A Lifetime Burning by Linda Gillard ***
I really enjoyed Gillard’s novel Emotional Geology when I read it a few years ago, and purchased A Lifetime Burning on my Kindle sometime afterwards. I love immersive family sagas, and was pulled in immediately. There is such an intelligence and compassion to Gillard’s prose, and I enjoyed the non-linear structure, which was effective in showing the depth and backgrounds of the characters.
Elements of the storyline, however, let the whole novel down for me. Some were frankly so unlikely that they felt ridiculous, which surprised me. I was very much enjoying the book up until the first bizarre twist came, but felt my interest in it waning somewhat. Despite being so well written, in some ways, A Lifetime Burning was really rather disappointing, and it has made me think twice about reading all of Gillard’s oeuvre, which was my original plan.
The Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy *** 
I decided, after quite enjoying The Hidden Room but not getting on at all well with London Lies Beneath, that I would give Stella Duffy one last chance. Thus, I borrowed The Room of Lost Things from the library. I was not pulled in straight away, but did find myself becoming more interested after a few pages, and almost engrossed a couple of chapters in.
The real strength for me here was the way in which London is portrayed; I miss the city dearly, having studied there for an entire year, and now being a whole country away from it. Duffy goes into so much detail about different boroughs; London, wonderfully evoked in all of its grit and glory, essentially becomes a character in itself, arguably the most important one in the novel. I admired the way in which everything revolved around something as dull and suburban as a dry-cleaning shop, too; it worked very ell as the novel’s focal point. The structure is clever yet simple.
I did find my attention waning after a while though; whilst the main thread of story featuring Robert and Akeel is interesting, some of the secondary characters had stories which felt quite repetitive after a while. This is my favourite of Duffy’s books to date, but I still wasn’t blown away by it.
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