Latest Posts

‘The Last One’ – Alexandra Oliva

When I first agreed to buddy read this a while ago it sounded like a novel idea, experimenting with the concept of post-apocalyptic events and tying it in with the excitement surrounding social media. The idea of a group of reality TV contestants taking part in a survival show, and being unaware of the fact that the outside world they left was no more, sounded so extreme that I was imagining a thrilling read. However, recent world events and the issues surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic lent this read an eerie sense of foreboding. At times I had to steel myself to continue, gripped but not in a way I was necessarily enjoying.

At the beginning there were clues that things were going to change in ways we were not imagining. While we got to see all the characters and their interactions everything was tempered somewhat by the filter of our main character, Zoo.
I got rather frustrated by the presentation of the characters on occasion. The attempt to pigeon-hole people and force their actions to fit a preconceived notion of how they would be seen by others meant I felt a lot of events were written about in order to present a particular slant.

Where the story really picked up was once we followed Zoo through her time following her surviving whatever she had experienced. She emerges from the woods in a dazed state. She can’t see. When she meets young Brennan she is convinced he is merely part of the crew. All her experiences in her mind form part of the test she has agreed to.

Yes, a little more background to the scenario would have been good. Understanding how this occurred might have been helpful, but the isolation Zoo has experienced does mean the detachment and lack of information makes sense. A bleak ending may have been appropriate, but I actually felt heartened by the potentially hopeful resolution to this story.

Now, as Boris Johnson has just announced a lockdown in Britain with immediate effect this seems like an apt time to find something a little cheerier to dip into…

 

‘Eight Perfect Murders’ – Peter Swanson

Malcolm Kershaw – bookstore worker, widow and suspect in a series of murders. At least that’s what we’re led to believe initially.

Malcolm narrates his story, and it’s clear we’re not being told everything. The question is, what’s being hidden and why? When an FBI agent asks to speak with Mal in connection to a series of murders we’re immediately intrigued. There seems to be a link between a number of deaths and a blog post written some years ago by Mal called Eight Perfect Murders. Someone appears to be using the list to carry out their own killing spree.

While the initial idea seems rather far-fetched, we slowly learn further details that indicates there is indeed a link. We also get told by Mal himself that he’s hiding things. The details he does give us mean we have developed a sense of trust and I certainly didn’t want to think badly of him.

As the story develops little details are revealed that start to affect the way we regard Mal. His actions become increasingly strange, and it’s evident that there’s twists coming…but it’s all about working out why and when this info is given.

It’s hard to say more without inadvertently revealing details that are crucial to the book’s success. While I’d not read all the books mentioned on the list, the literary link was appealing and Mal – though evidently not quite the good guy I had him pegged as initially – has a rather mercurial charm. By the notional end I felt rather disappointed that things were going to go that way.

A huge thanks to NetGalley for providing me with this in exchange for my thoughts.

 

‘Dandelion Wine’ – Ray Bradbury

Summer 1928 and young Douglas Spaulding is our main focus. For those who like a clear character arc, or well-defined events this will probably feel frustrating. The book seems to be made up of a series of vignettes, with some characters traced throughout but each capturing a moment or a significant experience.

While it’s not without its frustrations, there is much to love about this.
Douglas himself – and his brother, Tom – are certainly characters to be intrigued by. I suppose they are quite typical of the time/small-town mentality, but the joy they find in the simple things and the pleasure they take from their experiences was so positive. I loved the story of 95 year old Helen Loomis and the ice-cream, the happiness machine and the tarot witch. I don’t recall why I’ll have read it but the piece with Lavinia and the Lonely One (I recall a story called The Whole Town’s Sleeping) still sent shivers up my spine.

Not necessarily a story that will keep you gripped from the outset, rather a series of quite charming occurrences that each tell us something about ourselves and our common experience.

 

‘The Guest List’ – Lydia Foley

Will Slater, TV star of a survival show, is due to marry Jules Keegan on a remote Irish island. The two look perfect together, and Jules is – with the help of her sister, best friend and the wedding planner – determined to make this day special.

We start by being introduced to the dramatic moment when a body is discovered on the night of the wedding. We’re not told who, and I assumed it would be a fairly straight-forward ‘whodunnit’.

Immediately after this dramatic announcement we are introduced to some of the key characters of the story. As we learn a little more about each character we realise that many of them are harbouring secrets, and we do realise that a number of characters have good reason to want Will dead.

