Culture

Author: Tim Wynne Jones. Publisher: Walker books (3/5)

Mimi leaves the stress of the Big Apple for the tranquillity of her father’s house in small-town Canada, only to find that she is not the only one who thought it would be the perfect getaway. It doesn’t take long for Mimi to realise that the moody and neurotic Jay who claims that she is intruding in his father’s house is, in fact, her half brother. Together the two start to investigate the strange ‘messages’ that Jay has been receiving. Soon enough, despite leaving one twisted relationship, she finds herself the object of someone else’s obsession.
 
 
We switch to Cramer - a weird kid who is struggling to balance his two jobs with keeping his sometimes-crazy artist mother happy. He has a strange obsession with the house on the river and its inhabitants.
 
 
Throughout the novel you gain pieces of the puzzle of how these characters all fit together, unravelling the tangled branches of a family tree. In fact, everyone is caught in the boughs in some way, to the point that it’s a little bit ridiculous. This doesn’t leave much room for above-board fraternising, and the result is a lot of not-so-subtle incestuous undertones.
 
 
In some cases over-emotional reactions of characters took the place of real character development. This was especially true for Jay, who is disappointingly two dimensional despite a rich back story.
 
 
On the surface, the novel covers it all. There is suspense, intrigue and action, broken families and broken hearts, but unfortunately it is lacking something that I can’t quite put my finger on.
 
 
 
It’s nothing groundbreaking, but worth spending a Sunday afternoon reading. And in case you were wondering (I was), Tim Wynne Jones is no relation to Diana Wynne Jones.