Catherine Nixey VS The Engagements by J Courtney Sullivan
In her review of J Courtney Sullivan’s The Engagements in The Times, Catherine Nixey couldn’t find the diamond in the rough:
“The main problem is that the chapters of each life are interwoven, so you must wait for almost 100 pages before each one reappears. To sustain such a wait, you have to have some pretty good characters. And these ones aren’t. Most feel more like cheaply-cut replicas than originals. The housewife is well-groomed and emotionally repressed. A betrayed woman cuts up her lover’s clothes. The French play boules and eat steak frites. Much like diamonds themselves, these characters feel less like they have been freshly created than mined from elsewhere, then given a new setting here. And not to best effect.”
