Reviews for Still here

The average rating for Still here based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-24 00:00:00 Mary Rafe DNF. I really could not care less about the sexual hunger of a midde-aged woman who does not bother for a second to stop and consider the morality of initiating an affair with a married man - and this just for the sake of "cheap sex", to use her own words. A morality that she defines, with contempt, "Mosaic" - enough said. Moreover, I was supremely un-interested in her precocious sexual awakenings, and bored to death by her whinging about her dimming sexual attractiveness due to her middle age, and her whinging about the vicissitudes of her grandparents and mother, when she herself is in an enviable economic situation (vicissitudes with which she has only partial empathy, by the way). If, when you reach your early 50's, all you can think in relation to your life is your diminishing capacity to physically attract individuals from the other sex, then this can only be an indictment of the utter vacuity of your life. Sorry, but I can't even begin to relate to such a character. Her youth "adventures" with her friend, consisting in exchanging and consuming men as a matter of fun, was so tedious that it would make, by comparison, waiting under the rain for a late bus at a uncovered remote bus stop quite an exciting and fulfilling experience. The implicit message that women are needy and unsatisfied if they do not have a male partner, or the capacity to attract one, is something that should have died with the 50's. Her flat, boring, shallow self-absorbed personality compounded the excruciating reading experience. The platitudes was another ingredient. Her sexual fantasies of intercourse with a long-dead industrial revolution entrepreneur bordered on the utter ridiculous, and it was firmly in the realm of the pathetic. Reading half of the book was painful enough, and I did not have the strength of will to stomach another half. I want my reading time back. Avoid like the plague (unless you are a Trumpette, of course).

Review # 2 was written on 2017-04-14 00:00:00 Wayne McGraw Well if I wasn't depressed about approaching 50 then I would be after reading this. Grant writes about middle aged women as though their lives have ended now their bodies are sagging. Either she was being ironic or I was being over sensitive but I felt there was a bitter edge to the females portrayed in this story. All the characters struck me as narcissistic except for the Liverpudlians who were stereotypically portrayed as thieving scum who were descendants from those that failed to make the successful trip across the sea to be saved in wonderful America back at the turn of the previous century. I also struggled with Grant's writing style, continuously having to go back and re-read sentences because they didn't make sense the first time I read them. There was nothing wrong with the grammar, I just found it really hard to fathom out at times who was talking or who was sharing their thoughts. I'm still not actually sure what the book was supposed to be about. I think it was meant to be a love story between two middle aged people but it didn't strike me as that at all. Perhaps once you reach middle age it is impossible to experience romance. Aside from all this, the book had lots of strengths. It gave some really interesting facts about Liverpool that I didn't know about and Grant's idea of putting an amazing boutique hotel on Chavasse Park was quite perceptive. A year after the book was published, Liverpool won the Capital of Culture for 2008 and so began the amazing transformation of the city. It is almost hard to recognise it now, the city has once again reinvented itself and is working hard to cast aside it's harsh and largely unjust reputation that it still wears following the hard times and wanton neglect it has had to bear. Now Chavasse Park is the centre of style and boutique hotels are a plenty. I also enjoyed the insight into the Jewish lifestyle and the migration of those that managed to escape Germany before the Holocaust. And the book touched on the Six Day War in Israel which up until now I hadn't had much exposure to. Something kept me turning the pages of this book and as you can see, has given me enough fodder to share in a review. If you want something with strong discussion points for a book club read, then this book is an excellent candidate.