Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A pleasant summer read, 26 April 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I had enjoyed Patrick Gale's "Notes from an Exhibition" so when I saw a new Patrick Gale on the reading list I immediately ordered it. The concept of structuring events around a single day is not a new one, Michael Cunningham brilliant "The Hours" springs to mind, but here the handling is more pedestrian.
Laura has returned from Paris to care for her elderly mother who now lives in the home town of her college boyfriend of twenty years ago. Ben, the ex-boyfriend, has returned to his childhood home to look after his brother following the death of their mother. Laura and Ben meet and their mutual attraction is rekindled, but is it really their destiny to be together?
The chapters oscillate between Laura's story and Ben's. Laura's evolves around the care of her mother, whilst Ben's centres on his avoidance of dealing with the problems in his marriage to Chloe. Whilst these two are the focus it is the other characters who will influence the relationship's outcome without even meaning to. Patrick's strength is in his understanding of why people struggle with their problems when to an outsider (like the reader) the solution may seem obvious. The colour in Patrick's books comes from the grey areas of life.
For me this book did not meet the standard set by "Notes" but I did enjoy it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Love Without Passion, 28 May 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Patrick Gale's latest novel is both shorter and a lot more direct than some of his more recent efforts. Forgoing the multi-layered plotlines of "Notes From An Exhbition", his somewhat flawed previous effort, this focuses on the lives of its two protagonists, Laura and Ben, and their rediscovery of a lost love.
Gale writes with his usual easy paced style and the story moves along pleasantly enough. The love affair builds gradually and through a series of rather comfy coincidences. Gale builds the background of his characters well enough but the story doesn't engage in the way some of his earlier works do. The supporting characters include Laura's elderly mother and Ben's brother who is has Down's Syndrome and also happens to be gay. For once their unusual difficulties seem rather shorn onto the plot for a combination of convienience and to flesh out the rather drab story. Ben's wife also appears in the novel but is kept as a distant and rather two dimensional character, the main difficulty is that the first two thirds of the book seem oddly flat.
It's not all bad. As the plot reaches its climax (broadly from the decision of Laura and her mother to go to evensong) the book suddenly brightens and the writing suddenly seems to rise of the page in manner comperable to the best of Gale's work. It may come a little late but is enourmously welcome antidote to the rather pedestrian opening sections. The book builds to a very satisfactory climax for the reader. As for the characters, you will have to find that out.
Overall a smaller and slighter book. It won't disappoint fans of Gale's work, and those looking for a book for the beach this summer will probably be thouroughly satisfied. Yet compared to some of Gale's work it does seem to lack a little substance. Perfectly readable, but lacking the depth and substance to call it a really essential read.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not up to his usual standard - a poor attempt at a "summer read", 7 May 2009
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
This is a much slimmer volume than Gale's usual novels and the cast of characters is a mere handful. We focus on Laura, a frustrated accountant who returns from a life as "the other woman" in Paris to look after her distant, brilliant mother, a retired professor.
Laura has never really achieved her potential after to take her finals at Oxford, the result of being dumped by her only true love, handsome doctor Ben who has of course since married her rival from the Oxford days.
Amazingly, just as Laura had to return to England to look after her mother who had retired to Winchester, Ben leaves his consultant's job, (and his wife, natch) to look after his Down's Syndrome brother who just happens to live in Winchester too.
Laura inevitably settles into the "other woman" role again affair begins. There is a slight twist which I won't reveal as it's the only real surpise of the novel, but it basically links two characters with yet another unlikely coincidence.
The book is one long examination of a cast of rather cold and self-obsessed characters who have little of the warmth that Gale usually injects. The many fantastic coincidences are made to look even less credible by the plodding pace.
I had real difficulty caring about these characters. Explanations of their chilly characters are hinted at but never explored.
The blurb claims it to be structured "around the events of a single summer's day". This consists of the author giving each chapter cutesy little names such as "Early morning tea" and "Lunch Break", then relating events from decades apart as happening at roughly those times of day - an odd concept which didn't really add anything, but seemed to be trying to compensate for the otherwise rather dull plot. It doesn't.
The cramped confines of Winchester feels a suitable setting for a much narrower, less ambitious book. I also found the it to be strangely politically correct, with some rather simplistic and old-fashioned "feminist" barbs at men in general coming from his female characters which I found oddly shallow and quite at odds with the authors usual subtle understanding of the shades of grey of life.
If this was a first book by an unknown author, I would probably have rated it better. It still has the occasional flash of Gale brilliance but it is only because I respect Gale so much as a writer and love his previous works so much that I have to give this book a disappointing review. The blurb claims this is "vintage Gale" but it is anything but.
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