Beautiful Ugly

 

Beautiful Ugly

I read this book by Alice Feeney recently. I found it initially interesting but ultimately unbelievable.

The obsessive writer, Grady Green, has lost his wife in peculiar circumstances. His faltering career – one best-seller published and another needed – is boosted by his agent advising him to go to a remote Scottish island to live in a cabin and concentrate on his writing. He finds the islanders difficult to understand and get to know, but he thinks his perception is affected by the gallons of bog myrtle tea he drinks and which he decides is causing him to hallucinate. (Bog myrtle tea is not hallucinogenic)

I read it very quickly because I wanted to get to the end and discover the solution. I was able to skim much of it because there was so much repetition. How many times does the reader need to be told that the main character, the writer, is tired, confused, sleepless, and drinking too much? Many, many times, it would seem. Perhaps the author was being paid by the word.

Switching the point of view from main character to missing wife made it a little more comprehensible, but I wondered why she had bothered to stay with a husband who had so little time for her and for whom she had little respect. All was revealed, unconvincingly, at the end.

I had no empathy with any of the characters, apart from the dog, whose fate worried me, though he seemed to survive without harm.

I understand that the author is British, so wondered at the American spellings and expressions.

It is a deeply unpleasant book.