I raced through the five Miss Marple books I got for Christmas, but as in each case I knew Whodunnit and How&WhyItWasDone the main interest for me was in comparing them to the brilliant TV series with Joan Hickson. My other Christmas present, Victoria Goddard’s Stargazy Pie, was disappointing – the start was intriguing enough, which had lured me to choose it, but the further I got into the book, the more I found it confused and confusing, with incidents, scenes and characters flung with abandon into a negligible plot and coincidence doing much of the work, and overall for me its tone was bordering on irksome and in some scenes utterly inappropriate, its characters and its setting unconvincing.
Rather meatier was The Owl Killers by K Maitland, an historical novel or perhaps historical fantasy (it’s not entirely clear if certain folk-story creatures which appear are meant to be genuinely there or are simply imagined) which suggest a possible – if fantastical – reason why no beguinage is known to have thrived in England in the C14th despite their success in the Low Countries. The historical elements were sound, with the very believable characters very much of the age, but unfortunately few of those characters were particularly sympathetic, and while each of the five first person POVs was well written and clearly distinguishable from the others, none was terribly congenial. A novel I could admire for its intelligence and historical accuracy rather than one I actually enjoyed.
Coming up next an immediate re-read of the novella/novelette Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, as my first reading of it over this last week has left me somewhat baffled.
What are you reading this month?
Rather meatier was The Owl Killers by K Maitland, an historical novel or perhaps historical fantasy (it’s not entirely clear if certain folk-story creatures which appear are meant to be genuinely there or are simply imagined) which suggest a possible – if fantastical – reason why no beguinage is known to have thrived in England in the C14th despite their success in the Low Countries. The historical elements were sound, with the very believable characters very much of the age, but unfortunately few of those characters were particularly sympathetic, and while each of the five first person POVs was well written and clearly distinguishable from the others, none was terribly congenial. A novel I could admire for its intelligence and historical accuracy rather than one I actually enjoyed.
Coming up next an immediate re-read of the novella/novelette Treacle Walker by Alan Garner, as my first reading of it over this last week has left me somewhat baffled.
What are you reading this month?
