Forget-me-not (Charnwood Library) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Emma Blair (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd; Large Print edition edition (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0708992625
• ISBN-13: 978-0708992623
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Customer Reviews

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3.0 out of 5 stars A slightly more than just-OK read, June 25, 2008

By 

SusieQ (New York) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Forget-Me-Not (Paperback)

The plot of FORGET-ME-NOT, at least for its first half, centers around the trials and tribulations of Elyse Davenport, a nearly-40-year-old actress in 1912 Tourquay and London. Elyse comes to Tourquay for an acting season (because she can't get an acting job in the West End, though no one knows this). She has a love affair with another member of the company, and a light flirtation with Tim, the son of the owner of the boarding house in Tourquay. Tim's a journalist with the local paper, and he and Elyse form a friendship while Tim courts a wealthy girl, Katherine, whose mother frowns on their budding romance.

The first half of the book is taken up with Elyse's employment and health issues, and Tim & Katherine's aborted romance (she marries another man, deemed more suitable for Katherine by her selfish mother), and Katherine's father's secret love affair. After war is declared in August 1914, Tim becomes a pilot and will meet Elyse again, this time more romantically than their previous friendship.

I had somewhat of a hard time trying to give this book a good rating. On the one hand, the character of Elyse is fully developed and her story is well written. The character of Tim has his good (well written) moments. But almost every other character is kind of flat. I think the key is, I keep referring to these people as "characters", not people. They somehow don't come alive.

The novel has a plodding feel to it, particularly the first half, although I did find myself wanting to know what was going to happen to Elyse (she always seemed to teeter on self-destruction but always pulled herself back from the edge). I thought Katherine's war experiences as a nurse at the Front were left particularly vague, and yet this could have been a gold mine of emotion. Tim and Elyse's eventual romance has real heart, yet so often Tim is just verging on a kind of stereotypical, shell-shocked-young-man-at-war cardboard character, I didn't really invest in the emotion these two characters experienced. I also didn't like the end, which I won't give away, but it felt false; somewhat tacked-on. Like there needed to be an obligatory "happy" ending somehow, yet it just seemed a smack in the face to a certain character, in my view.

Were it not for the story of Elyse and the author's attention to detail and development of this character, I would probably have given this book a mere 1 star. The book's other characters basically remain somewhat cardboard, and there is a certain lack of grit and realism in the depiction of WWI's effects on their society, which bothered me.