Month: June 2020

‘The Great Godden’ – Meg Rosoff

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for granting me access to this prior to publication, and I’m curious to see what people make of this.

The Great Godden is a story about a turning point in someone’s life, where they foresee something will happen but feel powerless to resist it even though it will cause discomfort.

What stood out to me after finishing this was the ambiguity of the book. I read this as if the narrator was female, but I don’t think we’re ever actually explicitly told this. It doesn’t make any difference as the book really focuses on the reactions to events. What we do know, though, is the narrator comes from one of those families that seems to be bursting with life, setting up experiences but perhaps overlooking the damage caused by their lifestyle.

Our time span is a summer, a summer where everything shifts. Every year the family have gone to their beach home and effectively lived wild. There’s a fondness and whimsical quality to the writing. We focus on this specific year as this is the year that their cast is joined by Kit and Hugo, the Godden brothers.

Our first sighting of Kit reveals the depths of adoration he seems to inspire in others. He toys with those around him, and our narrator is warned about him by Hugo but to no avail. We watch as one by one those present fall under Kit’s spell, unaware of the chaos he will wreak.

While I loved the idea and style of writing there was a detached quality to this that made it hard to really engage with the story or characters.

 

‘Hideous Beauty’ – William Hussey

Even though one of the characters dies early on, this is a love story through and through. It’s the love story of Dylan and Ellis, but it’s also about the love between friends and the love we need to have for ourselves to really live.

The book opens with Ellis and Dylan making a big coming-out statement at their school dance. There’s a very positive vibe – until we learn this situation has been somewhat forced on them after someone anonymously posted a clip of them being intimate online. It seems they’ll overcome this – but as they leave the dance Ellis seems to be acting oddly. Something has upset him. He is distracted. Then, before we know it, they have crashed and plunge into a local lake. Ellis drowns, and Dylan is convinced someone rescued him but nobody seemed to be around when paramedics arrived at the scene.

Dealing with such grief would be awful at any age, but the doctor who treats Ellis makes a comment that shows even though things may still not be quite as accepting as they could be it’s still a huge improvement on the past. Perhaps not unexpectedly, Dylan struggles with his feelings after this – convinced someone left Ellis to die, so he determines to investigate and try to find out why.

Though there is an element of mystery to this, the fact we don’t really know what happened in the aftermath of the crash means we’re never sure what the mystery is to solve. Strange drawings turn up in Dylan’s mail and they seem to offer clues as to who might have played a part in Ellis’s abrupt change of behaviour.

As we watch Dylan piece together what happened I was very glad he had his best friend, Mike, looking out for him. An odd dynamic but, when it counted, they totally had each other’s back.

The last part of the book, where Dylan finally confronts the hideous truth about what happened to Ellis did come slightly out of nowhere. That’s not to say it didn’t ring true, but it was hard to reconcile the image we’d been given up to this point with the truth.

I liked the fact that Dylan was, eventually, able to start looking as if he would look back on his time with Ellis fondly. At times uncomfortable reading, but there was also a lot of positivity that I found quite uplifting.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.

 

‘The Fascinators’ – Andrew Eliopulos

The Fascinators was one of those reads that I’m not quite sure what to make of.

The prologue opens by getting us to see young Liv picked up by a group that we know nothing about and hints at something awful happening before completely switching focus. The story then shifts to a trio made up of Sam, James and Delia. They practise magic and are definitely something of an oddity in their hometown. We don’t know where their magic comes from or why it’s such a big deal to them, and this lack of detail was part of the issue with the book for me.

These characters live in a world where magic is fundamental to the story unfolding for us, yet we are never shown how we come to this position. With the arrival of new guy Denver we can see there’s a shift in the dynamics but it’s unclear just why this comes about.

A key factor in this story is the focus on Sam coming to terms with his feelings for James and how this impacts on their group dynamic. There’s clearly been tension for some time before we encounter the group but we don’t really get to understand this until a lot later on, by which time we’ve probably decided our views on them all and what we want to happen.

