Anne Donovan

Advantages: Strength of setting and emotion, unpredictable storyine, realistic ending
Disadvantages: Some may find the use of Scots offputting

...A touching account of the lives of a Glasgow family, telling the tale of what happens when one member of the family wanders off the beaten path of everyday life, here, Daddy becomes a buddhist but it is easy to relate the events and emotions surrounding his decision to a number of other life choices. I found that this novel spoke to me as a Glaswedgian, but I think that many people would enjoy it, whether they have a particular fondness for the city or have no previous ideas or experience of the place that the characters call home. Anne Donovan's Buddha Da gains its strong sense of setting and much of its powerful emotion from the author's use of Glaswegian Scots throughout, not just confined to direct speech, as many authors find is the only way that they can use Scots for a wider audience. However, Donovan's skill in making... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: An interesting premise, beautifully executed
Disadvantages: Might take a few pages to settle into the lingo

...You can tell from the very first lines that Anne Marie loves her Da. "Ma Da's a nutter. Radio rental. He'd dae anythin for a laugh so he wid; went doon the shops wi a perra knickers on his heid, tellt the wifie next door we'd won the lottery and were flittin to Barbados, that wis daft stuff compared tae whit he's went and done noo. He' turnt intae a Buddhist. Her Da is mental, but it's fun, he's a great Da to have. Not such a great husband maybe, you think, as "Mammy turn roond…and gied him wanny they looks…" The other thing you've noticed by the bottom of the first page is that may not be the easiest book in the world to read. All this dialect is hard going already. So you skip ahead and open a few pages at random. Yes, it is all like that. All the way through. Although not all EXCACTLY like that, because... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: A fscinating insight into someone search for answers - in a most unusual place
Disadvantages: Some people might struggle with the dialect at first

..., but that wis daft stuff compared tae whit he's went and done noo. He's turnt intae a Buddhist." Yes its in dialect - the whole book. The three main narrative voices are all part of the same family and they all speak in this broad Scottish accent. As a fully paid-up member of the southern softies club (I get vertigo if I venture north of Birmingham) this is not an accent I am particularly used to but it doesn't take much effort to get the hang of and once I had done so I found the various narrative voicees much clearer and more distinctive. The three voices mentioned above are Jimmy McKenna, a painter and decorator going on a spiritual journey through Buddhism, his long-suffering wife Liz, who finally rebels when Jimmy adds sex to the long list of things he is denying himself, and their twelve year old daughter Anne-Marie who is going... Read review

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