Book Review - Relativity

From Goodreads: Ethan is a bright young boy obsessed with physics and astronomy who lives with his mother, Claire. Claire has been a wonderful parent to Ethan, but he's becoming increasingly curious about his father's absence in his life, wanting to fill in the gaps. 
Claire's life is centred on Ethan; she is fiercely protective of her talented, vulnerable son, and of her own feelings. When Ethan falls ill, tied to a tragic event from when he was a baby, Claire's tightly held world is split open. 
On the other side of the country, Mark is trying to forget about the events that tore his family apart. Then a sudden and unexpected call home forces him to confront his past, and the hole in his life that was once filled with his wife Claire and his son Ethan.
When Ethan secretly intercepts a letter from Mark to Claire, he unleashes long-suppressed forces that – like gravity – pull the three together again, testing the limits of love and forgiveness.
Heart-wrenching, absorbing and magical, Relativity is an irresistible novel about science, love, unbreakable bonds and irreversible acts.

Thoughts: Antonia Hayes did not give a lot of interviews about this book. Understandable when you realise how closely she cuts to the bone with the premise of the book. One interview she did give was on Richard Fidler's Conversations. (seriously, I should track how many books I get from that show!) It was interesting and heart-wrenching enough for me to add to my list. In the end, I listened to it as a audio, read by the author herself.

I quite enjoyed the book, although I found Claire to be fairly annoying. However, there was one moment in the book where it completely lost me and it took a lot to get me back. During a meeting at school with Claire, Ethan, staff at the school, the parents of one of Ethan's friends and Ethan's friend, the mother of the friend reveals some very private and privileged information. The principal and other staff that were present just let it happen. There was time and space for them to intervene and they didn't. I do not know of, nor can imagine such a situation ever occurring. Schools are big on privacy and protecting children. There is no way what was revealed would be allowed. It was necessary for Ethan to find out the information disclosed, but it was done in such a clunky, plot device way it completely jarred me out of the story. For quite awhile I was so angry about the whole thing  I struggled to slip back into the story. However, in the end I managed to move past it and follow the story to the end.

The book is one of those that presents several questions to the reader. How would you react in Claire's position? What would you tell your child about what happened and the effect it has had? What are the dangers of hiding such information from a child - especially when they form answers for themselves that may be very far of the mark. And at what point do you start to believe your own lies in order to cover the pain?

Part of me wants to give Relativity 4 stars, but the reality is the school scene plus a few other little niggling issues means it will stay at a 3.

Relativity gets 3 stars

*        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it
*****   It was amazing

Book Review: The Serial Killers Club

From Goodreads: When our hero finds himself in the path of a serial killer, he somehow manages to defend himself, and give the blood-thirsty madman a taste of his own medicine. But when he goes through the dead man's wallet, he finds a mysterious personal ad inviting him to join a party hosted by Errol Flynn. What begins with passing curiosity soon becomes uncontrollable obsession, as our hero becomes acquainted with 18 killers. Their game: to share the thrill of the hunt and to make sure no two members choose the same two victims. To protect their identities, they have all chosen names of old Hollywood stars, and before long, our hero becomes Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. But he has no intention of following the rules. With a government special agent on his trail who will soon become his partner in crim, "Dougie" plans to knock off the killers one by one, from Carole Lombard to Chuck Norris, to Laurence Olivier and Cher. But what happens when the "stars" notice their numbers dropping?

Thoughts: At the library where I work, our customers can use an app called Overdrive to download ebooks and audio books. Occasionally I have to help someone access the items they want so I figured I better work out how to use it myself! So I downloaded a couple of talking books - this being one of them. It sounded good, sounded light and funny. It even had promise to start with, but by the end I just wanted it to be over! I think part of the problem is Dougie is just an incredibly stupid man. Painfully stupid. He is completely oblivious to anything going on around him that doesn't pertain to him. Every slight by a person, every comment made is reaction to him and if it's negative, he will spin it around to some explanation that strokes his belief in himself as this perfect human specimen. Of course what this means is he is extremely easy to manipulate and completely clueless to it. While it had comic value to start with, by the end it just became plain annoying and repetitive. 
It most probably didn't help that I wasn't enthralled by the narrator either. His voice lacked expression and possibly made a dull book even duller. If you were going to give this one a go, I'd suggest reading it, not listening. It is this that convinces me to give it 2 stars instead of 1.

