The End of the World is Bigger than Love | Davina Bell #AWW

I recently read an interview with Ann Patchett where see was asked about hard it was to scrap a piece of writing that wasn't working and to start again. The interviewer thought it might almost be like a little death to let go a hard-won piece of writing, but Patchett was more pragmatic. Her reply was that writing was like baking a cake. Sometimes you burnt the cake and had to make it again. But before you did, you could cut open the burnt cake and still eat the warm, gooey, soft bits in the middle that weren't burnt.

With that in mind, I jettisoned the over-cooked post I had been labouring over for a couple of weeks for this book. It was a relief to let it go.

I enjoyed The End of the World is Bigger than Love by Davina Bell so much, that my desire to write a response that did it justice, had got all messy and complicated with too many ingredients. If you promise to read on, I promise no more cooking metaphors!

This young adult novel will not suit everybody's tastes.

Lots of readers do not like dual narratives, so be warned, this book is narrated by twins, Summer and Winter.

Our two protagonists are also unreliable narrators, another love/hate device for many readers. Personally, I loved the mixed messages we were getting from Summer and Winter throughout the book. Who was telling the truth? Who wasn't? And why?

The story also jumps time and place fairly regularly as the girls remember all sorts of stuff about their childhood from their current position, stranded on a deserted island, without their father, after the world has gone to shit rather suddenly and dramatically. And rather presciently given current Covid-19 events.

This is a story about memories, feelings, thinking and relationships, therefore, not at all suitable for those seeking adventure and action.

Then there's the mix of cyber-terrorism, eco-dystopian, speculative fiction and coming-of-age themes with a whiff of romance that might put some readers off. This rather unconventional mix, however, worked beautifully for me. Even the ambiguous ending wasn't enough to deter me from my glowing, gushing feelings for this book.

Finally, Summer is pretty verbose. She uses lots of words instead of just a few and her energy levels and enthusiasm for everything is pretty high. In fact, she comes across as one of those rather annoying teenage girls who talks very loudly, very fast and thinks that everyone wants to know every little thing about her, and they want to know it right now! In real life, this would annoy me no end, but here, I found Summer to be rather endearing. 

Perhaps it was all the books.

Both Summer and Winter are great readers, thanks to the library left to them by their mother. Their list of desert island books was truly impressive. Why did they never try to leave the island for two years?  I say the books! 

Why would you need the rest of the big bad climate-mess world and the deadly greying, when you could read and reread books like Anne of Green Gables, The Diary of a Young Girl, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Outsiders, The Secret Garden, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close to name just a few.

This book may not be for you, and that's okay, but for those of you like me, who love to fall headlong into a bookish world of words and ideas, uncertainty and mystery with two strong characters, then this is the book to dive into. 

Love can sometimes feel like the end of the world, and the end of the world may be bigger than love, but if you have to face down the end of the world as you know it, then it's much better to do so with love by your side.

Obviously, my time with Summer has affected me more than I thought!

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book, and it's not an easy book to describe, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Summer and Winter, even when I wanted to shake them or give them a good piece of my mind! Being a teenager is not an easy thing. Books like this remind of us how awkward and uncertain and fearless this time can be and can also make us grateful for how short a period of time this phase actually is in the scheme of a whole life, even though it doesn't feel like that at the time.

Favourite Quote:

We live on a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea, and you don’t believe in miracles?

Davina Bell has had an interesting career trajectory. From working in publishing/editing to writing award-winning picture books for children and primary school aged kids, and now, The End of the World is Bigger than Love.

Facts:

• Our Australian Girl: Alice Stories
• The Underwater Fancy Dress Parade (illustrator Allison Colpoys)
• Birthday Baby (with Jane Godwin and illustrated by Freya Blackwood)
• Hattie Helps Out (with Jane Godwin and illustrated by Freya Blackwood)
• Oh, Albert! (illustrator Sara Acton)
• Under the Love Umbrella (illustrator Allison Colpoys)
• Lemonade Jones (with Karen Blair)
• The Corner Park Clubhouse series
• Baby Day (with Jane Godwin and illustrated by Freya Blackwood)
• All the Ways to Be Smart (illustrator Allison Colpoys)
• All the Factors of Why I Love Tractors (illustrator Jennie Lovlie)

Book 4 of 20 Books of Summer Winter

#JustSaying - Stay Calm & Read

Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash

Jennifer @HoldsOnHappiness wrote a post recently about keeping calm in a world suddenly gone mad. Her simple solution was to stockpile books, not toilet paper. And tea.

It would seem that all the end-of-the-world stories I've read over the years, have seeped into my subconscious, as I would have to self-isolate for well over a year before I even went close to running out of unread books or tea!

