Simon
“I learned something that day: there may be worse things than arriving somewhere with your dog and leaving without him, but there aren't many.”
Charlie Parker 8. A trip into Charlie's past to find out what really happened before his father took his own life and he is about to find out more than he bargained for.
These books just get better and better. This one perhaps not as violent as the last one but equally as terrifying. Darkness tinged with the paranormal, and don't worry, the dog is fine.
Never judge a book by its title because “The Others of Edenwell” may well sound like a ghost story, but really, it's a coming-of-age story, a historical mystery riddled with local superstitions, with a little dribble of horror (last 100 pages)
There is perhaps too much going on. It feels like the author had loads of ideas for this story and thought I must get them all in at all costs, where perhaps leaving a couple of things out might have made the story a tad more cohesive. However, any ploddyness with the story is made up for by the excellent characters of Freddie, Eustace and the truly awful bully Scole. Also, Freddie's relationship with nature, particularly the birds, is beautifully done by the author.
Overall, very decent, 3.5 rounded up because the ending was very satisfying.
They created vast problems, and then buried their heads in the sands of idle faith.
Racism and eugenics in the post apocalyptic land of Labrador, where purity is king and even the slightest non conformity is blasphemy, a wonky carrot or potato will get your field burnt to a cinder and a birth defect will mean banishment to the bad lands or worse. However, not all so called defects are visible to the eye.
Written in 1955, this stands up really well, just one tiny grumble, dialogue felt a little bit “famous five” at the end.
It went on like this. This is how it went on.
A girl goes missing while holidaying in a village in the north of England. The villages join the search but she isn't found. And life goes on and on and on and on and on.
I'm all for a bit of minimalistic melancholy, but this one really did stretch my limits. And yet, there was something that kept me going till the end. I was particularly fond of this line...
“Hanging together in leathery clusters”
Which reminded me of a bar I went to in London many many moons ago.
A pustule, not a man, a living, breathing, pustule.
Some interesting themes here. Eugenics, immortality, rebirth and sentient mushrooms, and I'm not going to lie, the mushroom thing got under my skin a bit. I think it dates back to when I was a trainee surveyor, and I once went into a house and there was fungus in the kitchen... FUNGUS IN THE KITCHEN!! It was everywhere and it smelt really bad, really really bad, I still struggle with mushrooms today, all that grey rubberyness ucky ucky.
Anyway, this was pretty good, the writing style is beautifully gothic, the setting is 1950s Mexico but, we could easily be on the moors in England. That wasn't the end though was it? Surely there is more to come from Neomi??
Wil I read more from this author? Yes I will!!!
This story has been told before(Contact). A signal detected from another world and then the mad race to get there and find paradise because, in this case, we are all gods children. But, low and behold, what starts out as a fun time had by all, soon turns into a nightmare of epic proportions with only one survivor from a crew of seven.
For the most part it was a wonderful reading experience, beautiful in it's world building , full of mad ideas and interesting characters. however, it does get a bit bogged down a little bit in the middle with long discussions about faith and morality which I found a little bit boring.
The ending though., so brilliantly at odds with the rest of the book, brutal, horrific and shocking, and I really wasn't expecting it. Of course, non of what comes out in those final scenes will ever be made public becauase.... The Church.
First thoughts that come into my head....
Holden, probably as annoying as any character in any book I've ever read.
So many annoying ticks in the prose that I nearly threw the book out the window, I REALLY DID
Holden manages to complete the three stages of annoying man in just 48 hours....
* Annoying aloof Teenager
* Annoyingly obnoxious young adult
* Annoyingly loud willy waving drunk grownup
And yet, despite all this, I was strangely compelled to finish it. I am glad we didn't read this at school, if we did I think I would have become a nun and lived on raw turnip for all eternity.
I liked it. Part of me enjoyed the crisis. There was relief, almost, in the promised worst.
Passion, violence, morality and sculpture in the time of Novavirus. Hall's stark, minimalistic prose really brings the story to life, installing vivid scenes of suffering and brutality with just a few words.
