Throwback Thursday: Josephine’s Book Edition

Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch.

It's (Throwback) Thursday! Let’s talk about Ruta Sepetys and Between Shades of Gray.

I read this in the summer of 2011. Ian and I were on holiday in Cornwall, staying in a beach hut style cottage and I started this book on the beach at St Ives and finished in my beach hut bed whilst Ian read a car magazine beside me. I seem to recall we drank wine and ate Maltesers and it would have been so lovely had this book not crushed my soul. I got about three quarters of the way through, said to Ian ‘I think I’m sad,’ and promptly burst into tears. Like, I was actually sobbing. We're talking proper ugly crying here people, the real deal.

The book is about, in a nutshell, Siberian work camps in WWII and it’s really freaking brutal.

It’s also exceptionally well written.

This is WWII like I’d never really seen before, and I hated myself for that. I never really knew that any of this terrible horrible stuff even happened. You just don’t hear about it the same as you do say, the Holocaust, or at least I never had. You think about WWII and you think about Hitler and the mass genocide of the Jews, but this, the millions of people that were killed by Stalin and his men, it’s kind of glossed over. We’d touched on it briefly at school, and I knew Stalin was a total dickwad, but the atrocities portrayed in Between Shades of Gray, (which, fitting title is fitting, as a by the by because this book is all about varying shades of gray - good people doing shitty things and random acts of kindness from total bastards) those atrocities I had little idea about. 

& that ignorance left me feeling disturbed and guilty and somehow humbled. 

That’s the thing I think: that this might be a work of ‘fiction’ but at the same time it’s totally not. It’s not. These things happened. It’s part of our history, and what the hell is there that feels like a sucker-punch in quite the same way as knowing that? That letting people freeze to death in huts they built themselves whilst enjoying a glass of whiskey by a fire is a thing that happened? That it's only one in a too long list of inhuman things that happened to innocent people.

Reading this book made me angry, it made my chest physically hurt – breathing in, filling my lungs, at some points hurt – it broke my heart. Not just the brutality of it either, but the hope; each and every smile made my eyes water, each joke made me want to cry, each tiny act of kindness felt like a knife wound and the love story, Lina and Andrius. Jesus God. I swear. I don’t know if it made me hurt more or less.

Even thinking about it now kind of makes me want to cry a little bit.

And yet. And yet. 

I could not put it down. I swear. I couldn’t stop reading.

Here’s the thing. This book is not a nice book. Bittersweet, that’s the word: it will not fill you with any kind of joy, really (although, that said there are moments that shine like a beacon in the darkness, like the brightest of stars in the night sky)   It will, instead, smash your heart into millions of tiny little pieces.

‘Why the hell,’ I hear you (especially you, Helen. You are particularly loud. I am a mystery to you, I know.) ‘would I want to read a book that's going make me so sad?’

You want to read it because whilst it’s not pretty, it is beautiful. And it will change you. And it matters. You need to read it, you do, because I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that it is phenomenal, but, (and this is very important) you need to read it prepared for what it will make you feel.

Review: The Life I Left Behind

I’ve always kind of liked a good thriller, now and then.  Once upon a time, actually, I’d read little else, kind of addicted to the thudthudthud of my chest as I turned pages in a hurry, devouring words and holding my breath, safe in the confines of my own home.

These days I read a lot less of the old thriller; I have to be in the mood for a book that gives me that familiar panicky feeling, for twists and turns that leave me gasping.  

I must’ve been in that kind of a mood then, this week, because I couldn’t put Colette Mcbeth’s The Life I Left Behind down. On the whole, it was a riveting read, and the last 15 percent or so (I read this on my Kindle) had me turning the pages like a crazy person; that thudthudthud I mentioned? The climax of this book gave me that feeling in spades. The premise is interesting, the characters – for the most part at least – vivid and well crafted, and the whole thing unravels at that sort of pace that keeps you on the edge of your seat, skipping meals and frantically speed-reading towards a conclusion that really is pretty damn satisfying.

This is the story of two crimes and interestingly, the narrative of the novel is split between three main characters – Melody, the victim of an attack 6 years ago that left her in a coma and now suffering from poorly disguised PTSD; Eve, who has just been killed – crime number two - possibly by the same person who attacked Melody years ago (yep, we’re hearing from a dead person here, which in and of itself is a pretty neat twist and works better than you might imagine) and Victoria, a police officer who worked on Melody’s case and is the lead on Eve’s.

