Another from Sara Gruen: Not Elephants or Apes but Monsters

Sara Gruen's novel Water for Elephants was a big enough success to have drawn me to read two more of her books. I'm tempted to give her a rest. Ape House was just silly and improbably (in my not-exactly-humble opinion). I was encouraged to read At the Water's Edge, and the Loch Ness monster angle intrigued me. The problem: I didn't like the characters.

After the sad little prologue in which a woman loses a baby and gets (false) news that her husband has been killed in the war, so she pulls a Virginia Woolf, the main characters are introduced--Maddie, a young bride married to Ellis, the son of a wealthy family, but with no money, skills, or job of his own. They are constantly in the company of Ellis' best friend Hank who (spoiler alert) lost Maddie to his friend in a coin toss.

Set in 1944, the characters barely register the effect of World War II on others. Shaming the family by their drunken revelry at a high profile party, the two men convince Maddie to come with them to Scotland to disprove charges that Ellis' father pulled a Loch Ness hoax years before.  The three take incredible risks traveling in waters where German submarines lurk. Once they arrive at the inn where they lodge, the young men behaving boorishly. Gruen allows poor neglected Maddie to evolve as she sees her husband and his friend through the eyes of the locals they scorn and treat as servants.

The plot developments seemed just too contrived for my liking. Even the justice meted out to poor foolish Ellis was far too convenient. At least there were no apes.

Another from Sara Gruen: Not Elephants or Apes but Monsters