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The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore (view source)
Revision as of 13:28, 23 January 2012
, 13:28, 23 January 2012no edit summary
Dunmore effectively captures the haunting feeling of the story but my sense was that we see rather too much of the workings of the story rather than getting a sense that the story develops organically. I could always see the author's hand at work in driving the story forward. This isn't an altogether bad thing when that author is someone of Dunmore's calibre, but I never felt caught up with Isabel's plight although the story itself is compelling and clever. I just felt a bit too distanced from it.
Despite feeling ahead of Isabel with large parts of the story, the ending though was unexpected and even a quite moving. As a brief, very well constructed ghostly novella, it ticks all the boxes, but probably as much due to the length of the book as anything, it isn't as involving as I would have liked.
Our thanks to the kind people at Hammer (yes, those very people who brought us the scary films) for inviting us to review this book.
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[[Category:Historical Fiction]]
[[Category:Literary Fiction]]