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You: A Novel

3.23 of 5 stars 3.23 · rating details · 154 ratings · 49 reviews

Dora Bannan hopes for a new life when she moves her husband and their three children to the wild moorland. She finds a job teaching music at a progressive school, where she also enrolls the children- their fellow students the progeny of back-to-the-land bohemians. But when the school's elegant art teacher, Elisabeth Dahl, offers Dora a seductive alternative to her domestic...more

Paperback, 368 pages

Published August 2nd 2011 by Bloomsbury USA (first published January 1st 2011)

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Aug 05, 2012 John Champneys rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Sat Jul 28 09:06:41 BST 2012
I need a little bit of intrigue in a book to give me the energy to read through the following acres of prose. Unless the prose itself has such entrancing properties that I can wallow in it at any and any point, I invariably I need bribing. I'm a fish who's too lazy to swim any distance unless somebody's dangling a worm on a hook to pull me through, and the first little worm was the snippet that a school-girl has a raving crush on the English master, whilst her mothe...more Sat Jul 28 09:06:41 BST 2012
I need a little bit of intrigue in a book to give me the energy to read through the following acres of prose. Unless the prose itself has such entrancing properties that I can wallow in it at any and any point, I invariably I need bribing. I'm a fish who's too lazy to swim any distance unless somebody's dangling a worm on a hook to pull me through, and the first little worm was the snippet that a school-girl has a raving crush on the English master, whilst her mother carries on her first lesbian affair with the English master's wife. What a delightful set of ingredients, I thought. With those items loaded into my trolley it wouldn't matter too much at the checkout which plot I selected from the range dangling on their hooks for me to select. If plots were sweets, Maltesers would guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Furthermore, I noticed that the Publisher was Bloomsbury and they are a firm with whom I feel that (despite the fact that they do the Harry Potter series and are consequently swimming in far too much money) you can hardly go wrong. My prayer that Maltesers would be the dangle-plot for Ms Briscoe to adopt were swept aside as I looked for something more obscure. I needed a sweet I quite enjoyed as a child but wasn't really sure about. Something like marzipan which I convinced myself I would love once I'd become a proper grown-up. Newberry Fruits sprang to mind. They were a sugar-crusted jelly in lime, orange and lemon and they had a liquid centre which gushed all over your tongue when you bit into them. For some reason I fancy I'd plumped for those. Or had they been pre-selected for me?

I slogged and groaned over this book, wading heavily through the chick-litty e-pages, which stayed drearily parochial at their best or navel gazing at their worst, not that I have anything against deep contemplation; because you are, I feel, supposed to come to an inner peace, love and understanding when you do that.

It dragged on and on. I kept looking for something else to do, something tantalizing to read, and managed to get myself thinking, madly, that if I left it alone for a bit it would somehow have magically have read itself on a bit further. The Siren whispers advised me to dump it as there was plenty else for me to enjoy. But I don't do that, and at the time I firmly believed that 'proper readers' simply didn't do it. Nonetheless, by the time I’d reached the halfway mark I was as teed-off as ever and sorely tempted to dump it as 'failed to finish'. When a book does that with me it's in serious trouble.

It perked up quite a bit at the 60% mark and I sailed through the batch of pages, deciding that I was quite enjoying it really, and that it had reached the 'all forgiven' point, as long as it kept up the pace and didn't slacken its hold, and something more needed to be dangled on the hook now. In short I demanded nothing less than a diet of shrimps followed on by a portion of succulent high fat low cholesterol Dublin Bay Prawns.

