After a long lull in posting activity here I've been invited to join The Book Book, moonrat's community book blog.
there, so do go visit if you'd like. I've not abandoned Great Books Reviewed altogether though and plan on reviewing more often in the future..it's a hectic world, this blogosphere!
Exodus
This Whitbread award children’s book is so powerful, it had me absorbed and helpless for days. Definitely for teenagers and adults rather than younger children, it is an exploration of a future, when sea levels have risen dramatically. Mara is a fifteen year old girl with vision and determination, living a subsistence level life on one of the few remaining islands in the North. Storms rage all winter and blistering hot summers send the sea level rising every year. Technology is long defunct in her community, but she has a relic from the past that she uses to explore the ruins of an old-world virtual reality internet equivalent, The Weave. Her discovery of some New World cities built out of the sea bed into the sky, gives her an idea to save her community.
When the refugee convoy reach the New World city they find that humanity has split into two groups, the intellectual elite live lives totally cut off from the Earth and reality in their techno world, while the outcasts and refugees eke out an existence in the netherworld, among the drowned ruins of the old world city. To save her people Mara has to work an even more daring plan, infiltrate the New World city, cope with its sophisticated technology and find someone she can trust.
Bravery, self doubt, trust, love, and care for humanity are all powerful emotions that drive this engrossing story. It is too near the possible truth to dismiss as mere futuristic fantasy, so is not a cosy read, but faith in the ultimate good nature and noble spirit of the few gives hope for mankind’s eventual survival. Read this for a great story, but not if you’re feeling fragile, this is no escapist read.
Jodi Picoult Vanishing Acts
A rescue worker and mother finds that her whole life she has lived a fictional identity, after her father is arrested for abducting her from her mother at the age of four. Jodi Picoult’s excellent handling of character, plot development, moral dilemmas and legal procedure kept me immersed till the end.
Vanishing Acts
Erica James Love and Devotion
Not one for the over imaginative parent. Harriet is left with the upbringing of her sister’s two children after their parents are killed in a car crash. The story of how she and the rest of their family rebuild their lives and she has to adjust from being a fast track career woman to an instant mother replacement, is well written and enjoyable.
Love and Devotion
Anne Perry The One Thing More
Set in the troubled and desperate times of the French Revolution, a conspiracy to rescue the King from his imminent execution at the guillotine is threatened when the main mind orchestrating it is murdered. Anne Perry is great at bringing to life the lives of ordinary people in the midst of history unfolding, the domestic details, the food shortages and suspicion, households divided but still a sense of hope shining out from the fog.
The One Thing More
Elisabeth Luard Family Life
An autobiographical account of her life bringing up her four children between London and Andalusia in the Sixties and Seventies. Passionate about food she weaves family and local recipes into her stories. This is my third or fourth time of reading – I love her pragmatic approach and resourcefulness, acquiring a donkey transport when they can’t afford a car in Spain, deciding to spend a year in France so the children will be trilingual before returning to English schools and finishing with the poignant story of one daughter’s early death in her twenties. I admire her both as a food writer and indomitable mother.
Family Life
I’ve just finished reading “Married to a Bedouin
She travelled onward, but circumstances brought them together again and she realised that he was the man for her. This is her account of their life together told simply but vividly. She starts off knowing nothing of the language or culture, seeing the Bedouin from an outsider’s view. Gradually she comes to know each individual, adapts to their lifestyle and becomes one of them. She is refreshing in her perspective, neither a saint promoting self-sacrifice for the man she loves, nor a high handed crusader trying to show them the benefits of civilisation. Occasionally her irritation with an incomprehensible tradition or superstition bursts out, but later on she comes to realise that there is a valid reason behind it.
For example, she is initially horrified to discover that a woman is considered ‘unclean’ for forty days after having a baby, as any Westerner would be. The reasons become clear however: the ‘unclean’ epithet isn’t a stigma, rather the new mother is given a chance to recover in a protected space, surrounded by all the other women of the family, friends, neighbours and so on, who cook, clean, fetch water, take care of the other kids, while she has no other duties than taking care of her baby and as a bonus she has the diversion of their company for forty days. No-one but her takes care of the baby and it is not shown around (for fear of the evil eye) until after the forty days are up, thus giving it a chance to develop its immune system before being exposed to the germs of the world.
Their cave, though primitive, sounds snug and warm and over time they acquire some modern conveniences – a gas oven, eventually a kerosene fridge and once Mohammed gets a driver's licence they have a car too.
This book records and encapsulates a way of life that is fast disappearing (by the end of the book the tribe had been resettled into houses away from the archeological site, their children were learning computer skills and many of the traditions of nomadic life had been left behind) and is a fascinating read, both for her personal story and the account of Bedouin life.
Amazon.com has an excellent customer review of Married to a Bedouin
To see more details at Amazon.co.uk on Married to a Bedouin
Iris and Ruby
This is the third book by Rosie Thomas that I’ve read now. Initially I was a little condescending, assigning them a library book rating – fine to get out of the library for a bit of light escapism but not ones to buy for myself. Now I’m persuaded to reconsider.
