( Women in armoured bathing suits… yes, so evocative of the middle 60s!) The Other Side of the World reminded me of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach in the way that the small domestic tragedy derives from the failure of the characters to communicate with each other. I don’t need to ‘like’ a character to admire a book, but I suspect that some to whom this book is marketed will focus on Charlotte’s deficiencies as a human being and perhaps overlook the fine writing, the carefully-paced structure and the occasional striking metaphor. I might be selfish sometimes, as we all are, but this character’s way of dealing with her own unhappiness is on a scale that I have no patience with at all.
But no, while this is an absorbing meditation on belonging, nostalgia, and motherhood, I found the central character Charlotte to be, as my mother would say, a bit of a misery and weak and selfish into the bargain.
From the blurb for this second novel from Sydney writer Stephanie Bishop, I had thought I might identify with the protagonists, a Cambridge couple who migrate to Australia in the 1960s.
0 kommentar(er)
