Miraculously, Finn avoids every cliché about first- versus third-world problems. In this richly textured, intricately plotted novel, she assures us that heartbreak has the same shape everywhere ... The Gloaming is chillingly cinematic in contrasting East Africa’s exquisite landscape with the region’s human needs ... delivers a searing taxonomy of loss, and shows the way it leads to a cycle of violence.
The structure of the book is both effective and frustrating, drawing out tension and constructing Pilgrim’s headspace as frantic and scattered ... It’s a bit of a drag when a tense moment is undercut by the end of a chapter and a 5,000-mile geographical shift, and it is hard to see the bigger picture while navigating the early sections ... What makes The Gloaming such a wonderful book is the way Finn plays with these elements ... Finn is prying at what it means to be guilty or innocent, not in a court but in the world and in one’s own head.
...relentless, hard to take and all the better for it ... Melanie Finn does a fine job of holding off the details until we have spent a little time with her shattered narrator ... there’s an impressive intensity and urgency as Pilgrim tells her sorry story. At first. Unfortunately, Melanie Finn hasn’t quite managed to keep her hand on the wheel. After a while, too many coincidences and contrivances creep in. It starts to feel too much ... After the taut opening, it all starts to feel a little loose and directionless.
...[a] deeply satisfying second novel ... Ms. Finn is a remarkably confident and supple storyteller. She hops through time and between Switzerland and Africa in brief chapters, never losing the reader or her own footing along the way ... Her portrait of Africa feels subtle and lived-in, never false or hokey ... deserves major attention.
...despite a somewhat deflated conclusion, offers an engaging take on redemption narratives ... despite the somewhat rambling nature of her travels, Pilgrim’s narrative grabs the reader. So it’s a shock when, a little over halfway though her novel, Finn abandons her protagonist’s first-person, diary-like chapters to spend the rest of her book looking at the world through the eyes of those Pilgrim meets ... it’s hard to tell if this structural decision truly pays off. Yet there’s enough allurement throughout The Gloaming to stave off boredom. This is a pure example of a literary page-turner.
