Bitter Sun

This book took me on an emotional rollercoaster. Riveting, and harrowing, once I started it I didn't want to put it down. This book is full of so many awful happenings, you can't not be affected by it all.

This is a gripping read. With children at the heart of this coming of age story, we see them coming to terms with murder, parental violence and sexual abuse. Not a comfortable read but I found it hard to put down. It is rather overlong, too many terrible happenings to be entirely true to life, but I would still recommend it. It is well written and the characters are well formed and believable.

Bitter Sun is set in a small farming town in the mid-west of America in the early 1970s. At a time when the Vietnam war is in full swing and the unrelenting heat is threatening to ruin the harvest, a body is discovered by John, aged 13, his sister and two of their schoolfriends when they are playing near the lake. The woman has clearly been murdered and when the authorities fail to make any headway in solving the crime, the children start asking questions themselves. It soon transpires that there are plenty of secrets hidden beneath a veneer of respectability in the town and some of the darker elements threaten to come to the fore as the children dig deeper. Add to this the various family backgrounds, each of which brings its own individual challenges and you have the start of a great coming-of-age story.

I certainly found the book gripping, in fact once I had found my bearings I couldn’t put it down. There is not only a murder that needs solving, there are also a large number of fairly major (but usually dark and terrible) things that happen in the community, probably far too many to be plausible but then what is literature for if not to stretch the bounds of reality. It is a harrowing read at times and there were also moments where I wanted to cry but it is, without doubt, riveting. No children should be subjected to many of the things that were described, but it was quite right that they were included in all their graphic detail.

My main criticism is that the book is just too long and this manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, I concede that it is certainly more riveting than boring, but it does drag occasionally. Secondly, it is violent and brutal in places which does not make it a comfortable or cosy read and whilst the frequent incidents are entirely appropriate within the context of the story, I still think it would benefit from some editing to reduce the length.

This book is well worth reading. It manages to both fascinate and appall the reader. As long as you are not expecting too much of a feelgood, comfortable read, I would thoroughly recommend this book.