This is a truly extraordinary
book. The blurb suggests it is a novel. Soon into reading you’re convinced that
it is a series of unrelated short stories and then about a third of the way through
you realise that the stories are related. The protagonist is the common factor.
Anneliese
Mackintosh keeps us engaged. Each “story”
or chapter is relatively short and totally unpredictable. There is no recognisable
story arc. She uses no well-worn formula. There even seems to be a different voice
in each piece though we eventually recognise Greta’s voice as a unifying
factor. Greta changes as she moves through her grief for her father.
The stories are
not given to us in chronological order. Yet there is a logic to them: they
track the changes that bring Greta to where she is today.
Frequently biographers
use fictional techniques to enhance their work. Here we have a writer of
fiction using the habits of memoir to keep us intrigued.
This all certainly
works: I personally could hardly put this book down. Mackintosh’s prose is also
of the finest.
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