Hot summers, long titles, and all that life throws at you.

Publisher: Tinder Press (Headline)
Pages: 326
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-472-22168-1
First Published: 30th October 2014
Date Reviewed: 7th September 2015
Rating: 4/5

It’s 1972 and Katie has lived in Elephant Beach on Long Island all her life. It’s nothing special, but it’s home for her and her friends. The prospects aren’t great unless you’ve the money and status to bag a better education, and most people end up at the local college. Getting high is pretty much assumed, cigarettes are smoked by everyone, and everyone’s got secrets.

If I Knew You Were Going To Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go is a book somewhere between a novel and short story collection, that looks at life in a fictional town in the 70s and life at the time for those coming of age.

There is a basic plot running through this book but it’s best viewed as a series of vignettes, indeed if you focus on the idea of a novel having a plot and a main character, you’re going to be disappointed. The stories are mainly set over one summer, with breaks for memories and considerations and reports of the future, and whilst you hear everything from Katie she’s no more important than anyone else. Katie may be the one whose thoughts you know and whose future you’re more invested in by virtue of intimacy, but Chicurel has worked on the whole. It would be fair to say that this book straddles contexts – a book for book’s sake, nostalgia, and a bit of a study.

Not a study as in get your pen and paper and write an essay, more a look at the issues of the time. These are teens still getting to grips with who they are, working through that time between childhood and adulthood and, for many of them, they’re trying to work through the poor hand life has given them, though they don’t always recognise it as such. The drugs keep them living life happy and although the future is discussed, told to us by Katie, everyone is living for the ‘now’. It’s best to. They know they’ve few prospects and that’ll be hard getting out, getting away, though there are possibilities. Many will die young through their various abuses. What all these teens do have, though, is friendship. Lots of it, lots of loyalty. There is a bit of a contrast with the kids from ‘the Dunes’. Chicurel shows us the privileged, the teenagers that turn to hippie living, throwaway boyfriends of less privileged backgrounds and protests for things they don’t have knowledge of, teenagers that were always going to end up as rich as their parents and do.

A new thought occurred to me, that women had all this drama, all this waiting and hoping and crying over things we’d been told, raised on, warned about, these monumental milestones that ended up lasting only minutes in our lives and were never, ever as wonderful or horrible as you thought they would be.

In a way it can seem like there’s a lot going on here, but it works in context. Suicides, overdoses; what we would now call ‘care in the community’; secret abortions where names must not be exchanged (the quote above is from such a scene); running away for a better life to never find it; PTSD. Everything is handled well and with respect in every way.

The affect of the Vietnamese war on mental health is the thread that continues from start to finish. A couple of the characters are veterans and dealing with scars, physical, mental, emotional. Not only does Chicurel detail these changed lives, she shows well how people back home might try but can’t quite understand what would have happened. The veterans, both young, behave in ways unconsidered and the easiest way to show you how the teens are incapable of understanding is to say that Katie fancies Luke something rotten, dreams about their lives together, but thinks trying to get him to notice her will work. You see that Luke doesn’t care but it’s not because he doesn’t like Katie, it’s because he’s got little left.

And there is a smigin of a theme of identity, of finding one’s place. Katie was adopted and wonders about her birth mother – what she’s doing, if she misses her child. The title of the book relates to this.

There are chances gained in this book, but not too many. To make everything work out in the end for everyone would be to negate the very real circumstances the book is grounded in.

I think it’s worth stating that there is a lot of swearing in this book and a lot of very casual ‘yeah, man’ language. I’m stating this, particularly the swearing, because it should be seen in context. Chicurel isn’t aiming to shock or offend, rather she’s setting the book in its era, in its place.

If I Knew You Were Going To Be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go. gives you something to think about. There’s nothing we can change now, of course, but it makes you think about similar circumstances nowadays and how the way things are, the privilege, the support, hasn’t really changed all that much and should have. It may not have an ending as such and it may be but a set of memories, but it’s a good read. As much as it isn’t a happy book, it is full of sunshine and friendship. That others would dismiss the friendship and say that it’s a bad place be damned.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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J K Rowling would like the moving pictures.

