Whether it’s the difference between reading with a pounding headache and reading with a clear head or some other quirk of time and space, I’m finding the writing quality of this novel going steadily downhill towards the end. It feels like Diamant has lost interest or is making up a word count. After building up some wonderful characters, she leaves them leading ordinary lives with little real drama or further insight into their minds except by telling us how they are doing.
This scenario takes place as Judy is called in to help treat the inflammed knee (I was going to type ‘joint’) of Cornelius whom Oliver and Polly have found and taken in. The problem here is that this could have been a huge emotional scene: Judy and Cornelius have not seen each other in a while, Judy does not know that her former lover has stayed away to protect her. In his semi-delirious state he calls her name and it tips the others off to a more intimate relationship than neighbors:
But Judy’s distress and Cornelius’s tone of voice signified something more than polite exchanges between neighbors. Polly wondered exactly what they had shared, how it might have started, why it had stopped, and how such a secret could have kept in such a small, gossipy place. “Poor things,” she said.
Oliver frowned. He had tried to forget his boyish dreams of winning Judy for himself, and thought of her only as his auntie–his and Polly’s, as well as Natty’s and David’s. It was unsettling to think of her in any man’s arms, and for it to have been Cornelius seemed even more out of the natural order of things. (p. 192)
Diamant tells us that Judy is in distress, Cornelius’ tone of voice indicated the relationship, Polly is wondering about it, and Oliver is as well, questioning his motives in thinking of his past crush on Judy versus the inter-racial aspect of the couple. Wouldn’t this have been better said in having the characters react rather than stand around and think? There’s also the reminders of the past–Oliver’s boyish dreams, Dogtown being a small, gossipy place–that I would think are unnecessary here since we’ve already been settled into the environment and comfortable with the characters.
Just seems like a lot of excess storytelling here and I’m a bit disappointed.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology