ive been reading some really excellent character driven books recently. when done right they can feel some of the best to get stuck into. and this one for me was done right.
id also just read a book of legacy and and paths chosen or chosen for us. and also what happens when you are on it.i really enjoyed getting to know the characters within this read. once again coming across them meant taking a peak into anothers life. and those moments we can very much relate to in our own ways. how humans can be so very different. live very different lives, but there is those moments or things we all seek, we all yearn for and it can sometimes hinder, heal or help day to day life on a planet we all walk upon.
in this book we follow Ben, Dylan and Stevie. and another thing i love in these books is when you truly do get to follow them over a large span of time. you really get to know them then. these three all met in their Trinity College days. there is so much ahead of them right? except decades later things dont look quite like that and in their own ways they are stuck or feeling the nothingness of lives they lead. Dylan had his career in rugby halted, taken you could say and its now all over and he lives that with his partner Rachel. and Stevie and Ben have settled into a life that equally feels like its flat-lining into mer of the mundane.
then Ben finally gets a role hes struggled for as an actor. and something in this role pulls at the fraying threads of his life. and things make a change.
i really enjoyed getting to see the way each couple played out their "roles" in life. and the dynamics between them. it really feels like i was getting to know them. and it was also the case i wasn't always sure whether i liked them, certainly not all of the time. and this in itself adds a new way to read a book. you are invested in them for different reasons. and you can look at what they go through in different ways.
the way we get to see more into their past is also really vital. and from an outside point of view i already saw seeds of things in that passed life that was clearly already beginning. but isn't this so often the case. we can see things when we arent "in it" or "living". its so easy to spot the signs sometimes when your not in the eye of it. the way Sarah captures the way her characters are brought them to life from the pages. this is especially the case when Ben's new role come into play. it feels close to home. it feels like it mirroring life. there becomes a whole new feeling to the read too. the tension and atmosphere suddenly become closer. too close. the cracks start moving more apart to open into holes.
i really liked how Sarah wrote this book. the writing style meant i could just flow my way through it so easily. far too easily when it means you sit for your Sunday gobbling up the whole thing. i became too invested to put it down. having seen all the pieces in the book and our characters i wanted to see how it would all fall together or even fall apart. and how we would leave the characters at the end.