Sunday Summary: May in Review

Wow, it feels like ages since I've written anything on here! Everything's fine, I just haven't felt much like writing reviews lately; I've read plenty of books but not had all that much to say about them. But I might ramble a little about a few of them in this post, we'll see.

Some of the things I've done

My work shifts have been all over the place the last few months, although fingers crossed they'll be getting back to something like normality from now on. We've got a new girl just starting at work, doing Sundays and a couple of afternoons in the week, and my manager told me she reminded her of a younger version of me. Having met her, briefly, I sort of agree. In about a two-minute conversation we compared our to-read piles, favourite books, and I already promised to lend her one of my four copies of Anne of Green Gables. I think reading that book is a quick way to get to know me! Must find out what her equivalent book is. I'm sure she'll have one.

When I haven't been at work I've been writing; I've picked up the children's story I began for NaNoWriMo last year and am giving serious thought to submitting it to Mslexia magazine's First Children's Book competition in the autumn. I've nearly finished the first draft, but have discovered I'm already over the suggested word count for a children's book!

I had a week off a couple of weeks ago and spent a couple of days up in London, staying with my sister Jenny. While she was at work I did some exploring, and some book shopping - although only on the first day. I also went up to Camden Market, which is awesome, and as it was a lovely sunny day, I walked up the road to Primrose Hill, where I spent the afternoon sitting on the grass and reading. The Primrose Hill bookshop is one of my new favourites; it's small and cosy. While I was in there, the bookseller, Chrissie, was whizzing around the shop finding recommendations for one of her regulars who wanted some holiday reading.

By some fortuitous chance, an old friend, Anna, happened to be in London the same week, and had got in touch with Jenny suggesting meeting up for drinks. So we found a nice little pub next to the British Library, called the Rocket, and spent a lovely evening between there and Pizza Express reminiscing about our schooldays, making little confessions about being horrid teenagers (only a little horrid, as teenagers go, but I think we were all a little relieved to find the others had no memory of the wrongs we'd felt terrible for years for doing to each other.)

And the following day, as a belated birthday treat for Jenny, we went to Shoreditch to Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium for tea: a cafe where cats roam free and say hello to and play with all the visitors. The cats are very well looked after - the entry fee pays for their welfare, they get days off and all have their own members of staff, and there are all sorts of toys and climbing apparatus to keep them amused (although one of the kittens liked nothing better than a scruffy piece of string. Because cat.)

I'm back on the Island now, for the time being, and am enjoying the summer sunshine. It's a bank holiday weekend, and tomorrow I'm heading for the beach. We're nearly into June and it's been quite warm; let's see if I'm brave enough to go in  the sea yet. I've sorted through my to-read shelf and pulled my science fiction books to the front, because for some reason I've come to think of that genre as good beach reading. I've got sci-fi classics (Iain M. Banks, Bradbury, Asimov, H. G. Wells) shiny new or newish books (The Book of Strange New Things, The Peripheral, Speak) and some weird and probably dreadful old books I've found in second-hand bookshops, which I will not name and shame in case I slander unrecognised gems.


Some of the Books I've read:

Beside Myself by Ann Morgan, and When I Was Invisible by Dorothy Koomson

These were publishers' proof copies that my sister got from work, and it was interesting to read them one after the other, because they shared several themes. In Beside Myself, a set of twins swap places as a prank one day - but then one of them refuses to switch back. Towards the end, one of the characters asked something along the lines of "What does it matter? You're twins, you live the same life, what does it matter which name you are called?" But even from a very early age, different expectations are put on Ellie and Helen. One is a leader, one is a follower. One is perceived as a good girl, the other as a troublemaker. People respond to the twins' actions in different ways according to who is perceived to be doing them. It was a dark, troubling read.

Meanwhile, When I Was Invisible follows the lives of best friends Roni and Nika (Both Veronica/ka Harper) whose lives take very different directions after a shared ordeal leads to one betraying the other. Roni returns home after spending several years as a nun, while Nika is trying to rebuild her life after witnessing a terrible crime. Also a rather heavy read, but I found it much more satisfying than Beside Myself.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Sparks

What I expected: A gender-flipped, feminist Dead Poet's Society. Progressive teacher shakes up the establishment but earns undying loyalty from her best students.
What I got: Miss Brodie shakes up the establishment, all right, but she is a manipulative, capricious and sharp-tongued woman who has affairs with other members of staff and sends some of her pupils down destructive paths. The narrative is curious, flitting between past and future and casually revealing what the girls' futures hold while they are still schoolgirls. Miss Brodie is rather more interesting and unsettling than the usual inspiring, unconventional schoolteacher figure, a deconstruction of the trope - except for the fact that she pre-dates many of the iconic examples!

Anne of Avonlea by L. M. Montgomery

Being the second book in my Anne of Green Gables omnibus, I used to read the two books back-to-back as a child, and Avonlea was just as much a favourite as its predecessor. Nowadays, though, I read it less often than Green Gables and Anne of the Island. It's a very episodic book, although the romance between Miss Lavendar Lewis and Stephen Irving towards the end foreshadows Anne and Gilbert's relationship (which for many readers - not this cynical old maid, though - is the main story of Anne.) It was lovely to reread after a few years, to meet Mr Harrison, to spend time seeing the Avonlea Village Improvement Society, to just spend the time with some old friends.

But the character of Paul Irving has come to irritate me no end, although with a feeling of guilt because he is in many ways a lot like Anne. Do different expectations for boys and girls influence what traits one can allow? But then Walter Blythe, in the later books, takes after his mother too, and he is one of my favourite characters. Walter has more depth of character, though, a melancholic temperament, inner turmoil, while Paul's ongoing struggle is with eating all his porridge. He's just so sickeningly good, and the "poetic" temperament Anne sees in him reminds me of nothing so much as Madeleine Bassett from Jeeves and Wooster as an eight-year-old boy.

