The Names by Florence Knapp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Bear, Julian or Gordon: What’s in a name?
Cora chooses a name for her newborn son and, on that choice, three possible futures open out. As it happens, all three are grim, though in different ways. The futures of the son, his elder sister, and their mother hinge on that simple choice.
The premise is original, and the writing in general is good, but the book is too short to hold everything that needs to be said. We visit the three main characters every seven years and I found it increasingly difficult to remember who was doing what. Their different character arcs were too divergent, and it ended up, for me, being a book about nine characters, not three.
As to the father, described in the blurb as “cruel”, he is a cypher. We only ever see him from outside, never here his inner monologue, and never hear how an intelligent man can be so nasty.
I was left unsatisfied by reading. Not for me.