We won this title from the Reading Agency: http://readinggroups.org./
This book divided our book group. One member, who found the text interesting, liked and felt a sense of identification with it, “couldn’t stop reading”, and completed the novel in two sessions; others were far less complimentary with a number of readers unable, or unwilling, to read to the end. This reader was in the latter group finding the text, due to its written style, a challenge to complete.
Whilst everyone agreed that there was a good and deserving story in The Wedding Gift , a number of the group felt strongly that it had not been brought out by the author. What the story required was a far better writer! Criticisms of Boden’s writing were strong, it was passionless, rushed, careless, sugar coated, flawed in plot, and relied far too heavily on dialogue. Boddn, it was felt, was nt great at building up suspense, nor was she able to make voices distinct; at times it was difficult, some readers found, to know who was speaking to whom. In relying so heavily on dialogue she failed to develop sound descriptive passages, which, if used, would have allowed readers to have had a sense of character and place. Why, for example, was there no description of the sea or Sarah’s reaction to seeing it for the first time in her life?
The fact that very few of the characters were developed (including Sarah and Theodora, the main characters), angered readers, but this lack of development was not limited to characters alone. The plot left the majority of the group wondering how certain situations had been reached. Its denouement was to be found in two paragraphs at the end of page 461 and the beginning of 462, but where was the lead up to it that would have made it believable? It simply was not there – the reader was just told. And by not being believable the writer did not do sufficient service to attacking misogyny and racism, the two very serious, but unsuccessfully challenged, themes in her book. By Jasmina
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