Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce [audio]

I listened to this novel and at times was quite enjoying it and at others found it a little boring. It's about a woman called Miss Benson who is in search of the practically mythical golden beetle in 1950 and ends up going on a trip halfway around the world in search of it. She takes along with her a rather unlikely companion in the form of Enid Pretty - a chatterbox in a pink suit. It's supposed to be a heart-warming adventure about the friendship between these two women and what they discover about each other and themselves, and I suppose it is. But the pacing seems off and some of its ideas are a little dodgy - the villainous mentally unstable POW Mundick for one. The prose was solid with hints of real beauty, it was just the storyline I was less sure of. And don't get me started on the narrator's voice for Enid (other than that she was great).