Tuesday, June 06, 2006

London Transports by Maeve Binchy or Please Hit These Characters Upside the Head

The copy of London Transports that I got my mitts on for a quarter at the library sale has a gorgeous cover. A glorious, brightly colored painting of trees, sidewalk and roadway set against a backdrop of cityscape and a mottled sky that looks like something Van Gogh might have come up with if he'd been in the right place at the right time (naturally, I can't find an image anywhere - darn). The inside, on the other hand . . . well, let's just say this wasn't the best of introductions to Maeve Binchy.

On the other hand, since it's my first Binchy book I can hardly judge. The 22 short stories had this in common: dreary lives, London settings (each story had a location name for a title, such as "Marble Arch" and "Pimlico") and characters that were in serious need of a good bonking. They were, for the most part, idiots. Emotional whackos. Stupid, stupid, stupid - just ditch the married guy and run types. The writing, on the other hand, was merely mediocre. Since I'd agreed to buddy read, I finished. Otherwise, I probably would have abandoned the book during one of my attention deficit fits, one of those moments when I reread a sentence five times and then found myself dreamily observing dust bunnies on the ceiling fan. The dust bunnies were scary; I should have been cowering, but I was somewhat hypnotized and neglected to even think, "Oh, say, I should do something about those dust bunnies."

Maeve Binchy also has a serious punctuation problem; she needs to learn about semicolons. I'd willingly to fly to Dublin to share my expertise. However, I supposed she'd justifiably bonk me on the head and send me home. Ah, well.

Till later,
Dustbunny-bound Bookfool

4 comments:

  1. I like your writing style. Nice way to take a book that bored you and make an interesting post. :)

    (this is Lauren from book-a-week, i have a hocky blog here, hence the screen name).

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  2. Hi Lauren!

    Thanks for visiting and for the compliment on my writing style. I'm hoping this will keep me from babbling too much in BAW, since most members seem to prefer to stay totally on topic (and I'm a terrible chatterbox).

    Bookfoolerytoes (who loves hockey - unfortunately, we lost our hockey team; it's just not popular enough to draw good crowds in the Deep South)

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  3. Ok now you have got my curiosity up! What team did you lose? Email me. :)

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  4. In case you didn't see it at your website . . . The Jackson Bandits was our hockey team. We miss them. Going to a hockey game was a nice change of pace.

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