This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEWED BY AMANDA KEATS
In the heart of Ireland, a new eco-village, Cloonsheeda, is being built. In the lead-up to the village festival, the women of Cloonsheeda will take a look at their lives and conquer what has been holding them back for years.
Full of quirky characters, Cloonsheeda has struggling mothers, controlling fathers, non-romantic husbands, religious zealots and corrupt politicians. There is the stay-at-home mum who wants to break free of the monotony of married life, the young German teenager starting her job as a nanny and naive about the ways of the world, the passionate young woman whose Australian sex-god has fizzled into a roomate in the Irish climate and the ex-wife of a well-known politician, alone and unsure how to move on. But this is not just about the females in Cloonsheeda, as it focuses on the men in their lives too.
This is a well-written character-based plot. Some characters leapt off the page for me far more than others. Sinéad was my personal favourite as she was clearly a feisty person in her heyday and this impulse had been surpressed by her husband "Daddy Winterbottom". Called "Mummy Winterbottom" by her husband and having to endure noisy dinner times while her husband sits and eats next to her with noise-cancelling headphones on to protect his hearing, you can see exactly how close she is to snapping under the pressure. So when the chance to join a protest against the new motorway being built presents itself, you just knew Sinéad was going to have something to offer.
If this were a story about Sinéad and a handful of others, it would have made for a fantastic read. The characters are all suitable damaged and quirky enough to live in an up-and-coming eco-village and each of them is actually very interesting. Sadly though there are just too many. I lost count of how many plot lines were introduced in the first chapter and how many new characters I was being expected to care about straight away. There was no focus and it was too much like hard work to remember who each person was and how they were linked to each other. Many of the characters would have been fine as secondary characters but Woulfe's decision to make each person a primary character only confuses the plot. When new twists and turns are revealed, it made me feel tired not excited – it was something else to remember not extra depth to a character.
A real shame that this clever, funny and emotional read became confused, muddled and tiring.
6/10