A good house Book

Not sure if I will finish this; so far it has not engaged me ... someone else called it "a laundry list"

... well that came true. It's not a very long book but I had a sinking feeling on page 1 as the little stream burbled out of a cleft in the hills, made its way through the town whose name I forget, performed a right turn at the backs of some houses with a story to tell and proceeded in a north-westerly direction past the parade ground where ... I'm making the details up, but this was the tone. Way too much whimsy and inconsequential detail.

It's the story of an extended family in a small Canadian town from the post-war years to round about now. It could have been interesting, but as the host of characters who might or might not have had some bearing on later developments grew, I felt more and more detached.

It was like listening to the relative with verbal diarrhoea who has an great piece of history to tell but fancies themselves as a raconteur - can't help filling in every detail and following every thread so you have tuned out long before the end.
For me that was chapter 1, somewhere in the '50s. Yawn.