Currently reading: The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The original time-travel adventure. I'm only a few chapters in so far, but it reads surprisingly fresh and contemporary, with its succinct explanation of the Fourth Dimension, and the Time Traveller's theories of the future evolution of mankind into a gentle, physically frail and unambitious race living in a paradise - or so it seems at first! This is a book that shaped science fiction as we know it: without it there would be no Doctor Who, no Back to the Future, and everything else would be quite different too!

I'm not sure when I'll get back to blogging regularly; probably not until I've finished my first draft of my work in progress, but watch this space. I will be back!

Bout of Books 15: Wednesday-Friday

Hello all. I've been at work for a couple of days so decided not to write readathon updates in my free time, but devote the time to actually reading over my lunch breaks and evenings instead. My third book of choice was Career of Evil by "Robert Galbraith" (who I think we all know is J. K. Rowling.) I don't think it was quite as good as The Silkworm, which followed detective Cormoran Strike as he looked for clues to a murder within the victim's manuscript of a novel, but it still did not disappoint. Career of Evil is another really dark thriller, with moments of pitch-black humour which make way for an investigation into a trio of very, very unpleasant characters. Although the suspects in this novel were limited to three, Rowling - sorry, Galbraith - keeps you guessing right to the end, "It must be this one," "Nope, here's a clue that says it can't be..." and when at last Cormoran Strike reveals the incriminating evidence, we find that, once more, the clues were there if only I hadn't overlooked them. Clever. Meanwhile, all I could do was watch helplessly, as Robin Ellacott, Strike's assistant, made some of the biggest mistakes of her life...

After the darkness of Career of Evil and Disclaimer earlier this week, it's time for some comfort reading, and I fully intended to spend today re-reading Pride and Prejudice. But life had other plans, and instead I got somewhat distracted listening to the soundtrack of the Broadway musical Hamilton which nearly everyone on the internet has been raving about for the past few months. I'd been trying to resist the hype, not being a fan of hip-hop or US political history, but I succumbed and have spent most of the day listening to it instead of reading. I'm not going to become completely obsessed with the show, but I did enjoy the songs, became emotionally involved in the fates of the characters (some of which I knew a little about, most of which I did not) and have had the whole thing in my head ever since. It piqued my interest in Alexander Hamilton and the early years of the USA as a nation, gave me a hunger for more knowledge on the subject. A couple of bloggers I follow, Sarah and Alley are taking part in a readalong of Hamilton's biography, and although I've no plans to join in the reading, I'll certainly be stalking their #Hamalong posts, which may have played a part in persuading me to give the show a chance. I'm glad I did, even if it did disrupt my readathon.

The Thirteenth Tale & The Girl on the Train

The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield

Margaret Lea, second-hand bookseller and part-time biographer, receives a strange letter one day: the reclusive author, Vida Winter, is dying and wants to open up the mysteries of her life story and true identity to none other than Margaret. Margaret travels to Yorkshire to stay with the strange and capricious Miss Winter and discovers a past full of mystery, a dysfunctional family, wild, psychopathic twins left to their own devices in a mouldering big house. Looking beyond the story Miss Winter tells, Margaret discovers nothing is quite as it seems, and is forced to confront a long-suppressed pain within her own family.

I think I'm going to like it here, I wrote in my review notebook within a few pages of starting The Thirteenth Tale. What's not to love? It's a book all about books and stories, the stories we make and how they come to define us. The whole idea of Vida Winter's first published collection, Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, which featured only twelve stories and was reprinted without a number in the title, gave me a delicious shiver. The mysteries of Vida's past are revealed slowly, each answer throwing up more questions, clues slowly coming together to reveal a truth that hadn't occurred to me, but that was hidden in plain sight all along.

The Thirteenth Tale is a rich, atmospheric novel that calls to mind the smell of old books, the cosy feeling of being wrapped up in a blanket with a hot chocolate while a storm rages outside. It is a self-aware entry into the canon of classic gothic fiction, settling among the classics as though it has always been there. I recommend this book to all book-lovers. One to read and then reread as a very different experience.

Thanks to Bex for sending me this.

Shelve next to: Jane Eyre, Rebecca, The Turn of the Screw, The Woman in White

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

The Girl on the Train is the thriller that has got the book industry talking this year: the tale of Rachel, a troubled young woman who takes comfort in watching a couple whose house she passes on the train one day and making up stories about them. But no one's life is as it appears to be from the outside, and even the most perfect marriage has its problems. Then the wife disappears...

Although there are three narrators in The Girl on the Train, Rachel (the titular "girl") is the most interesting. Her life is a mess. She is divorced, unemployed and an alcoholic, pretending she's holding things together but fooling no one, not even herself. None of the characters were particularly likeable, but I felt desperately sad for Rachel, wanting her to be able to get her life back on track and move on. Her ex-husband has married again, and they live just down the road from the house Rachel picked for her people-watching. And the families are closer-connected than they realise: Megan, the missing woman used to babysit for Rachel's ex and new wife, and that's not all they have in common. I found it interesting drawing parallels with the couples: Megan and Scott, Rachel and her ex Tom, and Tom and his new wife Anna.

Thanks to her drinking, Rachel has huge gaps in her memory, and the chapters from Anna's point of view offer an alternative perspective of Rachel as more dangerous and manipulative than she'd have us believe, or perhaps realises herself. These chapters plant a seed of doubt, and though I wanted to trust Rachel, I did not quite.

