I liked Wynne’s debut, Madam, so I was interested in checking out her sophomore effort. And well…what a disappointment. Not just a dud, not just a read that dismays, but the one that actively causes disgust. (more on that later). I’d love to be able to say that you can see the traces of Madam in here and that the book merely missed something, but that would be a lie. Because this obnoxious, tedious, pretentious stab at a murder thriller is a sad excuse and a waste of talent/promise, etc.
Yeah, sorry, this is harsh, but the thing is, I hated this book. In concept more so than in the execution, meaning objectively Wynne CAN write, she just needs stronger stories. Meaning, a tale of a bunch of young girls vacationing with their utter disgusting parents and family friends isn’t that strong of a story. Sure, Wynne dragged it out into one, but she did so by selecting the nastiest aspects of it and dragging it out into a very specific brand of tedium. And now, for some specifics: this is a book about child abuse. (And no, I’m not one of those squeamish readers who only wants tales from the sunny side of life; fact is, I usually prefer the other kind, but…) The adults in this story are TERRIBLE. You have three male friends from way back and their respective families, wives, kids, all of it. All are wealthy English, vacationing in the French chateau belonging to one of them. And yes, it’s set back in the mid 80s and yes, the British are notoriously withholding and polite and all that, but at least one of the adults exhibits active peado behaviour, molesting girl after girl, often in plain view of others, including the kids’ parents and no one says Boo, or if they do, it’s barely a reprimand, more like…Oh, you. It’s just him being himself, etc. And this goes on and on and ON. The bulk of the story takes place in the past and that’s most of the past. Adults bicker, fight, and misbehave and kids cower in terror of them. On repeat. Yey, what fun, Wynne, what fun. And while Wynne can indeed write, here she very deliberately chooses a very tedious, poshly pretentious tone of the upstairs portion of the upstairs/downstairs dynamic that makes the novel read like something decades and decades older than it is. The overall effect is obnoxious (stupid?), like teens who dye their hair grey. Also, because of all the childrens’ perspectives, the novel reads oddly young at the same time. And slow, so very slow. Same thing repeat over and over, after we long established the adults are perverts, and the kids are playing out their own dramas that read like BBC historical tv series at their most drawn-out and maudlin. This entire novel is a stuck up fifth digit holding up a starched crisp serviette. Affected pretension personified. With not enough of a story to excuse itself. Infuriating. Slow. Frustrating. Waste of time. Pass. Thanks Netgalley.
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