John @ Tales from Absurdia

Pretentious, contrived and pretty poorly written.

Full review available at https://talesfromabsurdia.com/book-reviews/the-invisible-life-of-addie-larue-book-review
_______________

“Never pray to the gods who answer at night.”

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

An excellent piece of investigate journalism.

Hitchens is no doubt motivated by his antagonism towards organised religion, but the sources included in this brief analysis of Mother Teresa support a view that - at the very least - we should all judge people on their actions and not their reputation.

Well worth a read.

Full review can be found at: https://talesfromabsurdia.com/book-reviews/the-thursday-murder-club-review/

I wanted to love The Thursday Murder Club. I really did.

Like most people, I was drawn to it because of the author. I love Richard Osman; he's smart, witty, and possibly one of the most pleasant people on television.

So I'm sorry to say that I found The Thursday Murder Club to be a very poor novel.

The idea of a group of elderly people coming together to get to the bottom of unsolved crimes is a brilliant idea. It should be funny and perhaps even a little moving. And very occasionally, it is.

However, the plot is plodding and disinteresting and the characters are, on the whole, thinly-veiled stereotypes. We have the fraudulent priest; the supercapitalist property mogul; the socialist rabble-rouser; the hardworking Polish builder; the mid-life crisis policeman... I could go on.

If The Thursday Murder Club was a pastiche of sorts, you could maybe forgive the characterisation as a nod to the genre. But it isn't, and whilst it's probably unfair to say that it's lazy, I think the characters needed to have something more original about them.

A Tale of Two Cities indeed! The first two parts of this three-part text, located in England for the most part are a slow read. The book has a very strange pacing to it. It threatens to be interesting only to peter out, and its narrative simmers but never quite gets going until the final third, when the narrative focus switches primarily to Paris. And what a final third it is.

My early impressions of this book, which continued well into the second segment, were that although the characters were memorable, they appeared a little two-dimensional, although the plot was potentially very interesting, it wasn't quite going anywhere, and that the writing actually got in the way of these two strengths. The book simply felt overwritten; it was bloated with extraneous detail of menial events (The mail chiefly comes to mind, amongst other affairs), and my cynicism was drawn to the fact that Dickens was paid accordingly as each instalment was made available.

Having said that, these criticisms cannot be levelled at the final segment of the text, and the sparse flourishes of beautiful prose which just about kept me going through the middle of the text are much more regular; one suddenly understands why this is a ‘classic'. Furthermore, the characters possess more clarity, more of an identity in fact, and the plot quickens to make up for the earlier slack. It reads like a much more refined book.

A Tale of Two Cities is an inconsistent novel capable of menial and delectable prose in equal excess, but persevere. It is more than worth your time. The closing pages are some of the best you will read.