Linda Grant (1) (1951–)

Starting in the 1970s, Linda Grant’s novel charts the life of Adele through her days at a new university to her enforced redundancy from her magazine editor’s role in the mid-2010, The main focus is on Adele’s time at university when she, along with her new friends were discovering who they wanted to be and how they hoped to change society for the better. Like many of her friends at university, Adele finds that the experience changes her life. The greatest effect upon Adele, was her friendship with Evie, a relationship that influenced much of her life and actions as she continues to try to understand what happened and why. Grant shows a deep affection and sympathy for her characters with their freedom to choose at university, which later becomes more restricted as they subsequently follow careers that at times bear little relationship to their studies. This makes for an evocative, spirited, engaging and moving portrait of the time and how young hopes change.… (mere)

The novel takes the reader to post-Brexit London where a woman has killed herself by jumping off a bridge. No one has come forward to identify her. The book explores a whole host of people who are connected to the suicidal woman by the most tenuous of strings. A police officer who can't stop thinking about her case. A nurse who was on the bridge simultaneously, yet unaware of the tragedy taking place. A filmmaker who creates a documentary about the jumper. For each of these people, we meet the people in their lives - family or friends or neighbors. This structure (sort of a hub, spoke, wheel approach) makes for a LOT of characters and a lot of subplots. Many of the subplots touch upon the theme of immigration today and how immigrants are (or are not) absorbed into London.

I was alternatively impressed and frustrated by this book. Grant's writing style is right up my alley. Her descriptions are outstanding, freshly rendered, and compelling in their own right. In this case, the book is set in London, and the author makes London come alive for the reader. She almost makes it seem like a character itself. She describes it: "There's nothing one could do that would provoke its surprise. It absorbed atrocities, shrugged them off . . .nobody talked to each other or made eye contact on the tube; like an elephant bitten by a mosquito, London was simply too big, too absorbed in its own individual business, too intent on getting to work and going shopping and having dates and affairs and planning robberies." Her prose made me think.

And it was a good thing it did, because the plot - such as it was - really lacked suspense. It was very fragmented. I felt I kept forgetting who the characters were (omg, I wish I had read this on Kindle where revisiting character info is 10x easier) and had to remind myself repeatedly of who they were and who they were related to. One character had two names to add to the complications. In addition, there were some pretty surreal moments that require the reader to puzzle out what has actually happened and more importantly why. I questioned if certain scenes were meant to be metaphorical. At any rate, I don't mind doing some of the work as a reader, but I felt the balance was tipped away from my favor and not in a good way.

To Grant's credit, she saved the situation a bit in the end with a relative straightforward recitation of what happened to each character, and I did appreciate that . . .in fact, it almost pushed me to give the book another star.

… (mere)