A review by emdawgb
The Uninvited by Liz Jensen
3.0
I was already inwardly at odds over this novel before I started reading it. The world as we know it is changing, and giving way to something terrifying and strange – I’m in! Yet, it is narrated by Hesketh, an anthropologist with Asperger’s, which means that the narrative style is comparable to the naive child narrators that irritate me so much. However, the premise was intriguing, and having read Liz Jensen’s novel Ark Baby and loved it, I had relatively high hopes for The Uninvited.
Unfortunately, it just didn’t light my fire. All the way through the novel I was waiting, and waiting, and then desperately hoping that something just a bit more exciting would happen. Due to the narrative style, everything was bogged down in tedious and ultimately tiring details, which to me seemed to detract from the story rather than add to it. The story is very interesting though, and I think with better execution it could have been fascinating. The idea of young children mindlessly murdering close family and loved ones is haunting, and Jensen paints a bleak picture of the fallout from these attacks.
Unfortunately, it just didn’t light my fire. All the way through the novel I was waiting, and waiting, and then desperately hoping that something just a bit more exciting would happen. Due to the narrative style, everything was bogged down in tedious and ultimately tiring details, which to me seemed to detract from the story rather than add to it. The story is very interesting though, and I think with better execution it could have been fascinating. The idea of young children mindlessly murdering close family and loved ones is haunting, and Jensen paints a bleak picture of the fallout from these attacks.