Charlie asks a question: Is it out of line, so to speak, to post reviews of books set during a holiday on another day? (I read this last week, hence the review now.)

To have and to hold, in convenience.

Publisher: (self-published)
Pages: 141
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-492-76514-1
First Published: 30th November 2013
Date Reviewed: 24th May 2014
Rating: 2.5/5

Jessica is going to propose to her childhood friend, Daniel. She loves him, and although he doesn’t love her that’s neither here nor there – this marriage will not be about love. Jessica wants a family but has never met the right man, and Daniel needs a wife if he’s to be selected as the next pastor of his home town’s church. Jessica’s adamant that love is not important, and Daniel says he can never love another as he loved his deceased wife. So the set-up is perfect… surely.

Married For Christmas is a short tale about the first month of marriage between two friends who both see an advantage in getting married. The characters are Christian but there are a few detailed sex scenes so, as the author points out, this isn’t a book for those looking to read a ‘fade to black’ and/or typical Christian romance.

The book begins well, and at first the characters are good – well developed, and showing much potential. Many readers have said it would’ve been nice to have read a few chapters from Daniel’s point of view and this reviewer would agree. Daniel is a solid, very good, character throughout, whereas Jessica changes somewhat, and not in a ‘regular’ way, but in that way that suggests the author really wanted to write about someone else. You have to be wary of Jessica, in this sense, and know that she will quite possibly get on your nerves.

Jessica’s thoughts about her past are consumed by the idea that men don’t like her, no one has been in love with her, and that she was never going to find anyone. However, as becomes apparent, there have been men who liked her. And, whilst it’s perfectly okay that Jessica has limited her pool of available men by discounting anyone who doesn’t share her religion, it does make the constant refrain unbelievable, even when considering insecurities and quietness. Men who liked her but were turned down because they weren’t Presbyterian nevertheless count as men who liked her. With her limits and the limited-by-design scope of her social life, the ‘no one likes me’ track doesn’t work.

The book could do with an overhaul. Missing words, poor grammar, and strange statements mar what would otherwise be fairly good writing.

What’s good is Daniel. Daniel remains a good guy throughout the book despite Jessica’s belief to the contrary. The change he undergoes is well-written and even if it’s predictable, it brings forth the sweet romantic element that was sorely needed. The sex scenes are written well and there are a fair number of them. They are detailed and verge towards erotic fiction at times, however this is somewhat influenced by the mixing of genres and they are less graphic when considered away from that context.

Married For Christmas is cute, but being upset about the marriage you planned working out as planned doesn’t invite empathy, especially when the marriage is only 4 weeks old. Similarly, the annoyance at the help offered (understandable somewhat out of the context of a close community, not understandable in it) doesn’t ring true given the amount of thought Jessica would’ve given to being a pastor’s wife. Strictly alright.

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Controversially yours.

Publisher: N/A (but I’d wager Vintage’s a good one)
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: N/A (Vintage’s is 978-0-099-51186-1)
First Published: 1814
Date Reviewed: 8th May 2014
Rating: 3.5/5

Fanny moved to Mansfield to live with wealthy relations and now, at eighteen, she’s very much settled and happy, despite being the family’s errand girl and companion. When the Crawford siblings enter their society, Fanny is suspicious – they don’t seem to be people her cousins should be associating with, and as the days continue she worries for her cousins’ futures. Many say she’s wrong about the Crawfords. Is she?

Mansfield Park is a lot quieter, so to speak, than Austen’s other novels, and quite different overall.

The major difference is Fanny – she may prove a difficult heroine to like. Part of this is due to Austen not giving the reader (at least it seems so – maybe the little was enough in the day?) information as to the Crawfords’ natures, instead letting Fanny’s feelings do the talking. This isn’t very successful as Fanny can, for the lack of information, seem over-the-top. Fanny is quiet and confident but she is often in the background and sometimes quite literally. And not at all in that theatrical way where the person at the back is the stronger person. Although Austen details her, it never really feels like she is the main character.

To the modern reader, Fanny may be difficult to relate to. Her scruples in regards to theatre seem silly and overboard today, and where Mary Crawford is slightly ahead of her time, Fanny is very much of her time.

