Bereft
One test I've taken to applying to books is that of memory: is it memorable?. It is an unfair test in one way- at 73 , my memory isn't what it used to be, if it ever was. But it has interesting results, nonetheless.
It is only a couple of days since i finished Bereft, and I remember being much taken with it. But do I remember it now? Hardly. It is a book about a murder of a young girl,for which her brother was blamed, causing him to run away. Then he comes back, the bulk of the book being about finding the culprit.
You see it is coming back to me now, but not in all the splendor i thought it would. Because in the end it was no more than a sad, sordid little tale from which i gained nothing. It, itself gained plaundits.
But it is one of those books, of which there are many nowadays, that strive for a weight they just don't have. It is a story of childhood but it is no Catcher in the Rye. It is a story of revenge, but it is not Monte Christo. It is a story of a young girl and an older man but it is not Lolita. There is a spooky resonance to it , but it is not Edgar Allen Poe.
I keep books, I have thousands of the things. Some i have reread, others i fully intend to reread. But this one - no.
It is a slight book that seems an echo of so many contemporary novels.
My faulty memory apart, I can't get excited about it, when there are so many- mostly older- books about which i can. Oh , for a great contemporary writer who has something to say and isn't doing what everyone else does