SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE.

SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE by JODI PICOULT.

BACK COVER BLURB: (Contains what might be considered spoilers, scroll over darkened text to read. TT): 

The first time Jane Jones tried to leave her husband, her daughter almost got killed. This time, she's going to do it right.

Jane escaped a childhood of abuse into the refuge of marriage, only to find history repeating itself. And when her husband's neglect extends to their daughter too, she know's it must stop.

Taking Rebecca with her, Jane runs away, seeking the only place of safety she knows. But however far she runs, she cannot escape the question always on her mind: how can she save her daughter, when she couldn't save herself?

FIRST SENTENCE {PROLOGUE: REBECCA}: November 1990

In the upper right-hand corner of the photo is a miniature airplane that looks as if it is flying right into my forehead.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {PAGE 249}: I gazed into the mirror, expecting to find outlined the very parts that I could say I hated - but I was standing tall, thin arms at my sides. I  knew from this alien rhythm in my heart that I had become a different person. I did not understand how, under the circumstances, I could possibly look the same.

SOURCE: A charity shop buy.

MY THOUGHTS: Presumably a case of a writer who has yet to 'find her feet' as an author of books. Having read and largely enjoyed most of her other books (though oddly enough not so much her recent ones), I was sorely disappointed by Songs Of The Humpback Whale.

A total mish-mash of a read.

Not told from one point of view, nor two, nor three, nor four but .... five. All written in the first person, some of the events recounted not just by one individual but several.

As if this didn't make for confusing reading ...

The fact that the chapters were not written in chronological order nor consistently dated made the time-line extremely difficult to follow. That one of the characters told her side of the story in, wait for it, reverse chronological, even more challenging.

Sometimes written in letter form (not a favourite format of mine to begin with), the italics they were printed in, small and faint, also made for difficult reading. 

Then there were intermittent tracts given over to the biology (typically the song) of whales - something that was to be re-hashed using elephants instead of whales in a later book - which added nothing to the flow of the narrative. 

As for the characters? Talk about dysfunctional!!!!

There was spousal violence, child-hood sexual abuse, a brother in love with his sister, an extra marital affair, an under-age sexual relationship. In other words, bar one or two, just about every cliche that those familiar with Jodi Picoult's books have come to expect.