Mark Haddon
"It wasn't about believing this or that, it wasn't even about good and evil and right and wrong, it was about finding the strength to bear the discomfort that came with being in the world."
I loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, so I was really excited to pick up this book and read it (this was also the first book that I read this year). By reading the first 50 pages, I was extremely disappointed but kept on reading to see if it got any better (in my opinion...it didn't). This is a book about death, it begins with a death, but nowhere is the struggle with this most human of problems made effective. Haddon provides lip service to a concept of death but he does fall short and it is in my opinion that the subject matter is beyond him.
The book doesn't have one main character telling the story, their are eight people trying to tell the reader the story all at once. A brother and sister and their families go on a week long vacation with one another after their mother dies and that is where the story begins. The point of view shifts from one person in one paragraph to the next person in the next paragraph, but there were many times where the switch occurred right in the middle of the paragraph. This made the story really confusing and I had to reread many different parts of the book to keep track of what was going on.
I thought that all the characters had great stories behind them. Mark Haddon probably could have written them all their own book if he wanted too. There was the sister who was going crazy over memories of an unborn child many years ago, the husband who was having an affair, the brother who was learning that his wife had multiple secrets and had to learn how to be a better husband, and a daughter who was coming to terms with her sexual orientation. It was too bad that you couldn't focus your attention on one character, instead you had to focus on all eight. Maybe some people would like this type of writing and likes lots of drama in their choice of books, I will leave this book up to you if you want to give it a chance or not!
Till the next review!
Rebekka.
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