Various Pets Alive and Dead
As seen:
By Marina Lewycka
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1 review
Marcus and Doro were part of a commune from the late 1960s until the early 1990s: lentils, free love, spliffs, radical politics, cheesecloth blouses, sex, housework and cooking rotas, crochet, allotments. Their children have grown up rather different from them: primary schoolteacher Clara craves order and clean bathrooms, son Serge is pretending to his parents that he is still doing a Maths PhD at Cambridge, while in fact working making loadsa money in the City; while third child Oolie Anna, who has Downs Syndrome, is desperate to escape home and live on her own. Once the truth starts breaking through, who knows what further secrets will be revealed about any of them? Set half in Doncaster, half in London, this is a very funny riff on modern values, featuring hamsters, cockroaches, poodles, a Chicken and multiplying rabbits, told by Marina Lewycka in her unique and brilliant combination of irony, farce and wit.
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The first sentence intrigued me, however the book overall lacked a plotline, or at least one that was set in the present tense.
A lot of the story is based on musings of the characters and looking back at their past, and i felt, sometimes a lot of reading between the lines was involved to understand what was going on. There was an unneccessarily large amount of in-depth information about things like the stock markets and sociology, that i thought was a waste, and i sometimes, read many passages where i didn't understand any of it! The story was anti climatic, and i was more relieved it was finished then the fact that i think i might have missed the answer of who exactly had lit that fire in 1994, which was mentioned many times during the story by all the characters.
Although, i am glad i read this book, as i did find myself relating to the characters, i would not reccommend this book as it is very different to my usual reads and i found myself wanting to give up most of the time.
