2018

A bookish look back: 2018 in review

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Although it doesn’t look like Jamie did one this year, here’s my year-end review pinched from The Perpetual Page-Turner

I have deleted some of her questions and added a few of my own, but the credit belongs to Jamie.

In addition, here’s a link to my Goodreads Year in Books, a fun little infographic.

 

Number of Books You Read:  54 + 2 rereads for school

You can see my shelf here

Number of Books You Re-Read: 3, but I only really count That Was Then, This is Now because I reread To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby every year I teach grades 10 and 12.

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Best Book You Read In 2018?

Best YA: Sadie by Courtney Summers sadie

I read a lot of terrific YA this year, but Summers is always a cut above.

Runners up include: Mosquitoland  by David Arnold, The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (which, incidentally, was the #1 best selling Canadian book for 2018), Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

My-Sunshine-AwayBest Other: My Sunshine Away –  M.O. Walsh

Runner Up: We All Love the Beautiful Girls – Joanne Proulx

Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t?

Final Girls – Riley Sager

This should have been right up my alley, but it was really just a ‘meh’ for me.

Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read in 2018? 

I was surprised at the positive buzz many of the books I really (really) disliked received.  For example, people LOVED Beartown and I detested that book. I also was not a fan of The Light Between Oceans and it got a lot of praise.

Book You “Pushed” The Most People To Read (And They Did) In 2018?

I probably pimped My Sunshine Away the most. So good.

Favorite new author you discovered in 2018?

I would definitely read anything M.O. Walsh wrote. I also enjoyed YA authors David Arnold and Becky Albertalli.

The-Woman-in-the-Window-A_-J_-FinnMost action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

I read a lot of ‘thrillers’ this year. I really enjoyed The Woman in the Window.

That was a fun book to read.

I also really loved (and couldn’t put down) I Will Always Write Back because I was so invested in the real-life correspondence between Martin and Caitlin.

 

 

Favourite cover of a book you read in 2018?

I was really drawn to the cover of Frances Hardinge’s YA fantasy Cuckoo Song cuckoo song

It’s got that whole creepy doll thing working for it.

Most memorable character of 2018?

Sadie from the book by the same name. Hands down. She broke my heart.

But I actually encountered several memorable characters this year and I would be remiss to leave them out.

Runners Up: Mim from Mosquitoland; Joe from You; Frenchie from The Marrow Thieves and Simon from Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Most beautifully written book read in 2018?

My Sunshine Away

Honestly, that book had it all. It’s a page-turner, it’s heart-breaking, it’s so beautifully written. Read it.

 

 

Most Thought-Provoking/ Life-Changing Book of 2018?

I don’t think I read any life-changing books in 2018, but I certainly read books that were challenging, Margaux Fragoso’s memoir Tiger, Tiger and and thought-provoking,  I Will Always Write Back by Caitlin Alifirenka & Martin Ganda w/ Liz Welch.

Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2018?

I could quote a million things from My Sunshine Away, but then that would ruin the pleasure of reading those words for the first time and you are going to read that book, right? Instead, I will leave you with this little gem from Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda.

…people really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it’s a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.

Shortest & Longest Book You Read In 2018?

That Was Then This is Now – S.E. Hinton, 159 pages

Into the Darkest Corner – Elizabeth Haynes, 450 pages

Book That Shocked You The Most (Because of a plot twist, character death, left you hanging with your mouth wide open, etc.)

Courtney Summers….I’m looking at you!

OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!)

Simon & Blue – Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda

(OTP = one true pairing if you aren’t familiar)

Favorite Non-Romantic Relationship of The Year

Martin & Caitlin – I Will Always Write Back

Favorite Book You Read in 2018 From an Author You’ve Read Previously

Sadie – Courtney Summers

Newest fictional crush from a book you read in 2018?

I loved Beck from Mosquitoland.

Best 2018 debut you read?

Probably The Woman in the Window

Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?

Hands down, Cuckoo Song 

Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?

Geesh, looking back over the books I read in 2018…they’re all pretty gloomy. Most FUN to read? Maybe Simon because I just loved him and his friends so much.

