Tag Archives: Families

March 28, 2013

Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

By bibliomouse

Amity and Sorrow

Publisher: Tinder Press

ISBN: 978-0755394364

Publication date: 28th March 2013

There aren’t many books that can be described by the hashtag #GodSexFarming, but Tinder Press’ second title is one of the few. Peggy Riley’s debut novel is fascinating and disturbing look at how hard it can be to escape from a former life.

It opens with a car crash. Amaranth has been driving without sleep for days, trying to get her two daughters, Amity and Sorrow, as far away as possible from their previous home. As the first wife of a charismatic preacher at the heart of a polygamous cult, Amaranth has first-hand experience of the effect that her daughters’ father can have on people and when a mysterious fire rips through their compound, she gathers her strength and the girls and drives with no real idea of a destination.

The crash occurs just outside a farm owned by Bradley, a taciturn divorcee who lives with his aged father and surrogate son, Dust. Against his better judgement, he finds himself sheltering the three escapees, two of whom have never before experienced life in the  ’real world’. Amity tentatively embraces her new life, enjoying the novelty of being free to venture further than she had previously been allowed, but Sorrow fights it at every opportunity. Convinced by her father that she is ‘chosen’, she shows definite sociopathic tendencies as she attempts to destroy any happiness that her sister and mother find away from the compound.

Life within the cult is revealed in a series of flashbacks, revealing  Amaranth’s history and her reasons for marrying the preacher in the first place, as well as highlighting the complicated relationships, friendships and rivalries between the many women all ‘wedded’ to the same man.

Riley’s prose is lyrical and gorgeous, with descriptions that frequently made me pause and re-read. There is a particular passage where the women are spinning around in celebration that highlights Riley’s skill with cinematic imagery and also gives a suggestion of the appeal of living with so many other people who are linked by a common belief. Most of the sections of the novel set in the compound are dark and disturbing so these tiny moments of light really shine through.

The novel is a both a slow-burner and a page-turner; parts are hard to read but I couldn’t turn away. Amity and Sorrow was one of the best books I read last year and I’m thrilled that it’s finally out in the wild!

4.5/5

Peggy Riley will be appearing on the blog in April and there might even be a giveaway so keep your eyes open.

I was sent a review copy by the lovely Tinder Press in return for an honest review – thanks guys.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Reviews

March 13, 2013

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

By bibliomouse

Life-after-life-cover

Publisher: Doubleday

ISBN: 978-0385618670

Publication date: 7th March 2013

Since winning the Whitbread Prize for her debut novel, Scenes From The Museum, Kate Atkinson has become a familiar name on bestseller lists, both with her detective series featuring Jackson Brodie and with her standalone novels. Her latest novel has been eagerly awaited by many and, although many much-hyped novels turn out to be a slight disappointment, Life After Life is definitely not one of them.

A baby is born on 11th February 1910 in a the midst of a snowstorm, strangled by the umbilical cord. She dies instantly. She is born again, in another life, and lives to be named Ursula Todd, the ‘Little Bear’. Ursula will die several times throughout her childhood, but each time another Ursula will use the “awful sense of dread” that she experiences on occasion to learn to avoid death, and darkness, for a little longer.

For the first part of the book, the chapters are short and cyclical; with each death, the narrative returns to 11th February 1910. Ursula is forced to resort to increasingly desperate measures the ensure that darkness will not fall on her young life again, at least not in the way that it has done before. By the time that World War I is over she has negotiated her way through a maze of both real and potential deaths, including drowning, falling and Spanish ‘Flu. Life is not easy for the Little Bear.

Atkinson never shies away from writing painful scenes and the situations that Ursula faces as she gets older are sometimes horrific, especially during World War II, when she both becomes, and doesn’t become, a warden with the ARP.. Ursula’s experiences in the aftermath of air raids highlight the oft-forgotten, crucial, and frequently gruesome, part that women on the Home Front played in the war.

Ursula is a wonderful character – intelligent, measured, occasionally impulsive, fallible and utterly human. It’s almost impossible not to be affected by some of the decisions that she makes, knowing that they will lead to her death, but it’s also fascinating to see where the alterations that she makes in the next version of her life will lead her. There is only one occasion in the novel that she chooses the darkness over life and it’s all the more moving because it’s the only choice left available to her.

Atkinson doesn’t neglect secondary characters, and it’s easy to love Ursula’s favourite siblings, Pamela and Teddy. Atkinson is a master of playing with perceptions and delaying truths until she feels the time is right for them to be revealed. This means that although the  fates of most of the characters stay the same throughout Ursula’s many lives, it isn’t always easy to predict what these fates will be.

In the hands of a lesser writer, Life After Life could have been terrible –  cliché-laden, repetitive and sensationalist. However, Atkinson has a skill for creating complex narratives peopled with very human characters, and for writing with a warmth which can make the most disturbing of situations readable. This is a novel in which the main protagonist dies several times, often in horrible ways. That it is a hugely life-affirming read is a testament to the talent of it’s author. I’m gushing now but it’s hard not to. The book is brilliant. Go, read it.

5/5

Many thanks to the publishers for my review copy. Needless to say, I’ll also be buying the hardback! This review was originally posted at http://www.forbookssake.com.

