The Whole World

I was in the mood for a decent crime novel and so pulled The Whole World off of my tbr and found it to be just the thing. Polly and Liv are Americans studying at Cambridge. They meet Nick, a graduate student and become a trio, only Live likes Nick and Nick like Polly. Then Nick disappears just after Polly's mother shows up and many secrets are revealed.

Winslow used to make up logic puzzles for a game magazine, so the plot is both intricate and fits together like a jigsaw puzzle. This is both a boon and a drawback to this novel; while it's refreshing to read a debut novel where the final answer lives up to the promise of the set-up, by the end of the book, all the details are resolved a bit too tidily. Still it was a fun book to spend show more an evening with and the writing was good, so I'd be happy enough to read another book by this author. show less

This had promise, but came across as uneven and jarring due to a couple of things. First is the misuse of multiple character point of view. For this to work well you need harmony and a way to mesh a character's view of herself and her view of others. Insight is key to understanding motives, actions and how one person relates to another. In this book we get some inner workings perspective, but not much in the way of how one character views or feels about another. That made for a whole lot more surprises than there ought to have been, not only in events that took place, but in the whys and wherefores. It just came across choppy and out of step.

Spoilers below -

The most glaring example is Liv's character. Her lunacy basically comes out of show more nowhere. Her closest companions don't note much awry in her behavior apart from some petty theft. In order for Liv's ultimate actions to be believable, they needed to be noted and telegraphed earlier. With neither Nick nor Polly being savvy enough to pick up on any weirdness, or Liv too savvy to let on, I don't know, so as a "twist" it didn't really work. Instead Liv's whole stream-of-consciousness chapter just seemed tacked on and a desperate way to wrap things up. Polly and Nick's emotional baggage wasn't well portrayed either. Both lacked the intimacy of a real person's thoughts. It was like reading the clinical notes of some psychologist more than the private thoughts and hangups of a real person.

Another problem is the author's lack of understanding of police work. I mean, if you're going to put a cop into a story with a crime, you better make sure you do your research. Clues and conclusions jump out of nowhere and rang very, very false. I actually laughed out loud at one point when I went back over some paragraphs or pages to find where I'd overlooked some link in Morris's logic chain only to find the whole chain was missing.

I know what the author was going for here, but she didn't make it. Maybe with more practice she will. show less

While I enjoyed Emily Winslow's writing style, I was not all that enamored with her first novel. In A Whole World, we get to know a group of characters, each from their own perspective. They interact through a series of events that eventually leads to murder. The characters themselves seemed overblown and exaggerated. The plot didn't actually move anywhere until about 2/3 through the book.

I found some things too overdone and other things just plain unbelievable. For instance, I didn't see how a man whose ankle was so badly injured that he couldn't ride his bike could then suddenly drive a standard and push in the clutch of a car. Yet, once he got back home, he was hospitalized due to the severe ankle injury. Things like this had me show more shaking my head and took me right out of the story. On top of that, the exaggerated emotions and behaviors of every single character made me question whether anyone in A Whole World had a shred of sanity.

** I received this book as an early review copy from Goodreads. ** show less

This book provides an atypical mystery novel to add to my collection. There are several plot twists that I found compelling and unexpected and Winslow's technique of writing only once from each character's perspective was fresh and happily frustrating. This was not the novel I expected, but I was happily pleased. While the book has its flaws, I enjoyed the conversational tone and storytelling. I found Liv's character most interesting. While her actions were unexpected and seemed to come from nowhere, I believe that is the point Winslow was trying to make with her--single moments can break us and twist our lives into unsuspecting paths. The plot has its flaws, but I found the writing poignant and the characters surprising.

A unique and interesting novel, a true literary mystery. Set in Cambridge, the story follows a group of loosely linked students, professors, a policeman, and their families, as they encounter a series of odd occurrences, disappearances and even murder. The plot is Gothic in nature, full of family secrets, hidden pasts, and violent passions.

But the unique part of the novel is the manner of telling the story. It’s a first person serial, with each character telling their share of the story from their own viewpoint. That’s nothing new, but usually the first person serial characters return over and over, as in Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying”. In “The Whole World” each character has their say only once. It’s an effective show more technique, and generates a real page turner of a novel as the complicated plot unfolds layer by layer.

An excellent read, on many levels. show less

How to describe, how about a cross between chick lit and light mystery? Kind of like 'lite' beer ?? Decently written, easy to follow, a bit too predictable. Winslow does manage to give a good descriptive feel to Cambridge, without overdoing it. While I can't say for certain if it's accurate, it did the job of making it seem real and was one of the better aspects for me. Of the characters, I was intrigued that Morris, the police inspector, was given his own section. I think most writers using this segmented formula would not have featured him so prominently and that was another quirk that I liked. The main characters of Polly and Liv were whiny, spoiled, twits. Winslow goes to great pains to divulge Polly's secret past to force pity and show more it backfires. Perhaps if she had divulged something dark, twisted and interesting from Liv's past it would have made her more believable and not just another whacko. What frosted me the most was the epilogue. The book really would have been better served without it. If you're going to wrap it up with a bow, then at least be reasonable about it. show less

I received this book as part of LT's Early Reviewer program. It's a debut novel set in Cambridge, England which is where the author, Emily Winslow, lives. She does a great job of setting the scene for her murder mystery. I thought her descriptions of Cambridge and the university, where most of the action takes place, were well-written and effortless. The story unfolds gradually through the recollections of five different characters--a professor and three students (one of whom disappears and/or is murdered) and the policeman working on the case. Usually, I like this way of telling a story, where you get different perspectives on what happened. The problem I had was that the plot as well as each character's life were overly complicated. I show more think I would have preferred hearing this story from one character instead of five. The other problem I had was that a major element of the plot seemed forced and just not believable. There were also a few minor things that stuck out as inconsistent, such as specifically describing a character as having all their clothes on and then two paragraphs later saying they got dressed and went out. To enjoy a book, I need to be completely absorbed in the story rather than aware of obvious plot devices and inconsistencies. While I thought the writing was generally good, the method of telling the story left alot to be desired and I would not recommend the book. show less