Kennedy's modern American take on Brief Encounter is certainly evocative. I found myself going up and down the emotional register with the fate of the characters. Thankfully, it ended up with a sense of renewal rather than as the authorial character's voice put it - "the death of hope".Despite being a romance written with thriller sensibilities, it wasn't quite unputdownable - but for the first third and last twenty percent of the book, I was eager to see what happened next. Unfortunately, the central romance and some of the dialogue quickly becomes hallucinatory to the point of unbelievability - something which one of the characters, Laura, notes after the fact.
There is also a slightly irritating sense of the author info-dumping his research onto the page. In some cases, this feels a bit on the nose as both of the main characters are of a literary bent with one even being an aspiring writer.
Kennedy, unusually for someone of the opposite gender, writes women rather well. So much so, that the other main protagonist, Richard, and the secondary characters aren't anything like as rich or interesting.
But the themes of lost dreams and loves did resonate (sometimes more than I'd like to admit) and overall, I was pleased to read this - and thankful to my local book club for suggesting it.
Verdict: It's no Brief Encounter, but it mostly readable.
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