Shine, Shine, Shine - Lydia Netzer

 This is the story of an astronaut who is lost in space, and the wife he left behind.

It took me a while to decide whether or not I was going to like Shine, Shine, Shine. Though quite easy to read, written in a simple, rather Alexander McCall Smith-esque prose, the narration feels quite detached: telling, not showing, although in a deliberate, dreamy way. I wouldn't class this as a science fiction novel so much as a love story set in the very near future. It is realistic but occasionally surreal - both characters experience visions that could be prophetic or could be hallucinations, literal pictures of metaphors explaining their world.

It is specified early on that Maxon and Sunny's son is autistic, and it is clear that he shares traits with his father, who is a brilliant scientist but whose mind needs a formula for every human interaction. A lot of the story takes place in flashback, and at first I found it very hard to relate to the characters. Maxon is a being of logic rather than emotion, though he is curious and eager to learn. (I heard Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation's voice in my head for him.) His conversation is stilted, his humour falls flat, and I wondered at first why he had ever married Sunny. Could it really be love? Their interactions seemed so awkward and uncomfortable. The dialogue with Sunny about why he thinks it is time for them to have a baby made me feel quite uncomfortable. But Shine, Shine, Shine is a novel of gradual revelation; as it fleshes out their history and characters, I came to realise that these two unusual people were made for each other, that their love is touching and all-encompassing, even if not easily expressed, and they are really a beautiful couple.

To all appearances, Sunny is a fairly ordinary suburban housewife, expecting their second child when Maxon blasts off into space. Then something happens, and she makes the decision: no more pretending. The layers are stripped away to reveal a quite extraordinary person. Every aspect of her identity is called upon at once: as daughter, mother and wife - her mother is dying, she is expecting her second child, and her husband is in space - but what does it really mean to be Sunny Mann? How does she reconcile how she appears to the world with who she is inside?

Shine, Shine, Shine has a somewhat open ending, not giving you definite answers on what happens next. The present situation is not what this novel is really about, so much as the people involved, what made them and brought them to this point. Instead of answers, we are shown one of Sunny's visions, which, like Sydney Carton's at the end of A Tale of Two Cities, may or may not be taken as truth, but which end the novel on a note of hope. I recommend Shine, Shine, Shine to fans of The Time-Traveller's Wife: even if you find it a bit difficult to get into at first, it's worth sticking with it to the end.

Favourite Quotes:

"What, do you want to put pinholes in me and screw a bulb into my brain?" she said...
"I don't think I would need pinholes," said Maxon... "I think you would just shine."

How do we love each other? We love each other like naked children in a strange jungle, when every stump turns into and ogress, each orchid into a lump of maggots. We didn't say, 'I love you,' just as we didn't, after a day of wandering, lost in the trees, turn to each other and say, 'We are the only naked children in this jungle.' Everyone else was just a jaguar or a clump of dirt.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

A bit spoilery.

After Amy Dunne disappears on her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband Nick is the first suspect. Though he maintains his innocence, desperate in his search to find out what has happened to his wife and to clear his name, the evidence appears damning. Chapters alternating between Amy's diary and Nick's contemporary narration reveal that the Dunne's marriage had been unhappy for a long time. In fact, it seems that Amy and Nick didn't even know each other any more. Their accounts of events in the past, and of each other's thoughts, moods and reactions, show a couple shockingly out of tune with each other.

These conflicting accounts keep the pages turning, switching the reader's allegiance between Nick and Amy, at least at first, while causing us to question if either party can actually be trusted. Nick, in particular, in the first half of the novel, showed the signs of being an unreliable narrator by withholding information, not only from the police, but also from the reader. His cell phone rings, and he turns it off, not telling who is calling, or mentioning it again - until the next time. He is questioned about an overheard argument - an argument he has not described. He claims to be a writer, and yet describes his father-in-law is "literally losing his head."

And then, halfway through, there is a momentous twist, and everything we think we have figured out about Amy, Nick and their marriage turns on its head. I was completely taken by surprise! The second half of the novel. The case plays out like a deadly game between ruthless, manipulative players taking turns. Both Amy and Nick reveal themselves to be highly unpleasant characters in a toxic relationship, and it's difficult to root for either one. The pages keep turning of their own accord as the story heads for a climax, and from a reader's point of view, you want something huge to happen, but you know it can't end well for both. Can there be a winner, or only losers?

Gone Girl starts off as a fairly straight-forward crime thriller, but turns out very different indeed: clever, but very twisted, dark and unsettling. You might want to read something cute and wholesome after this one.

Readalong: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte (ii)

Contains spoilers

When we left Helen, heroine of Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall, she was stoically enduring an unwise marriage that had turned out not to be as idyllic as she had hoped. The marriage turns from bad to worse as Huntingdon spends more and more time in bad society, making promises he cannot keep, drinking and gambling and eventually having an affair with the wife of a friend. After much agonising, and after many - far too many, the modern reader might say - second chances, Helen leaves her husband and takes her mother's maiden name, Graham, making her living as a reclusive artist in Wildfell Hall.

