The Happiest Refugee by Anh Do

Anh Do's funny/sad autobiography won this years Indie Award for non-fiction.

The Happiest Refugee was very easy to read, full of self-deprecating humour and honesty. I grew up with tales of Vietnamese boat people on the news. During the 70's there was a lot of media backlash against the boat people and racism and fear about Asian gangs was rife.

It's not so different now except that the boat people are coming from different countries.

Australians are curious beings. Some of us can say the most obnoxious generalisations and racist comments at the drop of a hat.  But underneath, and at a personal level, we can be kind-hearted and generous. Any story that personalises and humanises this issue can only be a good thing. 

Anh Do is so likeable and easy-going that even the staunchest anti-immigrationist must be moved by his story.
Autobiographies can be a cathartic experience for the writer; but Anh Do's story can also help us to exorcise the ghosts of 1970's Australian history.

An International Feast

My previous post was all Aussie.
Now for the adult fiction update from around the world.

I'll begin with one of my favourites - When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman. Funny, poignant, heart-warming, up-lifting. A truly human drama full of surprises, quirks & tragedy.

A great holiday read; one you will want to share with others.

Over Christmas I read a modern day classic - The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt.
I was initially attracted to the glorious blue/green art nouveau dragonfly on the cover of my edition.

What followed was a wonderful ramble through the English countryside at the beginning of last century. The book is populated by a group of diverse, contrary and interesting families. They're absorbed in the world of art, history, nature and literature. Their passion rubs off until you feel regret for not living through this period of time with them!

The only thing I found unsettling was the sudden jumps in time, especially as the book ended on one of these sudden and rather unsatisfying (& convenient for the author) jumps.

The Children's Book won the 2009 James Tait Black Memorial Award and was nominated for the Booker.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt was recommended to me by several friends and when I found a lovely old copy in a 2nd hand shop on holidays, it seemed fated.

My uni days are long over, so the romantic 'good ole college days' atmosphere didn't really work on me the way I've heard told by others. But I did love the story. The intensity of the friendships, the sinister, gothic drama that unfolds so gently and politely is completely absorbing.

It was a captivating read - dense and juicy. So much so that I couldn't read anything of substance for weeks afterwards.

As a consequence I turned to Maisie - Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. Light and easy, but with enough going on to keep it a cut above the rest.
Set after WW1 in London, Winspear is obviously concerned about the way war affects people long after the fighting is over. Her characters are all shell-shocked in one way or another and the fall-out continues to impact years later.

Maisie is a detective who uses the new ideas of psychology & intuition to help solve crimes. The first book gives lots of fascinating WW1 back story. It was just what I needed after The Secret History and I will certainly be reading more Maisie Dobbs in the future.

And now for my favourite read so far this year - Rules of Civility by Amor Towles.

It combines some of my favourite themes - the 1930's, New York, jazz, art, martini's, love, the meaning of life...!
Full of decadence, despair & drama - rags to riches and back to rags. The American dream, the quest for happiness...and all the compromises we make along the way.

Pop on your flapper dress, slip an olive into your martini and let this wonderful novel take you on a very New York journey.

I also finally read 2 of last year's Booker shortlist books - just in time to beat this years nominations!

The Finkler Question - hmmmm - where to start. I did find it funny - not laugh out loud stuff, but the word play was fun and it was clever in a very Finkler way.
And maybe that was the problem. I am not Jewish. Throughout the book I felt that there was some great story going on behind the scenes that you could only really get if you were Jewish. Perhaps that was the point?

I finished the book (slowly), waiting for my moment of ah-ha! It didn't come and I was left somewhat disappointed.

But then I picked up Room by Emma Donoghue!
I had been putting off reading this book - the premise - a story of a boy locked in a room with his mother. After all the media coverage of the young woman found in an Austrian shed, the idea seemed a little too real and somewhat grotesque.

And the first quarter of the book is exactly that. The story of captivity told innocently through the child's eyes. Except, of course, the boy does not view it as captivity. He knows nothing else; the Room is his world and he is happy enough.
He struggles when his mother finally tells him about the outside world and her plans for their escape.

I won't reveal any more of the storyline, except to say that this book made me cry - and very few books achieve that status! It was completely satisfying from start to finish.

Another piece of light fiction and a pleasant surprise, was At Sea by Laurie Graham.

A female detective of sorts, full of gentle English humour - from an American poking fun at the English tendency towards snobbishness & intellectual superiority!

It was uncomplicated, amusing and the perfect holiday read.

To finish this ramble, I will rave about Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

The story of Thomas Cromwell during the time of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's rise to wifedom was bound to pique my interest.

I loved the sense of anticipation that sat underneath the story of Cromwell, Anne Bolelyn and her family's rise to power.
The title of the book and the quiet, mousy Jane Seymour who appeared discretely throughout. We know her as Henry's third wife and that his infatuation with her began with a visit to her family seat of Wolf Hall.
The whole time I'm reading about Anne I'm experiencing a delicious sense of future foreboding, waiting for the inevitable downfall...waiting for Henry to notice Jane. So for the book to end with "Early September. Five Days. Wolf Hall." was beautiful and frustrating at once. Is there a sequel??

Full of fabulous characterisations, the sense of time and place feels personal.  If Henry VIII were alive now, would he be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder?
I loved the story, but occasionally found it hard to follow who's talking and when.