But it got me thinking, what WOULD I read if my family had to go into quarantine thanks to one of us being exposed to Covid-19?

Plagues and pestilence have been the scourge of human life since time began. Which reflects the extraordinary number of stories that have been written about this topic since then. As soon as we started recording and remembering stories, natural disasters got the starring role. For instance, plague and pestilence visit the characters on the battle field in Homers' The Iliad. You'll also find a far bit of this going on, with the whole wrath of God behind it, in the Old Testament stories as well.

Giovanni Boccaccio went there in the 1350's after the Black Death with The Decameron, as did Geoffrey Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales. Daniel Defoe gave us Journal of the Plague Year written in 1722 and in 1826 Mary Shelley wrote The Last Man.

More modern takes include Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider (which sounds fascinating by the way - a 1918 Spanish flu story), Albert Camus' The Plague, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, Peter Heller's The Dog Stars, Chris Adrian's, The Children’s Hospital, Ling Ma's Severance, and Philip Roth's Nemesis (a polio outbreak story).

If man-made bio-disasters are more your thing then you could try Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy, Frank Herbert's The White Plague, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, Dean Koontz' The Eyes of Darkness, Justin Cronin's The Passage and Stephen King's The Stand.

But would we really turn to plague-lit as a form of comfort during these trying times?

According to Buzzfeed last week, the 2011 movie Contagion is now the second most watched Warner Bros movie and the tenth most popular Apple iTunes movie. Maybe it should be reclassified as a documentary?

If I had 2-3 weeks off work, where I had to stay quietly at home I would have no trouble filling my time. I have several unopened jigsaw puzzle boxes, cupboards full of our favourite DVD's (for when Netflix falls over due to high demand!) and mountains of unread books. But I do feel sorry for my more extroverted friends. Two weeks stuck at home is their worst nightmare!

I might be tempted to reread King's The Stand. But I'd like to think I would use the time more fruitfully and finally tackle some of those more challenging books on my TBR like, Ducks Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann and Milkman by Anna Burns. Or maybe I will finally read all those delightful Angela Thirkell books stacked under by my bed for reasons of pure comfort and escapism.

Have you prepared your self-isolation reading list yet?
What are you looking forward to reading if you suddenly get two weeks at home?

For more Bookish Covid-19 posts try BethFishReads food post and Paula's positive spin here.

On the Beach by Nevil Shute

What a powerful reading experience!

On the Beach is an Australian classic set in Melbourne in the 1950's about the end of the world.

The Northern Hemisphere is gone.

A nuclear war between China, Russia and the USA has obliterated everything north of the equator. Australasia, South America and South Africa are now simply waiting for the cloud of fallout to drift south with the changing of the seasons.

The thing that really struck me about this post-apocalyptic book right from the start, was how polite and civilised everyone was about their imminent death. There was no panic, no fleeing, no looting, no disintegration of manners or ethics.

Everyone just got on with things. They went to work, raised their families, planted the garden with veggies for a season that they wouldn't be alive to enjoy.

Heavy drinking and reckless behaviours did start to creep in towards the end, but it was such civilised recklessness - downing copious amounts of 50 year old port and racing Ferrari's.

Despite my gentle jossing though, On the Beach is actually a rather disturbing read. The calm patience and knowing denial of our characters adds to the tension and the creeping sense of hopelessness. In an extraordinary act of will, the entire population has decided to not make a fuss. Instead they are determined to make the most of the time left to them. And it turns out that making the most of the time left to them looks rather like everyday life.

Spending time with your loved ones, pottering around the house and keeping busy with the usual things seems to mean the most to folks when you haven't much time left. Kindness and generosity and caring remained important for everyone right to the very end - which was such a pleasant relief after watching the end of the world as imagined by the makers of The Walking Dead where everyone becomes so vicious and cruel.

I was also profoundly moved by their careful preparations for their pets right at the end when they realised that the radiation affected animals at a slower rate than humans.

Shute used fictional places as well as real towns and cities. Falmouth, where the story opens, is based on Frankston, the town that Shute lived in on the Mornington Peninsula and the race track Tooradin is most likely, the race track on Philip Island.

Nancy @ipsofactodotme read On the Beach for AusReadingMonth a couple of years ago - her review is here.
And TJ @My Bookstrings reviewed it last year here.

P.S. The weather for our second weekend of #20booksofsummer was much better than the destructive #eastcoastlow and storms of last weekend.
Glorious winter sunshine with the temp. creeping up to about 20°C at lunch time. Lovely, although I've ended up with my first head cold for the year :-(

3/20

The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn

One of the books I had to read (way back when) at school was Z For Zachariah by Robert O'Brien. I approached it reluctantly at the time, but ended up loving it.