I could have done without Victoria’s POV if I’m honest. There wasn’t much of it, just a chapter here and a chapter there which meant I didn’t quite get in her head, and there wasn’t enough of the whole police work (which usually I love) to hook me in, and so I was reading her chapters and counting the pages til I was back with Melody (who is rediscovering herself and reclaiming her life in the wake of Eve’s murder, a clever and interesting arc) or Eve (who has been investigating Melody’s attack in the wake of the guy who was convicted being released from prison and who may have been murdered because of it) both of whom I really liked, for entirely different reasons. Eve is an interesting narrator, her investigation into Melody’s attack thorough and intelligent and the way the intricacies of the story are revealed through Eve’s eyes, either via the research she leaves behind before her murder, or her recounting of her story alongside the investigation into her own death is fascinating.

As for Melody, she’s a great example of how a person is not always all they appear to be on the surface. Melody has an inner strength that even she didn’t know she had and when everybody – herself included – expects her to fall apart upon learning the man convicted of attacking her has been released from prison and is possibly back to his old (murderous) tricks, Melody does the opposite. What everybody thought would break her actually saves her, kind of, and watching her take back her life made for a very satisfying read

If I had to pick out a flaw, then I’d go with this: I kind of wish the secondary characters had been a little more fleshed out, particularly Melody’s fiancé Sam who seemed to undergo a personality transplant about a third of the way in that made me blink a little in confusion. The thing with books like these is that most of the times the supporting cast is just as important as the protagonist(s) and it can be just a tiny bit frustrating if you feel like they’re not given much attention until the chapter they star in. That’s a minor niggle though, because on the whole I really liked this book. The prologue was excellent and grabbed me from the get go; the clever way in which the threads of the story are woven together delighted me; and the ending was exactly how the ending to a good thriller should be.

Throwback Thursday: Josephine’s Book Edition

I made the most delicious tea last night, all smoked cod and beans and cheese and yumminess. It was Nigella inspired, obvs, but this is me, and I do thins thing where I want to cook the thing but don’t have the ingredients required to cook the thing and so I just swap them out for whatever I have in the cupboard.

Also, Nigella’s version of this meal does not involve any kind of topping with cheese and grilling. However, why would you not? What savoury dish is not made better by topping with cheese and grilling?

So, I made it, and it was lush and I was super happy. Ian was less so, but it was always going to be hit and miss with him: he’s not so keen on things like that. He hates gnocchi, and will only eat risotto under sufferance, (which is a shame as I could eat both of those things for ever and not get fed up) and so I kind of knew that a meal that was mostly haricot beans and a bit of fish wasn’t going to fill him with joy. & why I have decided this is a thing to blog about I have no idea.

I still haven’t finished the Bill Bryson – although I am loving it. Seriously, so good. The thing is, though, is that it’s the kind of book that you can just dip in and out of and there are a couple of books that I got from Netgalley that I need to read sharpish, so last night (after the smoked cod deliciousness) I took myself off to bed with fruit pastilles and a glass of wine and started to read The Life I Left Behind. I’m only about a quarter of the way behind, but so far so good. I am intrigued, which is kind of the point, and it looks like being a super quick read so I should still be able to finish Bryson by the end of the month.

Also, today is Thursday (which you know already, but bear with me as I do have a point…) and various social media websites seem to run with a thing called ‘Throwback Thursday’ or (#TBT if you tweet or Instagram), whereby people post content, usually photos, relating to something they’ve done or seen in the past. Well, I thought to myself whilst pondering on the fact that updating more regularly was one of my New Year’s Resolutions, why not jump on that bandwagon? Everyone loves a little bit of nostalgia do they not, and I love talking about books I have read and liked and so here we go – Throwback Thursday: Josephine’s Book Edition.

I read this week that Steve Toltz has a new book out later this year, a fact that delights me, and so what better place to go back to this Thursday than 2010,  and Toltz’s debut novel A Fraction of the Whole (first published in 2008.)

You want to know why I like it don’t you? I like it, mostly, because it’s really excellently written. It also contains one of my favourite quotes of ever.

