I find that a novel is far more enjoyable if it offers a challenge and Joanne Harris’s ninth novel offers a host of them. It is a multi-layered book that will make you constantly re-assess exactly what you’ve been told whilst you try to fathom exactly where you’re being taken. It requires you to trust the author’s innate sense of truth and balance, and it doesn’t disappoint.
It has the feeling of a fiendish Japanese puzzle where all of the parts tessellate, but none seem to fit. Indeed Harris herself has likened to novel both to a Rubik’s Cube and the Lemarchand Box from Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” series. It is certainly as fiendish and in my view Harris’s writing has never been stronger or more deftly constructed.
I’ve always loved unreliable narrators (from Nick Carraway to Holden Caulfield) and in her two main protagonists blueeyedboy and Albertine Harris has created two deliciously unreliable storytellers. In a modern take on an epistolary novel they communicate through alternating blogs on a website called Badguysrock, and we all know that in the virtual world of the internet people are often not who they claim to be.
It’s difficult to comment on the intricate plot without revealing massive spoilers (a task which even the book jacket failed to achieve). However it is brilliantly plotted, and will keep you guessing at every turn, following the pattern that she established with Gentlemen and Players.
The book has attracted conflicting reviews, and Harris refers to it as her “Marmite” book (you either love it or hate it). Having now read it three times I’ve enjoyed it at every reading, despite the fact that I now where it’s going. I think it’s a work of genius and I feel privileged to have joined “#Team Marmite”.
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