Clapton’s Reviews > No Signposts in the Sea > Status Update

It often seems as if SW is trying to create characters outside her social (upper) sphere but has no idea what such a character might really look like. They feel hollow; a feeling reinforced by the fact that the book is just journal blotters by the protagonist Carr and most of the ideas are expressed through dialog and not action.

This book is full of inconsistencies. Edmund Carr has written one of the foremost books on the Middle East, but never had the urge to travel outside Britain?

“I’ve had a good life on the whole. It was a bit of a struggle at first, my people were very poor, and the village school isn’t the best start for an education.” … “It wasn’t so easy in those days, over thirty years ago, and I hated having to ask my parents for financial help.”

Edmund Carr’s family was very poor, but not so poor that they couldn’t have helped him finance his university studies?

Until now I don’t think it’s a great novel. I’m a little bored. Somehow the writing feels a little lazy; indulgent and without structure.