I’ll teach you how to decipher all the confused faces by closing your eyes & how to cringe when someone says the words ‘your generation’. I will teach you how not to demonise your enemies & how to make yourself unappetising when the hordes turn up to eat you. I’ll teach you how to yell with your mouth closed & how to steal happiness & how the only real joy is singing yourself hoarse & nude girls & how never to eat in an empty restaurant & how not to leave the windows of your heart open when it looks like rain & how everyone has a stump where something necessary was amputated. I’ll teach you how to know what’s missing

SEDUCE ME WITH PRETTY WORDS.

So, what’s it about?

From Goodreads:

Most of his life, Jasper Dean couldn’t decide whether to pity, hate, love, or murder his certifiably paranoid father, Martin, a man who overanalyzed anything and everything and imparted his self-garnered wisdom to his only son. But now that Martin is dead, Jasper can fully reflect on the crackpot who raised him in intellectual captivity, and what he realizes is that, for all its lunacy, theirs was a grand adventure.
As he recollects the events that led to his father’s demise, Jasper recounts a boyhood of outrageous schemes and shocking discoveries—about his infamous outlaw uncle Terry, his mysteriously absent European mother, and Martin’s constant losing battle to make a lasting mark on the world he so disdains. It’s a story that takes them from the Australian bush to the cafes of bohemian Paris, from the Thai jungle to strip clubs, asylums, labyrinths, and criminal lairs, and from the highs of first love to the lows of failed ambition. The result is a rollicking rollercoaster ride from obscurity to infamy, and the moving, memorable story of a father and son whose spiritual symmetry transcends all their many shortcomings.
A Fraction of the Whole is an uproarious indictment of the modern world and its mores and the epic debut of the blisteringly funny and talented Steve Toltz.

This book is excellent. It’s long, at over 700 pages in my paperback copy, but it doesn’t feel long, it’s fast-paced and witty and sharp. There’s a remarkably short list of characters and yet still an awful lot going on – there is nothing in that whole 700+ pages that you could get away with skipping, it’s all brilliant and it’s all relevant.  At times it’s fairly harrowing and Toltz tackles some pretty heavy subjects with an enviable skill (another of those books that leaves me asking, ‘how do I words?’), but it also made me laugh out loud and I remember being a little bit blown away that this was Toltz’s first novel. It’s pretty impressive, I think to write a book that touches your readers on a deep level, a fundamental level, to write an unlikely tale of tragedy and yet still manage to pepper it with a sharp wit. There’s something about the writing that feels kind of effortless, like, if you smile or even laugh, that it’s not because Toltz was trying to be funny, it’s just that he naturally kind of is. It’s that kind of humour and this is that kind of story – life is shit sometimes and bad stuff happens sometimes and sometimes its really sort of hard, like when you’re having the worst day ever and out of the blue something happens that has you laughing even though you’re wound tight as a spring inside; a bad day doesn’t stop the good stuff being good. Not always. 

Basically, it’s just a really really excellent read and I am so excited for Quicksand.

I couldn't think of anything other than her and the components of her. For example, her red hair. But was I so primitive I let myself be bewitched by hair? I mean, really. Hair! It's just hair! Everyone has it! She puts it up, she lets it down. So what? And why did all the other parts of her have me wheezing with delight? I mean, who hasn't got a back, or a belly, or armpits? This whole finicky obsession serves to humiliate me even as I write it, sure, but I suppose it isn't that abnormal. That's what first love is all about. What happens is you meet a love object and immediately a hole inside you starts aching, the hole that is always there but you don't notice until someone comes along, plugs it up, and then runs away with the plug.

And that’s that. Throwback Thursday. I wonder if I’ll remember to do it again next week….?

Top Ten Reads of 2014

I think I read too many good books last year. 

No really, I think I did. I think this because I have been really struggling to choose my Top 5 books of the year. I’ve been mulling it over for like, a week, which maybe I’m taking the whole thing just a little bit too seriously, but still. 
After a week of mulling (both wine and my thoughts because if you can't do that when you're off work for the holidays then what, really, is even the point?) I have come to the following conclusion: of the books I read last year it is impossible to choose just 5, and so since this is my blog and I make my own rules I give you my Top 10 books of 2014 instead. Stop it, I know, I know, but really I can’t narrow it down. I’ve been trying.

