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Title: Fizzles out
Review: Calpurnia starts off with a promising setting and characters who look like they could be interesting and believable, but the plot never thickens. In fact far from thickening, it sort of melts about a third of the way through, and trickles away in a real anticlimax.Anne Scott's writing style is dreamy and contemplative, not well suited for a thriller or whodunit, but that's okay -- I was expecting a gently unfolding and introspective sort of story, not a John Grisham novel. Any interesting leads Scott creates, though, seem to trail off in isolation from other plot elements, never connecting or impacting each other.Calpurnia is less a story than a collection of idle, non-urgent questions and answers about a family's life, and it never coheres into a whole that works.
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