The Brittle Star: An epic story of the American West Paperback – 21 September 2017

This book is a fantastic ride through the American West - the beautiful descriptions of the surrounding country and the people are interspersed with moments of page turning excitement, strewn with emotional highs and lows. At it's heart, it is a coming of age story set inside a Western, but the characters are so warmly written and so real in their foibles that you become invested in so much more than just the protagonist.I have been recommending this book to everyone in the week since I finished it, although fair warning, it may leave you, as it has done me, with a yearning for the open plains of America and a sequel...

I thought this a stunning debut novel, utterly absorbing story-telling with pinpoint characterisation and a wonderful conveyance of time and place. It happens I read it shortly after finishing Cormack McCarthy's Blood Meridian (which was a touch too excoriating and uncomfortable for me) and also Kate Atkinson's Todd family novels, Life after Life and A God in Ruins, both of which I loved. The Brittle Star strikes an almost perfect balance between those two authors' styles, with Atkinson's lyricism and poetic charm, levened by McCarthy's more brutal assault on the literary senses, with the Frontier setting obviously linking the McCarthy's and Langdale's novels. This is highly accomplished writing which will engage a wide audience, and is very easily recommended. I'm already looking forward to her next novel.

An epic story of the American West - loved this story of the your John Evert and his journey across America in the late 1800s. 4 stars

This book is utterly captivating. It is a classic hero's journey story. The goodies are good and the baddies are bad. The book includes all the elements that are touch points for human emotions as well as good dose of modern morality. It is beautifully written with some evocative descriptions and captured (as far as I could tell) the time and place of 1860s America.

It's well written with a great feel for nature, but it's poorly plotted and inconsistent thematically. It's definitely worth reading but doesn't deliver as a narrative.