Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Synopsis: ‘You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.’ Bougainville. 1991. A small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda’s last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers’ safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville’s children are surprised to find the island’s only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts’ inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished.

Review: I fell very slowly in love with this book and once I reached that point I found it compulsive reading. I love Great Expectations and it was an interesting idea to use it in the context of a Pacific island. Through the use of the novel the writer was able to explore many issues including the power of storytelling, cultural differences and beliefs, and the Romansbildung. It is a gently told story seen through the eyes of the main character a young girl who is consumed by the character of Pip. The difference culturally of Pip’s character to the girl’s causes her to question her own culture and makes her think about the world beyond the island and like Pip she too goes through her own Romansbildung. My only criticism is the ending which almost seemed unnecessary – I felt I had got everything I wanted from the book and didn’t see the necessity of answering certain questions – I felt that they were questions that the character wanted answering more than the reader. Beautiful story with a particularly beautiful cover.

LibraryThing rating: ****

Other books read by this writer: None but will look out for others.

Review by JudyB

Entre Nous: A Woman’s Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier

Date of Publication: 2003, St. Martin’s

Number of Pages: 237

Synopsis: Provocative and practical, lively and intelligent, Entre Nous unlocks the mystery of the French girl and the secret of her self-possession. Why do French women always look inimitably stylish? How do they manage to sit in a café for a three-course lunch and a glass of wine…by themselves? What gives them the certainty that allows them to refuse anything – whether a man, a job, or a little black dress – that doesn’t suit them perfectly?

More than just a book on fashion, Entre Nous is about the essence of French living – its observations about French women and their ways will help you take the best of all pages from the French girl’s book: the page that reveals how to really enjoy life. ~From inside cover

Review: As an admirer of all things French, I knew that this book was a must-read for me. I’ve read other books on the same subject, but this book not only explores the fashions and the food that we love so much, but really delves into the rules that the French girls lives by: discretion, self-possession, and taking the time to find quality and sensuality. The French girl seems mysterious only because she is so completely in control of herself – and not in the way we think. She understands herself to a degree that we Americans or English women rarely achieve. This book teaches us how to slow down our lives and how to find ways to bring into it a little of that French je ne sais quoi. I found this book to be not only entertaining, but inspiring.

This book includes chapters on work, home, fashion, and relationships. It also includes recipes, film and literature suggestions, and tributes to some of the world’s favorite French women, like Coco Chanel, Audrey Tautou, Catherine Deneuve, and Edith Piaf. Some details will shock readers (like the accepted practice of a French man taking a mistress). But aside from that, or even because of it, this book is universally charming and intriguing…just like a French girl herself.

Rating: 10/10

Reviewed by Sarah

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Synopsis (from Librivox):
Set in a time of oppressive colonisation, when large areas of the world were still unknown to Europe, and Africa was literally on maps and minds as a mysterious shadow, Heart of Darkness famously explores the rituals of civilisation and barbarism, and the frighteningly fine line between them.

We get the tale through a classic unreliable narrator, relating as Marlow, a ship’s captain, tells how he was sent by the Company to retrieve the wayward Kurtz, and was shaken to discover the true depths of darkness in that creature’s, and in his own, soul. Conrad based the work closely on his own terrible experience in the Congo.

This work has been reinterpreted and adapted into many modern forms, the most well known being the film Apocalypse Now.

Review:
From all accounts, Heart of Darkness was based on Conrad’s own experiences in the Congo some eight years before writing the book, which would, one would think, make for an interesting read. Instead, I found this dull, plodding and pretty pointless. I know it’s held to be a classic full of symbols and ambiguity, but I just did not gel with any aspect of this novella – not the characters, nor the setting, nor their apparent motives (which seemed very weak) for any of their actions.

The ending, in particular, was anti-climactic, singularly lacking in any drama or discernable meaning, and seemed drawn out yet strangely abrupt (a combination that would seem impossible, but that’s how it is!). Basically, it took a long time to get nowhere.

