Book #12 The Versions Of Us by Laura Barnett

The Versions Of Us

My thanks to the publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson for the complimentary copy of this book

Eva and Jim are students at Cambridge in the 1950's - a minor bicycle mishap causes them to collide one afternoon, and from there romance ensues, OR DOES IT? 

In essence The Versions Of Us is a love story with a Quantum element - the reader is shown all different possibilities occurring at once, in one Version, they meet and marry, in another meet and split up shortly after and in the third option they never meet at all. But which story has the best outcome for the couple? Which version is best, which version do you the Reader love the most?

I loved this book I really did. I loved both lead characters so much. Jim, the would-be creative stifled by family pressure to study Law and have a proper occupation, struck a chord and literally made my heart ache and continuously so; both in the versions he succeeds and in the ones were he makes a mess of his life. The observations around Jim's character in all possible outcomes are perfectly drawn. And in Eva's too. In one life the successful writer, in another, the barely visible wife of a Hollywood star, forced to devote herself to domesticity.

The versions themselves are distinct enough to genuinely BE different. For example, in every Version Jim and Eva have different children. I inhabited all three worlds with the same level of intensity. I was deeply wrapped up in it, and devoted to the idea, that sometimes some people are just made for one another come what may, and the stars which drove them apart will eventually pull them back together.

I have seen this novel compared to 'One Day' a book I didn't much care for, and so I feel like it's almost an insult! This book knocks spots off One Day, it's so much better, so much cleverer, so much more thoughtful and so much more real and believable. Eva and Jim won a place in my heart and the book is definitely one which I will re-read and buy as a gift for others. I want to read it again and read all versions individually just so that I can experience each as a solo story.

I recommend this particularly if you enjoy a love story that is above chick lit fare, or appreciate a love story done in a new way. I also think that those who loved Kate Atkinson's 'Life After Life' will love this.

A stunning debut by Laura Barnett, I can't wait to see what she does next 10/10       

Book #18 This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

This Is How You Lose Her

I wasn't planning on reading 'This Is How You Lose Her' because I didn't get on with miserabilist 'The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao' at all. My friend Nana, however is a big Diaz fan and convinced me to give him another try.

A collection of short stories all save one revolve around Yunior, Oscar's sister Lola's boyfriend from the novel. It becomes hard not to see Yunior as an alter ego of Diaz's as he shares so many autobiographical similarities.   I did not like the character of Yunior much in the novel, he got on my nerves, but this collection feels somewhat different.

Every story is in some way about the tragedy of love in its various forms from loveless marriages and couplings to being in love with someone and being unable to make them happy, to continuing to pine over someone five years after the end of the relationship.

As in Oscar Wao, Yunior is incapable of conventional fidelity even as he acknowledges it is destroying all his hopes of happiness. 

Pathos surrounds the work as a whole, and I thought the stories were very sharp and beautifully written, as a result I will probably read more Diaz and I'm rather sorry it wasn't this one I read first.

Verdict : 8/10

Book #56 The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale

The Whole Day Through

Length Of Time In Possession : around 8-12 months

This book is the third Patrick Gale I have read, following sister novels 'Notes From An Exhibition' and 'A Perfectly Good Man' both of which I greatly enjoyed.  Separated into different intervals in everyday life (such as Lunch Break, and Evensong) it covers a longer, yet not wholly specified period.

I did struggle to identify why the book should be separated out in such a way as a device to weave the plot around, having considered it I think perhaps it is there to reflect how the life of a carer is often mapped out in such a way.

Laura and Ben find themselves reacquainted after a twenty year hiatus after each comes to Winchester to look after a relative, Laura her ailing mother and Ben his vulnerable younger brother.

Restrained and elegant, The Whole Day Through is a novel about yearning and loss, how tiny coincidental acts meant that the stars kept two people who were perfect for each other apart.
The writing is as high quality as I have come to expect from him, and he may eventually come to be one of few writers whose entire output I've read.
As a reader I understood the emotions conveyed so well, and yet, I felt almost cheated, cheated on, by the ending which was highly unsatisfactory!

I understand that real life is messy, and so it many ways it is an honest story about reality: real people, real situations. Life rarely turns out the way you plan, God laughs!

And yet, Patrick Gale, REALLY? Did you HAVE TO?

