The Winter People – Jennifer McMahon

Posted on February 26, 2016 by Christie

A few years back I read Jennifer McMahon’s debut novel Promise Not To Tell, and I enjoyed it a great deal. A couple years after that I read McMahon’s novel Dismantled, a book I did not like one bit. Now I’ve just finished reading The Winter People, and I have to say it falls sort of in between.The Winter People is a story which bounces between present day and 1908. In the past, Sara Harrison Shea lives on the farm where she grew up with her husband, Martin, and her little girl, Gertie. West Hall, Vermont is well-known for its mysteries and ghost stories, many of which center around Sara and her family farm, a house filled with secret places and, well, secrets.

In her diary, Sara writes “The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old.”

I had heard about sleepers; there was even a game we played in the schoolyard in which one child would be laid out dead in a circle of violets and forget-me-nots. Then someone would lean down and whisper magic words in the dead girl’s ear, and she would rise and chase all the other children. The first one she caught would be the next to die.

Turns out, though, there is dark magic and Sara’s Auntie, an Indian woman who cared for Sara’s dying mother before she started sleeping with Sara’s widowed father promises to “write it all down, everything I know about sleepers.” In case it’s not obvious, sleepers are people brought back from the dead, but they only exist for seven days, you, know, unless they shed blood during that time – then they live forever.

In the present, nineteen-year-old Ruthie lives in Sara’s farmhouse with her mother, Alice, and her little sister, Fawn. One morning Ruthie gets up to discover her mother is missing. Cold tea on the table, truck in the barn – vanished into thin air.

Then there’s Katherine. She’s still grieving the loss of her son, Austin, when her husband, Gary, is killed in a car accident. Thing is, he told her he was going to be one place and he was actually in West Hall. Last seen: Lou Lou’s Cafe with Alice.

These disparate threads do come together by novel’s end, but I lost interest about half-way through. The Winter People is clearly meant to be a ghost story, but once crazy Candace shows up, intent on getting the missing pages of Sara’s diary so she can sell the secret of raising the dead so she can fight for custody of her son -yeah, right about then I was…c’mon. Oh, plus there’s a gun. Two guns actually. And other crazy shenanigans. And then, a lot of exposition to tie up those pesky loose ends.

When McMahon stuck to the ghost stuff…there were some creepy moments, but The Winter People is nowhere near as good as Promise Not To Tell.

Think of a Numb3r – John Verdon

Posted on February 17, 2016 by Christie

John Verdon’s debut novel Think of a Numb3r introduces readers to retired NYC detective Dave Gurney, the man responsible for catching several well-known serial killers. Now he lives a quiet life in Walnut Crossing with his second wife, Madeleine. He spends his time “enhancing, clarifying, intensifying criminal mug shots” which he sells through gallery owner Sonya Reynolds, a woman he spends just a tad too much time thinking about.

Out of the blue he receives a message from an old college classmate, Mark Mellery. Mellery is ” the director of some sort of institute in Peony and he did a series of lectures that ran on PBS.” Mark needs Dave’s help. He’s received a cryptic note:

Do you believe in fate? I do, because I never thought I’d see you again – and then one day, there you were. It all came back: how you sound, how you move – most of all, how you think. If someone told you to think of a number, I know what number you’d think of. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. Think of any number up to a thousand – the first number that comes to your mind. Picture it. Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope.

The note is creepy; the fact that the envelope contains the very number that Mark thought of, creepier still. Mark claims that the number he thought of – 658 – “has no particular significance to me.” The note also asks Mark to send $289.87 to a post office box in Connecticut. Mark has sent the money, but the check has not been cashed. It’s a perplexing situation and Mark is looking for some guidance.

Think of a Numb3r is a well-written mystery but I found it just a tad slow. Even after the bodies start to pile up, I felt like the same evidence was being recounted too often. A lot of names to remember- DAs and other detectives and such. As for Dave, he just seems pissed off all the time. Okay – yes, there’s been tragedy in his life which may explain some of it away, but then the reconciliation with Madeleine at the end seems a little trite. We get to hear just a little too often how famous Dave is and , yeah, we get it – he’s caught some monsters.

