Book Review - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Author: Alan Bradley
Year of publication: 2009
Publisher: Orion
Page extent: 384

It's 1950 and Flavia de Luce is an eleven year old girl living in at Buckshaw, a formerly grand mansion in the small English village of Bishop's Lacey. An apsiring chemist, Flavia spends most of her time locked away in her fully functioning laboratory performing chemical experiments with frighteningly accurate results. The rest of the time she is being tormented by her older sisters, Daphne and Ophelia (aka The Devil's Hairball), or roaming the countryside and bellowing at the top of her lungs on Gladys, her trusty bicycle. The three girls live with their widowed father, Colonel de Luce, their irritating housekeeper Mrs. Mullet, and Dogger, a former prisoner of war and general caretaker.

Life at Buckshaw gets interesting when Mrs. Mullet finds a dead bird on the doorstep with it's beak piercing a postage stamp known as the Penny Black. A few hours later, Flavia finds a man in the cucumber patch and witnesses his last words and dying breath. Overcome with curiosity and delight at the forensic investigation that takes place at Buckshaw, Flavia begins to examine life at Buckshaw, and her father, in greater detail. When Colonel de Luce is arrested for the murder, he opens up about life at boarding school, the theft of a priceless item, and the apparent suicide of one of his teachers. Convinced that her father is innocent, Flavia's investigation of the murder intensifies, much to the annoyance of Inspector Hewitt at the police department, and she manages to solve the crime, though not without getting herself into a bit of hot water along the way.

I've had this book on my 'to read' list for quite a while, and when I finally got around to reading it, I was completely delighted. Flavia de Luce is an hilarious protaganist - intelligent, glib, and cheekily arrogant, she is the perfect mix of Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew. Bradley's cast of quirky characters that reside in Bishop's Lacey add an additional layer of charm to the story, particularly during Flavia's interactions with them. Her superior, couldn't care less attitude towards Bishop Lacey's who only hinder her attempts at clearing her father's name is quite amusing coming from an eleven year old girl. As she gets closer to solving the crime, Flavia's patience with the adults in the village wears thin, and her boldness and cunning tactics increase with equal parts hilarity and intensity.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is a clever romp through the young adult murder mystery genre. Flavia de Luce embarks on her investigation with youthful arrogance, and quickly proves herself as a fearless super sleuth. Bradley's sharply written story is full of witty barbs and condesending observations about life in Bishop's Lacey seen through Flavia's eyes, and it's clearl she thinks she knows better than everyone else. It's a delight from start to finish, with a good dose of suspense dolloped throughout.

In a word: good

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Book Review - The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp

Title: The Misinterpretation of Tara Jupp
Author: Eva Rice
Year of Publication: 2013
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Page extent: 320

 

I first discovered Eva Rice quite a few years ago, when I read her novel The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, which was a complete delight. You should go and read it right now. So when I heard she was FINALLY releasing a new novel, I was ridiculously excited. Even better was that my library actually got a copy of it straight away.

The daughter of a vicar, Tara Jupp is one of eight children living in a small village in Cornwall in the 1960s. Blessed with her late mother's talent for singing, Tara is more interested in secret horseback riding at one of the biggest estates in the village, Trellenack. When Lady W-D discovers Tara had been riding her horses, she agrees not to get her into trouble. Instead, she asks Tara to come to tea, and to bring her beautiful sister, Lucy, to befriend her lonesome daughter, Matilda. Soon Lucy and Matilda are inseparable, with Tara tagging along. As Lucy educates Matilda about boys, Tara spends her days working in the stables at the mansion, and singing in the church choir. 

The arrival of a handsome Spaniard, Raoul, disrupts things, as Matilda is convinced he's her future husband, while Lucy and Raoul, both fascinated by old estates, have eyes only for each other. They marry, breaking Matilda's heart; she loses her best friend, and the man she loves. Lucy and Tara are no longer welcome at Trellenack, and Matilda disappears from their lives. 

Fast forward a few years. Matilda is a successful model and reappears in the village to marry her famous record producer boyfriend, Billy. Tara performs a solo during their wedding ceremony, and her life changes forever. Billy whisks her off to London to cut a record, and Lucy accompanies them to catalogue a Victorian house set to be demolished. Tara is transformed into Cherry Merrywell, and is thrown into the recording studio with the temperamental songwriter Inigo Wallace. Recording music by day, and living fast and furiously by night, Tara experiences London in the swinging sixties from the second she arrives in town. 

However, life isn't as fun and frivolous as it seems. Tara and Lucy's relationship begins to unravel when Lucy's marriage hits a rocky patch, and Tara begins to push the boundaries being imposed upon her by Billy. Life as Cherry Merrywell isn't all it's cracked up to be, and Tara quickly learns that fame and fortune often come with a catch.

