Friday, May 26, 2006

Great book

I went into Waterstones in Richmond a couple of days ago, and was surprised to see a selection of novels (mostly crime) for sale at 99p. It seems to be a way of getting people to read little known, but possibly underrated authors who are about to become the next Val McDermid. One of the books was Patrick Redmond's cleverly plotted The Wishing Game, which I bought in a charity shop a couple of years ago.

It combines the atmosphere and sensitivity of LP Hartley's The Go Between (an underrated classic, if ever there was, one of the best novels written in the last century), with the pace and plotting of a modern crime novel.

I chose a novel called Shrouded by Scottish author Carol Anne Davis. I'm about two thirds of the way through, and this is sooo much the sort of stuff that I want to be writing! It's about a mortuary worker who becomes rather attached to his "clients".

It suddenly occurs to me that I like novels, and write fiction, where the main protagonist is an outsider. Not necessarily a bad thing.

2 Comments:

Blogger Nukapai said...

I fell for the 99p thing and bought two novels, one of which I have almost finished reading. Few more pages to rush through tonight and it's time to start on the other!

This is significant because I've been unable to finish reading a novel for a very long time. I've had about 5 on the go for months. It's been some kind of very strange "reader's block".

Something about the cheap price may have done this. I really don't know...

10:51 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

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11:06 pm  

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