The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2011 01:24 AM PDT Being Billy Author: Phil Earle Publisher: Puffin Books, 272 pages BILLY Finn has spent eight years in a care home so he's understandably angry – with his mum for giving him away, with the system that allowed it, and with social workers who tried but failed to ensure that his life didn't suck. Billy's little brother and sister are the only people he loves, but even they can't keep him out of trouble. Is Billy being difficult on purpose? Maybe he just can't help being who he is. After all, who else can he be? Sad Monsters: Growling On The Outside, Crying On The Inside Author: Frank Lesser Illustrator: Willie Real Publisher: Plume, 192 pages Monsters have it tough. Besides being deeply misunderstood, they suffer from very real problems: Mummies have body image issues, Godzilla is going through an existential crisis, and creatures from the black lagoon face discrimination from creatures from the white lagoon. At heart, these monsters are human; after all, you are what you eat! Pomelo Begins to Grow Author: Romonoa Badescu Illustrator: Benjamin Chaud Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books, 48 pages Pomelo the little pink elephant wakes up one morning and notices that he seems to have grown. This makes him happy but also makes him worry. What does growing bigger and older means? This book addresses, with deep insight but an admirably light touch, the concerns children may have about growing up. Squish Rabbit Author & Illustrator: Katherine Battersby Publisher: Viking Juvenile, 40 pages Squish is just a tiny rabbit and this is actually how he got his name – he's hard to see, easy to miss and so ... squish! But although Squish is often missed, he never misses a thing, and when things go wrong, Squish is there, ready to help. This is Squish's chance to prove that even a small rabbit can be a big hero! Mortal Kiss Author: Alice Moss Publisher: Random House Children's Paperbacks, 352 pages Life in the town of Winter Mill gets almost too interesting with the arrival of Lucas and Finn. For Faye McCarron, it means coping with the ardent attentions of both young men ... but there are other complications to deal with, including a dead body in the woods and a snow storm that just won't let up. It seems that evil has come to Winter Mill and it's up to Faye to get to the bottom of it or die trying. The Flint Heart Authors: Katherine Paterson & John Paterson Publisher: Candlewick Press, 304 pages At the request of a power-hungry leader, the magic man of a stone age tribe creates the Flint Heart, a stone that hardens the heart of its bearer. The leader gains total control of his tribe but his cruelty leads to its destruction. Thousands of years later, the stone re-emerges, once more a poisonous and destructive force. As it wreaks havoc in the lives of a farmer, a fairy and a badger, siblings Charles and Unity work to find a way to battle the dark forces associated with the Flint Heart and save themselves and their friends from its evil influence. Liesl & Po Author: Lauren Oliver Publisher: HarperCollins, 320 pages Poor Liesl, locked away by her cruel stepmother in a tiny attic, with only mice and shadows as friends. However, one night, a lonely ghost named Po appears to Liesl and the two become close. That same night, Will, an alchemist's apprentice, accidentally switches a box containing the most powerful magic in the world with one containing something decidedly less impressive. Will's mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey. Eve Author: Anna Carey Publisher: HarperCollins, 336 pages Sixteen years after a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth's population, the world is a perilous place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and 200 other orphaned girls have been promised a future as the teachers and artists of New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school's real purpose – and the horrifying fate that awaits her. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2011 12:37 AM PDT Daughters-In-Law Author: Joanna Trollope Publisher: Touchstone Books, 319 pages THE last couple of novels by Joanna Trollope felt a little off to me, not exactly classic Trollope. Well, I'm delighted to be able to report that the British novelist is back on form and delivers a satisfying read with in her 16th book, Daughters-In-Law. The setting is middle-upper class Britain where lives are privileged, money is never an issue, the houses are grand, and everyone seems to be beautiful and model perfect. Matriarch Rachel Brinkley loves being the centre around which her large family revolves, and despite the fact that her sons are now all grown up and married, she still insists on fussing over and controlling them. On their part, her three sons remain – perhaps rather unhealthily – close to Rachel. The Brinkley boys – Edward, Ralph and Luke – come across as mama's boys, men in their mid-20s and early-30s who still depend on their mother to make important decisions for them. The novel opens with the church ceremony of youngest son Luke's marriage to Charlotte. As you would expect of a Trollope protagonist, Charlotte is very beautiful, spoiled, opinionated and has no intention of falling into step with the Brinkleys – and her "insubordination" has been steadily getting on Rachel's nerves. As Charlotte pushes her boundaries more and more, Rachel finds that her role as matriarch is diminishing and her control over her boys begins to slip. In a dark moment, she realises that even the other two daughters-in-law are becoming more important to her sons than she is. The final insult comes when Rachel realises that even her husband, Anthony, no longer seems to mind that his sons' wives are becoming an integral part of Brinkley family life. As her control over her family slips, so does Rachel's sanity