Book That Made You Cry or Nearly Cry in 2018?

There were definitely some lump-in-the-throat moments while reading The Marrow Thieves

Also, not gonna lie, My Sunshine Away and I Will Always Write Back gave me all the feels. I was too devastated by Sadie to actually cry.

Hidden Gem Of The Year?

I know, I keep saying it, but My Sunshine Away was a complete surprise.

Book That Crushed Your Soul?

Sadie. I had to wait a few days before I wrote my review. Seriously.

Most Unique Book You Read In 2018?

Again, I have to give it to Sadie. If you have not yet discovered Courtney Summers, you are in for a treat…and by treat I mean prepare to be devastated by just about everything she writes. In a good way.

Book That Made You The Most Mad (doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t like it)?

 

 

OMG – so many books pissed me off this year with their suckiness.

The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George

Beartown – Frederick Backman

Dear Mrs. Bird – AJ Pearce

 

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Favorite review that you wrote in 2018?

Although I was not even remotely fond of the book, I like my review of The Little Paris Bookshop

Best discussion/non-review post you had on your blog?

My trip to Italy and Paris in July.

Best moment of bookish/blogging life in 2018?

I love when I get to interact with authors – usually when they respond to a tweet about their book. This one was my favourite of 2018:

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Most Popular Post This Year On Your Blog (whether it be by comments or views)?

Incidentally, it was my review of Rob Lowe’s book Stories I Only Tell My Friends which received the most views (and some retweets, too).

Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself at the beginning of this year?

I set my reading goal at 50 this year…just so I wouldn’t be disappointed if I didn’t make it. I definitely had some reading struggles this year, but overall, it was a good reading year.

looking-ahead-books-2015-1024x278One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2018 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2019? Oh, please. I did do a cull of my tbr shelf…and by that I mean I took all the books off the shelves and read the blurbs and sorted them into piles of donate/reshelve/read in 2019, but let’s face it…rules are made to be broken.

Book You Are Most Anticipating for 2019 (non-debut)?

My son gave me J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst’s novel Ship of Theseus for Christmas. We’ve long been intrigued by this books, so I am looking forward to reading it.

I wrote that in 2015! Still haven’t read the book because I think it requires some dedication. That said, it did make it onto the 2019 reading pile.

2019 Debut You Are Most Anticipating

There are probably loads of books I will want to read, but I just found out that Tim Johnston has a new book, The Current,  coming out in January and I will definitely be purchasing that because I loved Descent

One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging Life In 2019

Stay the course.

 

Ruthless – Carolyn Lee Adams

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2E11B418-C156-499C-B40A-C90F9802D4A7Seventeen-year-old Ruth Carver has a nickname on the show-riding circuit: Ruthless. She earned the name by being single-minded  when it comes to competitions, but it’s more than that. At the ranch, it’s “sink or swim” and Ruth lives by that motto. Ruth also understands that her success in the ring will benefit her parents’ struggling ranch. She’ll do whatever it takes to win, even if that means pushing other people away from her. That includes Caleb, the boy who loves her.

Carolyn Lee Adams’ YA novel Ruthless is a thrill-ride of a novel. It starts when Ruth wakes up in the back of a pickup truck, buried in a mound of manure, hay and shavings. She’s hurt and she soon realizes that she is in trouble, serious trouble.

The trouble comes in the shape of a man Ruth nicknames Wolfman.

He is tall and big, with a large, black beard and bushy eyebrows. He has strange hazel-orange eyes. He reminds me of a wolf.

Ruth remembers him from the ranch. “I kept seeing that wolf-looking guy, and that wolf-looking guy kept seeing me,” Ruth recalls. So “I told Dad to fire him.” Seems like Wolfman is the kind of guy to carry a grudge.

Wolfman aka Jerry Balls, is a smart and dogged  psychopath.  He punishes girls who he feels are deserving and Ruth can see that “He hates me in a way that I didn’t know was possible.”