Verdict : 7/10

Destination : Shelves  

Book #45 When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman

When God Was A Rabbit

Length Of Time In Possession : Roughly 8 months 

Two years ago, Amazon must have emailed me suggesting I buy When God Was A Rabbit more than ten times. I got annoyed, and decided never to read it on that basis. I also thought its title was incredibly twee and irritating.

If one should not judge a book by its cover one should also not judge a book by its title, a friend insisted on my lending it, promising it was good, and actually, though it almost embarrasses me to admit it, given how ill disposed I was to it, it is!

I've seen complaints around the internet that it was disappointing and didn't live up to the hype, but, as I entered it with incredibly low expectations, the novel had the opposite effect on me.

It is a coming of age story about Elly, a quirky off beat damaged little girl who feels she doesn't belong anywhere or to anyone except her brother Joe. Their father struggles with depression, believing he is cursed and their mother is openly in love with both their father and their aunt.   

Both Joe and Elly have one special friend in Joe's case Charlie and in Elly's, Jenny Penny and for them, that is enough. The novel moves through their childhood into adulthood, and, like Elly's later newspaper column is about 'Lost And Found' that which we lose and find again, in the best of ways.
It is about love too, and love in all the forms it exists within. I felt envious of what Elly and Joe had within each other, a relationship special and vital to each.

Throughout the prose there is this sad nostalgia, but a kind of beautiful sadness if that makes any sense? Thoroughly engaging, I'm not sorry I read it, and perhaps ought to have listened to Amazon's automated recommendations, damn you for knowing me too well!!!

Verdict : 9/10

Destination : Return to Owner
  

Book #42 The Crane Wife by Patrick Ness

The Crane Wife

Length Of Time In Possession : 3 months

I have previously read 4 of Patrick Ness's "young adult" novels, the dystopian trilogy Chaos Walking and A Monster Calls, a book about grief from the perspective of an adolescent. All of these novels are brilliant and well worth a read. This is his first foray into the adult market.

I feel I must state that I met Patrick at World Book Night in April and he signed my copy of The Crane Wife then, he was extremely lovely to both me and my friends, but this review is a genuine reflection of how I felt about the book.

The Crane Wife is a Japanese folk tale of which there are several variants, this one is 'Tsuru Nyobo" - a story in which a man finds and rescues an injured crane only to then enter a relationship with a mysterious stranger.

In this modern retelling of the story, all round ordinary nice guy George, who runs a small printing business, rescues a crane he finds in his garden. In the coming days a mystery woman, an artist named Kumiko, enters his shop, and they begin to date.

Kumiko's artwork created in conjunction with George begins to cause a sensation, but Kumiko has a secret.....

The Crane Wife reminded me of its predecessor 'A Monster Calls' in that it weaves contemporary life together with fable. This is a strength of Ness, and something I hope he continues to pursue in the way Gregory Maguire has with his fairy tale novels. By far the best written sequences of The Crane Wife are the fable sequences related to the crane and the volcano.

Again, like A Monster Calls, a certain line of the prose in The Crane Wife caught me and felled me entirely, on a personal level.

When literature does this : when it can resonate with you in terms of things you have felt on a personal level or if as in this case it gives language to feelings you knew you had inside but had been unable to express, it is magical, it is the beauty of the written word.

This book, at least to me personally, is magical and transformative and has enabled me to look at a situation I have experienced from a fresh angle, and this new perspective has been key to the beginning process of healing an old wound, my own arrow in my wing.

Once again, many thanks Patrick Ness : a round of applause.

Verdict : 10/10

Destination : Keeping this book  

 

Book #41 Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life

Length Of Time In Possession : 4 months

Prior to reading Life After Life the only Kate Atkinson novels I had read were her Jackson Brodie private detective series beginning with Case Histories, a literary spin on the crime genre. I really liked those books, but had not managed to get "into" Behind The Scenes At The Museum when I tried it many, many years ago.

The premise of Life After Life (what if we could do it again and again until we got it right?) proved too enticing to me to resist. Instead of the Buddhist principle of moving from one life to another, this novel has more in common with parallel universe ideas and quantum theory : "Everything that can happen does happen" - the idea that you can go back and change your destiny from the point at which two paths were open to you.

Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910, the midwife is unable to reach her mother, and Ursula does not survive. The novel rewinds, Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910, she survives and goes on to grow up with her siblings Maurice and Pamela. At age 5 she drowns. Ursula is born on a snowy night in 1910.....and so on and so forth.