I’ll start with The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender which is so lovely that it kind of makes me want to cry a little bit. It’s a gorgeous gorgeous book, a blend of the certain and the impossible and prose so lovely that it makes you want to read it forever. I talk about it in more detail here.

“By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane.

If she were to drink it, she'd drown.”

Then there'sThe Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, the companion to the marvellous The Unlikley Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, (again, I blogged about this here) Queenie’s story is wonderfully poignant and I am so glad I read it. I urge you all, if you haven’t already, to acquaint yourselves with Queenie and Harold.

From the other side of the door came a hoot of laughter. ‘Fuck me. I’ve won a camper van!’ The laughter was followed by a dour Scottish voice: ‘You have not read the small print. She has not read the small print.’

I also really loved Cassandra Parkin’s The Summer We All Ran Away, which really is very well written as well as being a super story. Loved it.. 
(When nineteen year old Davey finds himself drunk, beaten and alone, he is rescued by the oddly-assorted inhabitants of an abandoned and beautiful house in the West Country. Their only condition for letting him join them is that he asks them no questions.
More than thirty years ago in that same house, burned-out rock star Jack Laker writes a ground-breaking comeback album, and abandons the girl who saved his life to embark on a doomed and passionate romance with a young actress. His attempt to escape his destructive lifestyle leads to deceit, debauchery and even murder.
As Davey and his fellow housemate Priss try to uncover the secrets of the house's inhabitants, both past and present, it becomes clear that the five strangers have all been drawn there by the events and the music of that long-ago summer.)
One of the best reads of last year, for sure, I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough.

Things I like: circuses and fairytales. Oh hello there then, The Night Circus, let’s be friends. 
And we are friends. 
I lovedlovedloved this book. A circus that only opens at night and a fierce competition between two young magicians – what’s not to love? This is an extremely visual book, which I loved, I also loved the story and the narration and the whole shebang. (I love when I get to use words like ‘shebang.’) It has a kind of Niffenegger feel to it almost, in the way it sweeps you under it’s wing and takes you on this utterly implausible journey that feels as real as anything you ever felt before. It spans a decade in time and it explores people and love and pain in such detail, but more than that it’s a really good book about a circus.

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case

I talk about More Than This here:  What you really need to know for right now is that this book is excellent and you should read it.


THE BOOKSHOP BOOK. If I was forced at knife point or under sleep deprivation torture or some such, to choose only one book from last year then this is the book I would choose. I still don’t know quite what to say other than this book makes me ridiculously ridiculously happy. I STILL KIND OF JUST WANT TO KEYSMASH. Is it weird to fangirl over one of my best pals? I don’t even care. THIS BOOK YOU GUYS.

The Girl With All the Gifts is one of those books that I likely wouldn’t ever have stumbled on were it not for Jen, and that utterly blew me away. It’s so good. Really really really excellent. I like that I went into it knowing nothing, which makes me not want to give away too much information for anybody that it yet to read it, but seriously. I read this in the summer and I am still not over it. This is what excellent looks like.

Melanie thinks: when your dreams come true, your true has moved. You've already stopped being the person who had the dreams, so it feels more like a weird echo of something that already happened to you a long time ago.

Oh, Love, Nina, how I love you. This book, made up entirely of actual letters that Nina Stibbe wrote to her sister in the 80’s is a rare gem. I loved it so much more than I anticipated doing. It’s just…it’s delightful, it’s matter of fact and honest and so funny, and nothing happens really: it’s just the day to day goings on of a day to day family. Just thinking about it now makes me want to read it again, which is the sign of something good, wouldn’t you say? I talk about Love, Nina in more detail in this post

I am in serious book love with A Song for Issy Bradley, and having met Carys Bray last year can attest that she is as lovely as her book. I devoured it in an afternoon, it made me cry (lots of tears oh my word) and it made me laugh and it’s really just a beautiful beautiful look at what it means to be a family. It’s the kind of book you can’t read fast enough and that leaves you wanting to sit back and just feel.

Anyone can be brave for five minutes or an hour or two. The bravery no one talks about is the hardest bravery of all. When you get up in the morning even though you'd rather be dead, that's brave.

I want to be friends with Sarah Hensaw. Read The Bookshop That Floated Away and you’ll see why. I don’t like to throw around the ‘perfect’ word really, but if I thought I might use it, then it just might be here. So much happiness in one fabulously eccentric little book.

