Carol Anshaw - Carry The One

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Disappointingly artificial

I didn't get on at all well with this book. I was expecting to enjoy it because it tackles interesting-sounding ideas, and attempts to explore important ideas about how lives develop and how they can be shaped by events, character and individual decisions. Sadly, I don't think it did it very well.

Part of the problem for me was structural in that Carol Anshaw introduces a large cast of characters to follow over many years, but then often gives only a sketchy account of their lives. A good deal of the development takes place away from the narrative and people pop in and out of the book with important things like the state of their relationship having changed but with no analysis of why. It all felt a bit sparse, and both emotionally and intellectually unsatisfactory in a book whose purpose is to examine exactly what is so often left unexamined. Partly as a result of this, I found the characters distant and not terribly real.

I also found the style rather clumsy and the prose not that easy to read. In the first few pages we are quickly introduced to a great many people in a rather clunky way, and there is a sex scene on page 3, clearly designed to shock (mildly, of course) and to engage the reader's interest. It all felt rather forced and unnatural to me, a feeling I never quite shook off because I was very often aware of the techniques the author was using and never really caught up in the narrative itself. The prose is competent, but there is a lot of stuff like this (on p.223), for example: "She and Rob were having dinner at the home of some friends, a meal that was going on forever. Actually it had hit the forever mark about an hour ago." I find that sort of thing slick and glib while not really telling me much. It gets very wearing after a while, and there's a lot of it in the book.

Others have obviously enjoyed this book so do read their reviews before being put off by mine, but I'm afraid I found it unengaging and somewhat artificial and I can't really recommend it.