Books I Have Reviewed

June 22, 2017

My dear I wanted to tell you – Louisa Young

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My dear, I wanted to tell you – by Louisa Young

I have been reading a lot about the first world war, lately. Having eagerly devoured Paxman’s two books, ‘Empire’ and ‘Great Britain’s Great War’ (which are like a primer course for anyone wanted an accessible entry into that vast subject) I felt willing to take on My Dear, I wanted to tell you, Louisa Young’s novel exploring the social and emotional turmoil of war from several perspectives.

I was a bit phased by the style of the writing at the start, and had to flip pages back and forth to work out who was talking to whom, and why, indeed this style of presentation was deployed. Then, I glanced at the reviews, and a comment ‘…urgent, theatrical, staccato style that is probably best appreciated as an audio book…’ caught my attention and made me look again, re-engaging with the story differently. Then, almost listening, I could clearly hear the different characters and identify more closely with them.

A woman writing a novel about the trenches – so obviously a claustrophobic, largely male preserve – has a difficult job to convey a lean account in prose that works; and Louisa Young is very largely successful. Her use of atmospheric, slightly disjointed prose very cleverly conveys creeping desperation and the madness of war. Her characters are eminently believable, with equal weight given to both men and women.

The main love interest was well drawn, though I found myself pulled more decisively towards the dilemmas of her loyal sidekick Rose; and I still wonder why, with the dearth of ‘suitable’ men, and as a shrewd and capable woman, Rose would feel herself stuck in her position as spinster. It felt almost as if Young created Rose so she could speak through her, rather than through the heroine of the story – though in a story on this scale, which manages to be both intricate and all embracing, all the characters were heros in their own way.

All in all, a worthwhile and engrossing read, which is worth sticking with to the end.

 

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June 5, 2017

‘Philomena’ by Martin Sixsmith

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Book Review – ‘Philomena’ by Martin Sixsmith

 

This is a relatively fat book, written by a very reputable journalist with an engaging and informative style, so I was really looking forward to it. Despite hints in the subject matter – tales of the Magdalene Sister slaves having now come into public awareness – that all would not be well, I looked forward to reading about Philomena and learning about her life.

Interestingly, this account is about so much more than one woman, and exposes the deep and painful hypocrisy embedded in the antediluvian system of Irish ‘care’: young girls who had the misfortune to become pregnant out of wedlock – in a culture where young men expected to have a fling or two before ‘settling down’ aged thirty-five or so – bore the full brunt of society’s disapproval, being forced into a painfully closeted, almost captive existence in which their ignorance of sex was mocked, their sorrow and naivety scorned, and in which young women and girls were forced to work in kitchens, gardens and laundries for three years and never once allowed to leave the confines of the catholic ‘home’ in which they found themselves.

Sixsmith does an excellent job exposing the web of conspiracy and intrigue that allowed this venal system to perpetuate for decades, enlisting our sympathy for our subject matter, and our immense gratitude that things have finally changed. It is so easy to take our freedoms for granted. I really empathised with Philomena and found myself aghast as the blinding hypocrisy of a system which lied, cheated and stole, for no better motive, it seems, than profit.

Once the link between Philomena and her long-lost son is made, the bulk of the book is about him. From the reader’s point of view, it is fortunate that her son had an interesting life, and that his inner landscape revealed so much of the pitfalls of adoption. For all that, I would have loved to learn more about the life and struggles of the woman who lent her name to the title of this book, and whose contribution is slim, compared to that of her beloved, darling boy, torn from her at the age of three and sent to live in America.

All in all, a very worthwhile, provocative read, if only because it reminds me to be grateful for all my blessings.

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May 18, 2017

Reading Books

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Reading Books

So in the midst of a busy Tuesday – riding, laundry, shopping – last week I went to the library and quickly collected four books, all different, and so far, all good. If you want to see what they are, visit Goodreads where I have updated my ‘currently reading’ shelf.

The interesting thing is, so far, that apart from being grateful that they are all good enough to keep me reading to the end – some are better than merely good – these books have all, in their varying ways, reminded me of something valuable. Something to do with the importance of language to communicate experiences that I won’t be living directly. More than I’m usually aware, I’m learning from even fairly fanciful plots – I will never live in a lighthouse on a tidal island or run my own village bakery – about motivation, what love means, and why it matters that we should each make our individual and very particular contributions to the world.

I hope to review each of these books. Meantime, it is a wonderful relief to reacquaint myself with the thought that reading books – good books – is good for me and goes way beyond mere escapism or time filling. I read quickly and sometimes deliberately to forget stuff going on, or to allow my head some down time. For example, it is better for me to read books in the evenings, tucked up in bed, than to spend hours staring at the computer, checking messages in the blinding white back-light that keeps me awake for far too long afterwards.

