Trespass by Rose Tremain

I didn't find this book to be very appealing and actually found it quite confusing and boring in some places. At the beginning of the novel you are thrown into a cliffhanger situation as you watch, or well read, a little girl run of and then scream at something she has clearly either seen or knows off. But from the next chapter the characters change, and your left actually feel very annoyed and frustrated. Why has this girl screamed? Isn't anyone going to go and save her? Is she alive or dead? I think the problem with the book, which you later find out, is that the cliffhanger you read at the beginning is summed up at the end and the remainder of the book is basically the back story of how everything occured as it did. But unfortunately your not actually able to tell this as there are no Dates titling the chapter, so you assume things by yourself. I for example, assumed that the little girl has been kidnapped, or had gone missing, or had just fallen to her death. Cliche endings if you like, but they are also the familiar sort of things that you are likely to see in those types of stories.

For me the book itself was actually very hard to focus on as I felt that there was too much moving about from character to character, and to me it actually felt like the author was trying to hard and had therefore complicated the book. Though I am aware that perhaps it was just my state of mind at the time of reading. However, I did continue with the book, as having a stubborn and OCD streak means I hate to leave a book unfinished when I have started it. I did find though that towards the end, when the characters and the story seemed to catch up on itself, and we were back to the point of the cliffhanger, that I was able to become more interested in the novel. I wanted to find out what had occured and why it had occured. But again, I was let down, its almost as if the writer wrote the ending in a tired state.

It felt rushed, questions left unanswered for no obvious reason as there is not a second part to this novel. I felt that the characters emotions were also not very truthful or real, and that just made it hard for me to connect. when someone you love dies you are overcome with distraught or emotionally numb, when the love of your life treats you like dirt you become angry or depressed and when you hate your sibling so much... well I dont know... would you plan to kill them? Im sure there was a lot of potential for this novel but for me it just didnt strike me in the heart. I was not love struck by the book and was eager to finish it so that I could get the review over and done with and move on to my next book.

Would I recommend this to any other readers, probably not. I think there are much better standards of books out there that readers can enjoy.