Difficult one to score. It's a good book and a great example of how you can use dialogue tags other than "said" and get away with it; the characters, for the most part, hooked me, but there are a lot of them and, at times, I had difficulties keeping them and their complex inter-relationships straigh...
I loved every moment of reading this book. While I was away from it I needed to get back to it, which for me, is my definition of a supremely successful novel.
A strange book, which can be funny, moving, thought-provoking – as well as frustrating. But then it is set in Ashford, which is all of those things and less. The plot is hard to summarise, although as a reader you'll probably be more preoccupied with unpicking the Byzantine web of connections which ...
Barker creates some of the most individual, interesting characters....
Anytime I see a book this size I think: "What was that you had to say that you needed more than 800 pages to do it?". And I am intrigued, because, surely, it must be something magnificent to justify the magnificent size. On the other hand I know that I suffer from severe obsessive-compulsive disorde...
I finished Darkmans by Nicola Barker. I loved it. It's wonderfully written, extremely modern, yet steeped in medieval ties & references. The story wanders amongst a diverse & unique group of characters, who surprise in quite a few ways. This is a book I could read more than once & get more out of it...
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What a wonderfully unexpected joy of a book! I nearly gave up after the first couple of letters - weirdly out of place (very annoying footnotes) - but oh am I glad I carried on. A book that has taken the epistolary form to new heights - very rarely have I seen it done better, a real delight. Recomme...
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