I'm not really qualified to review books like this. Works written by Serious Female Authors about delicate (meaning "thin"), introverted girl-women who filter stimuli from the male-dominated world through their totally kaleidoscopic internal metaphor thought process might give Serious Female English Majors a lot to write about, but it tends to annoy me.

The first chapter was so maddeningly precious and affected that I put the book down and avoided it for six months. Today I revisited it, starting with chapter two, and realized that the first chapter is written in a way that shows the reader how confused and unfocused the lead character is inside. It over-uses a particularly maddening device where words that end a sentence are used again in the next sentence to expand the thought. That might be okay in fanfic written by 15 year old boys about their favorite explosion in an Xbox game, but I can't stand it in books I pay good money for on Amazon.

Real quotes from the first chapter: "He once walked a tightrope across the Thames. The Thames is a river in London, which is five hundred and twenty-seven miles from here..." And "Then I stopped to have a look at the big flat stone cemented into the pavement...the famous stone, the oldest most important stone in town."

The first chapter was a torturous plod through broken sentences, needlessly repeated words and phrases, and the character herself was as inert and dull as the prose.

It turns out, that was the point. When she falls in love, she becomes slightly more interesting. And her sister, who appears at first in chapter two, is actually the exciting one in the book. But only compared to one another - they are not, compared to any other character ever written, very interesting at all.

Eventually, somewhere around the midpoint of this very short book, a myth gets told. I can't expect all of the books in the Canongate Myth series to be as deeply moving and transformative as Jeanette Winterson's Weight, but this one reads from beginning to end like it was written on spec and turned in after the first draft, even though there is the germ of a fairly good idea inside this book. ( )

It’s the kind of book I’d love to enjoy more than I ever do, that is not to say I disliked the book, I didn’t but in the end I didn’t love it either.

I did enjoy the writing style though, which switches the narration between the two sisters and plays with different styles of narration. But in the end it wasn’t quite as powerful or effecting as I initially thought it was going to be.

Read and comment on my full review at:
Bart's Bookshelf ( )

A re-telling of Ovid's Iphis legend from Metamorphoses. It is one of the few collections in the novel to have a happier ending luckily. This version alternates between sisters Anthea and Imogen (Midge). Their mother left when they were young and they were raised by their father and grand parents. Anthea is a free spirit who starts work at the advertising agency Imogen works at, but doesn't like being constrained to her role there despite being reminded she is on a good wage.

Imogen on the other hand follows the crowd. She runs with the men there who are extremely sexist, homophobic and rude. They are always trying to get her drunk and she is barely eating, disappearing into herself. Things change for both sisters for the better when Anthea falls in love with a graffiti artist who is a girl who looks like a boy. Imogen has to deal with her sister being gay amd find her own way in life at the same time.

This was a beautiful story. I adored it so much and have been telling everyone I know to read it. It has themost unusual and moving sex scene I think I have ever read in a novel. The prose is beautiful, a sort of stream of consciousness of the thoughts of the two sisters. It challenges gender stereotypes with the masculine being found beautiful in women and vice versa. It's part of the wonderful Canongate Myth series and I wil definitely be reading more in the series and by Ali Smith. ( )

I absolutely loved this. This is the third book by Smith I've read, and each book makes me love her more. I liked The Accidental quite well, and Hotel World even more, and I think this is my favorite of the three. I can't wait to read more by her. ( )

http://bookchronicle.wordpress.com/20... ( )