Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Moving, sexy, funny and moving again, in that order, 26 Nov 1999
By A Customer
This is Emma Donoghue's second novel, and is the one that her fans had been hoping she'd write; bigger, more ambitious, tougher, dealing with the pain of bereavement and the even more elusive pain of having to hide your grief. Donoghue is brilliant at getting inside the curiously detached and stunned psyche of her main character, Pen (another one of Donoghue's suggestive character names: the dead lover is called Cara, the lover's father - with whom the two women lived - is Mr Wall. Symbolism ahoy!) Once again, her technique of dramatising feelings by behaviour rather than by indigestible flights of interior monologue pays off. Pen gobbles cakes on the bus and then pukes them into a bush; she fantasises about making a pass at her lover's emigre sister. The days go by and she seems no closer to having any definite feelings about her lover's death, or her current predicament. Hood has more respect for its minor characters than Donoghue's earlier Stir-Fry, probably because the characters are older and not being seen through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old. As it says on the back cover, it's a kind of hymn to the pleasure of feeling ordinary; in a sense, you could say that of all her books, but this one dramatises it particularly well. Beautifully written, intelligent and unsentimental. A lovely book.
|
|
|
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful, passionate and full of dignity., 1 Feb 2000
Emma Donaghue provides us with a enigmatic look at just a splinter of what it feels like to lose somebody you love and bear all this pain in secret. She writes supremely making the reader believe this story with all the small details of what being in a relationship is all about, the fighting, and not forgetting the making up. It is one of the most powerful stories that I have ever read and helps me belive that sometimes you are not on your own.
|
|
|
3 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good look at relationships, 15 Jan 2003
Most books have a beginning, middle and end, and this book starts at the end. I found myself, while turning the pages looking for the story line, trying to figure out the plot. It seem's though, that there is no plot, there doesn't seem to be a goal for any of the characters, apart from Pen trying to force herself to cry and feel the grief she feel's she is expected to feel for her dead lover. What emerges from Pen's grief are relationships which seem more real than those found in any love story. We watch as Cara's hold over Pen continues to dictate Pen's life even after Cara has died, and Pen tries to regain her independance. Not a very entertaining read, but certainly one to start the mind ticking about your own relationships.
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Deirdre Madden
by Patrick McCabe
by Brian Moore
by Eavan Boland
by Marina Carr
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Make sure you always get what you want with an Amazon.co.uk 
Amazon Home