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A review by jatridle
Grasshopper by Barbara Vine
2.0
Like other Barbara Vine novels I've read (I've never read any of her Ruth Rendell books) this one isn't paced like a crime novel. Crimes happen in the novel, often in the periphery of the main action of the story, but the book, itself, is about a core group of young people and their eventual evolution into adulthood. It's a frustrating book filled with frustrating characters who expect you to care about some frustratingly asinine things. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to reach through the page and throttle the people this book forced me to hang out with page after page after page. Young people bitching about situations they fought and lied to stay in. There's a lot of (clumsy) foreshadowing and build-up to incidents that really, truly don't matter one iota. But, a small part of me liked the book anyway. In fact, that part of me liked the book BECAUSE these people were so damn frustrating. They're flawed characters. Flawed, young characters. Realistically drawn flawed, young characters-- who drove me absolutely nuts.
As for things I didn't like so much, the clumsy, heavily used foreshadowing. There was a lot of it, like she didn't trust the readers to keep reading on their own (and it seems from many of the other reviews, many readers didn't anyway.) I'm also not sure why Vine chose to begin the book showing how it ends. We get to see two of the main characters of the book grown up and doing well from the get-go, which, to me, took away a lot of the tension the book could have had.
There were some interesting aspects to the book. The kidnapping story-line kept my attention. And, as I've said before, I did sort of like seeing the main characters mature and grow as the book progressed. I liked the way Vine wrote humans instead of villains and victims. But, in the end, if I'm totally honest, I thought the book was a two-star"okay' and not much more.
As for things I didn't like so much, the clumsy, heavily used foreshadowing. There was a lot of it, like she didn't trust the readers to keep reading on their own (and it seems from many of the other reviews, many readers didn't anyway.) I'm also not sure why Vine chose to begin the book showing how it ends. We get to see two of the main characters of the book grown up and doing well from the get-go, which, to me, took away a lot of the tension the book could have had.
There were some interesting aspects to the book. The kidnapping story-line kept my attention. And, as I've said before, I did sort of like seeing the main characters mature and grow as the book progressed. I liked the way Vine wrote humans instead of villains and victims. But, in the end, if I'm totally honest, I thought the book was a two-star"okay' and not much more.