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Bridget Collins: The Binding 3 stars

Emmett Farmer is a binder’s apprentice. His job is to hand-craft beautiful books and, within …

Compelling but unpleasant

3 stars

Read this in a single sitting, staying up until 4am to complete it, and the plot and thrust of the novel have stuck to me like clay, but can't say I enjoyed it. Reads like three very different books sutchered together. The first third is genuinely great, but gives way to something altogether murkier, manipulating the reader. A lot of gratuitous unpleasantness, ostensibly intended as – what? – class commentary, but in a way that felt, to me, at least, like writerly laziness.