Rainbow Rowell is the queen of nostalgia - her books are perfect at conjuring up feelings and thoughts and situations from the past.
I adored both Fangirl and Eleanor & Park (I haven't read Attachments) so it was with both excitement and trepidation that I approached Landline, Rowell's forthcoming novel. I wondered how I'd find her writing when the book was aimed at adults, and whether it would hold the magic of her YA books.
Georgie McCool's marriage is in trouble. Her husband has taken their two children to his mum's house for Christmas, while Georgie stays behind to write the sitcom that will make her career. Only, now that Neal and the kids are gone, Georgie knows things are beyond wrong.
When she uses the old landline in her mum's home to try and call her husband, she finds herself communicating with a Neal from the past. Is this the perfect opportunity to fix her marriage before it breaks? Or is it a chance to never start what is now making her so sad?
Landline is full of great, flawed characters, like the previous Rowell books I've read. Georgie is likeable, but also clueless at times. Neal in the present time, who we barely see, comes across as a great dad, but also as closed off emotionally. Georgie's writing partner Seth is charming, but clearly lonely. Georgie's mum is hilarious, and her sister is sweet and supportive.
But that's just one way of looking at the characters. Rowell takes us back into the pasts of all those we encounter, giving us a glimpse into what made them the people they are in the present time. Georgie's memories show her as even more clueless when she was at university, while Seth is selfish. We see a closed off Neal in the past, who opens up emotionally to Georgie as he learns to love and trust her.
Landline isn't just a doom and gloom serious book though. It's full of lighter, genuinely happy moments (Georgie's sister's budding romance), and funny ones (Georgie's mums, the pugs). Rowell knows that to tug at the heartstrings you sometimes have to give a little reprieve as well.
And being an adult novel, there is a lot more light and shade within the book, with characters coming to adult solutions about their problems. At times I did feel a little confused, as Rowell's style for her adult novel is similar to that for her YA ones, and I sometimes felt I needed more of an obvious difference. Still, I loved this book, which is as as beautifully written as Fangirl and Eleanor & Park, and will no doubt introduce her to a new audience who haven't yet had the pleasure of her writing.
•Landline is released on July 31.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Orion. This did not affect my review.
Beautiful and brutal - two contrasting words that perfectly describe Rene Denfeld's The Enchanted.
In the depths of an American prison, a nameless man waits on death row. His pleasures in life are the books he gets to read, and his imagination, which turns his prison into an "enchanted place".
Another man, York, awaits his turn to die, having given up on life; an unnamed lady does her best to find information that will save York, while she falls in love with the prison priest. Above them all, the life of the prison continues - tortures and corruption abound.
The Enchanted is an exquisitely written book, at odds with the subject matter within. But it is the beauty of the descriptions, and the fairytale elements of the enchanted place, that make the brutality really, really hurt. Denfeld's protagonist is a man who has done terrible things, so terrible he can't talk about them (or about anything at all). Yet he's also a man who has great poetry in him, the flames fed by his love of reading. And that poetry and those words, his imagination, help him to survive in what is a truly horrifying place. The moments where the prisoner uses his imagination to face real life (particularly when the horses run) are strangely beautiful.
Denfeld pulls no punches with portraying the terrible prison in her book. Characters are treated appallingly, and many times I was so horrified by what I read that I thought I might cry, only I was too stunned to do so. In some ways, The Enchanted's prison scenes were televisual, they reminded me of something like Prison Break, or Oz. But worse.
As well as a horrible setting, the prisoners in Denfeld's book are horrible people. Or are they? They've definitely done horrible, terrible, dark things that landed them in jail, but the ones on death row are, even more than the rest, the products of their truly awful lives, which have been filled with pain and suffering. Nothing can justify their actions or the fact that they caused suffering to others, but Denfeld still managed to evoke my sympathy for many of her characters (apart from Risk and Conroy, who are just horrible).
Three of Denfeld's main characters have no names - there is the anonymous prisoner who tells the story, the investigator who is called only the lady, and the priest, who is referred to by his profession. Yet the anonymity offered to them by the fact that the reader doesn't know their names doesn't at all affect how much we get to know about their characters. By the end of The Enchanted, I felt like I knew all three intimately, because their deepest thoughts, misdeeds and wishes had been revealed within the pages of the book.