For the most part, I thought this was astonishing, but the story does meander between before, during and after, and I lost my handle on it a few times. Probably not for everyone, hence the wildly differing ratings, but I enjoyed it and will definitely read more from this author.
DNF@26%
I wanted to get through the year without a DNF, but nooooo. This book has no soul, really struggled to make a connection to anything and the thought of plodding though another 600 odd pages fills me with deep feelings of sadness and misery.
Don't look away though, some people love it, just not for me.
It's hard not to compare Young Mungo to Shuggie Bain. Both set in the poor areas of Glasgow and they both deal with poverty, neglect and abuse. But, if the Shuggie Bain story has a big heart, Young Mungo has a dark and violent heart. Yes, there are moments of kindness and tenderness, but they don't shine through and pull your heartstrings like they do with Shuggie Bain.
I thought this book was good, but in places it is extremely unpleasant and difficult read.
East Texas paranormal noir.
This is a story about being rubbish at being human. It also has ghosts in it, but are they there to help or are they there for some other reason? I really enjoyed this, something different, quite comic but also very sad.
In Europe this book is called Firecreacker, but in the US it's called Perfect Circle, after the REM song.
First off, and most importantly, extra pointswere given for the naming of the following characters.
Dick Mint
Stinker Strange-Paget
This is story is of Cecil Valance a would-be poet and a bit of cad, who dies very young during WW1. Following his death, he is immortalised and turned into some godlike poet extraordinaire by the men and women who loved and desired him. As the years go on perception changes and people begin to discover what the real Cecil Valance was like.
As with all AH's novels there are similar themes here, namely posh people, posh houses, public schools, art, music, literature and the promise of a rumpy fumble in the bushes. And, like all his previous books, it's beautifully written. Unfortunately, the first two parts are a real chore, I did nearly give up a couple of times. Thankfully parts 3, 4 & 5 are much better.
I guess if you haven't read any Alan Hollinghurst before, I would definitely NOT start with this one, go for The Swimming pool Library or better still, The Line Of Beauty.
A Charlie Parker novel with hardly any Charlie Parker in it.!!
This was the perfect antidote to the previous book which was so dark, and so grim and there were no winners and everyone was unhappy at the end. Don't get me wrong, this book has it's dark and violent moments but it also has a good heart some humour mostly provided by new characters Willie (sad face) & Arno. This story is all about Louis. We get to find out his past and how he became the cool killer he is today. Pretty damn perfect and I repeat, hardly any Charlie Parker at all.
I'm a bit all over the place with the one, you could possibly say pleasantly disturbed. In a nutshell, this is a gothic horror, a tale of sailing, forbidden desires, survival, fishing and cannibalism. It's about humanity stripped back to it's basest level. How low would you go to survive? How low would you go to protect the one you love?
For the most part, hugely entertaining, but If there is one problem with this book it's that the first part is so brutal, so barbaric, that the rest of the book kind of pales in comparison. Parts two and three do have their moments and often you are nudged towards ideas you would rather not think about, it just feels a bit like someone set the fireworks off in the wrong order.
This is the incredible story of German author Thomas Mann. I kind of fell in love with Mann a little bit, someone who seemingly preferred to be on the outside looking in, didn't really enjoy social gatherings and would rather shut himself away in a room, reading or writhing. Lots to relate to there.
If there is one criticism, I don't think Toibin writes emotion very well. This story is full of love, desire, danger and laughter but non of that shines through. I find his writing really dull, just feels like there is something missing and If I wasn't so intrigued by Mann, I think I would have struggled a little bit.
PS I never new that about Mahler.
Always run, never fight.Preserve the knowledge.Survive at all costs.Take them to the stars.
Amazing!!! Speculative fiction at its finest. Aliens (the kibu) have been gently manipulating humanity for thousands of years, nudging them towards the stars, all the while on the run from another bunch of aliens who will stop at nothing to wipe them out.
There's rockets, vodka, love, dogs, death and more rockets and blood, lots and lots of blood and violence. My only complaint, it was over too soon, ordered the next book straight away.
This story is based around the hidden village similar to the one located in forests near Vierhouten, in the Netherlands, built to hide mainly Jewish families fleeing the Germans in WW2.
