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 Patrick’s life could rightly be called a disaster. He failed out of university, his fiancee dumped him, and he’s severely lacking focus. He decides that he needs a break and takes a job in a seaside town. Patrick has hopes for his new place and sometimes even gets along with the widowed owner of his boardinghouse. But for the most part, he struggles to fit in and feels misunderstood almost constantly. Eventually, the misunderstandings become insurmountable and Patrick accidentally commits an act he’ll regret for the rest of his life.
I read this book a week ago now and it still hasn’t left my consciousness. Sometimes I find myself really connecting with bleak books that expose the grittiness of a harsh life I hope never to live personally (and trust me, I won’t be living this one). And this book is very, very bleak. Patrick’s life is never easy and he never gets a break. Not once. But somehow there was still so much that was great about it, perhaps because I went into it with incredibly low expectations – I’ll try to explain.
First off, the atmosphere. I could palpably sense the desperate feel of the town, down on its luck, and the setting was perfect for this type of book. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t put the book down and I found it amazingly easy to read no matter what else was going on. It was that absorbing. I remember actively avoiding other books that treated characters this badly, so this was truly unusual. I did keep hoping for Patrick, hope that wasn’t realized, but I thought it quite remarkable that Hyland could create sympathy for such a disturbed character.
And he is disturbed; it isn’t all his fault, of course, that he’s always felt second best and rejected. He’s intelligent but never manages to make good on that intelligence. Instead he is awkward, unsure of the correct course of action most of the time, completely unable to judge what’s appropriate and what isn’t in social situations. He tries, but he often tries too hard. I was left wondering if he had an undiagnosed mental disorder and I felt for him because I wanted him to succeed, have people see past the creepy exterior.
One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of This is How is that it’s too dark, that the ending doesn’t offer any hope, just continued suffering. I don’t know if I agree. I thought that most of the second half of the book was Patrick’s struggle to accept his crime, and I thought that at the end he did – that he finally began making the best of one of life’s worst situations even though he is still suffering. No, nothing in this book is cheery or happy – but somehow I was completely drawn into it and it was arguably one of the more compelling books I’ve read this year. I’m not going to list it one of my favorite books of all time, but I do think it earns its spot on the Orange Prize longlist.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 These two novellas are bound in one volume for me. The summaries are short because the stories are; I don’t want spoilers!
In The Hundred and Ninety-nine Steps, Sian is working on an archaeology dig at Whitby Abbey, working to bury her dark dreams even as she exposes history to the light. By accident one day she meets a man with a charming dog who gives her a bottle. Inside is a century-old manuscript with the link to a hidden murder.
I really enjoyed this novella, but I have to admit that I think the cover sold it as a little more exciting than it actually was. I wouldn’t call it a thriller – more a woman’s discovery about herself and about the world after it had brutally betrayed her. There is some mystery too, but I wasn’t precisely on the edge of my seat waiting to find the truth. That’s not a bad thing – I was fine with it the way it was. The book is also something of a love story – but whether it’s between Sian and Mack, the man she meets, or between her and the dog Hadrian (who could not love a dog named Hadrian?) is a choice left up to the reader! I loved the descriptions of the archaeology and I wanted to be there digging in Whitby Abbey; Michel Faber is a fantastic writer.
The Courage Consort is about a group of singers, through the eyes of Kate Consort, and their week in a remote European retreat. Away from everyone else, they attempt to learn a new and revolutionary piece of music, but what they learn instead is about their relationships with each other.
Even though this one takes a less prominent place on the cover of the book, I loved it and it was by far my favorite of the two. Kate was just such an interesting heroine. Similarly to Sian, she goes on a journey of self-discovery, from paranoia and depression to a surprising peace with herself and the world. She steps out from her husband’s shadow and I really love reading about women who discover their own independence, when it’s okay to rely on someone and when it’s not.
And as anyone reading my blog should know by now, I love stories based around relationships and that’s exactly what this was. The characters all really came to life for me and their interactions felt real and true. There isn’t much of an actual plot, but everything does come to something of a conclusion at the end and a surprising one at that. I can’t say much more than that, but it was really great and I was totally caught up in these people’s lives.
Both of these novellas come highly recommended by me, but if you choose one, choose The Courage Consort.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Celia’s mother died giving birth to her, so Celia grew up under the eye of her Aunt Tassi and, unfortunately, her Uncle Roman in Black Rock, Tobago. Roman is Tassi’s second husband and a sly alcoholic, planting lies about Celia and getting uncomfortably close to her on a constant basis. Celia is a clever girl and wants one day to go to university, but after her uncle proves his horrible nature correct, Celia can’t stay to be in the same room with him. So she flees to Trinidad, to her aunt Sula, to get away from the horror that had previously been her life.
