the year in books: august

"As always happened when I thought or heard of anything to do with babies and pregnancy, I thought back to my birth mother. This woman I didn't know. This stranger who I could have quite easily walked past on the street and not recognized as the person who gave birth to me. Nor would she have recognized the baby she gave away."

I only finished the one book in July, and it was Jonathan Harvey's The Girl Who Just Appeared, the first I have read by this author. It was an interesting plot. and though I thought I had the ending sussed quite early on (I was on the right lines but not exactly right!), it actually kept coming up with further plot twists to keep you intrigued.

It was one of the first times I have read a book that described in detail a city I know reasonably well. For me this was a bit distracting, a bit like when you have seen the film before reading the book, and it becomes more difficult to imagine the characters separate to the actors who played them! Obviously for me part of the enjoyment of reading must be from getting lost in imagined worlds, and I noticed a difference here when I kept being drawn back to reality. It was interesting to have it written with two different narrators, describing the same place at two different periods, and it felt like the history of the city was woven through the story.

Similarly, some of the accents and dialect written into the novel caught my attention, because they represented voices I have heard many times. It was an unusual experience reading a book with a frame of reference that wasn't many miles from home. What did surprise me was the introduction of the second narrator, as I wasn't anticipating it, and actually the voice, and the story suddenly shifted to become much darker. It was quite discomfiting initially, having started out feeling it was quite a light-hearted handling of the subject matter, I found myself caught unawares when the style and the plot changed so dramatically.

I finished the book quite quickly, and would like to read more from the author. It was an interesting plot that kept me engaged. This month is another classic novel that I have never read before, Wuthering Heights. So many people have told me that they adore this book, so I'm hoping my expectations aren't set too high!

Linking up with Laura and The Year in Books