The Living

by Anjali Joseph

There is a certain number of breaths each of us has to take, and no amount of care or carelessness can alter that.

This is the story of two lives. Claire is a young single mother working in one of England’s last surviving shoe factories, her adult life formed by a teenage relationship. Is she ready to move on from memory and the routine of her days? Arun, an older man in a western Indian town, makes hand-sewn chappals at home. A recovered alcoholic, now a grandfather, he negotiates the newfound indignities of old age while returning in thought to the extramarital affair he had years earlier.

These lives are woven through with the ongoing discipline of work and the responsibility and tedium of family life. Lives laced with the joys of old friendship, the pleasure of sex, and the redemptive kindness of one’s own children. This is the story of the living.

Genres: Fiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2016

About the author

Anjali Joseph was born in Bombay in 1978. She read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has taught English at the Sorbonne. More recently she has written for the Times of India in Bombay and been a Commissioning Editor for ELLE (India). She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia with distinction in 2008. Saraswati Park is her first novel.

Reviews

[Ahtims · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title and the blurb aptly describe the book, so nothing much of the story from my part.
What I would like to say is that it is a slow moving book, and the pace slows down as it proceeds. .. and towards the end, there are a few loose ends which we can interpret or built upon in our own way.
The two protagonists of this story are Claire, a young British woman and Arun, an old Indian man who live in their own countries, and the only fact connecting them is that they both work in the footwear trade, but in different ways and capacities.
How they spend their days seems to be the focal point of the story.
I was almost sure that they will intersect at some time or other, but that never happened.

On the whole, I liked it, but there was something missing.

[Aditi · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

----Dr. Seuss


Anjali Joseph, an award-winning Indian author, pens her new novel, The Living, that unfolds the story of two characters' daily lives, their past mistakes, their shortcomings and their daily mundane routine, set in two different continents of the world. The story is unique yet it could have been much more better with lots of character and plot development.


Synopsis:

There is a certain number of breaths each of us has to take, and no amount of care or carelessness can alter that.

This is the story of two lives. Claire is a young single mother working in one of England’s last surviving shoe factories, her adult life formed by a teenage relationship. Is she ready to move on from memory and the routine of her days? Arun, an older man in a western Indian town, makes hand-sewn chappals at home. A recovered alcoholic, now a grandfather, he negotiates the new found indignities of old age while returning in thought to the extramarital affair he had years earlier.

These lives are woven through with the ongoing discipline of work and the responsibility and tedium of family life. Lives laced with the joys of old friendship, the pleasure of sex, and the redemptive kindness of one’s own children. This is the story of the living.


Claire and Arun are the two protagonists of this story. Claire is a mid-aged single mother, working in the last standing shoe factory in England and is in a constant denial that her life could never be any better. But one day when she meets a man in a bar, she could not shake him off her mind quite easily and gradually felt pulled towards his charm. Unfortunately her happy ending didn't last long and her mundane lifestyle of taking care of a teenage boy whom she gave birth when she herself was a teenager, regrets everything in her life.

Arun, on the other hand, is a old grandfather who used to make hand-made chappals for a living in a village in a India, and is constantly reminiscing about his extra-marital affair with a young woman ages ago. He too is constantly in denial about the fact that his life could be better and that he should have done things differently and could have been a better husband and a father.

The author mainly focuses on the two lives and their daily lifestyle. While reading if you try to connect these two protagonists in any way, then I must remind you, do not waste your time in thinking about a possible connection between Claire and Arun, hence just try to enjoy the story and the details of these two lives. I think the readers always happen to expect too much from a character, thinking there might be something different from our lives that make them stand apart and that we can take a lesson or so from them. But when the characters follow our lifestyles then it becomes boring and the readers are not able to find that escapism that they were looking forward to through the character's lives.

Anyways, something similar happened with these books, after reading so many negative reviews on Goodreads as well as on other blogs, I believe the author must have done wrong by not portraying her characters with some sort of closure. And as a reader, I too expect that from the author's protagonists. Anyways, still I would like to hats off to the author for taking a different and kind of innovative approach to portray the lives of the characters so dully. Because normal and everyday human lives are dull unless you are not a celebrity or a politician or someone famous.