I was actually amazed by how very much I enjoyed this book. It sounded good but the beginning was very dark. I knew what was coming almost from page one, and I truly skimmed that particular section as much as possible. But then Celia escapes to Trinidad, and even though her life wasn’t wonderful, I just completely fell in love with the book. I loved the way that the author made this country I’d hardly ever heard of come to life for me through her descriptions. I adored Celia’s voice and even as I longed for the best for her I could completely understand her choices, even when they weren’t choices I would have made myself.
I think what really got me about this book was that even though there is a lot of bad in Celia’s life, there is also hope. She is vividly alive from page one and she almost constantly is fighting for that life, retaining her spark even when she thinks she’s lost it. She made the book for me. I also loved the tensions between all the characters in the novel, at least after that beginning; how love and desire develop, for example, and how they don’t, and Celia’s relationship with her Aunt Sula, who she barely knows. It prodded at the stigma of the relationship between the white English master and the black servant girl in England’s colonies, as well, and how easy it was for the master to blatantly use his beautiful young employees. It may be a familiar theme, and we all know how wrong it was, but it doesn’t make this story any less affecting. Celia’s slow rediscovery of herself and what she wants to be is magnificently done, too, and I loved the ending. It made perfect sense.
Honestly, Black Rock was a fantastic read. I am so pleased that I read it and I definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book for free from the publisher for review.
 Dongliang’s father used to be the son of a martyr, until the fish-shaped birthmark on his bottom was called into question. An investigation into the martyr’s descendants was instituted, but the family’s position was already too compromised and Secretary Ku lost his party membership. Now they live on a boat and Dongliang worries that his father is going to turn into a fish – but he can’t resist chasing after young Huixian, a beautiful little girl who is immediately accepted by the river people. To satisfy his obsession, Dongliang will have to challenge everything he knows, and make a difficult choice.
This book didn’t really work so well for me. It had an element of magical realism, which only sometimes works, and I found the whole thing kind of absurd. I think that was the point, but I still wasn’t a huge fan. I also didn’t really like Dongliang, which was a huge problem since the novel is mainly from his point of view. I could understand his frustration with his father, but I really disliked the way he chased after Huixian. I felt sorry for her more than sympathy for him, even though she was a bit strange. Actually I didn’t really relate to any of the characters, and I didn’t care what happened to them. I just felt disconnected from the story the whole time.
I know this review is quite subjective, and many of my issues with it might not bother someone else. Overall, though, I don’t think I could recommend The Boat to Redemption.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Dressed in his best clothes, unemployed Dan Dong heads to an exclusive hotel to apply for a bellman’s job. Instead, he is mistaken for a journalist, and falls into the world of exclusive banquets, where there is a presentation, delicious rare food, and a check for 200 yuan each time. Dan gets business cards made up and decides that banqueting is his new job. He is still a good-hearted man, however, and can’t help being swept up in the stories that desperate people tell him in order to make their lives better. As he uncovers corruption after corruption, Dan’s lies become strangely close to the truth.
There are so many facets of this book that it’s going to be hard to include them all in my review! I picked it up on the shelf because of a whim – I’ve been trying to read more multicultural fiction and the Chinese characters on the spine called to me. I was rewarded for my impulse by a really thoughtful book on corruption in modern China and the difference between truth and lies, and how they can mesh. Dan is unusually sensitive to food, so he struggles to quash his natural impulse to go to the banquets, always telling himself that a few more months will buy his wife a condo, a car, and so on, even though neither of them ever get any of these things.
Instead, he gets guilt trips from a variety of people when they find out he’s a journalist, and this is where the corruption comes in. Dan finds out about these things and he wants to do something about them, but he isn’t a good enough writer. He never got past middle school. But, eventually, his honest longing leads to him giving it a try, and that’s when we learn that the papers are corrupt, too. So, is he a freelance journalist, or is he still a banquet bug? Or is he both? It’s intriguing and the book doesn’t give the answers, doesn’t even have a solid conclusion, but instead makes us think about what happened to Dan. The book also demonstrates how the workers – supposedly the lifeblood of communist China – are in the worst possible situation, forced to break the law to get any money because they can’t afford a lawyer or a lawsuit.
Of course, it’s enjoyable, too. The author’s first language is Chinese – she left China for the US in adulthood – but she has a wonderful prose style and I would never have known that this was her first book in English. I was really interested in Dan’s character. He’s so often crippled by guilt because he gets mired in a web of lies, but he’s not as weak as he first appears, and deceit is not actually in his nature. It’s a neat trick to pull off. The secondary characters liven up the story, with various prostitutes, journalists, and rich people making Dan’s life interesting and dangerous. In contrast to Dan’s experience of “modern” life, his wife Little Plum is almost a caricature of the ideal Chinese peasant, as she does little but sit at home, do minor jobs, and cook for Dan, often representing his good side and his wisdom. The nature of Chinese society is depressing here, what with all the censorship and lies, but it seems as though Yan is trying to provide hope through Dan, who sees the injustices and wishes to correct them instead of perpetuating them.
