"Touch " is an ingenious, twisted fantasy that runs out of steam too early. At times, the complications of the plot gets in the way of any literary merit, unlike Claire North's first novel which I enjoyed. The first half is entertaining and fascinating, but the story then becomes too repetitive and I became bored with the one trick pony that is at the heart of the novel. The chapters are short, mostly between two and six pages long. But I needed something deeper to keep me interested.
Linda Grant is one of favourite authors, so I was catching up on an earlier novel from 2002. "Still Here" was one of her best, tracing the brand new friendship of Alix and Joseph whilst exploring the backstory of their lives and that of their families. But they are both approaching fifty, one single, the other trying to make his marriage work.
Alix is one of the best female characters I have ever read, prickly, fiercely intelligent, outspoken (she calls it mouthy), a product of a Jewish family from Liverpool. You wont understand until you read the book when she says "Be gone with you Issie, a new phantasm will come to me tonight". Joseph is an architect from Chicago building a hotel near the docks. His story alternates with that of Alix.
Grant writes with a sharp point to her pen, describing Alix's grandparents escaping from Dresden and making a new life in Liverpool. As Alix says "I have to admit that my generation, born after the war, has had the easiest ride in the whole of history. ". Haven't we just.
Another outstanding novel from Helen Dunmore. A great pity that this is her last. Our narrator, Lizzie, is a young woman ahead of her time for 1792. Her older husband is building a fancy terrace on the edge of the Avon Gorge at Clifton. But he is not all he seems. When her mother dies, Lizzie has lost her rock. Full of gorgeous descriptive prose, the relationships between all the main characters are beautifully drawn. I loved it.
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