Title | : | Huddleston Road |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | 1564788121 |
ISBN-10 | : | 9781564788122 |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Hardcover |
Number of Pages | : | 160 |
Publication | : | First published September 18, 2012 |
Huddleston Road Reviews
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Story about suicide. Seemed more like an essay than a novel. Excellent writing, but not a great read.
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Solid prose writing, as was the case with the first (and better) book from Mr. Toomey, though I am sure people will be dissuaded from this one due to the story, which is essentially: difficult, tortured (read: crazy) woman makes man's life hell (Leonard Micheals's Sylvia comes to mind). Okay, it's been done, but then again there have been plenty of difficult, tortured man and the long suffering woman who stands by him books (Under the volcano), so either you decide right now that the theme has been done to death and skip this or you decide that you don't care about repeated themes so long as the writing's good and the novel engages. Okay, now that we've cleared out all those bemoaning bores, get reading!
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Second novel by Toomey. Desperately overwritten. Hard to fathom this as a Dalkey Archive publication. The prose is leaden and images are (often) forced. Watercolour sentences float in muddles. Toomey isn't a bad writer (there are occasionally nice patches of expression), though he hammers his metaphors in a repetitive manner that will try seasoned readers. His themes are heavy, but Toomey fails to illuminate his key concerns with any subtlety or style. Instead his wretched narrative tends to descend into circles as opaque, hopeless and dull as his mired protagonist's obsessions.
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I really wanted to enjoy this, but just couldn't. The characters seemed flat and lacked motivation.