Rebecca Gowers

I picked this up at random in the library, I hadn't heard of it before. The tagline on the cover about it being a "genuinely puzzling historical murder mystery" pulled me in. Though it's not actually an historical murder mystery. In the afterword the author admits to having been inspired by Josephine Tey's book The Daughter of Time in which Inspector Grant investigates Richard III from his hospital bed. This isn't quite the same but I can see where the idea comes in.

Oxford doctoral student Kit is drawn into investigating, in the course of her literature research, a real life murder that mirrors the death of Nancy in Oliver Twist. Mostly than just seems like a little part of the plot of the book though and it takes a while to turn up in the book. There's a more interesting not-quite-romance story here about Kit who goes dancing and meets Joe and about families.

Not having known quite what to expect I enjoyed the book, despite the fact that I don't agree that it's a "genuinely puzzling historical murder mystery".… (meer)

A very tall woman with no sense of self-worth studies Dickens while falling for an irritable Mathematics professor who has a troublesome brother. There isn't really a murder mystery in this book and there isn't really a love story. Some turns of phrase are interesting, but most of the story is trampled by split infinitives and literal dialogue. If you enjoy the author's style you'll probably enjoy the book despite its lack of plot, but for me that style drowned any possible enjoyment.

This review sounds extremely harsh, but I mean it that some people *will* adore this book. Just not me.… (meer)

When to Walk is a fantastic read, but you wouldn't know it from a back-cover blurb or review synopsis: We're told that Ramble's marriage suddenly ends over lunch, her husband calling her an "autistic vampire", how does she go on, blah blah blah. One is forced to (rightly) wonder: Surely this isn't compelling stuff? Is there really anything original left to say on this subject?

What's most surprising is what the blurbs don't say: namely, how extraordinarily FUNNY the book is! Ramble, deaf in one ear and with "a dysfunctional pelvis", has a mind that's both brilliant and bent; her attention to detail is almost panoptical, and her tendency towards digression, reflection, and bewildering interpretation is no less hysterical than it is astounding. Her internal dialogue can make the strangest sidesteps - as when the sudden appearance of someone surprises her, and she promptly recalls the earliest OED citation (c. 1513) of the word "wow".

This is the tenor of the novel's narration, and you'll either love it or hate it. The lunchtime pronouncement is a clear illustration, as it's not what the husband said, so much as her instant rewording: "He didn't put it like this, didn't use either of the words I'm about to use, but I found he was telling me that in the person of his wife, I have degraded into an autistic vampire." She's incredibly intelligent, possibly gifted, hopelessly internal in her workings, and one gets the sense of her being slightly surprised by most everything - if only for a second. At one point her husband complains that she spends too much time inside her own head, and we're annoyed to concede that he might have a point. (Not that this makes him any less of a bastard.)

The novel takes place over a single week - each of the seven chapters comprising a single day - and, given the kind of story it is, doesn't have the greatest amount of plot. This has seemingly frustrated some readers, but I had no quarrel with that fact; Ramble's character and voice are such a singular mixture of ridiculous and affecting, that my only complaint was that it ended at all: I gladly would have read many more weeks' worth of her strange and comical misadventures.

When to Walk is Rebecca Gowers' first novel, and it's an astonishing debut. I'll be anxiously awaiting her second.

… (meer)