Friday, January 30, 2009

The Seance


by John Harwood

Too much.

That is what comes to mind. Too much to the story. The story is too convoluted. Too many twist and turns. It strikes me that more depth could have been provided rather than more characters. It became difficult to keep track of who was who.

Some characters seemed to simply drop out of the story without explanation.They did reappear, abruptly and just as abruptly brought the threads of the story together.To me this story is reminiscent of Wilke Collins, THE WOMAN IN WHITE, but not quite uo to that standard. I had high hopes for this book up until the halfway point, when the meandering of the story seemed to get out of hand.

A running theme was the appearance both desired and undesired of spirits, or ghosts. There were fraudulent mediums and gifted ones. Marriages not blessed by love, broken families and blackmail. It was exhausting rather than entertaining. I cannot think of a single person that I would recommend this book to.

1 comment:

  1. Oh dear. I suppose we all run into these every now and again, but it doesn't lessen the pain, does it? ;) Thanks for the heads-up.

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