Nom de Plume

Moods dictate not only what we read, but how we perceive it. Although I’ve read some great reviews of Eve Green–prompting me to get it in the first place–I have not been in the mood for touchy-feely, workshop-tortured prose about childhood. So scratch this one out.

Eve — well, let me quote for a second–

Evangeline. Five consonants, five vowels. A hard name to be saddled with when learning to write joined-up. A hard name still, even at twenty-nine, since it takes me an age to spell it out over the phone, and I’ve been accused of making it up altogether before now. Men, in particular, pronounce it wrong. They rush into the word, tangle themselves up in it as if it were wire. Slowness, as with most things, is the key.

(Excuse me, this is the sound of me retching. Slowly.)

In any case, Eve’s mother dies and she’s sent off to Wales to live with her grandparents. Musing about her childhood as she’s pregnant, she relives the tale of the child who is abducted the year she arrives.

And that’s as far as I got.

Would I like this if I were in a softer, more forgiving frame of mind? Would I have more patience with its carefully stitched words and phrases if I weren’t feeling so restless? I don’t know. What I do know is that I read until page 54 and every single page irritated me.