I’m not sure if it was the style of writing or the story, but I’m not much bothered about reading anything else by Conrad, at least, not in a hurry.

Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

Synopsis (from Amazon):
It is 1867, Canada: as winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a man is brutally murdered and a 17-year old boy disappears. Tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin head north towards the forest and the tundra beyond. In the wake of such violence, people are drawn to the township – journalists, Hudson’s Bay Company men, trappers, traders – but do they want to solve the crime or exploit it? One-by-one the assembled searchers set out from Dove River, pursuing the tracks across a desolate landscape home only to wild animals, madmen and fugitives, variously seeking a murderer, a son, two sisters missing for 17 years, a Native American culture, and a fortune in stolen furs before the snows settle and cover the tracks of the past for good.

Review:
Once in a while, the literary awards people get it right. When the Costa crowd made The Tenderness of Wolves their choice for Book of the Year and First Novel Award in 2006, they were certainly on top form!

This novel reads like a dream from start to finish, from the way the characters’ lives and relationships are gradually revealed, to the unfolding of the mystery surrounding an artifact that may prove the existence of a written culture of the Native Americans, to the investigation of a murder that rocks a small and seemingly close-knit community. There’s a timelessness to it all that means it could easily be transported to any era, but it sits perfectly in the onset of the harsh winter of 1867, and charts the journeys – physical, mental and emotional – of each of the players.

Told partly in first person from the point of view of Mrs. Ross, the mother of a teenaged boy who has gone missing immediately after the murder of a French trapper, and partially in the third person, taking an overview of what happens to the others as she ventures out on her quest – to find her son, and herself. It’s a much internalised epic that strikes deep into your heart as you read, pulling you effortlessly into the narrative and forcing you to journey with her.

Highly recommended.

Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite

The Island of Dr Moreau by H. G. Wells

Synopsis (from Amazon):
Adrift in a dinghy, Edward Prendick, the single survivor from the good ship Lady Vain, is rescued by a vessel carrying a profoundly unusual cargo a menagerie of savage animals. Tended to recovery by their keeper Montgomery, who gives him dark medicine that tastes of blood, Prendick soon finds himself stranded upon an uncharted island in the Pacific with his rescuer and the beasts. Here, he meets Montgomery’s master, the sinister Dr. Moreau a brilliant scientist whose notorious experiments in vivisection have caused him to abandon the civilised world. It soon becomes clear he has been developing these experiments with truly horrific results.

Review:
Like Frankenstein almost 80 years before, The Island of Dr Moreau features a man of science playing God and finding that his creations do not act as he would prefer. The themes of human nature, law, religion and society are expertly mixed against the backdrop of a mysterious Pacific island.

Of course, in recent years, many of the issues faced by Moreau have come to the fore in the media, as the advancement of genetics and cloning have begged the question of whether it is ever right for Man to play God, and just how far is too far? There is also the question of forcing a belief system on another set of “people” – deifying ones-self in order to be protected from one’s own creations – and the degradation of said creations when they are left to their own devices.

Wells has chosen a heady blend of science and nature to portray just how easily mankind can go astray – and one has to wonder if his ideas are not already becoming a reality – which makes for tense and exciting reading. It’s not a particularly long story and it runs at breakneck speed from beginning to end, hurtling the reader into the action and offering no respite until the tale is told.

If you fancy trying a bit of classic sci-fi, this is definitely one to try!

Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite

Chanel – A Woman of Her Own by Axel Madsen

Date of Publication: 1990, Henry Holt and Company

Number of Pages: 337

Synopsis: Chanel. The name alone evokes fashion and perfume, emancipation and allure. In this revealing, intimate biography, Axel Madsen brings to life Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who was born an illegitimate pauper and rose to become the reigning queen of fashion, revolutionizing women’s style forever.