The Girl on the Train kept me up until late on a work night because I just had to know what happened next. Perhaps I was a little disappointed, expecting a cleverer plot twist that would leave me breathless. (It was a perfectly satisfactory conclusion, but I was prepared for a shocker.) But it works well as a dark study of toxic relationships, mental health and addiction, and grief either for what was lost or what was never had in the first place.

Shelve next to: Gone Girl, Before I Go To Sleep.

Sunday Summary: First book splurge of 2014

My Precious...

January always feels like a long month financially, after the Christmas spending, presents and food. No matter how careful I think I'm being in December, somehow I always find my money stretches thinner after Christmas. Up to this point, my book-buying consisted of one children's book, second-hand, while I worked my way down the to-read pile and rereading old favourites. But Friday was payday. I fell in love with the new Lord of the Rings hardbacks as soon as I saw them, and figured that as my paperbacks have been read so many times that they're falling to pieces, replacing them with nice hardcovers would be a good investment. Payday fell on Friday this week, and I took myself down to Waterstone's. On taking the books to the till, I then discovered that Waterstone's were having a 20% off weekend - an added bonus!

This was going to be the end of my book-buying for now, but somehow my feet led me to The Works, who were filling their shelves with new stock after a big clearance. Lo and behold, the first thing I saw was a book on my wishlist - and the second thing I saw was another book on my wishlist; one that several people have given rave reviews of recently. Both were on the 3 for £5 offer, and it did not take me long to find a third title that caught my fancy, saving at least £15 on the full retail price. Evidently this weekend is the time for a good bookish bargain.

What I've been Reading:

One of the heroes of 2013 was Canadian astronaut Commander Chris Hadfield, who spent a large chunk of last year aboard the International Space Station. His autobiography, An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth is an inspiring read and a fascinating insight into what it takes to be an astronaut: a lot more than merely having good brains and an interest in space. Hadfield is revealed to be ridiculously determined, having started planning for a ridiculously unlikely career from a very young age, but also wise and well-balanced, working hard to become an astronaut and go into space, but not making that his only purpose. It's astonishing how much you need to know, because when it's just you and a couple of other people in a spaceship, no one else can step in, your survival depends on your attention to detail, quick thinking and a wide range of skills. (An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth also brought home how completely improbable the storyline about Howard Wolowitz going into space was in The Big Bang Theory. It doesn't work like that, chaps.) But Hadfield's book is not just about space travel: as is suggested by the title, it is full of wisdom that can be applied to everyday life even for those of us who are destined to keep our feet on the ground.

Pretty Girl Thirteen is the story of Angie, a teenage girl who returns home after being missing for three years, with no memory of anything that has happened. This is part page-turning thriller, and part an exploration of someone trying to go back to living a normal life in the aftermath of a catastrophe. What marks Pretty Girl Thirteen as different is that Angie's lost memories are due to Dissociative Identity Disorder, which I'd never come across in fiction before. As it's a condition I'm unfamiliar with, I'm not sure how accurately it is portrayed in the novel, but it was an enlightening read, if sometimes striking me as feeling a bit supernatural. The brain is a very complicated thing. Although Pretty Girl Thirteen contains traumatic subject matter, it wasn't a particularly distressing read, due to Angie not having any memories of her missing three years. I read through this book in a single sitting on my day off.

N0S4R2 - Joe Hill

Victoria McQueen has a talent for finding things. As a little girl, she cycled across the Shorter Way Bridge near her home, to come out miles away. Throughout her turbulent youth, all she had to do was go out on her bike and the bridge would take her wherever she needed to go. But one day, an angry, teenaged Vic found Charlie Manx, kidnapper, serial killer, and vampire of sorts, and she barely escaped with her life. Sixteen years on, Manx snatches Vic's son in his vintage Rolls-Royce Wraith (number plate N0S4R2 or N0S4A2 depending on which edition of the book you're reading.) Wayne (first name Bruce) is whisked away to Manx's Christmasland, a place that promises eternal happiness, fun and innocence. But Vic McQueen will do anything to get her son back.

Vic McQueen is a messed-up character, there's no doubt about that. Combine a childhood of living with parents who loathed each other with her reality-defying gift and her near-death experience at Charlie Manx's, and it's no wonder she went off the rails. But I found it impossible not to like this tough-talking, tattooed young mother just trying to make the best of things despite her brokenness. In the aftermath of her first encounter with Manx, the adult Vic goes through various institutions, and emerges not sure of what is true and what is illusion. It is notable that Manx's return into Vic's life coincides with her running out of medication. Though it's pretty certain that N0S4R2 is a tale of the supernatural, Joe Hill subtly introduces a hint of doubt. There are times when the same scene is shown from two different points of view, each account differing just enough to make you question the narrator's reliability.

Vic is one half of the most unlikely but endearing couple, and I will continue to call them a couple though they are separated at the time of their son's abduction. Lou is the improbable knight on a shining motorbike who helps her escape from Manx; overweight and nerdy, Lou is an archetypal "loser," but he has a heart of gold and an enduring loyalty. Even when Vic and Lou are apart, their love for each other shines throughout.

In N0S4R2, Joe Hill has created characters you can really care for. Even people who appear for just a scene or two are rounded out and make you feel for them - a very dangerous thing in a horror novel. Due to the genre, you know that dreadful things are sure to happen, but I found myself aching for certain characters to be spared. Surely they must be immune? The devastating impact of each death reaffirms that no one is the expendable extra, that when a serial killer is on the loose, there is no containing the consequences of his actions. No man is an island; the redshirt is a myth.

