Paul’s Comments (group member since Apr 18, 2020)

Paul’s comments from the Our Little Group SSSH group.

I look forward to it Sarah. x

Thanks Sarah. Helen has it at the moment, I'm going to start on The Miniaturist.

I read this about 8 weeks and a number of books ago. I generally enjoy Robert Harris's writing, I read Archangel and Fatherland some years ago and more recently, Second Sleep (his latest) and An Officer and a Spy (which I thought superb) Munich came hot on the heels of those last two and it didn't disappoint. I love historical fiction and even though I knew the outcome of the subject matter as well as anyone, I found the characterisation of the two (fictional) protagonists enthralling. The insights into the non fictional characters was great too. Chamberlain knew that Britain wasn't ready for war and wanted to avoid it at all costs, even at the expense of the Czechs. Bearing in mind that this took place barely 20 years after the Great War, he knew that the British people were not ready for more bloodshed on the same sort of scale that they had just lived through. Hitler on the other hand, was desperate for a fight even though his generals knew they needed more time and were not equipped for a full scale war. Even given what we now know of the monster that Hitler was, Harris still manages to shock us (to my mind), with Hitler's arrogance and ruthlesssness. History suggests that Hitler came out of the talks as the winner and Chamberlain as the appeaser but in reality, I think that Chamberlain bought us enough time to greatly effect the outcome of a war that was inevitable.
I found the back story of Legat and Hartmann highly believable and made the book a real page turner ( I finished it in under two days - this was before lockdown).
The tension that Harris builds into his narrative has the hairs standing up on the back of my neck!

I finished this one last night and have to say, I found it a bit of a struggle. not the sort of book I'd normally read.
Initially, I thought it a poor imitation of Bridget Jones (which I did read years ago and quite enjoyed), then as it progressed it became clear that Eleanor had some sort of personality disorder. I'm no psychologist but I thought at first she was living with asperger's but there were too many inconsistencies, for example when out of the blue, she started worrying what other people thought about her - meeting Raymond at the library so her work colleagues wouldn't know, starting to worry about her appearance etc. As I say, I'm no expert but I felt that once I'd ruled out asperger's, I decided on some sort of PTSD due to the childhood trauma which was alluded to. After making that decision I was able to enjoy the rest of the book a lot more.
I guessed quite early on that the conversations with 'Mummy' were imaginary, probably due to Honeyman being very careful not to talk about the means of communication, ie. the phone never 'rang', the conversations just happened and it seemed to me that she (the author) was being overtly careful to avoid mention of any mobile/landline.
Once I was over what I know to be my own issues with the narrative, I found myself enjoying the characters a lot more and I would definitely read a sequel.

Hurrah! It's working!