This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison
Novels with happy
colors of the cover should be happy; just one complaint to start out with while
trying to write a positive review because many people will enjoy this novel,
just not me.
Harriet Chance is 78
and has been a widower for two years.
She has been seeing Bernard, her dead husband, quite a bit lately. Of course her friends and family think she is
losing touch with reality, but no dear reader, Bernard really is visiting her
from the afterlife. (I have no idea why,
the book would have been fine without the weirdness of him having conversations
with Harriet and those that run the afterlife.
I must have missed something…?)
Anyway, before his Alzheimer’s got truly awful Bernard entered a drawing
to win a cruise to Alaska. And he
won! The ones who held the raffle take
three or four years to hunt down a relative (what?!) and now Harriet is going
on a cruise.
The style of the
writing was interesting. Each chapter
starts with the date and the age Harriet is at the time. Most of the story is set in the present, but
you also get to see what made Harriet the woman she is today. Unfortunately something awful and more awful
always seems to be coming when you learn about her past.
Maybe I’m being a
little harsh. I apologize. I could have seen around all issues I
mentioned above, but what starts out quirky and fun becomes depressing and very
dark. I get really annoyed when books do
that. I have to say it was very well written,
maybe a little too much an emotional rollercoaster for me. However, I did listen to the whole book. A testament to how good the reader was, and
that I did want to know where the story was going. Just didn’t like it when I got there.
If you like
dysfunctional stories with a fully development main character that is more
bitter than bittersweet this may be your next read.
