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Waterline (2011)

by Ross Raisin(Favorite Author)

3.66 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0670917354 (ISBN13: 9780670917358)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Viking

review 1: I read this book to the end reluctantly. Initially I found it very difficult to deal with the Scottish lilt, which after a while just became irritating. Once Beans was introduced the story became a little more interesting but still it just seemed to go on and on about nothing really. I like the idea that the story shows how easy it is to get into Mike's situation and how difficult to get out of it, but I couldn't understand the need to introduce characters to the story that just didn't add anything. Not really my idea of a good read.
review 2: This is very good. It can be read as a tribute to the people who work with those whose lives have collapsed. It shows what hard and often unrewarding work it is - trying to help people rebuild their lives. The book... more reminded me in a number of ways of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. An interesting technique that Ross Raisin uses is to write a small bit from the perspective of an anonymous stranger - this person describes a scene which has a little detail in to show that one of the people they are seeing is Mick, the main character. The role of the Highlanders (Mick's posh relatives) is to show the pecking order ingrained in our society and that as well as the obvious snobbery of looking down at the homeless, there is also inverted snobbery. It doesn't portray any trite solutions to the problem of the disintegration in people's lives, it just asks us to acknowledge that it happens and not to make judgements about people. less

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