Always hard to review these books because the stories are always incredible and some of the situations truly harrowing, unfortunately sometimes the writing and structure let them down and that is the case with this one. Just a bit of a mess to be honest.
I
Once more to the end of the world. This time, not a virus but an entity that lives on your fear making you, quite literally, die of fright. We never quite find out how the thing started but the indications are that it's all our fault. Good new is you can fend it off with pop music and babies. Story starts off really really well, a real sense of place (SE Australia) and feeling of isolation but once you get halfway though, the whole thing just peters out into just another dystopian road trip. Feels a bit Birdboxy, but not as good.
3.5 rounded up because we have chocolate!!!!!
This story has been told many times before. A young girl from a well to do family finds herself, through no fault of her own, on the streets, fending for herself, at the mercy of London's most wicked rapscallions, her life reduced to petty crime and prostitution.
What makes this book stand out is H, she is a wonderful narrator and you can't help falling in love with her and the strange group of friends she makes on her journey. There does seem to be a bit of a missed opportunity to expand on some of her experiences, particularly surviving life on the streets during the great plague of London which lasted a year but is reduced to a handful of pages. There is, however, much to enjoy and yes, the ending is ridiculously overblown, almost like the last scene of a Carry On film, But I loved it.
Ben had never seen Fred, but he had a moustache that Ben's mum said was ‘disgusting'.
Australian smalltown big secret coming of age mystery. 2 young teenage boys doing teenage things; catching crabs (the ones with claws), playing cricket, watching the A-Team thinking about girls etc etc. When a neighbour of one of the boys commits suicide and the grieving family move away, a new neighbour appears and things are about to about to get very dark indeed and nothing will ever be the same.
The theme of this book is grim but it's told in a really subtle way, you know something sinister is happening but the story keeps nudging you in a different direction. Wasn't totally bonkers about the ending but overall, really good.
You can endure an awful lot when you know that you'll be fed at the end of it.
Every now and again there will a story in the news, a truly horrific tale of neglect and abuse, it will make you despair for humanity and you will ask yourself how, in a modern society, something like that could happen. This book is one of those stories.
The story flips between then and now as we find out what happened to Girl A (Lex) and her siblings and how they've coped since escaping that horrible house on the moors. There are some shocking moments/revelations, especially towards the end, but don't expect something like Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door, this book isn't like that and it doesn't try to be.
I really enjoyed this, the prose is excellent and despite the grim subject, it has a kind of innocence about it which made the ending kind of lovely, sad but lovely.
As with the other Peter Straub books I've read, you have to work a little harder, concentrate a little more than you do with some other authors. Everything is backside up and left side down, one minute you are in the kitchen baking cookies with auntie Jean, next you have the history of the Sasquatch followed by skateboarding with Eminem and then some journal entries from mysterious uncle Tim. Overall this book was 95% satisfying but man I wanted the baddie to suffer and he didn't and where the hell did Mark end up?
Have to say, John Boyne does tell a really good story, it really does flow quite beautifully and, despite being quite gruesome in parts, I loved the story, that is, up until the ending. You cannot love the ending to this book, I feel incredibly sad and a little bit angry. It's just so awful that someone felt they had to torture themselves for 60 years, living in a kind of emotionless purgatory, friendless and unloved. What horrible times they were for a lot of people, and yet some bleat on “it was never like that in my day” like it was a good thing... pffft.
And this is love, I realise. This broken-bodied stumble forward, one carrying the other in spite of exhaustion, pain and the glare of the outside world.
I love it when something completely takes you by surprise and this book certainly did. This is a wonderful story of suspicion and secrets . Set in the harsh and unforgiving landscape of 17th century Iceland. Rosa and Jon marry out of necessity but it is an unhappy pairing. Rosa wants more freedom than Jon seemingly wants to give her and Jon, well, he has his own secrets and what exactly did happened to his previous wife and what the hell does he keep locked away in the Attic?
The more the story unfolds the more brutal and shocking the back story becomes and I was totally unprepared for the ending, totally unprepared.