Genre: historical fiction
Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)
Review: I'm used to reading non-fiction books that are written in such a readable way that it feels like reading like fiction (e.g. Erik Larson). That's easy. Reading a work of fiction, based on true events, and written in the style of narrative non-fiction is easy too, but much more confusing. I had to look for reviews of this book to convince myself that it is indeed fiction. I was able to find a article in which Crichton himself says that he did hardly any research, which answered the question for me.
Having settled that, I will say that in some ways this book was much less readable than other books, fiction or non, due to Crichton's (excessive?) use of slang. In other respects, he does a wonderful job of painting of picture of the times, and I assume that having his characters speak in the slang they would have used is part of that effort. Unfortunately, although clarity rarely suffers, since Crichton defines the slang terms used as they come, readability does. Instead of drawing me deeper into the world of Victorian-age criminals, the slang distracted and annoyed me. No harm in slang, of course, but everything in moderation.
No comments:
Post a Comment