Customer Reviews

Bungalow: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a sequel to Home Ground, this novel fell short of my expectations. While the former novel is dynamic, charged with the innocent, daring, and sometimes appalling actions of a young Ruth, this novel seemed flat and even boring much of the time. Her spunk is missing, so is her passion. Only the bungalow engages her full attention and energies, as not even her marriage, her lover Hugh, or her baby are able to do. Ruth is disengaged with her life in America and South America; thus, so was I.

(On a side note: Ruth as a narrator is unreliable. Her middle sister Valerie and Valerie's husband, Bernard, are never mentioned in this novel, though they both affected her life as a child and adolescent. Additionally, in chapter 3, Ruth claims she wondered at age twenty-one how Hugh will feel about her virginity. Yet, the first sentence in chapter 17 of Home Ground, states she is eighteen when she has her first lover.)

Though Freed is a five-star novelist through and through, this novel is by far my favorite. It has the lean necessity of cruelty and violent thoughts and angry passion that has shaped the best of Nadine Gordimer's work set in South Africa. Though it might help to have read Freed's previous novel "Home Ground" (equally brilliant, if a little lighter and funnier), one can read this as is and be spellbound. (As for the cover . . . search for the original hardback.)

"The Bungalow" is the first novel by Lynn Freed that I've read. Overall, it is a book that I'm glad to leave behind. While several chapters -- the ones where someone dies -- are completely engaging, much of the book is mundane. As the book comes to a conclusion, we're still reading long descriptive passages which substitute for action. As the main character Ruth's marriage to Clive deteriorates, one wonders why she married him. There is so little chemistry or respect between them that we are left without emotional investment. Ruth's romance with Hugh Stillington is interesting, but still seems somewhat formal -- described rather than felt. The family characters of Ruth's parents and their squabbles are interesting; but the mother's racism which I found disturbing seems to be mildly accepted as a fact of life. The problem is that there really is no character to like in the book. "The Bungalow" heads for the garage sale bin.