Publisher: N/A (I read Project Gutenberg’s edition)
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: N/A
First Published: 1764
Date Reviewed: 1st September 2015
Rating: 3/5

In the Medieval period Manfred, Prince of Otranto, arranges a marriage between his sickly son, Conrad, and the lady Isabella. On the day, Conrad is killed by a giant helmet, leaving Manfred with no heir, and an heir he must have if his line is to continue ruling and the prophecy that Otranto be returned to its rightful owner overruled. But Manfred’s new plan of marrying Isabella himself is to be upset by the arrival of a peasant and a ghost or two.

The Castle Of Otranto is a novella in the style of Shakespeare. It’s prose but high in drama; its value lies mostly in its Shakespearian context.

This is because there’s really not much to The Castle Of Otranto and albeit that this was the first gothic book ever written, it pales in comparison to most others. There are paranormal elements, not scary enough likely even for readers of the time, and these elements are never explained, they just happen and Walpole finishes his tale without explaining the whys and hows. The book is incredibly dramatic, there are info-dumps, and the story is minor. Not all that much happens, at least in the context of what we’d call action today, or even what Austen would call action, and a lot of the dialogue is composed of rambling.

What does work, then, is the imitation of Shakespeare. The Castle Of Otranto is to all intents and purposes a prose version of a Shakespeare play if Shakespeare had written about a man called Manfred who wants to keep his castle. The style is very Elizabethan – the first edition had Walpole pretending he was simply the translator of an old text – and the drama far more akin to Shakespeare than any fainting ladies of the Georgian period. The dialogue is full of thys and forsooths… actually it may not include a forsooth, but that word is a good one to use because I think everyone can imagine the period commonly associated with it.

The value of Walpole’s work lies in theatre – this book would make a great performance on the stage of the Globe. Otherwise, however, there is not much to be taken from it; I’d recommend it only to those with a prior interest who want to study drama and/or 1700s literature. There are veiled references to Henry VIII, there’s silliness, and there are many convenient relationships that have most certainly been planned. This book is contrived; it’s meant to be.

The Castle Of Otranto is fun but wearing. Read it if you love The Bard, pass on it otherwise.

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Marlon Brando’s over for coffee.

Publisher: Accent Press
Pages: 291
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-783-75257-7
First Published: 22nd December 2014
Date Reviewed: 17th August 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

When his wife Jane springs a divorce request on him, David is lost, but not for long. The school reunion he attended, at which he realised bullies will always be bullies and people change beyond recognition, led him to meet Bridget for the first/second time and they got along rather well.

A Street Café Named Desire is an oft-funny book, and a romance told from a male perspective, that has a lot going for it but doesn’t quite reach its potential.

Gould has a way of writing that can pull you in when you’re sitting somewhere noisy. His writing style is comfortable, the humour a mix of straight-forward and subtle – guaranteed to put a smile on your face – and the characters steeped in reality. David is very British, just an average chap trying to live his life which he was doing well until his narcissistic wife told him she was having an affair. He may not be the most thrilling of people but that’s part of the point – he shouldn’t have to be – and regardless, he’s very likeable.

The humour is all British and, if you’re British or know a lot about the Isles, you’ll ‘get’ it. Mishaps, children old enough to know what’s going on, orange paint that isn’t orange actually. The humour is never forced, it rolls out naturally.

The first half of the book is super. The plotting is good, the characterisation works well, and the way Gould has written the children is just great. Rachel in particular isn’t ready to let her mother get away with running off with a friend; in many ways Rachel takes on what David ‘should’ have been doing, getting angry on both her own and her father’s behalf and refusing to see her mother. It is a good part of the story because it shows both the difference between David’s relatively passive behaviour and his daughter’s assertiveness, whilst also delving into the teenager’s hurt and therefore the way the wronged parent has to comfort others whilst they themselves are in pain.

Bridget, too, is a fine character, and matches David’s contentedness with vividly-coloured passion. The attraction between them is something Gould shows brilliantly and Bridget’s no-nonsense responses to David’s worries read as true.

The issue, then, comes in the second half. Whereas the first half is rather excellent, the second half is full of info-dumps and minor, two-line, characters who are given lengthy backgrounds. It slows the story, which gets lost in amongst the detailing, and gives you a lot of information about people and situations there is no need to know anything about. Secondary characters, too, have sections given to them that don’t have much or any baring on the plot at hand.

