It's Friday once again and time for Book Club! So I will be linking up with Heather at Blonde...Undercover Blonde.
This week I read "The Facts of Life" by Graham Joyce.
Here is the synopsis from Goodreads.com: "The Facts Of Life tells the story of an extraordinary family of seven sisters living in Coventry during the Second World War. Presided over by an indomitable matriarch, the sisters live out a tangled and fraught life that takes them through the Blitz, war work and on into the hopeful postwar years, and a bizarre interlude for one of them in a commune. And through it all wanders the young son of one of the sisters, passed from sister to sister, the innocent witness to a life that edges over into the magical."
My thoughts: First, I don't understand the title at all, and two, there were some explicit sexual language throughout the book (and I am NO prude) but I was instantly reminded this was written by a man. I thought this was going to be a historical fiction novel about seven sisters all helping to rebuild England after the war. Well, it is about 7 sisters, one in particular who is, well more than psychic, and her son. All the sister help raise the son a bit, but you don't get to know about them. It's more of a weird romp thru the 1950' in Coventry, England if you were psychic and your family just let you do whatever, but your mom knew when you were going to get into trouble because she's psychic too. I didn't dislike the book - I just didn't quite get it. It was interesting, but random and boring a bit at times. This is one you either love or are like "meh", I'm on the "meh" side.
Until next week!
Jasmine
I'm glad I'm not the only one who can instantly tell from the language that the author is male! I just never like the sex scenes in books by male authors, they're cruder somehow than the books by female authors. I'm sure that isn't always the case, just seems to be tipped that way!
ReplyDeleteUsually I just read and the author's gender doesn't jump out at me - but every once in awhile it's REAL obvious!
DeleteI don't think I'll be adding this to my "must read" list anytime soon :) Thanks for the heads up!
ReplyDeleteIt's ok, like if you needed a book and it was just laying there you wouldn't be terribly disappointed.
DeleteGreat review, I'm going to link to you on the inner beauty friday post I'm about to write! Mine is about a book too :)
ReplyDeleteYAY! I'll check it out!
DeleteI am working on a post about how I need to read more. I know what you mean about sometimes being able to tell the author's gender. You've got me thinking about how one of my favorites--Hemingway-- is usually thought of as one of the most masculine writers, but thinking of the actual writing, I don't see as much of it. Hmm.
ReplyDeleteI think great writer's suck you into the story and you would be able to guess who wrote it - not would you care because it's about the STORY!
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