First published 2020. Amazon paperback, 2020, pp 282, c.84,000 words.
There is a cracking modern thriller here, but it is let down by the lack of editing. Did Ennew not bother to read it over, or get anyone else to, before uploading it to Amazon?
Firstly there are the numerous typos, often glaringly obvious like ‘HJe’ [p20], ‘card for’ [p21], etc. etc.. And it’s not just typos, there are some pretty basic errors of plot mechanics. For example, there is a book of poems that reoccurs throughout the story. Initially it is given and red and white cover (e.g. p10 and p21), but sometimes the cover changes to red and black (e.g. p22, p53, p124, p131), towards the end it has reverted to red and white (e.g. p279). Once it is given just a red cover (p159).
Then there are the repeated words, not just in a paragraph but in the same sentence, e.g. ‘tall’ [p73], ‘burnt-out’ [p92], etc. etc. Every writer does this in a first draft. Every sensible writer edits them out.
All these errors are so distracting that the reader is in danger of being more interested in spotting the next writing fault than in the story.
The other major irritation is the layout. Every other novel uses the convention of indenting the first line of a new paragraph. Here we have no indents, but line spaces are added to indicate new paragraphs. Often the paragraphs are only a single sentence long for no apparent reason: no change of topic, activity or character’s speech. It looks ugly. Also, it’s not helpful to have occasional uneven line spacing, e.g. p25, p174. Sometimes the justification seems primitive (or have extra spaces been typed?) – leaving uneven long gaps between words.
If one can struggle past the diabolical presentation, this book has an entertaining story and some good writing.
The main protagonist, from whose point of view the story is mostly told, is a poet of some minor renown – popular rather than high-brow. He is a rather unpleasant character who is hugely self-centred and indulgent. Somewhat implausibly he is married to a very successful cookery writer: why did she marry such a boorish fellow? He has just had published, after a long hiatus, a book of poems which feature unexpurgated his past excesses. The plot concerns the fall-out from this event. Ennew manages to keep the suspense up to the end – we are never sure who the good-guys are and who the bad. There are some characters for whom it is not clear until late on how they fit into the plot at all. There is a fine cast here, from his slick PR man through to a collection of low-lifers. While they might be slightly exaggerated, all seemed credible and real human beings.
There are some lovely sentences. For example: ‘His was a face that, even from a distant vantage point, Jimmy found unsettling: a broken stick of chalk for a nose, with disconcerting distance between the cavernous flared nostrils and thin upper lip. A large jaw cradled a jagged rim of stained teeth, ugly groynes on a storm-savaged beach.’ [p49], and ‘With grace, she lifted her face to the dark blanket of the sky, head tilted upwards, feeling the snow settle on her skin. The fluorescence caught her profile, the soft feathery flakes settling to melt on her cheeks, the strong chin, the small snubbed nose.’ [p93] (rather spoilt by the use of ‘snow’ twice in the next, five-line, paragraph.)
One final whinge: the paperback has Amazon’s usual poor-quality cover which refuse to lie flat, and the book is in the abnormally large size of 152 x 229mm, where the standard paperback in the UK is 128 x 198mm. It will have to be placed spine-up rather than spine-out on my limited-hight bookshelves.
Biography of Ennew from his website: https://craigennewwrites.wordpress.com/about/
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Morning-Girl-Craig-Ennew-ebook/dp/B086H2SH2V?ref_=ast_author_mpb
And: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114890293-the-good-morning-girl?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_21
© William John Graham, May 2024