Review: Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg

I picked this book up in my most recent library haul, because I had seen it last year I believe, in a number of videos on Booktube. It had been nominated for the Man Booker Prize in 2015. So maybe it was in 2015 I saw it on Booktube…time flies!

This is about a woman who loses her family in a freak accident on the eve of her daughter’s wedding. Her boyfriend, her ex-husband, her daughter and her soon to be son-in-law all die in a fire caused by a gas explosion. The woman, June, finds it difficult to cope and almost immediately after the funerals she picks up and leaves in her car with no luggage and no plan. 

Meanwhile we follow the rest of the inhabitants in the small town where tragedy struck, who all seem to be connected to the deceased in some way or other. Friends and family of course, but also the caterer and the florist for the wedding. 

We slowly unravel the backstories of a number of the main characters and discover what led to the explosion. We get a feel for how quickly gossip can settle what happened with no regard for the actual truth, but mostly I found that this book was just a number of people reminiscing about their past. 

In my haul I did say that this could be either touching or dreary and I found it to be leaning more towards dreary. As I said above I found it to be a lot of people, some of them minor characters, reflecting on their past, without anything really coming of it. I don’t know, this just seemed a bit unstructured to me. There was definitely *some* movement along a plotline, but it was very slow and jerky, and it seemed like the plot was unimportant compared to the reflections of all the characters. 

I read it in translation and I found the writing rather clunky sometimes. I don’t know if that was the author or the translator, but it was annoying. There was also a lot of jumping in time. Usually it would become clear pretty quick where we were in time, but a few times it confused me, and in general I found it unnecessary to jump around that much. 

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.