The first thing to note about Ghost Moth is its absolutely beautiful, deceptively simple cover. I know you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but in this case, you just can't help it.
On a white background is a shiny blue moth. But not just any moth, look closer, and you'll see the moth on the cover is made out of music notes.
The image on the front reflects what's inside - look more closely at each sentence and word, and you'll see so much more than you do at first glance.
On a trip to the beach with her family in Nothern Ireland of 1969, Katherine encounters a seal in the water who she fears may be her undoing. After staring what could have been death in the face, Katherine finds herself remembering her past - the equally hot summer of 1949 when, while seeing reliable, devoted George, she meets tailor Tom McKinley, who ignites a passion within her.
Ghost Moth flits between the two summers of 1949 and 1969, as Katherine's story is unveiled, and in some cases, unraveled. At its core, Ghost Moth is a love story - not just the love between a man and a woman, but also the love between family as well. Central to the narrative of 1969 is Katherine's family - her three daughters and her son, and her husband - and it's those relationships that really make the book so appealing.
Forbes took Ghost Moth
in completely unexpected directions, but they all worked, perhaps because despite their hugeness everything happened is part of ordinary life and death. I would have
liked to have seen and heard more about Northern Ireland of 1969, whose
events make the plot of the story hang much heavier and take on much
more significance, but Forbes was probably right to concentrate on
Katherine's family and let the other events form part of the background.
In addition, Forbes' writing is exquisite. Everything you read is suffused through with meaning. From the opening scene of Katherine staring the seal in the face to the very end with Elsa, there is a hidden depth to everything. It's difficult to believe this is a debut novel - Forbes seems like she's an old pro at the form.
For those who want to see how a novel should be done, Ghost Moth is a worthy read. It's as good inside as the cover makes it look.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This did not affect my review.
Very few people write handwritten letters nowadays - it's all about texting and emailing and Skyping and other things.
But there's something special about a handwritten note or letter, a thrill you just don't get with other forms of communication. I have one friend with whom I still exchange handwritten letters, and despite the fact that she and I don't see each other very often, our letters connect us and bring us closer to each other.
So Love, Nina, a collection of letters from author Nina Stibbe to her sister Vic, is a joyous read. Written when Stibbe moved to London in the 1980s to become a nanny to Will and Sam Frears, the sons of London Review of Books deputy editor Mary-Kay Wilmers, the letters are a wonderful window into domestic life.
Stibbe's letters introduce us to Sam and Will, who are brilliantly clever and insightful for two young boys; their mother Mary-Kay, who balances home and work with what looks like ease and humour; and a motley collection of friends and neighbours, including the playwright Alan Bennett.
Although the letters are one-sided (Stibbe didn't keep those sent back by Vic), they form a coherent narrative. We clearly see Stibbe getting older and wiser, although as a young woman there are still plenty of awkward moments, not to mention a healthy dash of judging people and a fair amount of culinary experiments, some of which don't turn out very well. We also see the relationships she forms develop, from those with Sam and Will and Mary-Kay, which continue even after she moves out and starts going to college, to new friendships with girls and boys she can't at first seem to make head or tail of, to her friendship with Nunney, the boy from down the road.
Love, Nina is an illustration of how important letter-writing is, and how it's a skill that should be cultivated and practised regularly. Witty, heartwarming and funny, Love, Nina should have us all rushing to put pen to paper.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Penguin. This did not affect my review.
As a general life rule, I stay away from horror because I'm a massive wuss and I don't like being scared.
But I decided to put the fear aside so I could read Lynne Truss's Cat Out of Hell, part of the Hammer novellas series from Arrow. And it sort of worked.
After the death of his wife, a man heads to a cottage with his dog for some solace. While there he goes through a file sent to him by his dead wife's colleague/friend. In the file, among other things, are audio tapes of a story being told to a man whose sister has gone missing - a story told by a cat.
And that's all I can say without spoiling it for you.
Truss uses an interesting structure for Cat Out of Hell, with the novella flipping between past, present and the very far past. Truss also employs a range of tools to tell the story, from straight narrative to emails to transcripts. It makes for good variety, and means we get to hear from a range of voices (human and not).
I can't tell you with any great expertise where Cat Out of Hell fits in the oeuvre of horror novellas since my expertise of horror literature extends to a few short stories by Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King's Misery (which terrified me). What I can say is that Cat Out of Hell made my spine tingle in the same way Poe and King's work did, which I guess is part of its aim. In addition, I made the mistake of reading Cat Out of Hell before bed, and spent the night having really weird dreams featuring cats (again, no more details because it would spoil the book).
Still, even though there was some spine-tingling and some weird dreams, I didn't find Cat Out of Hell terrifying. It was freaky, but also very amusing. I think that lighter side came from the great voices. Our protagonist, the widower, finds himself in the middle of a very strange situation, but still has time to act very, very human - he gets exasperated over the difficulties of unpacking after being away, he is annoyed by things very easily, and he's pretty judgmental when he wants to be. In addition to him, Wiggy is also a hilarious character, who seems to be from another planet half the time, but whose value to the story is clear from the very beginning (even if he does come across as a bit dim). And then there's Roger, who is a wonderful, compelling character.
Gothic and fun, witty and clever, Cat Out of Hell is a short, sweet read. Perfect for fans of horror, it's something that even cowards like me can enjoy. Just don't read it before bed.
