Rose

Rating:
Summary: On historical fiction as fiction
Review: I am impressed by how serious the readers' comments are. This is close reading. Admittedly, there is a problem with historical fiction in that there are so many damn details, so many things--mines, manners, arsenic--that go into a complete world whether it's real or fictional. The error over the decimal system drives me crazy. As for the canal scene, I stood at the canal lock and followed a boat through more than once. The use of the word 'pants' was a conscious choice for the American edition because we simply don't use the word 'trousers' as much as the British. What impresses me more is passionate reading, the engagement of the reader with the text, with the pace and rhythm of a book, with the story. The details are the seat on the train ("Ooh, what loverly rattan and a gas lamp, too!"), not the engine. Thanks for the chance to answer.

Rating:
Summary: Book Club Required Reading
Review: Had this not been a "required reading" for a book club that I belong to, I probably would not have finished it. I remembered trying three times to read "Gorky Park" and having difficulty sorting through Mr. Cruz' many characters. I found this book, although not as confusing, overwhelmingly peppered with trivial details, and a plot line so weak that I kept putting it down until the night before our book club met. Can anyone really say that they didn't have this "surprise ending" figured out by the time they were half way through reading this novel? Surprising to me was the fact that several members of our group LOVED IT. I don't think they've read enough GREAT books.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read!
Review: I eagerly anticipated the arrival of Martin Cruz Smith's book, and was quite surprised by its subject matter. I know that many readers are caught up in quibbling about the novel's historical details, but I found it a wonderful story with rich characters -- quite hard to put down (even at 3 AM). I highly recommend it, and once again am eagerly anticipating his next tome!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but it could have been better.
Review: I agree that the writer could have researched a little better. Facts were a bit muddled, but the story was interesting and kept the readers attention. I would read it again, and am glad I bought the book.

Rating:
Summary: Victorian atmosphere spoiled by frequent anachronisms
Review: Although Martin Cruz Smith certainly can tell a tale, he might spend a few hours checking up on detail before embarking on an historical fiction. I am not talking about the sort of obsessive attention to historical correctness which can make a reader excessively aware of the author's research and which often requires several pages of acknowledgments. But when a writer commits error after error, as Smith does in Rose, the mood is disrupted and the illusion shattered. A previous reader has commented on the use of aspirin; the NY Times reviewer on the breaches of decorum reoresented by the bishop'dinner conversation. But there are errors about things that everyone ought to know, familiar or not with the 19th century. For example, Britain adopted a decimal currency in the 1970's. Before that, the currency was in shillings and pounds (20 of the former to one of the latter; 12 pence to the shilling.) But the characters in this book are clearly reckoning in new decimal money. The incessant reference to the garment sported by the pit girls as "pants" is irritating in the extreme--even now, in England, "pants" refers to men's underwear, not outerwear which are "trousers," as they would have been in 1872. And on and and--one can only wonder what attracted Smith to the period if he could not expend the energy to avoid the most obvious of mistakes. Even Anne Perry knows better.

Rating:
Summary: Nice Novel - Shame about the Plot!
Review: Although this is perhaps Martin's most skilfully written book I am unable to endorse the uncritical acclaim which it has received. The plot, in truth, is pitifully implausible. Here we have a priest, who incidentally also plays Rugby football, driven by some desperate compulsion to preach in a deep mine. But wait - the poor guy gets killed in a pit disaster on his very first visit. What rotten luck! OK, so there are more implausible plots around. But wait - there is more. We also have a rich industrialist's daughter who has a compulsion to explore the meaning of life by trading places with a pit girl on the coal-sorting belt. In Victorian England!!!? If you are American, imagine a plot for a novel based on a Virginian plantation owner's daughter who blackens her face and goes out to pick cotton. It's that far-fetched. Just to round it off nicely, our hero suspects nothing as he sleeps with our eponymous heroine. After all, she still tastes and smells of coal! Martin Cruz Smith certainly did his homework on the minutiae of the Victorian coal industry. His scholarship falls down on the workings of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, but that is perhaps to carp. Super book, superbly written , but let's keep a sense of proportion here! It's a tribute to Martin's craftsmanship that this is a very good book: with this plot it could have been one of the daftest novels of all time!

Rating:
Summary: Being in Good Hands
Review: A powerful tale full of lust and greed. I was moved through the book and found it tourtourous to put it down. I was drawn into the movement of the story knowing that Blair was one step ahead of me. A character that knew so much of how the lives of miners were that it was comfortable leaving the sluthing up to him. There is nothing like a talented piece of writing where you are compelled to read it again, and share the discovery with others

Rating:
Summary: excellent, well-crafted, a superb read
Review: I have long been a fan of Martin Cruz Smith's work, and eagerly-awaited the publication of the paperback edition of 'Rose'. My waiting was not in vain. It is unlike anything else Cruz Smith has written, and another terrific surprise. It is historically interesting and mysterious. An all-around good read. Cruz Smith is a terrific writer. I hate for his books to end

Rating:
Summary: I loved this book. It's one of my favorites.
Review: I just wish Martin Cruz Smith could write faster. I'm ready for the next book

Rating:
Summary: Like Gorky Park,a combination of history, polictics, mystery
Review: Martin Cruz Smith is an immensely skillful writer, indeed so skillful in recreating remote, exotic places and times that he sometimes forgets the reader's need for some degree of clarity in presenting plot. In Rose, as in Polar Star, we are so overwhelmed with the details of Wigan, a dark, monstrous 19th-century mining town, that the mechanics of the plot are left far too implicit. Rich through the are, the details of Wigan: dirt, the brutality of mine life, social indifference, make the storyline - already rather abstruse - very difficult to follow. As author, Smith is permitted to hold the trump cards of plot as long as he likes. However, in Rose, he holds them so long that by the time the plot becomes focused and storyline relatively clear, I was more frustrated than entertained