Possession

Rating:
Summary: Debut with much potential, albeit wasted
Review: Celia Fremlin, Possession (Pocket, 1969)

This, the debut novel by a woman who's since gone on to pen close to a hundred more, should have been a barnburner. The plot is simple and easy to work with (family watches daughter fall in love with chap with overbearing mother-- shades of Bloch, Hintze, et al.), the twists are intriguing (the main character's friend, whose house is always full of interesting strangers); etc. Fremlin had a lot of really good ingredients, and is capable of writing scintillating prose when she wants to; every five pages or so a sentence or a paragraph would make me stop cold and marvel at the quality of this woman's writing. The problem is, once every five pages or so isn't enough to make the book shine, especially when it's under two hundred pages. So I ended up dropping this one into the "wasted potential" file. It showed enough promise that I'll probably attempt to pick up a few of her later works and see if she ever put it all together properly, but it didn't work in this one. * 1/2