Okay, after a brief detour to Book #14, Dead Until Dark, we now stretch all the way back to April for...
The House on Fortune Street by Margot Livesey. I think one reason for me taking so long to get to this particular book is that it was my top book of 2009 thus far... and in a bit of foreshadowing, it is still my top book and I am currently on Book #17 for the year (that tells you how far behind I am with these posts!). But I wanted to do it justice and no suprise that this lead to a a good deal of procrastination on my part.
But now that I am at the keyboard and have decided to do the post for this book post, I realize that there really isn't much I can say about it... you know I like to remain pretty secretive when it comes to plot... but in trying to figure out what to say about this book, it just seems like I don't want to say anything since much of what I loved about this book was how the story unfolded. This is one thing that I love about the Kindle ... while I mourn the loss of having a cover (as I do judge a book by its cover!), I really have enjoyed having the plot spoiled by an inside flap or back cover. With the Kindle, I find myself going in with minimal knowledge of plot points and that certainly improves the reading experience.
What I will tell you is that this is a wonderfully crafted novel. It is broken into four parts... and here is where I enter spoiler territory... told by four different characters and in sort of a jigsaw puzzle-like fashion we get their different perspectives... the times and events sometimes overlap, but other times they do not. I do recall (remember I read this two months ago!) remember being jarred at the start of Part 2... having really become engrossed in the first part, without warning I was at a different time and place with a different character as a the focal point. It was fascinating to have an opinion of a character and then learn something new about them or get a different take on them from someone else.
Granted some of the subject matter is not the most uplifting. After dealing with Dahlia and her brain tumor in my previous read (btw, this book, like Dahlia, was yet another winner from EW's 2008 Best Fiction list), this book didn't get much happier... at all. But what's that famous opening line from Anna Karenina? "All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Happy isn't typically entertaining fodder... and a visit to The House on Fortune Street (simply the home of many of the characters in the suburbs of modern day London, though .. .as expected, there is some irony in the street name) was certainly unique in its own way.
I will certainly be keeping my eye out for more stuff by Livesey... another good find here, not that I need to add anything more to my cyber-pile of books and authors to read.
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