Rice's main characters are strongly voiced women, particularly Tara. At seventeen years old, she is thrust into the limelight in London, and her naivety often gets the best of her. Though interestingly, I often forgot she was only a teenager. Rice managed to create a character who conveys a girlish innocence and an adult determination simultaneously. Lucy, however, is aloof and distant, an nice contrast to Tara's openness. The sisters, and the extended Jupp clan have an hilariously flippant attitude to life in their village, and the cast of supporting characters in London paint a wonderfully detailed picture of London's socialites living life as fast and hard as they can.

The only flaw in the novel was the focus on Lucy and Raoul. I felt their relationship could have been explored in much more detail. The reader only learns about their struggles through Tara's limited observations, since Lucy is so closed off. I think Rice could have devoted a little bit more time to their storyline, and to the issues they faced. Their plotline sometimes felt like a cursory glance into married life, when there was obviously a deep love story that had developed.

Overall, the novel was a fast and fun read. The characters were a mix of quirky and everyday people, and Tara's life in London stops just short of becoming a cliche. Her desire not to fit into the mould of a sixties songstress is what makes her so utterly likeable, and this coming of age is written in sweetly understated style.

In a word: good.   

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Book Review - The Night Circus

Title: The Night Circus
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Year of publication: 2011
Publisher: Harvill Secker London
Page extent: 387

 

Set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we meet a young girl named Celia Bowen, the daughter of magician Prospero the Enchanter (also known as Hector Bowen), and an orphan named Marco Alisdair, the ward of a mysterious man referred to only as Mr A.H—. The children both display special talents that they don't fully understand, and without their knowledge, Hector and Mr. A.H— , long time rivals, enter them into a contest of skill, with no real start or end date. The contest between the young proteges is a test of illusion, enchantment, and magic, and the children are bound into it with no hope of escape. They are trained relentlessly by their masters, prepared to face off against each other at some vague point in the future.

There are many principal characters, but the introduction of Chandresh Christophe Lefèvre ushers in the beginning of the mysterious and whimsical Le Cirque des Rêves. As Chandresh's assistant, Marco, now an adult, controls every single detail of the mysterious circus that only opens at night, in seemingly unplanned locations around the world. Celia, a striking young woman, is hired as the illusionist for the circus, and with a slew of eccentric secondary characters, the backdrop of the circus is slowly painted in exquisite detail for the audience.

At Le Cirque des Rêves, visitors marvel at the seemingly effortless elaborate tents and sideshows, but Marco and Celia work hard to use their talents to create magical worlds inside the black and white striped tents as they compete against each other in a contest no one else realises exists. Morgenstern creates an astoundingly magical world, with flawless attention to detail as new tents are conjured up, and colourful illusions are performed easily as Celia and Marco become increasingly immersed in their contest. But Hector Bowen and Mr A.H– don't count on Celia and Marco becoming more invested in each other as the contest progresses. As their romance develops, the binds of the contest constrict them more and more as they realise how the contest must end, and the passion with which they create illusions for each other is as enticing as the passion between the two of them on the few occasions they find themselves alone. Their love story is the spectacle around which everything else in the circus exists, though they are the only two people who realise this.

It's not often that an author can create a marvelous world that exists equally in reality and fantasy, but Morgenstern has done exactly that. Her careful construction of every inch of the circus is truly a wonder, and readers will sink into the world both inside and outside the circus gates in a deliciously slow fall. It's an almost dream-like descent into one of the most fantastical circuses one could ever read about, but Morgenstern has it exist within a reality that is also completely intriguing, rich with characters, and full of mystery that the jumps between circus life and civilian life with ease. Colours, textures, sounds and scents jump off the page, and when the book is closed, it's hard not to believe that the world you've been reading about is not the same world you're living in.

The Night Circus is such a richly created novel that this review really doesn't do it justice. To enjoy it, one really needs to set aside hours to delve deeply into the world of the circus and marvel along with the patrons at the amazingly detailed nocturnal whimsy that will dazzle, charm, and delight. This book is one not to be missed - I can't recommend it enough.

In a word: delicious

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Book Review: Meet Me at the Cupcake Cafe

Title: Meet Me at the Cupcake Café
Author: Jenny Colgan
Publisher: Sphere / Hachette Australia
Year of Publication: 2011
Page Extent:456

Issy Randall is a thirty-something in London, working in an office job that does nothing for her except pay the bills. She's having a secret relationship with her boss, Graeme (well, she thinks it's a relationship - it's a bit hard for her to tell) and she spends her spare time baking and visiting her grandfather, a former baker, in a nursing home. Life is pretty....average.