I think it's when I realised that my love of reading was bigger than genre or topic. As long as the book was well written, engaging and had something to say, I could not only get into it, but come to appreciate it & love it as well.

The Sky So Torn also deals with a nuclear winter and post-apocalyptic world but this time set in the Blue Mountains of NSW. It also comments on the nature of science, politics and power.

The wall dividing the city to keep the refugees out and protect the supply of food and water for those on the inside was quite a telling moment in light of Australian politics right now.

Zorn references Conrad's Heart of Darkness a few times, a book on my Classics Club TBR list, so I can't be sure (yet) if there are parallels beyond the obvious ones of civilisation, morals & racism (all themes that she discusses with a light touch in The Sky So Torn).

Zorn leaves the ending wide open. Just like Ann in Z For Zachariah, we see the main protagonists heading off hopefully to find a band of survivors down south.

The Sky So Heavy has been shortlisted for the CBCA awards and Aurealis awards.
It deals with mature themes and contains some swearing.
Recommended for 15+ readers.

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

How many teen dystopian novels with an alien twist do we really need?

I for one am a little over the whole genre.

But this one looks a little different.

An initial quote from Stephen Hawkings...
“If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Followed by an action packed rollercoaster ride of who to trust, what really happened and what will happen next.
The waves of destruction are well realised (and quite scary) as Cassie gradually tells us her back story. We also learn more about the waves as the story develops and Cassie works things out for herself.

The book looks good, the website looks prety amazing and it started off well. But then I got a little tired of the non-stop action and I found myself skimming my way to the end. The boot camp scenes bored me to tears!

I need more character development, more real tension and dilemma, not just one random thing after another. It's the same problem I had with I Am Number Four. A good idea that morphed into a mindless blowing random stuff up action movie.

But if relentless action, sinister aliens and survival by any means is your kind of thing, then this book has it in spades.

Due for May release.

Update - my husband read this book on our recent holiday and thoroughly enjoyed it. He loved all the action and the twists and turns!

All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls

All Fall Down is a heart-breakingly sad story, beautifully written and crafted.

It tells the story of a small village in the north of England in the 1300's through 14 year old Isabel's eyes.

The Black Death is coming closer and closer to their little village.

Rumours are spreading like wildfire. Anxiety and tension increase as people become suspicious of strangers.

And slowly, inevitably, people begin to sicken and die.

The second half of the story lacked some of the tension of the first half (or perhaps I was just starting to feel numb, like Isabel, from all the death and sadness).

The plot device used to get to the chldren to York also felt rather flimsy.

The story is full of historical facts about medieval life, superstitions and beliefs, woven in seamlessly so that you don't even realise that you're getting a history lesson!
 
Nicholls avoids using the medieval dialogue of the time but talks about the different accents of her characters and uses many words common to that period.

All Fall Down is a strong story for teen readers who are tired of vampires and other paranormal beings!

The Black Death is the original apocalyptic story. Half of Europe dead within a short period of time. Who will survive and how will they survive this disaster?

Shadows by Ilsa J Bick

Shadows is book 2 in the Ashes trilogy.

I enjoyed the first book immensely.
It raced along with lots of action, suspense and left us with a fabulous cliff-hanger ending.

I was looking forward to Shadows release date with great anticipation.

And... well... it's okay.

Sorry, that's the best I can do.

Shadows is so full of action and drama and bloody showdowns that character development and plot have gone out the window. I'm tempted to say that they were sacrificed in a gory zombie feeding fest half way through the first chapter!

The muliple viewpoints doesn't work very well either - it allows for lots of quick shifts in action, but it provides little opportunity to get to know anyone or feel like you care what happens. About half way through I thought,  "Oh for god's sake, release the zombies and just kill everyone off and be done with it!"

Having said all that, I can't help but think that this trilogy would make a great fright-night movie. You know - one of those movies with so much action and scary makeup that you don't realise how slight the story actually is until someone asks you at the end what it was about!

Crewel by Gennifer Albin

I approached Crewel with some trepidation and an "oh no, not another dystopian YA novel" attitude.

So I have to say up front that I loved this book from the first page.

I loved the whole weaving of time concept. It captured my imagination and drew me in. It felt original, new and exciting.

It was a little confusing trying to work out how the whole weaving of time thing worked though.
There was enough information to give you a 'feel' for it rather than a proper grasp on the concept.
I was okay with that.
I don't need to have everything spelled out for me and I could see this was going to be a series, so Albin has to leave some stuff for the other books!

There was a section in the final third of the book that slowed things down as the romance was being developed. There was also a very obvious ah-ha moment that we were all waiting for Adelice to work out for herself.

