80 Books No.74: Annerton Pit by Peter Dickinson

I try to be really fair in these reviews, and rational, and reasonable, and generally quite erudite. I've managed to find good points in most of my reads this year, even if it's that they were over quickly and I could move onto something better. I try not to have knee-jerk reactions to things.

But this was stupid. It was so ridiculously stupid that it sort of insulted me and I only skim-read the last fifty pages or so because I was so bored stiff. It was the sort of stupid which made you wish the writer had let someone else do it, because somebody else might have made it less stupid.

It wasn't all stupid. The opening pages of this were clever. It took a while to realise the narrator was blind and it really showed what could be done with clever descriptions and building up an almost tangible sense of surroundings. Throughout, Dickinson did well with this and I felt like I was wherever the narrator took us, purely through the descriptions of the four senses open to him. Kudos for that.

But the plot. Oh God, the plot. It was so stupid, and I shan't apologise for repeating that word because anything more would be crediting it too much. The plot relied on so many coincidences and unlikely events to make it work. Dickinson needed help with this.

And the book covers (whichever edition you read - just Google them) are horrendous. They make the narrator look like something out of The Exorcist.

Plus the copy I read was really grubby which made me feel a bit ill.

80 Books No 66: Uglies by Scott Westerfield

Those of you with eyes and a vague notion of the patterns in my reading can probably guess from simply looking at the book cover why this found itself from Asda's shelves into my trolley and to my house:
1) It references The Hunger Games and I loved The Hunger Games. This had several similarities to Suzanne Collins' trilogy, but as the cover says, actually came first.
2) It's YA in general which we already know I'm a little bit obsessed by.
3) It has a black front cover. Oh how I freaking love a black front cover.

So it was likely to be a hit. The general concept was also quite interesting without all of those elements: a world where judging people based on their looks has been eradicated by ensuring all people are turned 'pretty' at the age of 16 via extensive surgery. The Pretties then inhabit a different area than the Uglies and are subject to less stringent laws. Tally Youngblood is looking forward to becoming a Pretty until she meets Shay and is introduced to the world of the Smoke, an outlaw community where Uglies can live forever with the face they were born with.

Collins has obviously ripped quite a bit from Westerfield's idea here: the female character, the dystopian world, the burgeoning teenage relationships. However, Tally is a different kettle of fish from Katniss Everdeen, at least in some ways. Tally is happy to conform to society's expectations of her at first and only reluctantly challenges the status quo. However, in quite a bold move, Westerfield actually makes her quite unlikeable as a hero as she begins by intending to betray her friends. Yes, she overcomes this, but things still don't work out well. Katniss, whilst being a bit whiny at times, is at least admirable.

The novel dragged at first as it felt like so many other YA dystopian fictions I've read. It was when Tally left the city for the Smoke that it became more engaging and whilst the relationship with David was a little clumsy, the opening preview of Pretties at the end of the novel seemed to develop the story in a promising way. If I get the opportunity I'd probably read the rest of the series.

Uglies has also been optioned for a film, although it's a slow old process. Would be interesting see how exactly they'd cast it!

80 Books No.65: Until the Next Time by Kevin Fox

The amount of labels I've added to this post will demonstrate how hard this book was to categorise. I've hesitantly called it 'historical', although I'm not entirely sure 1970s Ireland and the Troubles are really consigned to the past; I've called it 'fantasy' due to the beliefs about and occurrences of reincarnation present throughout the narrative. I added 'thrilled' as Amazon categorises it as such. 'Romance' I'm definite about, as certain as I am that this is indeed a 'book'. This vein of uncertainties dogged me throughout the reading.

Sean Corrigan receives his uncle Michael's journal on his 21st birthday - an uncle he never knew about, if I remember correctly. This drags him from New York to rural Ireland to investigate what happened to his uncle in the 70s. The novel makes use of both Sean's 1996 first person narration and Michael's journal in order to tell the story. The author himself has said he found the dual narrative very easy to use as the voices of the characters were very similar and so was their story. This does, however, make it really rather confusing for the reader, an effect which was partially intended as the novel goes on to explore the idea that all of these characters have lived before and are doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes until they learn they lesson. In my opinion, it got a bit bogged down with this.

