I’ve Read Some More Jojo Moyes Novels…

Since christmas I’ve read three more of Jojo Moyes’ novels, in my quest to read all of her work as soon as possible, because, let’s face it, I’ve became a huge fan after reading some of her work. These three novels I’ve recently read, were

Sheltering Rain (2002)
Foreign Fruit (2003)
The Peacock Emporium (2004)

And even though I still consider myself a huge fan, I have to admit, that in my eyes these three were not up to her usual (or later developed) standard. The biggest problem was, that I didn’t really warm to some of the main characters in those novels. In all three novels parts of the story take place in an previous decade (after WW II, the ’50s, the ’60s) before switching to the 1990s or 21st century. In some novels that worked better than in others.

In Sheltering Rain I actually was interested enough in Joy and Edward in the 1940s, but I didn’t really like the people they had become in the 1990s. I did like Kate and Sabine and was really interested to see how their complicated mother/daughter relationship would turn out. Foreign Fruit actually was my least favourite of the nine Jojo Moyes novels I’ve read so far. I just couldn’t get into it and bring myself to care about any of the characters in the first part as the bohemians in the 1950s seaside town, just weren’t my cup of tea. Daisy and Jones in the second half of the book on the other hand, I could very quickly get invested in :-) The Peacock Emporium was a strange book. The few intermittent chapters told in first-person, but a different person every time, threw me off. Once again, the people and events in the ’60s didn’t really interest me and later one I was rather annoyed by the way they just surrender to their fate, so to speak. But I did care about the second set of main characters in the modern times, Suzanna and Jessie and Alejandro and also about the variety of quirky, but nonetheless loveable characters that inhabit that small town.

The variety of mostly loveable, or at least interesting, often a bit quirky characters are what got me quite hooked on her novel I’ve started last night: Night Music (2008). There is the young grieving and sort of destitute widow, the vindictive neighbour, the mysterious land manager, the jaded real estate agent and the gay couple running the village store. I’m only at chapter 8, but I’m really enjoying it so far, much more than I probably did the first eight chapters of the previous three Moyes books I’ve read. And I’m really looking forward to see where ther story takes me…

This entry was posted in Archive and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.