Get started, add a book to your profile!Start with your current and favorite reads. You can also see what your friends have read, browse recommendations based on the books you choose, and review your favorite reads. |
A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl—winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and The Guardian First Book Award
In the 1980s, Kate Meaney—“Top Secret” notebook and toy monkey in tow—is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing “suspects” and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friend... (show more)
Reviews (85)
Terrific first novel. The best part is in the details: the hell of mall retail, the childhood desire to escape and be something else, the mild paranoia of a solitary job. My only gripe with this book is that O'Flynn hasn't written anything else yet, and I'm impatient.
This book is hard to describe, but anyone who has worked in retail, say, Barnes and Noble for example, will find this book funny.
Stark, laser-sharp novel about the emptiness at the heart of our consumer society, this story of a missing 10 year old and how her disappearance alters the lives of several people offers a glimpse of a way through the desert of consumption. The mall is the true central character of the book, with the people, workers and shoppers alike, acolytes to a failed religion. This book is a brilliant dissection of soul-sickness. Highly recommended.
i still cant decide.i thought i was going to hate it based on the first part, but then it matured into something i liked a whole lot better.
a fast read. great characters. smart and very enjoyable with a good message and some mystery.
I liked the beginning of the book much better than the sad second half.
Wow, what a wildly disjointed and uneven novel. The first half is delightful and you grow to love the characters. Then you fast forward 20 years to a whole new set of characters who are unsympathetic and boring. The resolution is unsatisfying and I hurried to finish it. Too bad, it started out so strong...
What a great storyteller. I was immediately drawn to the first character. Brilliant character analysis, and yet enough hints to keep you guessing! Well done, and I look forward to future books by Catherine!
The characters were really vividly drawn and the storyline itself was based on a great concept but I felt like the book's energy level was a little low and uneven. The first half and the last twenty pages made it all worthwhile, but there were moments in the third and last quarters when it wandered and I wasn't quite sure that I felt motivated enough to get through. That being said, it has a sweet and quietly redemptive ending and I was glad to have read it.
Image Gallery (1)
 |
