While She Sleeps
While She Sleeps
This is something of a moral quandary for me. Do I review a book that I find rather flawed when I could just stick it into a charity shop and say nothing? I’ve done that before. In the end I decided to go for it because it so much reminded me of my own first novel and the issues I had when it was published way back in 1994 – in my case, inadequate editorial scrutiny from people who knew what they were doing, poor proof-reading, too much trust placed in the publisher to get things right. And a terrible sense of disappointment and self-reproach because I had been naive enough to trust in what was promised. So I’m going to put scruples to one side in order to make a point. After all, this is a blog about writing, and we can all learn from other people’s mistakes, mine included.
The book is While She Sleeps by Arlene Hunt. The cover is my kind of thing: tick.
The blurb tells me a young woman who is talented and loved, is lying in an induced coma following a murder attempt: tick.
Her family-life is far from perfect and several members of it are in the frame. Another tick.
So far so good. I bought it. And started reading straight away.
Instantly I’m in my comfort zone – fertility, family dynamics, pathological relationships, mental illness, moral responsibility … Yep. Lots more ticks.
But then … oh dear, various things started to really irritate – typos galore; characters misnamed; glancing references to other investigations by the police without a framework on which to pin them. I had to write a profile of the principal characters in order to stay with their details and links to other bit-players. Looked rather like a profile board for a murder in a detective’s office! And then the denouement – well, one minute we had so many loose threads it was anyone’s guess, and then wham! all is revealed from camera footage.
What were Hachette Books Ireland thinking of? Do they have editors and proofreaders these days? I only hope the author didn’t suffer the same sense of disappointment I felt all those years ago. If these were mistakes quite outside her control, she has my sincere sympathy.