The ministry

CONCLUSION
I was so confused about why I had this book - why did I request it on Bookmooch? - that I just looked through my emails to find out if I mooched it for a friend. I discovered I mooched another book I wanted and the moocher wanted two requests and Margaret Drabble seemed worth taking a punt on.
I am finding it a slow read, partly because it is so late and I am so tired before I start reading at present that I often fall asleep after a few pages, The pace is slow, it is not a romping adventure, and while compelling in a strange way I would not call it gripping or exciting.
More later when I get further with it. I need to up my pace as I have another of Cotterill's charming books winging its way from Alderney to me shortly and I have to read and return that one. Oh and until I looked to see if others had reviewed this today I had no idea it was the final part of a trilogy. All to the good. Books should stand alone in my view.
Three or four stars? The writing is very fine, but the cutting back and forward between the stories of a group of people during a particular period left me sometimes searching back to recollect who the current subject was and their relationship to other protagonists.
I am sure a review I read mentioned a surprising or unexpected end with tragedy. I didn't see that as I thought the end was clearly flagged throughout. I enjoyed it but was left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. The book seemed to be part of the 'real life with lots of untied loose ends' genre which may reflect life but is not always the most satisfying literature.
I read "The Radiant Way" a great many years ago, and remember nothing about it. I have never read the second book in the trilogy, so came to this final volume without any real prior knowledge of the characters in it.
I enjoyed it well enough, but probably not enough to make me want to go back and read the first two volumes of the trilogy. There were some powerful passages in it, mostly in connection with Cambodia and the refugees from the horrors visited upon that tragic country by Pol Pot. The following seemed to sum up what little I know of the terrible situation in which so many people in refugee camps must find themselves:
She had watched others around her deal with their memories in this way, and in others. Some, like her daughter Sok Sita, had lost their wits. Some had cauterized the past with rage, and lived off anger and hatred. Some had been arrested as by a flow of burning lava in postures of bowed submission, of cowed despair: and now crawled around, bent and deformed. Some of the young fed off film-star dreams of escape. Playing ping-pong, they chattered of visas and papers that would never come. Some plotted revenge. Some went back across the border to join the resistance. Some lived for the moment, learning camp ways, learning to wheedle and exploit and profit, to scavenge and trade. Even here, there were objects to sell and recycle, there were unexplained arrivals of snakeskin and pig meat and musical instruments. Of late, a new supply of small carvings had begun to appear on the market. A lizard, a fish, a flower, a crocodile: antique or fake, who cared? They fetched a price.