Review of Descending by Catherine Chisnall

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Rightly or wrongly, what matters to me most in fiction, apart from the necessary quality of the writing, is whether I care about the characters or not. In Descending, Catherine Chisnall has created a narrator who is so believable that the novel reads like a memoir. The other characters are drawn with equal skill and their variety brings wide interest to the book. 
At times, I felt that the writing was a little too much like that experienced in a report. And that quality did slightly detract from my enjoyment. 
But the characters saved the day in what is a contemporary story of self-discovery. I wasn't at all sure what the book was about when I started to read, but it soon became clear from the first person narrative that this was a tale about a young woman learning a hard lesson in life and growing to understand that we don't always recognise our actions as selfish until we later examine them. 
A good story, well told.


I interviewed Catherine here on the blog - the link to that interview is here: Catherine Chisnall