The Farm in Around the World in 80 Books

Apr 19, 2014 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: novels

I enjoyed Smith's debut thriller, the Soviet serial killer page-turner Child 44, a good deal, although not enough to read the two followup books. But the premise of this new book intrigued me enough to pick it up, and within the first few pages I was hooked. The bait is cunning -- an everyday adult Londoner receives a strange phone call from his father, and then another from his mother. The combined effect is to call into question everything he knows about his parents and his own childhood.

It w I enjoyed Smith's debut thriller, the Soviet serial killer page-turner Child 44, a good deal, although not enough to read the two followup books. But the premise of this new book intrigued me enough to pick it up, and within the first few pages I was hooked. The bait is cunning -- an everyday adult Londoner receives a strange phone call from his father, and then another from his mother. The combined effect is to call into question everything he knows about his parents and his own childhood.

It works for younger readers because few of us really know the interior lives of our parents, and while we often suspect some element of hidden experiences, past shames, and surprising secrets, we know that to seek to uncover them is to chip away at the foundation of our selves. On the flip side, older readers with grown children will recognize the protagonist who has drifted away from his parents, hiding within his own life, which has a fairly large blank spot of its own. We can easily say that love is directed in both directions, but is trust?

The vast majority of the book consists of the protagonist's mother recounting to him in precise chronological order, the strange events that she claims have been going on since she and his father retired to a small farm in Sweden. It's a bit of a clunky framework, because before the protagonist asks the obvious questions at certain points, she brings them up herself and addresses them. At the heart of it all is the very much out in the open question or whether or not she is sane. It's clunky because it has the effect of a very formal presentation of a crime or riddle of the kind you might find in a 1920s or 30s whodunnit. It isn't until the final quarter of the book that the son becomes a more active player in the story, seeking out the truth.

Of course, the only thing that really matter with thrillers is whether the payoff at the end is satisfying. Child 44 had a major twist at the end that I didn't really care for. Here, there's not so much of a twist as a shocking revelation of the type that's been lurking under the surface of the story the whole way through. Ultimately, the book is satisfying but underwhelming -- kind of like a desert that you order that's good, but not as good as its menu description. ...more

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Jun 02, 2014 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, scandinavian

Has a bit of that Sophie Hannah/Gillian Flynn sort of unreliable narrator going, and while it's not as twisty as either, the ultimate payoff works for me. Would be a worthwhile pick for fans of Scandinavian noir as a less-bleak spin on their themes. ...more

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