6/11/2023 0 Comments Hawthorn & Child by Keith Ridgway![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The effect is heightened by the fact that the book is initially presented to us as a crime novel or detective novel, a genre that especially relies on the kind of story that progresses, that answers the questions it implicitly poses. The reader puzzled by this strategy might usefully regard it as the explicit reversal of the conventional expectations of what a novel will offer us. If we were to abandon the notion that plots must be unilinear and that the reader’s relationship to the plot must be mediated by “well-rounded” characters, one of whom serves as a protagonist with whom we may “identify,” we might perhaps come to appreciate the different kind of structure and more dispersed focus on multiple characters Ridgway employs in Hawthorn and Child. Some readers expecting a conventionally linear narrative might certainly find that this book consistently defies expectations of sequential continuity and character development, but this does not mean it provides no story (it may provide too much) and no characters (there might be too many to keep track of). ![]() In its way, Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn and Child is a compelling read. ![]()
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