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niamhaine's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.0
israa11's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
sjw_creates's review against another edition
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Beautiful prose of a day and a moment in time intercepted with a future journey of the narrator.
helen's review against another edition
4.5
Dual narrative with alternating chapters. One story is set on 31st August 1997 (the day of Princess Diana's death, but she is never mentioned) and is about the residents of a terraced street in an unnamed city in the north of England. We get to know these residents over the course of the day and there's an almost unbearable tension as an omniscient narrator hints at an accident that is about to happen on the street. The other story is from the point of view of one of these residents a few years later as she reaches a crossroads in her life.
The author studied film and you can tell because it's a very visual book. There's an extraordinary opening where he describes a rare moment of silence in a city in the early hours of a summer morning - I could see and hear it all very clearly in my head.
I loved spending time with the characters on the street. They're a community of people who don't see themselves as a community. They live on the same street, see each other every day and yet they don't know each others names: the narrator refers to "the boy at number eighteen" or "the man with the burnt hands". And as we discover, all these ordinary lives are worth finding out about.
The build up to "the accident" is a bit stretched out and the author includes a few too many red herrings before we find out what happens at the end. It started to feel like the beginning of an episode of Casualty. But it kept me turning those pages!
Ultimately, it's a very moving book that I found hopeful and humane.
Favourite quote: "There are photographs on the dresser, amongst the decorative teapots and the royal doulton figurines, a lifestory waltzing across varnished wood."
The author studied film and you can tell because it's a very visual book. There's an extraordinary opening where he describes a rare moment of silence in a city in the early hours of a summer morning - I could see and hear it all very clearly in my head.
I loved spending time with the characters on the street. They're a community of people who don't see themselves as a community. They live on the same street, see each other every day and yet they don't know each others names: the narrator refers to "the boy at number eighteen" or "the man with the burnt hands". And as we discover, all these ordinary lives are worth finding out about.
The build up to "the accident" is a bit stretched out and the author includes a few too many red herrings before we find out what happens at the end. It started to feel like the beginning of an episode of Casualty. But it kept me turning those pages!
Ultimately, it's a very moving book that I found hopeful and humane.
Favourite quote: "There are photographs on the dresser, amongst the decorative teapots and the royal doulton figurines, a lifestory waltzing across varnished wood."
revisorium's review against another edition
5.0
Really poignant. The unusual choice of prose really pulled everything together. It felt like a collective hum of a story.
moominmama_11's review against another edition
3.0
I think it’s difficult to rate this book - I didn’t love it and I certainly didn’t hate it. I think I would describe it as inconsistent - there is some really beautiful writing and I would love to read poetry by this author, but there were also moments where the writing felt very inauthentic and as though all characters thought and felt things in the same way. I think maybe that was the point - the universality of the human experience - but I don’t think it rang true. The lack of names, speech marks, narrative was fine, after a few pages it was clear it was going to be THAT kind of book, but the problem with this kind of writing is that it builds next to no tension. I think it was an intriguing debut and would probably read more mature works by the author.
bertiereadsbooks's review against another edition
4.0
This is my third attempt at reading this book. I’m not sure I read past halfway before and up until that point I would probably have given it 3/5. The story feels a little slow and didn’t fully grab my attention but yet it’s still intriguing enough that I kept trying to guess what the ‘terrible event’ would be and how the characters may be connected.
eviemp3's review against another edition
4.0
Read for class. Adored. Will probably reread in the summertime.