Gosh, it's been ages since I've written an actual review rather than a discussion piece. Let's see how I do.
As you'll know if you've read the spoiler-free part of my previous post, I picked up K. J. Rabane's Who is Sarah Lawson for 62p from the Kindle store. I found out that it was heavily reduced through Kind of Book, and, seriously, go check them out.
It was the basic premise that drew me in initially. A woman goes home to find a family of complete strangers living in her house, insisting that she has amnesia and that she's a completely different person to who she thinks she is. That's an interesting start, and, as I said in my last post, I'd love to see what someone like Sophie Hannah would do with it.
The book itself is split into three sections, focusing on different times and characters. This means that the readers were made aware of a lot of information that the characters either didn't know or didn't have a particular reason to recall in the 'present' of the story, and a major problem I had with Who is Sarah Lawson was the way in which Rabane completely ignored this. Characters suddenly come to realisations after the audience has read the relevant section, rather than because they've seen or heard something to bring an idea to mind. It's not a bad story, but it's badly told. Things happen because the plot demands them, and, likewise, characters realise or know things because the plot demands them. The plot is the overarching puppet-master, rather than the story or the characters developing naturally and realistically. It simply doesn't hang together.
The timing is also off. For the first third, the plot seemed simple. Then it began to seem equally simple in another direction. The audience weren't held in suspense for more than a few pages at a time, and that's a problem in getting people to carry on reading a psychological thriller. Characters also seemed to ignore obvious ways to destroy the masque for the sake of the plot.
In short, my conclusion is that K. J. Rabane is not a skilled writer. That isn't to say that she isn't talented or promising - just that she was not able to make Who is Sarah Lawson hang together and flow properly, and it reads like the work of a talented amateur. It was worth 62p and the 2-3 hours I spent reading it, but probably not much more than that. That said, I do quite want to read some of her other work, but only if it's cheap. Maybe her short stories.
If you want to read something similar but better try Sophie Hannah, who writes similar impossible-beginnings thrillers, or Sebastien Japrisot's Trap for Cinderella.
As you'll know if you've read the spoiler-free part of my previous post, I picked up K. J. Rabane's Who is Sarah Lawson for 62p from the Kindle store. I found out that it was heavily reduced through Kind of Book, and, seriously, go check them out.
It was the basic premise that drew me in initially. A woman goes home to find a family of complete strangers living in her house, insisting that she has amnesia and that she's a completely different person to who she thinks she is. That's an interesting start, and, as I said in my last post, I'd love to see what someone like Sophie Hannah would do with it.
The timing is also off. For the first third, the plot seemed simple. Then it began to seem equally simple in another direction. The audience weren't held in suspense for more than a few pages at a time, and that's a problem in getting people to carry on reading a psychological thriller. Characters also seemed to ignore obvious ways to destroy the masque for the sake of the plot.
In short, my conclusion is that K. J. Rabane is not a skilled writer. That isn't to say that she isn't talented or promising - just that she was not able to make Who is Sarah Lawson hang together and flow properly, and it reads like the work of a talented amateur. It was worth 62p and the 2-3 hours I spent reading it, but probably not much more than that. That said, I do quite want to read some of her other work, but only if it's cheap. Maybe her short stories.
If you want to read something similar but better try Sophie Hannah, who writes similar impossible-beginnings thrillers, or Sebastien Japrisot's Trap for Cinderella.
No comments:
Post a Comment