Product Description

Simone is 38, a district judge whose husband Donald is on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. Whilst she is at court, passing judgement on the lives of others, Donald stays at home and looks after their two young sons. One morning a letter arrives; someone she has tried to forget has not forgotten her and Simone's private history is about to collide with her public world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #298497 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

About the Author
Helen Dunmore has published nine novels with Penguin, including: Zennor in Darkness, which won the McKitterick Prize; Burning Bright; A Spell of Winter, which won the Orange Prize; Talking to the Dead; With Your Crooked Heart; The Siege, which was shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread Novel of the Year Award and for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002; Mourning Ruby and House of Orphans. She is also a poet, children's novelist and short-story writer.

Customer Reviews

Well-written and absorbing, but missing a certain something
The title of this book is from a poem by e. e. cummings, 'Buffalo Bill', about a macho man facing up to death- 'and what i want to know is / how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death.' The novel is also about facing up to death: "And what's the worst that can happen?" asks one of the characters, about being in a boat during a storm. "You can die, that's all, that's the worst that can happen." He shrugs.

As well as death, the novel is about memory, Vietnam, burying the past, the sea, blackmail, lust, the law and motherhood. The characters are well drawn and realistic, and the writing about the sea made me want to head for the coast. The plot is also very readable, with tension and reflection in all the right places to keep you hooked.

But when I reached the end I felt a little disappointed, that the promise had not quite been realised. There is much dazzling, sensuous and precise writing here, but there are also passages of more mechanical writing, and the plot seems on reflection just a little too artificial. The novel set out to hit many targets with great flailing wings, but in the end failed to say quite as much as it promised.

Enchanting writing
Helen Dunmore's writing affects me like Somerset Maugham. The plot becomes secondary to the pleasure of just reading the book. Her characters are realistic in that the various aspects of the human condition are presented in a believable, sometimes brutally truthful light. A delightful read.

Not Dunmore's best
Your blue-eyed boy didn't live up to the expectations I had for the new Dunmore novel. There is the regular Dunmore trait of slipping between two different periods of time, but here it works less effectively then in Burning Bright.

However it was still a captivating read, with clever insights into the world of a woman who has made sacrifices to hold her family together, despite no longer feeling real passion for her husband. But the emotional bonding I have come to expect with Dunmore characters never materialised.

The blackmailing aspect of the novel was less effective. There was no climax, and no real sense of tension.

If you have never read Helen Dunmore before I would strongly suggest you read Burning bright or A spell of winter first, as this is definately not Dunmore at her compelling best.