Adam O'Riordan was a poet before he became a novelist, yet it's his poetic pen that moved me forward when reading this novel. Industrial Manchester is the backdrop to a family saga set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In many ways the story is a slight one, and moves us through the decades from the 1890s, when Charles, son of a Manchester industrialist living with his parents and two sisters finds that, thanks to him, the governess is pregnant. They are obliged to marry. The story progresses by our being dropped into various episodes in the family members' lives, as one sister develops as an artist, the other as a suffragette, and Charles' wife endures more or less permanent ill health. There's little plot - I'd have welcomed rather more - but the vignettes of which the book consists are well realised. However, I felt something of an unengaged observer, uninvested at any level with how the story developed. ( )

Good writing but did not add up to much. ( )