The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers

By Tom Rachman

Doubleday Canada 2014

Genre: Fiction

The story follows the life of Tooly who was stolen from her parents at a young age. We flash back and forth from her as a child to her in her early twenties, to the “present”. Tooly owns a bookshop, when she gets a call from an old friend. He tells her that her father is quite sick, and she needs to come back to New York to help him. This leads us on a journey to understanding what happened to her in her formative years.

Ok, can I just say that I thought that this book was going to be so great! It sounded like it was full of intrigue and mystery. I was very disappointed, and I was really bored. I really didn’t like Tooly. I feel like she was naïve and that irritated me. I questioned the entire time reading how she couldn’t see what was happening to her? How can you not see that what is going on is illegal? I wondered why she wasn’t inquisitive at all? I had a LOT of questions when I was a child. I know that ALL the people she was with wouldn’t really tell her, but some of them would. That is what irritated me. I felt really bad for Humphrey. He was a good man, who took care of her despite what she seems to think. I liked him and feel he deserved better than Tooly.

I did not feel like this was a big mystery it seemed pretty obvious to me what was happening through her life. So the whole novel felt a little bit pointless. I kept waiting for things to get exciting or mysterious but it fell flat for me. I was very frustrated with this one, I was huffing and puffing and putting it down because I felt it was so ridiculous how annoying Tooly was. Or I was rushing through it so it would just be over already!

What I did like was the writing style and I didn’t mind how we were flicked from childhood to adulthood I liked the important occurrences being revealed to me slowly. I think that it all worked very nicely. I don’t feel like flitting back and forth was choppy, it made sense and the sequence was still logical.

My Verdict: Pass on this one

This picture is a clue to next week's blog post. I hope you guys are excited!

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What did you think of this book? Were you charmed by Tooly or irritated by her?

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