Have your tissues ready before you read Chris Cleave's new novel, Gold. At first glance it just seems like a story about two women who are best friends and long time rivals in the world of British cycling, but add a child with cancer and a few deep dark secrets and you'll be racing through this book through a patina of tears and gasps. Okay, that sounded lame. I realize it seems like I'm overstating this, but I really was crying through the last quarter of this book. I also found myself pushing to read faster so I could find out what happens (Ah, just like a bicycle race! Clever, Mr. Cleave!).
Chris Cleave's previous novel, Little Bee, was a huge critical success but I was ambivalent about it. I thought it seemed a little inauthentic, like Chris Cleave doesn't really know what it's like to be an African refugee woman (but, then, it's not like I do either). With Gold, however, I believed that the author not only knew what it was like to train as an Olympic athlete, he also knew what it was like to have a child with cancer, and to be a child with cancer for that matter. In his author's note he mentions a lot of research prior to writing this novel, and it shows. The novel felt real enough that I had to go check on my own daughter several times as she slept just to reassure myself that she was not suffering like the characters in this story.
For more reviews, please visit my blog, CozyLittleBookJournal.
Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this book free from the publisher from NetGalley. I was not obliged to write a favourable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
