Joanna Cannon (1)

Ten year old Grace and her best friend Tilly are searching for God. It's their summer project, Grace decides. If what the vicar of their local church is correct, then God will protect everyone in their street, including Mrs. Creasy, who is missing and presumed dead. However, finding God anywhere in their locality is difficult, as all the neighbours have things to hide, and the one person who is willing to talk to them, Walter Bishop, is a man generally considered to be a man of pedophilic tendencies. Secrets upon falsehoods upon criminal behaviour, the lives and lies of the entire avenue are exposed as the summer progresses and as Mrs. Creasy fails to return home.

It's a nice book, a sweet look into the lives of two ten year olds and the seventies, but I remained unsatisfied by the story. I don't think I ever understood all of the secrets, and I felt that the book ended too quickly, without all the loose ends wrapped up.… (mehr)

I seem to be out of step here. It took me at least 250 pages to begin to become remotely interested in the lives of the characters who inhabited The Avenue in that sweltering summer of 1976: one I remember well, as I was pregnant with my first child, and for once in my life didn't relish the heat). I had difficulty remembering which character was which and I didn't believe in the young heroines, Grace and Tilly, who seemed remarkably unwordly (I was an extremely unworldly 10 year old once, but even I wasn't that simple). Most of all, I resented Cannon's polished little metaphors and similes. They were clever, but Cannon all but put them in italics to make sure we noticed them. I only bothered to finish the book because it is our reading book choice for this month. The plot seemed pointless. Some parts stretched credulity. For example, virtually the entire neighbiourhood turns out to look at some rust-stained drainpipe that apparently looks like Jesus. Really?

What a relief when I turned the last page.… (mehr)

This book is over 400 pages long, and until about page 300, I was rating it as poorly as I had 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep'. I felt that Cannon patronises the narrator, Flo, though she has an interesting use of metaphor and description which she almost feels the need to 'put in inverted commas'. Towards the end, I started to understand the picture that Cannon is painting -I can't say more without doing a spoiler alert. Which doesn't mean I altogether understand the back story which is brought into the present on a slow burn throughout the book. Nevertheless, this is an interesting (frightening - I'm way too near that point myself) portrayal of old age, and not one to relish. A more interesting and thought-provoking book than 'The Trouble with Sheep and Goats'.… (mehr)