Wednesday, 18 July 2012

Salvage by Gee Williams

Salvage

For the most part this is a highly engaging story, each part is told by a different character, the one in part musing about the next, this is really effective and leads you into the depths of the story.
The other really interesting thing about these different viewpoints is that you build up a picture of events in the round, each one shares their understand of what has happened - and you end up with the realisation that the "truth" has perhaps escaped them all (or perhaps truth just does not exist in abstract at all...). 

That it is set in Chester was also an interest for me, as my parents over the past 8 or so years have lived there.  I think this mean I know Chester well enough to validate the descriptions of it as authentic but not so well that I would spot the slight geographical anomalies that are bound to be present. That Parkgate features is also a little delight (the seaside town which is no longer by the sea - as the estuary has silted up and a grassy marsh has replaced the beach) it is a surreal place and so a great setting for some of the more surreal moments of the story.

I began by praising the work only for "the most part" - it is perhaps only the last dozen pages or so for which I have qualified my statement. I think the story could have been left unresolved but Gee does a bit of unnecessary tidying up - added a devise where one of the characters is a writer and you are lead to believe that some if not all of what came before is this writer's fictionalisation of events which may or may not have happened.  This adds a pointless layer of complexity to the story and I felt devalues the journey which I had been on with the characters - my advice is enjoy this but stop at around page 200... 

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