The writing style of the author is good, but not strong. There is no dynamics in the narrative style of even in the pacing or in the plot. The story does not even evoke any emotions as it is very plain and simple and fails to engage the readers with a sense of feelings for the story or for the characters.

The characters are good and they had lot of room to evolve in their skin, but the author just let them floe freely in their bland and regretful demeanor. Claire has done a great job in taking care of her son, but her pain is so deep that she is constantly on the horizon to explore her sexual adventures. Arun has delved deeper into the past mistakes when he had an extra-marital affair and now he is on the threshold to make things better. The supporting characters are also quite well drawn.

Overall, this is not so much of an engrossing read yet it is quite interesting enough with two different stories but with same manner of work life and how the stories are so realistic and simple.

Verdict: You can definitely turn away your head from this book.

Courtesy: Thanks to the author, Anjali Joseph's publicist, for giving me an opportunity to read and review this novel.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are books that the reader finishes and fails to see the Author's point (or what the publisher saw). Any of the parties could be at fault, but this book was one such.

The book narrates two parallel tales. Claire, working in a shoe factory in Britain, is a single mom of a teenager. Her monochrome life is stifling and so she tries to find spark in affairs only to be disappointed or guilty.

The other track is of Arun the last of the Kolhapuri chappal makers. His sons and grandsons have moved on. With age related diseases, guilt over past, regrets and nostalgia he carries on living with nothing to look forward to.

The book starts of well alright with lot of quotable quotes on ennui. Sample this

I thought to myself something I often thought at that time when anything went wrong, whatever it was, and then when it stopped, at least for a bit: Well, that passed the time

But then like a elementary kid with a stage fright the book meanders away into unintelligible ramblings.

Had hoped for a better book.

[Fran · Rating 3 out of 5]

Living is a gift though each of us has trials and tribulations. Leading a dull, unvarying life is a choice.Flexibility and willingness to experience change and growth is another.

Claire, a shoe factory worker in England and Arun, a chappal maker in India both have uneventful lives. The story alternates between these two voices and enumerates the choices they felt should have been made to control their destinies.

The digital copy was difficult to read and contained many spacing errors. The text was sometimes unclear as to which character's feelings were being revealed. A disappointing read.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was very quiet, beautiful, and impressively strange. It reminded me of Knausgaard in the sense that it's about how life is lived, about how nothing really happens, and how that could make you feel kind of ennui-ish and frantic. And I liked how the two parallel novellas didn't forcefully try to impose any links between the characters and their lives (apart from the fact that they're both shoemakers); you could draw your own conclusions about how they are connected.

Some people walk quite evenly, but not many, I’ve noticed, not many. Most of us shuffle along in our own strange way, not giving it attention. (82)

As I shouted I wanted, I remember, to weep at the idea of having to be a grown-up. (105)

And then, she said, I decided that I would never be unhappy again; that I would just expect nothing from life, but just enjoy whatever I could - a cool breeze, clean clothes, walking to school, or being alone. If bad things happened, I knew they would pass. I knew I would live a long life. But I also knew I couldn’t depend on anyone or anything to be happy. She looked at me again and her eyes were clear and warning. It’s a choice, she said. (107)

I had the feeling I had floated above everything - the factory line of my existence, failing to feel that I belonged in my life. (119)

[Jule · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a strange book to read. Not bad, just not entirely complete. It is the story of two people, a single mum in England, and an elderly grandfather in India. There is no connection between them (though I did search for one) and they never meet - they just share the profession of making shoes. That missing link was the first thing that bothered me. Another was the lack of conflict and thus development. Yes, they have their lives and some low key (very realistic) problems here and there, but it is nothing special, nothing big and therefore rather slow. There was no internal conflict and development recognizable for me. Also, the Indian words were necessary, I get that, but confusing. At least add some sort of description, because otherwise, it is sometimes impossible to know whether a word means a name, a food dish or a religious ceremony. Furthermore, there were no quotation marks in the entire novel, which made reading weird and hindered the flow at times.

In summary: well written, realistic and relatable characters - yes. Meaning, connection, conflict - no. Therefore, a just above average 3/5 stars.

[Smitha · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of two people running in parallel, one in England, the other in India. Claire, a single mother who works in a shoe factory, one of the last ones in England. Arun is a worker making chappals (slippers) in Kolhapur.

