I finished reading Handful of Dust two nights ago. It's about a woman who has an affair with a man, and this affair's effect on the woman, the man, and the husband. Though the story is told by a partially-omniscient third person narrator, the point of view of the narrator switches around a lot through the book. It opens with John Beaver, switches briefly through his mother, then goes to Brenda Last, then Tony Last. The end switches between all of them more and more quickly. It's an interesting device and I think it works pretty well for this type of book.

The problem was that I didn't find Brenda or John at all compelling. I have very little sympathy for a woman who sleeps around on her husband, tries to cheat him out of a lot of money during the divorce, and then complains about how poor she is when he manages to stop her from cheating him by dumb luck. John is just sort of a loser who obviously doesn't give a damn about Brenda.

Tony seemed like a nice enough guy, but he is passive almost throughout the book (he is really active only once). He isn't strong enough to serve as the hero. I suspect we're supposed to see Brenda as the hero, but I just can't like her enough to do that. But the book had a strong plot with a couple of unexpected twists, and I enjoyed it.