Toby's Room by Pat Barker

 review by Maryom

"Pat Barker returns to the First World War in Toby's Room, a dark, compelling novel of human desire, wartime horror and the power of friendship.
When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss. Toby's Room is Pat Barker's most powerful novel yet."


When this first arrived with us it was read and reviewed by The Mole  but I'd always intended reading it myself. With other -unreviewed books piling up, it took a while for me to get round to it - and when I did I wasn't overly impressed so I didn't put up my own thoughts. Then, earlier this week, I read a review of it on  Beauty Is  A Sleeping Cat blog as part of this year's Literature and War Readalong, so I've decided to chip in with my bit after all.

Elinor and her brother Toby are closer than normal siblings; a dangerous closeness that leads to incest and guilt which shadows Elinor's life afterwards. Via art school and medical training, the story moves forward to WW1 and Toby's death. The details of it aren't made public and Elinor is determined to find out what precisely happened. Meanwhile, she's accepted a position drawing and documenting the surgery involved in facial reconstruction which brings her into contact with mutual friends who might hold the key to Toby's death.

Despite all the praise lavished on it, this wasn't a book that grabbed me at all. I couldn't really grasp where the story was going; first it seemed to head one way, then move off at a tangent.  Was it meant to be a story of family secrets or artistic development or the horrors of war? Perhaps this randomness is more like 'real' life than fiction - but it failed to capture me because of it.
A lot of the characters also fell flat, seeming rather two-dimensional and hollow. Elinor particularly, though torn between closeness and repulsion for Toby, mainly came over as cold and unfeeling, and I just didn't care what happened to her. In checking links etc for this review I've discovered that several of the main characters, Elinor, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, appeared in a previous book by Pat Barker, Life Class set at the Slade School of Art and I wonder if not having read that has made a difference to my reading of Toby's Room.
I didn't think there was too much of a mystery about what happened to Toby - maybe there was for Elinor but not for me, picking up the clues as I read along.
All in all, it just left me rather unmoved and uncaring.

Maryom's review - 3 stars
Publisher - Penguin
Genre - adult, WW1

The Lying-down Room by Anna Jaquiery

review by Maryom

In the sweltering heat of a Parisian summer, Commandant Serge Morel is called to an unusual murder scene - to the casual eye, the elderly victim, Isabelle Dufour, could almost seem to have died peacefully in her sleep - if it weren't for the too-carefully arranged body, and the heavy grotesque makeup and bright red wig worn by the deceased.
It's a crime scene short on clues - the only possible lead is a pile of religious pamphlets found on the victim's bedside table and attention is soon focussed on the distributors - a middle-aged man accompanied by a mute teenage boy - who seem to have been targeting elderly women.Why would anyone have anything to fear from such a pair? Looking for the answer leads Morel and his team to the remote countryside of Brittany and back in time to the days of Soviet Russia.

The Lying-down Room is an interesting and enjoyable start to a new crime series - set in Paris and 'starring' Commandant Serge Morel, a quiet 'thinking' detective who creates origami sculptures to relax and focus his thoughts. He of course has problems of his own (what fictional cop doesn't have?) - his elderly father, slipping rapidly into senility; a long-term relationship with a married woman; and the return of a woman from his past - in addition to under-funding, under-staffing and a boss more interested in statistics and looking good on TV than diligent police work.
Both characters and plot-line hooked me almost from the first page. The story is unusual without descending into depths of blood-letting and gore; the characters well-rounded although I suspect they, particularly the minor ones, will develop more over the coming books. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more in this series.
Mixing police procedural with insights into the perpetrator's head lets the reader get a step or two ahead of the police, while an increasing body-count ups the tension. Only one quibble - the title somewhat points the reader in the direction of the guilty party.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Mantle (Panmacmillan)
Genre - adult, crime, police procedural, 

Buy The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) from Amazon

Black Moon by Kenneth Calhoun

review by Maryom

"Imagine a world without sleep. A world driven to the brink of exhaustion. A waking nightmare."

 We've all had that odd night when, no matter what, we couldn't get to sleep and know how shattered we'd feel the next day. But imagine a world where no one can sleep - not just for a single night but ever! That's the dystopian scenario of Kenneth Calhoun's debut novel Black Moon. The world has been overcome by insomnia - no one knows how it started or why but gradually the signs have been spreading and now the majority of people can no longer sleep. Here and there a lucky few still have to knack of falling soundly asleep - but they quickly learn to disguise this for nothing enrages the sleepless like the sight of someone sleeping! Without sleep, and, as importantly, without dreams, hallucinations take over, all normal behaviour ceases, all concepts of humanity are eroded.
Through this nightmare setting, we follow the stories of a few individuals;  Biggs, one of the few sleepers, in search of his insomniac wife Carolyn; Lila, another sleeper, sent to a supposed safe haven by her parents before they themselves lost all sense through lack of sleep; Chase and his friend Jordan who thinks there's money to be made with sleep-inducing drugs stolen from a drug store; and Felicia, Chase's ex-girlfriend, who works at a sleep study centre - maybe somehow the people who've studied lack of sleep for so long can now find a cure for it.

Black Moon is a hard-to-describe novel, a literary-zombie-dystopian mix that takes the reader into a speculative world where the most precious commodity is something we all take for granted - sleep. 

I heard about this book through Twitter (in fact it's a Twitter-competition-win) and was intrigued by the concept - what would happen if I couldn't sleep at all?  Insomnia is something I've never really suffered from - being kept awake by babies is different, as I'd have been happy to sleep if given the chance - but I've read of sleep deprivation being used as a torture/interrogation technique so the psychological effects must be deeply disturbing. I'm not sure whether the author answered my curiosity in this regard. Although the sufferers are shown wandering zombie-like through the background, the story concentrates on those who haven't quite reached this dreadful state. I think, being too used to encountering this kind of scenario in sci-fi reading, that I'd expected a more cut and dry ending, whether an upbeat 'miracle cure found' or no hope 'we're all doomed' one. Events didn't pan out the way I expected and I was left feeling wrong-footed, as if I'd been missing something all along.

Black Moon is a thought-provoking and intriguing read, even if it doesn't give quick, easy answers to the problems it raises. It's a novel for my re-read pile, this time using hindsight and knowledge of the ending to point me in the right direction.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hogarth Press
Genre - adult, dystopian,

 Buy Black Moon from Amazon

The Lovely Book for Wonderful Women by Lehla Eldridge

Review by The Mole

This is one of those gift books that is a token of love or friendship. Each page has a different suggestion of something to do to cheer yourself, or perhaps someone else who needs a lift. Bright strident colours adorn each page and sometimes a simple life goal: "Find something you are good at, enjoy it and make lots of money out of it." Clearly a tongue in cheek message but something to bring a smile to the reader's face.

Most of these messages are things I have seen female Facebook friends share with each other so there has to be a fair amount of appeal to these ideas but I know that it won't appeal to all women. But if your wife/friend/relative is this kind of person then this book is very likely a good idea for a present.

Publisher - Pinter and Martin
Genre - Adult, Gift book

Buy The Lovely Book for Wonderful Women from Amazon

Seventeen Coffins by Philip Caveney

Review by The Mole

We met Tom Afflick in Crow Boy when he suffered a time slip while visiting Mary King's Close and went back to the time of a plague in Edinburgh. He hasn't settled back comfortably into daily life and is haunted by memories so persuades his mum to let him revisit Mary King's Close. But the Close holds no answers and when visiting The National Museum he falls and strikes his head, once again causing a time slip.

This time he finds himself in 1828 and seeks lodgings in Tanner's Close after befriending Jamie, a vagrant. He survives by doing odd jobs for Billy and Will, a couple of Irish chaps who have offered him a roof but keeps slipping to alternative pasts and futures as he waits to return to his own future. But despite the danger he is in in 1828 (and there is plenty!) he is also being pursued across time by one of the characters from his time in Mary King's Close - and it's not to wish him well!! And once again Tom develops an affection for one of the girls he meets in history but the word 'love' is not used, which will please the boys. Poor old Tom certainly knows how to go for impossible friendships.

Who hasn't dreamed of going back in time and changing or accounting for a little bit of history? Well Tom creates such a paradox in this story and it's marvellously done. In fact is it 2 paradoxes?

 Another excellent story from Philip Caveney and this one is even better than Crow Boy as there is even more action but just as much history. Aimed at 9 and older this will appeal to both girls and boys. I thoroughly enjoyed this one as much as Crow Boy. If you haven't read Crow Boy then be warned that there are spoilers in this one - so get a copy of Crow Boy.

Publisher - Fledgling Press
Genre - Children's, historic, thriller

Buy Seventeen Coffins from Amazon

Adaptation by Malinda Lo

 review by Maryom

"Flocks of birds are hurling themselves at aeroplanes across America. Thousands of people die. Millions are stranded. Everyone knows the world will never be the same.

On Reese's long drive home, along a stretch of empty highway at night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won't tell them what happened.

For Reese, though, this is just the start. She can't remember anything from the time between her accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: she's different now. Torn between longtime crush David and new girl Amber, the real question is: who can she trust?"

Adaptation is an unusual story in that it mixes sci-fi and conspiracy theories with teen romance and Reese's struggles to come to terms with her sexual orientation; so you could see it as a bit of something for everyone, or it could be that some readers are going to find bits of it more interesting than others. For me, it was very enjoyable. I liked the mix of teen relationship issues and government cover-ups, as Reese tries to work out her feelings for Amber and David, or goes out with long-term friend and conspiracy theorist Julian to search for evidence to back up his claims.
The pace seems a little uneven at times with the action scenes being fast and dramatic, and the relationship issues less so, but all in all it pulled me in and kept me reading.
My main gripe would be that, as so often, this isn't the whole story. Although the story finishes at a logical point, there's a sequel, Inheritance and also an ebook novella, Natural Selection, which tells Amber's side of the story.

Maryom's review - 4 stars
Publisher - Hodder Childrens
Genre - YA/ teen, sci-fi, conspiracy theory, teen relaionships

Knightley & Son by Rohan Gavin

Review by The Mole

Darkus is a somewhat remarkable 13 year old boy. His father, a private investigator, is in a coma for some inexplicable reason and Darkus is waiting and hoping to see him wake from the coma. He has been studying his father's case notes and is sitting beside the bed discussing the cases to try to wake him. When he does finally waken then there is no-one there to witness it and he goes missing. And so the weirdness starts as, using his father's case notes, Darkus tries to stop the secret organisation called The Combination. The Combination has gained control of an ancient book containing a power that enables them to manipulate people, ordinary people who read a best selling book called The Combination, and have them commit crimes they would not normally contemplate.

Alan and Darkus Knightley - the father and son team - are two characters I just couldn't warm to. Alan has a personality that is flat and charmless yet arrogant and Darkus is no better for most of the book despite the naivety that he also shows - although towards the end this does improve. The real characters in this book are Uncle Bill - the head of a top secret police unit - and Tilly, Darkus's step sister.

Don't misunderstand though, I did enjoy the book and I'm sure the characters will develop in later books as the team investigate other crimes - hopefully still with Tilly's help and Uncle Bill's of course.

Publisher - Bloomsbury
Genre - Children's fiction

Buy Knightley and Son from Amazon