The Enchanted is emotionally a brutal, tough read, but it's also an incredibly rewarding one. I often felt like my breath had been taken away as I read it, but it was worth every horrified gasp I let out, every wince that crossed my face, and every tear I couldn't shed.
•The Enchanted is released on March 13.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This did not affect my review.
Getting young boys to read is tough, so stories full of adventure and sleuthing are probably your best bet for getting a 10-year-old to sit down with a book.
Rohan Gavin's Knightley and Son is definitely one of those books which will be attractive to young boys - it's got a young boy detective, a mystery and plenty of strange goings-on. Basically, Knightley and Son is the Benedict Cumberbatch version of Sherlock for young readers.
Darkus Knightley's private investigator dad Alan has been in a mysterious narcoleptic trance for years. While Darkus, known as Doc, waits for Alan to wake up, he begins to read all his dad's case files, memorising them in the hopes that when Alan resurfaces, he'll bring his son into the detecting fold.
When Alan does wake up, he wants Doc to stay away in case he finds himself in danger. But Alan's wonky memory means Doc is the one left trying to sort out the mystery of a book - The Code - which can seemingly control people, and an evil group of people known only as The Combination.
Doc's a great protagonist. He's odd and precocious and clever, and just a generally likeable kind of kid. However, he's far from cool, and a young boy reading this might find him a little difficult to relate to, especially because 13-year-old Doc is so much wiser than his years, and that inevitably leads to him using language I'm not sure young readers would be familiar with. At one point Doc uses the word 'incontrovertibly', which I'm not sure your average 10-year-old (the book is aimed at 10+) would understand without a dictionary. Then again, maybe I'm underestimating kids these days.
The plot is packed full of stuff - there's not only the mystery of The Code and The Combination, but also Doc's relationship with his father, his family situation, and his step-sister Tilly, who has a host of issues of her own. For me, Tilly was a slightly more compelling character than Doc, but maybe that's because I'm female. She'd definitely be someone girls who read the book would find fascinating.
Knightley and Son really gets going in its last third, when the action proper kicks off. Before that, there's a lot of thinking and theorising and mapping things out, and some unnecessary sub-plots (I'm not sure we needed to see Doc's step-dad fascination with The Code) and I got a teensy bit frustrated with the book. Once everything starts coming together, though, that's when the book really finds its way.
Gavin's created a novel that will appeal to young readers - boys and girls alike. Knightley and Son is the first in a series. It's a promising start, and if the following books can be tightened up a bit, then I'm sure it will draw more people in.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Bloomsbury. This did not affect my review.
The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, and Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea
and inspired by Pop Culture Junkie and the Story Siren. They're a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your
blog,
highlight our newest books and see what everyone else received for
review, borrowed from libraries, or bought.
On the blog
Review: The Collected Works of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Review: Friendship by Emily Gould
Review: The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris
Added to my shelves
I'm a huge Parks and Recreation fan, so I was really excited to get this amazing guide to Pawnee by Leslie Knope from Ebury.
We had a presentation by Transworld at work, and I nabbed a few books from them:
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes
Wake by Anna Hope
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan
The Thing About December by Donal Ryan (it chucked it down with rain on the way back from our visit, so my copy of this got a little spoilt, boo)
And finally, after attending Orion's women's fiction party, I got a couple of proofs through from the publisher:
Her by Harriet Lane (looks super creepy and very interesting)
The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman (about female fighters in Bristol)
What did you add to your shelves?
Shh, whatever you do, don't mention him. You know, him. No, not Lord Voldemort, that other guy. He's real. You know the one.
Now that we've got that out of the way, can I just say that The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris is brilliant?
The story of the trickster god, told through the eyes and voice of Loki, Harris's book takes us from the story of how the worlds were formed to the final battle of the gods and their destruction. In between are tales of Loki's exploits as one of the gods of Asgard, all winding their way slowly to the gripping conclusion.
The stories told in this book may be familiar to some, although I didn't read any Norse myths when I was younger. The scant knowledge I have comes from that person we're not mentioning, who was in those things we're also not going to mention.