The book is a recounting of their lives, their humdrum everyday life, where for Claire, nothing ever seems to change, while for Arun, has all the indignities that come with old age to face .

It might have been interesting had the writing been more evocative. In this case, it was just tedious. This is one of those few books that I struggled to read. In fact, it took me a while to understand where this was going when the chapter suddenly started talking of Arun. That might have been because this was a review copy, yet to be proof read. The characters didn't work for me, although Arun felt a little more relatable than Claire. Claire just felt self obsessed to me.
Over all a very insipid read, one that I could wait to turn the last page of. May be it was just me, the wrong reader for the book, but this book I wouldn't recommend to anyone.

[Tracy Hollen · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars
Claire’s story was okay but I couldn’t get into the parts with Arun. The two halves seemed very disjointed - shoes wasn’t enough of a concept to bind them together.

[Mystica]

Two alternate lives - Claire working in a shoe factory in England and Arun working as a chappal maker (which is featured on the cover) in Kohalpur. He is just doing what his father and grandfather before him did. Both characters lead humdrum lives and both wonder what would have happened if things had worked out differently in their respective worlds.

I unfortunately did not understand that the book was portraying the two lives and the workings of the mind of the characters till the very end. The portrayal of daily life, the humdrum and the extraordinary were both depicted in detail.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anjali Joseph’s third novel tells two tenuously connected stories of two dissimilar people living thousands of miles apart. Thirty-something Claire lives in Norwich, England, with her teenage son, Jason, and works in a shoe factory. Claire, estranged from her family and long out of touch with Jason’s father, makes ends meet but lives a sterile and inert emotional life. She goes to work without regret because it is a kind of labour that, though often tedious, occupies her physically and intellectually and provides welcome distraction from her empty love life and other worries. Eventually she meets a man, Damian, with whom she strikes up a casually romantic relationship. But where love is concerned, Claire is reserved and tentative, unable to commit, to take the next step. After she and Damian meet a few times and have fun, she starts putting him off and pretending to not be available. But when he stops calling she is assailed by confusion and regret. When her father dies, and she has no choice but to reconnect with members of her family, the hurts and grudges of the past come rushing back. In the novel’s other thread, we meet Arun, in his late sixties, a reformed but still susceptible alcoholic, who lives in India and earns a modest wage by making sandals by hand, an outmoded but exacting craft that he knows will soon be lost. Arun’s story is one heavy with forebodings of mortality. Arun is suffering from physical indignities that are consistent with his age and history of alcohol abuse, and he resists visiting the doctor because of what he might discover. Arun both loves and resents his wife, whose strong and steady demeanor is the glue holding the family together. Their lengthy up and down marriage, which survived his drinking and an affair he had with a local woman, has remained steady, though his relationships with his two sons are strained. As the days pass and he senses physical decline signalling that his time on earth is limited, the affair and accompanying guilt are increasingly on his mind. Joseph’s novel, vividly written and filled with painterly detail, though lacking somewhat in immediacy and narrative drive, urgently evokes sensations of remorse and reproach as Claire and Arun struggle to come to terms with decisions they have made and how those decisions continue to affect the people they love. The two stories, split into four alternating sections, are not linked in any conventional sense, though each carries thematic echoes of the other. The Living is a wise and beautiful book that shines a light on human nature at its most vulnerable and exposed. However, readers will likely finish it with as many questions about the structure as about the fates of the two main characters.

[Maria Gulczynska · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this book under my Christmas tree and finally managed to grab it. If you are looking for a regular story, this rough, the way it actually is, kind of being in the head of 2 characters is not for you.
How fab it is to think of something and read about it here. The truth, the real thing, the stream of consciousness the way I like it in the female form we know it but never dare to show it without a filter.
Arun and his wife remind me of my grandparents and their negotiations of old age in their lives. Claire is just so refreshingly normal as a woman, friend, daughter, worker, person. The real thing without glitter or colouring. Neat.

[Dora · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was a hard slog but I have managed to get as far as Part 2. Now I am done. I cannot read any more of this drivel. I hate the short sentences she uses. Like this. They are boring. The book is boring. Reminds me of when primary kids are learning to write but before they understand how to construct an interesting sentence. Considering AJ has a degree in Creative Writing this surprises me.

