|
[ Home ]
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
Carol Smith's strength is focussing on a small group of women where everything is not as it seems. She repeats that tried and tested formula in HIDDEN AGENDA, but with mixed results. Suzy Palmer seems to have it all -- a marriage to Andrew, two beautiful kids and a reputation as an artist. They have moved to New Orleans from the UK and everything seems rosy. But Suzy is facing the death penalty for murdering her children. Back home in England, her old schoolfriends Deborah -- a rabbi -- and Lisa -- a top QC -- are horrified by what's going on and are determined to help if they can. Meanwhile in South Africa, other friend Helen, an anthropologist, waits for news. And there's Lisa's much younger boyfriend, Markus, a German musician, who wants to get involved as well. But then a blast from the past arrives in the form of Olivia, who was on the outside of the close-knit group. Smith is a reasonable storyteller, and I kept reading even though I was pretty certain I knew what was going to happen -- and I was right! In the end, though, I think I was hoping for more narrative sophistication and polish than was actually present. The story's strength is its portrayal of that suffocating and often selfish friendship between schoolgirls -- but this is, to some extent, its weakness as well, as it is obvious that the tensions and past history will have contributed to the storyline in the present. And given none of the characters are particularly attractive, you may not care that much what happens to them. The book has a slightly unsatisfactory feel to it -- at times it felt like nothing so mundane as research was going to get in the way of Smith telling the story. An email to a friend of mine active in the UK Jewish community swiftly elicited the fact that no, rabbis don't have parishes. The US setting might as well be anywhere, aside from the convenience, if you can call it that, of the death penalty threat. And the plot twist, such as it is, requires you to suspend disbelief when it comes to the actions of a main and of a peripheral character (sorry to be oblique, but it's a major spoiler!) Smith is also rather a fuzzy writer -- you often have to read a sentence twice to know who she's talking about. So, it's a pretty fair idea and I've no doubt you'll keep reading to the end. But the book never quite gelled for me, and left me wishing for some more rigorous editing, researching and writing.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, September 2004
[ Top ]
QUICK SEARCH:
Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
[ About | Reviews | Search | Submit ]
[ Home ]
| 
