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Falling Short by Lex Coulton (view source)
Revision as of 11:38, 9 August 2020
, 11:38, 9 August 2020no edit summary
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Lex Coulton's debut novel is a story about mistakes, failures, and relationships. The main protagonist, Frances Pilgrim, is a sixth form English teacher who has recently fallen out with her best friend Jackson, a work colleague, and is grappling with the increasingly eccentric behaviour of her mother. This relationship is complicated by the fact that Frances's father disappeared at sea when she was five years old.
Part of the story is also seen through the lens of Jackson, who recounts a time in his life when he made a huge relationship faux pas in his country of birth, South Africa. It is clear from the start that the two are perfectly imperfect adults who are not very good at relationships.
As the pace picked up toward the middle of the book, however, Jackson did redeem himself somewhat, and I began to feel more empathy for the character of Frances.
The book has, to my mind, a few too many unusually named characters, especially the students, and it felt that this could have been streamlined. There is also a theme of ''The Tempest'' running through the story, and other poetry quotes, which again, point toward the writer being an English scholar. These didn't put me off, having studied English myself, but may have seemed more difficult to overcome for anyone not familiar with the play. It felt a little bit like the novel wanted to be a modern, bestseller type romp on the one hand, and a more literary text on the other.
For me, it met somewhere in the middle, and was an enjoyable read overall.
If you enjoyed this, you might like [[How to be Happy by Eva Woods]]or [[Accidents of Marriage by RS Meyers]].
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