Despite these flaws, I found Crewel to be a rivetting read. I've been telling everyone about it and I can't wait for book 2 to come out.

Allen and Unwin have got themselves a winner with this one.

It's due for Australian publication in October. Keep an eye out for it...whichever cover they decide to go with - it's eye-catching.

The Walking Dead

Warning: this is not a book review!

My husband and I have become hooked on a new TV series from the US.

It is not for the faint-hearted.
It is bloody, gory and freakin' scary!

During season one I hid behind the pillows several times an episode.

Season two has had lots of OMG-I-didn't-see-that-coming moments and a lot more character development as it settles into a longer-running series format.

The costume and artistry involved in making the walking dead creatures is outstanding. They are genuinely creepy, believable and capable of haunting your next nightmare.

And as for Andrew Lincoln! Mmmmmmmmmmmm

I loved Egg in 'This Life' and he made me laugh in 'Teachers'. He played the perfect lovesick-for-my-bestfriends-girl in 'Love Actually' and now he plays the sharp-shooting, moral highground, family man in 'The Walking Dead' with a convincing American accent.

If you have missed all the zombie action so far, you could catch up by downloading the episodes online. There are facebook pages and oodles of other links to follow along...if you dare!

The Way We Fall by Megan Crewe

This is an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it book.

A virus suddenly takes hold on an island population. They're quickly cut off from the mainland and left to fend for themselves as one by one they die, go hungry and become desperate.

Only 6 people survive the virus. One of them is Kaelyn and this is her story.

She tells us the story via her journal that she is writing to her best friend Leo, who left the island a few weeks before the virus began. This is the only part that doesn't really work for me. The Leo storyline seems contrived and Crewe keeps trying to make it significant right up to the very end.

But the rest is pure apocalyptic drama. It races along. People die by the truck-load. We see the best and worst of human nature.

Update: The end of the world is getting closer!Megan Crewe is now infecting us all with her virus!!

Check out her blog to be in with a chance of winning a great giveaway pack of her books.

The only cure is to stay inside with a good book for company - and here is an excerpt of The way We Fall to get you started.

Ashes by Ilsa J Bick

The end of the world is nigh!
According to the latest crop of teen books to hit my radar we don't have long to wait. Will it be a mutant virus? A nuclear dome? Or in the case of Ashes - electro-magnetic pulses that destroy every electronic system, fry healthy brains, and change other brains for better or worse.

Hormonal teenage brains get zapped into zombie, flesh-eating creatures. Older, diseased brains are suddenly cured, sleep-deprived brains are spared and some brains become super-sensitive.
Alex is a special case - a teenager with a brain tumour, prone to nightmares. She develops a super sense of smell. Tom is a returned soldier suffering from post traumatic stress and Ellie is only 8.

I wasn't that keen to get started on this book - zombies and love in the wild isn't usually high on my priority list. But thankfully Ashes is so much more than that. It is a great addition to the Armageddon genre.

I raced through each drama and catastrophe and let out an audible "aarghhhh" when the book finished on a cliff-hanger leaving all the loose ends flailing about madly. Book 2 is not due for another 6 months, but we can be prepared by checking out Bick's blog here.

My only hiccup with the book was the number of clumsy accidents that the 3 main characters had. Bick obviously used this device to add suspence and drama. I just found it frustrating.

POD by Stephen Wallenfels

If you enjoyed 'The Hunger Games' "Tomorrow When the War Began' and 'I am Number Four', then I'm sure you will love this too.

Aliens come to earth and wipe out anyone who happens to be outside at the time. That only leaves pockets of survivors who were inside their homes or shops at the time.

The story follows 2 such pockets of survivors. Josh and his Dad are stuck in their home with their trusty dog and a variety of neighbours they can see through their windows.

Megs is on her own in a parking station, until she realises that there are people still alive in the hotel above her, but they're being heavily guarded by the security guys gone mad with power!

Fast-paced, dramatic and tense. I raced through the second half of the book desperate to find out what happens. POD2, thankfully, is in the pipeline!

youtube trailer
Stephen Wallenfels website

Alone #1 Chasers by James Phelan

I'm still not sure about this one. The beginning didn't grab me, but I kept going to see what the disaster was going to be.
I love a good disaster/apocalyptic story and the disaster that occurs in Alone: Chasers is pretty catastrophic and dramatic. 

However the pace throughout was very slow and I struggled to engage with the characters. I found myself skimming through the pages to find the hook or the point to the story.

It didn't happen until the last chapter...it was a long wait, but it was a beauty! I didn't see it coming & there was an elegant simplicity to the twist that I enjoyed. Will it be enough to make me read #2 Survivor? Stay posted...