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The Lieutenant (2009)

by Kate Grenville(Favorite Author)

3.65 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1847673449 (ISBN13: 9781847673442)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Canongate Books

series

Thornhill Family

review 1: Well, this book is OK I suppose, but I was not impressed. Given it is based on the diary of a real man I'm not really sure why the author chose to make it about somebody else, nor why she chose to change all the other characters from real life people of the time to fitional ones. But my main complaint is one of historical inaccuracy. Within the first 20 pages the author makes two big historical howlers, both of which are key to the plot and the character of the main protagonist. But the law of the time simply was not what she says it was. People did not behave like that. For me this fatally undermined the protagonist and made me wonder how many other things she had got wrong. Nicely written, true. But as with so much award-winning and high-brow literature that I make the m... moreistake of reading it turns out to be poorly researched. I don't know. Maybe these "great literary artists" feel that getting the basic facts right is somehow beneath them.
review 2: A 'popcorn' book - light and readable, but with some seriously annoying kernels that get stuck in your teeth. The key culprits are the dogged attempt to sound philosophical while actually stating the perfectly obvious, and the too-frequent-to-be-excused schoolboy language - "he was full of unease, like being too hot or too cold, or hungry and thirsty." A promising premise for a novel, but sadly lacking in execution. less

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