The 2015 Book Challenge

Happy New Year blogosphere!

Somehow it always comes as a kind of surprise to me, the passing of time. I mean, I'm aware that it is passing, I just never expect it to pass as fast as it does and I feel like I've barely made any New Year's Resolutions before its December 31st all over again.
I am totally the 'oooh doesn't time fly' kind of a cliche. It's a problem that I don't know quite how to solve.

I'm making resolutions this year, as I do every year, but am still mulling them over so if you're looking for a blog post on how I plan to improve my life in 2015, well, this isn't it.

What this is, instead, is a post whereby I declare my pals to be absolute diamonds. Seriously, I must not have hit the snooze button on the day friends were handed out because mine are so excellent I can only have been first in line. (I've hit the snooze button every day since though. Waking up in a morning? Totally not my thing.)

The reason for my praising their collective excellence today, is that I received some excellent Christmas gifts, like for example the bag given to me by my BFF, that is upcycled from an actual copy of Alice in Wonderland (Those who know me like she so obviously does, know is The Book. I own more copies of it than is probably fine, I have no idea how to begin to care about that.)

A bag, made of Alice.

I'm telling you, so much pretty. I made some weird kind of squealing noise when I unwrapped it. So much pretty.

It's not the only truly excellent gift I got though (I told you, front of the line) and this one, from my pal Sarah, is one that you're going to hear a lot about this year.

Sarah got me a ribbon tied pile of sealed envelopes -  one for each month, a handful (7 actually) marked ICE - and a book.

She's set me, as she also seems to know me rather well, a book challenge! How marvellous is that!?
I don't know much about how it's going to work out, other than that each envelope contains a challenge for that month, I'm not allowed to re-read, and the book for January is Bill Bryson's 'One Summer' which I am RIDICULOUSLY excited about because Jazz Age America people: the roaring twenties. Al Capone and prohibition and the Flappers and talking movies and Atlantic flights and all that, well, jazz!
When people ask me, as people do, what decade I'd choose to live in, if it were in fact a choice, then pretty much every time I find myself thinking 'the twenties.'
I mean, there are other periods that interest me, others times I think I'd fit in with quite well, and perhaps I've just over read Fitzgerald (can you over read Fitzgerald?) but there's something about the twenties that just appeals to me. Needless to say, I cannot wait to read this book and I cannot wait to see where the rest of this challenge will take me.

I'll tag all the related posts with 'the 2015 book challenge' if you're interested - which well, it's a book challenge. Why would you not be! For now though I can't stay and chat; I have 600 pages of Bryson to read...

chasers of the light

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon, quite by accident, a poetry collection by Richard Siken titled 'Crush.' It shattered me into tiny pieces; it left me wondering how I ever got by before it; it made me feel so very many things. A copy of it lives by my bed. I loved it like I have never loved a poetry collection before and like I never expected to again.

And then I read 'Chasers of the Light.' 

Wow. Talk about feeling sucker-punched. This book is seriously beautiful. It amazes me, always amazes me, when people can use so few words to make me feel so much and this book made me feel SO MUCH.

I knew I would love it if I'm honest; it wasn't quite as out of the blue as my love affair with Siken. I'm familiar with Tyler Knott Gregson's work 'from the Internet' - I check his tumblr regularly and follow him on Pinterest. I have one of his poems pinned on the wall by my desk; this was always going to be my kind of book. I did not expect it to make my breath catch.

That's the one actually, that I printed out. I love it. I love it so much that I am very very tempted to order a signed copy of it from Tyler before signed copies is a thing he stops doing. I would love it framed on my bedroom wall, but anyway, that's another story. The thing is, that everything about this book speaks to me. The whole premise is glorious: Tyler came across an old Remington typewriter in an antique shop one day and right there onto the pages of a second-hand book he was buying, he typed a poem. Jesus. Right in the feels. 

The poems in what is known as 'The Typewriter Series' that make up the bulk of this book are stunning in their simplicity. 

Every word is carefully placed for maximum effect and I swear to you this book made my heart hurt, it made my breath catch, it made me feel like I wanted to cry because these poems are raw and beautiful and honest and they feel so  familiar. These are things that I have felt and these are words that speak to me; that feel weirdly like they are 'for' me. 

