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A review by kelly_
Coastliners by Joanne Harris
3.0
Chocolat is one of my fave books which is why I ended up picking this up. Joanne has this beautiful way of describing settings so that they feel so clear and real that you can imagine being there, surrounded by wonderfully quirky characters.
This book is set on a tiny island surrounded by a small group of superstitious locals. With a place so small, and there being little influence from the mainland, you’d imagine it would be a quiet and uneventful life. You’d be wrong. The residents have a way of creating their own mischief and scandal, from feuding families, suicide, sex, and theft. Not to mention the imminent danger from the island having to contend with more flooding each year, that even their graveyard is almost always submerged.
Enter our main character, Mado, who is the daughter of an islander (her ailing and almost mute father whom her mother divorced). Mado had been living with her mother in Paris but, when she died, she decided to return to the island to look after her dad and get reacquainted with island life.
What follows are a number of twists and turns as she fights to keep her home safe from the sea as well as unscrupulous business practices. We learn more of her history and those known of others who are key to the unravelling story.
There seemed to be inconsistencies in some of the storytelling, such as jumping from first person (Mado’s POV) then wanders off to sit in the mind of a minor character whilst Mado is elsewhere. This I found quite jarring. I’m also convinced there was some tense shifting that I hadn’t noticed at first but seemed more apparent later, when she had been talking in present tense and claiming not to know what was going to happen, but would then end a chapter with words to the effect of “I would later learn how wrong I was”.
Some of the revelations seemed to come in a fashion that wasn’t too believable in how neatly they just happened to be waiting for her to ask someone at that time, but somehow no one on the island had any idea before then (unrealistic given how small the island is).
Even when you were expecting things to be neatly wrapped up, more drama is thrown at us which carries us through to the end.
This book is set on a tiny island surrounded by a small group of superstitious locals. With a place so small, and there being little influence from the mainland, you’d imagine it would be a quiet and uneventful life. You’d be wrong. The residents have a way of creating their own mischief and scandal, from feuding families, suicide, sex, and theft. Not to mention the imminent danger from the island having to contend with more flooding each year, that even their graveyard is almost always submerged.
Enter our main character, Mado, who is the daughter of an islander (her ailing and almost mute father whom her mother divorced). Mado had been living with her mother in Paris but, when she died, she decided to return to the island to look after her dad and get reacquainted with island life.
What follows are a number of twists and turns as she fights to keep her home safe from the sea as well as unscrupulous business practices. We learn more of her history and those known of others who are key to the unravelling story.
There seemed to be inconsistencies in some of the storytelling, such as jumping from first person (Mado’s POV) then wanders off to sit in the mind of a minor character whilst Mado is elsewhere. This I found quite jarring. I’m also convinced there was some tense shifting that I hadn’t noticed at first but seemed more apparent later, when she had been talking in present tense and claiming not to know what was going to happen, but would then end a chapter with words to the effect of “I would later learn how wrong I was”.
Some of the revelations seemed to come in a fashion that wasn’t too believable in how neatly they just happened to be waiting for her to ask someone at that time, but somehow no one on the island had any idea before then (unrealistic given how small the island is).
Even when you were expecting things to be neatly wrapped up, more drama is thrown at us which carries us through to the end.