I can't decide between three and four stars. I'm giving it four because I read this in a week and it was the first time in almost ten years that I've read anything that fast. This book made me remember what it was like to check out a mile-high pile of books from the library and devour them all while eating sour candy in bed. And it did that despite being about child abuse -- so it must be doing something remarkable, but I'm having trouble summing the appeal up, as you can see. Part of it is the understated English humour -- this isn't P.G. Wodehouse-funny at all, but your mild, spinsterish, Barbara-Pym-Beryl-Bainbridge sharp wit. Lots of spot-on descriptions, characters I could love despite their obvious failings, a very clear *point* that, most of the time, isn't made heavy-handedly. The book has some glaring flaws -- for one thing, it's going for this epic look at two women's lives, but for some odd reason it chooses to cover only five years of those lives. If the narrative had spread out just a little more, say over ten years, I would've bought those epic pretensions, but five years?!? And then there are a *few* heavy-handed moments, and finally, I wasn't entirely sure about the ending. I wasn't sure if it meant to leave things somewhat unresolved, or if it was hinting at conclusions I couldn't quite grasp.Any synopsis will not do the book justice, but here goes: Emma (rich girl) and Kate (wretchedly poor, abused) become friends while still teenagers. For a bit it seems as if Kate will escape her past, but then, one bad decision, and you know how it goes. Before you know it, she's living in a hovel and, yes, abusing her own children. The two women's lives become more and more different, but the lasting power of their friendship is convincingly depicted although I've made it sound like a bad Hindi film, and it's also somehow empowering to read about. All in all, I'm not sure why Monica Dickens continues to languish in obscurity while other quite similar writers -- Doris Lessing came immediately to mind -- earned the towering reputations they deserved.
