This was a book I bought on a whim in London while standing in a 1£ bookshop. Not half an hour later, sitting alone, surrounded by other whovians in a movie theatre the man who sat down next to me exclaimed "Oh that's a wonderful book I just couldn't put it down" (I maybe should have taken it as a sign that he also fell asleep during the Day of the Doctor).
While I love Pears' prose, he changes style so subtly that you get a creepy feeling something is going to happen without a disruption to your reading rhythm, the plot was so drawn out and occasionally non-existent that it took me 2 months to get through the 673 pages. If you asked me what this book was about I still couldn't tell you anything more than it's about the lives of the Freeman family through the 20th Century. Unlike Gone with the Wind and A Woman of Substance, and even Roots, other family sagas, there's not a theme that binds this family together, that gives the book a coherent purpose. It's just about the lives of these people from beginning to end.
I think before picking up Pears' other book I'll work on finishing that list of 1,000 titles everyone should read.
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