Looking for a light read after my first book by Dostoevsky, I found just
what I needed. Or again, maybe it was too light.
It’s clear why the book has sold a million copies and why for quite some
time you couldn’t get on a London bus without seeing at least two people
reading it. It’s witty, well-written, romantic. Yet it’s also dreadfully easy,
its description of class discrepancies rather banal (the working-class female
protagonist is goofily and adorably political, the toff male protagonist
detached from most of the real problems of life and light-heartedly charming)
and, until the end of the book, nothing really surprises the reader (did anyone
not see the occasional shag between the two? Or their final declaration of true
and eternal love?).
As is often the case, it takes a fatality to change things, and the last
few pages of the book are deeper and more touching than the hundreds that
preceded them. Yet, it’s too little too late.
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