Wonderful, dazzling, amazing, breathtaking…. These are just a few of the words that I really can’t use when describing this book. We can add ‘sane’ and ‘coherent’ to that list as well while we’re at it.
In brief, the story revolves around a normal dysfunctional family and their assorted stories. We have the precocious Astrid (a 12 going-on-40 year old), the briefly suicidal Magnus, and the amorous Michael along with Eve, the matriarch of the household.
Thrown into the mix is Amber, a thirtysomething year old that turns up with bare feet and a broken down car. Through a series of rather ridiculous assumptions, Amber stays with the family and becomes the focus of the household; showing them their own lives from a new perspective and eventually becoming the catalyst for change that they all needed.
While that sounds like an interesting enough story, the author seems to try and obfuscate that tale with extended first person entries as well as brief lapses into prose, lyrics and memes. This leads to a disjoined, and sometimes nonsensical, piece of writing that seems to place too much importance on itself.
From my point of view, it seems like the author didn’t actually try to tell a story. It was more that she used to story as a foundation for her inane ramblings and supposedly deep passages that seemed to have only the most tenuous relevance to the story.
Saying that…. I do remember one scene of the book quite well and it did strike me as rather evocative. Moreover, I have yet to see a bad review of this book, merely acclaims and awards. Maybe this kind of work just isn’t for me, or maybe I’m missing something, but I like my stories to actually be stories.
Rating: 
