A Sixpenny Song by Jennifer Johnston
| A Sixpenny Song by Jennifer Johnston | |
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| Category: Literary Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Sue Magee
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| Summary: The death of a parent doesn't always hit hard and when Annie returns to Dublin she's more determined to find out about her mother who died many years before than to grieve for her father. Parts are good but this is not one of Johnston's best books. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 208 | Date: October 2013 |
| Publisher: Tinder Press | |
| ISBN: 978-1472209221 | |
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Annie's father is dead. She's not particularly upset as it's a decade or so since they've had any contact. Dada (he preferred to be called 'Father') had wanted her to go into the family business, to make money. She'd wanted to go to Trinity College in Dublin to read English Literature, but instead she'd packed a suitcase and left for London, where she still is - working in a bookshop. Her mother died when she was young - Dada had sent the child off to boarding school and did his best to ensure that her mother's name was never referred to again - and it wasn't too long before he remarried. His death brought Annie back to Ireland and she found that the money had been left to wife number two (as he was confident that she would know how to look after it) but the house now belonged to Annie.
Was she to stay and make a life in Dublin? Should she sell and go back to London? There was no grief for her father - just a relief that the tyrant was gone, even though he did still haunt her mind. Discoveries about the circumstances of her mother's death nearly two decades before became more important and drew her to Kevin, the handyman at the house she'd inherited, but hated. The discovery of her father's diaries fueled her need to find out more - but brought her father's presence uncomfortably close - as she found out the details of her mother's death from his point of view as well as the person who was closest to her.
The dialogue is excellent and the evocation of place as perfect as can be, but a few points jarred with me. Annie's stepmother had cleared the house of most of the furniture with the exception of the Steinway which belonged to Jude, Annie's mother and the bookcase which held the diaries. It seemed just too convenient a way of bring the content of the diaries to Annie's attention and left me with a sense of a plot that had not been well thought out. More disconcerting was the character of Kevin, whom I really couldn't get to grips with at all and the role he played in the story failed to convince me, despite the fact that it was evidently true. Of all the characters in the book the one who came off the page best was Annie's father, eminently dislikeable but nevertheless more real than the rest of the cast.
The words of Sing a song of Sixpence are evoked regularly throughout the book - and in the title - but I found that they added little to the story and stayed only just this side of being irritating. It's a short book, little more than a novella in fact, but for the first time I was relieved when I got to the end of a Jennifer Johnston book.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
Jennifer Johnstone is capable of great work - we were impressed by Shadowstory.
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