THE WONDER HOUSE, by Justine Hardy
I was drawn to this book: the cover is beautiful, and now I've read it, I want as many people as possible to buy it and enjoy it. It's curiously affecting, and had me completely gripped from about page 60 on. It's beautifully written and repays careful reading. Be warned though: it spoiled me for anything else for some time afterwards. I found it lingered long after I had finished it, and I kept on wondering about the characters who inhabit this wonderfully evocative world.
I've never been to India, but it is clear that the author knows the area she is writing about well and loves the country and people there deeply. Her sense of place is powerful. She also effortlessly helps to explain some of the tensions of the area. But you don't read this book for that, you read it for the powerful characterisation, the unfolding drama and the love stories beneath. There are incidents aplenty in this moving novel, but the author unravels them with a patience that is enviable. And the end, boy, is the end moving.
This book is fascinating and absorbing, and I am sure that anyone who enjoys reading will love this book. For a first novel it is assured and potent. I highly recommend it and hope it reaches the wide reading audience it deserves.
1 comment:
everybody should read this book
it is excellent
I wish JH had written more, then I could get another one, as I've just finished my latest book and am not keen on returning to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' autobiography. . . might pick up Shadow of the Wind again, or was it of the Sun? the one that's about a library, anyhow
Post a Comment