I don't know if Tyler Knott Gregson bared his soul writing these poems but I feel like he has bared mine.

Also it's really really pretty. Really pretty. 

 

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

To many, I was myth incarnate, the embodiment of a most superb legend, a fairy tale. Some considered me a monster, a mutation. To my great misfortune, I was once mistaken for an angel. To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. But I knew the truth—deep down, I always did.
I was just a girl

Oh my. I am in book love (again, I know, sorry not sorry). People, you need to read The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender and you need to read it right now. I’m not even kidding.

I found it ironic that I should be blessed with wings and yet feel so constrained, so trapped. It was because of my condition, I believe, that I noticed life's ironies a bit more often than the average person. I collected them: how love arrived when you least expected it, how someone who said he didn't want to hurt you eventually would

I knew I wanted to read this book from the moment I first saw it in hardback with its beautiful rose gold embossed cover. ROSE GOLD EMBOSSED. It’s a like a sign from the book gods or something. It’s just so pretty. I was seeing it everywhere too, like it was calling to me, like some kind of siren. Come to me, buy me, read me, love me. I didn’t though, I held off for the paperback, partly to practice my self control but mostly because hardback books whilst always that bit prettier are also rather cumbersome when you like to read in bed. The second it was out in paperback though, it was mine. Then Jen announced it as her choice for the November Weird Things BookClub (which you can get involved with here. We’re reading HDM this month…) and I did a happy dance.

I don’t think there is anything about this book I don’t like. Not a single thing. I love it. I love it like I loved Eleanor and Park last year, like it’s gotten under my skin and made a home there; like it was written somehow for me. I didn’t want it to finish – I kind of felt like I needed to read it slowly, to get fully immersed in the intricate weave of magic and reality and let this love story wash over me. That’s what it is, this book, at its heart. It’s a story of love: familial love and romantic love; lost love and unrequited love; love that’s always just out of reach and love that’s unconditional; love that blinds you and loves that helps you to see;  love that makes your heart sing and love that makes it shatter.

It’s kind of like a fairytale, not a Disney and they all lived happily ever after type of story but a proper fairytale, dark and twisted and beautiful and raw. It’s about impossible love and about loss and heartbreak and the bitter taste of joy. It’s about people turning into birds and ripping out their own hearts and about ghosts that you can never quite get away from.

And it’s about a child, born with a pair of wings.

Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage.

It’s kind of incredible, the level of originality, the beauty, the agony, the magic, the everything. It’s pretty much everything I want in a book. It’s rich and full and painful and stunningly stunningly lovely. It’s angry and violent, and there is murder and suicide and pain and sex – consensual and otherwise – and sorrow (the title doesn’t lie, about anything) but it’s also lyrical and beautiful and wonderful. Walton’s use of language takes the pain she’s talking about and transforms it into something otherwordly. Her prose is rich and every word feels like it was carefully considered; the whole thing is just full of imagery that makes you feel like you’re there and subtle foreshadowing that has you feeling pulled in and pulled forward.

It made my heart ache in the most wonderful way. Life is painful, it’s just the way it is, and this book makes you feel every single thing that you’re supposed to feel; everything single thing those characters feel gets you right in the chest. It’s glorious.  

The first of many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man's hands after hours spent in a wood shop.

It’s gorgeous. And I could quote possibly wax lyrical about it for A Long Time. But I’ll stop now, before it gets awkward. (Has it gotten awkward already? Oh God.) In a nutshell, this book is lovely, it’s a blend of impossibility and surety, it’s magical realism at it’s very best and it is a book that you really ought to read.

By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane.

If she were to drink it, she'd drown.

The Here and Now

Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.

Hmmm. I think I'm a little bit disappointed with The Here and Now. Probably because I read so much in this genre that my standards are extremely high; I love me a good dystopia and it has to be a good one to impress me.

Not that this was bad exactly. In fact it was actually rather good (as evidenced by the fact I read it in a day whilst say on my stall at Manchester’s Off the High Street Christmas Market.) The problem was, I think, that this story had the potential to be really great and it didn’t quite reach it. It always makes me rather sad when that happens.

The premise is excellent: the story is set in 2014 but the main character, Prenna, is from another time. She's from the year 2098 and has travelled back in time with her community of approx. 1000 people, to escape a plague that's threatening humanity.