In terms of plot, it’s actually quite straightforward – but without really getting a full picture of the world/attitudes to magic it was quite hard to really understand the significance of details until quite late on. Sam was infuriating at times, but the end result was actually quite positive and suggested that his relationship with James could have been held up to closer scrutiny.

 

‘Growing Up for Beginners’ – Claire Calman

In some ways, a quite uncomfortable book to read, but as we dig deeper into the lives of the characters I was able to find some heartwarming moments. This is the kind of story that will resonate with some readers, but the focus on a variety of characters allowed us to focus on the myriad ways in which people can find themselves trapped in situations.

Our cast is large, and this is a little daunting at times. Certainly initially it took some time for the voices and experiences of each character to really develop. We have Eleanor, daughter of Conrad. She is married to Roger, the kind of man it’s all too easy to loathe and despise. We have Andrew, a man in his thirties who works with Conrad and who has recently been dumped by his girlfriend so he’s moved back in with his parents. Andrew develops a relationship with Olivia, the daughter of a neighbour. She has a vibrant mother, Cecilia, who has a secret love – but circumstances never quite made it a safe option to reveal her feelings.

These seemingly disparate stories are obviously linked and, as we read, the links start to become clearer. Each of these characters is searching for something and has some growing up to do. They help each other (albeit unwittingly) through these shifting times and as we learn more about each it becomes just that little more significant. Perhaps the resolution is somewhat cliched, but it would take someone quite churlish not to find it appealing.

Thanks to Netgalley for granting me access to this prior to publication.

 

‘The Gravity of Us’ – Phil Stamper

Cal dreams of being a reporter. He has his life planned out, so it throws him a little when his dad drops a rather major piece of news…he’s applied to NASA to be one of those involved in the planned travel to Mars. This means the whole family has to move from New York to Houston, where their every move will be reported on as Cal Sr prepares for his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

This would be something of a shock to anybody, but for Cal – whose growing fanbase on social media is one of his passions – the threat of not being able to voice his opinions online is not one that goes down well. His mother is scared of moving across country and losing the link she has to her past. However, in the pursuit of such passion their needs are somewhat ignored – this never really gets touched on fully, and it seems like a glaring attempt to sweep some quite important things under the carpet in pursuit of ‘the story’.

I’ll admit to having only a glancing interest in the story of space travel, but the passion and enthusiasm shown for the subject here shone through and drew me in far more than I was expecting. I may never get as excited over ‘space dirt’ as some of the characters we see here did, but it’s clear to see the reverence such a program is held in and how much it means to many. Does it justify so many others having to shelve their dreams, or the costs involved? I’d find it hard to agree with.

A substantial part of our story focuses on the romance between Cal and Leon Tucker, son of one of the other astronauts. Things got set in motion ridiculously quickly, but the developing relationship between them was only a part of the focus. Watching how they worked together to figure out how to support their loved ones actually worked pretty well.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication.

 

‘Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know’ – Samira Ahmed

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read this prior to publication, and introducing me to a story that reeled me in slowly.

The title stems from a phrase used to describe the poet, Lord Byron. I wasn’t sure how this phrase could possibly link to the story, but it eventually became clear.

Our narrator is Khayyam, a seventeen year old American student who is fascinated by Art History but who is smarting from her most recent essay being discredited. While on holiday in Paris with her parents, Khayyam meets Alexandre Dumas (yes, really) – a descendant of the writer. They get talking, and before we know it a strange kind of hunt for missing treasure begins.

Both are convinced that Dumas had links with the painter Delacroix, and think that the link has something to do with a mysterious raven-haired beauty mentioned in works by Dumas and Byron, and featuring in paintings by Delacroix. Alongside this story in the present – which, in itself, would have been intriguing – we have the story of Leila, a young woman in the 1800s who has been the favourite of the Pasha, but who cannot bear him children.

It takes a while for the links between the characters and their stories to become clear. The hunt itself took something of a backseat for me as I was captivated by the attitudes to women and how history has, often, overlooked so many stories simply because of the gender of the person telling the story.

This was definitely a story that appeals on a number of levels. Yes, there are some amazing coincidences in this hunt, but the exploration of identity and the passion coming through for the subject was evident.