The Uninvited was a fortuitous find for me and I’m very glad I read it. I’m really looking forward to reading more by Geling Yan.
I am an Amazon Associate. This title is known as The Banquet Bug in the US. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 This book is about two women who come into contact in a rather terrible way. One, Sarah, goes on to continue with her ordinary privileged life, while the other, Little Bee, runs in order to save her life, and ends up a detained asylum seeker. Two years later, they come into contact again, where this story begins.
I have no idea how to review this book without spoiling it. I mostly just want to tell you to go buy it and read it now, but I like to be more detailed than that.
So first, I will say, I had my doubts about the author. Chris Cleave is a white male reporter, and the narrators of the book are women. One of them is an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, and I had no idea how the author was going to make her believable. But he did, and I honestly forgot that the author of the book was a white guy. Little Bee was an incredibly compelling character and I just loved her voice. It seemed perfect to me as she drew me into this story that is half horrific and half hopeful. My heart broke and then I smiled two pages later. She’s an amazing character, and both she and Sarah, the other woman, are so fantastically well drawn.
Even when finishing I had my doubts about the authenticity of the narrative. Even though the story was beyond powerful, I didn’t know if this sort of thing actually happened. And then I saw that Little Bee’s character was based on interviews of real women, and many of the incidents described especially in the beginning were taken from reality, even though this story itself and the locations mentioned are largely fictional. I can’t even describe how sad this made me.
It also made me angry. This is a book that will make you want to change the world. It’s a book about how many people are wrong, and even though we like to think we’re doing things right, maybe we’re not. But maybe we are – and maybe we can do better if we try. It’s about the strength that individual people have, and how seeing and loving makes a difference. It left me with tears on my face (a rare occurrence) but I still had hope. I hope that people like this can actually exist. These characters spoke to me so deeply that I wanted to be like them, I wanted to know I would make the sacrifices that they did.
I loved The Other Hand and right now, it’s my favorite book of the year.
I am an Amazon Associate. This book is known as Little Bee in the US. I purchased this book.
 Nine-year-old Michele Amitrano and his friends have little to do one very hot summer besides explore the Italian countryside around them. When the leader of their little gang, Skull, forces Michele to go off on his own in an abandoned house after a forfeit, he makes a discovery that is destined to change his perception of his friends, family, and life itself.
The outside of this book promised that it would be scary, but it wasn’t at all in the way that I’d expected, and to be honest I vastly preferred what I got to what I expected. Rather than a scary book in superficial ways, this is a book about human nature, about a boy discovering what adults can do to other little boys just like him. Michele’s loss of his childhood innocence is totally heartbreaking, but riveting. I can understand why this book kept others up all night to find out what happens next. I myself read it in just one day. It’s a very absorbing read.
This is also a beautifully written book. I don’t know whether to give credit to the author or the translator, but I could feel the heat of that Italian summer, see the wheat fields and the abandoned farmhouse, just as I could see inside Michele’s realistically wrought child mind. Michele is almost unbelievably genuine, which of course only adds to the emotional impact of the book, especially the ending. He watches as the people he trusted turn out to be fallible, which everyone realizes eventually, but hardly in this way. And of course it isn’t only the adults he’s already wary of, but those he loves and trusts.
From the adults’ perspective, I think the novel shows the desperation people have to make their lives better. Apparently crimes of this type (I’m being vague, but I think it’s worth not knowing) are still commonplace, and that only makes it all sadder. They want to move to northern Italy, which is richer, but it seems they’ll do almost anything to achieve it. I was left wondering if it was worth the sacrifice, and perhaps glad that at least one of the adults may have finally realized the amount of harm he was doing.
I would definitely recommend I’m Not Scared to anyone with an interest in thoughtful thrillers. It’s a gripping read with strong emotional impact that will leave you considering what happened for days afterwards. I’m looking forward to my next book by Ammaniti.
I am an Amazon Associate. This book was sent to me for free by the publisher for review.
 The last white family on her street in Zimbabwe lives next to Lindiwe Bishop’s family. One night, the house catches on fire, killing one woman and badly injuring another. The culprit, teenager Ian McKenzie, is sent to prison for a year. Lindiwe is still fascinated by him, and astonished when, on his return a year later, he begins inviting her along for car rides. Spanning the 1980s and 90s, this is not only a book about Zimbabwe in transition, but about love that is surprisingly realistic.