The confusing nature of the narrative meant this was quite a slow read for me, as part way through Michael's sections I'd have to remind myself that we were in the 1970s and he was on the run from US police, as opposed to Sean who seemed to have upped and left his life in America on a whim and some odd dreams. To confuse things further, Michael was frequently called 'Mickaleen' which was HIS uncle's (or great-uncles's) nickname - he'd been on the run from Irish nationalists. Then Sean was occasionally called 'Mickaleen' by people who'd known him when he was Michael...

I'd really recommend a flow chart if anybody else wants to try reading this. It was a fairly interesting story, certainly in its more 'historical' sections, although I preferred Sean as a character. The romantic element came in the form of Kate/Erin/whatever her name may now be, and Anne, who was a brilliantly drawn character. Fox really captured Irish conversation for me and the characters leapt off the page when they spoke. Definitely a writer who I would read something else from if it was slightly less convoluted and confusing.

80 Books No.64: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

After the less than thrilling read reads in the shape of On Beauty and The Bell, this book was frankly a breath of fresh air. It's a book I've seen in shops and heard talked about on a number of occasions and yet only got around to reading when I found it for 50p in a charity shop. The particular edition I bought was from World Book Night 2013, showing again its popularity. I have no idea why it has taken me so long to read this book.

The basic idea is that this book (and indeed the series which is now running to seven books with an eighth on the way) is an alternative 1985 where Wales has become a kingdom in its own right, the Crimean War has been going for over a century, airplanes have never been invented and everybody hates the ending to Jane Eyre. Special Operations law enforcement departments have been created in order to police things as diverse as time travel (The ChronoGuard) and the distribution and protection of books (LiteraTecs). Thursday Next is one such LiteraTec who finds herself investigating a crime where somebody is intent upon changing the plots of classic novels.

It sounds crazy and too far-fetched to be much good to anybody. What is so charming about Fforde's work is how aware it is of its own ridiculousness and the humour present throughout it. I read Shades of Grey last year (no, not the soft-porn series - though I did read that too), another Fforde novel where the future civilisation bases its class system upon the colours people can see. Another bonkers idea, but made entertaining through the wit and skill with which the author writes. How he comes up with his ideas, I have no idea, as he's included so many neat little details just for the sake of including them: the revival of dodos, for example, an aspect I really enjoyed.

The aspects of time travel and the preoccupation with literature made this a really entertaining read for me, and I'm interested in reading the rest of the Thursday Next series, as well as his Nursery Crimes series, where famous nursery rhymes are developed into real crimes and put on trial. There were probably bad aspects of the novel, but I'm ignoring them: I really enjoyed this.

80 Books No.56: Janie Face to Face by Caroline B Cooney

You know when you had a really brilliant holiday somewhere and then you go back to try and replicate it and it's never the same? This book is that for me. It's not that I hated it (you know you'd know about it if I hated it) but I was disappointed.

A bit of background would help with this.

Caroline B Cooney novels are a bit of a special thing. As in, something not everybody is ever going to get on board with. Here's a selection of the book covers of her books I have read in the past:

 

 

Check out the hair and the high-waisted jeans. Wonder how on earth I ended up with a German version of Don't Blame the Music. Cringe at the dodgy titles. These are 80s-90s YA fiction, completely unashamedly cheesy but endlessly entertaining. I mean endlessly: I must have borrowed Cooney's books from the library on almost a repeat for the best part of two years when I was about twelve or thirteen. I even bought Camp Reunion and Don't Blame the Music off the library when they threw them out: even my local library thought they were outdated.

 

However, it would be entirely remiss of me to laugh at these novels. Yes, they read a bit clunkily, but they were far from disposable YA chick-lit. In reality, they were quite something else. I was just graduating from pony books by the Pullein-Thompsons (a whole different brand of vintage) and then I came across these, which felt so much more grown-up. The best way I can describe them is a little like The Babysitters' Club, only grittier. In Summer Love/Camp Reunion, girl meets boy and sometimes boy turns out to be a complete let down. The stunningly attractive girl or boy might be nice or not. In Don't Blame the Music, sisters become dangerous to their entire family. This was high-drama and bitter-sweet endings. I was obsessed.

