Anyway, the book! I have no strong feelings about this novel. I don't love it, I don't hate it, it was just a week of reading. The characters are interesting, the situations are intriguing, the tone and pacing are good. This novel is about Claudia, a writer of popular history books, writing a history of the world and herself during her final days. It's an interesting device, however the breadth of the story meant that the depth was limited. That may be a reflection of the idea of 'history', though, in which you usually only see the broad sweeps, harldy ever the minutiae. In this case it just meant that I never really developed an emotional attatchment to the story.
My only real issue with the novel was its tendency to be predictable. I kept waiting to be surprised by this novel, but was only really suprised in the second last chapter, and if I had been a bit more emotionally involved I probably wouldn't have even been surprised by that as there were plenty of hints that it was coming. Also, I found the late addition of a character unneccessary, and his relationship with Claudia seemed out of character for her. I'm still a bit puzzled by his inclusion in the story - perhaps he was just intended to add more to the humanity of history, I'm not sure. It was a bit strange, though.
I'm adding Moon Tiger to my "re-read" pile, and hopefully I'll find more of a connection with more familiarity. For now I'll be moving on to the first of Peter Carey's Booker prize winning novels, "Oscar and Lucinda", which sounds like it should be fun.
There's still a week to be entered in my draw to win a book - just comment on the blog and tell me your favourite book and why you love it!
Happy reading!
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