As familiar as the stories may be, the way they're told is very, very different, and very distinctive. From the moment I started reading The Gospel of Loki I was hooked, and that was because I could hear the voice of Harris's Loki in my head. In this book, the method of telling is almost as important as the telling itself. Harris combines Norse terms with much more modern language, takes the myths and injects humour and sarcasm into them. Her Loki could come up to you today and have a conversation with you, and you'd think he'd lived in the 21st century all his life (apart from his appearance). The way Harris uses language is utterly compelling - I can't remember the last time I read a character whose voice I so easily heard.
The Gospel of Loki is split into books, with each an insight into a different arc of Loki's life. Within each book are lessons, rather than chapters, with Loki extolling on a particular subject or incident. The approach works well, as each lesson starts with a title and the lesson itself before launching into the narrative i.e. Book One, Lesson Seven: Hair and beauty, never trust a lover. Those titles also hint at the humour within - I was surprised by just how funny The Gospel of Loki was, despite the tragedies it contained. It was fun to read and I found myself chuckling throughout, just because Loki is a very funny character.
Covering as it does the Norse myths, The Gospel of Loki features many, many characters. Helpfully, there is a guide to them at the front of the book, with descriptions by Loki, who hates them nearly all of them. I felt the same. Loki might be mischievous, and heartless, and selfish, but the rest of the gods, from Thor to Sif to Odin are even worse. Of course, we only see them through Loki's eyes, so we're biased, but you can't help but love Loki and dislike everyone he dislikes. It would be disloyal otherwise.
The Gospel of Loki is a brilliant (as mentioned before), clever novel. This novel has been percolating in Harris's mind for almost 40 years, and I'm pleased to say, it was well worth that time.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Gollancz. This did not affect my review.
I don't watch Girls, but I've read and heard enough about it to know that it's very, very popular.
Emily Gould's novel Friendship perfectly fits the current zeitgeist for stories about 30-something females trying to live lives that have it all - money, friendship, love and more.
Bev and Amy have been friends for years, but now that they've hit 30 they both find themselves a little lost. Amy is stuck in a dead-end no-job job, dreaming of the time she held fame in her hands, while Bev is festering in a sea of temp jobs. When Bev falls pregnant, the two friends find themselves at odds with each other, exploring a new world opened to them by Sally, an accomplished woman who seems to have her life together.
Friendship feels very of its time. While it's set in New York, the story could fit any big city in the western world, and its protagonists are women most women could relate to in some way or another. And, like with Sex and the City, I believe most readers will probably find themselves coming down on the side of one of the main characters more than the other, although of course the best would be a mix of the two.
I personally felt more kinship with Bev, who is stuck in a rut she just can't get out of. While I've never had to go through her particular work situation, I do know what it's like to be going through the motions sometimes. Most of us grow or get ourselves out of that sort of a situation, but Bev has been stuck in it for far too long. She's still a sympathetic character though - making her own way, taking on responsibility for herself, hard-working (most of the time). Even when Sally, who comes into her life by chance and has wanted children for ages, offers her a comfortable life on a silver platter Bev decides to only take minimally, and really work to have the rest.
Amy, on the other hand, well, I didn't really like her, perhaps because I felt Bev was a better developed character who Gould showed growing through the book. I found Amy selfish and immature, and some of her actions were deplorable. The worst ones were where she put herself ahead of Bev, and ahead of their friendship.
But that's the central dilemma of the book - what happens when something so big happens it changes a person and their relationship with their friends? While I didn't like Amy, I thought she was pretty realistic, and her feelings and some of her actions were very human. In other words, she's fallible. Gould is to be commended for the honesty of her characters, who aren't pretty in all their guises, just like people aren't in real life.
Friendship was a pretty quick read, although I did put it down half way through and go and read something else. Initially, I was really caught by the book, but I began to dislike Amy quite a lot, so I took a break. When I went back to the book, I finished it off pretty quickly, and enjoyed it again. While I think Amy got off a little lightly, overall I was satisfied with the conclusion.
What I liked best about Gould's novel is that its focus is female friendships - the only love interests there are brief plot points. That examination of female friendships is rare in our culture these days, so if the popularity of Girls means that more books like Friendship are brought into our lives, that's only a good thing.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Virago. This did not affect my review.
•Friendship is out on July 3, 2014.
