6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
upmarket golfing hotel, 20 Jan 2006
In this true story, twenty year old self titled ‘heat-seeking sexual missile’ Kate Lock arrives at Exeter University in autumn 1981 and falls for Tim, a fifty six year old sociology PhD student. On the plus side Tim has nice ‘labourer’s wrists’, a ‘firm, dry, assertive’ handshake and a healthy bank balance. Initially his only major negative point, apart from being a convicted murderer, is talking like a prat. The first thing he says in the book is ‘I’m afraid Keith has a very limited vocabulary, especially after a few drinks. His ability to articulate decreases incrementally with every pint of flowers’. Amazingly, at Exeter University in 1981, instead of giving someone an excuse to kick your head in, it seems this kind of talk was considered witty.
Anyway, despite Tim slipping ‘a slim volume of Bertrand Russell’s ‘The Problems of Philosophy’’ inside her bag and being on the receiving end of some truly awful juvenile poetry Kate decides she ‘knew that this relationship, wherever it was going, would be of a different nature from anything I had ever experienced before’. Well, you’d hope so wouldn’t you? To me, the spirit of the book can be summarised in this sentence describing a hotel room: ‘It smelt of polish and lemons and something faintly musty, which I put down to a plug-in device designed to repel mosquitoes.’ which sounds mysterious and significant but is never referred to again.
I’ve given this book two stars (rather than one) because it is competently written, contains unintentionally comical phrases such as ‘upmarket golfing hotel favoured by Tony Jacklin’, and it deserves credit for what could be considered a rather unflattering portrayal of two dislikeable characters.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Carrion Kisses - a top notch true crime love story, 19 Mar 2004
By A Customer
I picked this up after reading about it in The Guardian and enjoyed it thoroughly.
The first part of the book is an account of how the author met and had a lolita-like relationship with a very much older man which gradually became more abusive and difficult as time went on. Not only was the man many years older than her (she was a student and he was in his late 50's) but he also had a few secrets of his own. Part 2 of the book recounts the writer's uncovering of the truth about her lover's past - namely the circumstances surrounding the murder of a previous partner. I'm a great fan of the true crime/modern memoir genre and this is one of the best examples in recent years - it's superbly written and a gripping story. Recommended!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent, 15 April 2004
By A Customer
I loved this book, I found it very moving and although it was one I didn't want to finish, I still found myself racing through it to get to the bottom of Tim's mysterious life.
An excellent true crime story without sensationalism. Highly recommended.
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