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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2013
A book that, once started, you find difficult to put down. As you read on, it just gets better and better. You want to know what event happens next as the story's tension mounts, and the scenes themselves that carry the story along are macabre and foreboding. The descriptions of events and scenes are not necessarily up there with the likes of Joanna Harris, ie Tea With the Birds, but are apt enough and relevant.
At first, I found the sex scenes a bit lurid and explicit and, but for the intended portrayal of a happy couple who will be expecting their first child, I felt the passages sounded like something out of an erotic genre novel and that the book could have done without them. I thought at first it also would have made more sense if the couple were already newlyweds to have the sex scenes inserted into the story, otherwise it just seemed gratuitous. I supposed the reason was to set the scene of initial euphoria and for a pregnancy which could easily become the target of neighbourhood gossip. But as I read on past chapters 17 and 18 I realised the importance of certain events like the reason for the trip up North to Scotland and how everything in the novel pieced together like a jigsaw. Although it could be said the novel is a thriller noir and even the humour is dark and threaded with a transcendent evil atmosphere, metaphorically hinted at by the book's title, I found the book consistently, if not persistently, funny throughout, but even this did not lighten up greatly the dark mood that loomed like a shadow over an otherwise idyllic situation. The darkness is like an invader that should not be there, but is nevertheless pervasive and as if anciently in waiting for Jamie and Kirsty to arrive at their new flat, ready to swallow them after toying with them a while. The blame always hangs on Lucy and Chris, two of their neighbours and a married couple who are portrayed like the Terrible Twins with all twisted malevolence, but you never can tell - and the book does not admit outright, it always lets Jamie's suspicion of those two lurking in the background grow with his increasing paranoia - I say, you never can tell if it is them or someone else, something worse and more unbelievable like one of their other neighbours, Brian for instance.
The author does not use metaphors very often - if at all - or literary language, but still describes scenes aptly and depicts the tension with expert precision. If this is his debut novel, then I think he's a born natural with the storytelling capacity for added verve and wit - indeed, his sense of humour is apparent during the sunny intervals of the novel's shadowy progress from idyllic situation to cumulative nightmare. The scene involving the spiders, particularly the last sentence of this chapter 15, had me chuckling loudly it was so funny to read. I've never read anything so hilarious in a very long time! The book, though, held promise from Chapter 1. I don't honestly know why Mark Edwards doesn't go mainstream with his novels if they are as good as this one. I heard from somewhere that he self-publishes independently: is this true?
Compared to one major incident earlier on in the novel I did think his two main protagonists, Jamie and Kirsty, overreacted to some more trivial matters like proverbially banging their heads together incessantly over something as mild as an unpleasant letter from some neighbours. They must therefore have really cared about making friends with them to have got so hung up over it, but this is not apparent a chapter or so later on when they meet again. The overreactionary nature of Jamie to some incidents seem to be a device to carry the novel along, or else a portrayal of Jamie as a nervous paranoiac. It shows how darkness is starting to creep into the peaceful existence they thought they were going to enjoy on Mount Pleasant Street about 10 miles from London city centre in the form of breakdown of communication and relationship with what began as welcoming, friendly neighbours, and thus resulting in Kirsty's and Jamie's emotional/social isolation from their fellow tenants. It shows how any perfect situation can turn sour like cat's milk with a few mishaps or misunderstandings and that there is no place on earth that can truly be called Utopia. Even if there was, there is still the problem of growing old, of change and decay, which are inescapable facts of life. But let us not forget how things could be if only we were all more considerate of each other, and this too is the author's message.
All in all, a real page-turner denotes a gripping tale and this book kept me awake till late for a good few nights wanting to continue reading so I could find out what happens next. I would recommend this book especially as good nighttime reading, and particularly for anyone who has experienced difficult or nuisance neighbours themselves and wants something they can relate to. It also should appeal to anyone else who likes dark thrillers that play and build upon the readers' deepest fears. A tale well-told, so I am giving it 4 stars.
