Ever start watching a movie, say on television or one of the older airplanes where they show everyone in the cabin the same thing rather than let you choose your own show on the seat back television, part way through: it’s sort of engrossing but also frustrating. If so, then you’re well set for Yuki Chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson, which starts right in the middle of a musing on revolving restaurants. Okay. Revolving restaurants. Wacky and retro. Then the Brontës. Some snow. Visiting seniors prior to appropriate visiting hours. Who pays for Yuki’s visit to the NHS? Some flashbacks about how Yuki has fainted, two entire times, in the past. Dogs. Pellet guns. Snow. Does it just seem like I’m listing off random things here? I guess it’s because I didn’t really see the point of this book. In one way, it’s like those nineteenth century Russian naturalist novels where everything is detailed, no matter how tiny, like a perfect, little portrait on a tiny piece of scroll work. But in another way, so what?
The fundamental issue here is that the idea of the book, that Yuki is a psychic detective investigating her mother’s earlier, psychic detective, journeys around London and the English countryside, is far more intriguing than the actual book itself. When nothing comes of the book, the disappointment of a good idea wasted is too much. All the snow, the atmosphere, it’s very The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen, except at least the little match girl dies at the end. Yuki, I guess she learns one fact about her mother she didn’t know before. Of course, it isn’t really anything she was looking to find out.
And why exactly is Denny so interested in following Yuki around in the first place?
Too many questions. Too little resolution. Sure, just like life, but frustrating nonetheless.
Yuki Chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson went on sale January 21, 2016.
I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.