My Goodreads review

We all know a Linda, even if we don't notice her.  But the world is full of people like the protagonist of A Tidy Ending, Linda Hammett.  

Linda is a middle-aged, unhappily married woman suffering from various mental-health issues.  She works at a thrift shop.  Her husband is a slob, and she's a bit of a neat freak.  But there's so much more to it than that.

I immediately loved this book and am giving it five stars.  For one thing, it's hilariously, laugh-out-loud funny.  And I say that as someone who is permanently disabled by my own mental-health issues.  Linda is in much bigger trouble than I, and for whatever reason I did enjoy being able to relate to her even while realizing she was off the deep end.

And Linda truly is off her rocker.  She has such an incredibly negative self-image, is so manipulative and bizarre in the way she approaches her life and other people, that it's really a tragic story in many ways.  But it's also thoroughly enjoyable to read, because of the excellent writing of Joanna Cannon and the humor throughout.

In the course of the book we learn a lot about Linda's childhood in Wales, why she is so down on herself and envious of others.  Linda very much wishes she were someone else.  I won't put any spoilers into the review, but I found the way she resolves that situation both satisfying and hilarious.

Joanna Cannon is a mental-health professional, and it really shows throughout the book.  There is so much insight into the strange things that people think and do.  Again, it was really a bit disconcerting to be fully aware of how insane Linda is, while also noting that she had some pithy observations that I quite agreed with.

I'm still thinking about this book a week after having read it, and will surely read it again.  Having read it left me more mindful of, for example, the man who shouts, "HI LADY!" every time I walk through the lobby of my apartment.  He's another Linda, isn't he?  Would it kill me to befriend him?

My review on Goodreads

I wanted to give this book a higher rating, because the idea at the core was so compelling.

The central concept -- that you can't dwell too long in the past without losing your ability to take action in the present -- is strong. And it's well-examined here by way of various relationships that take place partly in a coffeeshop with one magical seat. Anyone can sit there, when it's temporarily vacated by the ghost who occupies it, and go back in time for a short while. But if they linger too long, they'll become the resident ghost.

The book then follows a variety of people who wait for their opportunities to time-travel, even though one of the rules is that you can't change the present by going back in time. It's a lovely book in terms of food for thought.

It's clear the that author is a playwright. For one thing, the structure of the stories themselves make that obvious. The various couples whose relationships are explored enter and exit the cafe much as actors would on a stage. Each is given a distinct section of the book, feeling very much like a play where the lights would go down and back up.

Characterization is primarily done by describing what clothing each individual is wearing, again giving the impression of a play, in which much of the fleshing out of the character would be done by an actor. This detracted somewhat from the overall reading experience for me. But I do think it would make a phenomenal play or movie, because again I think the author's ideas were excellent.

The other thing that sort of ruined this book for me as a reader was that I think it needed re-editing after translation. There's a very serious "tell, not show" problem in the writing, where information is unceremoniously barfed onto the page in a very disappointing way for me as a reader.

I'm not going to put spoilers into this review. But for me, the couple dealing with Alzheimer's was the most poignant. Unfortunately, one of the most meaningful moments in the book was just plopped onto the page, the emotional reveal dumped out, all magic explained matter-of-factly, and then reiterated in case it wasn't spoiled enough the first time :( The disappointment was doubled down, gah.

I suspect this is an issue of a translator being hired to translate a fully-edited book, and not doing the work of an editor who crafts novels into sharp prose. It was probably well-edited in Japanese and then translated. But it hurt me as a writer and reader, to have such a nice book de-crafted in this way.

If this work is ever treated with a movie adaptation I will definitely check it out.