Member Review
Review by
Fiona B, Reviewer
This is solid contemporary fiction, a snapshot of 'typical' untypical family life. Add in a pandemic, and you've got some quite gripping social realism.
There's quite a lot going on - a large cast of characters, different homes, people being stuck at home, in lockdown, with people they wouldn't normall choose to live with. The strains of people trying to put up with each other are well described.
The Pandemic. What a time to have lived through (and nobody knows if it's essentially past history now, or not). Most of us experienced that strange shock of being wrapped up in the joys and trials of our day-to-day life and suddenly dealing with all that AND having to simultaneously deal with the world going completely dystopian-movie-weird.
It's set in middle-class London, and the characters are very much of the time and place, but they also are ordinary people in extraordinary times. Just having lived through that time too gives you common ground with them.
So yeah, it's a lot. And that sense of 'it's a lot' really comes through in Now We Are Forgiven. People come together, people fall apart. They find love and support in unexpected places, and betrayal too. There's drama, and crushing boredom, but the book is never boring.
It makes for a rich and satisfying novel.
There's quite a lot going on - a large cast of characters, different homes, people being stuck at home, in lockdown, with people they wouldn't normall choose to live with. The strains of people trying to put up with each other are well described.
The Pandemic. What a time to have lived through (and nobody knows if it's essentially past history now, or not). Most of us experienced that strange shock of being wrapped up in the joys and trials of our day-to-day life and suddenly dealing with all that AND having to simultaneously deal with the world going completely dystopian-movie-weird.
It's set in middle-class London, and the characters are very much of the time and place, but they also are ordinary people in extraordinary times. Just having lived through that time too gives you common ground with them.
So yeah, it's a lot. And that sense of 'it's a lot' really comes through in Now We Are Forgiven. People come together, people fall apart. They find love and support in unexpected places, and betrayal too. There's drama, and crushing boredom, but the book is never boring.
It makes for a rich and satisfying novel.
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