As the story progresses it was fascinating to see the menace such an isolated setting could generate. The cast of characters were flawed in many ways, and yet it was not until quite late on that we actually got answers as to how certain stories and events linked.

While the story was told in a way that kept you guessing I can’t help but feel that the ending all got wrapped up just a little too quickly.

 

‘The Murder at the Vicarage’ – Agatha Christie

I’ve read very few novels by Agatha Christie, but I have clear memories of Miss Marple being shown on tv when I was younger. First impressions do count…and I’d always had this vague recollection of her being a rather prim and interfering elderly woman.

My overwhelming response after reading this was that Miss Marple as she appears here was the germ of an idea, but she’s not fully formed. In fact, we see very little of her – just an appearance at key moments. She is presented as shrewd yet on the ‘busybody’ side – always hovering and overhearing/seeing things she perhaps doesn’t need to.

In this first of the Marple series we focus on the murder of Colonel Protheroe, the kind of man many could find reason to kill. He’s found shot in the Vicarage and we follow the vicar and various villagers around as they try to establish the truth.

There’s the usual red herrings thrown in, and what was proven here was that sometimes the obvious solutions are the truth. People are, at heart, quite predictable and observation counts for an awful lot.

 

‘In the Clearing’ – J.P. Pomare

I was able to read In the Clearing thanks to Secret Readers, and this is a book I will definitely recommend.

We have two clear voices telling the majority of the story. There’s a young girl called Amy who we can see is part of a cult and she recounts some of the abuses and brainwashing she endures at the hands of those she calls family. And then there’s Freya, a woman who hints at a traumatic past, who lives with her young son Billy. A familiar face from Freya’s past pops up, and somehow we know these events are connected but aren’t sure how.

As the story progresses I was quite horrified by the details we’re given about life in The Clearing and the way this group is organised. This is not comfortable reading.

Freya herself is not a particularly easy character to empathise with. Abrasive and, at times, her own worst enemy. However, when her son disappears we start to sense there is more to come.

What I was struck by was the way in which the various strands come together. I genuinely did not see some of these links, and the ending gave me serious goosebumps as I can only imagine where this might go.

 

‘The Virgin Suicides’ – Jeffrey Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides was one of those reads that had me fully engaged throughout, though now I’ve finished it I feel none the wiser about what I’ve read.

My first impression stems from the fact that the narrator is very hard to fathom. At times one voice; at others, a voice speaking as representative of many. It’s evident that the narrator is a male, someone on the periphery of these events and watching in fascination as the story unfolds – even involved to a small degree – but never really coming to any awareness of the story they are watching.

Our narrator, like so many of those around him, is obsessed with the Lisbon family. We begin with the story of Cecilia, the youngest sister, who after a failed attempt to kill herself leaves a rather macabre party and throws herself onto their fence. We don’t know why, and we get very little sense of how this event impacts those left behind.

Following the narrator through their recollections of the neighbourhood memories of the family meant I always felt quite detached from the events described. The description of the decline in the family home and their personal appearance, as well as the behaviours exhibited, all indicate extreme reactions to a traumatic event. I felt saddened that a family in such turmoil were, effectively, abandoned as nobody knew how to break through the barriers they’d imposed on themselves.

It came as little surprise to see the gradual unfolding of the lives of the remaining family members. There was a grim resignation to this, but it all felt avoidable.
While this confused me and has left me rather uncomfortable, I am curious to read more by this author.

 

‘American Dirt’ – Jeanine Cummins

This is a book that you will have heard about – either because of it being talked about as a must-read of 2020, or because of the almighty stink kicked up because the author is white and writing about the experience of Mexican immigrants. So many reviews focus on the slating of the author and the publishers for allowing a woman of assumed privilege to make money from an experience she has no first-hand knowledge of. I’ve read numerous reviews commenting that money should be given to people of the appropriate ethnic background to tell their stories, and we should not be supporting this book. Like other situations, a first-hand narrative is often going to have a rawness to it that you cannot ever hope to emulate, but why on earth would we be so short-sighted as to proclaim that if this cannot happen the stories should not be told?

I don’t think this is a question that has an easy answer, so I read the book in spite of some misgivings.

