A
chance meeting in a pub leads to a story over the course of a year
that fundamentally changes two people's lives and the lives of those
around them. In The Lesser Bohemians, a young theater student arrives
in London ready to explore an independent life. She happens to meet
an actor who is older than her, and they seem to have an attraction
that doesn't fade. Throughout the year, their relationship is
explored and so are their pasts.
Although
this is categorized as literary fiction, at the core of it this is
simply a romance novel that explores the relationship between two
people who appear broken, and for most of the book seem to be wrong
for each other. What makes it suddenly turn into a literary novel is
only the narrative voice used by the author. From the very first
page, it is stilted, choppy and in some cases completely
unintelligible (in addition, the entire novel never uses quotation
marks for direct quotes, which annoys me to no end). The reason the
author is probably doing this is to show the uncertainty and eventual
growth of the narrator, however, having the first 100 or so pages
written in this way will turn a lot of people off from finishing the
book, even though the story underneath is simple and somewhat
interesting.
The
other issue with this novel is that the narrator is just not
interesting. She's a kid sleeping with an older guy—although she
learns a lot about herself through the relationship, she just ends up
looking starry-eyed and smitten at the end, much like a
eighteen-year-old would in that situation. What was actually
interesting in the book was Stephen's story (which, by the way, you
don't even find out his or Eily's name until two-thirds of the way in
the book), his background, the abuse in his childhood, all of his
secrets and how he became the man that Eily met. Eily's hinting of
her own dark past doesn't really come out and doesn't pull you in
like Stephen's story. While parts of the book are interesting, the
writing style and the lack of something that makes Eily unique to
tell her story may keep a lot of readers away.
Check out more information on this title and more information on the author.
*I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.
2 comments:
The lack of quotation marks would make it tough for me...
Yeah, this is the second or third literary novel I've read that does this, and it's really hard to follow.
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