Reading encourages the discipline of getting to bed at a reasonable time, and staying there; a discipline worth encouraging after years spent endlessly thinking, typing, plotting and planning. If I can glean some value from what other authors are plotting, then so much the better.

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May 15, 2017

‘Choose Me’ by Kay Langdale

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Book Review – ‘Choose Me’ by Kay Langdale

It’s very rare that I read a book I really, really don’t want to end. A book in which I feel so invested, I want to congratulate the characters for what they have achieved.

This is the story of how a young boy’s mother dies, leaving him an orphan – his father, a shadowy figure, introduced his mother to the drug habit which killed her and apparently left behind nothing, except that Billy looks exactly like him – and the quest to find Billy a new family. Since Billy is not a cute Guatemalan girl of five, his chances, apparently, are less than bright, especially after his mother’s parents turn away from him in their grief.

What strikes me about this novel is the strength of the characterisations. I agonise with the social worker, charged with the job of finding Billy a new family; I empathise with the grandparents, riven and destroyed by grief, blinded to the needs of their grandson until it is almost too late. The thoughtful and searching interplay of the characters is so true to life, I was pulled along by this story, and now I really want to hear more about them, and what happened next. Will Kay Langdale write a follow-up?

Motivations are part of what make a book credible, whether the ending is happy or not. If the characters come alive to me, and I can hear their voices, I don’t really care if they believe in Santa, live in a mansion in Santa Barbara, or in a squat in Glasgow. I want to listen to their voices, hear their story and cheer them on. And Kay Langdale manages that process so beautifully, Choose Me really is a marvellous story.

I won’t tell you what happens, because I think you should read it.

 

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May 9, 2017

SixtyFive Roses by Heather Summerhayes Cariou

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Sixtyfive Roses by Heather Summerhayes Cariou

Sixtyfive Roses

 

Sixtyfive Roses by Heather Summerhayes Cariou tells the story of her sister, Pammy, born with cystic fibrosis, and the effects this has on their family: two parents, four children and grandparents.

Heather, older sister of Pamela, is naturally protective towards her younger sister who is diagnosed with CF in infancy because of ‘failure to thrive’. Pamela, it is clear, is lucky to survive her birth, and lives to the grand age of 26, at that time a most astonishing testament to the power of life to endure despite chronic, progressive and seriously debilitating terminal illness, in which at the time, children were considered lucky to survive into adolescence.

Daily treatments, the constant risk and actuality of hospital admission and the unpredictable trajectories of an illness that can flare up at a moment’s notice, produced a constant underlying anxiety within the immediate family, who were unable to plan ahead, have ordinary expectations, or to grieve fully – Not knowing what would happen or when, they endured a medicalised existence as best they could.

I so empathised with their struggle for normality in the face of incredulity and some latent hostility and incomprehension among members of the wider family, a feeling that the challenges for Pammy and her immediate family were overstated – she lived a long time, didn’t she?! Strenuous efforts were made at home to preserve a veneer or normality at all costs, but it became clearer as I read this often harrowing account, that in fact, the family adapted by absorbing an enormous amount of medical detail into their daily routines, which became second nature, while isolating them from ‘ordinary’ families and spontaneous enjoyment.

Heather is an articulate and expressive author, deftly managing the tide of sweeping emotions that threaten all the time, to undermine precious time spared from the grim reaper.

Hers is an intimate and balanced account of the trauma that everyone endures, when a child of the family is born with a life-threatening impairment. It seems a miracle to me, that any kind of normality was achieved, but in that, there was also the risk that the compromises hewn from the rock of unfairness – medical costs leading to bankruptcy, why me?, the strain that told on their parents – the heroism that procured the illusion of an everyday existence worked against the family too, as they were routinely misunderstood and accused of overstating their difficulties.

The echoes of the challenges that my own family faced, when I made my appearance in the world, are not lost on me. It is a common dilemma that disabled persons face. They do all in their power to achieve the appearance of normality, and because they are successful so much of the time, they are accused of overstating the difficulties they juggle with. Yet, ‘normality’ perches on a knife edge. One fall, one bad crash leads not to minor inconvenience and aches here and there, but to a month of housebound agony, an inability to walk or move quickly…. Having had two bad falls recently, I can recognise the challenge that is the thin line between success and utter catastrophe.

This is a remarkable book, and one which deserves to be widely read.

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April 17, 2017

Book Review: Nuts and Bolts of Self Publishing – by Chris Longmuir

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Book Review: Nuts and Bolts of Self-Publishing by Chris Longmuir

I could just say, to any novice indie publisher who knows nothing – and doesn’t realise that s/he knows nothing –

This book is a fantastic, easy to read, fun and practical introduction to indie publishing; and anyone contemplating self-publishing should simply go and buy it. And buy the paperback, so you can prop it on your printer, refer to it obsessively, and learn from it, until the book falls open from over-use at certain favoured places.