This novel is tremendously interesting : the impact of multiple lives begins to affect Ursula in her "next time around". She does things such as tell the maid Bridget her boyfriend is unfaithful or pushes her down the stairs. She does not know why she does this at the time, but in previous cycles, Bridget's relationship had dire consequences which Ursula instinctively knows she must prevent, but she is not psychic, and only has a vague idea, a deja vu.

Why do we, as people, experience deja vu? What is our mind REALLY trying to tell us? That vague sense of knowledge that we cannot quite grasp.....

There is also the idea that though destinies can change, certain things are set in stone. Elder brother Maurice is never anything more than despised, Auntie Izzy is always "a free spirit", Ursula always has a close bond with younger brother Teddy.

It reminded me about certain comments made in Doctor Who that some events are unalterable, but why them and not all? It's an intriguing question.

Who hasn't thought things like - what if I'd gone to a different university? What if that relationship had succeeded? What if I had been hit by that car that night? What would have changed? Who would I be, and would I still be the same me that I am now?

As a piece of prose the novel I thought this bore most comparison to was The Children's Book by AS Byatt, set within a similar era, a similar family and against the backdrop of history. There the likeness ends as they are very different novels, but I make the reference because I adored The Children's Book and equally loved Life After Life.

I thought this book was beautiful, eloquent and intelligent, both in terms of what it was saying and how it said it. I read this book in two sittings, and in a year when I've struggled to find things I've loved think this may be my book of 2013 thus far. I even wrote a poem inspired by it. Go buy it!

Verdict : 10/10 

Destination : Ebook storage

Book #57 The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman

The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans is a post WW1 Australian set novel about  Tom Sherbourne who having been demobbed gets a job as a lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock. Soon after he marries and he and his wife come to love their isolated idyll. Their paradise becomes tainted by their inability to have children and following her third miscarriage Isabel is cracking under the strain of the grief, when one night a boat is shipwrecked on their shores..... it contains a dead man and a newborn baby. Believing God has answered their prayers Isabel persuades Tom not to report the wreck and they pass the child off as their own.

But though he loves the child, the actions wrack Tom with guilt for years to come.....

This novel is a stunning debut on the part of M.L Steadman and covers such a range of emotions and reactions. Guilt, grief, sacrifice, morality, love, marriage, parenthood, loss, time, change, duty, truth. Above all it is achingly human, and provokes the same dilemma in its reader as in its protagonist.

I am quite a cynic these days, and on top of that a well read one, so it isn't that often that I find a novel with the capacity to move me to tears, but this novel did. Its location is atmospheric and beautifully drawn, the sea and the windswept isolation of the island; even with the unusual parameters of the storyline the novel feels gutwrenchingly real, of a place and time and characters who existed as opposed to an entirely fictitious prospect.

Enormously moving and brilliantly told. I won't forget this book in a hurry nor the emotions that rose within me as I read it. A quality piece of writing and a quality novel, I hugely recommend you purchase this book. 10/10

Book #56 The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller

The Song Of Achilles
 
The Song Of Achilles by Madeline Miller won the Orange Prize 2012 about a week or so ago and rarely has a book been so worthy of the accolades it has received.

The story of Patroclus an exiled Prince, who is befriended by Achilles, Prince Of Phthia, the novel charts their lives together from childhood to adolescence to the Trojan war.

For me this book was flawless, just flawless, it got me from the first page onwards and I sat smiling at it as I read it, so pleased was I with the knock out quality of the prose. Tender, beautiful, dramatic, atmospheric, touching, heartbreaking. This book is all these things.

Moreover the characters leap off the page. Known from The Iliad, they become rounded humans in Miller's reworking and are beautifully realised. Particularly, I could feel Thetis before me, smelling of salt and choking the earth beneath her feet, with the threat of power all around her.

The relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, thoroughly believable is the obvious star of the show, but the relationship between Briseis and Patroclus is both touching and sad.

I was blown away by this book and I think everyone who reads it should be. A Herculean piece of work in order to portray the Trojan war and an obvious labour of love, I can only thank Madeline Miller for providing me and other readers with it.     

Though it has the obvious attraction for anyone into Ancient Greece and Greek Myths it utterly transcends that. If you love reading, if you love books you need this book in your life, you will not be sorry you spent your money. An outstanding achievement 10/10

Book #18 About Love and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov

About Love and Other Stories

Wanting the blog to have variety of types of writing and content, this is my first short story anthology. I feel I must say at the start : DON'T BE SCARED OF CHEKHOV. I say that because I think that a lot of people view the great Russian writers as hard-going, long and inaccessible. Chekhov is none of these things, and the translation by Rosamund Bartlett makes it an easy read.