I had hoped for much more and am very disappointed. I cannot waste any more precious time on this book hence the 1* rating.

[Mitali Bhokarikar · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Living narrates the story of two lives: Claire, a young single mother working in one of England’s last remaining shoe factories, and Arun, a recovered alcoholic and now a grandfather, who makes hand-sewn kolhapuri chappals. The novel’s chapters are structured as alternating pairs. It’s up to us to read into the novel the other correspondences, without getting unduly anxious about a neat mirroring.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book will be putting you in a meditative state where you see lives lived with one approach which may be the best : just take all as it comes. Through depicting events and environments you sink into the mental states of the characters, and that, catching a glimpse of someone else's psyche is perhaps the best we can hope for.

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly short, well written book, but seems to be two stories, that have little connection.

[Patricia Moren · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a story of two people, living parallel lives, in different countries. Interesting concept but didn't read as one story. Very slow moving, lacking inspiration and no real conclusion.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

In The Living Anjali Joseph brings us a tale of two rather unremarkable people.

Claire is a single mum living in England with a teenage son. Thousands of miles away in India lives Arun, an elderly, reformed alcoholic whose relationship with his wife and children has never been close. The one thing that connects these two individuals is their work in the shoe industry and the pride they take in turning out a quality product.

For Claire, the mass-produced shoes she assembles on a production line still deserve attention to detail:

Sometimes the shoes I check don't fit as well with each other as they would with another left, another right. The same model, but some thing doesn't match. I rearrange them and find another one where the rosette's slightly off-centre, or the shape of the vamp mirrors the other one. It's a small thing. Who'd notice? But it's satisfying, finding the right partner.

Arun considers himself a master craftsman whose handmade chappals are meant to last a man a lifetime.

Everything should be perfect. Why so much care for something a man will put between his feet and the ground? But the chappals will be his constant companions. He'll spend more time with them than with his wife. The thing I make is with a man when he's alone, unnoticed. He can rely on it. Our chappals aren't like the cheap manufactured ones, stuck with glue; ours will be with you a long time.

Arun is in a reflective mood as he fights against the signs of advancing age. He considers the time when he betrayed his wife through an extra-marital affair, indulged in heavy drinking sessions with his friends and neglected his children. Could some of those wrong turnings have been avoided? What kind of life could he have led if he hadn't been so stupid or shown more tenderness towards his family? In the final chapter after a meeting with an old friend and an episode in hospital, he finds a new accommodation with his life.

The livingIn alternating chapters we also experience Claire's memories of her past and the enduring strained relationship with her mother and siblings. Flashbacks to her first love (her son's father) mingle with the routine of her shifts at the factory and her attempts to find a new love in her life. Romance seems to be on the cards when a stranger takes a shine to her in a pub but, like many of her other relationships peters out quickly. By the end Claire is forced to consider that happiness has all the time been staring her in the face via John, a work colleague that she's never considered previously simply because he was always around.

Neither of these stories contains dramatic turning points or revelations; life is not like that seems to be Joseph's message. It's made up of the everyday, the small moments and the small pleasures which for Arun means to to feel the sun on your face, to see your sons laugh and to be happy in the moment while for Claire it's waking in a bed knowing that someone had been there so she didn't have to feel alone.

The Living apparently began as a short story in Granta: India in 2015 which might explain why it feels like two disconnected stories rather than a novel. The chapters featuring Arun were a lot more interesting than those dealing with Claire - where Arun felt a fully rounded character with whom we can cry and laugh (there is a wonderfully funny scene where he succumbs to pressure from his family and finally gets to see a doctor about his prostate problem) where Claire to me felt more remote and reserved. The Living wasn't up to the standard of her debut novel Saraswati Park which I read a few years ago (see review here) but I have a feeling she is a talent that will be worth watching for the future.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novel consisting of two parallel but unconnected stories: Claire, a single mother living in England and working in a shoe factory, and Arun, a grandfather in India who makes traditional, handcrafted sandals. There's a great deal of attention to the craft and meaning of shoes from both of them, but other than that, no obvious similarities between their stories.

