Category Archives: Book Chat

The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas

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If you are not easily offended, The Slap is one hell of a book. I just now randomly opened it and counted half a dozen raunchy references to sex and another half dozen expletives. Tsiolkas throws around the ‘c’ word like he’s talking about making a cup of tea. Yet, The Slap is a very human story, albeit one filled with polarizing characters.

At our book club discussion, our moderator (that’s the person who chooses the book) asked us to write the name of the most reprehensible character on a slip of paper. Then she asked us to name the most sympathetic character. She wanted our thoughts on paper before we began talking and were swayed by opposing opinions. Then we began to discuss the book, the premise of which is simple enough. A group of disparate characters gather at the Melbourne home of Hector and Aisha for a barbeque. Hector is a gorgeous Greek man and Aisha is from India and owns her own veterinary clinic. They have a couple young kids. There are cousins and parents and friends and co-workers in attendance. One of the guests slaps the face of four-year-old, Hugo, who was going to — so the slapper thought — bash his son with a cricket bat. Hugo’s parents press charges.

But The Slap isn’t really a book about what becomes of Hugo and his parents or how the trial plays out. Tsiolkas drops in and out of the lives of various characters (one at a time a la Jodi Picoult only WAY more sophisticated and profane), giving us snapshots of their lives and insight into their feelings about the slap. We don’t hear from every character at the bbq and, interestingly enough, some of the characters we do hear from seem like unusual choices. The beauty of the book, though, is that we do get to know the characters well, feeling empathy, admiration and repulsion in equal measure – sometimes all at once for the same character.

The Slap, as another member of our group pointed out, is quite unlike anything else our group has ever read…and that’s saying something considering we’ve been meeting for 13 years. It isn’t just the language — which takes some getting used to even for someone like me who has been known to drop the occasional ‘f-bomb.’ Several of us agreed that we had a visceral reaction to the book and the characters: hard drinking, racist, violent, irreverent and funny drug users – the whole lot.  The Slap is thrumming with energy. It is almost impossible to put down.

Tsiolkas has important things to say about love, though – not just the love between a man and a woman, but the love between friends,  and parents and children.

This, finally, was love. This was its shape and essence, once the lust and ecstasy and danger and adventure had gone. Love, at its core, was negotiation, the surrender of two individuals to the messy, banal, domestic realities of sharing a life together. In this way, in love, she could secure a familiar happiness.

The Slap is an excellent novel.

40 Things I Want To Tell You – Alice Kuipers

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Amy, or Bird as she is called by those nearest and dearest, is a list maker. She’s super organized and has her future planned down to the last detail.

Read chapter for History

Essay for English.

Start “Top Tips” Section

Tidy room and pack bag for school tomorrow

Bird is 16 and lives with her mother and father in a London suburb. From her bedroom window, she can look over into Griffin’s bedroom window. Bird and Griffin have been best friends since they were kids and Griffin and his family moved into the house next door. Recently, though, their relationship has morphed into something more romantic.

Bird seems to have it all together – so together, in fact, that she runs an advice column on a website. There are cracks though: in her relationship with Griffin, in her parents’ marriage, in her own life.  And Bird is about to learn that the best laid plans… Meet Pete Loewen.

I raised my gaze to see a guy lounging against the open doorway. I couldn’t help but notice that he was really hot. …He was older than us. He wore jeans and a black shirt with the words Born to Diescrawled over it. His sandy blond hair hung slightly long, like he hadn’t got round to cutting it, and he had stubble on his jaw line. he managed to look like he didn’t care about his appearance at all, and yet he was one of the – No, he was the most gorgeous man who’d ever walked into our school.

40 Things I Want To Tell You worked on many levels. Bird is engaging and intelligent. Pete is mysterious and, well, hot. When Bird’s world starts to careen off course, her problems are realistic and relate-able.

