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A review by thomas_edmund
Sycamore by Bryn Chancellor
4.0
Sort of a struggle to review this one without sounding either overly annoyed and/or with spoilers. If its not overly clear from the blurb this is much more of a slice-of-life (but connected by a girl's disappearance) than a thriller mystery.
The story jumps between the past, around the time of Jess' disappearance and the present where some remains have been found in the local area. While at times the changes in narrative are masterful and intriguing at others they are a little confusing and disjointed - especially when you consider the sheer number of characters, many of which are quite similar at least in some areas.
I feel its important to clarify this as I suppose I was hungering more for mystery and complex interrelations, and while there are a LOT of relationships in Sycamore I feel there was a story tension between fleshing out all the tales and interweaving them with Jess' story. At times it felt a little stretched in my opinion and I do feel there was a little bit too much bait and switch towards the end of the story.
To explain without spoiling anything, what happens to Jess is very much held as the central tension and mystery of the book - with a real heck-tonne of misdirections and red herrings. BUT setting up this teasing creates a weird literary confusion, the real meat of the story is of course the various characters and their lives that central mystery is really just the focal point for all these stories.
And that's where the bait and switch comes in - its fine to have a story where the real treasure was the friends we made along the way - but its annoying that a lot of the story's tension came from a central mystery, that was resolved don't get me wrong, its just that idea of setup and payoff... It would be very annoying if Lord of the Rings ended with the realization that the One Ring was a metaphor for our own demons and we all have to metaphorically drop them in mount doom. Not because that's a bad story just we've had pages and pages of setup telling us the challenge is to get the ring into Mordor
Feels like I'm getting off track - Sycamore is a good read, the characters are beyond real and huge props to the author for developing so many intriguing interwoven stories. Just be cautious that I don't think this story will tame a hankering for a good murder mystery thriller type book, this is more a small town expose of the people type thing.
The story jumps between the past, around the time of Jess' disappearance and the present where some remains have been found in the local area. While at times the changes in narrative are masterful and intriguing at others they are a little confusing and disjointed - especially when you consider the sheer number of characters, many of which are quite similar at least in some areas.
I feel its important to clarify this as I suppose I was hungering more for mystery and complex interrelations, and while there are a LOT of relationships in Sycamore I feel there was a story tension between fleshing out all the tales and interweaving them with Jess' story. At times it felt a little stretched in my opinion and I do feel there was a little bit too much bait and switch towards the end of the story.
To explain without spoiling anything, what happens to Jess is very much held as the central tension and mystery of the book - with a real heck-tonne of misdirections and red herrings. BUT setting up this teasing creates a weird literary confusion, the real meat of the story is of course the various characters and their lives that central mystery is really just the focal point for all these stories.
And that's where the bait and switch comes in - its fine to have a story where the real treasure was the friends we made along the way - but its annoying that a lot of the story's tension came from a central mystery, that was resolved don't get me wrong, its just that idea of setup and payoff... It would be very annoying if Lord of the Rings ended with the realization that the One Ring was a metaphor for our own demons and we all have to metaphorically drop them in mount doom. Not because that's a bad story just we've had pages and pages of setup telling us the challenge is to get the ring into Mordor
Feels like I'm getting off track - Sycamore is a good read, the characters are beyond real and huge props to the author for developing so many intriguing interwoven stories. Just be cautious that I don't think this story will tame a hankering for a good murder mystery thriller type book, this is more a small town expose of the people type thing.