This is a deceptive book, looking for all the world like some standard lady-friendly Sebastian Faulks or Wally Lamb book, with its swirly girl on the cover and gentle title. But it's not really. Yes, it's a book about growing up and losing innocence, a book about the relationships people forge in their younger years and how those relationships change as they get older, but in this case the whole thing takes place in a climate of secrecy and oppressive rules.
The special school in which the protagonists live feels something like the school that Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Jill Pole went to, but in this case the students have a Special Purpose (no, not that kind of Special Purpose) and many things about the nature of the world are hidden from them and not discovered until much later (by some, never at all by most).
Sounds promising, doesn't it? Yeah, and it promises to be something big and startling, but then just never quite delivers. The story is sparse to the point of being boring, and all the characters seem to be in a daze all the time. Of course, you could argue that that is what life's like. But if I wanted to read real life stories, I'd read Take a Break, wouldn't I?
2 comments:
Somebody gave me this recently and it had a different cover. And I left it in the pub and they lost it. How did that happen? you leave stuff in pubs here and it is there when you get back. Period.
I won't bother trying to find it so.
Well, your mileage may vary, as the young people say. Ray liked it, and overall the comments on I Love Books about it have been positive. Some very positive.
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