 

And my obsession was mainly centred around the Janie Johnson series, books I touched upon in a review very recently. This series revolved around Janie, an ordinary girl who recognises her own face on a missing poster and then realises that her parents are not a real family. The novels trace her search for her 'real' parents and the explanation over what happened, as well as her tentative relationships with her long-lost siblings, parents and how her 'adoptive' parents cope with this revelation. Not to mention how her boy-next-door boyfriend supports her - but then completely screws her over. There was a made-for-TV movie which was awful but brilliant at the same time.

 

Frankly, I LOVED these books.

 

I was vaguely aware that there were some more books in the series published much more recently, but it was only when I found this at the most recent book sale I attended that I gave it much thought. I've skipped Book 4 and the e-book and gone straight for Book 5, which Cooney is adamant will be the last one. Frankly, it should be.

 

Here, Janie is at college. Her boy-next-door boyfriend is in her life but they're not together. She's trying to juggle both families, but basically abandoning her now elderly and sick 'adoptive' family. And then a true-crime writer contacts everybody she knows asking for help with writing her story. Interspersed with this story, is what happened to Hannah, her 'adoptive' parents' real daughter and Janie's kidnapper.

 

This could have had legs. It would have been more interesting to see Janie co-operating with the true-crime writer, than what she actually did - generally paying it no attention whatsoever. Indeed, Janie is largely oblivious to most of what really happens in this novel due to her sudden decision to marry the boy-next-door boyfriend in ten days. It is therefore left to all the other characters to maintain any real link to the original story. Perhaps somebody close to her selling her out would have been fun, although already explored in Book 3. Hannah's narrative could have been more interesting if it was given more time and she was allowed to develop more as a character. Cooney very much kept her as comic-book villain rather than a real threat, something highlighted particularly by the complete lack of a climax to the story.

 

Also annoying was the time-scale of this series. Book 1 came out mid-90s and the action here was supposed to be set five years after those events. So why did everybody have Facebook, iPads and mobile phones? So much action revolved around these things (sometimes in a very interesting manner, it has to be said) that it jarred with the origins of the series. It was as though Cooney forgot herself. She also forgot herself with some characters. A good proof reader should have picked up that Brian claimed he'd never worn a tuxedo as he never went to prom, but three pages later detailed he didn't need to rent a tux as he already had one from his days in a choir. Shocking continuity.

 

Ultimately, I'm not sure who this book is aimed at. People like me, who read the originals, are really too old for this book now, but the YA audience are likely never to have heard of the Janie Johnson series.

 

Also, I don't get the cover.

 

Please, Cooney, leave this series alone.

80 Books No.53: The Book of Lies by Mary Horlock

I know it's wrong to judge a book by its cover, but come on, just look at it. That is one seriously hot cover. I always like a black book cover as I've discussed before and this is whole shades of black and grey which makes it look really mysterious and creepy. The title is also so straightforwardly bold, as it's essentially acknowledging its own unreliable nature which in many ways sums up fiction in general: fiction is a lie.

The book also has a brilliant blurb on the back. A simple quotation from the novel itself, it reads as follows:

“It’s been a fortnight since they found her body and for the most part I’m glad she’s gone. But I also can’t believe she’s dead, and I should do because I did it.”  

 

 

Straight away we're into the world of troubled teenagers and death and suspicious circumstances, and as I've said time and time again, this is totally up my street. What's more, this has an unreliable narrator, a dual narrative and a quirky style of writing. What's not to love here?

