Another novel in diary format; another novel centring around the hot flushes of a menopausal woman; and a novel written by two people not just one. Did it work? Nope it didn't!

Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones are probably the benchamrks for the diary based novel of the modern age so it takes someone with a lot of skill and imagination to make them work. These entry finishing sentences that Mole and Jones excel at are not available to everyone. Lines like, must get a new bed or am I the only one with spots are brilliant throw aways when done properly. Plotting doesn't do it properly I'm afraid.

The plot of Plotting is very simple but it has beggar all to do with plotting as far as I can tell. That, possibly, is why I didn't like the book: I wanted to read a good plot!

Sally and her husband have reached the point where they are alone again, the family having just about grown up and just about having left home. Trouble is, they both feel that maybe it was the family that was all that kept them together.

Husband Gus decides that he wants to go and live at one with the earth, in a log cabin in the backwoods of the USA. So he does. He spends a yar living alone, bird spotting, building his own log cabin and so on. He writes home once a month or so.

As he is there at one with the world, she is at home and has suitors: possibly desperate men who who she is now alone and see an opportunity. She is clearly flattered but wants none of it.

She has the dream of being a writer and I think this is where the book falls down. We are treated to those quasi Mole and Jones endo of entry one liners along the lines of, Oh woe is me, a writer I will never be. It got on my nerves as she went on and on about her bleeding writing.

She engages in conversations about her wirting, attended a local literary circle and engages in correpsondence with Kate Wensley (Who she? Who cares?). This correspondence irritated me more than anything. I think it was a joke but cannot really tell but there are those who walk among us who end their missives with, eg, Best, Duncan. Best means yours sincerely or yours faithfully or with best wishes ... what ever you want. They drag it out here either just to try to be funny or because they just don't understand it, can't tell. They try to expand on Best by saying things like, love and best; best fashion victims; best bras and so on. Sorry, it didn't work.

Gus's brother Richard moves in for a while and is both irritating and a treasure as he is a brilliant odd job man. He finds a paramour of his own, though: then he moves out to be with her.

Sally then gets entangled with a man who is probably best described as a lothario: never goes anywhere until his hair is perfect. He catches himself in the mirror or shop windows and checks what he sees ... Eventually we think they are about consummate but he turns out not quite as she had hoped.

By the end of the year she has become a little bit of a succes as a writer and even appears regularly on local radio because of it. We are treated to some of her writing and it's awful: probably another joke and this on might have worked!

She comes to realise that whatever Gus is, they belong together and she can't wait for him to come home. He does! They parted with some rancour and when he gets back and the cause of the rancour si mentioned he dismisses it as nothing and yet she has lived and worried by it for the entire year.

End of story and I'm sure they all lived happily ever after. There is a sequel in this book no doubt but I won't be buying it. The diary aspect failed yet it could have worked easily as a straightforward novel. I do appreciate that they used the diary as a countdown and as a catharsis gigen the reason why Gus might have left in the first place. Not needed.

Many of the supporting characters are weak too hence this review not having mentioned any of them!

I bought this book as one of three in a 3 for 2 deal: I hope this is the one that was free.

Duncan Williamson
15th October 2006