Intriguing premise, let down by extremely poor execution.
Based on the blurb on the cover, I wasn't looking forward to reading this at all (but book club choice, so duty called ...) However, the first chapter gave me hope -- the idea that the parents would begin to doubt which one of their beautiful twin daughters died in a tragic accident two years before suddenly seemed almost plausible, and not a little creepy. Hooray! -- I love it when a book proves me wrong.
And how bittersweet it is when, reading on, I am proved right. Almost immediately, the implausibilities began to grate. After the initial premise is established -- traumatized parents decide to move themselves and their traumatized surviving child to a ramshackle, unheated house in the most remote corner of Scotland it is possible to find. They decide to humor/believe the surviving child when she insists that she is her dead sister -- the author doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Much of the middle four-fifths of the book is padding: would-be creepy atmosphere, pretty scenery, dubious psychology, and traumatized parents dwelling on things that they really should tell each other. Oh, and minor characters telling them over and over again, what a bad idea this all is.
Oh, and this line (page 56 of the edition I read) "The cool sunny wind tousled his ginger Jewish hair." I was actually stunned by such a lazy, obnoxious way to establish the ethnicity of a character.
Based on the blurb on the cover, I wasn't looking forward to reading this at all (but book club choice, so duty called ...) However, the first chapter gave me hope -- the idea that the parents would begin to doubt which one of their beautiful twin daughters died in a tragic accident two years before suddenly seemed almost plausible, and not a little creepy. Hooray! -- I love it when a book proves me wrong.
And how bittersweet it is when, reading on, I am proved right. Almost immediately, the implausibilities began to grate. After the initial premise is established -- traumatized parents decide to move themselves and their traumatized surviving child to a ramshackle, unheated house in the most remote corner of Scotland it is possible to find. They decide to humor/believe the surviving child when she insists that she is her dead sister -- the author doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Much of the middle four-fifths of the book is padding: would-be creepy atmosphere, pretty scenery, dubious psychology, and traumatized parents dwelling on things that they really should tell each other. Oh, and minor characters telling them over and over again, what a bad idea this all is.
Oh, and this line (page 56 of the edition I read) "The cool sunny wind tousled his ginger Jewish hair." I was actually stunned by such a lazy, obnoxious way to establish the ethnicity of a character.