as she struggles to regain her power, forcing the whole family to question assumptions true and imaginary, and find a new dynamic, if any of their relationships are going to survive. In lesser hands, Daughters-In-Law could have steered dangerously close to being an inconsequential and mediocre read; but Trollope moves the story beyond mundane bickering to a high-octane family drama. After the first 100 or so essentially scene-setting pages, Daughters-In-Law grips the reader emotionally, often to the point of sentimentality, and Trollope deftly takes her audience along with her to a satisfying conclusion. It is unfortunate that Trollope is sometimes seen as the poor man's Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper; I actually like the fact that, unlike Collins and Cooper's work, Trollope's novels deal with everyday problems that more of us can relate to, rather than the overly dramatic issues in those authors' books. And Trollope's writing is enriched by convincing dialogue, which Daughters-In-Law is full of. This novel is a gripping read due to its excellent pacing. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
| Posted: 21 Oct 2011 12:36 AM PDT Familiar themes and ideas are given new and enthralling twists. Gillespie And I Author: Jane Harris Publisher: Faber & Faber, 504 pages IT is said that one of the purposes of art is to reveal concealed truths. But there is also a fascination with ambiguity; the human mind seems to like nothing better than a puzzle. To cite possibly the most famous example of this: It is doubtful whether Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa would have retained its fascination over the centuries were it not for that ambiguous smile. What is she smiling at and why? Remove the smile and you would not have half the questions that jump into your mind on seeing the picture, and it would not be half as memorable. One of the literary equivalents of this is the device known as the "unreliable narrator". The technique is straightforward, if horribly difficult to pull off. The novel is written in the first person and the events are seen through the eyes of the teller. But what if the teller of the tale lies, or imagines things, or simply chooses to mislead? Where does that leave the reader? Reading the novel becomes an interactive guessing game of trying to work out where the truth lies. Over the course of the opening section of John Fowles' now classic 1963 novel The Collector (a clear source and forerunner, incidentally, of Emma Donoghue's Room, which was a finalist in last year's Man Booker Prize), the narrator calmly and coolly explains how he plans to kidnap a girl and hold her prisoner. In the first few pages, as he only hints at what he plans, he sounds entirely ordinary, reasonable and just a little pathetic and so, as the reader, it is only gradually that you realise that he is in fact seriously disturbed. Then the realisation kicks in that he is actually deranged and his attempts at rationalisation are just elaborate exercises in deceit. And by then the reader is complicit in the deception. The worlds of art and the "unreliable narrator" come together beautifully in Jane Harris's second and latest novel, Gillespie And I. The Gillespie of the title is Ned, a Scottish painter, "artist, innovator, and forgotten genius". The narrator is Harriet Baxter, who describes Ned as her dear friend and soul mate. "It would appear that I am to be the first to write a book on Gillespie. Who, if not me was dealt that hand?" she begins and thereafter unfolds the tale of a single woman in Victorian Glasgow who is smitten with the work of an artist and becomes a close friend of his family with results that no one could have foreseen and that the reader is left to untangle. Harriet's memoir of Ned is written some 45 years after the events she describes. Sitting in her flat in London, with two caged birds for company, she reconstructs the events of all those years ago and gazes at one of the few paintings by Ned that has survived. At the same time, she recounts the problems that she is having with her live-in companion. By far the biggest sections of the book deal with the Victorian past but her current problems are also illuminating – the words of Miss Baxter are simply not to be trusted. Harriet's version of the woes of Ned and his family, whatever the actual truth of the events she recounts, raises all kind of issues and is particularly pertinent in asking questions about the ways in which we think of the past, the ways in which we idealise our relationships ("soul mate" is not a casually chosen phrase) and our seemingly unlimited capacity for self-deception. Is there not, the reader is left wondering, just a little of the Harriet in all of us? I am anxious not to give away too much of the plot of this beguiling, intriguing, complex and beautifully written book. Suffice it to say that lovers of art, Romanticism and Victorian melodrama are unlikely to be disappointed. Aside from Harriet and Ned, there are some fine minor characters here, too, not the least of which are Ned's wife Annie and their elder child, the tormented and waif-like Sybil. If these characters are rooted in Victorian art and literature, and through Harriet's eyes they quite clearly are, then it is only right that they should be, as these are at the heart of the book. It is Jane Harris's skill that she has re-woven themes and ideas that are not entirely unfamiliar, and given them new and enthralling twists. This is a novel steeped in its period with authentic details and atmosphere – but it also contains some bitingly humorous and far more "modern" moments. I cannot recommend Gillespie And I highly enough – it is an utterly compelling and completely engaging read, extremely difficult to put down. Full content generated by Get Full RSS. |
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