Click by David Almond, Eoin Colfer, Roddy
Doyle, Deborah Ellis, Nick Hornby, Margo Langan, Gregory Maguire, Ruth Ozeki,
Linda Sue Park, Tim Wynne-Jones
Summary:
When Grandfather George "Gee" Keane dies he leaves behind a few gifts for his
grandchildren, a box of sea shells for Maggie and photographs for Jason. But as a
photographer he touched many more lives than just his grandkids and had a few
secrets that even his family didn’t know
The
Good: There were a few chapters in the book that
focused more on the grandfather and, contrary to my expectations, I really
liked those stories. One chapter focusing on the girl who thought she was a fish (I believe it's the second chapter, Annie by David Almond) was a great example,
someone else’s story with the grandfather only appearing briefly as a side
character, it reminded me of some slice of life anime I’ve seen over years
where there’s a central, reoccurring character but not every story they appear
in is their own. I think I would have liked the book more if the stories had
been more like that more about how the grandfather affected their lives than
the grand plot it created that tried to go beyond that (another other chapter in the
book that was like that was Jiro by Ruth Ozeki, again this chapter felt
like a complete short story and didn't contradict anything the reader
had already read).
The
Bad: As mentioned in the intro, each of the ten chapters was written by a
different author and the final result is a bit schizophrenic. Some of the
characters have completely different personalities in different chapters (the
son Jason was the worst recipient of this, there’s no way he could’ve dealt
with all his issues as quickly as he did) and there were simply some really strange
themes in there, like some of the characters having the ability to create
living duplicates of themselves and live separate lives (while the original is still completely aware of what the duplicate is doing). The time-skips
also felt rather erratic, sometimes stories took place one after another and
other times there are decades long gaps, it makes me wonder just how much
planning, if any, went into the overall flow of the story, it feels more like a
round robin than an anthology and just doesn’t quite work.
While some of the individual stories were alright I just can't recommend this book since it just does not work as a cohesive work. Most oddly put together work I've read in a few years, can't say it really made me want to check out the other works by these authors either.