On the other hand, the villains are repulsive. Manx is awful enough, evil and twisted enough to convince himself that he is doing what is best. But his henchman, Bing, is so much worse, utterly vile, a rapist and murderer, broken in the brain, and unlike Manx you get to see inside his mind. His point-of-view chapters made me feel defiled just by reading them.

At nearly 700 pages, N0S4R2 requires some commitment, but it is a twisty page-turner, an unusual and attention-grabbing thriller. Each chapter takes the story in a new direction. In some ways, I was hesitant to read much of the book in one sitting, for fear of what might lie in store for the characters, but that was continually overridden by the desire to get caught up in this adventure and spent my time in the world of the novel.

Lucky No. 14: Blame it on the Bloggers.

I wasn't planning to buy the book this year (whoops - I mean last year!) although I've had my eye on it since its hardback release. The current edition in the shops is the unpopular trade paperback - size of a hardback, but with a paper cover, neither one thing nor the other - and I had planned to wait for the smaller paperback. But Hanna, Sarah, Laura and perhaps some other people I've missed, kept raving about the book and as it was a Christmas-themed book, I could not wait another year. I'm very pleased I gave in: N0S4R2 was an excellent beginning to the new year. Let's see if the rest of 2014's reading can live up to this one.

Key Quotes

Christmas was almost three months in the rearview mirror, and there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running.

He was as tall as Lincoln and just as dead.

"What are you really scared of? Scared that you're crazy? Or scared that you aren't?"

"I am a leaf on the wind," Lou said, and the man-nurse said, "Dude, don't say that. I don't want to start crying on the job."  (Hurrah for the Serenity reference!)

He believed in his own decency with all his heart. So it was with every true monster, Vic supposed.

15 Day Book Blogging Challenge: Day Four

Day 4: What was the last book you've thrown across the room?

That's an easy one: XO by Jeffery Deaver. It was not a great book - a pretty good thriller story, with an interesting premise, twists and turns galore, though not very well written. (There was a lot of telling, not showing, "she thought," "he remembered," that sort of thing.) But there was one point where Mr Deaver made us think something terrible had happened. It's a crime thriller, lots of terrible things happen, but there was one particular event that took things to a new level of awful, the killer crossing the Moral Event Horizon.

Except he didn't. Deaver was trolling us all along. And I fell for it. And the book fell out of my hand to the other side of the garden, where it ended up covered in grass stains. Um, oops?

Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

For several years now, I've had a troubling vision of a future where the physical world is entirely forsaken in favour of twenty-four-hour internet. Where there are no shops, only online shopping, no human interaction but continual tweeting, no social gatherings but Facebook events. Where relationship status updates carry more weight that marriage certificates, and where couples don't even need to be in the same country. Instead of living life, we livetweet, and instead of seeing the world, we photograph it and post it on Instagram. We shun the friends we are with, while exchanging tweets on our smartphones with someone the other side of the world. And as I write this, I wonder how much of this is prediction and how much observation. I'm certainly as guilty as anyone else. The other day I could not be bothered to cook, so I ordered pizza without any human contact except, briefly, with the delivery boy. To this geeky, socially awkward blogger who loves escapism, there is a certain appeal to such a lifestyle, yet its very appeal sets off warning bells in my head. How long before we routinely upload our brains into the internet?

With Ready Player One, Ernest Cline makes a far better job of portraying such a world than I possibly could. In the not-too-distance future, the internet has been swallowed up by a massive, sprawling virtual reality called the OASIS. More than just a video game, the OASIS spans universes, with planets, books, virtual schools and workplaces, shops and restaurants, and of course games galore. Users have an avatar to traverse the OASIS, with headsets and gloves that allow them to experience the virtual worlds as though physically present. A few years before the novel begins, James Halliday, the OASIS' designer died without an heir, and his multi-billion dollar fortune has been left to whoever is first to unravel the clues hidden within the virtual worlds. For a long time, the clues yielded no results, and by many the "Easter egg hunt" has been dismissed as a hoax. Until eighteen-year-old Wade Watts stumbles upon the first key...

 I've never been much of a gamer, and so it took me a long time to be persuaded to read this book that has had such rave reviews. I needn't have worried: it was wonderful. Both the story and the world of the OASIS were utterly engrossing, and I would forget that I was reading about a kid sitting in the remains of a car in a junkyard, plugged into his computer. The OASIS seems more real than Wade's reality, which is in a sad state of being: overpopulated with all the world's resources running low. There's no real future for a kid who lives in a stacked trailer park. No wonder he finds refuge plugged into the internet, where he can be whoever he wants. Problems in the OASIS seem to affect Wade more than real-world catastrophe, and at times it would take me a moment to get reality and OASIS untangled. The OASIS, a computer programme made entirely of 0s and 1s, is as convincing a setting as any.

One of my favourite things in fiction is a good treasure hunt; not that I'm ever any good at solving the clues, but I enjoy watching the characters work them out. The hunt for Halliday's fortune lies in geek culture, especially from the 1980s: in science fiction, early computer games and cult movies. Though many of the references passed me by, many more made me smile - Firefly, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Discworld, Star Trek, Doctor Who... all these are name-dropped, and I had a big goofy grin all over my face through the final test. (Clue: he's using coconuts!)

Ready Player One is as thrilling as the best computer games, with enough real-world peril to keep the reader really caring. Solving the clues is more than just about winning the money: once the first key is uncovered, the big corporations get involved, their ultimate goal to privatise the OASIS. This is not just a case of Yahoo buying Tumblr, or even Amazon taking over Goodreads. For underprivileged kids like Wade, the OASIS is what makes life worthwhile. And the corporation plays nasty. Wade and the other competitors pose a threat to their ruthless ambitions, and must be stopped by any means.

