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A review by marc129
Burntcoat by Sarah Hall
2.0
Gosh, what am I supposed to think about this? This novel clearly didn't work for me. And how come? Certainly not because of the portrait of a wayward woman, because the artist Edith portrayed by Hall is quite interesting. Certainly not because of the style, or at least not entirely, because that is sometimes very sharp-witted and multi-layered, but often also banal and clichéd. Certainly not because of the theme of coping as a child with a mother who, after a stroke, develops a rather brutal way of dealing with things, without compromises. And, of course, it's not the description of a devastating pandemic that is problematic (this is, to my knowledge, the first pandemic novel I've read).
So why didn't it resonate? Perhaps it was the very clichéd nature of the all-consuming relationship that Edith enters into with the Turkish-Syrian refugee Halit: Halit is too much of an archetype of mysterious primeval male power ('chick lit-warning'), and the sex scenes are very explicit, almost pornographic. That explicitness also appears in the detailed description of the process of deterioration Halit and Edith go through, due to the disease ('pain porn'!). And then there's the very gaudy stuff about Edith's idiosyncratic artistry ('arty farty'!). Finally, there are a number of passages that I really don't see what they're doing in this novel (the visit from the half-brother from Canada, for example, at the end of the novel).
I suspect I'm doing Sarah Hall an injustice, but at times it really felt like I was reading chick lit upgraded with some artistic flair and a pandemic sauce over it.
So why didn't it resonate? Perhaps it was the very clichéd nature of the all-consuming relationship that Edith enters into with the Turkish-Syrian refugee Halit: Halit is too much of an archetype of mysterious primeval male power ('chick lit-warning'), and the sex scenes are very explicit, almost pornographic. That explicitness also appears in the detailed description of the process of deterioration Halit and Edith go through, due to the disease ('pain porn'!). And then there's the very gaudy stuff about Edith's idiosyncratic artistry ('arty farty'!). Finally, there are a number of passages that I really don't see what they're doing in this novel (the visit from the half-brother from Canada, for example, at the end of the novel).
I suspect I'm doing Sarah Hall an injustice, but at times it really felt like I was reading chick lit upgraded with some artistic flair and a pandemic sauce over it.