Rating: 2/5
Review:
Not for me
I'm afraid I didn't get on at all well with Whistle In The
Dark. Plainly a lot of other readers did
and I'm in a small minority, but I found it rather clunky, needlessly slow and
not very original in its insights.
The book opens with Jen and Hugh's daughter Lana arriving at
hospital after having gone missing for four days while on holiday in the Peak
District. Lana insists that she cannot
remember anything about what has happened and we are left guessing about
whether this is true or not. Oh, and
their other daughter chooses that day to announce that she is pregnant by donor
insemination and that she has split up with her (female) partner.
The book develops primarily into an examination of the
relationship between insecure, emotionally clumsy Jen and Lana, the classic
rude, recalcitrant teenager with a history of depression, self-harm etc. for
good measure. There is also some
sisterly infighting to help things along.
Meanwhile Jen intrudes further and further into Lana's life to try to
find out what has happened to her as the narrative jumps back and forth in time
(as seems near-compulsory these days) and a rather tame story eventually
emerges.
I'm afraid I found it dull and unoriginal. The relationships and characters seemed very
familiar to me from other books and the story certainly didn't hold my
attention. It seems to me that there was
an awful lot of Creative Writing but not much in the way of worthwhile content. Plenty of others have enjoyed this very much,
but I'm sorry to say that I really didn't.
(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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