I could not get enough of this novel, and it came as a real shock to reach the end. An outstanding science fiction novel: engrossing, geeky and a lot of fun. I wanted to eat that book.

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.

Before I Go To Sleep, S. J. Watson

Memories define us. So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep? Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight. And the one person you trust may be telling you half the story. Welcome to Christine's life.

(Cover blurb for Before I Go To Sleep.)

I'd had my eye on this book since it was published, and when I boxed up nearly all my books in order to decorate my bedroom this week, I borrowed this from the staff library at work. Although I'd read books about characters with amnesia before - and even made a half-decent attempt at writing one - Before I Go to Sleep was something altogether new. Christine Lucas wakes every single morning having to learn everything about her life and the world from the last twenty years - sometimes more. Before reading this I wondered just how Watson was going to manage to tell this story; how the reader would learn with Christine and not have to endure endless repetition as she rediscovered everything anew. Watson manages this with a simple solution: Christine's journal, which she reads before adding to each day, meaning that we are on the same page, as it were.

Before I Go To Sleep is a deep insight into what it must be like to live with amnesia: the fear and horror of not knowing anything, the world being a strange place, and discovering each day that you're twenty-odd years older than you thought. There were almost time-travel elements, as of course the world has changed a lot in the past decades. Where the world has changed gradually, to Christine it happens all at once, and she has to come to terms with the existence of mobile phones, photoshop, the Gherkin and London Eye - and living in a post 9/11 world without any understanding of the significance of that date - or knowledge that it is a significant date at all. "I must have missed so much," Christine writes. "Disasters, tragedies, wars. Whole countries might have fallen to pieces as I wandered, oblivious, from one day to the next."


Being a book all about memory, there are inevitably plenty of flashbacks, which are rather disorientating to read. Christine's mind is a very intense, confusing place to be, and the flashbacks can read like actual, physical shifts in time. Her perception of the world is a mishmash of past and present, real and imagined, and filling in the gaps where memories ought to be - but aren't.

The storytelling is very well-paced, with questions answered at satisfactory intervals - and with every question answered, another two are raised. The most straight-forward resolutions to mysteries add to the suspicion by posing another question: if this is the truth, why lie about it or conceal it up until now? Before I Go To Sleep is an intelligent, well-written thriller and psychological study that keeps you turning the pages wanting to know just what's going on. Although I had guessed at a major twist early on, it was revealed to give me a sense of satisfaction for figuring it out, rather than disappointment with the author for not being cleverer than me - a rare achievement.

Cuckoo, Julia Crouch

When Rose hears that her childhood friend has been widowed, she doesn't hesitate in inviting Polly and her children to stay. What else could she do? But Rose's husband Gareth isn't too happy about this. He's never liked Polly. She gives him the creeps. And certainly, Polly is not your normal grieving widow. She's never quite been normal, a former indie musician, with a history of drugs, eating disorders and other demons that have never quite gone away. But that's just Polly.

But the longer Polly stays under Rose's room, the more Rose feels she is losing her family. Her neatly ordered home and life starts falling to pieces. Could her old friend have anything to do with this?

Cuckoo is not the first book I've read where a newcomer to the household spreads an unhealthy influence, and seems to be gradually weaseling her way into the wife's position. Candia McWilliam's A Little Stranger works on similar themes, although in that case it was the nanny. Araminta Hall's Everything And Nothing looks like another version of the same story, but I haven't actually read that one and am only going by the cover blurbs.

I didn't automatically like any of the main characters, with the exception of Anna, Rose's elder daughter (and I suppose Flossie the baby.) Still, they are real characters, with flaws and struggles, dark secrets in the past, bad tempers, maybe too much drinking and smoking. Still, I grew to fear for Rose as her life started to unravel around her.

Polly was an interesting character, sometimes evil incarnate in a sexy dress, otherwise charm itself, and undeniably a very messed-up person. Sometimes it seemed she was so messed up that she couldn't help herself, and that there was only a certain amount of blame you could throw at her. Other times she was coolly manipulative, casting her glamour - and I mean this in all senses of the word - over Rose, her friends and relations, and eventually even the reader. As Polly began to cast her web, I was almost shouting at the characters, "How can you let her fool you?!" Yet in the end, even I was drawn in, a little. Even after all the evidence, even I wondered if, maybe, Polly was telling the truth and Rose was the one who was a bit mad.

When I started reading Cuckoo, it was with my editorial eyes, and at first I felt myself wanting to go through it with a red pencil. "Stop telling us and start showing! And for goodness' sake, stop telling us 'Rose thought this' and 'Rose thought that!'" Despite this, Crouch sets a really creepy, menacing atmosphere in her descriptions, each little detail leaving me worrying about what new disasters may unfold for Rose and her family. I feared for her.

Some aspects of the plot were visible for miles off, and I wondered how Rose herself could not see them sooner. But there were plenty of twists, too. Its ending was not a cosy, neat one, but if it had been, I would have felt cheated. This was not a neat story, but a messy one of damaged people trying to make their way the best they could.

If you enjoy this book, you may like:
The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly

The Poison Tree, Erin Kelly

Karen Clarke was always a good girl, a top-class languages student who lived a sensible, dull life, with a sensible, dull boyfriend and sensible, dull housemates. Then, after finding herself single again, she met Biba, the strange, alluring would-be actress who invited Karen into her life. For one summer, Karen seems to live the dream, sharing a big, old house in Highgate with Biba and her brother, with streams of interesting people, drugs and endless parties. But summer must come to an end, and one fateful evening all of their lives are changed forever...