Unfortunately there was no tasty diet. In true seventies style I found I was munching my way through a slice of wholemeal mung-bean pie, and all I really got was he ocular equivalent of jaw ache. As the story waded through its fuggy hash fog, I began to care little what or who Cecilia’s mystery baby was and by the end of the novel, despite the occasional description which held me captivated, I found that I simply couldn’t care less.(less)

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Apr 28, 2013 Steve lovell rated it 4 of 5 stars

They were there at the entrance to my local shopping plaza, sitting/standing in front of an ATM. They were knowingly causing maximum inconvenience to anyone game enough to run the gauntlet of their presence to use the machine. There were ten or so – teenage bogans in boganwear. They were of mixed gender, the girls about fourteen or fifteen by the look of them, the lads somewhat more mature. Surely some of them should be elsewhere this midweek day – they all appeared of school age to me. It was a...more They were there at the entrance to my local shopping plaza, sitting/standing in front of an ATM. They were knowingly causing maximum inconvenience to anyone game enough to run the gauntlet of their presence to use the machine. There were ten or so – teenage bogans in boganwear. They were of mixed gender, the girls about fourteen or fifteen by the look of them, the lads somewhat more mature. Surely some of them should be elsewhere this midweek day – they all appeared of school age to me. It was apparent though why two weren’t – they were attached to strollers containing toddlers, one of them being the youngest looking girl. She had a fag hanging out of mouth, was running down some f****** c*** at maximum decibels, every second word another expletive – doing so presumably for the entertainment of the greasily acne-faced males in her presence, but also ensuring any passer-by (me) would not miss out. To use the parlance of a few of my clients during my teaching days, she appeared a total skank. She was totally oblivious to her red-faced offspring, bellowing for all he/she was worth – obviously in some form of discomfort. The other ‘mother’, a slightly older, larger lass had her enfant quite contentedly sucking on a dummy. In sum, many with faces par-hidden by hoodies, this collection were not the best youthful products of our local community.

Am I too quick to judge? For all I am aware the two young ladies may have been ‘looking after’ the children for their mother, or older siblings, inside shopping. But I suspect otherwise. Being a newly minted grandfather, my thoughts focused on the two infants in the untidy gathering. Were their teenage mothers competent to give them the care they required? Did they in turn rely on their own parents to do so for most of the hard yards, most of the time? What were the conditions like in their homes, given their own appearance? I think of my own beautiful, cherished granddaughter cosseted, doted on, and being given the most caring, careful mothering possible. She is continually being presented with the most imaginative stimulation possible in order to give her the optimum start in life. Bringing another human being into the world is such a blessed, but nonetheless daunting, task – were these young ladies up for it?

Contrast these youths with seventeen year old Cecilia, the axis of Briscoe’s engrossing novel, ‘You’. If the sophomore novel is a challenge, then this author has met it superbly. Her narrative of the consequences of a ‘forbidden’ affair rebounds on three generations of a Dartmoor family. Briscoe takes us from the alternative, hippified seventies to the present time’s more stringent, yet conversely, more liberal times. Depending on one’s point of view, both are on show here. When we first meet our teenage ‘heroine’ she is in attendance at a school befitting the times. Her mother, Dora, is a sometime teacher at the establishment, insisting her daughter be ‘educated’ there, despite Cecelia’s desire to be somewhere ‘normal’. Enter Mr Dahl, brought in to give the place a semblance of academic rigor, and for the first time Cecilia sits up and takes notice. She begins her extra-curricula relationship with him innocently enough, doing something that no student, female or otherwise, did for me in forty years at the chalk face. She expresses her feelings for him, firstly, in one of the senses of those two words; and then, increasingly, in the other – by quoting passages of the great romantic works of English literature. And being the twit he is, he quotes rejoinders back. This is a recipe for disaster, and sure enough soon married teacher was bonking his student. For besotted, naive Cecilia, the outcome was inevitable

Unlike with the presumed young mothers gathered in my ‘burb’, on birth, Cecilia’s family, operating outside convention, as it was possible to do with ease back then in that era, take it on themselves to find the unwanted one a ‘good’ home. As an adult Cecilia returns to her old stomping ground with an agenda. She confronts Dora, now suffering terminal cancer, about her actions way back when, in an effort to trace her lost daughter. Then she discovers that the drippily insidious Mr Dahl is still plying his trade locally.

