Soleil, piscines, et fils.

Publisher: (self-published)
Pages: 250
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-1-514-37812-0
First Published: 1st July 2015
Date Reviewed: 11th August 2015
Rating: 5/5

Molly is spending her summer holidays in France with her penpal’s family. It’s lovely but Lea is a little too interested in boys so whereas Molly would rather do a variety of things, they end up at the pool almost every day. Slowly, however, Molly begins to come out of Lea’s shadow and finds friends amongst Lea’s acquaintances. And even though Lea’s got a hold on most of the boys, there may be one for Molly, too.

That feeling you get when reading The Enchanted April? Not the plot, and not the characters, but that beautiful, relaxing, peacefulness and overall atmosphere, the serenity of it? That is exactly what it feels like to read Watts’ book. How Do You Say Gooseberry In French? is the same as von Arnim’s book in spirit. It’s like a modern-day young-adult spin on the classic. It’s just gorgeous. There is a plot but it lingers in the background, humming in the flowers. There are characters and they’re important, but it’s the whole that you will take away from you. To say this is the perfect summer read isn’t an understatement. (Excuse my wintertime posting!)

Moving on to characterisation, the way Watts writes Molly is intriguing. For much of the book Molly, our narrator, talks about everyone else, it’s as though she’s peeking through the window. This is effectively correct – Molly likes being part of the group but she doesn’t really do much, she just goes along with what the somewhat selfish Lea wants to do, but she isn’t boring. The running commentary of the nuances between French and English, the use of French itself and Molly’s thoughts, carry the book along as much as Lea’s constant switching of affection. Molly’s differences to her penpal and the differences in culture enable Watts to explore various themes, which she writes as smoothly as she does everything else. Molly stays in the background without being in the background. She tells her tale, but unlike many narrators of books wherein they themselves aren’t important, she makes her own mark – passive at times, headstrong when required.

And she comes into her own. It’s a nice transformation to witness as our heroine, who might as well have been nameless at the start, takes the reigns, changing from telling the story of others to telling her own.

Days are spent lying by the pool and wandering around hill-top castles. Markets and towns and tourist spots are visited and detailed so that you can picture them yourself. Food is prepared, bakeries are visited, continental breakfast on the terrace is taken. The writing fits it all perfectly. Molly writes well for her age – it’s this rather than the feeling that the author is writing – and many readers no longer in their teens may find they relate to her well as will, I don’t doubt, many teenagers nowadays; the book is up-to-date but low on slang.

So you’re not going to rush through this book on a wave of adrenaline. It’s not like that at all. But you will keep turning the pages; it’s easy to lose track of time reading it as you tell yourself ‘just one more chapter’. You may find you finish it quickly, just as Molly’s holiday is over all too soon. There are few books like this one, especially nowadays, but that’s a good thing.

How Do You Say Gooseberry In French? is simply wonderful. It’s got everything a YA book ‘requires’ and everything for anyone else. And, well, southern France – how could you resist?

I’ve met the author.

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Tale as old as time.

Publisher: Abacus (Little, Brown)
Pages: 100
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-349-14172-5
First Published: 2nd February 2017
Date Reviewed: 1st February 2017
Rating: 4.5/5

When Will discovers his aunt has been killed in their flat, he runs away from those who did it. Leaving his estate behind he finds sanctuary in the middle of a residential square, climbing over a fence into a a garden that’s running wild. Dirty, scarred, worried and self-conscious, he begins to learn about gardening and stays hidden, pruning back the plants to bring the place to its former glory. But although he has food enough he lacks the money for other things and so he starts to venture outside the fence.

The Other Side Of You is a novella written for the charity Quick Reads. In keeping with the context and mission, the book sports simple language; it also has bigger print and a hundred pages. The idea is to produce a book that is accessible as well as good for those who want to read but may not have much time.

As you will expect, Craig’s book satisfies these well. The book fits the current recurrence in literature of fairytale retellings; the story is set in present day London with all the realities, hardships, rich spots. It leans on the basic traditional tale for its names – making it easy to see where Craig has chosen to stick as well as deviate in her retelling – as well as the message, but beyond that crafts a different story.

