Book Review
May. 14th, 2010 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariThe Bay of Noon
by Shirley Hazzard
This novel centers around Jenny, a young British woman assigned to work at the NATO base in Naples shortly after WWII. While there, she assimilates into the city and becomes close to Gioconda, a Neapolitan writer, her film-maker lover Gianni, and a fellow NATO employee, Justin. While the book was well-written and did a marvelous job of conveying the atmosphere of time and place, I found it overall quite dull. Nothing much really happens until the very end, and even then, the climactic events aren't that exciting. While I have very much enjoyed plenty of low-plot books, I couldn't do so with this one. The narrator was too detached, too lacking in passion, too listless.
by Shirley Hazzard
This novel centers around Jenny, a young British woman assigned to work at the NATO base in Naples shortly after WWII. While there, she assimilates into the city and becomes close to Gioconda, a Neapolitan writer, her film-maker lover Gianni, and a fellow NATO employee, Justin. While the book was well-written and did a marvelous job of conveying the atmosphere of time and place, I found it overall quite dull. Nothing much really happens until the very end, and even then, the climactic events aren't that exciting. While I have very much enjoyed plenty of low-plot books, I couldn't do so with this one. The narrator was too detached, too lacking in passion, too listless.
