Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1115 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
'What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you'. Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin's granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family - and of what goes to make a child. Called 'the best English novelist of his generation' by Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe extends his range in this magnificent account of a Shropshire family in the last half of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews

Disappointing male stereo types were not up to the job
J Coe is male but he is hard on his own sex - the men in this book are not the best. Perhaps one or two are ok types but they lie low. The big secret of Rosamund is not so very shocking and the only thing slightly iffy is whether she did did do what Beatrix thought she saw her do.. Ungrateful, damaged, hard and frightening women abound, luckily slightly to the left of the Executrice herself. A multi layered story that was worth the telling with plenty of delightful period detail to set the scenes. Satisfying and enjoyable, the dissection of various mother / daughter relationships was worth the trouble. The setting out of their feelings was accepting and understanding. I went on thinking about it all afterwards (read it overnight) and will read it again less hurriedly to enjoy the writing.

not a bad holiday read
not a patch on house of sleep, what a carve up or rotters club. however the photographic descriptions made compelling reading. what was disappointing was the poor and somewhat twee ending; i've got to hand it to coe because he tied up all those loose ends but there wasn't much of a twist in the tale and was a little predictable. don't buy it, borrow it from your library, if only for a holiday read.

Ian McEwan it's not
Whilst I enjoyed this book in some senses and indeed managed to read it very quickly, I did find it somewhat one dimensional. The plot itself is absorbing, with its focus on the ripple effect of one generation on another. However I felt that, apart from Rosamund, the main narrator, you never really get a proper insight of the characters (who were perhaps more interesting), partially due to the premise of the novels narrative construction - an old lady looking back on her past with the help of a series of photographs and literally talking through each picture. There is no real dialogue, and it is all told from the perspective of the present looking back. I would have liked to know more about some of the other main characters Beatrix, Imogen and Rebecca, and to have heard their 'voices' a bit more. An enjoyable but slightly unsatisfying read.