Dora, tenuously attached throughout to a vague, pottering, potty hubby, to add spice, is intermittently romantically attached to a Dahl of her own – Elizabeth – the teacher’s wife. For this reader Elizabeth Dahl proved to be as intriguing a character as she was to Dora, and Briscoe’s best creation.

The third generation is represented by Izzie, Cecilia’s adopted daughter – she has other biological offspring. Who is the enigmatic older boy prowling around the moorland home, before inveigling his way into Izzie’s bed? Most deliciously curious!

This is a meaty book. I loved getting my teeth into it and loved the feistiness of the Briscoe women. Its ending is a pearler. All is not as it seems – and our astute author is not overly tidy in bringing it all together either – when is life ever tidy? She allows some wriggle room for the reader to ponder. ‘You’ is excellent, and I recommend YOU read it.

Well, I hope that life has some tidiness, some love and more than a tad of hope for the two little tykes outside the shopping plaza that autumn day. I have no wish for the world to go back to the ‘Call the Midwife’ days of yore but, gee, I worry for them and those of their ilk!
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Apr 13, 2013 Bernadette Robinson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: dual-time-frame

This was what I thought of it when I read it in June, 2011.

It took me a while to get into the story. I'm not sure if this was down to the book or myself. The first half of the book is set in a dual time frame which I can cope with easily but something was lacking. Whilst the writing was quite good with regards to setting the scene with imagery and atmosphere, I felt that the characters lacked depth. The second half of the book dealt with the here and now. Every family has its secrets and the fam...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Ste80 rated it 5 of 5 stars

Da www.sognipensieriparole.com

"L'ossessione di te" è, a mio parere, la conferma del grande talento di scrittrice dell'autrice londinese Joanna Briscoe. Pubblicato lo scorso giugno dalla Casa Editrice Piemme, la sua lettura mi ha catturata ed avvolta fin da subito nella sua rete fatta di passioni, amori infedeli e segreti.

Questo non è il primo romanzo della Briscoe, che già con "Vieni a letto con me" aveva fatto innamorare del suo stile milioni di lettrici. Il fatto che sia critica letteraria per...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Cara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fun-or-frivolity

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is a beautifully told story about lost love. The main character starts the book as a very serious, academic girl with old-fashioned ideas from reading too many old books. (I can relate!) Her hippie parents enroll her in this anything-goes hippie school, and she falls in love with her similarly out-of-place English teacher. Meanwhile, her mother falls in love with the English teacher's wife.

The story covers about a year in detail, then flashes forward to the main character's adulthood. After...more This is a beautifully told story about lost love. The main character starts the book as a very serious, academic girl with old-fashioned ideas from reading too many old books. (I can relate!) Her hippie parents enroll her in this anything-goes hippie school, and she falls in love with her similarly out-of-place English teacher. Meanwhile, her mother falls in love with the English teacher's wife.

The story covers about a year in detail, then flashes forward to the main character's adulthood. After being away for years, she's moved back home with her daughters to help her mom, who has cancer. Also, and perhaps more importantly, she wants to find out everything she can about her baby (love child with the English teacher), who was adopted by persons unknown 23 years ago. She has a long-term boyfriend, the father of the daughters (except the middle one, who she adopted to try to alleviate some of her guilt for giving up the baby in her youth), but as she meets back up with the English teacher, she finds his pull undiminished. Meanwhile, her mother is engaged in a parallel struggle to free herself from his wife's hold.

This book is very well written and really made me care about the characters. Especially, while the main character is returning to the mistakes of her childhood, her daughters are starting to repeat the same mistakes themselves, and she's almost totally oblivious! That part made me want to smack her.

Everything turns out ok, though. My only real complaint is that the huge finale, the scene you've been hoping for throughout the whole book, where she's reunited with her lost child, is not included in the book. The book ends right before it. Argh! This bothered me so much, I kept writing the scene in my head, imagining how it would have gone.

