I found it hard to work out if I liked this book or not and I am still undecided.
The protagonist is in the midst of some kind of mental disturbance - himself suicidal he has to deal with the suicide of a childhood friend he has lost touch with. Through this the book takes as a major theme the guilt felt by those around a suicide that they weren't able to prevent it. This is challenging stuff and very easy to get wrong and yet Jayne Joso, in her debut novel, handles the material well. This is a sensitive book clearly in tune with the despair and yet also the desperation to cling on to life that so often rub up against each other.
That said, while the general ark of the novel is commendable there were a number of things about the style that were weak and irritating. For example the narrator/protagonist's roots in the generic 'North' are denoted by his use of 'me' instead of 'my' - yet as a whole the story is not told in a dialect and this becomes a mere linguistic tick that simply serves to jar the reader not immerse them in a reality. The is also heavy allusions to books and songs which I think hinder the narrative more than truly help it along or expanding it - the exchange of Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino for Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (here described to indicate Northern charm as 'a bird') is a key event in the story yet for me, having read one and not the other, the significance of the exchange is lost.
What I hope is that this is a glimpse of potential, a first novel that is a success not a triumph, and which will be followed up by better things to come.
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