You have to suspend belief to read this book. Craig unapologetically nods to dreams and the almost impossible, blending difficult and achievement in interesting ways, with Will gaining something incredible at the end that in hindsight you see Craig’s workings towards it. It’s the awesome lucky happenstance she seems to say, ‘work at it and things will come’ even if your own is more realistic. Secondly, in terms of realism there is a lovely magical realism/paranormal aspect to the book where Will hears a voice that carries him on, helps him get over impossible fences and so forth that looks to a phenomenon called Third Man Syndrome.

Due to the book’s shortness character development is understandably swift but it’s good, Will beginning with a major lack of knowledge of many things and quickly picking up meanings and concepts. The other characters are devices and this works well. All focus on Will.

The Other Side Of You is a great little book. This slow reader loved it.

I received this book for review.

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Farming during the Depression.

Publisher: Apollo (Head Of Zeus)
Pages: 198
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-97075-8
First Published: 1934
Date Reviewed: 31st January 2017
Rating: 4/5

Marget and her family travel to their mortgaged land, becoming farmers. It’s a difficult time and beyond the stress of growing and selling the crops for less than hoped, Marget’s sister Kerrin is becoming more and more difficult to live with. Things start looking up when Grant arrives to help out but the worst is yet to come.

Now In November is a short novel focused on the land and a family’s relationship to it. It’s a gracefully written novel, tragedy detailed in beautiful language, that whilst often painful has a stunning atmosphere not unlike the Brontës and their moors, or Laura Ingalls Wilder.

This is a simple tale, and relatively small in scope – the years both go by and stay still (there’s a sort of time-focused dual narrative going on you’d have to see yourself) but not so many as to cover too long a time, at least it seems so from what happens. It’s also not a happy book but as said above this is where the language has a lovely effect, not glossing over the events by any means but making it so that you can continue reading, so that you want to continue reading. The shortness of the novel aids in this as well.

A great deal of the book is focused on nature. In the context of its entirety, Johnson spends paragraphs upon paragraphs detailing the weather, the colours, the flora and fauna. This boosts the book a little, sometimes, above its general sad atmosphere, and helps to ground you in the scene, though some may find it too much depending on mood – this is a book for which it pays to choose your reading time wisely. A story for a hectic day this is not; a lazy afternoon, as much as it may seem at odds with the text, is your best bet. There is action in the events but the language flows along softly, an interesting effect and choice which means the book transcends its subjects.

The family is a good one to read about because they are so mixed in temperament. Marget, her mother, and younger sister Merle, do a lot of the household work. The father does all the manual labour, most often with a single helper. Oldest sister, Kerrin, brings to the book a different subject – seeming first to be very obnoxious then, in turn, dangerous and finally mentally ill (Johnson writes the progression of Kerrin’s mental capability very well), the use of such a character shines a particularly almost-modern light on mental illness which when mixed with the lesser medical knowledge of the time becomes quite something. Whilst Now In November may well have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction due to the the story of the Depression, and perhaps its author’s young age, it’s the characterisation and development of Kerrin that is perhaps its strongest element for us today, something that speaks very much to our present values and discussion.

Minor points are unrequited romance, the effects of industry on farming (in the event this is a major point, it’s just that it’s confined), the integration of black people. These round the story off, adding to the atmosphere and general demonstration of the time.

Now In November can be difficult to get into and the story itself is rough going, but the whole is an excellent creation with a lot to recommend it. Its themes are relevant today and it’s an interesting source for historical study and information.

I received this book for review.

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Pa pa Americano.

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton (Penguin)
Pages: 453
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-241-14415-2
First Published: 15th November 2016
Date Reviewed: 21st December 2016
Rating: 4/5

Our nameless narrator has struggled through life, feeling in the shadow of her best friend – someone who often hates her – being uncomfortable living with a mother who, in trying to better herself, has always pressured her daughter to be someone she’s not, and working for a performer who has many demands and idealised projects. She recounts her days in these contexts and in the context of song and dance, two things that have always had their place in her life.

Swing Time is a book with a lot of promise and at times sensational writing that unfortunately doesn’t achieve much.

Smith’s writing is wonderful. She has a lot to say – though, as many have noted, too much at once this time around (the book could have done with being trimmed in the subjects department) – and in general she says it very well. Situations and characters, both good and bad, leap off the page; everything feels very real. She’s opted again for familiar settings and thoughts but she does it so well it really doesn’t matter.

