A DISAPPOINTING READ. (Best of Friends - Cathy Kelly)

Member Name: thingywhatsit

Product:	Best of Friends - Cathy Kelly
Date:	29/12/06 (156 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tackles some characters realistically.

Disadvantages: Tackles some in a limited manner.

Best of Friends by Catherine Kelly was the first book that I have read from this author. It tells the stories of the lives of three women that live in Ireland in present time, and I thought it would be a good read, based on the information I found at Amazon.

I have to admit now that having read the first couple of chapters, I felt I had made a huge mistake, though perhaps was not being fair to the author. Instead of finding it tempting to read, I found it hard work, and thought that the author had included too many characters to make it readable, though giving the author a bit more of my time, and wanting to get my moneys worth out of the book, I persevered.

The main characters in the book are Abby, Lizzy and Erin, all of whom are nicely linked together by the death of a friend from cancer. Abby is pretty down to earth, and I liked the character portrayal and would have liked to have known a character like this in real life. She works on a television series, but hasn't let fame go to her head. Her husband comes out as a bit of a wimp, threatened by the fact that his wife earns more than him, although the true complexity of the relationship is for readers to discover.

Lizzy comes out as a wimp. There is something about the name Lizzy that seems to conjure up this kind of character, as in the past I have read four books, all separate stories, that have used the name Lizzy for those characters with very little substance, and I wonder if this is perhaps unfair to the Lizzies of this world. Totally kept in order by a selfish daughter, and unaware of what is happening in her marriage, though everyone else sees it clearly, Lizzie has to come to terms with her life, discover who she is, and which road her life will take following events described in the book that are quite real, though a little lacking in substance.

Erin's character seems nicely formed. She had left Ireland and had been living in America and has just come back to find her roots. This character was a likeable one and the way in which she reacted with family members was reasonable.

It's a story of pretty ordinary lives, mingled with the odd bit of panache, though I thought that the ending was very predictable and could have been tackled in a better way. The writing style is clear though over padded, and that's where the book fails, although I did get involved in the lives of the ladies over a two week period. It's not a hard read, but it is a long one, and the atmosphere of the little village in which it was placed didn't really come out very well at all.

The strongest character of all in the book was Sally, the link between the three women who played more major parts in the story, and I was actually saddened when Sally died, not because she had died so young or left children behind her, but because she was the most interesting of the characters created, and left the rest of the book bland, and missing that vital ingredient that makes fiction work.

My opinion.

Borrow it rather than buy it. It fills time, though there are better books out there. There's a hard cover version available, though to me this really would be throwing money away at a price of almost 3 Pounds plus postage, and what did occur to me whilst reading it was that perhaps it would be worth buying as an audio cassette for listening for an elderly person, since it contains nothing which would easily offend, and perhaps works better in the spoken voice than it does in book form.

I could actually envisage this as an audio book, and this option at 5.37 second hand from Amazon doesn't seem a bad option. The actual quality of the print was poor and hard to read so for those with sight impairment like me made it difficult to get into the book without some strain of my eyes.

I think there are better authors out there, although I noticed that Cathy Kelly does have a fairly recent book out called Past Secrets that looks tempting and which may restore my faith in her written work. There is also an award winning book written by this author that I may try called 'Always and Forever', and feel that perhaps my reading of the author was not the best trial I could give her work with this particular book. Since other authors enthrall me in one book, and disappoint me in another, I shall give the writer a second chance, though feel that this book is weak at best and at 5.59 Pounds plus postage is overpriced.



Paperback: 615 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; New Ed edition (31 Jul 2004)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0007154046
ISBN-13: 978-0007154043
Product Dimensions: 4.4 x 7.1 inches

Summary: A disappointment that would probably be better in audio format.