Review: Highly recommend
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 2, 2014
I absolutely loved this and became totally engrossed with story. (So much so, I put aside a Nick Hornby paperback to finish reading this on my kindle.) A five star book in every way.I enjoyed Mortimer's first novel but I felt this one was at a completely different level. I crossed the magical line between reading a good story and feeling so involved with the characters I genuinely cared about the outcome.While on holiday in Malaysia Diana is asked to read some family journals and to tell the true story of events that happened from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.Mortimer's description of time and place is her greatest strength. Her keen visual imagery conveys the ambience of the setting, with apparent ease. Coupled with her knowledge/research (?) into local politics/history as a reader, I felt I was transported to Kebun Pertama in the 1960s.The main and supporting characters were fully developed and felt very real. I especially liked Alex and yet the ending still took me by surprise. Dialogue and pace were pitch perfect and didn't feel forced or un-natural at any point. Put these together with an intriguing and unusual story and the result is an all-consuming 5 star read.I would like to pick up on a previous reviewers comment about the diary entries. I read it as the "novel" Diana was asked to write by Miss Chalcot after reading the entries and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.I highly recommend this one.