Very well written (The Chimney Sweeper's Boy - Barbara Vine)

Member Name: wolfey59

Product:	The Chimney Sweeper's Boy - Barbara Vine
Date:	04/06/09 (13 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of detail given and cleverly written

Disadvantages: Title gives away the plot

The book tells the story of a popular author who dies suddenly of a heart attack. His eldest daughter Sarah is then asked to write a memoir of his life, but on doing so discovers that Gerald Candless is not who he says he was.

It starts by telling the reader about a game the family play, which seems a bit meaningless to start with but ends up playing a big role in linking things together. After Gerald dies there is a lot of information from his wife's Ursula's point of view, which seems strange as it was Sarah who was asked to write the book. We hear a lot about how Ursula and Gerald met and their life together right up until the present time. The book moves from past to present quite frequently, but this doesn't make it too confusing to read and often links with the research that Sarah is doing and Ursula's life after Gerald.

I found this book very clever in the detail that it gave. Gerald wrote all his books with the truth about his past life entwined into them and disguised. This is the first place Sarah looks for clues to who he really was. At the beginning of each chapter there was a quote from one of Gerald's books and there lots of references to their content within the story. This leads me to think that the author had to almost write these books prior to the actual novel, or at least write detailed descriptions of what they were about so as not to confuse the themes.

One thing I didn't like was the way the title, to some extent gave the story away. Sarah discovers that at the age of 25 Gerald changed his name to that of a little boy who died of meningitis when he was five years old, and her first reaction was to find out the connection between her father and this little boy. She goes through a series of ideas before landing at the conclusion that it would have been the son of someone who called at the house around the time the boy had died. This immediately led me to think that it was a chimney sweep, as per the title, but it took several chapters for this to be revealed. This made the book feel a bit slow at times, with the reader wanting to hurry the book on as they already knew who he was. After this fact was established and Sarah talks to her 'real' family, does she find out what her father was really like and starts to find out who he was.

The Chimney Sweepers boy has recently been republished and the cover picture has been changed. On looking at the new cover, before reading the book, showing a pair of scissors tied up in a red ribbon, it shows that the story might be about a murder or such like. Instead, the scissors are part of the Game that has been passed down through the family and is mentioned a lot and is a link to Gerald's past, but not really relevant. The original book cover showed a black moth, which Gerald featured on all of his novels and it's this moth that holds the clue to who he was and prompts Sarah to investigate the chimney sweep idea.

There is one part of the story that I did not feel had any relevance and that was Sarah's odd relationship with a man called Adam. She finds herself going down to her family home in Devon every weekend to meet with Adam, where they play mind games all evening and get very drunk. Then one day he takes it too far and insults her and she doesn't want to see her again. The only link to him and the rest of the story is when Sarah's sister, Hope says something hateful to her Mother and Sarah likens it to Adam's words to her on their last weekend together. But other than that it doesn't play a part in finding out who Gerald was.
I found that the best part of the story was the end because this was the first time the reader hears Gerald's point of view of his life before being a Candless. Prior to this all the reader gets is a second hand view from Gerald's brother, who was quite young when Gerald went missing fifty years ago and cannot recall that much about him. The last chapter is an extract from a book that Gerald wrote before he died but gave the script to a fellow author for safe keeping. It is in this story we find out why exactly Gerald changed his name, why he treated Ursula the way he did and why he had such a love for his children.

I really enjoyed this book and would read it again. In knowing what the reason was for Gerald to change his name it would be good to read it again with this hindsight and make more connections that were otherwise impossible.

Summary: An Intriguing plot