Plenty More Fish by Dawn Martin

Intriguing, Repetitive, Underwhelming

Genre: Contemporary Fiction/Family Drama/Themes of addiction

It had come out of nowhere and Chloe was blind-sided by Pete’s actions towards a supposed resolution to a problem that she hadn’t really been aware existed. Even more humiliating was the telephone call from a woman, who she had spent the best part of her time with Pete avoiding, informing her that he would not be returning home and that all communication was to be now bypassed through the legal system. She had of course been aware that her job in particular had kept her from spending time with the family for some while, and trying to juggle that with all the other demands of life, with four teenagers, a dog and a husband, had been difficult. But, she couldn’t comprehend why he hadn’t even discussed it with her. She would just have to pick up the pieces and move on with her life, what choice did she have, and how hard could it be? Maybe she’d even find love again……

I had been following Dawn Martin online for a while but had never actually read any of her books, so I thought I’d give, what I now know to be her debut novel, a read. She refers to it as a memoir, but the fact that there are characters, to my mind, means that it is in fact, written more in the form of a novel, and as such the first thing to strike me was that there was no dialogue. If you write a memoir, it should be in the first person and in the case of an actual memoir, there would clearly be no dialogue because you are telling your story from your point of view. However, because this felt more like a novel, even though I now know it to be true events, I felt that it would have been easier to read, had there been dialogue. I am a big character based reader, I like to get to know and bond with my characters. The characters in this book might have possibly been renamed to protect those involved, and as such I do understand, due to its content, why there is no dialogue. However, after a while it did start feeling slightly monotonous to read with just pages of text.

There were however, times when the descriptive text worked really well, was written very well and even had very effective humour injected into it. The Norman/sprout anecdote made me laugh, as did the description of how the sassy Garfield, a cat belonging to one of Chloe’s dates, reacted when Chloe petted him and she smelt of dog. Also the initial lateness of her first date, John and his appearance. Not to mention the very random Helen Worth (Gail from Coronation Street) fixated Mike!

There was also a lot of background information on the characters, not all of which I felt was necessary for the reader and the change of topic seemed to occur frequently, just as you thought you were getting into, for example, Chloe arriving at one of her date’s houses, there would then be a lot of information on the past of that person. There were times where there were gripping situations, and I am in no way trivialising anything that the main character went through, particularly the main thing she endured, where the elevation of how powerfully it came across would have been I feel, aided by character dialogue but was very clearly harrowing. Emotion and disposition of an individual can be heard through speaking/dialogue, even if it is via an internal monologue as one is reading. By only conveying her character’s thoughts, neither of these things really came across as well as they perhaps could have. Internal dialogue is something that I personally greatly enjoy and I was very disappointed that this was absent.

With all that said, some of the scenarios in which Chloe finds herself, would certainly put me off online dating if I was single, but I have to say that I spent most of the time frustrated with the character of Chloe. Given her profession, destroying all evidence of what had happened to her on her weekend away with Alan, was something I thought that she should have known better not to do, but then I guess when you are in that position, you don’t have the correct presence of mind to do the right thing. I also couldn’t believe that she kept putting herself in the same position repeatedly after that. I felt that she should have been giving her time to her children rather than putting her own needs first, and as it turned out putting herself in harm’s way, even though she had four young individuals who relied on her. Also, because the narrative is written in character’s thoughts when the situations really call for communication, it was annoying not to know how the characters would have reacted and conversed with each other.

It is difficult for me to say how I feel about these ‘characters’ knowing that they represent real people, because I am conscious of the fact that I am really reviewing a memoir and someone’s experiences. The constant and repeated experiences with the various men that Chloe chose, for me, became wearing, and the most intriguing, readable part wasn’t until towards the end of the book, when Claire effectively puts herself in hospital. It was at that point that for the first time, the storyline became gripping waiting for the inevitable fallout of the love triangle between Claire, Mel and Chloe. However, I was disappointed with the ending which to me, stopped abruptly. I do not know if Dawn has written a follow up to this, but if she has I might be tempted to read it, just to find out what happened next, particularly with it being a memoir. I may also read other books that she has produced, if not written in the same format, as this was her first, and I have yet to investigate others.

I have since spoken with the author and she has given her reasons for the lack of dialogue and informed me that her second book is written in a different format (first and third person), and the others have dialogue. I look forward to reading those in due course.