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Revision as of 11:54, 30 August 2020
, 11:54, 30 August 2020no edit summary
The story is one of several friends who meet at Lancaster University in the 1980's. Cameron is a dyspraxic Scottish outsider, who struggles to fit in and is quickly swept up in a friendship with the aforementioned Bex and another girl, the Canadian Christie. The other member of the group, Tommo, is a selfish wannabe rockstar, who Cameron seemingly dislikes intensely. It is obvious that Tommo is going to be the one to get the group into trouble, and I did find that the characters seemed a little unbelievable in their total commitment to their part: feminist activist/ambitious blonde Canadian/wannabe rockstar. They did seem, at times, a little one-dimensional, including Cameron. In fact, I thought the best character was Cameron's father, who was portrayed in a lovely, masculine yet soft-centred way.
I felt that the novel might have been more interesting if the author had chosen to portray it from more than one character's viewpoint – particularly Bex, as though she has real potential as a character, I didn't feel that that was developed enough. I like the first person, present tense style of the story, which is set in present -day Edinburgh. I like the short, punchy sentences, as this is a style of writing I enjoy and it usually moves the action on quickly. It also helps to draw you close to Cameron's experience, and it should make you empathise with him, though as I said above, I found it more difficult to do this as the story progressed.
Something I really didn't like about the style of the book was the asterisked notes at the bottom of many of the pages. These had 'explanations' of some of the places or events mentioned in the text. I felt this distracted from the absorption of the story, and made it feel like reading an essay or as if the author hadn't quite finished the manuscript. I'm unsure whether this was intentional on the author's part, to indicate that Cameron was writing the story as a report of what happened, but I felt it detracted from the story somewhat. It seemed that the words could, and should, stand -alone without these explanations.
The chapters flip between 1980's Lancaster and present -day Edinburgh, and although this works pretty well, and the book has a good story at its heart, I did feel that it was over-long and carried on telling the story way after it should have ended. The loose ends were tied so neatly that they seemed a little fake. Overall, the pace does pick up in the second half of the book, and there is a genuinely absorbing storyline at its heart.
Further Reading: If you like this book, you might like [[The Generation Game by Sophie Duffy|The Generation Game]] or [[This Holey Life by Sophie Duffy|This Holey Life]], both by Sophie Duffy.
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