Also, at the end, it seems like everything is settled, and the mom has even managed to free herself at last from her lover's hold on her... but then the English teacher calls the cottage, finally ready to leave his wife and run away with the main character after all these years. What does she do? That's left hanging. I'm not even sure how I want that part to turn out, honestly. It seems like the English teacher is a childhood fantasy, not something to go for in adulthood. On the other hand, the boyfriend appears so little in the book, it's hard to totally pull for him, either.

Anyway, this book was perfect for flying to Portland--even after I arrived, I wanted to keep reading. I really enjoyed it.(less)

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Nov 05, 2011 Rosanne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I can see by the other reviews listed here that I am the only one that gave You a 5 star rating. Why? Simple answer is "I loved it".

I have to agree with many that at the beginning it was extremely confusing with the changing time frames in the chapters. However, once it became clear to me how it was going to progress; I got caught up in the characters and their saga.

Cecilia's childhood was spent living a bohemian lifestyle that was at times wild and crazy. Dora, her mother, was the bread winner...more

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Feb 21, 2012 Jane rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Where I got the book: won on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

Cecilia has returned to the cottage on the Devon moors where she grew up, to care for her sick mother, Dora. This is the ostensible reason, but she is also drawn to the last place where she saw her lost baby. Amid the strange wildness of Dartmoor, she comes face to face with her past while Dora struggles to free herself from the ties that bind her.

I began this novel with the uncomfortable feeling that I was not going to be able...more Where I got the book: won on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

Cecilia has returned to the cottage on the Devon moors where she grew up, to care for her sick mother, Dora. This is the ostensible reason, but she is also drawn to the last place where she saw her lost baby. Amid the strange wildness of Dartmoor, she comes face to face with her past while Dora struggles to free herself from the ties that bind her.

I began this novel with the uncomfortable feeling that I was not going to be able to adapt to Briscoe's rather self-consciously literary style after reading a slew of genre novels. And ended it with an appreciation of her clarity and command of language; this is definitely a writer who grew on me once I summoned the patience to settle into her world.

I think I detected a fairly strong D.H. Lawrence influence, and one passage that just had to have been a tribute to Dorothy L. Sayers, thus:

Sayers: Accepting rebuke, he relapsed into silence, while she studied his half-averted face. Considered generally, as a façade, it was by this time tolerably familiar to her, but now she saw details, magnified as it were by some glass in her own mind. The flat setting and fine scroll-work of the ear, and the height of the skull above it. The glitter of close-cropped hair where the neck-muscles lifted to meet the head. A minute sickle-shaped scar on the left temple. The faint laughter-lines at the corner of the eye and the droop of the lid at its outer end. The gleam of golden down on the cheek-bone. The wide spring of the nostril. An almost imperceptible beading of sweat on the upper lip and a tiny muscle that twitched the sensitive corner of the mouth. The slight sun-reddening of the fair skin and its sudden whiteness below the base of the throat. The little hollow above the points of the collar-bone.
He looked up; and she was instantly scarlet, as though she had been dipped in boiling water.

Briscoe: He looked up at the inn and she glanced at him on the seat beside her and examined him as though strongly magnified, followed the exact shape of the bone of his nose, his irises' confusion of pigmentation, rendered lighter in sunlight; wayward eyebrow hairs, a faint sheen of moisture on his forehead; the outer line of paleness that traced his lips, the strong cleft above the mouth, the sun-shot curve of his ear and a tiny scar on its outer edge. She could see the twitch of his pulse in his neck. He turned and she blushed, and the notion disappeared.

Both male characters are very English in appearance. I love echoes like that--they make all literature seem like an endless conversation.

Briscoe uses a rich imagery which shifts around in some interesting ways. Early in the novel, women--particularly the mother-daughter relationship--seem to represent safety and are connected to earth, while men represent danger and water. Later, the danger--and the water metaphors--seem to lie with the women, while men are safe and earthy. This may represent Cecilia's gradual willingness to come to some sort of peace with her past, while Dora struggles to break free. All very Lawrencian.