At first, I found it surprisingly difficult to get into this book. I’m not very familiar with Zimbabwe’s history and apparently they just changed over from Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, and the characters carry a lot of angst about Independence and the fate of their country. I recognized the name of Robert Mugabe, but I couldn’t remember why. I was unfamiliar with all of the slang, too. So I had a few pages of wading through something I thought I was bound to dislike. But, of course, then I got used to the slang and figured out what everything meant, the characters stopped complaining so much about history and instead the history was described in the book so I could understand, and Lindiwe met Ian.
Typically the love story was what made this book for me. I don’t want to give too much away but it’s obvious that something is going to Happen between Lindiwe and Ian from the very start of the book when she keeps his picture from a newspaper clipping. It does, and it is really beautiful, but it’s also realistic. Sometimes love isn’t good enough, and they have struggles, but they had me cheering for them from the very beginning. Their relationship takes work, as does their relationship with another person who comes into the story a little later.
The transformation of Zimbabwe was also fascinating. Wikipedia told me what was going to happen in that respect, but seeing it through the characters’ eyes was totally different. The city of Lindiwe’s girlhood, with the rich houses well-kept and the main street full of delicious restaurants and places to play, becomes a poor ghost town by the time she becomes an adult. White people were once welcomed and then become scarce. Reading through the book gave me a real sense of the change that was happening and the frustration that the people of Zimbabwe felt.
I must also admit that I was quite pleased to see that Little, Brown chose to put Lindiwe on the cover instead of Ian. I know books for adults are probably less white-washed but it’s undeniably pleasing to see at least part of a gorgeous black woman when they could have chosen the white guy.
In the end, The Boy Next Door was a great book and I’m so glad I read it. I learned a little (the author grew up in Zimbabwe so I felt she probably knew what she was talking about) and I loved the story. I think knowing a little about Zimbabwe before starting is a good idea, though!
I am an Amazon Associate. I received this book from the publisher for free.
 Laura thought she was destined for spinsterhood until Henry McAllan chose to make her his wife. What she didn’t bargain on was his desire to own land, and their move to a cotton farm a few years later with two small girls. Laura hates the farm, which she and her daughters christen Mudbound, and hates her father-in-law, who has no place to live but with them. When World War II ends, Henry’s brother Jamie comes to stay with the family, and so does Ronsel Jackson, the son of the sharecroppers nearby. Sharing the common bond of fighting men, Ronsel and Jamie become friends of a sort, in a way that no one in the South will tolerate for very long.
It’s hard to say I liked this book, but it was compelling and completely horrifying in parts. This is particularly so because most of the characters in the book are very racist. I know people genuinely thought like this when and where this book is set, but it bothers me and I can’t understand it (which, I suppose, is a good thing). I wanted all the characters to stop being close-minded, to think more like Jamie, who sees Ronsel as a person despite the color of his skin and respects the military achievements that he made.
The book rotates between viewpoints, giving us insight into all of the characters’ heads. We can witness Laura’s unhappiness, Henry’s land-lust, Jamie’s jitters and bad memories. Ronsel’s memories of war in Europe were for me the most affecting. He describes the difference it made in Europe when he was defined as a man, not as a black man; the wonder of having a white woman fall in love with him and everyone make him feel like he was valued. He had to be my favorite character and my heart broke for him over and over again, stuck in a racist town working on a farm where he’d never be appreciated the way he should have been.
Mudbound is a powerful and affecting book, but it won’t leave you happy. It will leave you unsettled and anxious to change the world, correct anyone who might still feel this way. It’s an evocative and moving picture of the American South, but I hope it has changed very much.
I am an Amazon Associate. I purchased this book.
 Matilda’s small island of Bougainville is at war. The redskins are invaders and many of the young men from her village are engaged in fighting them; she lives her life constantly tense and alert, deprived of many of the privileges she experienced in her youth. There is no electricity, no running water, no schools, and the villagers must live off the land. There is just one white man left in the village, and eventually he takes initiative and starts a school. His teaching consists mainly of reading Great Expectations aloud to the class, and Matilda for the first time discovers the power of literature.
For the most part, I really enjoyed this book. I absolutely loved when the teacher, Mr Watts, began reading Great Expectations. It was just magical to see Matilda learn about stepping outside of her life for the first time, and she remarks that she feels like she knows Pip and is completely bound up in his story. She felt like a kindred spirit after that. The book started out so charming. The war parts, however, made me distinctly uncomfortable and sad, as one might expect, so the book was certainly not all a joy, and it’s hard to say I enjoy people being hacked into pieces. It all seems to happen very abruptly, especially when I realized that the author was trying to convey a message about morality. He asks us to consider what a good person is and what a good person does, and the result was quite shocking and upsetting.
I much preferred the parts on the island to the end of the book, but I appreciated that too. I can understand why Mister Pip was shortlisted for the Booker prize. It’s such a compelling tale about the power of story and really looks at the consequences of our actions, the horror of war, and simple goodness. I was really surprised by what I got out of this slim volume, and I definitely recommend it.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
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