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Reading In Bed (2008)

by Sue Gee(Favorite Author)

3.26 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0755303121 (ISBN13: 9780755303120)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Headline Review

review 1: Although the book was enjoyable enough, I found that the writing style of the author was sometimes difficult to get my head around on first glance. Her sentence structure is sometimes convoluted and unnatural sounding. Also, I was puzzled as to her use of punctuation, regarding speech especially. Why not just use speech marks?On a brief side note, the name Dido was massively off-putting to me, but that's not really a valid criticism, I suppose.The story was nice enough, nonetheless, but it's not one I'd recommend.
review 2: Sue Gee could probably not have shoe horned in any more references to books or to Radio 4 if she had tried. Her main characters were called Georgia and Dido, they mixed in circles of academics, fashion photographers, doctors and writers. The... morey had been friends ' for an absolute age, since they first went up to Oxford' (this spoken, i imagine, in accents upon which the Queen could dine)and one was newly widowed after her husband's sudden death and one newly worried after her husband's weird text messages. The story revolves aimlessly, harmlessly and entertainingly enough around illness, infidelity, failing romances and rickety friendships. There is a rampantly insane maiden aunt,(gosh that is an original character) there is an arrogantly handsome lothario,(wow, that must have taken some thinking through) there is a shy retiring doormat who gradually is seen to be blossoming into some sort of dude,(Didn't see that coming) there is a gay/actor/bestfriend (bloody hell, the revolutionary creativity just keeps on coming) and there is an arid, bitter blue-stocking who turns out to be a lesbian (no archetypal writing by numbers here at all).Grief and grieving, illness and mortality, infidelity and forgiveness. They are all picked up and looked at rather half-heartedly like ornaments in an antique shop but I think Gee liked to polish some more than others. Chloe, the daughter who had lost her father, is a 100% unattractively self-obsessed beauty. Me, me, me doesn't in any way communicate the total selfish pre-occupation of this horrible woman. I think I was supposed to feel sorry for her and walk with her in her pain; I just felt the urge to throw a glass of lemon flavoured mineral water into her beautifully made up visage.I picked it up because of the title about three years ago and it sat idly on the shelf until I took it up a couple of days ago. I realize, in retrospect, it was not written for me. They just all felt so superior and shored up against proper life that even when, supposedly, horrible things happened to them such as tumours and court cases and relationship struggles I could not find it in myself to emote one little bit of sympathy. I am a nice bloke ordinarily and sniffle and well up and sometimes unashamedly sob when the opportunity arises in my reading and so i have to say it is maybe because i didn't believe they were real. They said interesting things.....somtimes, they said vaguely amusing things.....sometimes, but never real things. The story begins as the heroines drive away from a literary festival at which they had feasted on all things literary and are exhausted by the rich diet in which they have indulged. I finish this and feel as if i have been stuffed with one of those loaves of bread which are half wholemeal and half white which leave you bloated, uncomfortable but conscious that give it a little time and you will know that you have not been in any way nourished. less

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