Prenna’s spent the past four years since she arrived in 2010 trying to blend into society and trying to keep the rules laid out by the leaders of her community, rules based on fear that leave Prenna desperate to never be discovered. She’s under the impression – as you would be I suppose - that the community leaders have everybody's best interests at heart and that they’re trying to make things better. To fix what isn’t yet broken. However, (dun dun dun!) all is not as it seems.

When is it ever?

Time travel, evil baddies masquerading as goodies, a virus that threatens mankind, and a good old forbidden love story. Should have been so great.

Parts of it worked. I am in no way slating this book. It’s a pretty good exploration of important issues – most obviously global warming – and it explores these issues without ever really preaching. Far-fetched as parts of it are, there’s still a part of you all too aware that to go from where we are now to what Prenna has seen in the future isn’t that great a leap. You can't not consider the plausibility and doing so makes you realise that Prenna’s right: we very probably aren’t doing enough. I loved the idea of these people travelling back in time and things being so different and the juxtaposition of one world against another; all of that side of the story was interesting and relevant.

Then, the development of Prenna’s relationship with Ethan is lovely and honest – it’s not all hearts and flowers either, this is an honest to God look at an honest to God forbidden and impossible love, made all the sweeter the whole way through by how desperately tragic it is. All the angst people, all the angst.  I guess it’s going to happen, when you travel back from 2098 and fall in love with a guy in 2014.  S’never going to be an easy ride, is it? Brashares gets this spot on - the emotional intensity is palpable

So you have the romance and you have the whole time travel paradox side to the story, along with the underlying issue of the plague and where it came from and how to stop it and you know, all those things, they ticked all my boxes. I liked this book, I did.

I just...expected more. I just felt like I was being given a taste. Reading this book was like being offered one Malteser whilst the rest of the packet is left just out of reach. Which, holy terrible metaphor batman, I apologise. You get my meaning though, right? More Maltesers…

The main issue I had was with the narrative voice. I guess, if your protagonist is a teenage girl then I think you need to write her as a teenage girl. It didn't make sense for Prenna's narration to be as formal as it was, for her conversations with Ethan to be so lacking in teenage idioms and expressions.  Teenagers just don’t talk like that. Crikey, most adults aren’t as formal as Prenna and Ethan. Perhaps you could excuse it by saying Prenna's not from this time – things are different in 2098 - but still, Ethan’s a Time Native, and he didn't sound like any 18 year old I ever met. Often their conversations jarred a little – I was aware of it, pretty much all the time - and it made it more difficult to get into their headspace. It also made feel like there was no sense of immediacy, or urgency. Even when the spoilery Bad Stuff is happening, there's no real sense of tension, you're aware as the reader that Prenna and Ethan are working to a pressing time limit, but you don't feel like they’re in that much of a rush. It's weird.   

I had issues too with the characterisation, not so much with Prenna and Ethan (although Prenna was a little inconsistent) but with the secondary characters. The leaders of Prenna’s community are obviously asshats, and are clearly supposed to be the bad guys but there’s just no depth to them., you don’t get to find out enough about them or what they’re doing or why. To get behind Prenna’s fight you kind of need to know what and who it is she’s fighting against. And you don’t. And the big show down, the whole good versus evil thing towards the end of the book is such a letdown – because of that, because these characters have no depth and as far as we can see are evil just for the sake of it. 

I kind of felt like Brashare just doesn’t care that much – why not flesh things out further if she does. Tell me more about time travel, tell me about the effects of messing with the timeline, tell me more about this plague and what the time travellers hoped to achieve by going back 88 years, make your bad guys into fully realised characters instead of these one-dimensional people that take away from your story rather than adding to it. Make me care, I guess. The world is going to be hit by an environmental catastrophe in 84 years unless something drastic happens – make me care about that instead of just whether or not Prenna and Ethan get together in the end.

I guess, for a teen romance with a bit of a twist, it was good but when you consider it could have been so much more, it could have been an engaging and exciting story, it only reaches okay and that made it disappointing.

I received an early copy of The Here and Now via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Girl on a Wire

Everything could end at any moment. The difference between life and death was one breath, one second, one act. And that meant that life was worth everything, every minute of every day

 
Interesting characters, a slow-building love story and a circus. What's not to like? 

Oh, but I do love me a good circus story. 

