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Raking the Ashes
 
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Raking the Ashes (Hardcover)

by Anne Fine (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Bantam Press (1 April 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0593054121
  • ISBN-13: 978-0593054123
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 14 x 2.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 818,426 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"A remarkable novel...there is something terrifyingly recognizable in each of the characters that will have readers looking deep inside their souls."
-"The Observer"

"From the Trade Paperback edition."



Independent

‘A fearless novelist...also a constantly amusing writer. The result is an unsettling, sometimes angry but always engrossing story.’
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Raking the Ashes
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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Painfully accurate dissection of a relationship, 18 April 2007
By Jaybird (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
This review is from: Raking the Ashes (Paperback)
Raking the Ashes is another brilliant book from Anne Fine, although Telling Liddy remains my favourite.

The book discusses the breakdown of a relationship from the point of view of the woman, Tilly. She is a feisty and confident, a health and safety engineer on an oil rig. Tilly is a woman you go to if you want a problem solved, not for a sympathetic hearing. She has no female friends, a dementing mother, and an ambivalent relationship with her stepchildren.

Her partner is kindness and consideration itself; everyone loves him. But, he will do anything to avoid confrontation, preferring to stick his head in the sand no matter what the problem.

The book is the story of the relationship, with Tilly considering leaving but then not quite managing it.

Anne Fine always writes well and this book is no exception.

Why not 5 stars? Well, the ending felt a little tacked on to me. Otherwise, as a dissection of human foibles, this book is highly recommended.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A shock too far?, 18 Sep 2009
By E. Shaw "Kokoschka's_cat" (Leeds, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Raking the Ashes (Paperback)
Geoffrey is a lovely man in most respects. Marriage to the impossible Frances has broken down but he gets his two children, Minna and Harry, for tea once a week and to stay every other weekend. He is kind and considerate, but he doesn't like to confront trouble, so he evades the truth rather too often.

His girlfriend Tilly is quite a different sort of person. It's her house they are living in and she has rather a good job as an engineer, ensuring that oil rigs don't break down. Tilly has done all she can to fit in with Geoffrey's family, but she still feels as if his ex-wife treats her like a suspect and incompetent baby-sitter, so it's probably good that Tilly is away a lot with her job.

Tilly is the narrator of this tale so we only get her version of things, but it is not hard to see through the acerbic persona she favours to the somewhat embittered and revengeful monster lurking within. A lot of what Tilly espouses is feminist good sense. Men, it is true, prefer on the whole not to confront what is going on behind their back. They are good at swallowing the gruel with the caviar and looking on the bright side. But women like Tilly are not inclined to let them get away with it. Tilly catches on to Geoffrey's moral dissembling once too often, and she decides to have her final revenge.

This is a beautifully enraged and lucidly intelligent little story, full of spite and elision and sparkling with the kind of wit that delights and half-shocks. The ending, however, might be a shock too far.
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