My wife's sister Anne brought this book with her when she came to visit a couple of weeks ago. She thought I might be interested, although I would never have chosen it myself. But it turned out to be such an enchanting read. We are in 1946 and the war is only just over, the memories of the occupation of Guernsey weigh heavy on the islanders. But when they start corresponding with London based writer Juliet Ashton, she starts to understand how they feel. A book that is entirely made up of letters between Juliet, her work colleagues, friends and those on Guernsey ensures the plot moves on with quite a pace whilst keeping us in suspense about what happens next. There is a lightness and charm about the writing but always with a dark undercurrent of what happened to some of the characters in the last few years. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I would normally steer clear of a post apocalyptic novel ("The Road" and anything by Margaret Attwood being exceptions) but this book is so cleverly constructed and well written. There is a lot of back tracking before "the collapse" and here we get terrific modern human drama. The story alternates between various characters which, in different hands, would have been a mess. But the author keeps all the threads and swopping of time zones carefully detailed and a cohesive and thrilling plot emerges. Best of all, no Zombies.
Not so much a novel as a discourse on retrospective jealousy. Graham Hendrick becomes absorbed by the past affairs of his second wife Ann, despite being hugely in love with her and she with him. I find this hard to imagine, although I guess we have all wondered to a varying degree. It's just that Graham takes it to extremes. But it makes for a highly entertaining story, even if there is no plot as such. Only the second novel Barnes wrote, I actually preferred his first "Metroland". Thirty years later his prize winning "The Sense of an Ending" shows how much he matured as a writer.
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