A Street Café Named Desire is fun, true to life, and promising. It’s a fair read, and worth it, but needed more editing.

I received this book for review from the author, who I’ve met.

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Because communication isn’t always the problem.

Publisher: Vintage (Random House)
Pages: 160
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-099-56384-6
First Published: 1926
Date Reviewed: 26th August 2015
Rating: 5/5

Original language: French
Original title: Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding)
Translated by: Sandra Smith

Yves spots Denise when her child throws sand over him; he is entranced from that moment. The two begin an affair as Denise’s husband leaves for work and continue seeing each other for the remainder of their holidays. Back in Paris, it’s not the same. Yves, once rich, has to work for a living, whilst Denise lives in luxury; and that is just the start.

The Misunderstanding is one of those novellas in which the reader is privy to the issues at hand and will see that the couple have a lot to work on if they’re going to be in with a chance. It was Némirovsky’s first book, so it’s not as polished as others – the language is overly detailed, romantic, and the author favours angst for angst’s sake – but nevertheless it’s exquisite – even as a twenty-one year old this writer knew her stuff.

In the foreword, Sandra Smith states that the French version of ‘misunderstanding’ Némirovsky uses means three different things: a specific event; ‘the person who is misunderstood’; ‘incompatibility’. It’s a good thing to note because it is indeed that way in the story. There are a couple of events, one in particular, that cause the couple problems. Neither Yves nor Denise understand each other, understand the other’s life and where they’re coming from. And this, perhaps more so than their respective rank in life, causes their incompatibility.

This incompatibility has to be explored. In a past life, or, rather, if Yves had remained rich (he lost his parents’ fortune during the war) the two would be very compatible. The main thing that gets in the way is the financial distance, the difference between luxury and necessity. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a problem if Yves didn’t feel so hard done by (he is constantly in debt because he lives above his means, trying to emulate his childhood) but Denise’s relative obliviousness to her lover’s situation creates distance all by itself. Yves can’t go out in the evenings, he needs to sleep – something Denise cannot understand on a fundamental level. So Yves resents Denise, resents the way she’s overbearing in her love, and in pushing her away as he starts to do, Denise resents him in turn. She listens to her mother’s advice and applies it to her relationship, and it works up to a point, but she pushes it too far.

In some respects The Misunderstanding can be compared to The Great Gatsby – the love of a once penniless soldier compared to the once rich man. A topic often discussed is whether Jay Gatsby would ultimately be happy if he had Daisy, and this is something we could ask of Yves. Does Yves love Denise because she represents what he was and would like to be? Doubtless he believes they would’ve had an easier time were he still rich, but then things would have been different across the board.

Yves’s feelings on the divide are summed up by this line:

“When I’m with her… I always have to be mentally wearing a dinner jacket.”

Would Denise accept him if he were poor and didn’t proffer to pay for expensive luxuries as he does? The chapters written from Denise’s point of view suggest that she would, but then if she is unable, as Némirovsky notes, to understand his relative poverty, she is surely living a sort of fantasy.

Yves cannot see what is in front of him any more than Denise can. It would take the reader breaking the forth wall from their side and stepping into the novella themselves to patch things up to a good level. Denise’s mother has it right; she knows what’s going on and has good advice, but there is a level of pain, hurt, that has been somewhat manufactured by Yves and Denise that stops them breaking the barriers between them. Self-loathing runs smoothly in this book, informing everything.

So The Misunderstanding is not on the same page as Suite Française, nor, even, Fire In The Blood (a book with content that’s not as complex or as likely to bowl you over as this one), but it’s incredible nonetheless. It’s quite obviously the work of a new, young, fearless writer who has yet to learn that flowery language doesn’t make a good book, but at the same time it’s also the work of someone with an immense understanding of her subject and the knowledge and empathy to write it well.

Should you read it? Oh, but you must!

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A book about books and fairies.

Publisher: Corsair (Tor)
Pages: 398
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-1-472-10653-7
First Published: 18th January 2011
Date Reviewed: 25th August 2015
Rating: 3.5/5

Mori can see and talk to fairies. With her twin gone and her mother out to get her, too, she runs away and ends up living with her absent father and his sisters. Sent off to a prestigious boarding school, she’s out of place but finds solace in the library. She’ll try to stop her mother gaining power if she can and will read the entirety of the library’s science fiction section in the interim.

