Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

review by Maryom

On a snowy February day  in 1910 a baby is born - not once, but a second, a third, an infinite number of times. This baby, Ursula Todd, has an amazing gift - to be able to relive her life; to go back to the moment of birth and try again - to find love, happiness, to alter events at a small personal level or create a wider impact and change the world.
Happy Ever After isn't easily found though. Death and disaster are waiting in many guises - a world war, flu epidemic, strangers lurking in country lanes, another war.... averting one danger leads straight to another.

You might expect a novel to have a sad, tear-jerker of an ending; you might expect a few poignant moments along the way; but Life After Life positively bombards the reader with them. It's "Death and again death" as Virginia Woolf says: sometimes unwanted or unexpected, sometimes welcomed. Strangely in view of this, the overall feel is of something tremendously life-affirming. Ursula strives so hard to find a happy way through life and I just found myself urging her on in her attempts. The same people and scenes re-occur over Ursula's many life-times, weaving in and out with greater or lesser impact.

A book for anyone who's ever wondered Did I make the right decision? What would have happened if I'd chosen X instead of Y? Much as I love Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books, this is a return to more thought-provoking story telling. I was torn between savouring every moment and finding out how it would all end.  A stunning, emotion packed read and I'd challenge anyone to not be moved.


Maryom's Review - 5 stars
Publisher: Transworld Books
Genre: Adult, literary

Buy Life After Life from Amazon (pre order till March 2013)

Entertaining Strangers by Jonathan Taylor

review by Maryom

 "Entertaining Strangers is a tragi-comedy about the eccentric Edwin Prince – a depressive intellectual obsessed with high culture and ants – and the mysterious, homeless narrator Jules, who gradually unravels Edwin’s impossible relationships with his landlady, neurotic mother, psychotic brother, domineering ex-wife, dead grandfather and, above all, his ant-farm. At the same time, Jules continually experiences traumatic memories full of fire and water, and gradually a terrible pre-history emerges from beneath all of the other stories, which seems somehow to shape both Jules’s fiery dreams and Edwin’s obsessions – a great fire, massacre and one girl's drowning in Smyrna, 75 years earlier."

Homeless Jules accidentally stumbles into the house and life of Edwin, an eccentric high-culture buff with a fascination for ants. Living in chaos, surrounded by broken relationships, Edwin tries to find order and a perfect world in his ant colony. His family is, at best, dysfunctional; all of them scarred by his grandfather's experiences in Smyrna, 75 years earlier. Is Jules destined to save them from themselves?

From its double-edged title to the equally ambiguous narrator, Jules, Entertaining Strangers is a difficult novel to pin down and describe. If you could imagine a mash-up of  It's A Wonderful Life and Withnail and I with copious amounts of vermouth you'd perhaps be coming close. I probably wasn't the best person to read this, having a 'deaf ear', therefore no understanding of music, and a deep seated repugnance for ants - so I'm sure many subtleties either drifted past me or I shied away from. At times I was pulled in and fascinated; others not so much; but it's definitely a book I would return to. 

Maryom's review - 3.5 stars
Publisher - Salt Publishing
Genre - Adult fiction

Buy Entertaining Strangers (Salt Modern Fiction) from Amazon

East of the Sun, West of the Moon by Jackie Morris

 review by Maryom

Most of us have heard this story of the prince, changed by a troll into a bear and only able to be released, under certain strict conditions, by a young girl who loves him. When the conditions aren't met, he is imprisoned and the girl must search for the castle, east of the sun and west of the moon, to free him. Here Jackie Morris brings us a new twist on this old folk tale.

I've long been a fan of Jackie Morris's delightfully illustrated children's books but this is bit of a departure for her - aimed at an older readership, this time the emphasis is on words not pictures and proves that the author can conjure up images with both! I can't sum up the tale better than Jackie Morris herself, as quoted on the fly-leaf ; "It is a coming of age story, a love story, a leaving home and going out into the world story. It is a journey, an adventure, a love story that in the writing took unexpected turns".

East of the Sun, West of the Moon is a gorgeous little gem of a book, just over 160 pages long, 6 by 7 inches, stitched together in the old-fashioned way, which had me enthralled and enchanted. The achingly beautiful story of finding love and freedom moves from the dirty city back-streets of the 'real' world to 'fairy tale' landscapes of desert or woods or ice, interspersed with beautiful full page and smaller illustrations.

A rare book that is as lovely to look at and hold as it is to read.


Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Frances Lincoln
Genre - folk tale, 11+, adult
The publishers suggest a target age of 11 to 14 but this is a book that will very much appeal to adult lovers of folk stories too.

The Boy Who Led Them by George Chittenden

Review by The Mole

When Stanley discovers a message in a bottle on the seashore he finds he needs to know who the writer was and as much about him as possible to be able to see if there really is treasure to be found. Taking the message to a local museum he meets Reg who tells Stanley what he needs to know and the adventure starts.

