"The Sound Mirror" by Heidi James.
The sound mirror was chosen by Cath, and first read by her as a Master’s degree exercise; on the re-read for the book club it felt like a completely new book.
This is social commentary based around the stories of three, quite differently placed, women.
Their relationships, their background, their life stories all seemed almost unrelated; some integration develops towards the end of the book.
There is much societal informaion used in the novel.
The chapters are mostly 2 to 3 pages, (14 chapters in the first 50 pages), each chapter written in the voice of one of the 3 women, Ada, Claire, Tamara.
There was reference to a physical sound mirror on p152, and nowhere else.
The relevance to the book remains unclear.
The general reaction from book club members was that whilst the writing differentiates the characters quite clearly, the structure was quite opaque with little continuity.
All club members struggled to get into the book, but one member persevered well and felt that the writer had achieved a good social analysis via the characters, had generated a clever story line that converged well towards the end.
Various detailed comments from club members were noted including:
- The vignettes were well written.
- Claire was the most believable character
- Very readable
And in a more negative vein:
- Started it, chucked it, absolutely hated it.
- Tried reading several “Tamara chapters”, that didn’t help.
- The men-folk got a raw deal from the book.
- The author was trying to be clever
- It was very bleak and I disliked all of the characters
- Got bogged down. Did I enjoy it? – No, not really, but it was interesting.
- Difficult to follow, unpleasant, I didn’t like it.
The book generated an inconclusive discussion on how to break an on-going cycle of abuse in society.
Doorly score: 3.1
PC. 20th September, 2025
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