Suddenly, changes are afoot in the property development office where she works and redundancies loom. But Issy knows her job is secure. She's sleeping with the boss after all. So imagine her surprise when she's called into Graeme's office and given her marching orders. Not long after that, Graeme ends their affair and leaves her jobless, boyfriend-less and totally humiliated.

Retreating to a hermit-like existence, Issy spends her time baking delicious cakes for her and her roommate, Helena, and lying in bed all day depressed and desolate. A forced excursion to an employment training seminar leaves Issy feeling even more hopeless at finding another job, and after admiring the empty little shop and sunny courtyard at the corner of her street, and idea begins to take shape in Issy's mind. Encouraged by Helena, Issy starts investigating the possibility of opening her own cupcake café, and before she knows it, she's up to her eyeballs in lease agreements and mortgage applications and building quotes.

Luckily the local bank manager, Austin, is there to help Issy along the way, and despite his disheveled appearance and equally disheveled personal life, Issy begins to feel soft sparks flying between them. As her café takes shape, we are introduced to a host of quirky and likable characters: Pearl, the unemployed single mother Issy recruits to work in the café, Caroline, the sharp divorcee who isn't afraid to voice her upper-class opinions on everything, and Grandpa Joe, who supplies Issy with his tried and true recipes. The café opens to moderate success, with word of mouth and a few lucky breaks propelling Issy and her baking into the spotlight.

While Issy works hard to establish herself in the small business world, Graeme hatches a scheme to try and win Issy back and develop the lovely little group of shops on Pear Tree Court where Issy's café is, into a group of modern apartments, with the deluded idea that she'll actually be grateful to him for selling up her dream and getting her back into an office job. Tension mounts as Austin and Graeme vie for Issy's attention, and Issy and Helena clash over Issy's choices as she works to achieve her goals, both professional and personal.

This all sounds like fairly standard chick lit fare, but there's something more personal and touching about this novel than the usual material in the genre. One of the most enticing and thoughtful touches is the inclusion of a recipe at the start of each chapter, which is then something Issy bakes or is featured in the café throughout the chapter. Not only do the recipes sound delicious and, as someone who loves to bake, I find that particular aspect of the novel extremely appealing, but there's a realness to Issy and her friends that makes the story totally relateable.

The story itself is somewhat predictable, but the author's focus on each characters' story is what sets this apart from other chick lit. The audience isn't subjected to Issy's every thought and rumination over her love life - there's a good amount of focus on her setting up the business and the day to day running of the café with Pearl and Caroline. Told in the third person, the point of view switches from Issy to Pearl to Austin to Graeme with ease, giving the reader a nice, balanced taste of life in Stoke Newington, London with all its kooky characters.  It's hard not to find yourself feeling like part of the neighbourhood (and craving a cupcake almost constantly as you read)!

This book is the perfect Summer read. It's a denser book than most chick lit, and it would be wonderful for lazy days at the beach or warm nights sipping a cocktail after dinner, and I highly recommend it if you're after a good comfort read during the busy festive season!

In a word: lovely

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Book Review: Beautiful Days by Anna Godbersen

Title: Beautiful Days
Author: Anna Godbersen
Publisher: Razor Bill / Penguin Group
Year of Publication: 2011
Page Extent: 358

This book was provided to me by the lovely people at Penguin Group Australia for review.

Beautiful Days is young adult fiction author Anna Godbersen's highly anticipated sequel to Bright Young Things. Set in the halcyon days of the Jazz Age in New York, the book follows the highs and lows of three beautiful young women living at Dogwood Mansion in the fictional White Cove, Long Island. Small town orphan Cordelia Grey, long lost daughter of the late Darius Grey, has inherited part of her daddy's bootlegging booze business and is living in the lap of luxury with her best friend from Ohio, Letty Larkspur. Letty is a talented singer on the brink of stardom and has moved in with Cordelia at the mansion until things pick up for her. Their good friend, wealthy socialite Astrid Donal, who is engaged to Cordelia's brother Charlie, lives in a neighbouring mansion and the three girls spend most of their days lounging by the pool or prettying themselves for the many evening soirees around Long Island and in Manhattan.

As Cordelia and Charlie grieve recent the loss of their father, they decide to open their own speakeasy in Manhattan as a tribute to him and in an effort to push the Hales, a competing bootlegging family, out of the lucrative market. Tensions escalate though, as the rivalry between the Grey siblings and the Hale family increases, with each family taking dangerous steps to threaten and eliminate the other from the market.

