stefhyena's review
2.0
I reread this, but I feel quite entitled to mark it as a book I read because I literally remember nothing from the first time I read it apart from her t-shirt slogans (I didn't even recognise this as a book I had read until I got to the first of them). This was a weird but charming touch.
Despite being about a missing child and the horrifying possibilities of that, mostly the book managed to be fluffy and comfortable (a cosy mystery) which I am not completely comfortable with it must be said...
Trish is quite likeable in a busy-body sort of a way but her woolly thinking and fragile emotional state make it hard to believe in her as a successful lawyer. I get the feeling from previous books that Cooper likes to make her characters still "feminine" in quite predictable ways no matter how successful they are but I feel as with Willow (who even in the 90s as a wide-eyed and desperate for feminist books, young girl who hadn't heard the term "liberal feminism" I was at times very irritated by), so also with Trish the mandatory femininity and emotional self-indulgence (even when coupled with physical self-neglect) get in the way of having a more well rounded character. At the same time it is nice in a way to read about an alternative form of toughness, a courage that does not depend on bullying, putting-down or domineering others. In response to the too much (middle-class) niceness ond sweetness of Trish there is a wistful part of me that wants to believe in that world-view and to believe that women bring motherliness and kindness to the world and each other (it was easier to believe when I was 19).
Antonia on the other hand is unlikeable. I wanted to find a redeeeming feature in her because she is successful and tough and doesn't let men push her around but she is nothing but a small-minded bully. The fact characters in the book give her so much empathy and care and see her as a sort of feminist icon sums up everything that doesn't work about liberal feminism, because as a feminist what precisely is she doing for any sister at all (see for example her treatment of Nicky). Nicky was more complex and interesting and I would have liked to have seen more of her (ironically for such a significant character she is backgrounded for much of the book or reacts in a series of stereotypes and limited walk-on scenes). But that is a major flaw of the book that there are simply too many characters and the proportion of its 342 pages that we spend for example on seeing a police inspector having lustful thoughts for one of his sergeants, and dwelling on her dress-sense and hinting that he has marital problems (but seemingly only marital blandness actually as there is no hint of conflict), or the proportion of pages developing the swim teacher's gay domestic life which is for something so emotionally filled in not all tgat relevant to the plot or the many, many other overdetailed bit parts that distract from the main characters meant that the main characters had to remain larger than life and relatively wooden.
So for example Ben is seen through so many different lenses. Even though I hate Antonia I can't help (and this is my mistrust of Cooper's gender agenda coming through) wondering if her view of him has some truth in it (that there is a passive and somewhat kindly male, chauvanist pig buried in his masochism). Trish sees him as perfect and masculinely attractive but then that founders and falls apart but then sort of gets put back together without the lust and it all happens so quickly and in such a piecemeal way that none of it seems to be any more substantial than a cardboard set in a cheap amateur show of a musical. His wife (there are so many characters I have forgotten her name) similarly has a superficial complexity that comes across as not quite believable, more inconsistant than well-developed.
I was liking the fact that the main evidence against Trish as far as the police were concerned was that she was a sexually transgressive woman (having had many short-term partners but not succumbing to a man properly) and that there were questions around her hetero-sexuality (only because she didn't have a consistent man) and the hysteria that all non-hetero-sexualities (lesbian, gay, promiscuous or asexual) all lead to paedophilia. I liked that it seemed for a minute that Cooper was trying to expose the lack of logic and the hypocrisy that holds this persistent lie together. But I feel it as a cop out that the minute the questions around Trish's sexuality were raised out of literally nowhere (ie a past the reader is not privy to) comes her knight in shining armour to rescue her conscience (in reference to the victimised Nicky), her reputation and her sexual orientation in one fell (and supposed to be romantic) swoop,
Oh no, no, no Natasha Cooper, it was this sort of sneaking back into dependency on men that put me off the initially likeable Willow in previous books (I like the Worths better as cameos, especially the slight snarkiness about their gifted child...nice way to feature a trope I thought, that was one of the sections that almost dragged another star out of me).
Then my old hobby-horse the way class is featured in this book is far from satisfactory. It seems that for Cooper rich characters have more motivations and aspirations and giftedness than poor ones (neoliberal propaganda swallowed hook, line and sinker). In previous books my problem was Rusty, here it is more Nicky. Class gets touched upon, and bullying is frowned upon but the self-indulgence of the rich is seen as unproblematical within this context (which seems illogical to me). I also felt outraged about the lie-detector test. I was not surprised that Antonia did not respect Nicky's rights in this but the fact that neither Trish (a lawyer) not Emma (I think she is a lawyer too, and she certainly is a polygraph expert which was convenient) saw an ethical issue with asking Antonia but not Nicky for consent to test Nicky was beyond surprising. I was appalled. Yes, then after the fact Emma saw that Antonia had acted unwisely and maybe sort of less than perfectly kindly but how about unethically? How about illegally? Human rights seems to be not a big deal in this book (I thought some of the police procedure was dodgy in this way as well).
Many readers have commented that the ending is unsatisfactory. I would like to comment more upon that. I found that to be both true and untrue. I hope that Cooper meant it as an unsatisfactory ending that is meant to hint at chilling possibilities. I would have liked...oh but that would be a spoiler!
