Play Book Tag discussion

I have recently read two of Maggie O'Farrell's books, Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. There was something so beautiful and ethereal with a dark undercurrent, that I wanted to visit her beginnings by reading her debut novel, After You'd Gone.

At the start of the book we learn that Alice is in a coma. Things have shattered and the reader begins to pick up the broken glass, one piece at a time and examine it. At the beginning they don't seem to fit into any particular time line or pattern and then little by little we can piece them together and see the emerging picture.

We get bits and pieces of Alice's life, as well as her mother, grandmother and sisters. Time moves forward and back in no particular order.

I appreciate O'Farrell's writing ability and style. When it is all said and done, I'm not sure how much I liked this book.

I felt that way about The Hand That First Held Mine. I admired the writing, but I didn’t enjoy the story as much. I just looked at my ratings for all her books, and I realized that I overuse the 4 star rating. My 3.5 star and 4.5 books all ended up with the same 4 stars. So I’m downgrading The Hand that… to 3 and bumping Hamnet up to 5. My new favorite is her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, which I read recently.

Rating is always tricky for me. I tend to think too much about what I think it is worth and consider factors beyond my own enjoyment.

Often, I don't factor in my own enjoyment enough. I'll come back to a book later and think "I really loved that book, why did I only give it a 4?"

And if I think if a book has literary merit I rate it higher even when I don't enjoy it so much.

This one is difficult because, I like her style and I am always drawn to the trope of a coma or amnesia. While I don't mind moving back and forth in time, this one had too abrupt movement, so I really had to struggle to piece it together. And in the end it was quite depressing.

I do the same thing. It only bothers me when I see that I gave the same ratings to two books that are far from equal in my opinion. Half stars (or a 10 point scale) would help a great deal.