Official Review: Letters from a Shuttered Country
Posted: 31 Aug 2020, 12:23
[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Letters from a Shuttered Country" by Chris Steed.]
Letters from a Shuttered Country, written by Chris Steed, is a collection of interconnected short stories about life in isolation during the COVID-19 crisis. The reader follows Bill, a middle-aged white man, who, at the urging of his adopted daughter Katie, reconnects with his group of friends via email and Zoom. As these friendships are being reforged, Bill and his friends must finally face the monsters in their shared past, in order to move on to live more fulfilling lives.
At just 200 pages long, Steed’s debut novel is a very short read. However, there are a number of glaring flaws present, which negatively affected my reading experience. Hence, before I get into the nitty-gritty details, I will first rate Letters from a Shuttered Country 1 out of 4 stars.
To begin, the book seems very much like a rough first draft; the writing was not properly formatted and lacked necessary signposting, making it difficult to tell where one story ended and where the next one started, which caused much confusion. In addition, there were countless grammar and punctuation errors, such as a lack of quotation marks to indicate dialogue, missing commas, and spelling errors. These mistakes massively reduced reading comprehension, flow and clarity. This was really exasperating, as the obvious lack of editing contributed to the overall poor impression of the novel being extremely unready for publication.
More importantly, the characters were undeveloped, especially the women. Most of the female characters were defined with respect to their relationships with the other male characters. For example, whilst Katie has a significant amount of screen time, what is mentioned most often is Katie’s ex-boyfriend sending her revenge porn, which has nothing to do with the storyline whatsoever.
Additionally, Steed compares his book to a modern-day version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. For the people who are unfamiliar with Chaucer’s work, it is a profound piece of social commentary (in the form of twenty-four interlocking stories) on medieval society and culture. The Canterbury Tales is also told from a wide variety of social-class perspectives. In line with Chaucer’s form, Letters from a Shuttered Country also endeavours to cover a range of themes to provide critical insight into society’s failings. In other words, Steed hopes that his readers will be able to become better people, in order for society as a whole to progress.
However, most attempts at providing said critical insight were merely superficial, if not shoddily executed. To illustrate, with regard to the issue of race, Bill brings up George Floyd as an example of why racism needs to be eradicated. The author had intended Bill’s observation – that the presence of racism is one of society’s greatest failings – to be enlightening, but the fact is that this observation is both regrettably obvious and very far from the groundbreaking realisation that the author wanted it to be. Furthermore, given that Bill is a white man, his claim about understanding what racial discrimination feels like for people of colour is, unfortunately, both patronising and arrogant. Simply put, this attempt at racial discourse only promotes optical allyship, not anti-racism.
Still, there are some positive points. For one, I enjoyed the fact that the stories were set in a variety of places, such as London and Israel, as this provided refreshing changes of perspective and kept my interest in the book. Nonetheless, what is most important now is for Steed to rework his draft, to ensure that what he wants to get across to his reader is insightful, nuanced, and powerful. Much work has to be done before Letters from a Shuttered Country is ready for publication, and I do encourage Steed to read more opinion pieces about life during the COVID-19 crisis from as many social-class perspectives as possible. Therefore, I am unable to bring myself to recommend it to anyone, unless they have a powerful interest in narratives regarding life during lockdown. For those who are sensitive, there are a few non-explicit references to abortion, suicide, and adultery.
******
Letters from a Shuttered Country
View: on Bookshelves
Letters from a Shuttered Country, written by Chris Steed, is a collection of interconnected short stories about life in isolation during the COVID-19 crisis. The reader follows Bill, a middle-aged white man, who, at the urging of his adopted daughter Katie, reconnects with his group of friends via email and Zoom. As these friendships are being reforged, Bill and his friends must finally face the monsters in their shared past, in order to move on to live more fulfilling lives.
At just 200 pages long, Steed’s debut novel is a very short read. However, there are a number of glaring flaws present, which negatively affected my reading experience. Hence, before I get into the nitty-gritty details, I will first rate Letters from a Shuttered Country 1 out of 4 stars.
To begin, the book seems very much like a rough first draft; the writing was not properly formatted and lacked necessary signposting, making it difficult to tell where one story ended and where the next one started, which caused much confusion. In addition, there were countless grammar and punctuation errors, such as a lack of quotation marks to indicate dialogue, missing commas, and spelling errors. These mistakes massively reduced reading comprehension, flow and clarity. This was really exasperating, as the obvious lack of editing contributed to the overall poor impression of the novel being extremely unready for publication.
More importantly, the characters were undeveloped, especially the women. Most of the female characters were defined with respect to their relationships with the other male characters. For example, whilst Katie has a significant amount of screen time, what is mentioned most often is Katie’s ex-boyfriend sending her revenge porn, which has nothing to do with the storyline whatsoever.
Additionally, Steed compares his book to a modern-day version of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. For the people who are unfamiliar with Chaucer’s work, it is a profound piece of social commentary (in the form of twenty-four interlocking stories) on medieval society and culture. The Canterbury Tales is also told from a wide variety of social-class perspectives. In line with Chaucer’s form, Letters from a Shuttered Country also endeavours to cover a range of themes to provide critical insight into society’s failings. In other words, Steed hopes that his readers will be able to become better people, in order for society as a whole to progress.
However, most attempts at providing said critical insight were merely superficial, if not shoddily executed. To illustrate, with regard to the issue of race, Bill brings up George Floyd as an example of why racism needs to be eradicated. The author had intended Bill’s observation – that the presence of racism is one of society’s greatest failings – to be enlightening, but the fact is that this observation is both regrettably obvious and very far from the groundbreaking realisation that the author wanted it to be. Furthermore, given that Bill is a white man, his claim about understanding what racial discrimination feels like for people of colour is, unfortunately, both patronising and arrogant. Simply put, this attempt at racial discourse only promotes optical allyship, not anti-racism.
Still, there are some positive points. For one, I enjoyed the fact that the stories were set in a variety of places, such as London and Israel, as this provided refreshing changes of perspective and kept my interest in the book. Nonetheless, what is most important now is for Steed to rework his draft, to ensure that what he wants to get across to his reader is insightful, nuanced, and powerful. Much work has to be done before Letters from a Shuttered Country is ready for publication, and I do encourage Steed to read more opinion pieces about life during the COVID-19 crisis from as many social-class perspectives as possible. Therefore, I am unable to bring myself to recommend it to anyone, unless they have a powerful interest in narratives regarding life during lockdown. For those who are sensitive, there are a few non-explicit references to abortion, suicide, and adultery.
******
Letters from a Shuttered Country
View: on Bookshelves