It's an excellent subject for a YA novel I think actually, the circus. Or it is, if you assume that all the young adults out there are like I was when I was a young adult myself (I am not one, now *sobsob*). 

I used to dream sometimes, when I was a teenager, of living in a circus, of an old gypsy style caravan (thanks for that Rumer Godden) and of bare feet and The Big Top and the trapeze and a boy with messy hair and a cheeky grin (there was an Enid Blyton book with a boy called Barney who'd grown up in a circus. He had a pet monkey. I think it all stemmed from that....)

This book is pretty much ^^ that. And you know what? It's so refreshing to read a book like this, that's so different to the other (much of it excellent) YA fiction that's out there right now. Kudos to Bond for taking an age old formula and making it new again. Kudos to Bond for taking us to the circus.

Jules Maroni is sixteen. And she's a high wire walker. She convinces her family to take on a role in the prestigious new Cirque American, despite it meaning they have to work alongside The Flying Garcias - a trapeze flying family who have been their rivals for over two decades. Jules wants to ignore all the drama and just focus on being the best high wire act the circus has ever seen, but even she can't ignore the bad luck that seems to be following her around since the move, and the mysterious objects believed to cause bad luck that seem to be following her wherever she goes. Remy Garcia - yep, of The Flying Garcias - seems like an unlikely ally, but he's the only one she's got.....

I was an upside-down rose, a suspended drop of blood, a floating ballerina. I was alone on the wire. I was whatever I felt like being

This book ticks all the boxes. I'm such a sucker for all that it is, with it's slow burning romance and it's well thought out characters and it's exploration of the sub-culture of the circus. It's gripping and exciting and interesting and fine the whole love story is a tad predictable (and do we need to discuss how the main characters are called Julieta and Romeo and come from rival families, or should we just go with it? Let's just go with it.) but Bond more than makes up for that with her ability to build up some honest to God dramatic tension that has you holding your breath and torn between not wanting to turn the page and not being able to do it fast enough. 

You can't help caring about all these kids; you can't help being afraid for them; and you can't help rooting for them (Dita, let me hug you, you darling), and there are enough twists and turns to keep you guessing  - some of them come from nowhere and leave you gasping - which kind of makes the ending fall somewhat flat. Always a shame when that happens is it not? That said, I was a little more 'is that it *sigh*' than 'OH MY GOD RAGE' at the end so don't let that put you off. S'a good book, I promise: the characters are excellent and can be related to, the story is real and honest and exciting and did I mention THE CIRCUS?

You throw caution to the wind, it may blow you away.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

“It’s all very well for a man to set out of his front door and tell his friend to wait while he walks the length of England. It’s an entirely different kettle of fish when you are the woman at the other end.”

I’m not sure if I ever blogged about The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the rather wonderful story of a man who walks the length of England to visit an old friend who is dying. If I didn’t then I should have done, because Harold Fry’s story is intelligent and inspiring, moving and amusing and filled with a sense of hope. I loved it a whole lot and I have not a single qualm about telling everybody in the world to go read it.

I mention it now because I just finished Rachel Joyce’s latest novel.

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessey is a companion piece to Harold and tells the story from the other side.

Queenie Hennessey is in a hospice when she gets a letter from an old friend, Harold Fry. He’s coming to see her, he says, and he asks her to wait. Queenie doesn’t think she can wait, she is in the hospice to die after all, but Sister Mary Inconnue, gives her a reason to hang on; as she waits for Harold to walk from South Devon to the North East, with Sister Mary Inconnue’s help, Queenie begins to write to him.

This book is unbearably sad at times and it broke my heart into millions of tiny little pieces, but, at the same time it radiates that same sense of hope that I found when I was reading Harold.

It’s injected with a sense of humour that makes you huff out a laugh as your chest tightens, makes you smile as your eyes fill with tears and whilst the ending is (obviously) anything but happy, there’s a sense of satisfaction that Queenie’s life has gone full circle. The whole book from start to finish is nothing if not bittersweet: Queenie’s story; her memories of Harold; the other characters in the hospice with their own heartbreaking stories that bring a little colour to Queenie’s quiet life, it’s all so very very lovely and it all hurts, more and more as the book goes on. This book left my chest tight and my heart in my throat but I am so pleased that I got to know Queenie Hennessey.