Review: A Five Year Sentence by Bernice Rubens

My Interest

In my introductory post to this year’s Reading Wales event, hosted by Paula at The Book Jotter, I optimistically listed two classics (click the linked text on “two classics” to read which ones) that I hoped to read. One went nowhere in print, the other nowhere on audio! One had to do with medicine and with the almost daily trips to first the hospital and now a nursing rehab to visit my Mom, that was just not what I needed this year. So, Plan B. With a little Googling I found a short, seemingly “lite” book for this year. I enjoy this event so didn’t want to read nothing. Plus, the author

The Story

“Miss Hawkins,” never “Jean,” is retires from the factory where she has worked since leaving the orphanage at age 14. She has made no friends. She lives alone in the flat she prudently bought during the risky war years. Her retirement gift is a Five Year Diary book. This gift ends what I will term her “Man Called Ove plan”. She is frugal. She cannot waste the diary. She must get the five years use of it. So each day she sets herself a task that is out of her ordinary rut or niche of life. She also occasionally has dinner with the man in her mirror whom she calls Maurice!

Elsewhere in the same town, Brian is of similar age and lives as the hen-pecked son of a terrible, overbearing old mother. When he and Miss Hawkins meet, both come to see a way to expand their lives, but not in an ordinary way. Brian has figured out a great “escape” from his life, but is it the escape Miss Hawkins wants him to take? What does vengeful knitting have to do with all of this?

My Thoughts

The style of the book is long, long paragraphs that made me want to skip a lot! In among them though is the story and the characters’ back stories. Miss Hawkins was an orphan with a “Matron” over her that made a life-long impression and not in a good way.

This was an odd book–odd like Muriel Sparks’ The Driver’s Seat was odd.

The author, Bernice Rubens was the first woman to win the Booker Prize, so of course she can tell a story!

My Verdict

3.0

A Five Year Sentence by Bernice Rubens