Sunday Story

This week I read JoJo Moyes' Sheltering Rain, her first book, published in 2002. Someone had recommended I read her books.

I read the book but I can't say I enjoyed it. It's a family story where the family is estranged and coming back together over the death of the father (3 generations). They were awful to each other, but not awful people. I wanted to smack them for their inability to see beyond themselves. But I cared enough to keep reading.

That's a fine line to walk for your first story, isn't it? People could hate your characters and stop reading all together.

And I'm not entirely sure how she kept me reading. The father didn't die until a long way in, so I guess that kept me waiting. The granddaughter didn't settle into the grandparents' house easily and I kept waiting for the fireworks, so that kept me going. We switched and changed between the present and the past, so that kept it interesting - and the past was incredibly interesting (in Hong Kong after WWII).

It's threads. She had threads through the story that didn't weave together until the end. That was what kept me reading.

Kind of like hooks, aren't they?

(This Sunday post is sort of like being in my own book club analysing what I read. Discussing it here helps me work out what's in my head - just in case you're wondering what I'm raving on about!)