February 2022 Buddy Read Fog Heart by Thomas Tessier

[Bill]

Thanks for setting this up, Randolph. Look forward to it. When should we plan on starting?

[Don]

I'm in!

[Bill]

Feb 1 works for me.

[Bill]

Just finished Part 1. A little surprised that it was published in '97; the approach seems to me like an older novel. The prose is pretty clean, packed with musings, digressions, and lifestyle details, including Arthur Machen's Dog and Duck.

[Bill]

Depends on what you mean by "superfluous". I would cut all the paragraphs about Machen's cocktail. But then I'm known to have these cutthroat tendencies.

[Bill]

If I had checked out some excerpts, I would have known this is not my thing, sorry. It took some skimming to get to the end.

Oliver's shady past was revealed way too early. I did like his (view spoiler)[comeuppance at the hands of Marthe (hide spoiler)], but I have to say, casting the only German woman in the novel as an S&M adept seems a bit... problematic to me.

[Bill]

It's also hard for me to take this communication with the dead thing seriously. But I've written enough about that in a recent buddy read.