Referring back to Austen’s lack of detailing, in the case of Mary, the ‘bad’ traits are more obvious – Mary wants to marry someone of equal or more wealth than her, and she doesn’t want to marry a clergyman. This is interesting to consider, given that wanting someone of equal wealth wasn’t exactly uncommon at the time, nor seen as bad, and it’s not particularly glaring today, either. It could be said that not wanting to marry a clergyman is simply personal taste.

It is more in the case of Mary’s sudden shifts in affection that the bad traits lie. Austen’s presentation of Henry leads you to realise that he likes women, with emphasis on the plural, but it can come across on occasion as the case of a boy who is happy in the presence of girls and to have the opportunity to have a preference, that he hasn’t before been given the chance to really think about what and who he wants. Certainly Henry reads more the immature boy than the noticeably deceitful man, and Mary’s opinion that he would change, well, there’s the feeling that she could be right.

Despite Fanny and the somewhat dubious plot, there is a lot of laugher to be had in reading the book. There is a specific section during which you could consider Austen had realised there was a lack of joy in her story and decided that had to be remedied.

The ending of Mansfield Park is very quick and the author moves away from dialogue to give you a summary of events. The reader may feel short-changed by this, however Austen does say of a specific aspect that readers all consider timing differently and so you are left to decide on timing yourself.

Quieter, with a heroine who does little and with not much in the way of story, Mansfield Park is a very different Austen, but worth reading nonetheless. Certainly it is the novel most set in its time.

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Moving home is often disruptive, but not quite as much as this.

Publisher: Little, Brown (Hachette)
Pages: 212
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-316-22883-1
First Published: 20th May 2014
Date Reviewed: 19th May 2014
Rating: 5/5

Marianne locks herself and Kate in the ballroom. Marianne may seem mad but it soons becomes apparent that there’s more than meets the eye, for the ballroom is stale and she won’t leave the building, and something has obviously happened to Philip.

Black Lake is a stunning début, a novel with a purposefully spoiled plot that explores the effects of displacement on a person.

If you have ever visited a historical country estate knowing that the reason you’re able to be there is an owner’s lack of money, this is a book for you. In Black Lake, the house of Dulough is somewhere between a character in itself and a catalyst. Lane looks at the various ways an extreme version of moving home can affect people based on how they feel about the place and how much knowledge is provided or kept from them. We see John, inheritor of a house without the funds to pay for it, upset at the prospect of government involvement but with the will that comes with calling the shots (as much as you can once papers have been signed). We see Marianne, his wife, a woman from a humble background who took a while to get used to the idea of not making the dinner and living away from the city but who is now happy, proud of her home, and under the impression that her children will always have that home. And we see the children, in particular Philip, who understandably has trouble with the new literal boundaries and the idea visitors can use his bedroom whilst he no longer can himself.

Lane shows us the differences. On the surface it seems that Marianne is the most affected, and it can be easy at first to think that the children will get used to things. But Lane shows how children can be affected by the smallest elements of change and how adults are slow to realise this when it happens. For example, take the defining moment – Philip telling a tourist that he’ll get his food for free because it’s his house and finding that he does actually need to pay. Lane handles Philip’s sections with care and the way she relays information is just as telling – Philip shows upset but never tears, and it is in this that the confusion of a previously happy child is shown.

Talking of Philip’s narrative, Lane has chosen a particular format for her story. She begins with the near-end, goes back in time, includes a long ‘never before seen’ account, before leaving the reader with a slightly opened-ended last page which infers much but confirms nothing. The third-person narrative switches between John, Philip, and, later, Marianne. A couple of chapters are written as descriptions from no one’s view in particular. It is written in the sort of literary style that is often prefaced with ‘nothing really happens’, and the style is likely to interest many. Something, many things, do happen, but Lane’s slow-moving seemingly dull writing is very deceptive. You’ll note, whether during or after having finished reading it, that there’s a layer of boredom to the book, yet what happens is anything but boring. It’s interesting to compare this illusion to the way the ‘government’ sees their semi-acquisition of the house. Having replaced the furniture and having prepared scripts for tour guides that are untruthful, it’s easy to imagine that the defining moment in the family may be passed over by the new staff, and not included. The Campbell family is of little importance now that the house can be enjoyed by the public and it’s ironic that the new, true, shocking fact in the family history would be glossed over or left out. Or, maybe, as can be the case, made overly vivid and expanded upon for money.