The Poison Tree is a story told in two timelines: the main plot which set during the summer of 1997, a time that begin with hope in Britain with a new government, and ended with the nation mourning the "People's Princess," Diana. The second strand takes place ten years later, but the repercussions of the tragic night have not stopped. It is not much of a spoiler to say that Biba's brother - and Karen's partner - Rex has just been released from prison for a double murder - we are told this early on. The mystery is in what we are not told: why was her really there and what led him to that point? Why would Karen stay with a notorious killer? What is Karen's own guilty secret, and to what lengths will she go to keep it?

For most of the book I found Karen, the narrator, to be quite a dull character, with one unique trait - her language skills - and little personality. Her reaction to being dumped is emotionless - soulless? When she falls in with Biba and Rex, she seems easily moulded to become like them, to fit in and become part of their family until she's not sure who she was before, or who she would be without them. The sibling relationship between Rex and Biba is the most interesting dynamic in the story, the tale of a brother and sister who have nothing left but each other, and Rex in particular is driven by his obsession with protecting and holding onto his unpredictable, damaged sister.

I started off by disliking the main characters in the book when they showed no consideration for those around them, disturbing their neighbour, his children and pregnant wife by their late-night revelry. As a student in university accomodation I was made ill through lack of sleep because of people in the opposite flat, and my personal experiences made me hostile to these characters. But as the book progressed I found myself softening towards them, feeling sympathy towards the outwardly carefree and inwardly desperate Rex and Biba. Actual liking for the characters fluctuated; I was drawn to Biba by her charm but repelled by her selfishness, while Rex grew on me. Despite seeing the story through Karen's eyes, I could never quite like her; sensing a darkness beneath her seemingly ordinary character that didn't seem to be part of their shared history.

The Poison Tree is, like the poem it was named after, a dark, menacing read. It is almost gothic, with the crucial big, old house more of a character than a setting, with skewed residents who were too quirky, too passionate and intense. There is a thread of suspense throughout the story which kept me turning the pages and left more of a lasting impression than I first expecting, creepy and disturbing with its untold secrets and a shocking ending which left me to work out for myself why Erin Kelly had chosen this poem for its title. Kelly's next novel is set to be named after another William Blake poem, "The Sick Rose," which gives me reason to expect an equally dark read

The Poison Tree is one of the selected books for Richard and Judy's Summer Reads 2011.

Cold Light, Jenn Ashworth

Ten years ago, fourteen-year-old Chloe and her older boyfriend Carl drowned in what seemed to be a suicide pact between young lovers thwarted by meddlesome adults. The tragedy came at the end of a time when their northern town was terrorised by a spree of crime, and after the mysterious disappearance of the main suspect. Ten years on, Chloe’s friends Lola and Emma are still troubled by what had happened, and a grisly discover at a memorial service, prompts the girls – now young women – to reassess what had happened to their friend.

The main events of Cold Light take place in the late 1990s, and Jenn Ashworth captured perfectly what it was like to be a teenager at that time, taking my right back to the nostalgia – or not! – of my early high school days. Although we don’t notice the world changing much at the time, I was surprised to see how different the late ‘90s and early ‘00s feel compared with today, in the details of Lola typing up her father’s project on her school computer, of mobile phones being a novelty and shoplifting from Woolworths.

The novel is a gritty picture of poisonous teen friendship and loss of innocence. Although too explicit for a Young Adult novel, it is far from being out of the realms of teen conversation and behaviour. The girls act older than they ought, confident to the point of arrogance in their own maturity, but ultimately out of their depth. I vividly remembered the cruelty of so-called friends, the conflict between fitting in and being true to ones self, and the horrible feelings of being ugly, hideous, greasy and a no-hoper.

Cold Light also explores the role of the media in piecing together the “truth” in a mystery with many gaps in what is known. We see the local media stirring sensation, subtly influencing people’s beliefs until theories become facts, and the story of Chloe and Carl becomes a Romeo and Juliet tragedy that everybody wants a piece of.

And then, with a subtle twist, you are forced to re-examine what you think you know. Along with the standard thriller plot, in which facts slowly emerge, one detail turns the story on its head. We knew all along what was going on – but then we look at it from another angle and it becomes much more sinister. Cold Light is a gloomy book, but despite this an excellent, atmospheric thriller and a fascinating examination of the dark side of being caught between childhood and adulthood.

I received Cold Light  from the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton

You may also enjoy:

Sugar Rush – Julie Burchill
Hold Still – Nina LaCour
Eve Green – Susan Fletcher

Mini-reviews 3: Toast & The Woman He Loved Before

Toast – Nigel Slater

I was given a free copy of Nigel Slater’s autobiography Toast at a book party in my local Waterstone’s store, as part of the World Book Night celebrations. World Book Night was an initiative when publishers produced a million special editions of a range of well-loved books, for book-lovers across the UK to give away to friends, family, colleagues or total strangers. My former boss was at the event handing out copies of Toast, which was recently made into a TV movie starring Freddie Highmore and Helena Bonham Carter, among others.

