Customer Reviews

Visible Worlds: A Novel

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I had not heard of the author until I discovered this excellent novel in a London bookshop last month. I am surprised the book did not get more publicity on its publication as it is a cleverly plotted, very original, reader friendly novel. I was frequently reminded of Graham Swift's Waterland, but Visible Worlds has a distinct identity of its own. The author hints early on that her main twenty characters are all linked, but she keeps the reader guessing, teasing us with little clues in each chapter. One family leaves a trail of footprints in the snow that stretches twice around the globe - almost; a trail covered by three family members in a relay that takes more than half a century to complete. The landscapes of Northern Russia and Canada are beautifully evoked - I have recently read several books about Antarctic travel and thought I had read more than enough descriptions of long marches through snow, but Bowering finds ways of avoiding the cliches favoured by other writers. The book has a strong feeling for places, time, distance, family tensions and the Cold War paranoia of the 40s and 50s. I found the book slow at the start, but it is well worth reading through to the end. Highly recommended.

Good read but characterization not strong enough

The plot of this book was exceptionally well crafted. The imagery and descriptions were written so well, you can truly see yourself in the Arctic Ocean, northern Canada, Siberia, and Germany and everywhere else the author takes us. Reading the book though, I kept thinking there was not enough character development to make me truly feel something for these people. It was almost like too much was happening in too few pages. Still, it is worth reading.