This is an odd book, with an interesting structure and uncomfortable characters. It’s about a literary minded woman, Susan, whose ex husband of 25 years sends her a manuscript for criticism. We read the story – a gruesome thriller – along with her and she critiques it. Inevitably parts of her own life story – the marriage and divorce from the writer, her problems with her second husband and her failure to realise her own literary potential – unfold along with her musings about the thriller.
The thriller is OK for the first part but becomes quite ridiculous towards the end. The characters in the thriller are unlikeable and thin, of course, given the abbreviated length of it. But maybe that's OK. It's only a manuscript after all.
The second story is of course more interesting but I felt it never really developed and that Susan’s musings were obscure. Did the first husband write this thriller to show her he could indeed become a writer? Did he intend to create some sort of nasty allegory of their marriage? I might be a bit thick, but I really missed the point of the whole thing. 3 stars for the idea.
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