Nigel Slater is a well-known TV chef, and taste is one of the most evocative senses, so it makes sense that Toast is a food-based memoir. It is a quick read, written in short chapters - some more like paragraphs - each devoted to one of Slater’s childhood memories based on to some food item. Some chapters are about general family rituals based around a dish, others cover a very specific memory. The novel takes us through Slater’s childhood, the grief at his mother’s death, and the marshmallows which cannot replace a goodnight kiss. Slater describes his discomfort as his father’s remarriage to Mrs Potter, their cleaner, and his lonely teenage years living in the middle of nowhere. We follow Slater through his school days, cookery course, first jobs up until he moved to London to start his career. Toast succeeds in making me feel peckish and nostalgic for a time I never knew (1960s-70s, as far as I can tell) when British food was not as cosmopolitan as it is now – pasta, pizza, curry, now staple parts of the British menu, all being dismissed as “foreign muck.” Though at times I think the food described sounds bland at best, unappetising at worst, Slater writes with fondness and affection. But I gag in sympathy when Slater describes the various ways his father would persuade, force or fool him into eating an egg – the one food I can’t even swallow is eggs. Yuck.

The Woman He Loved Before – Dorothy Koomson

Last time I read a Dorothy Koomson novel, I dithered about whether or not it could be classed as “chick-lit,” and had to consider what I meant by the term. Despite its candy-coloured dustjacket, The Woman He Loved Before is not so much a romance novel as a thriller with ghostly undertones. With gritty, unflinching writing about a woman trapped in prostitution, and another suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it cannot be described as "fluffy" by any stretch of the imagination, although it starts off “chicky” enough, by recounting a relationship that started off as loathing-at-first-sight before turning into attraction and love. When Libby is injured in a car accident, she finds herself re-examining her relationship with her husband, who has widowed when they met, and who she suspects has never really got over the death of his first wife, Eve. Although Eve’s death was always put down to being a tragic accident, the doubt is there: was she murdered, and is Libby herself in danger? Then she finds Eve’s secret diaries which reveal a shocking past and horrific secrets about the family. The Woman He Loved Before would be a great companion novel to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, exploring the unenviable role of the second wife, with themes of the importance of choices, and control – or lack thereof – over one’s own life.

Wight Moon: Out of the Shadows, E.A. Berry

When Ann Grayson moves to the quiet Isle of Wight after a messy divorce, the last thing she expects is to find herself mixed up with a family of vampires! Alarmed at first, she soon learns that the Island vampires have coexisted peacefully with their human neighbours for well over a hundred years. But when missing young women start turning up outside the home of local businessman - and vampire - Joshua Ellis, unconscious, suffering severe blood loss and with puncture marks on the necks, this peace is threatened. Are the Island vampires as tame as they seem, or does someone with a grudge want to discredit them?

Wight Moon's author, Elaine Berry, is a friend from my theatre group, but I had no idea she had written and self-published a book until she turned up at rehearsal with the finished product. Wight Moon is a supernatural thriller, and Elaine does not mess around with introductions but plunges you straight into the action when protagonist Ann encounters a strange child alone in the cemetery. I don't know many books set on the Isle of Wight, so I enjoyed identifying local landmarks, and was amused by the addition of "friendly neighbourhood vampires" into the local mythology. Wight Moon does nothing to alleviate the impression that Islanders are a little, well, peculiar!

All fantasy writers have their own take on the mythologies they use, and Elaine's vampires have their own existance. In everyday life, they appear no different to human beings - no sparkly skin here! - but when they "turn" they take on the more traditional "vampire" appearance, with red eyes and prominent fangs. When in "vampire" form, and only then, they have additional, supernatural powers, such as deep hypnosis which they use (mostly) for the good of mankind, although they are not above turning on the "vampire sleep" for their own purposes.

Wight Moon is a gripping tale - as Elaine put it: "if you like twists, this one is plaited!" She creates suspense early on with short, choppy passages, alternating the mundane scenes of a mother and daughter at lunch, with the kidnapper hiding in the daughter's flat, waiting for her return. The book is full of humour, shown in the day-to-day lives of the vampire family, such as her matter-of-fact description of Mary, the baby vampire, with a mug of blood in one hand and a rusk in the other. If I hadn't already known Elaine, I might have guessed she was a connoiseur of Gilbert and Sullivan in a scene between Mary and her uncle that culminates in a groan-inducing pun reminiscent of Pirates' "Often/Orphan" gag. The book works well as a stand-alone novel, with a satisfying tidying-up of loose ends, but finishes off with a wonderful sequel-hook which sent me off to Elaine to offer my services as proof-reader for book two. A really enjoyable read.

Crescendo, Becca Fitzpatrick

After all the hype about Hush, Hush, I judged it to be a very average teenage novel, with a compelling but not compulsive storyline, decent overall, but nothing that really stood out. I made sure to read Crescendo fairly soon after its predecessor, so that the story-so-far was fresh in my memory, and I could pick up where I left off.

I found Crescendo to be less average than Hush, Hush, but I'm sorry to say that I don't mean that in a positive way. Firstly, there were the inevitable comparisons with New Moon, book two of the Twilight series. In Crescendo, Nora feels insecure about her relationship with Patch, who seems to be keeping things from her, and before we are far into the story, she breaks up with him. Unfortunately, despite Nora being the first-person narrator of the series, I was not seeing the story through her eyes, but rather through the eyes of an outsider, moreover a reader who knows all too well how these stories go. It was far too obvious that Patch's secrets were nothing to do with him not really loving Nora any more, and that he had his reasons for keeping his distance. Nora spent a lot of time feeling angry with Patch for breaking her heart - when it was she who did the leaving in the first place. (Think Sandy in Grease.) She also seemed to have left her common sense (never particularly bright) in Patch's pocket, and I (metaphorically) read from behind my hands as Nora made stupid decision after decision and hoppity-skipped right into danger's pathway. Again, though, I observe this as a genre-savvy reader rather than from the character's point of view.