At the heart of the novel, more than the moving, is communication. John thinks Marianne has gone mad, but once you read her account, even before then, you see the lack of knowledge the aloof country man has of his social city girl. Perhaps if John spent time with her and discussed the money issues, the necessary transition might have been easier, or, if two heads are better than one, another option for upkeep might have presented itself. John’s secrecy is the main issue here, but one could also consider the difference between adults’ and children’s’ methods of coping and their knowledge of each other.

To be sure, in choosing to read Black Lake you have to be in the mood, or just open to, a book that has much to say whilst making you wonder if anyone cares. Black Lake is character-driven entirely, and the lack of emotion on the surface does mean that it requires your attention.

Black Lake is a magnificent study and story of family and upheaval. Fill up the teapot and get a whole place of biscuits ready, because this relatively short book is going to consume your afternoon.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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Can’t let the monster in.

Publisher: Two Roads (Hachette)
Pages: 370
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-444-79700-8
First Published: 4th March 2014
Date Reviewed: 8th May 2014
Rating: 4/5

On the day of the parade, at sixteen years old, Blythe was abducted by the school librarian. Locking her in an old missile silo with provisions for many years, Dobbs told her he was protecting her from the apocalypse that was soon to hit. Unable to escape, Blythe is forced to live with him and his madness, his passive aggressiveness, his abuse, and she watches as he often leaves to go Above, back to the world he tells her is falling apart. Throughout, Blythe’s hope, though faded, never dies – one day she will escape and get back to her family. And Dobb’s madness can be put to rest. Or can it?

Above is an epic story that spans a fair few decades, many themes, and culminates in a rather tidy ending. It is an interesting book, as it could be said that it isn’t sure what it wants to be – there are two parts to the story that, whilst sharing a general element vary greatly – yet the overarching idea of theme exploration does manage to keep the two plots together.

Whilst the first half of the story is inevitably dull on occasion, the second half transforms the book into the afore-mentioned epic. Above is a lot longer than the almost 400 pages suggest, partly because the time scale is convincing and partly because there are so many moral elements considered.

Beyond the dullness of a lot of the first half – the days spent with nothing to do, the literal dullness of a world without sunlight – there is of course the times in which abuse takes place. Dobbs tends to ere on the side of caution, that is to say that generally the horror of Blythe’s situation is the fact of imprisonment and Dobb’s removal of things that make her happy. However, as may be expected, there is some violence involved. It’s a creepy sort of violence – Dobb’s doesn’t beat Blythe up but he does enough, and he does it in a ‘careful’ way as to make it sobering. Morley affectively shows how a person can seem average, even good, and keep a certain façade or even belief around them, which can make others think they are okay. Even Blythe, though she is strong at heart, feels sorry for him despite what he does to her.

This abuse and manipulation is the biggest thought of the novel. Morley puts the reader, and Blythe too, in a particular situation. We hate Dobbs because he is a bad man. There are no two ways about that – he forces himself on Blythe and his kidnapping does not begin and end with her. The man is bad. However once you reach the second half of the book you are presented with confusion. Blythe’s confusion. The confusion of both the prisoner she was and the person she is right then in that moment. This confusion doesn’t change the fact that Dobb’s is a bad person, but in the context of the book, and in the context of science fiction, it asks its main character and the reader questions. Blythe makes you question.

(The rest of this review will contain references to the twist in the tale, by necessity.)

Because what Dobb’s had been saying all along turns out to be true. Blythe has been abused by Dobbs, but she has also been protected. This means that Dobbs, in some ways, occupies a grey area. Both the character and the author herself constantly refer back to Dobbs, and it is obvious that Morley wants you to really hone in on this question of right and wrong. She never suggests Dobbs should be pardoned, of course he can’t, but she opens up all the sorts of thoughts we as a society tend to push aside. What exactly is right? What exactly is wrong? Can wrong ever be right, just a little bit? Do we truly try to understand victims or do we pretend we do? More than the questions surrounding Dobbs, Morley urges us to relate to Blythe.

