Rant and Review

Apologies readers but a mini rant is up ahead. I am still feeling dreadful and have been in bed for the past two days. I think it might be flu now - I have zero energy and keep fluctuating between freezing and boiling hot. In other words, I'm probably not coping with life quite as well as normal but argh, I have things I need to get off my chest.

Car insurance. GARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! I do not cope well with comparison type websites at the best of times (train websites are the absolute death of me) and especially not when it comes to car insurance. Why is it so outrageously expensive? I thought it was bad last year at nearly £600 but this year the cheapest quote I've found is £748.

SEVEN HUNDRED AND FORTY EIGHT POUNDS. It is fully ridiculous. Nothing has changed. If anything, things have improved because I've got another year's no claims bonus and that's meant to help, isn't it? And I'm doing everything right. I have an older driver on the policy, I don't do many miles per year, it's a small car that isn't worth very much. It can only be the postcode. I don't think the area I live in is that bad but clearly the insurers do. Luckily, being the depressingly sensible type, I have a separate account that I put £90 a month into to cover things like insurance, tax and repairs so I'm not going to bankrupt myself to pay for it, although that account is now somewhat empty. There seems no logic whatsoever to the pricing. It's almost as expensive now as it was when I first passed my test 8 years ago and it makes no sense.

Don't even get me started on petrol prices. Over £45 for a tank of petrol in my little car? Jesus wept.

Or the fact that a year's worth of proper breakdown cover is another £80. Go me for haggling the AA down from £164 though! But just think of all the other stuff I could be spending that £800 on instead. Books for example. Many, many books. And in a neat segue, here comes a book review.


I've just finished reading Jump! by Jilly Cooper. You go into a Jilly Cooper book expecting certain things - overuse of the word ravishing, lots of romping, constant referrals to scent instead of perfume, lavish descriptions of nature and many puns, mostly in relation to people's names. I find all of these things quite comforting in her books (in fact I wrote a parody once for a forum I post on - so much fun to do) so that didn't put me off at all.

Was it a good book though? I am going to have to say no.

I just felt like it needed a damn good edit and clearly it didn't get one. This seems to be increasingly common with established authors. I think they get carried away with the worlds they create and their editors don't seem to have the balls to get the red pen out and start slashing. I'd be interested to know exactly what the editor of this book actually did do because if this is the final product, the first draft must have been horrendous.

Yes, she writes big books with lots of characters but there were just way too many characters in this one and so many of them were entirely two-dimensional and superfluous. It led to some really bad and confusing dialogue - pages and pages where all of the characters seem to say a line each (half of them bad jokes) despite not being involved in the same conversation. The time sequence is patchy, there are loads of plot holes left unexplored and unanswered and it just doesn't feel well rounded at all.

As usual, there are a couple of romantic plots running through the story. I'm not going to join in with the bashing of the main one (read the Amazon reviews for that) which seems based on the fact that it's centred on two 60+ year olds. Cos you know, god forbid that older people are allowed to fall in love. Personally I thought it was quite sweet and certainly better written than the other one which involved Amber. I just wish Amber had been allowed a slightly better happy-ever-after moment. I have no romance in my life so I like it in books and felt mildly cheated by the "we're together now" line which was pretty much all that it boiled down to in the end. As for Amber herself, she's a nice character but not particularly distinctive. She seems boiled together from a quite a few other Jilly Cooper heroines - not necessarily a bad thing in a lesser character but not quite enough for one of the leads in such a big book.

Oh and I really, strongly, object to anyone writing a storyline in which a 15 year old gets unwillingly involved in group sex with 3 people twice her age. It was so distasteful and actually really unnecessary in terms of plot. And then no repercussions whatsoever for any of the older characters, as if it's somehow absolutely fine!

Despite all that, I did still enjoy bits of it. The book romps along quite well considering the aforementioned plot flaws, there are some really funny moments and I always like to catch up with some of her established characters. I do like her books, even when they're clearly as full of problems as this one is. If you've never tried any of them then please don't be put off by this - start with Riders instead. The earlier ones (Riders, Rivals, Polo) are far and away the best and it makes sense to start at the beginning and work your way through. Or if you don't have the patience for a 700 page book, try and track down some of her shorter books (Octavia, Harriet, Imogen etc). They're very much a product of the 60's and 70's so don't expect anything approaching political correctness but they're very good fun.