BRITISH thriller writer Robert Harris has opined that the one thing bad books have in common is that at times they do not ring true.
On the other hand, good books should always feel true in the time and place of reading.
Sheena Kamal’s latest offering falls short of the Harris test.
Not that it is all bad. There are just too many hollow circumstances and incredible events to persuade the reader of the plausibility of the central character.
That she should encounter and survive so many horrors while all about her others do the falling down is perhaps a chapter too far.
There is a constant reference to unexplained events in her past that drove me to do something I have never before done as a reader.
I stopped in the middle. And then went back, as the singing nun Maria von Trapp advised, and started at the very beginning.
In this case it was the first Sheena Kamal novel Eyes Like Mine in which she introduces us to Nora Watts and her traumatic past, her search for her biological daughter, and her interaction with mentors and saviours as diverse as a cancer-riddled journalist and his jilted male lover and a fellow alcoholic former policeman now turned private investigator.
The plots in both books are as complex as the characters they contain.
The first book is not so much a “back story” but a prequel, one that provides the peek holes through which to understand one woman’s horrible past.
As a stand alone It All Falls Down proved frustrating reading without the release provided by a read of the first work.
One thing we do learn – Nora is a survivor. Ans she will be back with all the complexities in book number three.
Problem is: will I bother reading it.
On the other hand, good books should always feel true in the time and place of reading.
Sheena Kamal’s latest offering falls short of the Harris test.
Not that it is all bad. There are just too many hollow circumstances and incredible events to persuade the reader of the plausibility of the central character.
That she should encounter and survive so many horrors while all about her others do the falling down is perhaps a chapter too far.
There is a constant reference to unexplained events in her past that drove me to do something I have never before done as a reader.
I stopped in the middle. And then went back, as the singing nun Maria von Trapp advised, and started at the very beginning.
In this case it was the first Sheena Kamal novel Eyes Like Mine in which she introduces us to Nora Watts and her traumatic past, her search for her biological daughter, and her interaction with mentors and saviours as diverse as a cancer-riddled journalist and his jilted male lover and a fellow alcoholic former policeman now turned private investigator.
The plots in both books are as complex as the characters they contain.
The first book is not so much a “back story” but a prequel, one that provides the peek holes through which to understand one woman’s horrible past.
As a stand alone It All Falls Down proved frustrating reading without the release provided by a read of the first work.
One thing we do learn – Nora is a survivor. Ans she will be back with all the complexities in book number three.
Problem is: will I bother reading it.