I did enjoy bits of the book and the outright feminist rant here and there (even though superficial and not sufficiently analytical) was as welcome now as when I was a young woman and absolutely STARVING for strong and intellignet female detectives. Two and a half stars and an indulgent laugh.
Despite being about a missing child and the horrifying possibilities of that, mostly the book managed to be fluffy and comfortable (a cosy mystery) which I am not completely comfortable with it must be said...
Trish is quite likeable in a busy-body sort of a way but her woolly thinking and fragile emotional state make it hard to believe in her as a successful lawyer. I get the feeling from previous books that Cooper likes to make her characters still "feminine" in quite predictable ways no matter how successful they are but I feel as with Willow (who even in the 90s as a wide-eyed and desperate for feminist books, young girl who hadn't heard the term "liberal feminism" I was at times very irritated by), so also with Trish the mandatory femininity and emotional self-indulgence (even when coupled with physical self-neglect) get in the way of having a more well rounded character. At the same time it is nice in a way to read about an alternative form of toughness, a courage that does not depend on bullying, putting-down or domineering others. In response to the too much (middle-class) niceness ond sweetness of Trish there is a wistful part of me that wants to believe in that world-view and to believe that women bring motherliness and kindness to the world and each other (it was easier to believe when I was 19).
Antonia on the other hand is unlikeable. I wanted to find a redeeeming feature in her because she is successful and tough and doesn't let men push her around but she is nothing but a small-minded bully. The fact characters in the book give her so much empathy and care and see her as a sort of feminist icon sums up everything that doesn't work about liberal feminism, because as a feminist what precisely is she doing for any sister at all (see for example her treatment of Nicky). Nicky was more complex and interesting and I would have liked to have seen more of her (ironically for such a significant character she is backgrounded for much of the book or reacts in a series of stereotypes and limited walk-on scenes). But that is a major flaw of the book that there are simply too many characters and the proportion of its 342 pages that we spend for example on seeing a police inspector having lustful thoughts for one of his sergeants, and dwelling on her dress-sense and hinting that he has marital problems (but seemingly only marital blandness actually as there is no hint of conflict), or the proportion of pages developing the swim teacher's gay domestic life which is for something so emotionally filled in not all tgat relevant to the plot or the many, many other overdetailed bit parts that distract from the main characters meant that the main characters had to remain larger than life and relatively wooden.
So for example Ben is seen through so many different lenses. Even though I hate Antonia I can't help (and this is my mistrust of Cooper's gender agenda coming through) wondering if her view of him has some truth in it (that there is a passive and somewhat kindly male, chauvanist pig buried in his masochism). Trish sees him as perfect and masculinely attractive but then that founders and falls apart but then sort of gets put back together without the lust and it all happens so quickly and in such a piecemeal way that none of it seems to be any more substantial than a cardboard set in a cheap amateur show of a musical. His wife (there are so many characters I have forgotten her name) similarly has a superficial complexity that comes across as not quite believable, more inconsistant than well-developed.
I was liking the fact that the main evidence against Trish as far as the police were concerned was that she was a sexually transgressive woman (having had many short-term partners but not succumbing to a man properly) and that there were questions around her hetero-sexuality (only because she didn't have a consistent man) and the hysteria that all non-hetero-sexualities (lesbian, gay, promiscuous or asexual) all lead to paedophilia. I liked that it seemed for a minute that Cooper was trying to expose the lack of logic and the hypocrisy that holds this persistent lie together. But I feel it as a cop out that the minute the questions around Trish's sexuality were raised out of literally nowhere (ie a past the reader is not privy to) comes her knight in shining armour to rescue her conscience (in reference to the victimised Nicky), her reputation and her sexual orientation in one fell (and supposed to be romantic) swoop,
Oh no, no, no Natasha Cooper, it was this sort of sneaking back into dependency on men that put me off the initially likeable Willow in previous books (I like the Worths better as cameos, especially the slight snarkiness about their gifted child...nice way to feature a trope I thought, that was one of the sections that almost dragged another star out of me).
Then my old hobby-horse the way class is featured in this book is far from satisfactory. It seems that for Cooper rich characters have more motivations and aspirations and giftedness than poor ones (neoliberal propaganda swallowed hook, line and sinker). In previous books my problem was Rusty, here it is more Nicky. Class gets touched upon, and bullying is frowned upon but the self-indulgence of the rich is seen as unproblematical within this context (which seems illogical to me). I also felt outraged about the lie-detector test. I was not surprised that Antonia did not respect Nicky's rights in this but the fact that neither Trish (a lawyer) not Emma (I think she is a lawyer too, and she certainly is a polygraph expert which was convenient) saw an ethical issue with asking Antonia but not Nicky for consent to test Nicky was beyond surprising. I was appalled. Yes, then after the fact Emma saw that Antonia had acted unwisely and maybe sort of less than perfectly kindly but how about unethically? How about illegally? Human rights seems to be not a big deal in this book (I thought some of the police procedure was dodgy in this way as well).
Many readers have commented that the ending is unsatisfactory. I would like to comment more upon that. I found that to be both true and untrue. I hope that Cooper meant it as an unsatisfactory ending that is meant to hint at chilling possibilities. I would have liked...oh but that would be a spoiler!
I did enjoy bits of the book and the outright feminist rant here and there (even though superficial and not sufficiently analytical) was as welcome now as when I was a young woman and absolutely STARVING for strong and intellignet female detectives. Two and a half stars and an indulgent laugh.
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