This week(end) has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. First of all I managed to get ill at the end of the week and have now developed a nice little cold (number two this year!). It feels like my head is full of cotton wool, my hearing seems to be a bit off and my nose is both blocked and runny. I have resorted to the dreaded cold-flu drinks with the chemical lemon flavour to see if this helps but so far it just seems to make me go "Eeeww" and do not much else. The good part of the week(end) has been watching the speedskating at the Olympics. I used to love watching the speedskating growing up and have fond memories of spending hours in front of the telly cheering on the skaters. I did the same in my living room this weekend.... accompanied by a nice slice of home baked cake. I have to say, it wasn't an entirely bad weekend.
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Acid Row - Minette Walters
I had a race to the end finishing this one and at the end of it all I am not quite sure why that was.
I think part of the problem with this one is that there are two stories that are being told but one is so much stronger than the other that it makes the whole thing kind of unbalanced.
The first story is where we meet the doctor with the good heart Sophie who tries to do her best for the people who live in Acid Row, a grim council estate where crime rates are high and people are afraid of their own shadows and of what lurks at the end of lanes and paths. Sophie is a feisty, young doctor who genuinely cares about her patients and believes that if she can try to make the lives of some of them better she may just give them or their children a better future. Being a kind hearted soul she agrees to go to a call for an elderly gentleman, new to the estate and in the course of that ends up in the middle of a full scale riot.
The reason for the riot has to do with the second story about a missing girl. Amy is a little girl whose mother seems to hop from man to man with a scary degree regularity and she seems to be equally blind to her daughter's faults. The family that mum has chosen to bring her little girl into is that of a bunch of disinterested people. Dad drives a bus and the kids are spoilt, arrogant and ungrateful. If I was mum or Amy I would have run a mile but as this is a novel they make the best of it.... or at least pretend to. When Amy goes missing people look for a scapegoat and, wouldn't you know it, Sophie happens to be visiting them.
The two men, father and son are an odd couple to say the least and throughout the story you find out just how warped their relation ship is. Unfortunately for them the mere fact that they are new to the estate proves them ideal candidates for having taken Amy and they become the obvious focal point for the frustrations with their lives the residents are feeling. Things go from bad to worse for Sophie as she tries to escape from the situation but help is coming. It is just that he is slightly busy trying to find his missus and her family... and shouting at people... and changing his character from a jailbird to a fine upstanding citizen. Don't get me wrong Jimmy is ok as a character it is just that he is so obviously set of as the "to be reformed" character of the book that I did not pay too much attention to the references made to his past or his actions in the present as I knew they were going to change him anyway. Well, good for him I guess.
As I said the downside of the book is that the two stories do not gel for me. The one with Sophie takes over and the one about Amy gets to feel intrusive and distracting. I am not sure why Walters felt the need to add it in at all? What else bugged me about this one? Well, mainly the fact that at times Walters puts distance between the story and the reader by going forward in time to tell you about how things ended whilst the main characters are still in the middle of it. It is distracting and I really would rather find out as we go along what happened to the main characters.
What was good? The main story with Sophie was interesting. She is likable enough, clever, strong and one of those people that does good because they really believe in what they do. The characters that she has to deal inside the house with are varying degrees of evil and till the end you are really not sure she is going to make it out in one piece. There are probably lots and lots of estates like Acid Row all over the world and the book does show you how little it takes for things to get out of control. There only has to be a little spark and it can set off a full scale riot that no-one would have been able to foresee. The people in the estate (although the characters are slightly one dimensional) show that they care about one another and are prepared to fight for what they think is right and are ready to stand and be counted when it matters most. It is nice to see the family and friend bonds that make sure the people of the estate survive the riot and it's aftermath.
Title: Acid Row
Author: Minette Walters
475 pages
Pan Books
ISBN# 0-330-48946-1
Books to be read: 138
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