Astrid moves into Dogwood Mansion as her relationship with Charlie progresses, but quickly finds the goings-on of the business all together too dull for her liking, and recruits Cordelia, Letty and Billlie, her stepsister, to be part of her adventures on the town. This causes friction not only between Astrid and Charlie, and Cordelia and Charlie, but also between Letty and her new beau, promising writer Grady O'Dell. Cordelia also finds herself at odds with flirtation, unable to interpret the intentions of handsome, high-flying pilot Max Darby. As the opening of the Grey's speakeasy draws closer, each girl is pulled further into a world full of a seemingly never-ending cash supply, criminal activity, and unbelievably glamorous social circles where anything goes.

As with the first book in this series, Anna Godbersen has created a richly layered 1920s world of money, mobsters and magic. The parties are endless, the fashion is to die for and the money never runs out. It's easy to forget that the three female characters are in their late teenage years, as the story offers them opportunities that seem to shimmer with possibility, and as they flit between Long Island and Manhattan, the reader is swept up in their glamorous lives from the first page.

With deliciously detailed accounts of the minutiae of their daily lives, Godbersen shows her skill at building an exhilarating world full of possibility and intrigue, and teenage readers will be hopelessly captivated by the story. This book will appeal to older readers as well, as it has an almost Gossip Girl-esque premise. It's hard to believe any great tragedy could befall these girls as they enjoy the best days of their lives, so it will be interesting to see how they fare as 1929 draws to a close in subsequent books. I'm already desperate to read the next installment in the series, and I can't recommend this book, as well as its predcessor, highly enough.

Beautiful Days is now available for sale in Australia for a retail price of approximately $19.95.

In a word: fabulous



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Book Review - Four Women, Ten Years Later

Title: Sisterhood Everlasting
Author: Ann Brashares
Publisher: Random House
Year of Publication: 2011
Page Extent: 349

Ten years ago, we met Carmen, Bridget, Lena and Tibby. Four teenagers, best friends and polar opposites of each other. And yet they were stuck together with a bond so unbreakable nothing could penetrate it. Four books and ten years later, author Ann Brashares has given us the final book in the series, Sisterhood Everlasting.
 

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Now women in the last year of their twenties, the Sisterhood has scattered across the United States, and, in Tibby's case, across the world. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to a guy she doesn't really love, Bridget is living with Eric in San Fransisco where she temps and zooms around the city on her bicycle, Lena is in Rhode Island teaching art classes and occasionally selling her work and Tibby is in living Australia with Brian. Brashares gives us glimpses here and there of what life was like after the girls graduated from college, mostly as a way of illustrating how their bond remained unbroken as they chose their paths after school, but it's the present that's focused on for this final installment.

We learn quickly that growing into women has taken its toll on their friendship, and the closeness the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants once had has faltered somewhat, and although none of them will admit it, they each privately acknowledge that their relationship is not as it once was. For a myriad of reasons, each woman feels lost, wondering why life hasn't quite turned out the way they thought it would.

A letter from Tibby, with a plane ticket to Greece arrives in each of their post boxes, and Carmen, Bridget and Lena's spirits are lifted at the though of a reunion in the place that gave them so many happy memories as younger women. But upon arriving in Santorini at Lena's late grandparents' house, it quickly becomes evident that this trip is not going to be the happy reunion they were all hoping for. When a life-changing event takes place, the girls scatter back to their corners of the world, more restless and desolate than ever, questioning themselves, their lives and their friendship.

Brashares' writing of these four characters is, as usual, pitch perfect. Each character has their own distinct personality, but the reader will find themselves relating to each one of the girls numerous times throughout the story. Brashares has such talent for writing female characters - the nuances, the thought patterns and the heart breaking raw emotion conveyed through each character is unbelievably real, and it speaks volumes to Brashares' ability to understand not only her characters, but her audience as well, who have grown up reading about the lives of the Sisterhood. The story flows naturally and while it's seeped in the disappointment and tragedies that come with growing up, the writing is outstanding and affecting.

If you're unfamiliar with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series, I highly recommend you get yourself a copy of each book and set aside some weekends to get lost in these beautifully gripping stories. Despite the first three books being Young Adult fiction, they appeal to people of all ages (females in particular, I'm sure), and I know that I'm definitely going to miss reading about these girls. I think it will be a long time before a YA book comes along that is as poignant and enjoyable as these books have been.



In a word: beautiful

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Book Review - Vintage all the way

Title: The Secret Lives of Dresses

Author: Erin McKean

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (Hachette Australia)

Year of Publication: 2011

Page extent: 290

I love vintage clothing. I love most vintage things, but vintage clothing in particular is especially enticing to a female in her twenties. So, when I saw the cover of this book in the local book shop, I had to pick it up and read the blurb on the back. The dress alone on the front cover was enough to convince me to buy the book, but the blurb on the back sounded perfect for our recent beach holiday.

