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Many English writers from the UK dig into the language to discover or re-discover words that are not used everyday but are nevertheless sometimes interesting, sometimes charming but always give more color to the narrative. Jo Blake is one of those and she succeeds well in creating a world in which you feel engulfed and included. With time it becomes a bit too much, as drinking something very sweet our sour can overwhelm after a little bit. I nevertheless enjoyed this book and am going to read other works by her. To give you a vague idea, allow me a quote from this book:" to a little park, where a brass band was parping out that particularly northern brand of nostalgia between borders planted with primulas and daffodils and hyacinths. Kids darted round on scooters, wobbled on small bikes. Dogs dragged old ladies after them."

That's about all I can say of this book. No great dramas or surprises in this book, lots of interesting details about life at the time, But all this is written in some kind of monotone unrolling of the life of this child slave. It's difficult to get attached to anyone and it's like reading a daily diary of someone esle's life.

C’est avec grand plaisir que j’ai lu ce livre, le premier que je lis de cet auteur: L’écriture est un peu longue avec beaucoup de descriptions mais il se rattrape par surprises accumulées à la fin (quoique quelque peu prévisibles): Bref je vais sans doute lire au moins une autre oeuvre de cet auteur (de nombreuses notes en bas de page se réfèrent aux précédents ouvrages):

Reading this work after 1991 makes me realise again how relative everything is. Had I read this one after a bad book I might very well had given it 3 stars but after reading a very good book this one pales in comparison. As said somewhat well written, but the writing gets lost in so many details about the rooms, the apartments and personal lives that seem to have no relationship to the story and don't add anything the result being that it takes away much more than it adds.

J'avais deja lu un autre ouvrage du meme auteur qui m'avait impressione par sa qualite d'ecriture. Celui-ci est encore meilleur. L'auteur recherche toujours le meteriel de ses romans et monte des scenarios toujours riches en contenu.

Probably one of his first books, it's the first of the Hary Hole series, this books gives us a taste of what his writing looked at when Nesbo was starting.
It feels again like one of those paint by numbers paintings. The author seems to have taken a handbook on how to write a thriller and followed it, adding here and there a few insinghts. When he feels that the writing is too short, he inserts long passages that seem to be taken from books about Australia (the action is in that country), and when it's still too short for his tastte he inserts reminiscences about Hary's past that makes the reader wonder what is this doing here. Not a good book, the writing of a beginner. Not sure if that was the first work I had read by him I would have read more.

For the first 100 pages or so I thought this girl is off her rocker but then it gets more precise and turns out she was quite logical. Written in English as it was spoken during WWII which makes for a nice reading.

I'm not sure how and why I read this book to the end. As mentioned the first part of the book is long and boring, written a la Agatha Christie but without the logical reasoning with lots of statements such as "Oh my God, you must feel devastated!" and the like.

But the end somehow rescues the whole thing with a several very original plot twists. Not sure it was worth the long read for that though...

Not sure if it's the translation or the original writing, but it feels like something written by a teenager for other teens.

Good twist at the end.

Again a book in which French follows each thought thread in every possible direction and this writing method puts the reader right in the middle of that universe with all it's terror and anxiety.

Nothing really exceptional, keeps things rolling. A bit confused by all the characters who are there only for a few moments and pop back up chapters later.

I was impressed by all her past works I've read, the quality of the language, the tension buildup.

In this one the ravings of a bunch of teenage, rich teenage girls with sentences such as "it as like, ewww, I don't know". So you could say that the ambience is well recreated but it sure makes for a long a boring read. At about 25% I went to read other reviews who all said it didn't get better until the end so I have to admit I left it at that.