Once you’re ‘familiar’ with this line of questioning, the rest of Morley’s ideas become apparent. Above isn’t ‘simply’ a story of abuse, nor an apocalyptic book. It is much more than that. It’s a study, a constant questioning of morality, of race, of government, of the news, of disability. The last on that list becomes prevalent towards the end. Most everyone is disfigured, and Morley compares viewpoints. Blythe, born before the apocalypse and kept safe, notices the disfigurements. Adam, her son, having lived solely below ground, doesn’t notice any differences. Or if he does (because he has read books and seen films) it doesn’t bother him. With Morley telling the story from Blythe’s viewpoint, every new person or group of people is detailed, their scars, burns, and lack of features brought to the forefront. You could even say it’s too much, that Blythe sees too much even after she’s been Above for a good few days. It’s interesting to contrast this detail with Blythe’s unhealthy pallor but ultimately flawless (as far as radiation is concerned) person. Especially when she notes her pale, now freckle-less face, and notes that her old crush would likely not find her attractive now. It takes us, the reader, to remember that, saying her crush is still alive, he is likely disfigured beyond compare.

Included in this study of the view of disability is the way the medical group of people are trying to create a perfect baby (to recreate humanity as it was) and the group of average citizens who are saving the creations who haven’t turned out correctly. This is now a world that values difference. Difference is all there is.

There are other things to consider, such as Blythe’s naming her son Adam – a stated plot device that infers who Adam may end up to be – and the experience, though only a minor part of the story, of a black albino woman. There is the effect that sudden freedom can have on a person, the effect of a difference that wasn’t expected (of course this particular difference wasn’t expected, but you know that Blythe would never be returning to life as it was when she was sixteen, the world moves on, and this is what she hasn’t really thought about), the struggle to regain what’s loss, and control, possession. In Adam you see the world in a new light, literally and metaphorically, in Blythe you may end up appreciating what we have now just that little bit more.

Above isn’t a masterpiece. There is a disjointedness to the duel plot-line that is likely only to be healed with prior knowledge of the duality, the writing is average, and once Blythe has escaped she’s not quite the person you may expect or even like, and not simply because of her displacement and longing for the past. The epic nature also makes it seem a little too long and there are reports from people familiar with Kansas that the numbers aren’t correct. But the morality and the way Morley uses a society harmed in order to make her point clearer is good to read and, as the length of this review suggests, leaves you with plenty to think about.

Combining ideas and repeating details, Above may not be the book you were expecting it to be, but judged on contents alone it is very much worth the read and the time it takes to reach the end.

I received this book for review from the publisher.

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Speaking to Isla Morley about Come Sunday, Above, and The Last Blue) (spoilers included)

Charlie and Isla Morley discuss growing up and travelling back to South Africa, creating a negative heroine, the 1800s medical phenomenon wherein people were literally blue, and what it’s like owning five tortoises.

If you’re unable to use the media player above, this page has various other options for listening.

When one marriage leads to another.

Publisher: Tinder Press (Hachette)
Pages: 324
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-755-39436-4
First Published: 1st March 2013
Date Reviewed: 7th April 2014
Rating: 3/5

When the fire started burning down her polygamist community, Amaranth took her two daughters and escaped. Happy to marry and comfortable with her growing family, if uneasy about the ceremonies, Amaranth was glad to defend her people as women left and those living nearby took an interest in what was going on. But after her good friends leave and her husband draws their daughter too close, the first wife knows she and her daughters must leave, too.

Amity & Sorrow is the story of the plight of a mother who has become too used to her life. Interestingly, it is not so much about the plight of her daughters, which is the reason for some of the issues.

There is just something ‘off’ about the book. The cult is presented fairly well, but the writing style doesn’t fit the subject. Even though the reader knows the cult is bad, and has the details to imagine the situation, the literary style of writing distances you from it. The story may include the information, but it doesn’t truly try convince you of it, even if you are convinced.