I could just say, this is one of the best books I have read on indie publishing. (No, it’s not quite the only one, but it is definitely among the best ….) Compact, easy to read and to carry around, easy to love and take to bed in the wee small hours, this book has really helped me so much to lay aside the twin fears of anyone starting out on the indie publishing road, namely, that (a) publishing one’s own books is all too complicated for one to understand and (b) that indie publishing is bound to be too expensive.

Longmuir makes no assumptions about what the reader knows, (which is so refreshing). So she explains just about all that needs to be explained for the serious novice. That might sound like a bit of a contradiction, but we all need to start somewhere. Okay, so in these technological times my age might be against me, but it does also give me some advantages: I know my way around a keyboard fairly well, and I know that there are several ways to find and do things. So I can work out that to de-format a book for Kindle, (before reformatting it, in a mobi-friendly fashion) you can use the ‘find’ and ‘replace’ functions to de-format (which means, take out all the tabs, italics, bold, extra fonts…but leave in the page returns) in seconds.

Nuts and Bolts is gently and helpfully repetitive, so you don’t have to read the whole book again to find a single reference. It also contains helpful checklists.

That there is a definite order to the way of doing things also becomes apparent, but knowing what to do and how and why, is such a relief. And it occurs to me that while I will engage the services of several professionals to help with editing and publishing expertise, there is no better way to get it right than to know a bit about what the whole process involves before making that call or sending that email.

Happiness Matters is my next book, which I am hoping to publish soon, my first outing as an indie author. Meantime, Chris’s book gets full marks from a very grateful reader. Thank you.

 

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February 20, 2017

Thinking My Way to the End of the World – by Jerry Waxler

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Jerry Waxler – ‘Thinking My Way to the End of the World’

I was sent Jerry’s book to review – thank you! – and have read it with great interest.  So many aspects of Jerry’s journey – this youthful search, the almost obsessive quest for answers, and, ultimately, for any peace of mind – resonated with me.  As Jerry writes (at page 144)

“All this time I(d) been looking to science for answers, and despite all my intense efforts to understand the material world, my reason for living ha(d) been draining away. I’m so glad I found this.”

And by the time I got to that point in his story, I was glad he found some answers with his spiritual quest too!  I heaved a small sigh of relief that this young, earnest and very clever man had discovered some prospect at last, of his very own happy ending, fresh hope at the end of a long, dispiriting trail, the start of a new path.

I would have liked to learn more about why Jerry had ever felt such keyed-up angst in what appeared to be a fairly conventional Jewish up-bringing, and where, perhaps, his particular fears originated.  It is true that, as a member of an ethnically distinct group that has been subject to much more than its fair share of persecution, Jerry’s particular worries were understandable; yet not all individuals who are in group that habitually sees itself as persecuted end up in such a state of chronic anxiety and depression.

Perhaps, in a later volume of his autobiographical adventures Jerry might enlighten us.  His first volume details the author’s journey from youth until the age of about thirty-five, and it would be very interesting to catch up with his progress in the intervening years.  Times change, and I’m sure he has changed too.

This is a well-written, insightful and very sincere look at the particular challenges facing young people in the 1960’s America, which contained many unexpected parallels with my own experiences. An interesting read.

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February 15, 2017

‘Elephant @ the Party’ by Julie D’Amour

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Elephant @ The Party by Julie D’Amour

‘Elephant @ the Party’ is the first in a series of YA books by Julie D’Amour about Lucy McGregor, a young woman who has to learn the art of self-acceptance, and finds herself in some pretty amazing places, learning to do just that.

I started out reading, thinking, ‘We’ll see how we go with this, I don’t usually read YA….’  And despite occasional stumbles in the text, I found myself drawn in, and then captivated, though how to describe that is a challenge.

I related to Lucy, and understood her characterization as the elephant at the party.  That made me sad, and then involved as the plot unfolded.  I read descriptions of faery life, minutely observed and so brightly vivid and colourful that the account seemed to leap of the pages.  It feels so truthful.  I know about Spirit, and I sense that there is more to this story than mere description.  Perhaps kinship comes close to describing it.

The narrative was intriguing on a number of levels.  The faery backdrop revealed that, in parallel worlds, creatures live as benignly as possible within their environments; so streets are built in the trees, and though its inhabitants live in apartments, these are found within the body of the trees of the forest, which provides shade, shelter and food.  Wild meat is eaten, but prayers of thanks are offered beforehand, and foods and materials are sourced and adapted to impact the physical world as lightly as possible.  I found myself searching for more examples of this in the text, feeling in some way hopeful that we as a species might learn something about that….