Madsen traces Chanel’s extraordinary life, from her beginnings as an orphan, to the first small boutique she opened in 1910 (using her lover’s financial backing), to the founding of the House of Chanel where she altered the look of fashion entirely, inventing sportswear, the “little black dress,” costume jewelry, and the perfume that Marilyn Monroe said was all she wore to bed. Although loved by many men, Coco remained wed only to her business, and when she died in 1971, at the age of eighty-eight, she was wealthy, and international celebrity, and utterly alone. ~Blurb from back cover

Review: As an enthusiastic admirer of Coco Chanel’s style and of the fashions she created, I was excited to read this book. I was surprised to find out that Chanel was an immensely complex and interesting person, even aside from her creative life. She came from very humble beginnings, lived through two world wars, survived tragedies, heartbreaks, and scandals, and through it all, she worked hard to realize her dreams of success. She is someone whom even non-fashionistas can admire. She was tenacious and clever, and her innate sense of style came through in everything she did.

This book features wonderful photographs of Chanel, a handy index, and even a guide to the author’s sources. For anyone who is even remotely interested in fashion, this book is a god-send. For everyone else, this book tells the story of a courageous and complicated woman who fought for her success and did things her own way. This was one of the best books I read in 2007, and I will definitely re-read it in 2008!

Rating: 10/10

Reviewed by Sarah

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Date of Publication: 2003, Doubleday

Number of Pages: 360

Synopsis: Andrea Sachs, a small-town girl fresh out of college, lands the job that “a million girls would die for.” Hired as the assistant to Miranda Priestly, the high-profile, fabulously successful editor of Runway magazine, Andrea finds herself in an office that shouts Prada! Armani! Versace! at every turn, a world populated by impossibly thin, heart-wrenchingly stylish women and beautiful men clad in find-ribbed turtlenecks and tight leather pants that show off their lifelong dedication to the gym. With breathtaking ease, Miranda can turn each and every one of these hip sophisticates into a scared, whimpering child.

The Devil Wears Prada gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to plaints about “The Boss from Hell.” Narrated in Andrea’s smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda’s children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antiques store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day – and often late into the night – with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not it’s worth the price of her soul. ~Blurb from back cover

Review: This debut novel sat on the New York Times bestseller list for months, and was turned into an Academy Award-nominated film. I did the non-bookworm thing: I saw the movie first. When I finally picked up the book, I was both delighted and irritated. I was delighted that Andrea had a more complicated personal life in the book than in the movie. Her best friend and roommate, Lily, is a promiscuous, alcoholic graduate student and her boyfriend, Alex, is an idealistic elementary school teacher. She loses sight of both of them as her job gradually takes over her life. Even Emily, the senior assistant, shows signs of cracking under Miranda’s pressure. There are many, many instances of Miranda’s tyranny over her little empire, which guarantee that you’ll be simultaneously laughing and wincing at poor Andrea’s suffering.

If I had to choose one thing that bothered me, it would have to be the dialog. It was incredibly contrived and most of it wasn’t believable. The conversations sound like they happen in someone’s head, but when you put the words down on paper, it all sounds fake. Real people just don’t talk like this. I would try to imagine these people saying these things, and it didn’t work at all. It really takes away from the story, and it shows how untrained the author actually is. Much of it sounds like it came out of a high school creative writing class. At the same time, though, Miranda’s outrageous rants and requests (“Yes, there’s something wrong. Something very, very wrong. Why do I have to come back to my office to find this sitting on my desk?”) are perfect, which hints at some real-life experience of the author’s.

If you’re a fan of chick-lit, this book is great. It’s full of fashion and fabulousness, parties and Paris. Just don’t expect too much.

Rating: 7/10

Reviewed by Sarah

The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

Synopsis (from Wikipedia):
The protagonist is Tom, a young chimney sweep, who falls into a river after encountering an upper-class girl named Ellie and being chased out of her house. There he dies and is transformed into a “water baby”, as he is told by a caddis fly — an insect that sheds its skin — and begins his moral education. The story is thematically concerned with Christian redemption, though Kingsley also uses the book to argue that England treats its poor badly, and to question child labor, among other themes.

Review:
Reading The Water Babies is like having a large quantity of morals and saccharine forced down your throat, and the constant digression (in particular, the one about salmon rivers; one of many digressions that seemed to have utterly no point!) makes it even more difficult to swallow.

