Review: Christopher Wild by Kathe Koja

..... he lives by his pen, his wit, his nerves, his temper, his ambitions, his appetites, 

his ability to manoeuvre on several fields at once, keeping free of the floods that wash others away .....

Synopsis: Three lives. One man. 

Marlowe lives three different lives in this story, each time awakening in an dark alley, living a new life. I am afraid that for me, the narrative did not work; it was incoherent and disjointed (each paragraph begins with a dash symbol). I could barely follow the dialogue - was it all in his head or was he actually speaking the words aloud (hint: all dialogue is in italics), and thus I struggled at times to work out who was actually narrating the stories.

For me personally, the character portrayal, the editing and punctuation (or lack thereof), writing style and storytelling put the author firmly on the back foot with me. Marlowe was a complex character - poet, spy, heretic - there is so much that you could do with him in a fictional context.

And as much as I love Marlowe, I was not a fan of this, and sadly, I would not recommend it.