Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency
God, I feel like I'e been reading this book for a year. This Booker nominee started off strong--about two families and their intertwined lives, in 1970s England, full of great small familiy dramas--but 300 pages in, it got really boring, skipping ahead years at a go and giving ridiculous plot lines to all these minor characters. I swear I found one two page section that described characters who aren't even in the rest of the book. And the bits that were interesting just got left by the wayside. A few of the characters were really lovable, but several were loathsome. Anyway, it was really slow and way too long (597 pages). I wonder if the Booker committee made it all the way through or just started it and said, hey this is good, let's nominate it, and didn't realize that it totally dropped off in quality halfway through. OK. C.
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