Leah
Written on Dec 12, 2011
It’s all a bit of a mess and there’s just nothing really to it. That’s all I can say. The writing is clunky in places, as if the editor/copy-editor just wasn’t bothered, the amount of Irishisms used was mind-boggling and unnecessary (you’re writing a book, you do not need to make it sound authentic because it just comes across as corny). It just didn’t work for me. It’s as if Scanlan’s publishers were desperate to cash in on the Christmas market and chucked any old thing out. This would have worked better as a little short story because the amount of time Alison spends complaing about her jobless state is enough to put you off, especially when she starts going on about money and how she has none of it (yet she doesn’t sell off her designer clothes and hangbags, so she’s clearly not destitute) but as a full-length novel (or as full-length as something that is 280+ pages can be) it doesn’t work, sadly and it just wasn’t for me.