P.S. There is a prologue in my version where the name of Jamie is changed to David, and which also seems very inconsistent with the last chapter of the novel. Perhaps this will be corrected in time.
At first, I found the sex scenes a bit lurid and explicit and, but for the intended portrayal of a happy couple who will be expecting their first child, I felt the passages sounded like something out of an erotic genre novel and that the book could have done without them. I thought at first it also would have made more sense if the couple were already newlyweds to have the sex scenes inserted into the story, otherwise it just seemed gratuitous. I supposed the reason was to set the scene of initial euphoria and for a pregnancy which could easily become the target of neighbourhood gossip. But as I read on past chapters 17 and 18 I realised the importance of certain events like the reason for the trip up North to Scotland and how everything in the novel pieced together like a jigsaw. Although it could be said the novel is a thriller noir and even the humour is dark and threaded with a transcendent evil atmosphere, metaphorically hinted at by the book's title, I found the book consistently, if not persistently, funny throughout, but even this did not lighten up greatly the dark mood that loomed like a shadow over an otherwise idyllic situation. The darkness is like an invader that should not be there, but is nevertheless pervasive and as if anciently in waiting for Jamie and Kirsty to arrive at their new flat, ready to swallow them after toying with them a while. The blame always hangs on Lucy and Chris, two of their neighbours and a married couple who are portrayed like the Terrible Twins with all twisted malevolence, but you never can tell - and the book does not admit outright, it always lets Jamie's suspicion of those two lurking in the background grow with his increasing paranoia - I say, you never can tell if it is them or someone else, something worse and more unbelievable like one of their other neighbours, Brian for instance.
The author does not use metaphors very often - if at all - or literary language, but still describes scenes aptly and depicts the tension with expert precision. If this is his debut novel, then I think he's a born natural with the storytelling capacity for added verve and wit - indeed, his sense of humour is apparent during the sunny intervals of the novel's shadowy progress from idyllic situation to cumulative nightmare. The scene involving the spiders, particularly the last sentence of this chapter 15, had me chuckling loudly it was so funny to read. I've never read anything so hilarious in a very long time! The book, though, held promise from Chapter 1. I don't honestly know why Mark Edwards doesn't go mainstream with his novels if they are as good as this one. I heard from somewhere that he self-publishes independently: is this true?
Compared to one major incident earlier on in the novel I did think his two main protagonists, Jamie and Kirsty, overreacted to some more trivial matters like proverbially banging their heads together incessantly over something as mild as an unpleasant letter from some neighbours. They must therefore have really cared about making friends with them to have got so hung up over it, but this is not apparent a chapter or so later on when they meet again. The overreactionary nature of Jamie to some incidents seem to be a device to carry the novel along, or else a portrayal of Jamie as a nervous paranoiac. It shows how darkness is starting to creep into the peaceful existence they thought they were going to enjoy on Mount Pleasant Street about 10 miles from London city centre in the form of breakdown of communication and relationship with what began as welcoming, friendly neighbours, and thus resulting in Kirsty's and Jamie's emotional/social isolation from their fellow tenants. It shows how any perfect situation can turn sour like cat's milk with a few mishaps or misunderstandings and that there is no place on earth that can truly be called Utopia. Even if there was, there is still the problem of growing old, of change and decay, which are inescapable facts of life. But let us not forget how things could be if only we were all more considerate of each other, and this too is the author's message.
All in all, a real page-turner denotes a gripping tale and this book kept me awake till late for a good few nights wanting to continue reading so I could find out what happens next. I would recommend this book especially as good nighttime reading, and particularly for anyone who has experienced difficult or nuisance neighbours themselves and wants something they can relate to. It also should appeal to anyone else who likes dark thrillers that play and build upon the readers' deepest fears. A tale well-told, so I am giving it 4 stars.
P.S. There is a prologue in my version where the name of Jamie is changed to David, and which also seems very inconsistent with the last chapter of the novel. Perhaps this will be corrected in time.
