Just Finished Reading: Trespass by Rose Tremain (FP: 2010)

Fine Art dealer Anthony Verey is starting to feel every one of his 64 years. Clients in his fashionable shop have become few and far between and sales have become even rarer. For the first time in his life he is starting to envy others more than they envy him. It is, he thinks, time for a radical change in his life. Thinking back to the happiest times in his life he thinks about his sister and how she used to protect him from the harsh realities of life. Now living in France with her lover she is ideally placed to help him transition to a better life. Arriving in Sothern France Verey starts a chain of events that will lead to a death and a cleverly constructed act of final revenge after decades of abuse.

This is another one of those books I picked up because it looked interesting and different – not the kind of thing I normally read, a change and all that entails. It was certainly well written and neatly constructed although I had worked out several of the secrets before being revealed by the author. Oddly, despite being interested to see if I was right in my suppositions, I never liked any of the characters portrayed here. Verey himself, his sister and her lover where all in their individual ways broken people but I couldn’t feel much sympathy for any of them. Their situations, I thought, were entirely of their own making. The French lead character Aramon Lunel was distasteful in the extreme and I really didn’t enjoy being inside his head. About the only person that I felt any sympathy for, as well as a grudging respect, was his long suffering sister Audrun who was at the centre of things by about half way through. Of course not having any character to focus my interest on tended to diminish any pleasure I had reading the novel and didn’t exactly aid my reading through it at any speed. It certainly wasn’t a bad book, just a not very enjoyable one (for me at least). Clever, atmospheric, creepy in places and with a reasonably satisfying ending this was worth the price I paid for it but I doubt if I’ll be looking out for this author in future.

[2015 Reading Challenge: A book with a one word title – COMPLETE (13/50)]