I have seen Simons's books, with their distinctive covers, around for a while now - they're hard to miss, unless you're Lynn, who doesn't seem to have heard of Simons - but steered clear. Until last week, when I was visiting a friend and saw a few Simons novels on her shelf; this is her favourite. Borrowed books are read early, so...
Lily Quinn is an artist and perpetual student. Partially supported by her family, she’s six years into a bachelor degree and drifting through her life until her beloved boyfriend Joshua leaves her. Superstitious (she believes that if something really good happens then something really, really bad will, too) she ignores her winning lottery ticket, and flees for Hawaii, where her parents live post-retirement, but she finds no peace with her self-pitying, self-absorbed mother and clinging-to-denial father. With relief she receives a call from New York detective Spencer Patrick O’Malley – Amy, her best friend and roommate, has gone missing and the police are worried.
Seizing at the chance to escape her parents, Lily flies home, and her life turns upside down as she discovers (through hundreds of overwrought pages) that nothing was what she thought it was, that her faith was misplaced and her trust abused, that we’re all capable of choosing not to see what’s in front of us, and that what she has most taken for granted can shift perilously beneath her feet.
That all sounds like the basis for a fascinating book, doesn’t it? And yet… no. The plot was certainly interesting, but I felt the characters lacked depth and were unsympathetic (especially Lily’s sisters), the surprising reason for Amy’s disappearance was obvious almost from the beginning, the blossoming of Lily’s artistic talent annoyed me, the book went on way too long, and the writing style was excruciatingly pretentious, especially in the opening chapters. In my pre Bookish days I probably would have quit by chapter two - the writing is stilted, pretentious, and we are told much while being shown little...
This was my friend’s favourite of Simons’ work. And if this is the best she has to offer I think I’ll pass on the rest of the oeuvre. – Alex
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