Claire is lonely and emotionally closed off, struck in an antagonistic relationship with both her teenage son and her elderly parents, who threw her out of their home when she became pregnant as a teenager. Over the course of the story she slowly begins to reconnect with life, building bridges with her son and engaging in several romantic relationships (though one of these was incredibly ill-conceived and I found it quite off-putting). She seems to be severely clinically depressed – at multiple points in the book she reacts to a stressful situation by literally lying down on the floor and zoning out for hours – and as sympathetic as I am to that, it unfortunately doesn't make for compelling reading. By its nature, depression seems to be extremely hard to turn into narrative; I always think of Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which suffered from the same problem.

For that reason I preferred Arun's sections of the book, though I can't say they had much more plot – he was simply a more engaging character. Arun is a sixty year old man dealing with mild illnesses, negotiating daily life with his (presumably arranged) wife, regretting his past as an alcoholic with a mistress, meeting up with his grown sons and grandchildren. His pet cat disappears and reappears, he dreams of places he explored as a child, he refuses and then agrees to see a doctor. It's all mild, banal stuff, but the writing is lovely. I liked this passage, when Arun sees a childhood friend for the first time after years apart:
I would have looked at another man his age, crumpled, his remaining hair wispy and mad, and his little face wrinkled, and found him absurd, pathetic, and he was, but nothing had changed. Certain loves slip into us before we are able to weigh things up.

Overall nothing really happens and it will probably slip from my memory very soon, but it's a surprisingly quick, easy read, despite the poetic style of the writing. Even if it has nothing more to offer than this, the writing is excellent.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

[Cathy Geagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Living is the first of Anjali Joseph’s books I have read, despite her previous offerings Saraswati Park and Another Country coming highly recommended. As a result, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from it, and having read it I am not entirely sure what I think about it.

The Living tells two stories, in alternate sections, of two very different people on opposite sides of the world. Claire is a single mother in her 30s who works in a shoe factory in England. Arun is a shoemaker in India, a grandfather and a recovering alcoholic. The only ‘spoiler’ I will give you is that these stories are not connected. It’s best you don’t spend your time looking for when the stories overlap/collide, and instead enjoy each on their own merits.

“Over time you get used to the unknown areas of the person you live with. They become familiar, or that’s what you think.”

Claire is in the middle of a life shaped by a decision made when she was just a teenager; Arun is drawing to the end of a life handcrafting chappals in a world being taken over by machine production. There are no huge dramas here – Claire attends her father’s funeral, tries to decide exactly how she feels about two different men, thinks back on the estranged father of her son. Arun attends his niece’s wedding, spends time with his family, and reflects on his former mistress. The curtain rises at a given moment in their lives and drops again without any pat resolution – this is a book about living, not about distorting the experience of living into narrative convention.

The rich interior lives of the protagonists, in all the often mundane detail that make up the average day in the average life, control the pace here – only a certain type of reader will like this book. If you are drawn to action filled plots – this is not the book for you. However, if you enjoy thoughtful meditations on the daily actions, decisions and moments looking backwards that make living what it is; if you have ever wondered what are the legacies of small lives – The Living is both well written and just what you are looking for.

www.eatsplantsreadsbooks.com

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was given this book by Goodreads and it is not my usual genre of choice but I like to move out of my comfort zone occasionally. The book introduces us to two characters who seemingly have nothing in common other than being employed in the shoe making trade.
We look inside their heads and read their thoughts, there is very little actual dialogue and when there is, no speech marks are used which I found a little confusing.
Whilst living in the present, their thoughts are often in the past. Claire's adult life has been shaped by the fact that she has brought up her son alone and Arun is an elderly recovering alcoholic. As with most of us, they have regrets and face the future with what appears to be little hope of improvement in their daily lives but they stoically go on. There is a lot in the thoughts of both characters that many of us can relate to and the novel is often quite insightful.
Whilst I could appreciate the prose and have great interest in the characters, the fact that the story just stopped left me with feelings of sadness.

[Kelly (purplebookstand) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Living

This book tells the story of two different people on two different continents. The blurb intrigued me and I was looking forward to reading it.

First we meet Claire. Claire lives in the Uk and is a single mother who works in a shoe factory. Arun is a recovered alcoholic and grandfather who lives in India and makes chappals for a living.

Apart from the fact they both make footwear for a living, Claire and Arun's stories run parallel to each other. We explore their pasts, their loves and their regrets, but nothing in great detail.

