My Temporary Life by Martin Crosbie
My Temporary Life by Martin Crosbie
Summary
The story of Malcolm, an underprivileged Scottish teenager who splits his time between the home of his wayward mother in Canada and Kilmarnock, Scotland, where his devoted father lives. The story documents his growth from a suppressed, bullied boy into a man who strives to find stability and a permanent place to belong.
Review
The pace of the story is ragged, which is perhaps down to an overly-ambitious plot. In an attempt to create a coming-of-age narrative, slow, descriptive, introverted and often repetitive chapters are rounded off by action-packed scenes that feel rushed, as though the writer has used them purely to move the plot on to the next big milestone. The feeling I was being rushed through the chapters worsened towards the end of the book – the protagonist completing what felt like a checklist of life-affirming moments; including a rather out-of-place sex scene – making me feel like the writer got bored of telling the story. The plot was crammed with issue after issue for the characters, causing me to roll my eyes a few times.
Plot inconsistencies are rife, some fairly major: for a family with little to no money, Malcolm does a lot of air travel between Canada and Scotland! The characterisation and the dialogue frustrating, particularly with regard to how inconsistently the author writes in a Scottish dialect. In one scene, dialogue is written as though spoken with a thick accent, and in the next, the same characters converse without it. And although Malcolm was born and bred in Kilmarnock, he doesn’t seem to speak with an accent very much either, let alone think in one.
A serious lack of scene-setting meant that the chapters set in Scotland and the chapters set in Canada became blurred; they both felt the same, and the scenes therefore lacked the atmosphere such high drama requires in order to build suspense. The parts set in Scotland felt over-dramatised and predictable, which, together with the rushed pace, made it feel like an American soap opera.
I also picked up on quite a few grammatical errors, some of which are confusing and off-putting.
Overall, I found this an underwhelming read which lacked substance but tried very hard to achieve it.
★★☆☆☆
Why you’ll like it
You may enjoy reading this if, like Malcom, you have experienced living in two different countries with an unconventional upbringing. You may also like it if you like a plotline that is crammed with drama.
Why you won’t
Inconsistent, poorly-executed plot. Feels rushed. Frustrating dialect changes. Cheesy over-use of the word ‘temporary’ to allude to the title.
