Book Review: The Little Red Chairs

From Goodreads: The much-anticipated new novel from the literary world's master of storytelling, Edna O'Brien.
A woman discovers that the foreigner she thinks will redeem her life is a notorious war criminal.
Vlad, a stranger from Eastern Europe masquerading as a healer, settles in a small Irish village where the locals fall under his spell. One woman, Fidelma McBride, becomes so enamored that she begs him for a child. All that world is shattered when Vlad is arrested, and his identity as a war criminal is revealed.
Fidelma, disgraced, flees to England and seeks work among the other migrants displaced by wars and persecution. But it is not until she confronts him-her nemesis-at the tribunal in The Hague, that her physical and emotional journey reaches its breathtaking climax.
The Little Red Chairs is a book about love, and the endless search for it. It is also a book about mankind's fascination with evil, and how long, how crooked, is the road towards Home.

Thoughts: This is our next book group read and I'm really glad because I seriously don't know what to think! I'm hoping a bit of discussion with the other members will help me clarify my thoughts about this book.

Usually when I'm unsure about a book I will read a few reviews and find one which makes sense to me. With this book I agree with those who thought it was brilliant and with those who thought it was rubbish! The story is engaging, but I found it hard to get a grasp on any of the characters. They all seemed to be secondary in the way they weren't fully formed and not "there" enough.  No one's motives seemed to be clear for anything. I don't understand why Fidelma was so disgraced. I didn't get the feeling that Vlad was so ingrained in the community that his arrest was so startling. Worthy of some gossip, yes, but not the seismic shift that was suggested.

The plot also jumps around a lot. It's almost like O'Brien started on a thread of a story, but when it ended up not going the way she wanted, she just abandoned it, moving onto another idea.

But on some level I did enjoy it. I found myself wanting to pick it straight back up after I put it down. I wanted to know what happened when they got to The Hague, I wanted a resolution.

For now I've given it three stars, total fence sitting. Maybe I'll be clearer about how I feel after our book club meeting! 

Book Review: Fates & Furies

From Goodreads: Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.
At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed.

Thoughts: This was our first book group read for the year and it was an excellent one!  If you belong to a book group I highly recommend this as a book. It provided the best discussion I think we have ever had.

I have seen a few reviews that have compared it to Gone Girl and I can see where the comparison comes from, but it is similar in only the most basic sense. Like Gone Girl, Fates and Furies is told in two parts, from two points of view with the second challenging some of the assumptions you had made in the first part. Unlike Gone Girl which is plot driven, this is very much driven by it's characters and their reactions to the environment. They make things happen, things don't just happen to them.

And the characters are amazing. They are flawed and fragile. They are unpredictable and challenging. They are likeable and detestable. They are human. Groff's characters stare you in the eye and dismiss you easily, truly not caring what you think. 

Particularly in the second half of the book, the plot twists and turns in ways you never imagined. Suddenly the actions of some become clear and, as in Gone Girl, what you thought you knew turns out to be a beautifully crafted facade.

At it's heart, Fates and Furies is a love story. A story of an imperfect marriage, of doing what must be done, of giving your life to another. It's gritty and real, not a fairytale romance at all. But in the end it shows how love makes us do things we never thought were possible.