I feel that there is potential for a great story in The Living but it didn't quite deliver. Also, I don't know if it's because it's a review copy, but it was hard to read in some places with spaces in the middle of words all through it. This reads more like a work in process, rather than the finished product, so who knows, it may be improved upon.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review The Living in exchange for an honest review.

[Karen Carter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I was really intrigued by this book after looking at the blurb and couldn’t wait to get started it very much sounded like a book I would love as I enjoy character led novels.
The story portrays two characters both living relatively uneventful lives in different countries but sharing a profession and perhaps a frustration with life as it stands. Beyond this I could see little link or entwining of their stories – maybe I was missing something.
I thought the idea was interesting however I never really engaged with either character; there was little development in them over the course of the story and there wasn’t really any kind of climax and little sense of the defining moments in their life really being unfolded with any kind of depth or passion.
I really wanted to love this book and whilst it was nice enough and I didn’t dislike it, it never really captured me in the way a book often does.

[Sarah-Jayne Windridge-France · Rating 4 out of 5]

In all honesty I wasn't sure that the 'split' story would work for me - but it couldn't have segued better. I absolutely loved the mother/son relations and the guttural reality and normality of that prose ... but then the aged, gentle Indian soul captured my senses and I was drawn to his present and his past.

I opened my eyes and breathed in the cigarettes and the leather, I felt the splosh of the cheap cider and balked at the illiciness of the carnal relations. Classless, coarse and challenging - but so very, very real.

The author couldn't have captured the two scenes better.

If I'm honest the single mother and her loose and lonely ways plucked my heartstrings just a fraction harder.

This book has to be read and devoured. I couldn't have read it quicker if I'd tried.

[Anne Goodwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Claire is a thirty-five-year-old single mother, her days bounded by tidying up after her son, the routine of her job in one of England’s last remaining shoe factories and her own fear of change. Estranged from her parents since their unsupportive response to her pregnancy, she worries about her son’s future while hoping for love with a man she meets at the pub. Arun is a sixty-seven-year-old grandfather who makes hand-crafted chappals at home. A recovered alcoholic, veteran of a long-ago extramarital affair, he rails at the indignities of old age, his troublesome prostate in particular.
Full review http://annegoodwin.weebly.com/1/post/...

[SJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Proof received via Netgalley. The copy I had was full of errors and erroneous spaces in words that made it difficult to read.

I honestly didn't understand the point of this book, unfortunately. Nothing really happened, no-one learnt any lessons and there was really no plot to speak of. I enjoyed Arun's chapters more than Claire's, whose dialect and lack of commas I found hard to parse. I'm also not a big fan of books without quote marks for speech, as it makes it tough to discern what is spoken and what is internal monologue.

Maybe it was intended to add to the story but for me it missed its mark.

[Ellie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I breezed trough this story, and to start off with really loved it. The story concentrates on 2 shoe makers in different countries, England and India. Both characters are complete contrasts, and we get a good insight into each of their lives. I found it wonderfully interesting to read, and the writing style made it an easy read.
I feel like the story was left unfinished, and I had no resolution to the points in their lives we left them at, which is frustrating. I think just a little more insight could have wrapped the story up much better.

I received this from goodreads giveaways, and this is an honest review in thanks.

[Tiah]

Review for the Sunday Times: http://bit.ly/2bU0g3t

– It's a long way from the morning till the end of the day, a long long stretch. –

– There was a sweetness to being hungover. Life was simple. –

– What is it, I thought, about this work; the same thing, over and over, it takes your life but in the process it gives you this quiteness, it takes away the struggle. –

– It is the living we should pity, for the life they have yet to go through. –

– One is always going to die, from the moment of having been born, but at certain occasions it seems more imminent. –

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whilst this book was very well written and certainly had plenty of potential, it just simply didn’t deliver. The lives of the two core characters, never crossed and was seemingly unconnected. It was quite simply the musings of two people. A book without a point.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.

[Alan Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A single mother in England, a dying man in India, two lives connected only by the fact the first makes shoes in a factory while the other makes shoes the traditional way in his home. A strange lyrical book that doesn't entirely gel

[Eileen Hall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a book I warmed to unfortunately.
Characters were not that believable.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Harper Collins via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.