Present Tense Book Review – Case Histories: Part 2

(Part One of this Present Tense Book Review.)

I’ve rattled through this book, a testament to both the writing and the degree of traffic on Oxford Road this week (I do a lot of my reading on the bus…) On the whole it was enjoyable, and any book with a character called Binky is worth reading. Here, the Binky is an old South African lady, a slightly different twist on a cliched character, in a book full of quite interesting characters who don’t quite escape from the page. The story is pretty good, but the confluence of the three case histories is a bit unsatisfactory – two of them intertwine quite nicely, but the third feels mostly superfluous.

If I was in a reading group I’d comment on the theme of lost women/girls, and the multi-layered definitions of loss that the book explores, and explores well, I think. But that sounds a bit pretentious when I’m just churning words out into the ether, so I’ll conclude by saying that the book was sufficiently diverting that I want to read the others in the series…