Of course, if you mix water and earth you get mud, and a lot of this story seems to be about people who are stuck in the mesh of relationships that they have created. The moldering, damp cottage that harbors both warmth and family and a litter of decay and death--crumbling structure and dead insects--holds the protagonists in stasis. Briscoe carefully engineers the ending so that the stasis is still there but a glimpse of a way forward is afforded. (I found it amusing that, after railing against the non-tying-up of loose ends in a crime story, I was happy to accept the unresolved ending of You as author's privilege. What a difference a genre makes.)

I guessed at the crisis and revelation in the novel by about halfway through, but that didn't stop me from turning the pages to see if I was right. Briscoe convinced me of her power to maintain a story, and I'll be looking for more of her novels.

I also feel I should remark on the excellence of the editing; I didn't spot a single mistake, a rare treat. And I loved the cover design and the feel of the cover's matte, slightly textured coating. The whole package added up to a reading experience that kept me slightly on edge in a good way. If I were going to knock off half a star it would be because the book didn't grab me straightaway, but that would be splitting hairs. Good stuff.
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Oct 16, 2012 Devil rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is so perfect, I'm struggling to find words to express it.

The truth is, during the week it took me to read it, I lived in the book. I wanted to live there, be haunted by the amazing characters and settings, I wanted no distractions from the real world.

This book is incredibly vivid, it's sensual in the way that your senses are constantly being called upon by the author's descriptions. So, even though I'm not remotely familiar with the scenery of Dartmoor and I didn't really recognise ma...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

As others have mentioned, the beginning of 'You' and its constant switching between the present and past is quite confusing, and at times I was tempted to just give it up. I'm pretty good at retaining what I've read, but even I had trouble at times remembering if I was reading about the present or the past. Especially considering most of it, past and present, all takes place in the same house. Additionally, Briscoe gets a little too flowery at times with the descriptions. I would skip chunks of...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Tiffany (Book Cover Justice) rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-own

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I wanted to like this book. I really, really did. I was very excited about winning a copy from the Goodreads First Reads program and anxiously awaited it. But I have to admit that I just didn't like it. I couldn't even finish it. It is very rare that I don't finish a book. I don't know why, but I feel very guilty if I don't. However, after even a few pages I knew I wasn't going to finish this. Sometimes you just know.
Cecilia moves her husband and kids from London back to the home she grew up i...more

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Sep 09, 2011 Debra Wood rated it 4 of 5 stars

Forbidden love affairs in the Moorlands lead to unexpected consequeces for characters in this novel. Reminding us that the choices we make in our young lives may come to later haunt us. Is there a fairy tale ending to be had on the Moorland? This novel leaves the reader with room to wonder.

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Aug 24, 2011 Galadriel Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Galadriel by: First Reads Giveaway