Among Others falls somewhere between fantasy and magical realism. A book about books, it’s mostly the thoughts of a reader with a bit of spell-casting thrown in.

Something that’s intriguing to discuss is the way Walton deals with magic in this book – it could be argued there is no magic. What exactly is magic, after all? The reader does not see much of Mori’s mother and there are no incantations or blood bindings – such things are spoken of but never really shown. This is not to say there is no magic as such, more that it could be argued the magic is the magic of nature – Mori finding comfort in nature and in her imagination. This is what makes the book fall between fantasy and magical realism. Whether it’s magic in the typical sense of the word is down to the reader’s own interpretation.

And that is a wonderful thing. That Among Others can be interpreted in various ways makes it special. When Mori speaks of adults having power over her are they really casting spells or is it her fear of the unknown, of these relatives who are strangers to her? Her mother is unsafe to be around – the authorities wouldn’t have sent her to her father if Mori were dreaming it – but is this mother actually a witch or is it more of a metaphor? Is Mori using the idea of magic to cope with abuse? In the time span of the book, a year or so (barring a glimpse of the past), Mori gains knowledge of sexual desire and has her first boyfriend. She also grows as a person, very much so, and another section that could be viewed as a metaphor concerns the last time Mori deals with her sister, and her grief.

I’d like to talk about the scene concerning Mori’s father – the person Mori has obviously taken her ‘reading genes’ from. The potential abuse is never mentioned again – Mori wipes over it but not in a way that suggests she needs to in order to cope with it, more that she does not, or did not, understand what was happening. Mori seems not to see the issue with it and never speaks of it again. As a reader you can see the issue with it, the potential for the book to take on a different tone; it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. But then Walton makes you question what you’ve read, whether accidentally (and, if so, this should have been rectified) or on purpose – Mori’s not phased by it and comes to enjoy her father’s company, as a meeting of equals if not as father and daughter, and whilst you are only ever in Mori’s head, nothing further happens or is asked. I don’t think one could say that the suggestion that Daniel is interested in his daughter is wrong, but certainly you’re challenged by it.

Another thing to love is the way Walton deals with Mori’s acquired disability. It’s always there but never takes over the plot; a good depiction of disability that states the pain and then lets Mori’s personality shine through.

So this is a book about books. It’s the diary of a reader, a list of what she’s reading with commentary. Sounds blissful, doesn’t it? And in a way it is; particularly for those who read science fiction and fantasy, Among Others is like coming home. References to classic science fiction abound (the book is set between 1979-1980). (This means that those who don’t read science fiction are less likely to understand the references, however it’s the sheer passion and the intellectual literary conversation that Walton emphasises, so it doesn’t really matter if you don’t catch every nuance.) In a way, however, it’s an issue – you are essentially reading the naval-gazing diary of a teenager who thinks she knows it all. A very ‘today I did this… and this…’ diary.

Now this isn’t so bad by itself, even if it is a bit boring sometimes to read about someone reading and doing little else – the problem is the name-dropping. This book reads as an attempt to gain love, it’s the written version of Walton putting her hand up and saying ‘author I love, notice me!’ Mori, or, as could be asserted given Walton’s age and preferences, Walton herself, gushes profusely about Ursula Le Guin (who incidentally blurbed the book, making this a nice cushy circle) and various other authors, most of whom are still around today and thus liable to read Walton’s love letter. It’s very much as though Walton has written this book to get noticed so she can get in with her idols and it’s all very cliquey and doesn’t feel very welcoming – because it’s not really. This book is for authors.

This is where the magic – be it stereotypical or not – gets let down. Pages about books and then, oh yes, I forgot, this is meant to be about magic, must add it in… and now I can get back to talking about myself and my love of science fiction. The book is very low on plot, the characters are fairly well developed but evidently not important (a great pity considering some of the content), and really all there is to take away – all you are given to take away – is a long list of books you should be reading. The ending, whilst powerful in its way, showing strength, doesn’t solve the puzzles Mori unwittingly sets for the reader.

Among Others will remind you why you seek out book clubs, festivals, and literary conversation. If you know the work of those referenced well, you’ll likely get more from it but on the whole a proper memoir about someone’s reading life and a straight out fantasy book would be better choices.

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