Chekhov is renowned in the business as 'the greatest short story writer who has ever lived'.  I had already read one of his other short stories 'The Bet' some time ago, which isn't in this collection but is brilliant, do seek it out.

I think that because the collection is called 'About Love' I expected the stories to all be about love, and though a lot of them actually are, I think it's just called that because it's the title of one story.

There are 17 stories total in this collection and as with anything that has a variety I liked some more than others. The first three stories are in fact about love, one about a chance romantic encounter on a journey, another about a father's concern over an errant son, and the first 'The Huntsman', a character who as far as I'm concerned deserves a punch in the face.

'Gusev' a story of two ill men on a boat journey home and 'Fortune', about two shepherds discussing hidden treasure seem to break the pattern, but could both be seen as being about aspects of love in a certain light, the love of adventure and nostalgic love.

After Gusev comes my two favourite stories 'Fish Love' written in 1892 and 'The Black Monk' from 1894. Fish Love because it is so bizarre as to make it unique and The Black Monk because I think it must be a very early example of a character with either bipolar disorder or schizophrenia and as such interested me. I also really enjoyed The Student' a really short one in which a student has a sudden revelation, a type of which I identified with.

Some of the stories I confess got on my nerves, I didn't particularly like The House With The Mezzanine or The Lady With The Little Dog but I think that's just a question of personal taste.

Also in the collection are a trio of stories from three men on a hunting trip which are slightly connected by their storytellers but not interwoven, which is fun

Despite it taking me longer to read than I expected it would, largely due to a bout of food poisoning I enjoyed this collection and would seek out other collections 7/10

Book #12 Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry

Welcome to the "difficult second novel", when you've had a seriously massive hit with your first real novel, 'The Time Travelers Wife' (note intended for cave dwellers and well, time travellers) where on earth do you go?

It's tough as the weight of expectation is upon Niffenegger, and I expect many people picked up this book in the hopes of a new Time Travelers Wife, and were sorely disappointed. Not so me, if it had been a story with a similar feel to the former, I would have felt the author had just been and churned it out, and thought her initial success was a fluke and she lacked talent and imagination. This new novel proves she has both those qualities.

For me, though I will not have the same affection for it as I do its predecessor it is neither a greater nor a lesser book, it is more a shift sideways.

The novel has three strands to it, I suppose. The first is a study of the complex nature of the relationship of twins, particularly identical twins, and how that relationship can be at once joyful and suffocating. It focuses on two sets of twins, Edie and Elspeth Noblin and Edie's daughters Julia & Valentina Poole, who are similar in their problems yet different too.

The novel begins with the words 'The End', Elspeth's end, her death, and the novel begins from there, which reminded me of a line from a TS Eliot poem 'in my end is my beginning', because Elspeth's death is the catalyst of the first chain of events.

Elspeth leaves her estate to her nieces, who she has never met and who are barely aware of her existence. It is clear that at some point in the past, something happened between Edie and Elspeth, their relationship irretrievably broke down and despite being twins, they never saw one another again.
Julia and Valentina's relationship is overly interwoven, with Julia controlling what choices they make as a duo never as individuals, and, Valentina fragile and timid, unable to strike out alone.

The second strand of the book is three interlocking love stories. The first is Elspeth and her lover Robert, their tale being told partly through Robert's memories, and partly by Elspeth herself. The second is Martin and Marijke, their upstairs neighbours, which I wondered if it was included solely for light relief from the rest of the novel, and the third is Robert and Valentina, after Robert becomes drawn to her following Elspeth's death.

The third strand is what gives the novel it's uniqueness, it's a ghost story as well as a love story, Elspeth's ghost is trapped in her flat, and with the Highgate Cemetary in London serving as the novels backdrop, there is a clear attempt to add Gothic flair to the novel, which sometimes succeeds.

The novel is in so many ways about death, the death of relationships, the feeling that you are dead inside, the idea of being alive but not really living, and death and the afterlife itself, but it's still a very alive book.

The final third of the book brings with it two almighty twists, one of which there are earlier hints of and the other which shocks, at least it didn't occur to me personally that it was coming, and so that added to the novel's enjoyment for me, despite a more than passing nod to 'Beloved' by Toni Morrison.

I probably will never read this book again, but I would recommend it, just don't come looking for a Henry DeTamble and a Clare Abshire, you won't find them here. 8/10