As far as the mystery – it’s good enough. There are certainly some compelling elements – footsteps in the snow which vanish into thin air, clues left for the police which are clearly meant to demonstrate how smart the villain is. I just wish it had all unfolded a teensy bit quicker.

Pulse Pounding Thrillers

Posted on January 11, 2016 by Christie

There’s nothing I like better than a thriller; it’s my go-to genre when I want to jumpstart my reading. I love a good mystery, a page-turning, heart-pounding, protagonist in peril book that I can’t put down. I know I am not the only one who likes suspense, just look at how popular books like The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl are. I love it when you find a book with the perfect combination of creepy thrills and stellar writing, so I thought I would share five books for any readers out there who are looking for something to curl up with while the weather is crappy.

Intensity – Dean Koontz

So, I read this book about twenty years ago. Koontz is a very prolific writer of supernatural fiction. I’ve read a few of his book, but this one was totally propulsive. It’s about a Chyna Shephard, a young woman who is visiting a with her best friend’s family when really bad luck arrives in the form of serial killer Edgler Forman Vess. What follows is a thrill ride that will have you turning the pages super fast.
Instruments of Night – Thomas H. Cook

You might have to order books by American mystery writer Thomas H. Cook online because it’s rare to find him on the shelves of our local book stores-which I don’t get because he’s fabulous. The first book I ever read by Cook was called Breakheart Hill and it had a killer opening line: “This is the darkest story I ever heard and all my life I have labored not to tell it.” I had to buy it…and I’ve probably read seven or eight books by him now. One of my favourites by Cook is Instruments of Night.

It’s the story of writer Paul Graves, a man who has spent his career writing about the horrible dance between serial killer and sadist Kessler (and his accomplice, Sykes) and the man who has spent his career chasing him, Detective Slovak. Instruments of Night operates on more than one level, though. Graves has almost completed the 14th installment of his series when he is invited to upstate New York to meet with Allison Davies, mistress of an estate known as Riverwood. Fifty years ago, Allison’s best friend, Faye, was murdered on the grounds and now Allison wants Paul to “imagine what happened to Faye. And why.” Couldn’t put it down

If you like literary mysteries- you’d be hard pressed to find anyone better than Cook.
Dark Places – Gillian Flynn

So everyone knows Flynn for her novel Gone Girl, but I actually read her book Dark Places first. It’s her second novel, her first is Sharp Objects…also really good, but Dark Places is – I think – her best. It’s about Libby Day, this rather unlikeable woman who has – no question – survived a lot of hardship. Her mother and two older sisters were murdered when she was a kid and her testimony helped convict her older brother Ben – who was fifteen at the time – for the crime. Flynn weaves the past and present together as Libby finds herself confronted with the truth of the crime that changed her life. Fantastic book.
End of Story – Peter Abrahams

You could polish off End of Story in an afternoon – because once you get going you won’t be able to put it down. It’s the story of tells the compelling tale of Ivy Siedel, an aspiring writer, who takes a job teaching writing to a small group of inmates at Dannemora Prison, in Upstate New York. When one of her students, Vance Harrow, turns out to be a talented writer, Ivy decides to take a closer look at his history and discovers something about him that both shocks and excites her…and changes her life forever.
And my last pick is a book I just purchased this weekend and I haven’t read it, but I am expecting great things because it’s been given copious praise by everyone and their dog. It’s called Descent and it’s by a new-to-me author, Tim Johnston. A family is on vacation. The college age daughter and her brother go out for a run and only the brother returns.

I’ll let you know how that one turns out.

Have you read any good thrillers? I’d love to hear about them.

