Book Count (since 1 January 2012)

Book Count (since 1 January 2014): 30

Tuesday 7 August 2012

The Yips by Nicola Barker

Blimey.

A long and bizarre novel.  The writing is very good and the plot is fairly engrossing but the character development is minimal and the dialogue staggeringly unrealistic.   How many teenagers who fail their A levels and find themselves working in a hotel bar pepper their banter with words like "suppurating"?

In my opinion, the lack of connection with the characters made this book a lot less engaging than it would otherwise have been.  The best novels are those that read like a conversation bringing a story to life and this novel was much too flat, almost essay like, to achieve that.  Instead, although it is easy to appreciate the language and even the unusual plot, there is something so one dimensional about this book that I frequently found myself subconciously drifting off into shopping lists and must-not-forget-to-dos.  A shame because there is a lot of quality writing here, but the dialogue lets it down.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.