Iris and Ruby relates the interlocking but distant relationships of three women: Iris, an old woman living a solitary life in an old stone house in Cairo, trying to hold on to her precious memories of her great love in wartime Egypt; Leslie her daughter, a conventional wife and mother, who has suffered from feelings of rejection by her mother all her life; Ruby, her daughter, a troubled but feisty eighteen year old, rebellious and dyslexic, trying to find direction in her life.
Ruby runs away to stay with her unknown grandmother in Cairo. Iris is initially unwelcoming, unwilling to have her peace and memories disturbed, but Ruby’s persistance catches her interest and the two strong-willed women make a connection. Ruby is determined to help her grandmother record the memories which seem to be slipping from her grasp. Iris’ stories of her time in Cairo during the Second World War, the frenetic life of work and partying to forget the war, that lent intensity to relationships that could be cut short any day, weave in and out of Ruby’s present day exploration of Cairo and the development of her relationship with Iris. Leslie is left out of the equation, frustrated both in her intense love for her daughter and her need for her mother’s love that she feels she has never won.
Rosie Thomas strength is her story-telling. I wasn’t drawn in to identify with the characters, though they are well-defined, my interest was kept by the gradual unfolding of the story and the eventual dawning of understanding and acceptance in the troubled mother-daughter relationships. The background of the war being fought in the desert added another layer of period detail to absorb and add to my historical knowledge base.
If you enjoy tales of strong-willed individual women with a war-time setting, do get this one. It is well written and crafted and I ended up liking the characters, even though I didn’t lose myself in them. To quote the reader's review on Amazon "an easy but intelligent read".
When I looked this book up on the Amazons it was only available from the UK..perhaps Rosie Thomas hasn't crossed the Atlantic yet? To see details at Amazon.co.uk on Iris and Ruby
This magical children’s book was one of my childhood favourites. Over the last few weeks I have been revisiting it with my children, so I looked it up on Amazon, expecting it to be out of print, and was delighted to find that the whole series were republished in 2002.
Tolly is an eight year old boy starting his holidays from boarding school. His father is posted abroad with his step mother, his mother having died long ago. Having spent his previous holidays at the school he is intrigued but apprehensive to find himself on the way to visit his mother’s grandmother, who he’d never met, in her ancient family home, Green Knowe. A quiet, rather lonely child, he quickly makes friends with his young-at-heart great grandmother and in exploring the old house finds it peopled with the reminders of other children of the family who lived there long ago. Gradually the three children become real to him as he catches tantalising glimpses of them and his grandmother recounts their stories.
Vivid detail and lively characterisation create an enchanting story that fascinates old and young alike. This is the first chapter book that my six year old has been interested enough in to listen to for long periods of time. Snow, floods, Christmas, feeding wild birds, tea in front of the fire, spirit children and an old house with loads of stories are the essential ingredients, with the warm relationship of Tolly and Mrs Oldknow at the heart of it. Lucy Boston weaves them together with great artistry into a gentle story (though with some tense episodes of suspense) that is timeless, despite the 50's background of Tolly’s boarding school and absent father that are so far from the experience of most of today’s children. It is a dreamy and slow-paced narrative, creating a special atmosphere, rather than relying on action for its appeal. I recommend this for ages 7-11 but it can be thoroughly enjoyed by older and younger as well.
See further details at Amazon.com by clicking on this title – The Children of Green Knowe
Look at other readers’ reviews on Amazon.co.uk by clicking on this link – The Children of Green Knowe
I really enjoyed Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, so on my next visit to the library I made a beeline for the T’s and found The Hundred Secret Senses. Diving into it on my return home, initially I thought –‘nice but the same characters rehashed’. Delving further into the book revealed the differences. The same over all theme of old world China meets modern day America prevails: the disparity of a rural culture with hundreds of superstitions and beliefs and urban San Francisco that has dispensed with all that long ago creates the narrative tension around which the protagonists reluctantly dance.
Olivia is a photographer whose marriage has just fallen apart. She is half Chinese, half American and since she was five her Chinese half sister Kwan has both fascinated and irritated her with her stories of ghosts that she sees with her Yin eyes and her memories of her past life that she seems to remember in all its details. As an adult Olivia feels a guilty resentment towards Kwan, who has always loved her devotedly, but oppressively, however rude or offhand Olivia is to her. One of the main rocks that her marriage to Simon foundered on, was the ever-intrusive memory of his previous girlfriend who had died tragically, before Olivia met him. Kwan is determined to help repair Olivia’s marriage and a trip to China working on a travel article seems to be the ideal opportunity to bring them back together.
Amy Tan’s characters are brilliantly three dimensional. You start off sharing Olivia’s irritation with Kwan’s endless talk of spirits and past lives, but by the end, as Olivia’s understanding grows, you are brought to see that Kwan actually was the one who could see the truth beneath life’s facade after all. The emotional and spiritual depth of Amy Tan’s writing is always there but applied with a light hand and liberal doses of poignant humour.
These are books I want to buy, to keep on my shelf to dip into for refreshment. I don’t want to have to give them back to the library and lose this delightful well of quirky humour and idiosyncratic prose.
Click on this title for details on The Hundred Secret Senses
Click here to see what Amazon.co.uk have to say about The Hundred Secret Senses
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