The plot twists and connections between the characters, while fairly cleverly played out, were fairly easy to predict. It's also difficult to identify the target audience.
Honestly, I find Moriarty's quirky writing style more suited to teenage narrators. Unusually for this author, most of the characters in Listen Taylor are adults.
She's starting secondary school, learning to be a part of a big family for the first time, quietly struggling to find her place in the world. Noticeably, the least erratic character, twelve-year-old Listen, is also the most relatable. Listen Taylor was full of wonderfully eccentric characters, though almost unrealistically so. Once I'd battled through the first pages the story picked up, with clever connections between the separate storylines. The first few chapters were a muddle of different characters with no apparent connections. While I usually enjoy this writing style, it was a bit too abstract, especially at the beginning, making it very difficult to pick up the threads of the story. Moriarty is very good at taking separate strands of a story and weaving seemingly insignificant details together. The stories of these people come together to create a tale of life, love, and ultimately, what being part of a family means.Īs an admirer of Jaclyn Moriarty's books, I was looking forward to reading The Spell Book of Listen Taylor. Her sister Fancy is becoming increasingly disillusioned with her home life, and her daughter's year two teacher is coming to terms with a break up.
Marbie Zing is terrified of doing something wrong and losing Nathaniel and Listen. Listen Taylor's father has just moved in with his girlfriend and they are adopted into the Zing family, with all of its delightful eccentricities and unusual behaviour – the Zings meet every Friday night for dinner and then disappear into the garden shed to work on the 'Zing Family Secret'. Summary: An entertaining story following several members of a family through a difficult and revealing year.
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