The cloying condescension makes it even more unpalatable, as does the fact that if each meandering incident of digression and every lesson imparted to the reader were removed, we’d be left with a sweet story of about three pages in length.

This was very obviously written with an audience of just one in mind (constant personal references such as, “that’s more than you can do!” are certainly aimed at a specific young boy) and the rambling fairytale appears to have been constructed with the sole purpose of having him grow up to be a good, God-fearing man, which is all very well, but didn’t much endear it to me.

Overall, it was just far too sickly-sweet and moralistic (although the narrator claims the story has no moral on account of it being a fairytale – as if that ever made a difference to morals within tales!) to be completely enjoyable – I prefer not to be lectured while I’m reading!

Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Synopsis (from back of book):
As Monsiers Richard and Moncharmin prepare to take over as acting managers of the Opera House, they discover their predecessors have bequeathed them the “Opera Ghost”. A seperate memorandum-book has been set aside for his various whims, including extravagant financial needs. Heedless of the numerous warnings to comply with these strange demands, the managers shrug it all off as a practical joke taken too far. Then a sequence of eerie coincidences and tragic events follow, culminating in the sudden disappearance of the beautiful prima donna Christine Daae in mid-performance.

Tortured by the pangs of unrequited love, the mysterious figure living beneath the Opera Hose has been awaiting his chance to strike – and once he does, he is deadly…

Review:
Somehow I was expecting a little more from this novel, having seen several film adaptations (including the very famous musical), none of which have been completely true to the original story (although some have been closer than others).

At the start, it is presented almost in the style of a factual report, with the author relating events allegedly as told to him by those who were there, gathering information from various sources, including diaries, letters and anecdotal evidence, and indeed, parts of it are based on fact (the Opéra de Paris, for example, does exist as described, as does the subterranean lake; and on one tragic occasion, one of the counterweights for the magnificent chandelier fell, killing one), but the flights of fantasy as the story develops becomes wilder and wilder.

The Phantom himself is presented as a tragic-comic figure. His despair and loneliness inspire pity, but many of his escapades (such as the “joke” with the money) make him seem faintly ridiculous. There’s also the psychotic nature which is, apparently, completely due to his being hideously ugly, which seems just a trifle far-fetched. As does Christine’s relationship with him – one of attraction/repulsion – as there are several occasions where one cannot honestly be expected that any woman, no matter how gullible, would let herself be entrapped in such a way when there is very clearly more than one way out.

Ultimately, though, the opulent splendour of the tale and its setting redeems it and lifts it out of the murky depths. There are moments of absolute genius (mostly the descriptions of the Opéra de Paris) which make this a very worthwhile novel to read and one that perhaps should be read by anyone who loves a Gothic touch.

Reviewed by Kell Smurthwaite

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell

Synopsis: ‘A is for Apple. A bad apple.’ Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. To his new friends, he is a good guy with occasional flashes of unexpected violence. To his new girlfriend, he is strangely inexperienced and unreachable. To his case worker, he’s a victim of the system and of media-driven hysteria. And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: can he really start from scratch, forget the past, become someone else? Is a new name enough? Can Jack ever truly connect with his new friends while hiding a monstrous secret? This searing and heartfelt novel is a devastating indictment of society’s inability to reconcile childhood innocence with reality. (taken from Waterstones’ website)

Review: I was a bit apprehensive about reading this not really sure what to expect. However I found myself gripped from the first page to the last. Predominately this story has to be described as thought-provoking, not only do you find yourself exploring the issues concerned but sometimes you find yourself looking at your own reactions. True that the format of the narrative manipulates them by revealing the story bit by bit but equally I feel this serves to take the black and white out of the situation and allows the reader to consider its complexities. I finished this last night; 24 hours later I’m still mulling it over, seeing patterns and thinking and rethinking. It seems trite to say I’ve been on a journey but I do feel that genuinely.

LibraryThing rating: ****½

Other books read by this writer: None but will look out for others.

Review by JudyB