This seemed a much lengthier read than the actual 400 and something page count would have me believe. It might be that picking it up and putting it down for about three months isn’t the best way to read it but it did seem to drag. Altogether too much foreshadowing of the ‘if only I’d known then what I know now’ type which rather than heightening the suspense leads you to not be surprised by many of the events in the book.

I’m making it sound like I hated it which I didn’t. It was a much more interesting, more unputdownable, book in the last hundred pages than it was in the lead up and I enjoyed seeing all the various threads intertwine and play out. Just too much set up for not enough pay off in the end though.

The main spinal theme of the books is scaling heights but the recurring theme of relationships, especially those between parents and children, is more absorbing on the whole. The thing about heights gets your attention but I felt it diverted me from the real matter of the story. Clodagh Brown is the narrator telling the story about eleven years after the events happen when she was 19, mainly when her and her friends lived in Maida Vale and took to gallavanting around the local rooftops. I think it’s the looking back narration style that really annoyed me; since she’s looking back she can hide things from the reader but it didn’t feel artfully enough done. I don’t mind being able to guess the ending but there seemed to be too little that I couldn’t guess at here.

I love many of Barbara Vine’s books but other are just ‘eh?’ for me. This was one of the second type.