The story focuses on the tale of Lydia and her young son, Luca. Lydia is a bookseller and her husband was a journalist. They lived a relatively comfortable life in Mexico, but the growing violence surrounding them is hard to ignore. Lydia’s husband writes a piece on a local leader of a cartel (the same man that Lydia has befriended as he is a regular visitor to her bookstore) growing in significance and reach. As a result, sixteen members of the family are massacred as they gather in their home. Our first meeting with Lydia is as she takes shelter with her terrified son in a shower stall, desperately hoping that the gunmen will not find them.

Now, I cannot ever begin to fathom how this experience would affect you. It is – I would hope – never going to be a situation I will find myself in. As such, I couldn’t begin to comment on how truthful this story is or how accurately the writer depicts the subsequent attempt of Lydia to journey thousands of miles with her son to try and escape the threat they are now under and attempt to get to the safety of America.

What I can say, without a doubt, is that the story we are given as we follow Lydia is told in a way that encourages you to consider the situation of not just Lydia but all the characters she encounters. There’s so much highlighted that is wrong with the current system, but in spite of this we see humanity at both its best and worst. We are never quite sure whether Lydia will be safe or not, and the risks she has to take as she tries to protect herself and her son are monumental. She has to make split second decisions that go against everything she has considered normal.

While I cannot hope to add anything to the debate surrounding the publication of this, I do feel it tells a story that will give a brief glimpse into a very unpleasant aspect of our world today. It might not be quite the story many would like, but if it opens the way to more such stories I cannot help but feel it’s a good thing.

 

‘The Escape Room’ – Megan Gouldin

Perhaps there’s a small part of me that wants to intensely dislike one of our main characters, but once we learn what she’s actually done there was a part of me that shook my head in admiration and felt rather pleased for her, even though she’s not someone I found particularly likeable.

The construction of this book was so interesting.

We begin with a prologue that tells us how everything is going to end. A security man in an office building hears what he thinks is a series of gunshots. Nobody else is meant to be in the office, so he immediately calls the police. They don’t take him seriously…until they arrive to find an elevator with four people inside – three of whom are dead – and a lot of blood. Of course we have questions!

The focus then shifts to thirty odd hours previously where the four people found in the lift arrive at this building for what they think is a training exercise…an escape room task to help them bond. It sounds a ridiculous premise for a Friday evening, but as we delve into their moments in the lift and learn about them/their work on Wall Street for a highly successful company, it doesn’t sound quite so unfeasible.

Alongside the account of the time in the lift, which slowly uncovers the animosity between these characters, we have the narrative of another worker in the company – Sarah Hall – who joined them not long before this event. We are shown some of the daily life of such high-profile workers. It is brutal. None of the characters we meet – including Sarah – are particularly likeable. They may not have always been so selfish, but this environment brings out the worst in them. Without batting an eyelid they will spend thousands, because to them it is nothing. Vacuous, greedy and ready to stab someone in the back without hesitation these people are not people we are encouraged to feel sympathy for.

Yet for some on the periphery of this experience, this environment is not about money and selfish desires being fulfilled. Rather, it is an intellectual challenge…but such naivety cannot last in this environment.

As we slowly piece together the reality of the elevator setting and the background to each of these characters I found myself desperately hoping that someone would come out of this looking remotely good. While there is a definite murkiness to this resolution, I found myself feeling it could be justified. And for me that juxtaposition between what we know to be right and what we convince ourselves is acceptable lies at the heart of this fast-paced thriller.

 

‘Stardust’ – Neil Gaiman

A lovely fairytale about a young man claiming his birthright and a journey into the land of Faerie.

I feel I must have watched the movie of this at some time because it all felt so familiar, but I thoroughly enjoyed this sojourn into an unusual land.

The town of Wall is on the boundary of the land of Faerie. Each year a market is held and people can purchase things they have never seen before. Our story begins with a young man being sold a beautiful glass snowdrop, ending up under a spell and having sex with an enchanted young lady who spends half her life as a bird. We then see him left with the child.

Years later the child, Tristan, is almost an adult and in love with a young lady called Victoria. He promised to catch her a falling star in exchange for her hand in marriage. And so begins an unusual quest.

Along the way Tristan comes to realise he’s not quite what he thought. He learns to trust his own judgment and ends up saving the star from others who pursue her for their own ends.

A truly magical story that ends exactly as you want it to. It put a smile on my face.