Rating: 2/5
Review:
Original but hard going
I am not surprised to see that people seem either to have loved or
hated Lomita For Ever. In some ways, I did both; there’s a lot
that’s good about it in that it has an original style and deals
with some tough issues pretty well, but in the end I couldn’t
really get on with it.
The book deals with
Ever (short for Everett) whose mind seems to be coming apart
following the death of his father and some shocking revelations
leading to his separation from his wife and son. Frankly, for a good
deal of the book, it’s not easy to say what the plot is; Ever has
revenge of a kind in mind on someone whom he thinks destroyed his
father but meets the very aged but still beautiful Lomita which
throws everything into turmoil.
It’s an odd plot
written in an odd style, and it was the style which eventually threw
me out of the book. It is original and in some ways brilliant, but
it’s also very hard to understand at times and began to get
unbearably mannered. As a small but typical example, Chapter 13
begins:
“The firing range.
Did not require ear
defenders with the Maxim 9...”
That weird
fragmentation of sentences happens a lot and while it is atmospheric,
it got me down in the end, especially when it made it very hard to
know who had said what. I quite enjoyed the first 20% or so, slogged
through another few chapters and then began to skim, I’m afraid.
On the one hand I
admire Trevor Eve for his originality and courageous avoidance of a
generic celebrity-author’s thriller, but on the other the book
became a real chore after a while. Others have plainly enjoyed this
far more than I did and you may too, but personally I can’t
recommend it.
(My thanks to
Unbound Digital for an ARC via NetGalley.)
No comments:
Post a Comment