Shelves: first-reads

Rarely do I read a novel that I get so emotionally pent up in that it affects my mood for days. I received, You: A Novel by Joanna Briscoe, a Good Reads First Reads giveaway in August of 2011. The week that it took me to read, contemplate, and review it was not very pleasant at my house. This novel is exquisitely written and I do not want to take anything away from that fact. I will definitely strive to read more of Mrs. Briscoe’s work as I believe she has a wonderful way with words. I dearly l...more Rarely do I read a novel that I get so emotionally pent up in that it affects my mood for days. I received, You: A Novel by Joanna Briscoe, a Good Reads First Reads giveaway in August of 2011. The week that it took me to read, contemplate, and review it was not very pleasant at my house. This novel is exquisitely written and I do not want to take anything away from that fact. I will definitely strive to read more of Mrs. Briscoe’s work as I believe she has a wonderful way with words. I dearly loved the settings and scenes in this book. I felt I was there on the English Mooreland, her ability to give every detail and leave room for imagination is admirable. I expect that this is the very reason I had such intense feelings about the cast of characters. I truly did not like many of the cast and I admit I think I hate the main character with an intenseness that I rarely feel for actual human beings. In general all of the adults in this book are so selfish I am surprised they see past their own noses. The children are all very likeable and have the typical self centeredness you would expect of a child. I realize that without the people there would not be a story, but I really just wanted to read the parts when she set the scene for the actions that would so enflame me. I truly love the way she handled Dora, the mother’s, story line. I believe with fleshing out that would have been a very original and lovely novel on its own. Cecelia, the daughter’s, story is OK, it’s not super original but I don’t find it overdone. I do despise Cecelia and her machinations once she becomes a seventeen year old. Her actions while not uncommon to a young woman cause a terrible chain of events that effect other lives but all she does is lay blame, whine, and obsess. In doing this she neglects her family and nearly loses it all. While I read this over several days it was mostly read in large chunks. I would sit down and not realize I had raced through so much text at once. I find this to be another endearing quality about her writing. I do confess to having a difficult time plowing through the second half, but even then it was in large bites. I very much want to read more of Joanna Briscoe’s work and hopefully feel as good about some of her other characters as I did badly about these. (8/24/2011)

-I will review when I stop being angry about it. Tomorrow perhaps.(8/22/2011) (less)

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Aug 01, 2012 Pat rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is a perfect book for anyone who likes soap opera drama filled with multiple betrayals and ironic parallels. Cecilia, the main character, has an affair as a teenager with her English teacher, James Dahl. James' wife, Elizabeth, is simultaneously romantically involved with Cecilia's mother, Dora, who is still married to Cecilia's father. The complicated web of secrecy and lies accelerates, and eventually culminates when an adult Cecilia returns to her childhood home to live with her partner...more

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Oct 26, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 3 of 5 stars

I like the way Joanna Briscoe writes. And I like the setting - the moors of Devonshire. Her descriptions of the crumbling house got a little repetitive. And I grew annoyed with the responses of Dora to the questioning from Cecilia, her daughter. I like books best where I get attached to the characters and that didn't happen for me in You: A Novel.

In this book, the story alternates between two time periods 20 years apart, which could have been confusing but Joanna Briscoe does it very skillfully....more

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Nov 09, 2011 Hazel McHaffie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The setting is Dartmoor evoking good memories for me. So I took it on holiday. Cecilia is obsessively in love with her teacher, Mr Dahl. Her mother is fascinated by Mrs Dahl. It's a way-out liberal school but the ramifications of these relationships have enduring consequences. When Cecilia returns 20 years on to face her past she finds more than she bargained for. I found the book readable enough but the denouement was predictable too early and the coincidences rather unbelievable. And the endin...more

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Sep 28, 2011 Katherine rated it 3 of 5 stars

Going back and forth in time, this book explores the guilt and despair of a young mother forced to give up a baby for adoption as she grows up and has a family. The story line is strong and the characters are well drawn with plenty of faults as well as virtues. At times, however, the jumping back and forth was confusing and I had to go back to be sure if I was in the past or the present. I kept reading for the story and found that, even after 300+ pages, the ending begs for a sequel.

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Feb 08, 2013 Erica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book became compulsive, the further into the story I went. This novel has a real sense of place. I could feel the wildness of the moors of Dartmoor; the turbulence of the weather echoed the conflict of emotions throughout the story.

It is a beautifully written book and the story gripped me. After I read what happened on the final page, I couldn't stop wondering how the next step would make so many lives and relationships implode. A great ending, leaving me marvelling.

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Jun 16, 2013 Ann Chappe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Other reviewers seem to have either loved or hated this book...I started it without many expectations , found it tedious initially and distasteful in parts. Loved the setting and the lyrical style of writing and felt compelled to finish to the end for this reason, even though the character of Cecilia grated a bit. In the end the story itself (apart from the strata of seaminess) shone through and became quite captivating.

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Apr 19, 2013 Evelyn Jackson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book!

