Kelly's Reviews > Six Years

The style and narrative of this novel reminded very much of Linwood Barclay but without the character depth and development and with a really weak plot.

I will certainly admit that I didn't finish this novel, in fact it felt as though it had taken me Six Years just to read 100 pages. Not only did I find the plot lacking in both detail and context but that the lead character seemed more like a mental stalker than a concerned ex-boyfriend. (Though why he was concerned in the first place is a mystery in itself)

Our narrator then seemed fairly normal at first, he had lost the love of his life and Six Years later was still hung up on her (even though she had sounded like a right bitch in the first chapter) for whatever reason. Then in a completely tenuous and fairly unbelivable conicidence, he discovers that her husband (the man she married instead of our stalker narrator) is now dead. Then without a single real motivation, beyond being entirely emotionally stunted after his dumpage, he goes into a full scale hunt for a woman that not only dumped him and then literally ordered him to stay away, but then didn't speak to him for six years...

The weak reasoning behind his involvement was addressed in the novel by the narrator, who acknowledged that there was no real reason to investigate his old bitch girlfriend and her possibly late husband, but this just made him sound really defensive, as though convincing us he wasn't mental.

All we knew about their relationship was that it had been a fairly short-lived affair in a secluded camp, but that it had still been never-ending love. Until she dumped him and married someone else. Therefore I couldn't really care whether the husband was or wasn't the husband, or whether Natalie was real or fake or whatever. If she had turned out to have been a firebreathing dragon with seventeen heads I probably wouldn't have been interested. Though that may have been more believable that the rest of the plot.

The plot itself, beyond this tenuous reason for investigtion, was really just a drawn out series of events in which our stalker narrator spent heck of a lot of money trapsing around the country interviewing people that should have known Natalie. But didn't. I know, I know. Tense right? No. I loathe the novels where the lead character knows that something has happened and yet nobody believes them... that isn't tension, that is frustration and being frustrated throughout a novel isn't entertaining.

Anyway, enough ranting. I wouldn't recommend.