Reconstructing Amelia – Kimberly McCreight

Posted on November 11, 2015 by Christie

I’m sure all the mothers out there can appreciate how difficult it is to really know what is happening in our children’s lives these days. I mean, on the surface, it seems like it would be easier, right? We have phones that connect us immediately — but the flip side of that is that, because of this technology, our kids can live lives very separate from us, too. When I was a teenager there was one phone and it was in the kitchen. If you got a call, you took it in full view of your parents and siblings; there were ears everywhere. Hardly anyone calls my house phone anymore – and certainly not the friends of my kids.

It is this very private world that is central to Kimberly McCreight’s suspenseful and timely novel Reconstructing Amelia.

Kate Baron is a high-powered lawyer and single mom. She and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Amelia, live in Brooklyn, where Amelia attends Grace Hall, a hoity-toity private school. Despite Kate’s busy job, she and Amelia share a close bond, likely forged because it’s always been just the two of them. There have been a few bumps in the road recently: Kate chalks it up to teenage moodiness. Then she gets a call from the school: Amelia is being suspended, for plagiarizing an essay. The suspension is a shock to Kate because

Amelia had never been in trouble in her entire life. Her teachers called her a delight – bright, creative, thoughtful, focused. She excelled in athletics and was involved in every extracurricular activity under the sun. She volunteered once a month at CHIPS, a local soup kitchen, and regularly helped out at school events.

The accusation of cheating is clearly a mistake. However, when Kate arrives at Grace Hall she is devastated to discover that her daughter is dead (not a spoiler: it’s on the book jacket). Apparently, Amelia jumped from the roof of the school. Although Kate can’t quite believe her daughter would do such a thing, the police rule Amelia’s death a suicide and the case is closed.

That is until Kate gets an anonymous text: Amelia didn’t jump.

With the help of Lew, a crusty police detective, Kate begins reconstructing Amelia’s life only to discover that there were many things she didn’t know about her daughter.

There are dual narratives in McCreight’s book. Kate’s limited third person narrative allows us to take her journey, but we also have Amelia’s first person narration – which gives the reader a glimpse into a life Kate could never be privy to. There are also text conversations, Facebook posts, and an anonymous blog called ‘gRaCeFULLY,’ which tracks the comings and goings of Grace Hall students. All the bits fit together to create a picture of entitled girlhood and head-in-the-sand adulthood.

There are some bits of the book which didn’t necessarily belong (Rowan) and I am not 100% sure I bought some of the twists, (I won’t say which because, hello, spoilers) but that doesn’t mean I didn’t turn those pages at breakneck speed to find out what happened to Amelia and why.

I would like to think that the girls in Reconstructing Amelia are just fictional, but I know that’s naïve. Sometimes, even when we love our kids and feel close to them, we don’t always know what is really happening in their worlds. That’s the sad truth.

Great book.

Off the shelf – Books with buzz

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Christie

Listen here.

There are always books which are hotly anticipated by the reading public. Avid readers know, for example, when their favourite authors will be releasing their next book. Publishers generate a lot of pre-publishing buzz and of course books that win major literary awards also garner extra attention. I think book buying has changed a lot in the forty years I’ve been buying books with my own money. I remember when the Scholastic book flyer was my only real opportunity to purchase books – and then all you had was this teensy picture of the cover and the equivalent of a tweet’s worth of description. When you could actually go into a book store and hold the books, well, that was heaven. I have books on my shelf that literally cost 60 cents. Can you believe that? Social media wasn’t even a twinkle in someone’s eye – so word of mouth or checking out top ten lists was really the only ways to hear which books were hot and which books were not.

Then you have to wonder if all books with buzz are created equal. Even books that have won big prizes are often mired in controversy. A huge portion of my summer reading time was taken up with reading Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize winning magnum opus The Goldfinch. That book is close to 800 pages long and, for me at least, was thrilling and infuriating in equal measure. Not everyone agreed that it should have won the Pulitzer. In fact, The Washington Post called it “the disappointing novel that just won a Pulitzer” Lady Vowell Smith, a professor of literature and book blogger, wondered about the book’s merits in her post “Did the Goldfinch Deserve the Pulitzer?” The UK’s Sunday Times said “”no amount of straining for high-flown uplift can disguise the fact that The Goldfinch is a turkey”. Newsweek’s review said that “The Goldfinch neither sings nor flies.” Ouch.

