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Title: Skillfully written - but is that enough?
Review: There is no doubt that Jane Hamilton can write but that does not necessarily mean she can craft a good novel. We get a brief glimpse of the Goodheart family before disaster strikes - too brief, for me, to sympathise with the characters or realise what makes them as they are. Ther follows a porridge of flashbacks and a colourful bouquet of characters, most of them somewhat hysterical in their behaviour. And a view of a very narrow world, frankly a rather uninteresting world. In fact I had a rather odd feeling while reading this book: that the authoress had a specific reading public and a concrete commercial goal in mind. Which makes it a book for a very limited public indeed. Rather disappointing.
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