 

Author Erin McKean runs a popular website called Dress A Day, where she lists vintage patterns she find and the fabrics she uses. There is some gorgeously kitsch stuff on there, and if you're a fan of the fashion from Mad Men, you'll love her site. So it makes sense that she used her love of vintage fashion as the basis for her book, The Secret Lives of Dresses.

Dora is a university student on the brink of graduating and being accepted into graduate school. She works in a coffee shop in her university town and harbors a crush on the manager, a grad student who flirts incessantly with her but takes it no further. Her uniform is jeans, t-shirts and comfortable shoes - a far cry from her grandmother Mimi's vintage clothing boutique. When Mimi suffers a stroke, Dora rushes home to sit at her bedside, but finds herself taking charge of the boutique in Mimi's absence. Having grown up watching Mimi run the shop, and assisting there herself, she's able to run the shop perfectly and keep her mind off Mimi's worsening condition.

As Dora works in the shop, she tries to plan the next stage of her life: graduate school. If she goes to graduate school, she'll have a shot with incompetent Gary, the manager at the cafe she works in, who declared that he doesn't date undergrads. With little else to inspire her, Dora sets her sights on grad school, knowing that if nothing else, she'll be able to go on a date with Gary. Her future has no direction other than to get that far. She has no real career aspirations, and taking over her grandmother's shop gives her time to reassess her life. Returning to her hometown, and to her childhood bedroom with its cupboard full of vintage clothes (that she never wanted to wear), Dora begins to re-evaluate the direction her life is taking.

As she takes over the shop, and meets Con, the architect working upstairs, Dora slowly begins to appreciate the importance her grandmother placed on the clothes she sold. The discovery one day that some pieces of clothing have a "Secret Life", written by Mimi and given to the purchaser amazed Dora, as Mimi remained tight-lipped about many things in her life. These Secret Lives are little biographies created by Mimi to give the item of clothing a story, a personality that the buyer connects with. With Mimi's friend Gloria and the quirky shop assistant Maux, Dora delves into a life she thought she'd left behind, with surprising results.

McKean writes her female characters well - they feel different to the usual chick-lit stereotypes. At first glance, Dora seems like a fairly bland, directionless student. But as the story progresses and she gets drawn in to Mimi's world, Dora slowly emerges from her shell and begins to figure out what's important. There isn't too much keening for Gary, and the introduction of Con (who I wish we saw more of) doesn't shake Dora to her core. Rather, she takes it in stride, somewhat bemused and entertained by his attention. The kind-hearted Gloria, Mimi's roommate and friend, and tough talking Maux add some nice contrast to Dora's alternating grief-stricken and nostalgic frames of mind throughout the novel. McKean's descriptions of the vintage clothes is so specific and personal it's almost as if a fourth major character has been added to the plot. It's easy to imagine the beautifully tailored suits and stunning retro gowns, and the effect they have on people. And to be honest, it made me want to go out and update my entire wardrobe with vintage clothing.

This book isn't the best book you'll ever read. But you know what? When you do read it, you'll feel like someone wrapped you up in a blanket and gave you some hot chocolate to sip on. It's just so comforting and cute. It moves along at a perfect pace, the characters aren't moronic women who dither over every little decision. And there are some awesome pieces of clothing in there. All in all, it's just a really nice book - so pick it up if you have the chance, especially if you're going on holiday somewhere. It's just that kind of book.

In a word: good

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Book review - Got enough Room?

Title: Room

Author: Emma Donoghue
Publisher: Picador (Pan Macmillan)
Year of publication: 2010
Page extent: 300+

Once in a while, a book comes along that immerses you, making you feel both intrigued and disturbed by a world you think you'll never be able to understand, but can visualise perfectly. That book is Room by Emma Donoghue.

Room is where Jack lives with Ma. They don't go in or out of Room. The door is always locked. Their only visitor is Old Nick, who comes through Door at night to visit with Ma while Jack sleeps in Wardrobe, hidden from view. 

Jack has Ma's complete attention. They eat, play, exercise, sleep and watch TV together, just the two of them. Jack knows nothing of the world outside, having never left the eleven by eleven foot Room he knows as home. Early on in the novel, Jack turns five and Ma begins to reveal things about Outside, desperate to leave the prison she has been stuck in for the past seven years. Jack finds it hard to believe that things like people, lakes, houses, trees and aeroplanes exist, having believed that everything he saw on TV was pretend. To him, nothing outside of Room is real - Room is the centre of the universe and he and Ma (and Old Nick) are the only people who are Real. Convincing Jack that freedom is something they desperately need is a difficult task for Ma - how do you convince a child who has never left the room he was born in that there is a much better way to live?