 

Now, this won't be everybody's cup of tea. Set in Guernsey in both the 1980s and the 1940s, it tells the story of Catherine who has inadvertently killed her friend/enemy, and her uncle Charlie who inadvertently betrays his whole family during the German Occupation in World War 2. Neither of them are wholly sympathetic characters and yet I ended up pitying both of them. Horlock skilfully binds their two narratives together, both through content and style of writing. There were so many individual threads which tied together so well, in a way I've never seen done quite as well before. The style of writing, utilising footnotes with references to other fictional books added a level of veracity that I enjoyed, and yet this also helped to destabilise the narrative as it was, ultimately, a book packed full of lies, both between the characters and between author and writer. The open-ended nature of the novel was also enjoyable as Horlock treats the reader as an intelligent being who doesn't need everything spelt out for them.

 

All in all, an enjoyable read.

 



80 Books No.52: Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie

This is a highly popular YA novel, winning and being nominated for loads of awards in the last few years. Sophie McKenzie is a generally highly respected author for young adults and I've read some stuff by her before; mainly the Medusa Project novels, or at least some of them.

The basic premise of the story is that Lauren knows she is adopted but can't get her parents to tell her anymore than that. After some basic research, she finds a photo of a missing girl from about eleven years ago in America - and somehow decides that she is one and the same. From there, through some very tenuous plot twists and turns, she ends up meeting her birth family.

This storyline is so similar to a series from the 90s known as the Janie Johnson series. There were some differences: Janie discovers that her 'parents' are actually her grandparents, before they all discover she was actually stolen by their daughter. From there she meets her birth family and all the things associated with it. There was also an enjoyably terrible made-for-TV movie in 1995.

I can see why Girl, Missing has so many fans. It is pacey and doesn't let up for a minute. There's an element of romance and the excitement of a thriller. The reader is taken on quite a journey from the start of the novel to the end. My favourite section was when Lauren had met her birth parents and family and was trying to adjust. It would have been nice to have explored these feelings further, something which the Janie Johnson series did brilliantly.

Unfortunately for this book, the main character Lauren was, as her boyfriend remarked, 'one of the most self-obsessed people in existence'. This does change slightly towards the end, but she isn't especially likeable. She jumps to far too many conclusions too quickly, partially as a necessity to keep the plot moving forward. One could argue that this is aimed at young adults and so needs to be sensational and fast-moving, but again, the Janie Johnson series was far superior to this.

Also, this book has two sequels Sister, Missing and Missing Me. In the second, it seems that history repeats itself as Lauren's 'new' sister is kidnapped and put in danger, something which both happened to Lauren originally and also happened to the list in Girl, Missing. Missing Me jumps the shark even further by my assessment of the plot as the sister discovers she and Lauren were conceived by sperm donor - so even Lauren's 'birth father' isn't her birth father - layer after layer of complications construed in order to tell a convoluted story. I could be cynical and say McKenzie is simply cashing in...

My advice: skip this and find Caroline B Cooney's novels instead. More of which in a later blog post.

80 Books No.48: Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepherd

Oh good grief. If you know me, you'll probably have been bored to tears by my talking about the TV series Pretty Little Liars in the last six months. I've become hooked, and it's so frustrating that season 2 has yet to be released on DVD in this country. I watched season 1 in record time because it's so amazing and pacy and exciting and just frankly SHINY that it has be watched. Nobody in Rosewood is unattractive; nobody is what they seem. It's INCREDIBLE.

So my excitement at finding book one of the original novels in a book sale yesterday was second to none, hence how I read it in about three hours. There was little new here for me as I've already watched the whole series and this probably covers episodes 1-5 at a guess, although not quite in the same order. It was interesting to notice the subtle differences between the two versions: the novel is far less ethnically diverse, with all four 'liars' seemingly mostly Caucasian, whilst in the TV series having a range of backgrounds for the girls. I would also say the TV series perhaps paces itself better as secrets are kept longer, and as the whole series is based upon secrets and lies, that kind of works better than things being more public knowledge as in the novel.

What the novel does do is allow the reader more of an insight into the characters' heads. Aria and Hanna were my favourite characters from the TV show, and continue to be here, but become more human and relatable as Aria struggles to know how to fit into Rosewood again and Hanna struggles with her weight. So far Ali hasn't come across as quite such a bitch as in the TV show, but there's time in the rest of the series.

