PS I love you by Cecilia Ahern

PS We did not love you!!

“PS I love you” tells the story of a young widow who finds a way through her grief with the help of friends, family and letters from her late husband.    

It was published in 2004, and quickly became a global bestseller, reaching No1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list.  In 2007, it was adapted as a movie starring Hilary Swank. 

The book was a debut novel for author, Cecilia Ahern, whose father is former Irish prime minster, Bertie Ahern.  Ahern was only 21 and had recently completed her degree in Journalism and Media Communications,  when she published "PS I love you" .  Since then, she has published a new novel every year and has now sold 25 million books worldwide, in over 40 countries. 

On Goodreads it currently has an average rating of 4.02 stars based on 316,665 reviews. This excerpt portrays a typically positive review. 

Beautiful. Wonderful. Lovely. A Masterpiece. Heart-warming. Fantastic. Sensational. Emotionally evoking. 

The same level of acclaim is evident on  Amazon with average ratings of 4.4 stars based on 650 customer reviews. 

Despite this fountain of praise, we found it hard to say anything positive about this book.  Clearly we are in a minority ( only 2% of reviews on Goodreads rated this book as low as 1 star) but our honest impression is that this was a painful and tedious read. The plot was OK but poorly developed, the characters were flat and lifeless, the setting immediately forgettable. 

However, these issues were irrelevant in comparison to the writing.  Cliched, clumsy, dull and repetitive, Ahern’s prose seemed to break every writer’s rule and was so consistently bad that it distracted from the story.  

In a quest to understand its charm, we also watched the film. Although the plot, characters and dialogue were much improved, it still missed the mark.   Even Hilary Swank was disappointing. 

As a group, we are often divided in our views about books. On this occasion we were unanimous and so we can at least thank Ahern for achieving an unusual degree of accord!

Fortunately, our culinary experience was more enjoyable. We did not pursue an Irish Bar as featured in the book, instead choosing a traditional Northumberland Inn, the Duke of Wellington

  The service and the food were good, and the cheese souffle was delicious:

But the house salad was rather lacklustre: 

And so to our next read. ..........

Another popular and successful author, but will it be a winner for us?  As we have learned this week, our group doesn’t always agree with the crowd!!