The first impression from the description is that this is a children's book and yes, I suppose it is but the way and the style it's written in is ageless. It sounds a bit clichéd? When Reg starts to tell his tale of Jacob Swift, Swift is a young boy but events make him grow up fast and the reader quickly forgets his age and thinks of him as "The Boy" - the king of the smugglers.

Packed with historical fact and historical references this book was a fascination for me and engaging doesn't come close to describing it. I didn't feel patronised or preached to but I felt I was sitting with Reg, in the museum being told the story with a real passion - like only a true fanatic can.

My only concern is, do young children read about smugglers any more? If they don't then I think they should be made to. But don't forget to read the book before you let them have it.

Publisher - Austin & Macauley Publishers
Genre - Action Adventure, Children's and Adults

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Daughters of The Grail by Elizabeth Chadwick

Review by Maryom

"Thirteenth century France. Bridget has grown up mastering the mystical gifts of her ancestor, Mary Magdalene, whose unbroken female lineage has kept a legacy of wisdom alive for a thousand years. But the all-powerful Catholic Church has sworn to destroy Bridget for using her healing talents and supernatural abilities.
Bridget's duty to continue the bloodline leads her into the arms of Raoul de Montvallant - a Catholic. But when the Church's savage religious intolerance causes Raoul to turn rebel, a terrible vengeance is exacted by Simon de Montfort, the unstoppable Catholic leader ..."

That's the back-of-the-book blurb but I feel the story of Raoul and his young wife Claire deserves more of a mention. Looking forward to a pleasant, peaceful life their expectations are shattered when the south of France is effectively invaded by northerners who've signed up for the Pope's crusade against the Cathars. Their differing responses to the invasion of their lands pushes their marriage to breaking point. He takes up arms and fiercely opposes the French, she turns her back on all violence from whatever source and finds consolation and strength in the peaceful non-resistance of the Cathar beliefs.
I discovered this book through someone's recommendation while I was reading Labyrinth by Kate Mosse  and Troubadour by Mary Hoffman both set in the same time-frame of The Albigensian crusade. While Daughters of the Grail definitely falls into the 'romantic fiction' category - with quite a few 'bodice-ripping' moments - it's also a moving look at the devastation that war brings - at personal and wider levels.
While not within my normal reading genres, Daughters of the Grail was an enjoyable novel that captured the happenings and atmosphere of the time really well without over-crowding the story-line with dry facts. Definitely one for the historical romance fans out there!

Maryom's Review - 4 stars
Publisher - Sphere 
Genre - Adult Historical Romance

The Disappeared by C J Harper

review by Maryom

Jackson has lived most of his 17years in an elite 'Learning Community', being educated to become part of the Leadership that runs his country, but a brutal awakening is waiting for him. Sent along with his best friend on an errand by one of his teachers, he is attacked and beaten up and his friend left for dead. Trying to return to his school, he finds all record of him has been deleted and no one will admit to knowing him. Instead he's sent to an Academy, a strict, violent school aimed at churning out factory workers where he finds all his assumptions about his world turned upside down.

The story started excellently but as Jackson settled into the Academy the pace slackened. The Academy itself is a wonderfully imagined but  horrible place - more like a zoo than a school with the children treated like animals and teachers inside cages for their safety - but Jackson seemed a little inactive for my kind of hero. Even giving his sheltered upbringing I was surprised at Jackson's naivety and lack of knowledge of the world he lived in. I know this is a little bit par for the course for dystopian novels - the innocent, brought up faithfully believing everything they're told, discovers the unpleasant truth and sets out to right it - but he did seem immature for 17 and far too happy to wait for his mother to fix things.

I'm sure The Disappeared will appeal to teen conspiracy theorists and lovers of dystopian fiction. There's a lot of thought-provoking matter about education systems, human rights and even superiority being given solely on appearance hidden behind the plot for readers to get their teeth into.

The first in a series, it will be interesting to see how the story develops.

Maryom's review - 3.5 stars

Publisher - Simon & Schuster

Genre - Teen dystopian fiction

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Burning for Revenge by John Marsden

Review by The Mole

(The fifth book in the Tomorrow series, started with Tomorrow When the War Began)

Ellie (the narrator of the story) and her gang are now fighting against the invaders of their homeland of Australia in an all out war.

The group of teenagers are becoming mature beyond their years as they take on the role of professional soldiers and trying to keep one step ahead of the enemy all the way.

***Warning *** Suspend disbelief before entering. There are technical details that simply don't work in reality but never fail to work for the gang BUT in this story telling, unlike the first book, it just doesn't seem important. Clearly the story telling in this book has moved on a lot and become a great deal more engaging.

The entire book felt like a TV episode - it didn't feel enough plot for a film - and worked very well. The fact that I've missed three books didn't feel like it mattered - there were references to bits that I'd missed but it didn't feel important - but had I not read book one then I think I would have been totally at sea.

A really enjoyable read that leaves the reader wanting more.

Publisher: Quercus
Genre: Teenage fiction

Buy Burning for Revenge (The Tomorrow Series) from Amazon