But one thing about this book did not work for me and that was the relationship between Bird and Pete. It’s not that I didn’t buy their instant attraction. It’s not that I didn’t buy where that attraction led them (*use your imagination*). It’s just that nothing about Pete’s story is fleshed out. There are all sorts of rumours swirling around about him, but we’re not privy to any of his back-story,  and neither is  Bird. It makes it hard to care for him, especially because he acts like a jerk to her.  And then he doesn’t. Then Bird acts like a jerk. But the problem is, I couldn’t ever root for them to be together – although perhaps I wasn’t supposed to.

That said – I gobbled up 40 Things I Want To Tell You pretty quickly and I will happily add it to my class library. I am sure my female students will love it.

The Death of Jayson Porter – Jaime Adoff

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The Death of Jayson Porteris a book that took me way outside of my comfort zone. I don’t mean my reading comfort zone, I mean my human comfort zone. This is a YA novel that packs a significant punch.

Sixteen-year-old Jayson lives with his drug and alcohol addicted mother, Lizzie, in a high rise slum called Sunny Gardens in Bandon, Florida.

Sunny Gardens. The last stop for single moms and their messed-up kids. The last stop before the streets. Sunny Gardens, where the elevators are always broke – but not as broke as the people living here. Where crack is bought and sold like they trade stocks on Wall Street. Shootin’ with needles and guns while I’m tryin’ to do my homework. Babies cryin’ ’cause they hungry.

Jayson takes the reader through hot, hopeless days while he tries to balance school, work and a mother who abuses him physically and emotionally. His father is long gone, although Jayson does visit him a couple times.His life is complicated further by the fact that his mother is white and his father is black, so he isn’t really a part of either world. Jayson is one of those kids you root for, but you also wonder how he’s ever going to survive.

He wonders, too.  In fact, he often contemplates jumping from the railing of his apartment building, imagines what it would be like to be “a bullet screaming to the ground.”

Here’s the bit that was out of my comfort zone. I don’t have any real experience with ‘project’ living. I don’t know any crack addicts or hookers. As a mother, I can’t imagine beating my kids the way Jayson’s mother beats him. And even though I understand that this is fiction, I also know that there are kids out there who live like this. So, the book touched a nerve.

Adoff captures Jayson’s fear and misery. The writing is immediate and unembellished, sometimes even reading like poetry.  There is very little in Jayson’s life that is joyful, but finally and thankfully, there is hope.

Until It’s Over – Nicci French

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I can honestly say I’ve been a Nicci French (husband and wife team, Sean French and Nicci Gerrard) for over a decade, but I may have to quit them after reading Until It’s Over.

Astrid Bell is in her early 20s and works as a bike messenger in London. She lives in a huge house with university pals Pippa and her former boyfriend (and owner of the house) Miles. They share the space with Mick, Dario, Davy and Owen. They’re a family, in a sense.

Until It’s Over opens with an accident. Astrid is riding home from work and is almost at her house when someone opens their car door and Astrid goes flying off her bike. The woman in the car is a neighbour and she’s mortified at the accident she’s caused. Astrid is unhurt except for minor cuts and bruises. But later, the woman turns up dead. And hers is just the first murder connected to Astrid Bell.

Until It’s Over is supposed to be a mystery. About two thirds of the way through, though, the narration changes. Instead of following Astrid’s first person narration, we suddenly find ourselves in the killer’s head. I guess this was so we could understand their motivation. Um. The killer is Crazy.

Nicci French is usually such a dependable author –books that are page turning, psychologically complex and fun. Until It’s Over was none of those things. I didn’t believe in (or care about) any of the characters. It wasn’t suspenseful. I often felt myself shaking my head in disbelief at the way characters interacted each other in a sort of oh please way.

I think if you’ve never read Nicci French – you absolutely should. But don’t read this. Read Killing Me Softly (which remains my favourite) or The Safe House.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson

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Helen Simonson’s debut novel Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is the next best thing to spending a holiday in the English countryside. When we meet the title character, Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired), he’s just received the news that his younger brother, Bertie, has died. He’s trying, rather unsuccessfully, to cope with the news when Mrs. Ali, proprietress of the local village shop, appears at his door to collect the paper money. She takes note of his unsteady appearance and  offers to make him a cup of tea. Thus begins their relationship.

