Review by Cathy White
3 out of 5 stars
When
successful businesswoman Pandora Halfdanardson picks up her brother, jazz
musician Edison Appaloosa, from the airport to stay with her and her family,
she doesn’t recognise him. This is because he’s put on a bit of weight since
the last time she saw him. A 'bit' as in over two-hundred pounds.
On
their arrival at the house, Pandora's fitness fanatic husband Fletcher is less
than impressed and when it starts to look like Edison is going to outstay his
welcome, he gives Pandora an ultimatum –her husband or her brother. Pandora,
aware that her brother's weight could end up killing him, rents an apartment
for them both while she supervises the strict diet and fitness regime she
persuades him to do.
While
the heft of the plot concentrates on Edison’s weight loss, this is merely the
narrative that glues the novel together. The wider issues and themes woven
through Big Brother are loyalty,
marriage, family, relationships, jealousy, resentment, control, power struggles
and whether one person can be or should be responsible for another.
None
of the characters are particularly endearing. The nearest we get to someone likeable
is Cody; Pandora’s step-daughter, although she can be so relentlessly nice you
want her to rebel a bit like a normal teenager. Then again, her brother,
Tanner, takes on the stereotypically rebellious teenager in this tale.
Shriver’s
writing is flawless; each sentence is beautifully constructed and each word
chosen with precision. However, the ending left me feeling so cheated I wanted
to unread it to get rid of the disappointment I felt upon reaching the end.
This
was a hard novel to give a star rating to – it would have been 4 or 5 out of 5,
had it not been for the ending.
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