Our Lady of the Serpents

Petri Harbouri

Sometimes you just get unlucky in your reading choices. Right on the heels of Habe's execrable Off Limits, I picked up Harbouri's slightly less execrable, but no less boring, Our Lady of the Serpents. Plot: rich woman on a remote Greek island hires a British expatriate to work in her garden. There is some mystery surrounding the death of her husband and whether she takes her succession of gardeners as lovers, firing them when she's worn them out. You will eventually realize that you couldn't care less whether said rich woman killed her husband, nor whether she and the newest in her string of gardeners will end up bumpin' uglies. My most pressing thought during the final few pages of my attempt at this novel was how quickly I could feed it to the dustbunnies. Unfortunately, thanks to much of my recent reading, they are far better fed than they have been in years. Hopefully I'll manage to find something decent next time out. (zero)