Mrs. Ali was, he half suspected, an educated woman, a person of culture. Nancy had been such a rare person, too, fond of her books and of little chamber concerts in village churches. But she had left him alone to endure the blunt tweedy concerns of the other women of their acquaintance. Women who talked horses and raffles at the hunt hall and who delighted in clucking over which unreliable young mother from the council cottages had messed up  arrangements for this week’s play group at the Village Hall. Mrs. Ali was more like Nancy. She was a butterfly to their scuffle of pigeons. He acknowledged a notion that he might wish to see Mrs. Ali again outside of the shop, and wondered whether this might be proof that he was not as ossified as his sixty-eight years, and the limited opportunities of village life, might suggest.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is one of those little gems of a novel – beautifully written, with characters so remarkably authentic they seem to jump off the page. Pettigrew is a widower and Mrs. Ali, too, has lost a spouse. They are drawn together because of a shared love of Kipling, but they live in a small town – everysmalltown, really, where everyone knows your name and your business – and not everyone would have them together. Although Mrs. Ali was born in England, she’s Pakistani and therefore viewed by some as ‘unsuitable.’ I think Pettigrew’s feelings for her take him quite by surprise.  I suspect he thought that at 68, that part of his life was over.

In some ways, Pettigrew is a stuffed shirt. He likes things ‘just so.’ He desires attention and often  believes he’s entitled. The beautiful thing about him, though, is his willingness to change, and he does, too. His relationship with his son, a pompous banker who lives in London, undergoes a transformation. He starts to care less about tangible things, like a pair of shotguns that had once belonged to his father, and more about feelings and people.

To say that nothing much happens in Simonson’s novel is to miss the quiet patina of daily  life – much of which, at least as it’s written here, is laugh out loud funny. As people plan parties that can only go awry, as children squabble over their rightful inheritance, as the battle-lines are drawn between cultures, Major Pettigrew tries to find a way to navigate the messy business of living. He is proof that life does offer second chances, if we are brave enough to open our hearts to receive them.

The Ask and the Answer – Patrick Ness

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Oh, Todd. Oh, Viola.  You’re breaking my heart.

Patrick Ness has done it again with the second book in his Chaos Walking trilogy. When we left Todd and Viola in The Knife of Never Letting Go, they were running for their lives into the town of Haven. Well, Todd was running at least; Viola had been shot.

Haven turns out to be exactly the opposite; the pair are captured and separated. When Todd comes to, he is tied to a chair and the Mayor (remember how evil he was in the last book? You ain’t seen nothing yet!) is interrogating him. But all Todd can think about is Viola.

“Where is she?” I spit into the dark, tasting blood, my voice croaking, my Noise rising like a sudden hurricane, high and red and furious. “WHERE IS SHE?”

“I will be the one doing the asking here, Todd.

That voice.

The opening scene in The Ask and the Answer is but a taste of the horrors to come. Ness doesn’t pull any punches: literally.  Haven has been taken by the Mayor and his men and Todd finds himself separated from Viola.  No one is safe and the lines between who is good and who is not are constantly shifting.

The Ask and the Answer is about war. The themes are universal: outsiders rounded up like cattle and branded; a leader crazy for power (or perhaps just plain crazy), and two kids trying desperately to make meaning and find a way to do the least damage.So much comes at them and I often forgot that they were just kids. That was the hardest thing to believe about the whole book: Todd is supposed to have just turned 13 and he seems a lifetime older.  But I am looking at him from my cushy, never-been-in-war, perspective. Who knows what you might be capable of if there was no alternative.

