Richard Farrell (3)

Wow, I hated this and I wish I had stopped about half way through when it started getting too introspective and dull, but I read a review that said to keep going because it was worth it. No, no it was not.

I was expecting a mystery but there isn't one. Or rather, there could be if it was treated as one but instead of going through the search with Radford, we get to read about him sitting in his hotel room and whining to himself while writing reports. When he's asked if he's investigated a particular line of questioning, he answers sure, four times already. When? We never see it.

So the mystery is a bust which leave this book with the introspective "meaning of life" that Erin is chosen to pontificate on even though it all smells like bullshit. Basically, her advice is that everyone should have a regular mid-life crisis. Cool. But of course her advice makes Radford, who we are told several times never looked at another woman besides his wife, want to have an affair with her and, while he does not, he does open himself up emotionally to her, vulnerable with her as he hasn't been with anyone else in ages. Dude, your wife is literally begging for you to open up to her and have some emotional connection from you and you give it to a woman who is basically having a mental break because of trauma. Awesome.

I like introspective, character-study books. But you need to have a character to connect with to make it successful. While I get a tiny bit of Erin's motivations (not wanting her family to deal with her death a third time), that seems like such a tiny bit of her reasoning and the rest ("I'm finally awake because birds chirping and making designs with sticks makes me happy!") comes across as not-even-philosophy-101 nonsense. So yeah, can't connect to her. Radford, I get some parts of him (because I have a workaholic spouse) but his constant self-pity, his weird and uncomfortable hero worship of Dickie Gray, and his stubborn reluctance to actually do his job in the first third makes him very unsympathetic.

No mystery, unlikeable characters, bullshit-grade introspection... this book had it all and I wanted exactly none of it.… (mais)