So here is Ruth, trapped with a psycho in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Left alone when Wolfman is called in to work, she discovers that she is not his first victim, but she is determined that she will be his last. Her breathless escape from his cabin is just the start of 200+ pages of pulse-pounding reading.

If you’re wondering how Ruth is going to manage getting and staying away from Wolfman in the middle of nowhere, in terrain she doesn’t know, without supplies…well, that’s part of what makes Lee’s novel so compelling. Failing is not an option here and readers soon discover that Ruth is every bit as tenacious as Wolfman.

There is nothing graphic about this book, although the threat is imminent. Wolfman is also not a one-dimensional character; his story is told through a series of flashbacks. Doesn’t make him any more sympathetic, but you still get a glimpse into how he might have ended up the way he did.

We also see a bit of Ruth’s story from pre her abduction. One surprisingly prescient snippet recalls a conversation she has with her family. Her grandfather, once a sheriff, is offering advice should she ever be taken. He tells her “Don’t ever let them take you to a second location.” Her father offers “May God have mercy on the soul of the poor bastard who ever dared try.” Truer words.

Ruthless is terrific.

One Day in December – Josie Silver

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I expect to be in the minority here, but I really didn’t see the charm of Josie Silver’s B697342F-E7EB-45CA-8ED5-439900BCD1C2novel One Day in December. It’s a book that depends on the chemistry of the central characters, Laurie and Jack, and our willingness to believe that a fleeting eye-lock might actually change the trajectory of someone’s life.

Laurie lives with her bestie, Sarah. They live in London, working post-college jobs and bemoaning their love lives (or lack thereof) over weird little sandwiches made with chicken, blue cheese, mayo and cranberry.

One day on the bus, Laurie locks eyes with a stranger waiting at a bus stop.

We are staring straight at each other and I can’t look away. I feel my lips move as if I’m going to say something, God knows what, and all of a sudden and out of nowhere I need to get off this bus. I’m gripped with the overwhelming urge to go outside, to get to him. But I don’t.

Laurie spends the next year boo-hooing about the boy, looking for him everywhere she goes, determined that he’s the one. And then, there he is. It’s a Christmas miracle. Except maybe not so much because it turns out that the love of Laurie’s life is Sarah’s new boyfriend.

Silver toggles the narrative between Laurie and Jack, so that we get to see just how tortured and two-sided these star-crossed lovers are. Because  – of course –  Jack remembers Laurie from the bus and  – of course –  he hopes she doesn’t realize who he is because he is trying “to establish her place in [his] head as Sarah’s friend rather than the girl I saw once and have thought of often since.” Even though Sarah is smoking hot he worries that if he and Sarah break up she’ll “spirit Laurie away with her.”

Ah, the tangled web.

Jack and Laurie’s relationship morphs over the ten years of the novel. That’s a lot of time to be pining for someone else. Laurie runs away to Thailand for a time and there she meets Oscar, a London banker, “but not a wanker”, who is “funny, self-deprecating, and when he looks at [her] there’s a kindness in his eyes that warms [her].” Truthfully, he’s an altogether nicer bloke than Jack.

But the heart wants what it wants, I guess. At least that’s the premise of Silver’s confection. You’ll need to believe in Jack and Laurie to fall in love with the book. I didn’t care about either of them.

Inexcusable – Chris Lynch

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inexcusableAlthough I teach high school English and although Chris Lynch is a prolific writer of award-winning YA literature, his novel Inexcusable is the first of his books I’ve read. This particular novel was a National Book Award finalist, as well as top of  many other “Best of” lists. School Library Journal called it “A finely crafted and thought-provoking page-turner.”

Keir Sarafian is a high school football player and an all-around decent guy. That’s what his single dad, Ray, tells him. That’s what his older sisters, Mary and Fran, tell him. That’s what his class and team mates tell him. So that’s what Keir believes.

When Inexcusable opens Keir tells us that “The way it looks is not the way it is.” From that intriguing opening, we follow Keir through the last few weeks of his high school career. We watch him play a never-ending game of Risk with his father. We watch him take down a player on an opposing football team, a hit which seriously injures the other player and earns Keir several scholarship offers and the nickname “Killer.”

