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Loading... With Your Crooked Heart: A Novel (original 1999; edition 2001)by Helen Dunmore
Work InformationWith Your Crooked Heart by Helen Dunmore (1999)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Right from page one I knew I was going to enjoy reading this book. Dunmore is definitely one of my favourite authors. I particularly liked her presentation of the relationship between the two brothers, who were very different people and yet connected closely. Also, the breakdown of a marriage was interesting to me - although surprisingly little detail was provided. I'm not exactly fascinated by young children, but I was one myself once, and I found unexpected empathy with the young daughter of the separating couple. It's a story of life and death, of brief moments which have big impacts, and of unrecognized closeness in relationships. I finished Helen Dunmore's With Your Crooked Heart and enjoyed it enormously. It's a sensuous and visceral read, charting the lives and loves of a small group of people in London and Yorkshire. Dunmore shows us how little hold or control we have over our lives, and she delights in those transcendent moments when people recognise the ties that bind us to each other. If you know her work already, this is one of the better ones. I zipped through this book, which I saw recommended here on LT. The writing was beautiful, and the story had a lot of potential, but the author just didn't make me care about any of the characters (except one, a child), and I didn't really have a good feel for what motivated most of the adults. A disappointment. Also, the author used one stylistic device that really irritated me. The chapters vary in point of view, which is fine, but about half of them are narrated in the second person, i.e., "You did this, you thought that." I really couldn't get into that at all, and don't really understand what it was intended to achieve.
Dunmore is so skilled at drawing you into this story -- it's about a doomed triangle involving two brothers and the woman they both love -- that it's possible to be lulled into hoping for a happy ending. Awards
Best-selling British author Helen Dunmore -- novelist, poet, and first-ever winner of the Orange Prize for the year's best fiction by a woman -- delivers a "haunting . . . twisting, sensually written tale" (The New York Times Book Review) of betrayal and fierce love.In "sharp, elegant prose" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), With Your Crooked Heart introduces Louise, a tough and introspective Londoner trapped in a subtle battle between two brothers. Paul and Johnnie were born twelve years apart, in a one-bedroom flat in a dingy London suburb. Their ascent to money and power looks easy from a distance, but the seductive brothers burn those who get too close. When Paul marries Louise, Johnnie is part of the contract, and their daughter, Anna, is tangled in it from birth.Paul deals in the development of contaminated land; self-destructive Johnnie deals in crime. When Johnnie has to flee the country, Louise goes with him. Their trip sets in motion inevitabilities that have smoldered beneath the surface from the beginning, a dire and redemptive chain of events that devastates every branch of this crooked family tree.With Your Crooked Heart's sensuous, daring prose brilliantly exhibits Dunmore's "poet's ear for language and photographer's eye for images" (Newsday) and confirms The Guardian's claim that Dunmore is "an electrifying and original talent". No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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It sounds like something you’re read a hundred times, but in Dunmore’s hands, it turns into much more. The story is told from various points of views and persons, but is mainly Louise’s story. As the plot builds to its almost inevitable conclusion, one almost wants to look away and not watch how Louise destroys her life.
This is my first foray into Dunmore’s writing (she won the 1996 Orange Prize—now the Women’s Prize for Fiction—for her book A Spell of Winter). Her writing is so adroit! See the stories that these few words paint:
"I love daylight sleep. First of all there are the hours it eats, that you never have to live."
Only one thing puzzles me: Dunmore uses the phrase “it’s not Nova Scotia” twice in the book. As in:
"‘Not much else for her to do up there.’
'It’s not Nova Scotia, Lou.’
A bit of an odd expression, but I let it go."
I, too, think it’s a bit of an odd expression and, since I live in Nova Scotia, I’m curious about it. Can anybody shed any light on Dunmore’s use of this phrase? 3½ stars.
Read this if: you love intelligent use of words; or you fancy a warning tale about lives that go off the track—through personal choices.
‘Heart’ is a qualifying keyword on the Keyword Reading Challenge at Bookmark to Blog. ( )