Tenant was a controversial novel when it was published, with frank depictions of alcoholism, adultery and other debauchery deemed unsuitable for ladies to read - and no doubt for a lady to have written! For a woman - who in those days would have had no independent rights, unable to own property or sue her husband for divorce - to be found to be married but separated from her husband must have been scandalous. The ideal Victorian wife was "the angel in the house," the selfless, submissive wiife devoted to making her husband happy without any thought for herself. Despite marrying against the advice of her relations, Helen is not generally a thoughtless or irresponsible woman. For a large part of her narrative, her attitude seems to be that as she chose to marry Huntingdon, she must take the consequences, and set a bad husband a good example by living a virtuous life. But is it virtuous to remain in a loveless, somewhat abusive marriage? What about when Arthur commits adultery with Lady Lowborough, the wife of a friend? When Helen knows about her husband's dalliances, is it right for her to tell the other wronged spouse, or remain silent in the hope that he will not be hurt by what he doesn't know? Her decision to put up and shut up turns out for the worse, and when the truth comes out, Lord Lowborough is hurt far worse for her silence.

Helen wrestles with her conscience, continuing to live with Huntingdon, though not as husband and wife, for a long time. She comes to realise that being a good person herself is not enough to reform an unrepentant scoundrel, and that being a "good wife" can be more damaging than to outrage society and her conscience by abandoning her husband. The last straw is Huntingdon's influence on their son, only an infant but already encouraged by his father to imitate his foul language and love of drink. Helen realises that the only way to stop little Arthur from turning out like his father is to take him out of Huntingdon's reach, where he cannot be corrupted. Helen's motives can surely not be faulted, and in the modern day this would be the logical course of action,but Anne Bronte must have raised a few eyebrows of her Victorian readership in her presentation of the conflict between being "respectable" and doing the right thing.

Anne Bronte always seems to be the forgotten sister, overlooked in favour of the more famous Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but Tenant is a brave, groundbreaking novel which deserves to be better known.

Anne's House of Dreams

After three years of waiting, Anne finally fulfils all her friends's prophecies and marries Gilbert Blythe. Gilbert is now qualified as a doctor and has taken a position sixty miles from their home town of Avonlea. The newlyweds move to a tiny village called Glen St Mary which overlooks the Four Winds Harbour, and set up their "house of dreams" in a tiny cottage with a beautiful seaview. If you think of the Anne series primarily as a romance, it makes a nice change to see the couple after the wedding, and the ups and downs of "happily ever after."

Anne's House of Dreams comes as a welcome return to the cosy, familiar Anneishness that makes the series more than just a friend but a "kindred spirit." We don't get to see much of our old friends - Marilla, Rachel Lynde and Diana - but when we do they are just as alive as ever. In Windy Willows, I realised retrospectively that the Avonlea scenes weren't quite alive, the characters described as from a distance but not captured upon the page. Though three years have passed, it picks up where Island left off, and I think it wouldn't do any harm to skip Windy Willows altogether.

It could have been all to easy to find Anne's new home to be a poor imitation of the old one, but Glen St Mary and Four Winds have their own, very distinct, feel. In Avonlea, "although [Anne] had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her constsantly." With Montgomery's word-perfect descriptions, I could almost hear the crash of the waves in the background, smell the salt in the air and feel the coolness of a sea breeze. Four Winds Harbour is a busy port, with fishermen constantly coming and going, guarded over by the lighthouse and its faithful keeper, Captain Jim Boyd. I loved Captain Jim immediately, an old sailor, rough in appearance and speech, but a true gentleman, a captivating storyteller and a hero.

Anne's House of Dreams is situated rather out of the way, just outside the village itself, and as such there are not too many new characters, meaning that each one is properly fleshed out, and that there is more of a continuous plot in this book than in its predecessors. Beside Captain Jim, we meet the stubborn and outspoken Marshall Elliot and Miss Cornelia  Bryant. If you're a Methodist or worse, a man, don't expect Miss Cornelia to have a good word for you. From tactlessness to tantrums to dying at an inopportune moment, Miss Cornelia's catchphrase is, "isn't that like a man?"

And then there is Leslie Moore. Leslie forms a strange, hostile friendship with Anne, but although Anne knows they could be "kindred spirits," there is a barrier between them. Leslie's life is like the photo-negative of Anne's, for while Anne is perfectly happy (even with her red hair) with a wonderful husband and joyful life, Leslie has experienced tragedy after tragedy, ending up trapped in a loveless marriage. The barrier between the women comes down later, but at such a cost!

Although marketed as children's books, it is clear that this is no longer a kids' series. Anne's House of Dreams is full of adult themes - unhappy marriage and the moral dilemma of whether a doctor's duty is worth heaping more suffering onto a life already full of pain. And Anne and Gilbert suffer such a heartbreak that changes their lives forever. Afterwards, "there was something in the smile that had never been in Anne's smile before and would never be absent from it again." This marks a turning-point in the tone of the series. Sorrow has touched upon a care-free, happy-go-lucky world. There can be no going back from that. The end of the book depicts Anne and Gilbert leaving their House of Dreams for a bigger house, better for raising a family in, but it happens so suddenly, in the space of a few pages, that neither the reader nor Anne is quite resigned to it. Although Anne will grow to love her new home, at the time of leaving the House of Dreams, and this volume, she hasn't yet done so, and I found it quite a melancholy note to end on.