The Dust That Falls from Dreams: A Novel

I struggled with this book. I really did.

I loved the blurb and was excited to read it but then... the paragraphs were SO long and muddled. One minute I was reading about Rosie and her neighbour/boyfriend and then literally the next sentence - in the SAME paragraph! - was about the King at the palace. Dialogue also tended to be all in one paragraph and that made it hard for me to follow on who was saying what.

There was an insanely small chapter that was in the maids point of view and all we learnt was that she stumbled across Rosie - in her bedroom - crying. That's it. That's all we learnt. That she came across Rosie crying. If you're going to write in someone else's POV then at least put something that is actually important to the story line in it! And don't even get me started on the chapter in the POV of Rosie's father... If I'd wanted to learn that much about taxes and the money situation in London at that time I would have picked a non-fiction book, thank you very much. I'm all for learning about the time period to better understand the book but that was just nonsensical babble.

I'm sorry but I really could not get on with this book. It took me WEEKS to read 90 pages - in between that I read about four other books - and if its taking me that long, I'm not finishing it.

The Dust That Falls From Dreams may be the most beautiful title of a book ever. And it was made even sweeter by its use in the novel. If I didn't know this tome was written in the present day, I would think it was written in the time period it portrays. It reminded me of a Jane Austen novel, but with the explicit--and sometimes gruesome--details that we expect in our modern books. It is charming and witty, and the narrator's hints of things to come kept me reading. It is lengthy, with passages of descriptions and details that may not have been necessary, but were illuminating. A historical novel that must capture as closely as possible what it was like to live through the Great War.