Lynch carefully layers the character of Keir. He’s an affable guy. On the surface, at least, he seems to have it all.

I got along, and got along well. Got along with staff, with teachers and lunch ladies. Got along with guys, with athletes I knew before but knew better now, guys who were studs at basketball, or even guys who played sports that didn’t matter, like tennis. I got along with smart kids like debate, as well as with guys who sat around glassy-eyed and famously did nothing at all.

Keir wants to be liked. “I hate it when people I love scream at me,” he admits, which is one of the reasons he so admires his father. And because he so admires his father, Keir realizes that he “had to be a good guy if you were Ray Sarafian’s kid. You couldn’t possibly be anything less.”

But the real truth about Keir Sarafian is something different. And Lynch unspools Keir’s story  – which is really the story of what happens between Keir and his beautiful classmate Gigi Boudakian on prom night – with care. I felt my feelings about Keir constantly shifting.

Lynch explains in his preface for the 10th anniversary edition of the book that “The novel remains the supreme art for serious investigation for these troubled-troubling individuals who do things that appall us…There are no excuses for doing something deplorable. There is just the story behind the story. And if at the end of one of these stories we cannot feel empathy and compassion for the deplorable character, that is not at all unreasonable. But the hope really is that we might come away with a bit of understanding for a human condition we did not particularly want to understand before.”

What is so remarkable about Lynch’s novel is the way Keir’s version of events – even his version of the kind of young man he is – is so out of sync with the way things actually are.

Good guys don’t do bad things. Good guys understand that no means no, and so I could not have done this because I understand, and I love Gigi Boudakian.

Inexcusable  is a timely, well-written and ultimately devastating story which will offer plenty of opportunities for discussion for mature readers.

 

The Boy Who Drew Monsters – Keith Donohue

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Who in the hell knows what really happens in Keith Donohue’s odd but utterly 108FC969-09A2-4584-905C-31766A67CC7Bcompelling novel The Boy Who Drew Monsters. I mean, sure, I could follow the story’s claustrophobic narrative, but at the end of the day I was still shaking my head and going WTF.

Holly and Tim live with their son, ten-year-old Jack Peter, in a small town on the coast of Maine. Jack Peter has never been 100% okay, but when he was seven he almost drowned and since then he “has not suffered easily any human touch.” He also can’t bear leaving the house; if not for his friend Nick, and his parents, Jack Peter would be completely isolated.

Jack Peter had been an inside boy for over three years. Hadn’t been to school, rarely left the house. One by one, his few old friends had nearly forgotten about him, and they always gave Nick grief for continuing his strange friendship.

These characters are isolated anyway. Their community is scattered; Jack Peter and his parents live way out on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It’s winter and constant snow is always further isolating them – so it seems.

Things are about to get slightly creepier, though. For example, driving Nick home one night, Tim sees something unsettling.

Uncoiling, the white mass transformed itself into a living figure rising from a crouch, its pale skin glowed sepulchral blue in the moonlight and it turned with a hunch of its shoulders and began to shuffle away.

Holly starts to have strange visions, too. She imagines the dead from a ship which sank off the coast. One night, home alone with Jack Peter, a “rapid-fire staccato that traveled the length of the waterfront wall” of her house startles her into exiting the house in her slippers to investigate.

As each of the small cast of characters in this novel are visited by stranger and stranger hallucinations – if that’s even what they can be called – Jack Peter’s behaviour grows increasingly more strange. He draws incessantly. And guess what he draws? Yep.

