Sunday, July 27, 2014

Book Review: Charles Williams, Aground (1960)



Aground is the sixteenth Charles Williams novel that I have read, and it is my least favorite. I found the characters flat (even by standards of the genre), and the dialogue was unusually wooden. But my big problem—and this is my problem, I must emphasize—is that I know nothing about boats, and most of the novel’s action is narrated in sentences such as this: “The mainsail was jib-headed, so there was only one halyard.” Had I taken pains to decipher every such sentence using appropriate resources, Aground would have taken me ages to read, and I do not know that I would have enjoyed it any more than I did. Aground’s plot centers around our hero trying to get a yacht ungrounded before the bad guys kill him. If you know about boats, you may love this book. For me, it was just a bad match. Grade: D+

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