Any Given Doomsday, A Respectable Trade, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, The Thirteenth Tale, Drowning Ruth
Any Given Doomsday, Lori Handeland
I went into this with low expectations based on reviews in LibraryThing. Unfortunately they turned out to be justified.
The book is readable, but it has very little going for it to outweigh the bad bits. The characters are flat, the main character is an idiot who’s still stuck on some man she slept with nearly a decade ago, and the resolution of the plot doesn’t make any sense. (Being somebody’s child is not an ability that you can absorb.) The pacing flags towards the end, and the character gets dumber: I’d have had a better opinion of the book if I’d stopped 100 pages before the end.
Then there’s the whole character-is-an-empath-who-gets-new-powers-from-sex problem, which leads to her being drugged and basically date-raped by someone who wanted to give her powers. I don’t see that “power” of hers going places I want to be, so I’ll pass on any more in this series.
A Respectable Trade, Philippa Gregory
Technically I didn’t read this. I got 56 pages into it before deciding it wasn’t worth finishing, and then I read the last 5 or so chapters in reverse order. It’s the October selection for my book group or I wouldn’t have made it to page 56.
This is a reissue of one of Gregory’s earlier novels. I suppose her recent work is better written. The prose here was often leaden and repetitive, and I could not sympathize with the characters – a big problem in a book about two people struggling in bad situations.
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, Michael Chabon
Very interesting world. I’d have preferred a longer ending: he solves the mystery, but the main character’s life is left completely up in the air.
The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel, Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale was a bit pretentious in parts, but the uncovering of the mystery (the life story of a famous writer – the book is her telling the story to another woman) was fascinating, and the ending surprising. Very well done characters.
Drowning Ruth, Christina Schwarz
Read this for a book group, or I’d have never have picked it up (and possibly not finished it). It was well written, and the characters were well developed, but it bogged down in the middle. The “mystery” of the drowning became clear too quickly, and the present-time story wasn’t interesting enough to make up for it.