The Boy Who Drew Monsters, not gonna lie, was a weird one for me. I can’t really say with any certainty that I actually knew what was going on. It’s sort of a horror novel by way of the gothic, and sort of a family drama, too. For a while I thought Jack Peter might be autistic and then I started to doubt that diagnosis. When I closed the final page, I still wasn’t certain what I had just read, but I’ve certainly never read anything else like it.

jake, reinvented – Gordon Korman

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jake reinventedGordon Korman’s YA novel jake, reinvented takes a page straight out of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic,  The Great Gatsby. Like, straight out of it. This is the story of Rick, a high school kid who is only marginally cool because he is the kicker and back-up quarterback for the F. Scott Fitzgerald (yep!) high school football team and hangs out with Todd Buckley, the team’s hyper-masculine starting quarterback.

Rick Paradis is an observer, much in the same as Nick Carraway watched the action in The Great Gatsby. When the story opens, he’s observing a raucous party being held at the un-parented home of new-to-town Jake Garrett, the football team’s new long-snapper. It’s the first of many Friday night parties that Jake hosts, each one getting bigger and more out-of-control.

Jake is an enigma. He watches his house getting trashed with an “unruffled calm.” His speech is peppered with ‘baby’ as in “Good hang time, baby”, I suspect an outdated tag even back in 2003 when the book was published.

He looked like he just waltzed off the pages of the J. Crew catalog, or maybe Banana Republic. I mean, nothing he was wearing was all that special – just a plaid shirt, untucked over a white tee and khakis. But everything went together perfectly, and hung on him with that rumpled casual effect that you can’t get by being casual. This guy worked it.

Jake befriends Rick, pulling him into his orbit. It seems like an odd friendship at first, but Rick does have something that Jake needs: a connection to Didi, Todd’s self-absorbed, but perfect girlfriend.

Like in Fitzgerald’s novel, none of these characters are particularly likeable. Todd aka Tom is a big-feeling womanizer; Didi aka Daisy is vapid and spineless; Rick is an observer who is soon calling himself Jake’s bestie, but I was never really sure how they managed to get to that place beyond acquaintances.

The novel’s plot mirrors Fitzgerald’s too, so for anyone familiar with that book, this book will not require much effort. And love or hate Fitzgerald’s novel, there’s no denying the quality of the writing. Korman’s novel suffers a little by comparison in that department.

On the other hand, Korman’s novel does speak to that crappy period of time when you are no longer a kid, but you are not quite an adult. There aren’t any of those (adults, I mean) in this novel, anyway. These kids are pretty much left to their own devices. Like Gatsby, everything Jake has done, the persona he has manufactured for himself, has been done to attract the attention of Didi. Is she worthy of his love? Probably not. As Rick says to Jake: “They’re crappy people. You’re worth more than the lot of them put together.”

As an homage to its source material, jake, reinvented will likely speak to any teen who has desperately wanted to reinvent themselves. And if it encourages students to read The Great Gatsby, then that’s a win in my book.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends – Rob Lowe

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I was more of a Robby Benson than a Rob Lowe fan back in the day. I guess they were sort of popular around the same time, give or take a few years. 0D9E8612-E728-46F5-8D69-9E382FBC38EFRob Lowe’s autobiography Stories I Only Tell My Friends, however, made for riveting reading, and the same can not be said for Robby Benson’s novel Who Stole the Funny.

Lowe was born in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1964. He moved with his mother and father to Dayton, Ohio when he was still an infant. His parents chose Dayton because it was “a bustling, growing city,”  home to many national companies. Lowe’s father was a lawyer; his mother gave up her job as a high school English teacher to stay home and raise her son. Four years later, Lowe’s brother, Chad, was born.

Lowe got an early start in the acting business in Dayton. A trip to see a production of Oliver!  turned out to be a “a transformational experience” for ten-year-old Lowe. A few weeks later,  he participated in a community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz. Lowe notes that his parents (well, his mom and step-father because by then his parents were divorced) would have had “no way of knowing how deeply affected I’d been, how electrified I was by the age-old connection of actors, material and audience…that was a club I wanted to belong to.”

Flash forward a few years and the family has moved to Malibu, California.

