Scan barcode
A review by rosekk
Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon
3.0
I started reading this a while ago, but stopped after 20 pages, deciding I wasn't in the mood for it. This time I persevered, and discovered I probably won't ever really be in the mood for it.
The book did have some good qualities. The writer has a talent for creating complex webs of relationships, and considering what complex blend of emotions feeds it. The premise of the book also appealed to me: the idea of writing an imagined life for a twin that never lived, and using it to imagine a whole alternate timeline works well. And I am usually fond of unreliable narrators.
Where this fell down for me was the feel of it. I never felt much sympathy for the narrator. The best description I can think of for her is 'acidic'. She reminded me of people I've met before and struggled to get on with.
I was also not convinced by the world building in this. Since it predicts a near-future, it has the common sci-fi issue of having to build a plausible world out of the current one, and explain how the world got from A to B. In this book, the description of the new world was relatively vague (and complicated further by the unreliable narrator), and there was only a rough outline of how this new world came about. It all made enough sense that I could accept it and follow the story, and it was clear that the point of it all was more to serve as a backdrop for character drama than a proper vision of the future, but it still felt insubstantial.
The book did have some good qualities. The writer has a talent for creating complex webs of relationships, and considering what complex blend of emotions feeds it. The premise of the book also appealed to me: the idea of writing an imagined life for a twin that never lived, and using it to imagine a whole alternate timeline works well. And I am usually fond of unreliable narrators.
Where this fell down for me was the feel of it. I never felt much sympathy for the narrator. The best description I can think of for her is 'acidic'. She reminded me of people I've met before and struggled to get on with.
I was also not convinced by the world building in this. Since it predicts a near-future, it has the common sci-fi issue of having to build a plausible world out of the current one, and explain how the world got from A to B. In this book, the description of the new world was relatively vague (and complicated further by the unreliable narrator), and there was only a rough outline of how this new world came about. It all made enough sense that I could accept it and follow the story, and it was clear that the point of it all was more to serve as a backdrop for character drama than a proper vision of the future, but it still felt insubstantial.