Book Review: Two books rated the same for entirely different reasons

I've not long returned from a work trip interstate to sunny and sticky Sydney, where, among other things, I saw the Machu Picchu treasures exhibition at the Australian Museum, which is well worth a look if you happen to be in the neighbourhood before April. I may do a separate post about it if I can find the energy, but it has been a very challenging fortnight and I am knackered, so no promises.

On my trip, I used flight and downtime to get through two novels, which I ended up giving the same rating - 7/10 - but for basically opposite reasons. Let me explain!

The first of the two books I finished while away is celebrated Australian novelist Evie Wyld's fifth book, The Echoes. This is a book framed by the death (and afterlife) of Max, a young Englishman killed in a road accident in London, and the consequences for his partner, and Australian woman called Hannah. However, the book is predominantly set in Australia, mostly in a small country town.

There were some elements of this book that I thought worked really well - the device of Max's ghost as the part-narrator was both moving and effective, and the portions of the book that looked at Max and Hannah's relationship and their life in London I found really sad and engaging and powerful. It's also undeniable how skilled Wyld is as a writer - her story lives and breathes, and her sense of how her themes are interwoven never falters.

That said, the reason I didn't rate this book higher is more down to me and my reader peculiarities than to Wyld. The majority portion of the book, which looks at Hannah's (and to a lesser extent, her mother Kerry's and her sister Rachel's) childhood and teen years, fits the general type of what I call "Australiana grime", or sometimes "bush grim", which is one of my least favourite genres to read and which I often find both dull and depressing, especially if it's set in the outback or in a small town. It's not that Wyld executes it badly - in fact, she does a much more layered and compelling job than most - but I just don't enjoy those stories, and this one, for all its undoubted literary merit and the talent that informed it, is no exception.

So if I was rating this purely on "how good is it as a piece of literary fiction", it would have attracted a 8 or even a 8.5 / 10, but if it was rated on "how much did I enjoy reading it", it would have been a bare 6 (and only reached that level because I did very much like the ending). In the end, 7/10 seems like a fair way to split the difference. 

This book gets the same numerical rating as The Echoes (7/10) from me, although it could scarcely be more different.

Unlike The Echoes, The Midnight Feast is not literary and is not beautifully or lyrically written. I did not feel at any time that there were insights to be gained or existential questions to be addressed through the story. The characters were stereotypes who rarely departed from their time-honoured groove in the story. The plot, while sparky and very well-paced, was not particularly original, following all the standard beats of a thriller mystery and with a series of reveals that were fairly predictable.

HOWEVER, also unlike The Echoes (which I admired much more than I found pleasurable, as outlined above), I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was exactly what it said on the tin - a mystery thriller with lots of twists - and I really like that genre for relaxation reading if executed competently, which this one certainly was. I also found the ending morally satisfying in that Wildean vein of "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.”

Overall, very good fun, not deep, great if you are looking for something engaging and not at all stupid but also not demandingly literary.