An entire book could (and should) be written about Malibu in 1976. In the bicentennial sunlight of that year, it was a place of rural beauty where people still rode to the local market on horseback and tied up to a hitching post in the parking lot. Long before every agent and studio president knocked down the beach shacks to build their mega mansions, Malibu was populated by a wonderful mix of normal working-class families, hippies, asshole surfers, drugged-out reclusive rock stars, and the odd actor or two.

It is during this period that Lowe begins to pursue acting in earnest, and also lands the role that will turn him into a household name.

Stories I Only Tell My Friends is an honest, self-deprecating look at fame and its rewards and consequences. It’s a who’s who of the times, which makes it especially fun to read if you are of the same vintage as Lowe…which I am. I loved reading about Lowe’s participation in The Outsiders. He’s candid about his career highs and lows, and about his prodigious romantic interludes (some clearly less to do with romance and more to do with sex – but look at the guy.) Lowe is aware that he’s a good-looking (great looking, really) man, but he never comes across as full of himself. He’s also honest about how he abused alcohol, a hard-earned perspective that comes from being twenty plus years sober.

This is a really dishy memoir – not a tell-all, exactly, but a Hollywood story about a decent guy who came-of-age in the public eye, and managed to keep his wits about him. He wrote it himself and it’s funny and witty and at times it almost seems as though Lowe can’t believe the ride he’s had either.

Great book.

The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy – Kate Hattemer

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vigilanteEthan Andrezejczak attends Selwyn Academy, a fine arts high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s the narrator of Kate Hattemer’s debut YA novel The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy. His life revolves around hanging with his friends Jackson, Elizabeth and the too-cool-for-their-friend-group, Luke, and teaching Jackson’s gerbil, Baconnaise circus tricks. Ethan pines for ballerina Maura and loathes Miki Frigging Reagler from afar. Maura and Miki are two of the stars of the reality show For Art’s Sake (FAS), which is filmed at Selwyn.

They’d chosen a school (our school) and they’d chosen contestants (not me). Every episode, they had some artistic challenge and someone got kicked off. The last person standing would be crowned America’s Best Teen Artist.

Ethan and his friends are convinced that For Art’s Sake is wrecking Selwyn. Luke is especially bent out of shape because the school’s literary arts magazine refuses to publish his commentary about the TV show. “It’s a review, but mostly it’s editorial,” he tells Ethan. “I tried to suppress my snideness. I may not have been totally successful.”

The fact that someone as cool as Luke is anti-FAS is a touchstone for Ethan. When he enters Ethan’s orbit in grade seven, Ethan describes him as

the most popular prepubescent on the planet. He was impossible to dislike. That’s not hyperbole: I tried. I have a strict policy of holding automatic grudges against people everyone likes. But Luke had a mouthful of braces and said “awesome” all the time, and he was totally genuine.

It’s Luke’s idea to roast FAS in a poem. He announces “We need to reclaim our society and values and culture.”

Conquistadors, they thundered in,
And dizzy, we succumbed to spin.
They’ve colonized our native land.
What once was vivid now is bland.
We sing and dance at their command.
 – The Contracantos

 

 

Luke’s ultimately betrayal is especially hard on Ethan, but it gives him the chance to take some chances and find his own voice.

The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy plumbs the depths of poetry, friendship, loyalty, art, betrayal and growing up. These characters (and I am certainly including Baconnaise) are witty, intelligent and human. They are trying to figure it all out. They don’t always get it right, but Elizabeth asks Ethan if he thinks he’s “the only one who’s amazed and scared and freaked out by how complicated everyone is.”

This is a smart book. I highly recommend it.

The Hesitation Cut – Giles Blunt

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The Hesitation Cut is my first experience with Canadian writer Giles Blunt, who is 34AC2891-84BC-4F62-A5DA-5AAC7D6F7FEFperhaps most famous for his crime novels which feature Detective John Cardinal. (I have watched a couple of those novels brought to the small screen and have found them super intense; I can only imagine what the reading experience would be like.)

In this standalone, 30-year-old Brother William is living the cloistered life of a monk in Rochester, upstate New York. He’s been at Our Lady Of Peace for ten years, living a life punctuated by ritual. One of William’s jobs is to work in the monastery’s library and it is there he meets Lauren, a writer who has come to do research on Peter Abelard, the famous philosopher  from 12th century France, who had an ill-fated relationship with his student, Heloise.