8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in British, Reviews

February 14, 2013

Tell The Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

By bibliomouse

tell-the-wolves-im-home-978144721853101

The beautiful cover of the hardback

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

ISBN: 978-1447202141978-1447202141 

Publication date: 14th February 2013 (paperback)

My favourite book of 2012, Tell The Wolves I’m Home, is out in paperback today so I thought I’d post the review I wrote for the lovely Lizzie over at These Little Words, as part of her ‘Best of 2012′ series, in December.

Set in the mid-1980s, Carol Rifka Brunt’s novel is a hauntingly gorgeous debut. When June’s uncle and best friend, the renowned but reclusive painter Finn Weiss, dies of a mysterious disease, she is devastated. In the early days of AIDS awareness, the stigma attached to it means that no-one will talk to June about Finn, and she cannot reveal why she is as upset as she is. When Finn’s partner Toby gets in touch with her and explains that he misses Finn as much as she does, she is prepared to hate him for occupying part of Finn’s heart that she had thought was all hers. As they get to know each other, she and Toby realise that Finn has been more cunning that they gave him credit for.

What makes the novel so fabulous is the quality of the writing. There are paragraphs that I had to read several times because the writing is so gorgeous, and June’s narrative voice is pitch-perfect. Insecure, baffled by her sister’s distance and somewhat isolated from her schoolmates, she thinks that she has hidden her greatest shame, her love for Finn, from everyone, not realising how obvious it was to those who mattered. She is self-aware enough to admit that there are less than altruistic motives to some of her actions, but at other times her naïvety is immensely touching. She is brave and imperfect and is my favourite ‘heroine’ since Cassandra Mortmain.

It’s been several months since I finished reading Tell the Wolves, and I still get emotional thinking about June, Toby and Finn. Carol Rifka Brunt has a beautiful way with words and a real knack for getting inside the heads of her characters, and I very much hope that she won’t make us wait too long for her next novel.

tell-the-wolves-im-home-978144720214101

The equally lovely paperback cover

5/5

Huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy of the book.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Relationships, Reviews

May 18, 2012

The Child Who by Simon Lelic

By bibliomouse

 

Publisher: Mantle

ISBN: 978-0330522748

Publication date: 5th January 2012 (hardback)

I loved Simon Lelic’s first novel, Rupture, so I was excited when I was sent The Child Who, Lelic’s third book. Lelic’s writing is powerful, and he writes about topics that can definitely be considered controversial: Rupture was about the motivations of a teacher who shot students in a school assembly, and The Child Who tackles the uncomfortable subject of children killing other children.

When Leo Curtice, a small-town solicitor, picks up the phone one afternoon, little does he realise that his life is about to be altered irrevocably. The phone call is to request a solicitor for Daniel Blake, a 12-year-old who is accused of murdering his classmate, Felicity Forbes. Leo is understandably excited about the opportunity to take such a high-profile case, but has no idea just how much publicity it will generate.

What made this novel a cut above the usual ‘evil child’ narrative is that he concentrated on Leo’s life and how it is changed by him representing Daniel. Daniel’s guilt is never in doubt, nor is the horrendous nature of his crime, but Leo can’t help but see him as a victim too and is resolute in his determination to represent him, despite the detrimental effect that the case has on his own family. However, when his 15-year-old daughter, Ellie, vanishes after a series of threatening anonymous letters, Leo is forced to question his decisions.

This is a compelling narrative, but I didn’t find it quite as affecting as Rupture. Passages scattered throughout the narrative flash-forward to point suggestively to a tragedy for Leo, and his wife Megan, but I found the ending, if not disappointing, then slightly anti-climatic. Lelic’s writing continues to be excellent – polished, assured and forceful, and The Child Who is a good read, but I just didn’t enjoy it as much as Rupture.

3.75/5 (This is where I wish that I gave ‘marks out of 10′!)

This was sent to be by the publisher, but I was not paid for the review and all views are my own.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in British, Detective/Crime, Reviews

October 10, 2011

Good Behaviour – Molly Keane

By bibliomouse

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I bought Good Behaviour by Molly Keane. To be perfectly honest, I bought it for the cover primarily- as I mentioned in the Book Porn post, I couldn’t resist a book with bunnies designed by Eley Kishimoto (the design is called ‘Bunny Dance’. How could I not?) so I had no idea if I would actually like the story within the gorgeous cover. As it turns out, I did. Described as a black comedy, I found it to be far less funny than this suggests. The humour is of the uncomfortable kind, where you want to hide behind a cushion until it’s over, but it worked really well in the context of the narrative. It’s the story of Aroon St Charles, the daughter of an impoverished Anglo-Irish family in the early Twentieth century. It begins with matricide. From there, the narrative goes back to Aroon’s childhood and her experiences with unrequited love, a suicidal governess, a disturbed and loveless relationship with her mother and her desire for her father to notice her. Put in those basic terms, it sounds much less enjoyable than it actually it. The characters are really well-written, and each emotion is concisely put out in the open for the reader to feel. Aroon is not a likable character, but she is interesting in her naivety and snobbery, and knowing how the narrative ends/the book begins makes the tale compulsive reading.

4/5

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Relationships, Reviews

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