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Book Reviews Title Friends
Like These Fiction-Net
Rating Buy It
From Amazon.co.uk - BUY
NOW! Cover
Story Ever found that
missing Malteser – all over the seat of your
linen Jigsaw suit? Realised you remember the words
to everything the Human League ever wrote –
but not your seven times table? Photocopied your
face out of boredom on a holiday temp job? Worried
that you ALWAYS look like Jo Brand in your
friends’ photos? Yes? Well, meet
Rachel, now out of University but not quite in the
Real World, doing one of those “Look, no
hands!” jobs in a PR firm. When her best
friend Alex persuades her to join in with Laura and
Mike’s engagement party in a Lake District
cottage, she agrees with mixed feelings. For even
Laura’s meticulous arrangements haven’t
taken account of actressy Caroline, Rachel’s
bete noire, whose mysterious behaviour around the
groom-to-be rings bells that Rachel hoped never to
hear again... We
Say This is the debut
novel from twenty-four year old Victoria Routledge.
The word “Friends” appears in its title
and in fact, the book owes much of its premise to
the U.S comedy of that name. The setting might be
London and the Lake District but the themes, like
the T.V show, are group friendship and coming to
terms with each other’s annoying habits. Also,
dealing with the tangled web of relationship
histories between the seven of them. Unfortunately,
“Friends Like These” is neither as funny
nor original as the comedy series with the shorter
title. I couldn’t claim to be bored by it but
neither was I gripped – the story just sort of
carried me along. To be honest, I think it was
fairly easy to predict what was going to happen
almost from the beginning. The so-called
“shock revelations” were easily spotted,
leading to impatience on my part to get to the
dramatic bits. On the positive side, these moments
were good – once the crockery started flying,
the dialogue came to life. It was like watching a
bad soap opera – you know what is about to
happen but, at the moment of truth, it becomes
compulsive all the same. The most
interesting character is the nasty Caroline.
However, she isn’t in it enough to develop
into more than a villainous caricature. At one
point, she describes one of the other characters as
“bland” – I have to say I agreed
with her. In fact, I thought all of the rest of the
characters could be described in the same terms.
Perhaps this book is just too nice for its own good
– depicting a world that is naïve and
simple, where the bad are beaten and the good get
married. Review by: Rachel
Taylor |
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