Brother William is almost immediately smitten with Lauren. When he arrives at the library “it was like coming upon a small animal in the forest.” There is something about Lauren that draws William, like the moon pulls the water (if I can make such a clumsy comparison). He is helpless against its pull and when he notices “a scar across her wrist”, he’s done for. Lauren becomes William’s next calling. He decides she’s in trouble and he can save her.

So, he gives up his life, takes back his name (Peter, surely no coincidence) and heads to New York City. A lot of pieces click into place (his estranged brother has saved his share of the family estate, so suddenly a former monk without worldly possessions has disposable cash), he gets a job, and relatively easily in a city the size of NY, tracks Lauren down.  Although I am not sure I bought it, there’s an empty basement studio in the very same building where Lauren lives, and so Peter moves in and befriends her.

The thing about these two characters is that neither of them are even remotely likeable. While Peter pretends to be altruistic, Lauren makes no effort to hide the fact that she is damaged goods; in fact, in some ways, she seems to enjoy the wallowing.  To be fair, she tries to warn Peter:

”Peter, I have my work and nothing else. Nothing. I’m not what you think, or need, or want. I’m just a selfish bitch, you see.”

Peter almost takes this as a personal challenge. Lauren WILL love him.

Then, along comes Mick, Lauren’s former lover. He’s the proverbial bad boy, but he’s actually one of the most likeable characters in the whole book. His arrival on the scene throws Peter into a tailspin.

The Hesitation Cut was easy to read. I couldn’t put it down. Did I buy all the pieces chinking together? No. Did it matter? Probably not. Blunt has constructed a well-made play, peopled with mostly despicable characters. Whether you care about their fates won’t actually impact your enjoyment of their sad journeys.

The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George

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F96E7CCB-2F2E-4033-A1CA-9F4483B1F637A friend once told me that I was the most romantic person they’d ever met. I don’t actually think that’s true. Or, if it used to be true, it’s not true anymore. I think I am cynical about romance now and it’s through that cynical lens I read Nina George’s much lauded novel The Little Paris Bookshop which made me cringe on so, so many levels.

Jean Perdu (and as I was pointing out some of the novel’s cringe-ier moments, my son said “Perdu means lost, mom”) is a “literary apothecary”. Basically, he can find the right book for what ails you. Geesh, I can do that out of my classroom library, but whatever. He lives in Paris and sells books out of a barge docked on the Seine.

One day, a new woman moves into his apartment building. She’s left her husband and has nothing, so the concierge of his building asks if he might have a table to loan her. He does; the problem is that this table is in a room that he blocked off with a wall of books twenty years ago. For reasons.

The delivery of the table sets off a whole chain of events. The woman, Catherine, finds a letter in the table and it is this letter (and Perdu’s sudden and unexpected feelings for Catherine) which set the novel’s main narrative in motion. Because suddenly Perdu knows what happened to Manon (simply called ———-, for the first part of the story because, clearly, it’s too painful for Perdu to even say her name), the LOVE of his life. She disappeared twenty years ago and for twenty years Perdu has been healing others with his books, but not healing himself. (INSERT EYEROLL)

When he gets his first erection of the last twenty years, Perdu has no choice but to RUN AWAY. He hops onto his barge, about to make a clean getaway when suddenly he is joined by Max Jordan, a wunderkind writer who is now suffering from crippling writer’s block. So, the two of them float down the Seine – Perdu in an effort to bury the past and Max just because.  Along the way, they pick up one more guy, Cuneo.

The Little Paris Bookshop is a road trip bromance sort of novel filled with pithy observations about the world and set-pieces designed to show these dudes as enlightened beings. The women in the novel are props. Everyone is thoughtful and forgiving and treacly.

I had high hopes for this book. Paris (which I visited for the first time in July 2018), books: what’s not to love? I thought.

Le sigh.