Date: Wednesday 4 July 2018
Present: Gill F, Doris, Jen
A slow, poignant book that took time to warm-up. Hopefully, dinner came out hot from the start (unless it was salad!) but I don't know because I wasn't there.
Nic: I didn’t like the book to begin with – I didn’t enjoy the language / style. But I did like the story and want to know how it resolved. I definitely got more into it. It was a bit Captain Corelli-ish in its futility but I quite like a sad ending
Sabine: agree with Nic – I was waiting for the story to start for about 100 pages! Ending was melancholic but a happy one would not have worked. Liked the description of the minutiae of Irish provincial life. And the (always scary) reminder that small things can have a big impact.
Gill C: I liked the book.
Jen: I felt that it was a very English book, for all that it was written by an Irishman. It didn’t have the lyricism of Irish English. The characters were very flat; events happened to them, rather than they driving or having any influence other than the original action by the child Lucy. I enjoyed parts of it, but overall, disappointing.