I think I could be a little in love with Mantel's Thomas Cromwell.

A Swag of Stories

This blog is mostly reviews for books for young children and teens, but I've been reading a lot of adult fiction this year, so I thought I'd do a quick catch-up.

At the moment, I'm half way through Bereft by Chris Womersley. It's a gripping, haunting tale of murder, grief and family. It's setting is the Central West of NSW (which explains why I felt so at home in the story from the start) and follows Quinn Walker as he returns home after WW1 to atone for the murder of his sister years earlier. The writing is dark and poignant...and I'm hooked. A worthy winner of the 2011 Indie Award for Fiction.

Flock by Lyn Hughes is set in the Blue Mountains - another place close to my heart.

Essentially it is the history of wallpaper in Australia - who could have guess how interesting and compelling this story would turn out to be!

Of course, the history of wallpaper is interwoven into a moving family saga of love, betrayal abd belonging.

Flock was evocative, gentle and mesmerising in it's detail.

Since reading this story I too have become fascinated in wallpaper! I now find myself gazing at unusual designs on cafe walls or running my fingers across a beautifully flocked wall with a far greater appreciation than before.

And now to the gorgeous Kate Morton and The Distant Hours. This was a pre-Christmas read. It was big, juicy and satisfying. Perfectly absorbing and easy to read in the rush and madness leading up to Christmas. I loved the Gothic eerieness, the mystery, the hint of sinister events. My only complaint was the ending, which wrapped everything up a little too tidily.

I enjoyed it so much that I hunted down one of her earlier works, the Forgotten Garden a couple of months later. This story was not as well developed as TDH but was still engrossing with it's hints of Rebecca a la Daphne du Maurier.

Finally we come to Geraldine Brooks and Caleb's Crossing. I am a fan of Geraldine's Brooks previous books, so I was expecting a lot...and I was not disappointed.

I devoured this book in a few days over Easter.

Brooks has the happy knack of completely immersing her readers into the time and place of her stories. You are in America - Boston and Martha's Vineyard in the 1600's. You walk beside Bethia and Caleb as they negotiate their way through these new worlds too.

This is Brooks at her best - historical fiction with heart, soul and intellect. Highly recommended and sure to turn up on a number of award shortlists over the coming year.

The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M Boston

Time for a classic children's story.

First published in 1954, Lucy M Boston published this series of delightful stories about her old family home.

I say delightful and mean it in an Enid Blyton, ye-olde-worlde charm kind of way. A story full of imagination, simple pleasures and family history.

I'm not quite sure if you could really call it a time slip novel - it's more like a gentle ghost story for the lonely child inside of all of us. After surviving the truly frightening yew tree in A Monster Calls, the Green Noah was a pussycat by comparison.

This would be a lovely read-aloud story for the family to enjoy together...and thanks to modern technology you can watch the 1980's BBC episodes on youtube (link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdhiI8XmJQI (episode 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReaDW0OyGBc&feature=related (episode 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkuMCRq9oP4&feature=related (episode 3)

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking Trilogy was on my list of "bad books". To show it wasn't anything personal (just an inexplicable dislike of talking animal stories) I decided to tackle his latest book.

A Monster Calls came to Ness upon the death of writer Siobhan Dowd. According to Ness' author note at the front of the book, Dowd had "outlined the characters, a detailed premise and a beginning." He didn't feel that he could write a novel in her voice, but the idea grew and evolved until it felt like he had "been handed a baton".

The result?

An incredible, atmospheric, dark fairytale of a story. Complete with creepy, eerie etchings by Jim Kay.

I loved it.

As mentioned in the previous post, this is a modern day fable exploring grief and the search for truth.

Conor has a lot to deal with - at home and at school. He is haunted by nightmares and bullies. Until his nightmare becomes real and he is forced to face his demons head-on.

Ness, with the guiding spirit of Dowd behind him, creates a masterful story.
I devoured this book, I shuddered, I poured over the illustrations and I ooh-ed and aah-ed with satisfaction.

This story will haunt you in the way all powerful fairytales creep under your skin and slip into your dreams.

Keep me away from talking animals, but talking trees are okay!

http://www.patrickness.com/

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Grief and the Search for Truth are the themes covered by my next 2 reviews.

Amy and Roger's story is thrashed out whilst on a road trip together.

I love a good road trip story (think John Green's Paper Towns for starters). It's a great device for moving a story along with the obvious parallel between the internal journey and the physical trip.

Amy and Roger both have problems that they are running away from. Amy and her father were in a car accident together 3 months earlier. She survived - he didn't. Her brother has been put in rehab and her mother has moved to the other side of the country. Amy hasn't driven since the accident, so her mother arranges for a family friend to drive her over when school finishes.
Enter Roger - handsome and all grown up since Amy last met him. And still hung-up on his ex-girlfriend who has just dumped him in a vague, unresolved way.

The road trip helps both Amy & Roger find the truth, deal with their grief and move on... in exactly the way you would expect. Which doesnt mean that I didn't enjoy this story. I did - thoroughly.
Amy & Roger are both likeable characters, their journey is believeable, the book is scattered with photos taken en route, etchings, copies of receipts and song play lists. It's fun, light-hearted and un-put-downable.

There are a couple of sex scenes, but they are discretely dealt with (no details!) and are appropriately in context.