I am not much of a follower when it comes to reading, but I have read both of Tartt’s previous novels: The Secret History, which is my favourite and The Little Friend. Plus, my son, Con, read this book and really liked it – so I had to give it a go.

Okay – so what’s this book about?

Theo Decker is thirteen and lives with his mother in New York City. They are on their way to a meeting at Theo’s school when they duck into the Metropolitan Museum of Art to take a look at an exhibit of Dutch paintings, including that of The Goldfinch. Theo’s mom wanders off to the gift shop; Theo is entranced by a girl of about the same age, who is in the museum with her grandfather…and then there’s an explosion and Theo’s life is irrevocably altered. The old man, as he’s dying, encourages – insists – that Theo make off with the painting of the goldfinch and that’s certainly central to the book’s story – but that’s really only a part of it. Tartt wrestles with a lot of themes here: family – both biological and the family you choose, art, beauty, addiction. Theo isn’t necessarily the most likable character, even though lots of bad things happen to him he also makes a lot of poor decisions. This book is chock-a-block with characters – Boris, the friend Theo meets while living in Vegas; Hobie, a furniture restorer, the Barbours, family friends who care for Theo when his mom first dies. A lot of people, lots of stuff happens and it’s up to the reader to decide whether any of it matters. Does it add up to something worthy of praise in the form of the Pulitzer – that is if you think prizes matter at all. It probably mattered to Tartt to the tune of $100,000.

Another book that everyone is talking about is Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. When this manuscript was “discovered” it exploded the publishing world – but really: discovered? Everyone knows Harper Lee for To Kill a Mockingbird. Other than Mockingbird she is best known for helping Truman Capote (her childhood friend) with research for his book In Cold Blood. She published a handful of essays – but that’s it. She’s notoriously private and always maintained she’d never publish another book. So, it’s kinda suspicious that this one turned up after all these years. It’s essentially an early draft of Mockingbird. Lee is 89, lives in assisted care and I think the publication of this book has something to do with the fact that her sister, Alice, sort of her gatekeeper, passed away. There’s an awesome series of articles about the discovery of Watchman and a look back at Mockingbird in The New Republic. The first article, “The Suspicious Story Behind Go Set a Watchman” is particularly interesting for anyone who wants to read the whole story behind the birth of Watchman.

Personally, I’ve resisted buying the book. I love Mockingbird. I’ve read it multiple times. Since I believe I know the story of how Watchman came to be, I’m reluctant to hand over my $30 for a book which has pretty much been panned. And of course it has – it’s unedited because Lee is blind and deaf and perhaps even the teensiest bit senile. The book’s a cash grab. I hate that.

In any case – if you are looking for something to read, something that will guarantee you something to talk about at the water cooler or dinner or with your book club, it’s easy to find those books.

If you are interested in books that generated buzz, check out some of these titles.

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins

This is this year’s Gone Girl. It’s on my tbr shelf, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m probably just about the last person who hasn’t.

Purity – Jonathan Franzen

Famous for dissing Oprah, there’s no arguing with Franzen’s talent. His newest book hits the shelves Sept. 15.

Euphoria – Lily King

Inspired by the life of Margaret Mead and almost universally praised.

The Troop – Nick Cutter

Unless you love horror novels, you might not have heard of this one…but trust me, everyone was talking about it.

The Girl in the Spider’s Web – David Lagercrantz

Stieg Larsson, the creator of the Millennium series, died of a heart attack in 2004, but that apparently won’t stop Lisbeth Salander, the series’ prickly computer genius. Hotly anticipated and hitting the shelves Sept 1st.

