A dud Book

When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant. I had such high hopes based on the description:

• "In the spring of 1946, Evelyn Sert stands on the deck of a ship bound for Palestine. For the twenty-year-old from London, it is a time of adventure and change when all things seem possible. Swept up in the spirited, chaotic churning of her new, strange country, she joins a kibbutz, then moves on to the teeming metropolis of Tel Aviv, to find her own home and a group of friends as eccentric and disparate as the city itself. She falls in love with a man who is not what he seems when she becomes an unwitting spy for a nation fighting to be born. When I Lived in Modern Times is 'an unsentimental coming-of-age story of both a country and a young immigrant . . . that provides an unforgettable glimpse of a time and place rarely observed'."

And because it was the winner of the Orange Prize for fiction. But alas, I was disappointed. 

The writing style was not to my liking; it seemed brusque, it lacked feeling and authenticity. The character's themselves were uninteresting to me. It is a short book, but I never felt the author developed her characters. I didn't much care what was happening in the story because I felt like the characters were strangers instead of friends. I could never picture them or identify with them in any way.    

The main character annoyed me. In part because she was vastly different from myself. I could not identify with her because I barely knew her (bad writing), but also because what I did know of her was opposite to myself in every way! I kept thinking, I would never do that, what id she thinking, why would she go there? It got old for me quickly. 

There was a lot of potential there. The ending wasn't bad actually, but it was a big miss for me. 2 stars would be generous. I would not recommend it.