In regards to that ‘in general’, there are some occasions where the writing misses the mark in ways it didn’t in Smith’s previous, NW, that look directly to current trends. Phrases needlessly hyphenated – ‘brand-new’ – and descriptions that are exactly the same as what everyone else is using right now – ‘gunmetal grey sky’ – that suggest editorial input rather than the original words. But Smith’s style is so winsome you can’t help but carry on reading.

Because this book is a page turner. The page count is daunting but Smith knows when enough is enough, using short chapters when it fits, and expanding the sections later on as the book gets to the weightier subjects. It’s a case of if you’ve liked her before you will most certainly enjoy this book no matter the flaws.

Smith hasn’t really covered any new ground with her many subjects but they remain interesting. Race is explored – being black and being mixed-race in the 1980s and beyond, the differences as time goes on. Class is explored – the narrator and her friend Tracey were born and bred on a run-down council estate and the narrator’s mother is working to often extreme lengths to prove that she’s better than that. (As such, childhood emotional and psychological problems and abuse is explored, the lectures hammered into the narrator about her ‘no good’ friend, as well as the emotional and physical abuse meted out to Tracey by her father.) The problem we have wherein famous white people go out to Africa to ‘help’ – this is something that we’re really starting to acknowledge now so whilst Smith’s text is timely she is unfortunately only regurgitating what we already know, and it’s really down to the individual reader as to whether that’s okay or not. (Smith does go a fair way here, first exploring the problem of idealisation, ‘let’s go build a school for girls because that will help… and we’ll completely neglect to look at what the residents actually need right now, including the fact the girls can’t go to school because their parents need help with the crops’. Then she looks at the absurdity of publicity that makes the western celebrity look beloved in that country whereas all the people following her vehicle are doing so because it’s a novelty. And so on – it’s regurgitation but it’s on point, ending with an exploration of money and overseas adoption.) And she looks at jealousy and the effects of childhood on mentality, personality. Of those with power and those without.

Our nameless narrator seems to have been used in order to shine a light on every other character, because the woman herself is unremarkable. She rarely has anything positive to say but then again she has had a lot of pushback – being in her head all the time it can be difficult to see when her personal problems are due to her negativity and when they are due to people putting her down, though there is a lot to be said for her childhood. But, yes, the light this allows Smith to shine on everyone else is excellent. We get to explore the impact of Tracey’s early life and choices on her growing up in a way that often provides a commentary – much more subtle than the comments about celebrity and ‘Africa’ (that’s another point, that which country is chosen is irrelevant, it’s just got to be ‘African’). Smith shows well, in the way that your thoughts of Tracey will move back and forth between pity, like, and dislike, these effects. The plight of the narrator’s mother too – her lecturing her daughter on politics, on how Tracey is below her because she, the mother, is trying to be a politician, is working on a degree when everyone else is ‘happy’ to remain where they are; her tireless work to be somebody – shows both the effects of selfishness on children and also the difficulties of social mobility. Through the mixed-race and ‘African’ characters – Smith doesn’t often repeat the name of the place celebrity Aimee makes her school, which may be a point in itself – Smith shows disparities, issues of identity, the differences in perspective, and again, that celebrity focus comes back in the form of appropriation of both culture and individual people.

‘And the dance and music?’ you may ask, ‘the swing time of the title?’ There is commentary on it, in particularly the difficulties of black Americans to gain stage and screen space, and included in this is a whole heap of information and references that have been largely skipped over by western history – this book is a resource. However, the inference of the title that this will be a book about dance is, as you will have noted by the fact I’m only just writing about it now after reams of other subjects, wrong. This book minors in dance.

On these topics it must be said the book is not at all linear. It’s not quite experimental but the narrative does dart all over the place and it can take a few lines to get your bearings each chapter because both time and location are mixed up. Why Smith chose to structure the book in this way is not clear – it does allow the subjects to be dealt with in blocks but by their very nature they are not completely confined by these blocks.