Bird Box – Josh Malerman

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Christie

It seemed like everyone was talking about Josh Malerman’s debut novel, Bird Box, but it was still a surprise when it was chosen as our April read for book club. In the 15 years we’ve been together we’ve never read anything even resembling a horror story. I was really looking forward to this one because I love a scary book.

Malorie lives alone in a house in a Detroit suburb with two children she calls Boy and Girl. The house used to be nice but now she notices the “rusted utensils and cracked dishes. The cardboard box used as a garbage can. The chairs, some held together by twine.” Clearly, it’s not situation normal and Malorie’s musings allude to “older stains,” for which there are “no chemicals in the house to help clean.”

Malerman doesn’t waste any time with preamble. That’s probably a good thing because Bird Box relies on a heavy dose of the unknown to make it tick. Something has happened to the world. The “Internet has blown up with a story people are calling ‘the Russia Report.'” People are behaving monstrously, attacking strangers and family members in gruesome ways (a mother buries her children alive) before ending their own lives. It’s a “the whole world’s going crazy” scenario, but it spreads from Russia to North America (and who knows where else) like wildfire. The only way to prevent doing harm to others and yourself is to prevent yourself from seeing whatever is out there. People hole up in their houses, windows covered, and if they must venture outside, they wear a blindfold.

Bird Box bounces between Malorie’s perilous journey down the river in a boat (she’s heard that there is a safe community and after four years alone, she longs for something more for herself and her children who she laments “have never seen the sky. Have never looked out a window.” ) and her time in the house with a group of strangers she discovered through an advertisement in the paper.

I can’t say I was fussy about the beginning or the ending of Bird Box, but I was seriously creeped out in the middle. There’s a scene when members of the house have to go out into the backyard to get water from the well. They have to be blindfolded, of course, and a rope is tied around their waist. The person whose job it is to go to the well must make the journey three times. On this occasion, it’s Felix’s turn. On the third and final trip from the house to the well he hears a sound.

But now he can tell where it is coming from.

It is coming from inside the well.

He releases the crank and steps back. The bucket falls, crashing against the stone, before splashing below.

Something moved. Something moved in the water.

It’s moments like these when Bird Box is at its best. Like Malerman’s characters, we are blind and we realize that the scariest thing in the world is what we can’t see.

The Ice Cream Girls – Dorothy Koomson

Posted on June 15, 2014 by Christie

Told in the alternating voices of Serena and Poppy, The Ice Cream Girls, by British writer Dorothy Koomson, is part suspense novel and part family drama. Koomson expertly weaves the story of two teenaged girls accused of murdering their history teacher, Marcus Halnsley. They’re called ‘the ice cream girls’ because of a photograph of the pair wearing bikinis and eating ice cream. Their story, and their relationship with Halnsley, is anything but sweet, though.

We meet Serena at the moment when her husband, Evan, proposes to her for the second time. We meet Poppy as she leaves prison, where she has been incarcerated for the past twenty years. These are two women, one black and one white, who might have never met if it hadn’t been for Halnsley.

We meet him through Serena first who says that “all the girls said he should be a film star because he was good-looking.” Serena doesn’t really like him at first because he was “always picking on me.” But when Mr. Halnsley starts to take a special interest in her, Serena feels singled out and special. Halnsley convinces her she could excel at History and offers to give her private lessons. It isn’t long before he crosses the line. It’s a simple (although inappropriate gesture) at first, but it’s easy to see how easily Halnsley manipulates fifteen-year-old Serena.

I walked home instead of getting the bus and along the way, I kept reaching up to touch my face. His touch had been so gentle and soft. And the way he said he wanted to take care of me made my stomach tingle upside down every time I ran it through in my head. He wanted to take care of me. That must mean I was special. Someone as clever and grown-up as him thought I was special.

