Rezension zu "The Land As Viewed From The Sea" von Richard Collins
[Ich habe mich entschieden, die folgende Rezension komplett auf Englisch zu verfassen, da es dieses Buch bisher nicht in einer dt. Übersetzung gibt....]
Summary:
John is working on Julian's small farm for the summer months. Julian and John are old friends and they get on quite well. Normally John earns his money with photography and painting and he really cares for the bohemian lifestyle.
Earlier this summer, John has begun to write a novel. He tells Julian about it and Julian asks if he may read the manuscript. John lets Julian read the story chapter by chapter while they are working on the farm.
John's Story is called The Land as Viewed from the Sea and it is about a man called Sean and his lvoe to the sea and to a woman. The more Julian gets to read of the story, the more he realises that fiction and reality have started to blur. What's the message within John's story?
Review:
I have to admit that this is not one of the easiest books, but in the end, I was taken with it. In the library, it caught my eye because of its simple but outstanding cover.
Collins definitely wrote a lovely description of the sea and the seaside atmosphere. I really liked his poetic ideas in the description parts. But regarding the novel as a whole, these descriptive parts became too dominant. I would have loved to read more dialogues.
At the beginning, it was difficult to get into the story as the two plots intertwine. Moreover, the story is written in present tense, which I found confusing at first.
I liked the aspect that the story more or less only needs a couple of characters to proceed. But all in all, John lacked a bit of colour as being the protagonist. Maybe a bit more tension or an increase of the very few humorous parts would have been nice. However, the „wave“ that comes towards the reader in chapter 16, was one of the best choices of the author to put into the storyline.
Conclusion:
All in all, it was difficult to judge the book as a whole as there were some amazing parts and ideas, but some other parts were unfortunately quite boring to me.