After reading Loitering With Intent and The Abbess of Crewe I was all hyped up on this new (to me) crazy author. I dove into The Bachelors and came up all “eehh.”
It’s not that I’m necessarily against a story about epileptic bachelors, scam artist, spiritualism, seances, unwanted pregnancies, trials, handwriting experts, and planned murders, it’s just that I didn’t care about any of the characters. I kept confusing all the bachelors for the first half of the book, was irritated with the women throughout and never got vested in any of them.
Would I recommend it? No, but I’d still recommend the author. I need to take a bit of a Spark break and read a few other books that have been piling up, (Why do all the inter-library loans come in at once?) but I’ll be back to read her other books for certain.
Behind the Willows 
I’m delighted that someone read this, as it means there’s only one Spark novel left which nobody has yet reviewed (The Mandelbaum Gate) but I’m sorry it didn’t work for you. I want to read it, because it comes in a stream of some of her best work, but I think I need a bit of a Spark break too, before I tackle it! Too many similar characters always confuse me, so I’ll make sure I’m paying a lot of attention when I do try it…
Wow, only one left unreviewed?! Impressive! Hope you have better luck with this one. I’ve a four month old at the moment and most of my reading is done in tiny snippets all day long while feeding and rocking her so paying a lot of attention to a confusing book is a little hard for me right now!