I thought that the story itself took a very long time to get started. Early on Nora discovers a hint about her father's murderer, but aside from a couple of scenes, that plotline is suspended for about a hundred and fifty pages while she tries to get over Patch, stalk Patch, get to know her returned childhood friend Scott (who is TROUBLE with a capital T and a capital ROUBLE) and work out if Patch really is dating Nora's worst enemy forever Marcie Millar. Once the father story is picked up once more, in the last quarter of the book, the pace picked up and I was able to lose my irritation enough to stop snarking and start caring once more. I was turning the pages quickly, wanting to know what had really happened to Nora's father, and just where Marcie Millar came into it all. After three hundred pages of teenage angst and sneaking about, the narrative returned to the action thriller of the previous volume. Just as it looked as if everything was going to be back to normal, Crescendo ended on a cliffhanger, because after all, you can't have less than three books in a teenage series.

I'm very sorry to Ms Fitzpatrick and all her fans, I want to award more, but Crescendo earns two stars from me.

Rosamund Lupton: Sister

Richard and Judy discontinued their popular book club last year after leaving Channel 4. Its place was immediately snapped up by the “TV Book Club.” The latter’s success evidently alerted them to the fact that it was not yet a dead genre, for today the Richard and Judy book club made its comeback in conjunction with W.H.Smith and Galaxy. Their first chosen title, Sister is the story of a young woman, Beatrice,  investigating the disappearance of her sister, Tess. When all her friends and family become resigned to the seemingly straightforward answers they are given, Beatrice insists on digging deeper, looking beneath the surface and relying on her closeness to Tess to recognise when things don’t add up.

The novel begins at the end, so to speak, with Beatrice telling her story to a lawyer. The bulk takes place in the past tense, in chronological order, but there are enough glimpses into the present to tantalise and hint at the answers not yet revealed. In her past, Beatrice seems to be flailing around, grasping at any possible clues, and the short scenes set in the present leave you wondering which of her wild ideas, if any, lead to answers.

Although Sister is described on its covers and by the author as a thriller, I would debate that classification. The tone is too slow and contemplative to fit the thriller genre comfortably, although Lupton hooks you by creating a creepy and unsettling atmosphere. There is a real sense of loneliness and desperation as Beatrice battles with the world to prove a truth that no one wants to hear. I found myself reminded of a Nicci French novel, Secret Smile in which the heroine is the only person not fooled by her creepy stalker ex-boyfriend’s nicey-nice manner.

Yet there were moments when I sensed there was something unreliable about Beatrice’s narration. Perhaps she was too desperate to believe what she just knew against all the evidence. As I read on, I came to realise that the story was on Beatrice’s side, however, I was not quite wrong. At the very end of the novel, a sudden switch in tense revealed that one thread of the book was indeed not what it seemed. Although this thread was not strictly crucial to the main narrative and in retrospect it was cleverly written, I felt a little cheated. This thread was in some ways the most solid, reassuring part of the story, and felt more real than the main plot. To have that pulled out and proven to be a fabrication was rather jarring.

While reading Sister, I found myself reminded of several other books and authors:
Nicci French: Secret Smile for its lonely, claustrophobic tone and some plot aspects.
Elizabeth Winthrop: December: a former Richard and Judy favourite, just for how I felt upon reading it.
Emily Barr: The Sisterhood because of the relationship between sisters and my suspicions of the narrator.
Jodi Picoult: any Picoult book. There was a chunk where I really noticed the author had been reading up on her chosen subject, in this case about genetic research on unborn babies.
Stieg Larsson: Millennium trilogy, especially part 3: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. There was a moment when I wondered just how big a cover-up was going on here, and who could be trusted.

Relentless, Dean Koontz

For several years've had Dean Koontz on my to-read list, an author whose book blurbs have been appealing and intriguing, but until this weekend I had never got around to reading one. This time, I got past the back blurb and flicked open the book. The first three lines made this author and specifically this book shoot right to the top of the pile:

This is a thing I've learned: Even with a gun to my head, I am capable of being convulsed with laughter. I am not sure what this extreme capacity for mirth says about me. You'll have to decide for yourself.

Immediately I wanted to know more. I already liked this guy and wanted to know more about him, and how he came to be doubled up with laughter with a gun held to his head.

I wasn't quite sure what category Dean Koontz's novels came under. At work we file them under "Horror," but according to the back blurbs I've always understood them to be thrillers, though of course you can't know until you read one.

I was very impressed with Koontz's authorial voice. Relentless is written from the point of view of Cubby Greenwich, a happily-married family man who writes books and who cannot be trusted with the most basic of appliances. He has bonkers in-laws who call themselves Clothilda and Grimbald and seem to like living in an apocalypse bunker more than in their own home. His wife, Penny, is refreshingly normal, but his six-year-old son is a scientific genius.

The story begins when Cubby receives a vicious review for his latest novel, from a man who is well-known for writing vicious reviews. He's not so well-known for hunting down, torturing and murdering the subjects of his reviews, along with their families. From there on, the novel turns into your fairly standard staying-ahead-of-the-psycho-serial-killer story, but written with constant humour that keeps the story fresh. Being a serial-killer novel, there are gruesome, claustrophobic and desperately tragic scenes, and of course Cubby Greenwich is hiding a secret from his past. But there is more than just constant suspense which can become oppressive if not relieved.

Relentless is not at all what you would call a realistic thriller, what with an organisation dedicated to destroying people who don't write the sort of books they approve of, and a couple of unexplained science-fiction elements that don't quite seem to fit in (teleporting dogs, anyone?) But it was great fun to read, genre boundary-breaking, a mixture of intelligence and incredulity. I shall certainly be reading Koontz again.