Another book I hadn't finished by the time of the meeting, but I have finished it now. A Gothic novel if ever there was one! The children Rob and Cathy, grow up in their Grandfather's house, their mother having abandoned them to live in France and their father incarcerated in an asylum. The sore of their mothers abandonment never heals. Cath and Rob live a cloistered and dysfunctional life in their Grandfathers large country house, find their love for each other and their need for comfort moves from sibling to lovers. The novel twists and turns with elegant descriptions of melancholic decaying life in a large house in interwar Britain. Lacking a character that you could sympathise with, this cold novel fails to engage the reader (my interpretation), although the descriptive prose is in places poetic in its elegance.
Words used to describe it:
great descriptive prose, ultimately unsatisfying, self obsessed, vivid descriptions, lacking resolution, vignettes and no story
Marks out of 10:
between 4 & 8
Next Book
Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge (Maire)
Next Meeting
11 August at 128 Harbord St
Subsequent meetings:
Sept Oxford Road - Carolyn
Oct Harbord St - Rowena
Nov Kingwood Rd - Olivia