Emma Donoghue takes a dismal situation and turns it on it's head by using Jack as the narrator. His curiosity and constant questions reveal the setting and the plot bit by bit as Jack processes the information Ma gives him with doubt and disbelief. Less a story about an horrific situation and more a story about the bond between a mother and son, Donoghue uses Jack's somewhat stunted grammar and infantile language to illustrate a world seen for the first time through the eyes of a completely innocent child. Routine things like walking with shoes on, going up and down stairs and having a shower are taxing, confusing tasks for Jack, and his brain is constantly whirring with questions, observations and initial refusal to try living life differently.

When I began reading room, I was a little bit ambivalent - the language alone was somewhat off-putting. But before I knew it, I was drawn into the world of Room. The minutia of Jack and Ma's everyday life is described in intense detail, while other aspects of life Jack doesn't understand are glossed over, which can be frustrating initially, as adult readers pick up on the serious undertones of the situation. Piece by piece the pace of life in Room picks up and moves forward to develop into a gripping story that leaves it mark on the reader. 

This is one book you definitely need to read - soon.

In a word: Intriguing

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Book review - Seriously, you HAVE to read this

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Children's Books
Year of publication: 2008

Page extent: 400+

I had heard a little bit about The Hunger Games on the internet, but I didn't really know what it was about. Finally, I managed to get hold of a copy from my library. To sum things up, I spent nearly every waking moment (when I wasn't at work) with my head buried in this book for about a week. It. Was. Incredible.

 

Sixteen year old protagonist Katniss Everdeen lives in Panem, a post-apocalyptic land that use to be known as North America. Global warming and natural disasters have eroded the land immensley and the states we know today no longer exist. Instead, everyone lives in a District - there are 12 in all, each controlled by the Capital. There used to be a District 13 until an uprising against the goverment and the population was annihilated, ensuring no other rebellions would occur once the other Districts could see how badly the folks in District 13 had behaved.

 

Katniss lives with her widowed mother and twelve year old sister, Prim. She provides for them by hunting with her trusty bow and arrows in the forest beyond the barbed wire perimetre that fences in the poplation in District 12. Her hunting partner is Gale, an older boy whom she befriended in the forest after her father died. They kill anything that moves, as long as it can provide food for their families, and have a solid knowledge of the plant life in the forest that also helps keep food on the table when a hunt hasn't yielded any results.

 

Each year, the Capital holds a festival known as The Reaping, which is a thinly veiled punishment for the rebellion of District 13 many years before. Townspeople gather in the main square in each District and watch as two children, a boy and a girl, aged between twelve and eighteen are chosen at random to compete in The Hunger Games. The Games are a televised reality show where the children (known as 'tributes') are placed in an arena (which is a man-made enivronment consisting of anything from forest, snow, beaches or mountains) and are pitted against each other with one main goal: kill or be killed. The last child alive wins.

 

When Prim's name is drawn for in The Reaping, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Before The Hunger Games can commence though, the tributes are styled and paraded around for the televison audiences, so people can choose their favourites and sponsors from each tributes' District can decide if they're worthy of gifts while they're in the arena. They are then sent to a training centre where they have a chance to learn new skills and see what their opponents' strengths and weaknesses are, and should they choose to, form alliances. Along with Peeta, a boy her age from their District, Katniss enters the arena suspecting everyone and trying to form a strategy that will keep her alive until the end.

Sounds gruesome? It is. But it's also the most heart poundingly suspenseful action/thriller I've read in a really, really long time. If you want a book that will literally make your heart pound with anxiety, this is it. Suzanne Collins writes in such a way that at times you forget you're reading about children. The basic need to survive is what drives Katniss, not her deisre to end lives. While some tributes train for The Hunger Games their enitre lives, Katniss and Peeta must battle it out using just their instinct (which Katniss has in spades thanks to her talent for hunting) and whatever skills they managed to pick up at the training centre.

 

To be honest, I've never been a fan of sci-fi, fantasy or novels with a distinctly dystopian feel to them, but this book falls somewhere outside of those themes. Yes, they live in a dystopian society, but the universally relatable themes of love, courage and devotion are what make Katniss Everdeen's journey through The Games so gripping. Her constant flux between wanting to give in to the urge to kill her competitors before they kill her, and just wanting to survive without inflicting too much pain so she can go home to her family and Gale create such an emotional roller coaster for the reader that the book is an instant page turner from the get-go.