The characters are intriguing too, an aspect of these books about which I suspect we will hear more, later in the series.  Connor is – almost – too obliging to be true, too wonderful, but what a guy!  Lucy’s learning and her journey to self-acceptance is courageous and wonderful to watch.  I have learned from that – I continue to learn – and in such an entertaining, colourful way, that I cannot help but be swept away.

Thank you, Julie, for reminding me of worlds that live alongside ours, hopeful, kind and treading lightly on the earth.  Elephant @ the Party is part fairy tale, part truth, part warning to us all, that to live happily and content with ourselves is an important, vital part of our future success.

Rating : 4.5 / 5

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January 20, 2017

Is it a thriller?

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Is it a thriller?

I like books, of course, and I used to say I liked thrillers. Edgy, exciting, with narrow escapes, a bit of luck, coincidences to make the hair stand on the back of my neck, a nice bit of calculation to keep the grey matter going.

But, whether it is a current trend – in what, apparently is called genre fiction, which is supposed to stand in opposition to literary fiction – though I think it is pointless to take such distinctions literally – increasingly, the thrillers I read are merely violent.

John Grisham’s debut, A Time to Kill, is undoubtedly a violent tale. But arguably, it was The Firm a thrilling book with remarkably few references to blood and gore which established his reputation as a thriller writer. Indeed, I always thought that it was the allusions to violence, the danger of it, that made a book thrilling, rather than the blood bath; but in this, I appear to be out of step with modern trends.

I watch very little TV these days, and so films that my daughter would scarcely raise an eyebrow at, would probably give me nightmares. I read few thrillers, either, though many thriller writers excel. Increasingly I blame this on the realisation that I don’t find references to gun toting alcoholics who rape girls, and farm hand yokels who spit and swear, drive pickups and shoot people for fun, thrilling at all.

Last night I had to decide not to continue reading a book, otherwise well written and confident, which was disappointingly violent, and in which the hapless females seemed to have the ill-fortune to encounter violent sociopaths wherever they went, with disastrous and very bloody consequences.

Quite apart from the realisation that most sociopaths I know are socially indistinguishable from my neighbours and hide in plain sight behind the façade of respectability, repeated references in thrillers to downtown yokels with vile morals disrespects the vast majority of people who are kind, thoughtful, hardworking and desperate to escape the burden of nine to five purgatory, wherever they work. It may well be that stories of tormented or doomed young girls in trouble sells copy. Perhaps we find clichés of tough, hardened folk difficult to escape. But readers can choose, and I suspect that the explicit and relentless violence in many thrillers becomes unsavoury and damaging.

Maybe someday, booksellers might look to categorise books according to their ‘blood content’ thus assisting hapless readers like me who are looking for an exciting read which manages to steer clear of violent, misogynistic men and beautiful, tormented, abused girls.

 

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October 11, 2016

Pieter Alexander Hintjens: 3 December 1962 – 4 October 2016

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Pieter Alexander Hintjens: 3 December 1962 – 4 October 2016

pieter-hintjens

After a long and painful illness, a battle with cancer over the last six years, my brother has died in Brussels, aged only 53.

My love for him has always been the adoring, muted kind that looked up to the light he shone, that basked in his enthusiasm and tried, and failed, to keep up with the thousand-and-one ideas he gave voice and form to. Many of his passions were beyond my comprehension but very real, nevertheless. As a computer programmer, writer of internet protocols and founder of on-line communities, his interests went way over my head. As an author, latterly, we connected and I was able to collaborate with him on one of his books – The Psychopath Code – an involvement for which I am profoundly grateful: Not only has this particular book helped me to navigate a few tricky moments in my own life, but the understanding we shared was like coming home.

I can’t begin to do justice to my brother’s legacy as a professional innovator, thinker, and networker. Pieter was one of these rare people totally unafraid to take chances, to think not just outside the box but into the next universe. How he maintained his enthusiasm and energy, where his inspiration came from, I shall not know in this lifetime.

His death last Tuesday has opened up a hole in my life, a tear in the fabric of my normal. Poignantly – and painfully – it is only as his legacy becomes clearer that I notice the loss of his quiet, determined contribution in my life. Always, in the background, he encouraged me, supporting my modest hopes for an ordinary life: my ambitions to study, to write, to marry and have a child. In all these attempts he was unwaveringly supportive, while seeking so little from me in return. Of course, elder brothers are looked up to, and often expected to take the lead. But lately, in these last few years, while he faced pain and uncertainty – about which he has written so candidly on his blog – while he battled fear and the shadows of disappointment with his trademark wry humour, he faced these challenges fearlessly and with a fiery determination that is frankly awe-inspiring.

If I could, I would swear from now on to be always forgiving, loving, kind. But because I am only human I can undertake only to do my best to make him proud of me. I was always proud of him.

 

pieter-1

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