Reviews for Family and a Fortune

The average rating for Family and a Fortune based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-06-02 00:00:00 Beast Beauty There is no doubt that this book has literary merit but I found reading it a joyless and dreary experience. There is little narrative, it is almost exclusively dialogue which gets very wearing after a while.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-21 00:00:00 Dolly Jute I bought this in a jumble sale thinking that it might be one of those relatively light 1930s stories in the style of Delafield. However, this is a very, very different style of novel. Almost completely dialogue-driven with hardly any description other than the physical characteristics of the protagonists, this is a very difficult book to read. It requires far more attention to the text than almost any novel I have read. It was a real effort and far outside my experience. Yet, the experience is beguiling. For me it is a bit like watching Chinese Opera. I haven�t much of an idea about what is going but the extreme difference to normal experience and the obvious quality and sincerity of the delivery, fascinate and entertain. I won�t hurry to read another Compton-Burnett novel, but, when I feel like reading a book which has the same intellectual challenge as that posed by a crossword puzzle, I will reach for another.