It’s interesting to look at the choice the author made as to where the mother and daughters would end up. On the one hand you have them crashing the car into what many would see as a backwards place – a farm worked by only a couple of people; an ancient television set; a rarely-used petrol station; a lack of modern technology despite its day. What this choice means is that the family have little opportunity to see what life is like for the vast majority, to get used to the ‘new’, and to rehabilitate. This in turn means that the book lacks any big moments in the plot besides those in the flashbacks and at the end, and that whilst they escaped you might not feel as though the women will truly live life to the full, especially as Amaranth seems happy to remain in the first place they find.

But on the other hand, this lack of modernity, this lack of computers (other than one instance in a town) and so forth, mean that the family are eased into the world. It means that the changes in Amaranth especially (the girls will be discussed in due course) are slow and she has time to get back to life as it was when she was a member of society. You see more of her adjustment than you would if she’d found herself in Silicon Valley, or the like, where the change would have been immediate but only on the surface for its suddenness. Beginning in the middle of nowhere in a place more familiar in lifestyle, there is perhaps less of a chance she’ll return to the husband who brainwashed their daughter.

The sisters, Amaranth’s daughters, Amity and Sorrow, were born on their father’s land and therefore their reaction to their mother’s escape is, if not in words, that she has kidnapped them. Sorrow especially wants to return; she is the sister most brainwashed by her father, the cult’s leader. It is in Amity, the less extreme of the two, that the reader gets to see the most progression. Amity is more open to change, and whilst it may seem a little too fast a progression at times, Amity’s growth makes up for the little growth otherwise.

It is in Sorrow’s experience, specifically, that the story lies, and it’s also in her life that the potential dissatisfaction with the ending is to be found. She is not as developed a character as the others, in fact it could be said that she is a plot device; yet without her Riley wouldn’t have been able to explain her points. Sorrow was impregnated by her father, who had sex with her, having brainwashed her so much that she believed it was important and right that she and her father ‘make Jesus’. Whilst not commented on in the text itself, there is the obvious theme of consent running throughout the book. Incest itself is discussed.

And because it is this event that wakes Amaranth to the reality, finally, (if even then late in the day), the story continues on with Sorrow’s extremist beliefs taking what amounts to the biggest element of the book. Sorrow is always looking for a way back, because she doesn’t know any different and she is at an age where she won’t listen to her mother, especially not a mother who has left her, Sorrow’s, glorious father. The issue here is that whilst Sorrow’s extremism is believable, the extent to which she is, to all intents and purposes, encouraged, is not. Amaranth spends very little time with her daughters, even though, as the one person in the three who knows about the real world, she should have been helping them. Instead she starts to make a life for herself by herself.

A warning here to anyone who doesn’t want to read too many details: the ending of the book needs to be discussed because of what it effectively does, and will be in this paragraph. Amaranth, though obviously scared and still suffering from the manipulation and abuse under her husband, shows, in leaving the cult, that she still has her wits about her. She knows what is right and wrong both in regards to her own beliefs and the world at large, and she takes her daughters away from their father. Due to this escape, it is hard to believe that in the real world, such a woman would ultimately leave her daughter back at the cult’s land together with the father, after having tried and failed to convince the daughter to return with her to their new home. Maybe she would leave her temporarily while she went to the police for help, but leave her there for good? You can’t say that due to the possibility for danger, as the daughter is very unstable, it is best she stay away from Amaranth and Amity – the girl has had no chance to change and the handful of days during which there was space to influence her were not enough. At worst there are places she could be sent away for care. Perhaps Riley is showing us just how brainwashed and scared someone can become, but given everything that Amaranth does and thinks beforehand, the conclusion is not at all sufficient.

Where Amity & Sorrow gets it right is in the small things – the wondering about the changes to the world since Amaranth left it; the comparisons of dress and its relation to sexuality; the overall consideration of religious cults; to some extent, Amity. But with its poor choice of voice, underdeveloped characters, and the knowledge the reader will be left with when it’s over – the knowledge that what you’ve read is very wrong on a completely different level to the basic wrongness of the cult – one would be hard-pressed to recommend it for its story. You could try to come up with an explanation for the ending, but this is one book for which the ending is impossible to make right.

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