Just a few short weeks after Halnsley has convinced Serena that he loves her, he meets Poppy. It’s clear, of course, that he’s a predator and that both Serena and Poppy are vulnerable despite the fact that they come from decent families. For the next couple of years the girls share the man who alternately abuses them and plays them off against each other – all the while convincing them that he loves them.

The story requires some finesse and Koomson does a terrific job of layering all the bits together. There’s a lot the reader wants to know. Why did Poppy go to prison, for example, and not Serena? Serena went on to college, met and married Evan (a doctor) and now lives in suburban bliss with her two children. Of course, behind the scenes she’s a hot mess. Every night before bed she has to hide all the knives.

The dinner knives are safe but the sharp ones, the ones that can do serious damage, seem to be missing in action. Admittedly, that’s my fault: I hid them last night, and I can’t quite remember where.

Things aren’t much better for adult Poppy, either. She arrives home to her parents only to discover that her father isn’t speaking to her, can’t even look at her and her mother

managed to sit down at the same table as me for more than three seconds. She didn’t make herself a cup of tea, so I knew she wasn’t staying, but it was a start. She actually came into the kitchen and didn’t immediately walk out again.

Poppy is intent on finding Serena and getting her to admit that she is actually responsible for Halnsley’s death and while their reluctant reunion dredges up all sorts of bad memories, it also allows the women to finally have a chance at exorcising the ghost of Halnsley, a man whose hold on them has poisoned their lives long after his death.

Great book.

The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion

Posted on May 19, 2014 by Christie

rosie It’s easy to see why Graeme Simsion’s debut novel The Rosie Project was such a huge hit with readers all over the world. It’s one of those books with easy to like characters, a straightforward story and just enough quirk to make it stand out from the pack.

Don Tillman is a scientist in the Genetics department at an unnamed university in Melbourne, Australia. It’s clear from the book’s opening pages that while Don clearly has a super-sized brain, he also has some issues which have prevented him, thus far, from finding a suitable partner. Thus, the Wife Project.

Don’s two friends Gene and Claudia try to help with Don’s project, but Don felt their assistance was lacking. Their approach “was based on the traditional dating paradigm, which I had previously abandoned on the basis that the probability of success did not justify the effort and negative experiences.” He eventually writes a sixteen-page questionnaire that he hopes will sort the wheat from the chaff.

Don describes everyone he meets by telling us their Body Mass Index and by the time he tells us that he is “thirty-nine years old, tall, fit and intelligent, with a relatively high status and above-average income” and that he should be “attractive to a wide variety of women. In the animal kingdom, I would succeed in reproducing” we know for sure that Don is somewhere on the Autism spectrum.

According to Autism Canada

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurobiological condition that can affect the normal function of the gastrointestinal, immune, hepatic, endocrine and nervous systems. It impacts normal brain development leaving most individuals with communication problems, difficulty with typical social interactions and a tendency to repeat specific patterns of behaviour. There is also a markedly restricted repertoire of activity and interests. Individuals on the autism spectrum tend to have varying degrees and combinations of symptoms

All things considered, Don does pretty well in the world. Where he struggles is with human interaction. So when Rosie blows into his life, ostensibly looking for someone to help her discover the identity of her biological father, Don’s ordered world is thrown completely off-kilter. That’s when the fun really starts.

There are several laugh-out-loud moments in The Rosie Project, and it is fun to watch socially challenged Don and prickly Rosie work their way towards each other. It’ll make a great movie.

The Most Dangerous Thing – Laura Lippman

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Christie

It took me forever (it seems) to finish Laura Lippman’s novel The Most Dangerous Thing, a book that the Wall Street Journal called “a creepy, genre-bending, stand-alone novel.”

Lippman’s novel is the overly long story of five childhood friends, Gwen, Mickey, Tim, Sean and Go-Go who are reunited as adults after Go-Go is killed in a car accident that may or may not have been deliberate. The real story, though, is about what happened to these five when they were kids – a bit of nasty business that is alluded to and then covered up. It’s the seventies, after all.