And that question is at the very centre of Ness’ terrific book. If you had no choice – what would you do? If you thought all was lost – what would you do? People constantly surprised me in this book, particularly the Mayor’s son, Davy. It’s a testimony to Ness’ considerable talent that he is able to make Davy sympathetic.

As for Todd and Viola – they continue to be resourceful and bloody amazing and true to each other is ways that are both heart-breaking and inspiring. They’re so brave and so resilient, I hated to leave them again.

Book three, coming up: Monsters of Men

Played – Dana Davidson

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I am slowly working my way through all the books I bought for my classroom library. I want to be able to put books into the hands of my students and to be able to say something meaningful about them. Although I am way past my teen years, I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by the calibre of the teen fiction out there today. I’m not talking about the mega hits like Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series which, sure, teens read en masse but which I can’t say is quality literature by any stretch.  I’m not talking about better-written fare like The Hunger Games. I’m talking about those quiet, often over-looked, books that speak directly to young adults about things they care about and things they worry about: divorce, illness, love, sex,  abuse, drugs and alcohol. Those sorts of books were few and far between when I was growing up – which is why everyone and their dog read Judy Blume’s novel, Forever or Go Ask Alice by Anonymous.

Dana Davidson’s novel Played tells the story of handsome and talented Ian Striver, a boy who does know the difference between right and wrong, but who also wants – more than anything – to be accepted into an elite group at his school. Ian has made it past the induction phase of FBI (Freaky Boys Incorporated) but now he must pass one final test: he has to bed someone chosen for him by members of the FBI.

Kylie is the girl and it is impossible not to fall in love with her. She’s smart, she’s kind, she values the right things (her family: single mom and her younger brother and sister) and even when a little voice tells her that it can’t be possible that a boy like Ian could fall for a plain girl like her, she allows herself to fall in love with him.

Ian, on the other hand, was so fine and so popular that he could have any girl he wanted. Kylie wasn’t sure what, but she felt that something wasn’t quite right.

But the truth was that she wanted something more to happen to her. She went to school, took care of her siblings, kept their house clean, did her homework and saw her girlfriends from time to time. But that wasn’t enough. It seemed to Kylie that a perfectly healthy, reasonably intelligent teenage girl ought to be able to get into more than that. Kylie felt as if her life was more like that of a thirty-five-year-old than that of a sixteen-year-old. So while she had her suspicions about why Ian was taking time with her, she was going to let it ride and see where it took her.

While Ian does set out to play Kylie for his own gain, Davidson does a terrific job of making him likeable and complicated. Played does not play out exactly as the reader might anticipate and I enjoyed it a great deal.

34/365

Before I Go To Sleep – SJ Watson

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What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

Memories are a bit of a problem for the protagonist of SJ Watson’s debut novel Before I Go To Sleep. Twenty years ago, Christine was in a serious accident that left her without the ability to retain memories. That means every morning she wakes up in a room she doesn’t recognize, with a husband she doesn’t remember and in a body she’s troubled to discover is twenty years older than it should be. She muddles through the day, trying to piece her fractured life back together – with the knowledge that she’s going to have to do it all over again the next day. That’s right: she goes to sleep and her brain erases all the memories of the day.

Before I Go To Sleep was my book club’s first read for 2012 and was also my pick. We had a lively discussion about the book’s merits and I am happy to say that with a few minor caveats, the women in my group (except for one) generally enjoyed the book.

The general concensus was that Watson did an admirable job of writing a convincing female – not an easy task, I don’t think. We had a little bit of a debate about the novel’s structure. At least one person was put off by constantly having to re-read the story, rediscovering memories as Christine did. I actually think that it was deftly handled. If I am feeling frustrated by having to hear stuff over and over, imagine how trapped by her circumstances Christine must be feeling. 🙂

I alo think Watson was striving to write something more than just a thriller – although he did that quite handily. I think he was trying to say something about memory and how our memories shape us. It’s a fear of mine, really, to be old and not know my children or the other people who have been important to me. Christine’s situation means that she is forced to learn painful information over and over again – and it’s heartbreaking.

