Saturday, January 10, 2009

REVIEW: The Dragonfly


Title: The Dragonfly: A Bury St. Edmunds Historical Time-Travel Novel
Author: Rosemary Goodwin
ISBN: 1593741022/ Whiskey Creek Press, 2007
Fiction
Rating: DNF

First Line: In the pub's parking lot, cars nuzzled into the parking spaces next to the building, like suckling pigs on the teats of a sow.

I love well written time-travel novels, and whenever I get a lead on a new one in the genre, I'll track it down every time. In this novel by Rosemary Goodwin, the main character, Cathy, suffers a head injury in a car wreck and finds herself in the area of Bury St. Edmunds during three different time periods before she finds her way back to her home. Unfortunately, I only read thirty pages of the book before I gave it up as "not my cuppa". The characters spent very little time talking to each other. Instead they called, dared, giggled, laughed, grinned, snapped, pouted and whined. (Those are just in the first two pages.) Also...Cathy first appears in an Anglo-Saxon village, and the people there seemed to have little to no reaction to her strange dress, speech or behavior, which I found odd.

I hate putting a time-travel book down, but in this instance the writing style and I just weren't getting along.



9 comments:

  1. Sorry it didn't work out for you. At least you were smart enough to quit while you were ahead. I'm going to start doing that too.

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  2. Cathy, How are you??? Haven't heard from you in awhile--so decided to check out your blogs. Are you not updating your other blogs now????

    Miss you and hope life is GREAT.
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  3. Hi Cathy & welcome on my blog.
    (is ´on´ the preposition to use here`)

    It is so nice to know I have an American among ´all´ my readers :)

    I read and enjoyed time-travel stories when I was a child but have not really tried any since then. And I can´t say this review made me want to ;) But perhaps, if I come across more favourable reviews one day ...

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  4. Is this Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk? My dad lived/worked there for a long time but I'm not sure if I could persuade him to read this...

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  5. Kathy--I usually don't have all that many books that I don't like, but I'm philosophical about it when I do. (Gives me more space on my bookshelves!)

    Betsy--Thanks for tracking me down. Denis and I are fine. I've been concentrating on my book blog so far this year, but I've pretty much got all the changes made to it that I want, so I'll be back on my other blogs soon. Denis and I will be spending a week down in Bisbee at the end of the month, and I know we'll be coming back with tons of photos to share!

    Dorte--actually it's welcome "to" my blog. I wouldn't have said anything if you hadn't asked since my Danish is non-existent! I read a time-travel a few months ago that made it on my Top Reads of 2008--Octavia Butler's Kindred. Excellent!

    Karen--Yes, it's the Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk during Anglo-Saxon times, the 17th century, and World War II.

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  6. I really need to take a tip from you give up on books sooner than I do. I usually struggle along for too long. But don't you love the cover?

    I too am a sucker for time-travel books, so this is one I would have picked up. Thanks for the warning.

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  7. We came to Bury St.Edmunds, not to praise him ...

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  8. Beth--have you read Kindred by Octavia Butler? EXCELLENT time-travel!

    Paul--I'd groan, but I'm too busy laughing. That reminded me of visiting Rochdale. There' a huge cemetery there. Right across the street is the Cemetery Hotel, which made me wonder where customers really go when they check out, but the piece de la resistance is that they're both on Bury Road!

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  9. Interesting that the author used all those speech tags when current writing wisdom is to stick to the invisible "said" most of the time. I'm wondering about editing standards at Whiskey Creek Press.

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