Customer Reviews

Burying Ariel

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Before I enter into a review let me say I have been a Joanne Kilbourne lover since Gail Bowen's first mystery. I have distributed all her novels to all my friends and family. I have been looking forward to every single one of her novels - until Burying Ariel.

This to me is a very tortured attempt at incorporating a personal view into fiction.

I gather the topic is misguided expectations: expectations parents have of their children, lovers have of their paramours, individuals have of themselves. And how we fail and cannot let go or, if we do, the price we pay.

This is certainly a valid topic and true. But in the novel it is so lifeless. So there is the old academic who cannot let go of his mysogenistic perceptions (only in the end) and that is exemplified by the fact he doesn't like email or using a computer; then there are the parents, high achievers, who do not want to recognize the artist in their daughter; the feminists, who are totally obnoxious and want to claim her as a victim of patriachy; there is the (almost ex-) partner, badly scarred himself; etc.

But none of these characters are actually explored in detail. They are just what they are: People who do not understand. They all do things, but none of their actions have any grounding in the novel. They are simply scarred people (there are a few more) and none of their actions are related to anything.

I was truly disappointed. Sure there is the usual family history; but there are also some memorable hitches when it comes to the series. Funny, Joanne Kilbourne, at nearly 50, would suddenly have a new gynaecologist, I guess for the sake of the novel.

Gail Bowen writes wonderful novels, but in this one she just stretched credibility too far.

If you want to complain about feminism or the imagined threat of "political correctness" on campus, there are other ways.
If you want to make everybody's misconceptions topical in a novel, make characters come alive. Do not leave them cyphers.