If you haven't checked out these books yet, I highly recommend you do so, but make sure you also get the second and third books, Catching Fire and Mockingjay as well, because they're the kind of books you HAVE to read one after the other, they are that intense.

 

In a word: Incredible.

 

Spoiler alert! If you want a little taste of the book in movie format, check out this amazingly well crafted fan video. Be aware that it does contain strong violence (against children) though, and has some major spoilers for a certain part of the book. The Hunger Games is has already been bought by a production company, so expect the movie version in a year or so. I hope the producers see the fan video though, and realise that someone found their Katniss for them

And on that note...

"Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favour!" - Effie Trinket

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Book review - The best book I've read in a really long time.

Title: The Help

Author: Kathryn Stockett

Publisher: Fig Tree/Penguin Group

Year of publication: 2009

Page extent: 400+

In her debut novel The Help, Kathryn Stockett manages to perfectly capture the atmosphere of a town at the brink of civil rights uproar from the perspectives of three different women living three very different lives.

The setting is Jackson, Mississippi in 1962 and the story begins with Aibileen, a middle aged black woman who works as a maid for a wealthy white woman about twenty years her junior. Aibileen has raised eighteen children in her life and only one of them was her own. She then introduces Minny, a fellow black woman who also works as a maid, but moves from job to job because of her hot temper and quick tongue – white women don’t like to be spoken back to in Jackson. Finally, we meet Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, a young white woman fresh out of college who has moved back into her childhood bedroom on her daddy’s cotton plantation.

Skeeter has no job, no suitor and no hope. She spends her days playing bridge and serving as the secretary/editor for the local Junior League with her friends, a group of well-to-do, uptight white women who have all managed to marry into money and pop out a couple of babies before their twenty fifth birthdays. Desperate for some sort of writing career, Skeeter takes a job at the local paper writing a household tips column, despite never having run a household in her life. She turns to Aibileen for help with the column, and a quiet friendship forms.

Alongside Skeeter’s interactions with Aibileen, Miss Hilly, Aibileen’s employer and Skeeter’s friend, begins campaigning for separate bathrooms for the “coloured” help, calling it “the home help sanitation initiative.” Appalled, Skeeter refuses to publish Hilly’s propaganda in the League’s newsletter, and begins to more closely observe the injustices and abuse white women subject their black maids to.

Skeeter quietly begins interviewing Aibileen about her life as a maid for white families with a view to getting the story published. A publisher in New York agrees to look at the story, but only if she can include at least twelve maids in her book. Enlisting the help of Aibileen, Skeeter begins secretly interviewing other maids in Jackson, on the condition of anonymity and her book begins to take shape.

A fragile friendship between Aibileen, Skeeter and Minny forms as they work on the book, with the understanding that they are never to speak of their project outside the walls of Aibileen’s house. Stockett’s depiction of these three women is incredibly realistic, with the tonal shift in voice from chapter to chapter making the characters leap off the page, often feeling as though the character is there, reading her chapter aloud to you and allowing you a glimpse into her life. Stockett moves seamlessly from the poor neighbourhood of the maids to the upper class houses of the white women, and manages to perfectly portray every character, from the three main protagonists to the secondary characters scattered throughout.

What Stockett also manages to convey, besides the daily injustices and racism suffered, is the love and compassion the maids have for the children they raise, and sometimes even for the women they work for. The novel is a heart felt and well constructed story, full of emotional ups and downs as the audience travels alongside these three women with separate voices and separate lives, but one common hope: equality.

I couldn’t put this book down – I read it in about three days and every time I opened it I was instantly transported to Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. Every word written was thought provoking and evocative. It was a truly great read and I cannot recommend it enough – you simply HAVE to read this novel!

In a word: excellent.

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Book review: The latest offering from Marian Keyes

Title: The Brightest Star in the Sky

Author: Marian Keyes

Publisher: Michael Jospeh/Penguin Group

Year of publication: 2009

Page extent:612

I finished reading the latest offering from Marian Keyes earlier this week, and I have been putting off doing a review for it for the past five days or so. Why? Because I fear I will have to write something I never thought I would say about one of Marian Keyes’ books: I…didn’t really like it. And I am a huge fan of this author - I devour her books when they are released, and usually enjoy the hell out of them.

Should I duck for cover so that the internet flaming can begin?

Maybe I’ll just get on with the review.

The Brightest Star in the Sky is about the tenants in an apartment building at 66 Star Street in Dublin. There’s Katie, a 40 year old woman who works in the music industry. She’s dating Connall, a complete workaholic. Then there’s a snotty girl in her twenties called Lydia who rooms with two Polish guys and drives a cab full time. Matt and Maeve are married and oddly disconnected from each other, and Jemima, the elderly woman who lives alone until her grown up foster son, Fionn, comes to stay.

