Gypsy

Beth is a young, high-spirited girl with a talent for fiddling like none have seen before. Beth and her older brother Sam move to America and begin to work there, meeting Jack and Theo. As the story progresses, they emigrate to Alaska, seeking gold and the business the gold rush will bring them. But along with their adventures come loss and despair. The story is exciting and their escapades move the narration along. However, the book feels like a collection of short stories. The individual adventures the characters have could almost be made into separate stories. Although the drama goes up at the appropriate times, it goes down again so far after each spiel that it feels a bit like the end. But then it goes on again with another short story. The long string of short stories seems to be linked together only by a very very slow moving character side-story. Apart from Jack, I felt there wasn't really any character development. Beth remained innocent and naive, Sam remained a cute London boy and Theo remained all too charming for his own good. Sam might have become a little wiser and a little more street smart, but i think that's it. Even then, Jack changed without any proper explanation or 'showing' how and why he changed. Except for perhaps a short 'i changed because of you' that lasted only a few lines, we don't see the gradual change in Jack at all. Suddenly he's chivalrous and shoulders everything. Suddenly he's nice and well-mannered and holds his tongue. Suddenly he transforms into the perfect man. With only a 'for you' to satisfy. The ending was pretty satisfying though. The cliff-hanger/almost-twist was quite well-carried off. It actually made me hold my breath for a while. It was a sweet ending. Sad too, but i thought it was well done. If you're looking for a slightly lighter read, or don't mind all of the above, this is a good book to read. Over-looking its imperfections, it's quite exciting and (somewhat) moving. FROM HERE ON: SPOILER ALERT The side-story is another issue i have with the book. It's really, really, really slow moving. I mean, I get she loves Theo and all but did she have to take so long before she finally realised (or before he finally forced her to realise?) how much of an idiot he is? If it were a little faster perhaps I could have forgiven how irritating it got after a while. When Theo finally left it was almost the end of the book. Then there's the Molly part. After milking the whole I-don't-want-to-leave-you thing for goodness knows how long, Pearse just kills her off. And Beth never talks to Langworthy ever again. The whole first part of the book disappears into a puff of smoke. Any implications or effects Molly or the Langworthys/Edward might have had on Beth don't seem to exist. After drawing out the whole Molly issue two thirds into the book (Beth writes to Molly and Mrs Langworthy) Molly dies and she's never mentioned again. Or at least, not in a significant way.