katarinaliest

Veronica isworking in a job that requires her to travel a lot. She tries to make the bestof it by keeping in touch with friends while away. But her long absences take atoll on her marriage and ultimately on her own well-being.

I wassurprised when I did so well on summarizing this novel, because honestly itseemed very obscure to me. So obscure in fact that I couldn’t even remotelymake out the plot until I was more than half way through the book. The firstfew chapters seem to have no connection to each other whatsoever apart fromtheir protagonist Veronica. This made the beginning of the book a slow andoften tiring read. Only in the end does Vallie Lynn Watson connect the fragments to each other, new chapters begin where old ones leave off and that managed to capture myinterest and attention but for the book as a whole I felt it was too little toolate and so I would not recommend this novel to other readers.

Maincharacter Veronica appears to be easily figured out by the reader but then theauthor presents me with unexpected, sometimes contradictory, information abouther and I have to rearrange my perception of her. All supporting charactersremain slightly out of focus and even the frequency with which their names arementioned throughout the novel does not bring the reader closer to them. Infact I found that the manner of fact style Vallie Lynn Watson adopts in her narration kept bothcharacters and plot at a distance from the reader which I was unhappy withthroughout the novel. Vallie Lynn Watson didn’t give her characters enough room to develop andrather strings plotpoint to plotpoint by chasing her characters through variouscities and hotels.

Often thisnovel reminded me of “True things about me” by Deborah Kay Davies. The authorsshare a dry narrative unmoved by the, sometimes horrific, things that happen totheir characters. But where Davies narrative works up to a climax Vallie Lynn Watson's writingbeats around the bush without release or clear ending.

I was a little disappointed bythis novel. The characters appear undeveloped and the plot seems to have no point.