Then there’s this….thing floating around, giving its first person narrative on all the occupants of the flat and while it’s interesting at first, the narration carries on far too long, interrupting the actual flow of the storyline.

Essentially, it boils down to this: Lydia is narky and angry at the world because her mother is suffering from undiagnosed health problems, Katie and Connall break up because surprise surprise, Connall is a workaholic. Jemima is a crabby old lasy with an annoying dog, and Fionn is a gardener from the country side filming the pilot for a gardening show, and he gets sucked into the celebrity lifestyle.

So, this thing that’s floating around gives the reader an inside look at what’s going on, and I suppose it’s supposed to be a different way of just narrating the story in the third person, but I found it really irritating. The little tidbits and teasers in these peoples’ lives really don’t amount to much of anything and take pages and pages to actually become part of the story, and because of the amount of characters in the book, nothing seems to happen for a really long time.

I understand that Keyes was trying to create one of those stories where there are a million seemingly unconnected characters whose lives intersect with each other and they don’t realise it until the end, but because of the amount of people coming and going there just isn’t that anticipation of what’s going to happen next. I also didn’t really buy a lot of the connections that were made between the characters, and felt like sometimes they were used to keep a particular person relevant to the plot when they really didn’t need to be there at all.

The final big moments happen in the space of about fifty pages, which, in a six hundred page book is fairly late in the game for bombshells to be dropping left, right and centre.

Overall, I just really did not enjoy this story. It often felt tedious and too conveniently orchestrated to feel like a natural progression of the storyline. I much prefer it when Keyes sticks to the hilarious Walsh family antics. This book really lacked Marian's usual humour and vivacious characters. This is definitely a book you can live without reading.

In a word: Meh.


Sidenote: I do like the cover though - the blue and white is quite striking. But Keyes' covers are always great.

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Book Review: The Memoir Club

The Name: The Memoir Club
The Writer: Laura Kalpakian
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press, 2004
Pages: 280

The Memoir Club starts off on a well-beaten literary path: several women from different walks of life each sign up for a class, in this case a Write Your Own Memoir night class. Their reasons are fairly atypical – they all want to write a memoir about their lives to try and answer a significant question about their lives and their identity. Despite their abrasive and unsympathetic teacher, once the class is over, the women each decide to continue with the class in their own time, and hence The Memoir Club is born.

Initially focusing on Caryn, who has survived an horrific tragedy, and her friend Nell who signs them both up to the club as a means of therapy for Caryn, Kalpakian widens the focus to four other women, Rusty, Sarah Jane, Francine and Jill as they read the chapters they have written each Wednesday night to the group. The audience is immersed in each woman’s story quickly as their day to day lives become intertwined with the other members of the club, and the story strongly echoes The Jane Austen Book Club, dealing with a particular character in each chapter of the novel.

The relationships forged by these women is not quite involved enough for the audience – while the characters in The Jane Austen Bookclub became fast friends, the women in this book seem to land in each other’s lives accidentally, and the inclusion of several sub characters seems almost too convenient for the plotline. Still, Kalpakian has made a valiant attempt at connecting the women for the purpose of supporting each other as they tackle the questions their Memoir Club teacher forces them to address and the book is a fairly engrossing, quick read. Fans of similarly styled chick lit novels will enjoy getting to know each of the women and watching the subsequent drama unfold as the characters get to know each other outside of the classroom.

In a word: Likeable Pin It

Book review: Stephanie Plum

The Name: Fearless Fourteen
The Writer: Janet Evanovich
The Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Fearless Fourteen is the latest Stephanie Plum offering from comedic crime writer Janet Evanovich. Stephanie accidentally falls into the roll of motherhood as she takes on custody of one of Joe Morelli's distant relatives, thirteen year old Mario, while trying to find his mother, who has been kidnapped and held ransom for ransom, a cool nine million dollars. Collecting her usual gaggle of hangers-on as she tries to find Mario's mother, Stephanie ponders life as a mother and wife, while working security for Ranger, which mostly involves babysitting fading pop star Brenda. Grandma Mazur is up to her usual hijinks as she bonds with Mario, morphing into an emo internet gamer, Moonman is back and vegged out Morelli's couch and Brenda's stalker moves into Morelli's garage. All of this takes place as the residents of Trenton scramble to find the missing nine million, which is supposedly buried somewhere on Morelli's property. There's also a proposal, a booby trapped suitcase and homemade weapons, making it a quick, entertaining read.

In a word: Fun Pin It