Maybe I should have; but I hadn't heard of Virginia Andrews until this book plopped through my letter box. You'll recognise an Andrews book in the bookshop as its cover will have an eerie backdrop to an attractive young lady with haunting eyes staring out at you!

I think there is a continuity problem with this book in its early stages but once that problem is out of the way I think you'll enjoy this story.

The problem is that the young girl at the centre of this story is the product of a parental split. She lives with her mother and her second husband in a well to do area but her father is even wealthier ... even that doesn't sound right and it's part of the story that could simply be got rid of to some extent.

Anyway, the mother falls pregnant and the young girl feels sorry for herself and when the baby's born she feels lousy about it as she opines 'Why couldn't I be the one who was born today?'

The baby becomes a major feature of part of the story but the girl comes to love it and her initial sentiments evaporate to the extent that they became completely irrelevant to the entire plot.

The girl's uncle is in a home for the mentally infirm and he is brought into the story and then left alone by turns.

Once the girl has fallen for a school friend, the story takes off: love making, teenage angst, the father, the mother, the step brothers. The step brothers are given an important cameo at one stage although quite why they were brought into the story escaped me except that it helped to illustrate, perhaps, the fragility of adolescence. One of the twins gets his come uppance by the end of the book and that makes that alright then!

The two star crossed lovers decide to elope and guess who they take with them? The uncle! The uncle pays for the motor home that they hire for six months for their get away from it all journey and that unleashes a story that's really unreal but readable and enjoyable. There is, however, a surreal part to this story that had me confused initially as it came upon me so quickly that it took me a few pages to sort out what was going on!

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this part of the story is the mental state of the uncle. They took a major risk by helping him to escape from his 'home' but it turns out to have done him the world of good. The suggestion being that he wasn't so much mentally ill as harbouring memories that held him down and back. Once he had been given a reason to move on from his problems he never looked back!

Out of the blue and perhaps predictably, love fades and the boy walks away: just walks away and he's never seen again.

The story fizzles out then except that there is an epilogue in which we are told about the ill fated twin, whatever happened to the boy and so on. We didn't need to epilogue as it reads like a bolt on and an additional chapter could easily have sorted it all out more efficiently.

Overall a passable story I would say: least middle aged men will enjoy staring at the front cover for a while!

 

© Duncan Williamson
29 January 2005

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