Still, this is totally filling the void whilst I endlessly click refresh on Amazon waiting for season 2. In the meantime, here's the totally awesome opening from Pretty Little Liars. Remember: two can keep a secret if one of them is dead ;)

80 Books No.24: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

This is a book which has been massively hyped up over the last few months, with bookstores shoving it to the front and people raving about it online. It's been optioned for a film by Reese Witherspoon's production company and the author is working on the screenplay. So it'll become yet another one of those 'which is better, the film or the book?' I'll get back to you on that particular debate when the film is released.

For now, I'll concentrate on the book. This is billed as a thriller, albeit with some deviations from the genre, and I don't usually get very involved in thrillers. I've read Dan Brown's Langdon books (apart from The Lost Symbol - not religious enough for me) and a couple of others (usually religiously themed) but largely not been interested enough to pick up many more. I bought this one largely because it was being so hyped up, and because the front cover is cracking - I love a black front cover.

The general premise is that Nick Dunne's wife Amy goes missing on their fifth wedding anniversary. There are signs of a struggle and strange clues, and Nick is being shifty for some reason. The chapters alternate between Nick's narration of the investigation into Amy's disappearance, and Amy's diary entries from the last seven years. The police have their suspicions and to this end, it's pretty obvious where the novel is going. Then it all goes crazy and you don't trust anything again.

Unreliable and hazy narrators are a really interesting device to use, if they're done well. I'm thinking here of Plath's The Bell Jar, Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and even Shriver's We Need To Talk About Kevin (yet another 'which is better, the book or the film?' Ans: the film makes no sense without having watched the film). They keep you guessing and second-guessing exactly what is going on. Flynn uses them well here, until you can no longer decide whether you should believe Nick or Amy. It's a really effective reminder that any marriage has two sides, as the front cover's strapline says.

Both Nick and Amy are largely unsympathetic characters, Amy more so. It's hard to say much more without spoiling the book, so suffice to say that she is the more unreliable narrator of the two. It all becomes clear once you've read it!

Overall, an enjoyable book, one of the few I can genuinely say I've enjoyed this year. Well worth a read despite the hype.

80 Books No.21: Trapped by Michael Northrop

A novel about high school teenagers trapped in their school as the worst snowstorm for <insert amount of years> batters the East Coast of America. This seemed totally up my street and not a little bit topical given not only Hurricane Sandy in the USA but also the crazy weather conditions in the UK this year. I'll admit I was also slightly swayed by the really cool chapter headings which made it seem like more and more of the pages were being covered in snow as the novel went on; I'm a sucker for gimmicky graphics.

On the topic of graphics, I want to make a point about this front cover, because I'm also quite easily swayed by a catchy cover (yes, yes, I know...). Now, based upon this cover, I assumed something off the chain was going to happen in this book, a preconception aided by the concluding statement of the blurb that 'As the days add up, the snow piles higher, and the empty halls grow colder and darker, the mounting pressure forces a devastating decision. . . .' That word, right there: devastating. I was seeing cannibalism, human sacrifices, something completely Lord of the Flies-esque. Not that I even particularly like Lord of the Flies, but I was hoping this might be an updated version that I could get on board with.

Suffice to say, that I didn't get what I was looking for. The novel started out well, much like Michael Grant's Gone did, with tension and reasonably likeable characters. The narrator was engaging enough and so were his friends, and there was a sense of mounting dread as the snow thickened and they became increasingly cut off from civilisation. I did think the author had thought through the idea of them being snowed in, considering the consequences of power failures, frozen pipes and even the sheer weight of snow upon an old roof, so on those counts he should be congratulated.

Unfortunately, on other counts, he lets the reader down in my view. One character is set up as a ticking timebomb, whilst another is the weirdo on campus who is probably more dangerous than that. There's girls to add temptation into everything, and testosterone running wild. More than enough ingredients to justify the bloodstained front cover and description of 'devastating' in my mind. And then... almost nothing happens. It's like Northrop sets all of this up and then sort of bottles it and to add insult to injury, the story just stops and leaves you with no pay off to all of this. It was another frustrating read, really, which could have been so much better.

I wouldn't discount Northrop in the future, but he'd have to do much better than this.