![]() ![]() Paul Beckman's newest Kiss Kiss is an eclectic collection of flash fiction that runs the gamut from humor to serious. My partner deems this to be a book to read on a train journey - but not perhaps when crossing the Tay Bridge. Nevertheless, The Last Train is light reading which, although not to my taste, will interest readers who like a little history mixed with their romances. She is clearly very good at writing about food but not so good, I fear, at writing novels. She won the BBC Masterchef award in 1991 and has been cookery columnist for several prominent newspapers. Sue Lawrence is an award-winning food writer. Similarly, it seems unlikely that the Victorian woman, Ann, having just watched the train she believes her husband to be on plummet from the bridge into the river, and rushing through the storm to the local station for news, would bother to run after her hat when the wind blows it into some rose bushes. I find it hard to believe that a woman who has just discovered that her man has left her and is speeding down the highway to try and intercept him before he gets on a plane, should care about her "messy, fair hair and sallow skin" (has she only just discovered that she has fair hair?) or the fact that she has not "taken a minute to brush on some blusher". ![]() The plots sound good but the writing is adjective and cliche driven and the strictly alternating chapters, jumping between eras and characters, disrupts the flow of the parallel stories. Was Ann's husband really on the now submerged train? Was Fiona's partner really who he says he was and where has he gone? Fiona, in 2015, has just discovered that her de facto partner has run off to Australia, leaving her a loving note but taking all their money. Ann's husband is thought to have been on the train. The two women around whom the story revolve both experience the sudden disappearance of their partners. And both families are linked by the Tay River Disaster in which, in 1879, a violent storm led to the collapse of the railway bridge across Tay River in Scotland just as a steam train was crossing it. ![]() So reads the blurb on the front cover of this book. "Two families, over a century apart, their secrets laid bare." Book Lover Resources, Advice for Writers and Publishersĩ781760630867, A$29.99, hardback, 352 pages ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |