Book #2 Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Everything I Never Told You


Everything I Never Told You is the story of Lydia Lee who is already dead when the novel begins, though her family don't know that yet. It initially appears to be heading into the territory occupied by The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, but instead becomes a very different kind of story unique unto itself.

I felt that the story was the embodiment of the famous Philip Larkin poem 'This Be The Verse'. The more we learn about the lives of the Lees, the more we see how their entire dysfunction has been created by the emotional baggage both parents have carried through from their own childhoods, which then accidentally dictates their interactions with their own children. Or more specifically, Lydia.

James is Chinese and his wife Marilyn is All American. The children and the couple themselves face the kind of prejudice as a mixed race family one would expect from small town 1970's USA.

Though they have three children, all the hopes of both parents have fallen upon their middle child, Marilyn's by design and James's by accident and they each want for her everything they feel they failed to have. A parenting mistake that is never rectified has led older son Nath to be overshadowed, and unplanned youngest child Hannah is almost deliberately ignored.   

Though it begins as a novel about her, there is some great writing which shows that if anything as the novel progresses Lydia becomes more and more a ghost, less and less knowable and as a result the situation becomes so much more tragic, in many senses as realistically forgotten whilst living as either of her siblings.

It also manages to cleverly subvert a couple of story cliches I think, the dead girl in a small town cliche generally, and 'the Clever Asian Kid' cliche.

It is mournful and it has this pervading sadness without being depressing,  People think of love as a tremendously positive thing, and neither parent is a bad or evil person, but loving in the way they think of as loving.  It is almost an elegy to the harm we can do we with love. And this is what makes it noteworthy and this is what it makes it haunting, as a family filled with silent despair finally implodes.    

9/10

2015 Challenge :A book you can finish in a day.
     

Book #64 Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield

Bellman & Black

Length Of Time In Possession : 2 weeks

In this follow up to 'The Thirteenth Tale' Diane Setterfield writes another spooky story set in the Victorian era.

We are introduced to William Bellman - the happy child of a single mother who grows up to be well liked and successful.

But, when William Bellman was 10 he created the perfect catapult and accidentally killed a rook with a well aimed shot. As we learn William's story the narrative is interspersed with prose about the intelligence and behaviour of rooks. William may have pushed his childhood transgression out of mind but the rooks have not forgotten as soon he will learn.....

The intriguing thing about Bellman & Black is that William and those around him attribute their bad fortune to the way of the world, preventable deaths for example were common of the age. The reader however is in on the secret, the idea that something more sinister that is unbeknownst to the characters is actually in play here.

The novel does have its problems, events become slightly repetitive in both of its halves, yet the prose itself is continuously engaging and you stick with it.

There is something genuinely unsettling about the proposed notion that a mistake that you make as a child and do not recall can literally have repercussions across your life through unseen forces that you can chase but never quite grasp...

It's an interesting novel, worth reading and has an original concept. It is not entirely perfect in its execution however.

Verdict :   8/10

Destination : ebook storage

Books #18-19 Shadows of The Workhouse/Farewell To The East End by Jennifer Worth

The Midwife Trilogy

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Length Of Time In Possession : Roughly 2 weeks

Last year, I read the first in The Midwife Trilogy "Call The Midwife" on which the BBC series is based. I picked up the sequels in an omnibus of all 3 in the charity shop and proceeded to read. The follow ups are "Shadows of The Workhouse" and "Farewell to the East End"

Like the original book, some of the stories in these novels are familiar from the show, the second two books like the show strike a darker tone reflecting various social issues from the times : Tuberculosis, Backstreet abortions and the Workhouse.

I'm sad to say that I have found the most recent series of Call The Midwife rather depressing and these books are likewise, with few moments of the humorous respite shown at the beginning.

I have to hold my hand up and say I skipped the lengthy section devoted to the old soldier, it was covered in the series and didn't interest me that much then either. I probably need a slapped wrist for saying that.

As the third book concludes Jenny's life at Nonnatus House and brings the book up to date, it is pretty sad to read. The fact that they all lost touch with Chummy, Cynthia's struggle with religious life, then mental illness, then cancer. The eventual irrelevance of the service Nonnatus House offered, its demise and closure, and the deaths of each nun they worked alongside. But death is, inevitably what happens to people who were in their 20s, 60 odd years ago.

Worth reading, but the novels have almost been entirely covered by just two series worth of Call The Midwife "Jenny Lee" did move on to be a midwife in a hospital for nearly twenty years, and I can't help but wonder if the series will evolve and move on from its Nonnatus setting.

Worth reading but didn't set me alight 7/10

Destination : Back to the charity shop