Boof

Not for me, 23 Oct 2012

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)

I really wanted to like this book; in fact I've picked it up a number of times, started it and put it back again. I lived in Israel back in the early 90's and being neither Jewish or Muslim and havnig lived amongst these people I am fascinated by books about this part of the world.

However, I just can't seem to get in to this book; the characters, and what happened to them, were difficult to get to know and I never felt the black humour promised from the blurb. Maybe because I have lived there in Israel, for me it is difficult to see what happens there as light or humourous, I don't know.

For me, it was tough going and I was unable to finish the book. There are plenty… Read more

Enjoyable read, 23 Oct 2012

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)

Letty Fleming has had to cope with the sudden death of her husband as well as the wrench of uprooting herself and her three children from their home in Germany. She seeks sanctuary in her childhood home in the Scottish Islands where she struggles to come to terms with the traumatic events in her life. The question mark hanging over her husband's death - did he jump, was he pushed, was it an accident - are eclipsed by doubts about him and their marriage, as the suspicion begins to grow that he may have betrayed his country in the course of his work as a diplomat.

The close knit family gradually unravels as they battle against the elements on the island against a backdrop of an… Read more

Thought-provoking, 21 Oct 2012

Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)

I was intrigued by the premise of this novel - an alternative England where the church is all powerful and the few secularists have been banished to a bleak island somewhere off the north-east coast of England where they subsist on a diet of fish and vegetables, and where any sign of faith is punished by a gang of teenage boys, who hate and fear the English. This is certainly a highly imaginative novel.

Although it appears this book is being marketed as an adult novel, I can't help feeling that it will perhaps most be enjoyed by teenage readers: the story mainly focuses on the friendship which develops between Nathaniel, the leader of the Malades gang, and Sarah a beautiful… Read more