How I got this book: From the publisher, Arrow. 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 House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz
Review: The 100 by Kass Morgan
Review: Marie Antoinette, Serial Killer by Katie Alender
Added to my shelves
Last week for work I went to a presentation by Penguin Random House UK on their 2014 highlights, so I came home with quite a few books...
Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto
Half Bad by Sally Green
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Popular by Maya Van Wagenen
A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter
The Chimp Paradox by Dr Steve Peters
Thrive by Arianna Huffington
Who is Tom Ditto by Danny Wallace
Mary Berry Cooks
Succession by Livi Michael
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe
The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
One Step To Far by Tina Seskis
A Delicate Truth by John le Carre
A Girl Called Jack by Jack Monroe (not pictured because it's in my kitchen)
Phew!
I'm looking forward to them all, but especially Thrive because I loved Lean In; Half Bad, because I've heard it's so good; ditto for Elizabeth is Missing; and Popular, which is by a 15-year-old girl (!) and is about her experiences of trying to become cool after she finds a 1950s guide to popularity. I've read Love, Nina (look out for a review soon) already, and both the cookbooks are pretty fantastic.
I also got sent a few other books, including a copy of Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.
What did you add to your shelves?
We are in the age of Sherlock - Benedict Cumberbatch's incarnation of the famous detective is one of the most popular things on television, Elementary is doing pretty well, and there have been two successful films about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation in the past few years.
Despite this, it's only recently that I ventured into the source material for all of the above. While I've yet to read a full length Sherlock Holmes novel by Doyle, I have read a number of short stories, and now the first new Sherlock novel by Anthony Horowitz, The House of Silk.
As an old man in a nursing home, Watson finally starts writing down the story of one of Holmes's most difficult and disturbing cases. The reader is transported to November of 1980, with London in the grip of a cold winter. A man arrives at 221B Baker Street, worried that he is being stalked and will soon be killed. But the stalker, a man with the scar on his face, is just the beginning for Holmes and Watson, who soon find themselves in ever more danger as they try to hunt down the mysterious House of Silk.
The pressure of writing a novel featuring some of the best known fictional characters ever must be immense, and to have to write about them in their own world must make the task even harder, but Horowitz pulls off The House of Silk as easily as blinking.
The "voice" of Watson is spot on, with Horowitz putting his own stamp on it by introducing us to an older Watson, who sets the scene for the tale. Sherlock is captured brilliantly as well, and is just as frustrating and superb as he is in the Conan Doyle stories I've had.
There are references littered throughout the book to previous stories featuring Holmes, but they're subtle and show understanding of the characters, rather than used by Horowitz as a way of saying "look, I know what Holmes is all about".
And then there's the mystery itself. Extraodinarily clever, there were many times when I thought I had it sussed, only to be proved wrong. The turns fit together well, and the ending brought all the strands together in a coherent, believable way.
Murder, intrigue, danger, and a clever, twisting plot make this an unputdownable novel. It might not be Conan Doyle, but Horowitz has created a perfect Sherlock Holmes story.
How I got this book: Bought.
I admit, I mostly picked up The 100 by Kass Morgan because the blurb on the back said it was developed in conjunction with Alloy Entertainment, who are behind Gossip Girl (and The Vampire Diaries, but I don't watch that).
The 100 (said The Hundred) is pretty well set up to be made into a television programme. One hundred teenagers, jailed for their crimes aboard the spaceship they live on, are sent back to Earth, which has been devoid of human life since a nuclear war centuries ago. When they land on Earth, these 100 teenagers must set about exploring their new world, and learning how to survive.
I think it's a great concept, and I really enjoyed all the aspects of The 100 that covered how Earth was destroyed, how new colonies were set up in spaceships and how the 100 go about creating a society from scratch. The politics onboard the spaceships - the poor live on Walden and Arcadia, the rich on Phoenix; the strict population rules; the new kind of democracy - were fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the power struggle that played out very subtly between the Chancellor and the Vice Chancellor in both the present time and through a series of flashbacks.
The book is told through alternating focus on four teenagers (with flashbacks to how they got to where they are in the present day). Clarke was arrested for treason and both her parents are dead. Wells is the Chancellor's son and only wants to make things up to Clarke, the girl he loves. Glass escapes just before the ship transports her to earth, and discovers life on Phoenix is pretty dangerous too. And Bellamy fights his way on to the ship to earth to protect his younger sister. Each of them has a different role to play within the book, especially Glass who is our only pair of eyes into the present time aboard the space ships, so it's good to have a variety of characters to see this world through.
Like on the spaceships, the politics on Earth are interesting as the teenagers go about creating a whole new world from scratch. How do you create a democracy? Do you even want to create a democracy, or is a dictatorship better in a situation like this? Who gets to be in charge - the brains or the brawn? All interesting questions that play out over the course of The 100.
While I enjoyed the aforementioned aspects, I did feel The 100 was let down by its focus on romance. Most of the time, The 100 felt like a romantic novel set in a dystopian world, rather a dystopian story with elements of romance. I definitely wanted to spend less time reading about the romantic entanglements of the characters and more about the way they dealt with the problems of the world they were in. The romances, or not in some cases, didn't add any welcome tension. There is enough tension in the situations the teenagers find themselves in (in the past and present) to create a compelling story.
Having just watched the trailer for the television version of The 100, it seems like they've dispensed with much of the romance to focus on the core issue of reinhabiting Earth. That's exactly what the book should have done, and what I hope its sequel will do. In the meantime, The 100 may be good enough for a television series, but it's not a must read unless you like your plot taking second place to your romance.
How I got this book: From the room of unwanted books at work.
