Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Recent reads: Capital by John Lanchester

CapitalCapital by John Lanchester
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This started promisingly, with an interesting selection of characters all living in or connected to Pepys Road, a fictional street in Clapham somewhere. I almost wished it had been set in the real Pepys Road, which is in New Cross, but never mind, Clapham probably fitted the story better.

I enjoyed reading it, and the story went along at a decent pace, but in the end I didn't find the characters deep enough to care about too much, except perhaps Zbigniew and, surprisingly, Roger, the investment banker whose heart just wasn't really in it and who had to put up with Arabella, his wife and probably the most obnoxious character in the book.

The postcards idea was an interesting thread that drew the whole thing together, but in a way I'm not sure it was needed and when all of the loose ends were tied up at the close of the book, I was left thinking, "oh, ok, that's it then." I'd basically worked out what had been going on with the postcards well before that and there was no twist in the tale.

Still, it was a nice easy read, it was 20p on kindle and would probably make quite a good book club pick for any London-based book clubs.

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