The story bounces between then and now and the big reveal – which comes in the novel’s final pages – doesn’t really equal the sum of its parts. My problem with the book is that it took forever to get anywhere and when I finally arrived I was just sort of meh about the whole affair. As a novel of “psychological suspense,” as the Globe and Mail purports it to be, it was lacking the actual suspense.

Actually, I think the real mystery in The Most Dangerous Thing is who is telling the story because Go-Go is dead and the remaining four are all referred to in the third person. In the author’s notes at the back of the book Ms. Lippman says: “I don’t want to tell you.”

As another kind of story, The Most Dangerous Thing is quite compelling. The children are children only in flashback; we are actually dealing with them as adults and their lives are messy and complicated – as lives tend to be. We also spend time with their parents and those lives aren’t much better. But the thing is – is The Most Dangerous Thing a family drama times three or is it a mystery, or a thriller, Maybe it’s social commentary?

Ms. Lippman says it’s her most autobiographical novel – geographically speaking. She says “I have been circling the unusual neighbourhood in which I grew up, determined to write about it, but wanting to wait for the right time and story.”

If I hadn’t been itching for the book to move along already, I would probably have enjoyed it more. Ms. Lippman is a wonderful writer, no question…but this book was only just okay for me. Maybe if I hadn’t been expecting something different, I would have been less disappointed.

Me Before You – Jojo Moyes

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Christie

Last night, my book club met to discuss Jojo Moyes’ novel Me Before You. I was the only member of the group that didn’t love the book. I liked the book a lot, but it won’t go down in my personal annals as one of the most amazing, romantic, beautiful, (insert other appropriate adjective here) books ever. Trust me, I am the gushiest romantic on the planet so it came as just as much of a shock to me when I didn’t get all weepy and heartbroken at the end.

Me Before You is the story of 26-year-old Louisa Clark, an ordinary girl from an ordinary family. Until recently, she’d been working at the local cafe in the little market village she lives in in England. She lives at home with her parents and her younger sister, Treena and Treena’s young son, Thomas. Their house is too small; they don’t have much money and so when Louisa loses her job at the cafe she is desperate to find new employment so she can continue to contribute to the family coffers.

Enter the Traynors. They live in Granta House which is on the other side of Stortfold Castle – I presume that’s the posh side. Camilla Traynor hires Louisa as a companion to her son Will who, two years ago, had been in a serious motorcycle-meets-pedestrian accident that has left him as a quadriplegic. He’s a bit of a git.

Circumstances being what they are, Louisa doesn’t feel like she’s in a position to quit, even when Will is arrogant and unkind. Instead, Louisa is determined to make friends with Will and so, of course, that is what happens. Will softens because of Louisa’s friendship; she flourishes because of his. They are both irrevocably changed.

Me Before You was an easy book to read. I motored through 200 pages on Saturday night. I liked Louisa and I liked Will and I liked their story. Although I didn’t agree with the stylistic choice Moyes made to interrupt the story’s predominantly first person narrative to give readers a glimpse into the heads of a few other characters, I did appreciate this observation by Will’s mother:

It’s just that the one thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the galumphing. unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring – you see before you, with his parking tickets and his unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been rolled into one.

I am a mom and so I knew what she was talking about. Could I have lived without her insights? Absolutely.

I also took issue with the epilogue. It felt cheap to me. Way, way too tidy. But no matter.

One of the questions posed last night was whether or not Me Before You was a great book. Define great. That’s the cool thing about reading. Everyone’s definition of what makes a great book is going to be different. I am going to have to figure out how to articulate what makes a book great for me and get back to you.

As for Me Before You – it was a very enjoyable book to read. Could I niggle over a bunch of little things? Sure, but none of them really detracted from my reading experience which was totally pleasant. I didn’t shed any tears, but I did well up once or twice. So, almost, Ms. Moyes.

The Ludic Reader

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