So a problem with this particular output from Smith is that she’s chosen a character who may have experienced a lot but never looks at things in a different way, never really attempts to change things, instead going along with what others tell her to do, and whilst that’s not an issue per se, it is an issue when you’ve 453 pages to spend on it with no real conclusion. The story never goes anywhere, meaning that the ending, if it can be called so, is incredibly unsatisfying. You may have enjoyed the book on the whole immensely, but the end is so incredibly disappointing that when it arrives you may feel that your previously fairly fun reading experience was for nought.

It is difficult to recommend Swing Time outright but it is equally difficult to say that this book isn’t worth reading. If the experience of reading it is of merit – as a prime example let’s use the release date of mid November, assume you got it around that time and then read it beside the Christmas tree (it’s perfect for that) – then it passes with full colours. (‘Passing’ is another subject looked at, and I know I’m going all over the place with my paragraphs; it should give you an idea of how it is to read this book!) If writing, then it’s pretty great, you will most likely be swept up by this book and find it hard to put down. If story, look elsewhere. Characters are somewhere in between.

It’s best to look at what is important to you and then combine that with the overall atmosphere, which is pretty awesome. For here I will say it’s worth a read and to really enjoy it whilst you’re deep into it because the ending is disappointing but isn’t quite bad enough to warrant it not being read.

And if that’s confusing, well, welcome to Swing Time.

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Be a bit nicer.

Publisher: Apollo (Head Of Zeus)
Pages: 301
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-97769-6
First Published: 1964
Date Reviewed: 15th January 2017
Rating: 4/5

Hagar Shipley is in her nineties and her time is coming to an end. Living with her son and daughter-in-law she has had time to reflect on life and has been able to live with a modicum of independence, but Marvin is not her favourite son, his wife Doris is too religious, and both now want her to live in a home. Hagar has other plans.

Originally published in 1964 the reprinting of The Stone Angel by Apollo now is timely as it fits the current trend of books about older people. But it has a twist – the woman here grew up in the 1800s, a bit earlier than our contemporaries.

This book is a difficult read and it takes a while to work out what’s really going on, where fault really lies and so on. (This will be aided if you’ve read more recent novels in a similar vein.) Hagar is not completely forgetful, but she forgets enough that you learn to read between the lines and base your opinion of the other characters on the dialogue they speak. (There’s a chance, of course, that Hagar reports conversations wrongly but one can only go so far as the reader.)

So you go through a brief period at the start where you’re questioning who might be the ‘bad guy’ if such a person exists, and then you start to see what’s been in the background all along. Hagar is not a pleasant character by any means. Through the pages that pass by you can see her open favouritism – her favourite son is not the one who looks after her and through the reactions of Marvin and Doris you can see plainly that they’ve had that beaten into them. Hagar nags, belittles, and is critical 90% of the time; she may well have a personality disorder. She has seen herself as above so many people that she’s had few friends; very snobbish. She’s made bad choices but remained rigid in her views. Toxicity is a big feature of this book as while you feel for Hagar’s plight, her not wanting to be put in a home, you can also see how much emotional pain she has caused those who have looked after her for years. And Marvin and Doris aren’t young themselves – whilst Doris’ relentless devotion to converting Hagar to her own religion is a bit much, it’s impossible not to feel for this couple who have looked after a woman so ungrateful.

A difficult book at times, then, but not a bad one. There are a few drawn-out sections, which means it’s a good book to read in terms of its cultural status – it’s considered a Canadian classic – as well as all the things Laurence says, but it may not ‘wow’ you. Despite its character it is an easy, comfortable read, that has a lot of value nowadays for its social context and historical content. It also demonstrates how a strict upbringing can affect a person as well as showing what is important, even if what’s important may seem obvious – Hagar doesn’t get it.

You know from the start where this story is headed but its not a sad book. Hagar’s views and personality mean that she’s very open and confident so whilst she’s not particularly nice she does break through some of the social barriers in place during her younger years. The father who sees himself highly. The husband who was different but that different proved too much. The children much too like their awful father. The people one should not associate with. And Laurence’s 1960s take on it all can be fascinating.

One to read and love in places, perhaps fiercely dislike in others, The Stone Angel is one for contemplation. Where Hagar is loud, you’ll find yourself seeking quiet. It may not be fun – the lady is not for changing – but it’s memorable, interesting, and rather important.

I received this book for review.

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