The book had me in its iron grip until the last 50 or so pages- when I have to say that it fell apart for me. It wasn’t that I didn’t buy a certain part of it (and, really, it’s  almost impossible to talk about without giving anything away), let me just say this: too much convenient exposition. Too neat.

That said, Before I Go To Sleep was a great way to kick off our 12th reading year.

SJ Watson talks about the book and his writing here.

21/365

 

Right Behind You – Gail Giles

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On the afternoon on his seventh birthday, I set Bobby Clarke on fire.

I was nine.

It was all about Bobby’s birthday present.

A baseball glove.

Gail Giles YA novel Right Behind You grabbed me from the start. It’s the story of Kip McFarland who lives a hardscrabble life with his father in the Alaskan wilderness. Kip’s mom has recently died of cancer, and you get the impression that Kip and his father aren’t coping too well.

When Bobby Clarke shows up to gloat about his new baseball glove, Kip overreacts and douses him with gasoline. What happens next is shocking and tragic and changes Kip’s life forever.

Kip spends the next five years of his life in a locked down psychiatric facility. The reader has a front row seat to Kip’s therapy, and his own attempts to sabotage his recovery. But life does go on for Kip and his father once Kip is released. Right Behind You drags the reader along with Kip as he struggles to reinvent himself.

This story is successful on a couple fronts. For one thing, the writing is interesting. I loved the line: The hollow inside me filled up with red mean. I liked it so much, I stopped to copy it down when I read it. I also loved Kip and that’s saying something because, let’s face it, what he does to Bobby is inexcusable even if he was only nine. He’s smart and he has the ability to scratch beneath the surface of his own psyche. He doesn’t always like what he finds, but that’s what makes him human.

The story takes us from Alaska to the Texan coast and even though several years transpire, I never felt as though Giles was rushing to the conclusion. And when Kip gets there – to the next part of his story – readers will wish him peace because he’s earned it.

14/365

Graveminder – Melissa Marr

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Melissa Marr’s first novel for adults (she’s better known for her YA novel series Wicked Lovely) was my first read in 2012. Actually I started Graveminder  in 2011 and was hoping to get it finished but I just couldn’t manage it. Graveminder was recently voted Best Horror novel at Goodreads, but it’s been on my radar for a few months and I was really looking forward to reading it.

So, so disappointed.

The premise of Graveminder is actually quite intriguing. When Rebekkah Barrow’s grandmother, Maylene, is murdered, Rebekkah comes back to the town where she grew up. Claysville is not like other towns; it has strange traditions, particularly where the dead are concerned.

Matlene was a graveminder.

If anything happens to me, you mind her grave and mine the first three months. Just like when you go with me, you take care of the graves. …Promise me.

Rebekkah, as it turns out, is a graveminder, too. Her job – which she knows nothing about until she returns to Claysville, is to guard the graves of the dead.

Her return to Claysville is complicated by her on again off again relationship with Byron,  the town’s undertaker.  (Graveminder, undertaker – sounds like a couple wresters,eh?) Byron was Rebekkah’s sister’s high school sweetheart until tragedy struck and now Rebekkah just can’t seem to get it together where Byron’s concerned. These unresolved feelings make up a large part of the novel’s energy – but not in a good way.

None of Graveminder actually lives up to the promise of the plot.  The writing is generally clunky, the characters vacillate between annoying and insipid and many promising plot threads are never satisfactorily resolved.  Rebekkah continually pushes Byron away and they have the same conversation over and over – like they are 12 – drove me c-r-a-z-y.  Their interaction was not adult in any way.

Graveminder wasn’t scary, either. The premise was: the dead must be tended or maybe they’ll come back and if they do – watch out. Also, Marr has created an intriguing ‘other’ world, a place where the dead go and live. The thing is, it feels like she’s dropping the reader into the middle of a story – where questions are asked but never answered.

If there’s a sequel coming, I won’t be reading.

11/365