The whole teacher-student affair is kinda gross although Briscoe has the tendency to make it seem romantic at the time of reading it. About half way through I realised it was her teacher and I was lik 'ew'. Simply it's kinda gross but weirdly hot. When I read the blurb I had to read it a few times as I thought I read it wrong due to the lesbian thing going on with the mother and the teacher.

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May 07, 2012 Dohn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: won-it

This book it amazing and a really surprising. It is a real page turner and most defiantly a must buy. I was lucky to get the opportunity to read this book through a free giveaway and would like to acknowledge how grateful I am to have this privilege. I really liked the way the book is written and the story. I hope that I am able to persuade at least one person to buy this book.

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Aug 25, 2011 Lana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-won, favorites

just won it on goodreads cant wait to read it!!!

Well now I have finished it. This is a interesting book with many dimensions, twists and turns.The relationships are complex and engrossing.I would have liked it to be a bit longer, this is one that you dont want to end.
I did like the way the writer conected all the people in the book as thier lifes seened to be intangled.I am going to look to see what Joanna Briscoe has on kindle to read.I do recomend this book to adult readers!!!!!

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Jul 23, 2012 Just Before Bed rated it 2 of 5 stars

There's something compelling about this novel even though the central characters are repellent and whiny and the families are achingly dyfunctional and the prose with all its lyrical poetic flourishes is ponderous. The resolution was unsatisfying and annoying.

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Aug 26, 2011 Jean Grant rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who don't mind putting life on hold to read

Recommended to Jean by: Anne Fuhrman

I gobbled this book down in two days--felt like a bookstruck teenager again. The exploration of teen love is marvelous as is the mother's love story. It took me a while to get into the "quest for the mother/child" theme, but once I did, I loved it. A passionate read.

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Jan 09, 2012 Daisy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary

I bought this on a whim as it was a Kindle Daily Deal and looked like an interesting plot. It took me a few chapters to get used to the constant back and forth between time periods and characters, but even when I did I had the feeling I just wasn't going to finish this book. To sum it up in one word, it was just 'boring'.

I didn't really connect with the characters either, which for me makes a big difference between whether I love the book, find it ok, or as in this case really not enjoy it. Aft...more

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May 09, 2013 Jo Swingler rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sometimes repetitive, clunky and contrived in places, and perhaps might have been a better novel if streamlined more. The descriptions of Dartmoor were very accurate and beautiful, though. A good read overall.

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Dec 01, 2011 Heather Wilson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: quit

I have to quit this book 125 pages in. I'm bored.

I'm not exactly sure what the problem is - the language and writing mechanics are lovely. It may be a story and character problem. Both the story and the characters feel predictible and stale, though it tries hard not to be. Aha. That's the problem, at least for this reader.

I will try this book again someday - maybe I'm just not in the proper frame of mind for it right now.

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Apr 26, 2013 Angie Perkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this far more than I expected to - really compulsive reading with very strong characters. I definitely look forward to reading more by Joanna Briscoe.

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Dec 03, 2011 Jess rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: to-study, already-own

Beautiful, perfect. Briscoe has clearly spent time in Devon, her descriptions of Dartmoor are spot on, and she really captures life there, for better or worse.

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Jan 12, 2013 Holly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow. A consuming read full of suspense, them characters complex, and flawed. Fit it in to every cranny of space I could, I raced to finish it knowing with sadness I would be lost once I reached them final page, and I am.

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Jul 31, 2011 Caitlin rated it 5 of 5 stars

I won this book in a good reads contests and I'm really looking forward to reading this book. I can't wait for it to get here.

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About Joanna Briscoe

Joanna Briscoe is the author of two novels, Mothers and Other Lovers, which won the Betty Trask Award; and Skin, which was runner-up for the Encore Award. Her short stories have featured in several anthologies. She was a columnist for the Independent and the Guardian and writes regularly for all the major newspapers and magazines. Joanna Briscoe lives in London with her family.

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