Ness - The Crane Wife

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing

I'm afraid I found this book a disappointment. I loved Patrick Ness's thoughtful, intelligent insights, his wonderful storytelling and his outstanding writing in the brilliant Chaos Walking trilogy and was hoping for more of the same here. Sadly, I found it a slightly uncomfortable mix of magical realism (never a favourite of mine), a meditation on the nature of truth and love, and a collection of random barbs aimed at some of the author's pet hates about modern life.

The Crane Wife is a tale of a 48-year-old man in present-day London, his adult daughter and her infant son as the two adults struggle toward an understanding of love and fulfilment. The agent of this is a mysterious, enigmatic woman who may or may not be the incarnation of a wounded crane and who creates an eastern-sounding allegorical story about the relationship between a volcano and a Lady who was "born a breath of cloud." To me, it often had an air of self-regard while not saying anything nearly as deep as it thought it was and although it was well written I found it a slog because of its often rather pretentious feel.

It does have its moments. There are some rather touching character insights, and some of the satire is neat, like the woman whose every spoken sentence ends with a question mark or someone sitting down to watch "brightly coloured people suffer brightly coloured hysteria all across Saturday night telly," but other targets like cyclists or British stereotyping of Americans felt crudely done and sat uncomfortably alongside the mystical feel of the narrative.

Patrick Ness is a wonderfully talented writer, but I think he has ventured into a genre in which he isn't at home and the book suffers badly for it. I am sorry to be critical of a writer whose other work I have enjoyed immensely, but I didn't think this was up to anything like the same standard. It has enough about it to warrant three stars (just), but I can't really recommend it.

(If you haven't read the Chaos Walking Trilogy, I recommend it in the strongest terms. It's brilliant.)