Afbeelding auteur

Araminta Hall

Auteur van Our Kind of Cruelty

6 Werken 846 Leden 70 Besprekingen

Werken van Araminta Hall

Our Kind of Cruelty (2018) 543 exemplaren
alles en niets (2011) 118 exemplaren
Imperfect Women (2020) 102 exemplaren
One of the Good Guys (2024) 56 exemplaren
Dot (1600) 26 exemplaren
Hidden Depths (2022) 1 exemplaar

Tagged

Algemene kennis

Geslacht
female
Nationaliteit
England, UK
Woonplaatsen
Brighton, England
Agent
Lizzy Kremer (David Higham (UK))
Korte biografie
Araminta Hall has worked as a writer, journalist and teacher. She teaches creative writing at New Writing South in Brighton, where she lives with her husband and three children.

Leden

Besprekingen

Thank you Araminta Hall for cleansing my palate from shoddy books! I had been having a bad reading streak and this book has redeemed me, so thank you for that.
Told in multiple points of view and through different media, this one kept me turning the pages and feeling like I was listening in on the neighbours’ car crash life whilst making me seriously reconsider and think through different conceptions.
After several years of a “happy marriage”, Mel finally leaves Cole, who seems to be THE perfect guy. He then moves to the country side where he meets Lennie. A relationship starts to build; but is everything and everyone as they seem? Then, two young women go missing near Cole’s location whilst doing a hike for violence against women, so things start to rapidly unravel. The twist at the end is just brilliant, so do pick this one up.
This is definitely a “book club” book with much to discuss about modern feminism and the innate condition the opposite sex have concerning violence towards women.
A 10 out of 10 for me.
… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
AleAleta | 8 andere besprekingen | Feb 8, 2024 |
The story starts out with Cole, as he begins to rebuild his life after his wife left him. As he tells the story of his marriage, how his wife would verbally attack him and how, by the end, he was an abused spouse, but that he'd still like to put his marriage back together, how his college girlfriend also inexplicably turned on him, how he is a caring feminist, fully aware of the difficulties and dangers women face, it looks like this novel is going to be utterly predictable. As Cole goes on about what a great partner he is, and how it's the women in his life who are the abusive ones, it looks like this novel is going to simply be another book about domestic violence. Don't get me wrong, it's still underrepresented in fiction, but for a genre that requires some level of suspense and a few twists and turns, and from an author whose previous books had delivered on that element of the thriller, it was disappointing.

And then it turns out that this is a completely different novel than expected. While Cole may be exactly as he appears, the people around him very much aren't and what looked like a straightforward story becomes something a lot more complex and morally ambiguous. I don't think every element of this plot held together, but it was a lot of fun and it kept surprising me, so it did what a thriller is supposed to do.
… (meer)
½
 
Gemarkeerd
RidgewayGirl | 8 andere besprekingen | Jan 27, 2024 |
“And I know, historically, it’s been hard to be a woman but, my God, it’s hard to be a man right now.”

A provocative and thought-provoking novel, One of the Good Guys by Araminta Hall explores the gendered dynamic of power, the mythology of the ‘good guy’, and feminine rage.

Told in three parts primarily from the perspectives of three individuals but also through newspaper articles, podcast transcripts, Tweets, and WhatsApp chats from third parties, One of the Good Guys has an interesting structure.

Cole is the first to tell his story, that of a good guy baffled by the breakdown of his marriage who has taken refuge on a remote stretch of coast in the South of England. Melissa’s story starts seven years earlier and charts the course of her marriage to Cole. The third properly introduces Lennie, explains how and why she became involved with both Cole and Melissa, and the fate of two missing young women.

There’s a mystery here, more than one really, but it’s the complexity of the characters that offers the real intrigue. There is a thread of unreliability in each narrative that deliberately keeps the reader off balance. The way in which Hall manipulates the reveal of information is very clever, exposing conflicting points of view that forces continual reassessment of everything.

Dark, compelling, and powerful, One of the Good Guys is an impressive novel that unashamedly challenges society’s complacency with regard to violence against women. Not a pleasant read, but an important one.
… (meer)
½
 
Gemarkeerd
shelleyraec | 8 andere besprekingen | Jan 23, 2024 |
I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

This was very much a book of two halves for me. The first section, told in the first person by Cole as he mulled over his failed marriage to Mel, was engaging. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that you realize pretty quickly that he's an unreliable narrator. There is a later section from Mel's point of view, which again was a thought-provoking read,. However the second half of the book, which deals more with the disappearance and presumed deaths of two women walking to protest against male violence, was entirely lacking in forward momentum. It went round and round in circles with tabloid newspaper articles, blog and podcast transcripts, and endless social media posts. I found these muddied the water even more than the actual revealed actions of the characters. This would be interesting as a starting point for a discussion on male violence, but as a novel it ultimately failed.… (meer)
 
Gemarkeerd
pgchuis | 8 andere besprekingen | Jan 12, 2024 |

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Statistieken

Werken
6
Leden
846
Populariteit
#30,227
Waardering
½ 3.4
Besprekingen
70
ISBNs
77
Talen
6

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