Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Galbraith reviewed

15.07.13 | Cathy Rentzenbrink - The Bookseller


The Bookseller's fiction previewer Cathy Rentzenbrink writes...

Having just finished The Cuckoo’s Calling by J K Rowling (Sphere), I can report that it is a cracking read with great characters, and I turned the pages with increasing eagerness through to its very satisfying ending.
The first time I tried it, back in December 2012 when the author was a debut novelist called Robert Galbraith, I read the prologue and the first chapter and then stopped. It was one of the 93 titles submitted for the April New Fiction feature for The Bookseller. I liked the AI sheet with its mention of the intriguingly named Cormoran Strike enough to request a manuscript but the opening pages did not lure me in quite as much as those of the 12 books I went on to finish that month did.

I remember thinking that the prologue, which describes the immediate aftermath of the fatal fall of a beautiful model with perceptive swipes at our fame-obsessed media, was stronger than the first chapter. I found Robin, the airheaded, marriage-obsessed temp we meet in the first chapter, a bit irritating. I loathe the expression “to pop the question”. There is an awkward point of view switch where we see Robin through lingering male eyes and find out she is strawberry blonde and curvaceous. I stopped reading after 18 pages. A bit harsh? I have to be. I’m a fast reader but I can’t read 93 novels a month so I am more often looking for reasons to stop reading than to carry on.

Other readers did carry on and the novel achieved some good reviews and had sold less than 500 copies in hardback up until the moment we found out the identity of its author.

More


No comments: