Posts Tagged ‘Book Review’
Puberty Blues – Gabrielle Carey & Kathy Lette
‘By day we were at school learning logarithms, but by night – in the back of cars, down behind the Ace-of-Spades Hotel and on Cronulla beach – we paid off our friendship rings.’
Puberty Blues is about top chicks and surfing spunks – and the kids who don’t make it – in a world where only the gang and the surf count.
Puberty Blues gives us the facts no one wants to face. It is a horrifying yet hilarious account of the way many young people live, and some of them die.
I didn’t read this book when it came out in 1979, I was reading mysteries, fantasy and science fiction back then and this doesn’t fit into any of those genres. It’s an interesting little book, the authors were fairly young at the time of writing, and the book is semi-autobiographical. It is a seminal work as it was the first novel written by teenagers about teenager behaviour.
This is not the teenage behaviour I got up to, not that I’m trying to distance myself from it in anyway. The behaviour is raw and it shows them trying to have sex at a very early age and sometimes succeeding, sometimes you can be too young and not physically ready for sex, that’s depicted in this book.
I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I didn’t like the content as it is so far removed from anything I ever did and from anything I could ever conceive of doing, but on the other hand it tells it like it was and probably still is in some circles. I love it and hate it for exactly the same reason, the behaviour depicted. It is a great book for documenting what actually happened and probably still does happen.
It’s available for sale here
Warnings. There is lots of sex, swearing and drugs as well as other inappropriate behaviour.
Deep Secret – Diana Wynne Jones
One of the many super fabulous books by the dearly loved and recently deceased Diana Wynne Jones. The description of the plot is as follows:
All over the universe, Magids are at work to maintain the balance of magic, using their own talents to push the right people into doing the right things at the right time. And on Earth, the Magids are working hard to coax the world into its rightful place Ayewards, towards magic.
Rupert Venables has been the junior Magid here for only two years when his sponsor dies; it’s up to him to find a replacement. Trouble is, the most promising on his list of five names, Maree Mallory, doesn’t want anything to do with Rupert Venables. And while the junior Magid is trying to track down the other four, the fatelines are becoming dangerously entangled on more than one world and magic starts getting out of hand…
When it comes to describing Jones’ books I find it hard to stop using adjectives. Her writing is spot on, her characters are believable and her worlds make me want to be there. I can’t reveal the twist as you might not want to read it and we can’t have that, but suffice to say Jones manages to get her usual unexpected twist into the book.
Deep Secret - Diana Wynne Jones
What I loved most about this book is part of the setting. She’s set it within a convention called PhantasmaCon, it was awesome. I’m sure she’s been to many conventions over the years, she’s probably been feted at a large number of them. Her descriptions described the madness beautifully. Sitting talking to someone, trying to have a sensible conversation when someone drifts past in some costume and you have to run after them as you need to talk to them about something ‘very important’. I have certain friends I only ever see at conventions or conferences. I adored her descriptions of the costumes and the people, she has them down pat. There’s a bit of madness with the layout of the hotel as it changes continually and the attendees barely notice, when they do they put it down the committee having done a wonderful job.
Just awesome stuff, it’s a good read if you want to attend a convention for the first time as it gives you a good understanding of how conventions work, it’s also a good read for the fantasy aspects.
I Am Legend – Richard Matheson
This book was originally published in 1954 and is a scary thought of what could happen given the technology available to us now.
Robert Neville may well be the only survivor of an incurable plague that has mutated every other man, woman and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creature who are determined to destroy him.
The premise of this book is very scary, it’s a brilliant fusion of horror and science fiction. A plague has hit, very much like the black plague, and no-one can work out how to deal with it. It reminds me very much of the advent of the AIDS virus, how it spread so quickly and how there were so many people worried about getting it and the misinformation that surrounded it at the time. With this virus they didn’t appear to have time to figure out how to combat it and they certainly have little idea of how it spreads. This plague turns people into vampires and Robert Neville is currently the last man who hasn’t succumbed, the reason is unknown as his wife died from it some time before the book is set.
The writing in this book is superb, you don’t get much better than this. Matheson has fused the two genres of horror and science fiction very nicely. There is just the right amount of each and a good story line as well.
The things I had trouble with are Neville trying to figure out the plague by himself and how the infrastructure kept going despite having no-one to run it. It was not sufficiently explained how Neville had the background to be able to figure out all the science type stuff in order to figure out how to treat the disease. I don’t know why it worries me about the infrastructure, but I’d like to know how it kept going. Many of the systems would have stopped, in fact, Neville did install a generator so he could generate his own electricity, but there was also the water and the sewerage which just seemed to keep going despite the lack of personnel.
I’d still recommend this book. Whether you like horror or science fiction I feel it has enough of both to satisfy most people. Now I have to see the movie of the same name with Will Smith in the lead role, awesome!
Empire Falls – Richard Russo
A story about a man, his daughter and the community they live in. Miles Roby is a man with a sense of humour and a penchant for spotting signs that don’t quite make sense or have typos, a trait he shares with his teenage daughter. It’s not gentle, but it does have a lot of gentleness throughout in the love Miles has for his daughter, in the relationship he has with his ex-mother-in-law and the relationship he has with his ex-wife’s new husband.
I loved the writing in this book. I admit to having read it in audio form and that made it more special as the voice did a very good job. The writing was just lovely, there was brilliant characterisation, I could visualise the people and the township, I could visualise the hardship some of them dealt with in order to just get through their lives. I was unsurprised to find the book won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2002, well deserved. Richard Russo has written a number of other books and I’m going to be adding them to my To Be Read pile in due course.
I mentioned the book is not gentle and that’s true, it deals with many challenging situations such as Miles being invited to his ex-wife’s wedding, and having to deal with her new husband on an almost daily basis, such as having a priest with Alzheimers who feels the confessional is a good place to pick up gossip. There are much harder situations in this book but I won’t give you spoilers. Russo deals with many of these situations with humour but doesn’t minimise the challenges Miles faces. Russo gently guides us towards the biggest problem of all, one that many people in today’s community will recognise, one that has devastated many schools in America…but I promised no more spoilers. If you want to know more I suggest you buy a box of tissues and then the book, you won’t regret it.
The Phantom Tollbooth – Juster & Feiffer
Normally when you write the name of a book and it’s author you don’t write the name of the illustrator unless the illustrations are integral to the book. I didn’t think they were in this case until I read this article. It turns out they were very integral to the writing of the book. Norton Juster wrote bits of this book, read them out to his roommate, Jules Feiffer, who sketched out some ideas. Juster then used these illustrations to give him more information on the writing. A wonderful partnership.
I loved this book, despite it being around when I was young I only read it a few years ago. I was totally enchanted. Here’s the synopsis taken from the article:
Milo is a bored innocent who unexpectedly finds himself on a magical journey to a strange land. Accompanied by his traveling companions, Tock the watchdog and the Humbug, the young boy struggles to make sense of the nonsensical adult world and sets off to rescue princesses Rhyme and Reason.
How this happens is that he’s in his room and finds a toy car, getting in the car is the start of a magical journey. It is full of puns and references to so many things that it’s worth reading multiple times to ensure you understand everything completely. As an adult I adored it and could see how it would appeal to children of all ages, have I ever mentioned I tell people I’m 18?
What makes the book appeal to me more is this interview. I rarely read author interviews as I find they’re so different to the book, the fact that they can write so differently to how they interview probably attests to their writing power, but in this case I read the whole thing. What I found is that the author and illustrator are exactly like the book, they wrote/drew as they interview and I find that appealing. They’re in their eighties but they sound as if they’re much younger than that, they haven’t lost their inner child, the inner child that came through into the book.
Enough from me. Your homework is to acquire the book (not from me as I’ve already sold it) and read it yourself. It shouldn’t take long but it’s a wonderful journey.
The Hand That Signed the Paper – Helen Demidenko
I picked up this book second hand knowing the controversy behind it, knowing Helen Demidenko is really Helen Darville and knowing she had tried to pass this book off as family history rather than a fictionalised account of interviews with Ukrainian witnesses. I’ll take the description from the back of the book:
The Hand that Signed the Paper tells the story of Vitaly, a Ukrainian peasant, who endures the destruction of his village and family by Stalin’s communism. He welcomes the Nazi invasion in 1941 and willingly enlists in the SS Death Squads to take a horrifying revenge against those he perceives to be his persecutors.
The story is horrific and I feel partly tries to absolve certain people from their actions. I’m not here to comment on whether this is good or bad as I’m not unbiased, I am very fortunate as almost all of my family were living in Melbourne since before WWII but this doesn’t make me unbiased. I’m going to try and comment on the book and the writing.
Some of the writing is very good, I often look at a phrase or a paragraph and note how nicely it is written. I did find there was a lot left out, a lot that I was interested in or felt would have added to the story but was just omitted. I agree it’s a big story and challenging to get it all into only 157 pages. I found it challenging to recall which person was speaking as they all seemed to have the same way of speaking and there wasn’t much difference between when one finished and another started. The only time it was clear cut was when they changed hemispheres and all of a sudden the niece/daughter in Australia was speaking, it was easier to note the difference as there were references to the Australian landscape.
There was a lot missing and a lot I didn’t find believable. Back in June I reviewed a memoir written by a Lithuanian now living in Melbourne and I found myself comparing the two books. I also found myself comparing it with the books written by Arnold Zable, Café Scheherazade – Arnold Zable and Jewels and Ashes. I did try to be careful with my comparisons, Liubinas is not a professional writer, Darville/Demidenko is a journalist and Zable is an accomplished author who has run many writing workshops. Out of the three Zable was obviously the best crafted, Liubinas was very touching and as it was an honest memoir was easily believable, Darville, while well written just didn’t have that air of honesty.
One of the problems the first chapter brings to light is the way war criminals can move countries and settle into a new life. Melbourne is home to a great many Holocaust survivors, I believe there are more here than anywhere else, and among those survivors there must be some whose war record is dubious. One of the issues this book shows us is what to do with these war criminals. They are now old men and women, in so many regular crimes in Australia there is a statute of limitations where if it’s been too long since the crime was committed then the person can’t be prosecuted, has it been too long since the Holocaust and should those old men and women not be prosecuted? I don’t have the answer to that and I’m not going to express an opinion, just stating it’s brought to light by this book. Again, I’m biased so I’m only trying to comment on the book. It’s an interesting discussion and one that should be discussed on a different type of blog by someone else.
Could I even recommend it? That seriously depends on the reader. If you identify with the Jews in the Holocaust then I suggest you don’t as you’ll be really upset as it details atrocities and how people tried very hard to ignore them while profiting from them. If you are able to stay unbiased and treat it as historical fiction you’ll probably get a lot out of it. I won’t say you’ll enjoy it as enjoyment is not something you get from books like this.
My dilemma now is what to do with the book. I don’t want to keep it on my shelf, it’s been hard enough having it here so long. I don’t fancy selling it as it makes me uncomfortable. Should I just return it to the op shop? Maybe that’s what I’ll do.
The Boy Who Kicked Pigs – Tom Baker
The front cover describes this book as ‘A grotesque masterpiece’, I agree about the grotesque part. The story is about Robert Caligari who enjoyed kicking pigs and ended up causing some serious trouble and then gets his comeuppance.
I found it interesting not due to it’s writing style or it’s content but for other reasons. It’s written by Tom Baker who played the fourth Doctor Who (he was always my favourite until David Tennant came along and now I can’t make up my mind) and for some of the illustrations. There are quite a lot of illustrations and the ones with horses are quite realistic. This seems to be written for children in a Lemony Snicket style and I wasn’t too impressed by his writing.
The part of the story that stands out is the part where the conflagration is being reported. Robert causes a very bad accident and we see the reporters in a very bad light. They gush about the accident in the same voices they would have gushed about any traffic problems. It’s very tongue in cheek, it’s the only part I enjoyed.
Can I recommend it? If you like Lemony Snicket you’ll probably enjoy it. If you’re a big Doctor Who fan you’ll want to read it for completeness. I currently have it for sale here
It’s Café Scheherazade!
Saturday night, almost five hours after the play finished and my eyes were still sore from crying. I started within moments of the actors coming onstage and stopped while they were handing out cake. It was an awesome play, totally hit the tenor of the book, with seriously good music by some fabulous players and so many phrases came directly from the book.
I was slightly on the back foot as I only started reading the book the previous weekend and had about 30 odd pages to go when we went into fortyfivedownstairs. Took it with me and read some of it on the train which made things rather disconcerting when the exact same words came back to me on the stage only a short time later.
Café Scheherazade by Arnold Zable is one of the best books. It is a retelling of the stories of some of the people who used to sit around talking and eating in Café Scheherazade in Acland Street, St Kilda until it closed in 2008. The characters are talking to a journalist who originally went into get some details for Café Scheherazade’s 35th anniversary and ended up hooked by the stories. They are challenging stories as they encompass existence in Siberia, Kobe, Vilna, Paris and Shanghai in the years surrounding and during World War II.
There are so many good things about this book I really don’t know where to start or finish so I’ll just include a paragraph and tell you why I think it’s so good.
This is a tale of many cities: each one consumed by the momentum of history. Each one recalled at a table in a cafe called Scheherazade, in a seaside suburb that sprawls upon the very ends of the earth, within a city that contains the traces of many cities.
This paragraph is a bridge between two stories. It finishes off the previous story without diminishing it, reminds us where we are, not just in the cafe, but on the seaside in a suburb in a fairly remote location. It doesn’t seem remote to the people who live there but it is remote from the places these people have come from, not just in distance but also in the food, the culture, so many other things including the weather. It then reminds us that this city has so many other cultures from so many other cities in the world and seems to lead us directly into another story. The writing is just perfect it’s succinct without leaving anything out. This paragraph is just an illustration of the whole book.
The play is exactly what I expected, it is just a reduction of the book and although it leaves out so much doesn’t lack anything. To get the mood of the play all the actors and the two musicians walk out slowly backwards in time with the Klezmer music. It was very evocative of the book and as soon as I saw them I instantly thought of how hard it would be to keep their arms up like that, but that reminded me of Yossel, one of the characters in the book, who was nearing ninety:
…age does not matter. Willpower can defeat it. I can still lift fifty kilos. I have already walked fifteen kilometres today…
That is when the tears started. Already they had evoked the book from within me and all they’d done was walk backwards on stage to the sound of the music.
Fortyfivedownstairs is a fairly small area. There were around 100 seats with only a couple empty and to get to the seats you had to walk on the stage, there was no delineation between the stage and the first row of seats. They had kept one seat aside in the front row, next to a table with a sign not to sit there and not to use the table, I managed to sit behind this seat. Martin, the journalist, sat there a couple of times and the light was focussed on him, it highlighted my lap with my copy of the book and my tissue.
Some scenes were rather fragmented with the actors giving a couple of words each in turn. I felt this highlighted the fragments of stories that have managed to be told and the fragments of families that have survived that era. They were very powerful.
I cannot tell you the best part of the book or the play as they were both so excellent all the way through. I could highlight the writing style, the characterisation, the stories themselves or so many other points but that would take up a whole book. I could highlight the acting, the music, the stage direction but again, that would take a whole book. Much better to just tell you to read the book and see the play. If you can’t do both then as they are both as good as the other you have a choice if you’re in Melbourne until the 11th of September when the play has it’s final performance, but elsewhere there is no choice but to read the book. I have one copy to sell, if I can think of a good competition before it sells I might offer it as a prize. If you miss out you can buy this book and others by Zable at his publishers, it seems to be unavailable everywhere else I’ve tried.
I hope to finish the book in the next day or so, I’d like to move onto something a little easier on the emotions.
Paint Your Dragon – Tom Holt
Evil is innocent, OK?
Evil is innocent, OK?
From the back of the book.
The cosmic battle between Good and Evil…
But suppose Evil threw the fight?
And suppose Good cheated?
This is the story of St George and the Dragon, it’s not the story from the 10th or 11th century or before that when good and evil were straightforward, it’s from the present. St George and the Dragon have come back and they’re hear to see you!
Actually, that’s nowhere near correct but it sounded good. St George and the Dragon have been brought back to have that final fight, again. Bianca is a sculpturess of enormous proportions, the sculptures not her body. St George inhabits one sculpture and the Dragon another. There’s a coach-load of demons on an expenses-paid holiday from Hell and with them involved things go to hell in a handbasket.
It’s a fun ride and I greatly enjoyed it. There are lots of references to the earlier fights with some additions which I’m sure never happened. We’ve got time manipulation and a nuclear explosion. All the fun of the fair. I really like Tom Holt’s writing style, it’s light and breezy while packing a punch in the legend stakes. He basically takes a legend with some facts in there and turns it into something you would never expect. It’s fun.
Split – Tara Moss
I was quite excited when I picked this up, I’ve heard so many good things about Moss and I was keen to see if I felt they were right. On reflection the answer is yes. I suppose I have to write some more now, pity, would really like to leave it at that.
Makedde Vanderwall is a woman with a past.
Makedde Vanderwall has returned to Vancouver to finish her studies and is funding this by modelling. Get the obvious link here, Moss has worked as a successful model herself. I’m not denigrating this, just pointing it out, I did enjoy getting an insight into the world of being a model. It was interesting watching Mak (Makedde) interact with her makeup artist and this interaction was different to those I’ve seen depicted on screen. It also answered one question I’ve had for a long time, how they manage to change clothes without getting makeup all over them.
I found two parts to this story. There’s all the set up where we find out a lot of background, see the characters unfold and find out about the setting, and then there’s the action. The first part I found rather boring and only stuck with it as I really wanted to find out if her action scenes were any good. It’s a good thing I hung in there, they were fabulous. Moss has a way of writing action scenes that make them really pop out. The book is not onerously long, unlike other authors, so the beginnings although I found challenging to read are not that hard to get through. I’ll definitely be reading more in the future.
Mak is a strong character. She comes across as strong willed, independent and able to deal with many different situations without needing a man’s help. She has a gay friend who gives her self-defense classes and also encourages her with her male friends. It’s a pity we didn’t see more of this friend, Jacqui, and I hope she comes up in other books, I found her refreshingly open and honest.
A word of warning. There is the odd swear word which fits nicely within the book and references to sex.