The Serial Killers Club gets 2 stars

*        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing

Book Review: The Heart Goes Last

From Goodreads: Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a ‘social experiment’ offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their ‘Alternates,’ the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over. 

Thoughts: This should have been good, it should have been brilliant, especially in the hands of Margaret Atwood. The idea was solid, a world in economic ruin and people desperate enough to do whatever they needed to feel safe and secure. But it wasn't good, it fell short, very short. 
I loved The Handmaid's Tale and The Year of the Flood and Atwood has long been on my list of authors to read everything of so I am really disappointed in this.
Charmaine and Stan annoyed the hell out of me. They were both so stupid! There were situations, especially with Charmaine where her inability to see where certain events were leading was astounding. Her tendency to take everything literally and in isolation without taking in what was happening around her made her character hard to believe. 
The story was originally written as a serial story, chapters released bit by bit for readers to pick up on. I didn't read it in that form and maybe it worked better as a serial, but as a whole novel it's flawed.
The problem is you're not sure if this is meant to be a black comedy or a serious commentary of the direction of our society and where we are heading. It's almost like it's trying to be both and falling seriously short. There are parts that are farcical (possibilibots and an over abundance of Elvis and Marilyn impersonators to name just two), but they seem to be there as plot devices and nothing more. The story line lurches from the strange to the absurd leaving you feeling confused and let down. However it does hold enough potential to keep you going, I kept holding one waiting for that one moment when it all came together and I got to share in Atwood's grand design. Unfortunately I think the design should never have made it off the drawing board.

The Heart Goes Last gets 2 stars.

*        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing

Book Review: Coin Locker Babies

From Goodreads: A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today. 
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile. 
Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.

Thoughts: This was our July book group read and I found it hard going. So hard I actually put it down because I was not going to the meeting so didn't feel a pressing need to finish it. Then the meeting got postponed,  as did the next one and we finally decided we would have a long lunch meeting and discuss all three books. So I picked it up again and while I won't say I found it easy reading, I did hit my stride with it.

Coin Locker Babies is just one of those books you have to go with the flow with. There's not much point trying to delve to deep, just be carried by the current and grab the snatches you can in the hope it will come together finally. And it did, sort of. I'm sure I missed stuff, but I got the general feeling of the book. Basically being dumped in a coin locker and then bought up in and orphanage and foster family really, really messes with you head. It's incredibly obvious that Kiku and Hashi are damaged. Their ways of dealing with that damage are vastly different, but their loyalty to each other as brothers, while twisted, is as strong as any siblings. A very strange read.

Coin Locker Babies gets 2 stars

*        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing 

Book Review: Bleakboy and Hunter Stand Out in the Rain

From Goodreads: A new, laugh-out-loud novel from award-winning author Steven Herrick.
Some things are too big for a boy to solve.
Jesse is an eleven-year-old boy tackling many problems in life, especially fitting in to a new school.
Luckily he meets Kate. She has curly black hair, braces and an infectious smile. She wants to Save the Whales, and needs Jesse’s help.
Both haven’t counted on Hunter, the school bully, who is an endless font of meaningless names. 
With Hunter’s catchphrase 'Ha!' echoing through their peaceful school, someone has to give.
But will it be Jesse? Kate? Or is there more to Hunter than everyone thinks?
An inspiring and funny story about the small gestures that help to make the world a better place.

Thoughts:  This is the sixth and last of the Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA) shortlisted Younger Readers books. 

Most Steven Herrick stuff I have read previously has been books in verse and I've really liked them. This however fell short of the mark for me. Jesse and Hunter are both great characters, although I felt Hunter's story was the stronger of the two and I engaged with him a lot more than Jesse, but quite a few things just did not gel for me in this book.

The alternative school just didn't work for me. For a place that promoted calling teachers by their first name, giving children a say and supporting a meat free diet, I couldn't understand why the teacher stopped Kate's talk about how the Japanese eat whales. There were a few other incidents where things occurred that just didn't seem to fit with the school's philosophy.

The highlight of the book was Hunter. So nice to see a child portrayed as complex and not just the bully or the bullied. Hunter at school is a different kid to Hunter outside of school and while you start out not liking this little bully, it doesn't take long before you see a completely different side of him. He's a lot older than his years and a lot smarter than people think.

Bleakboy and Hunter isn't a bad book, it's just not as good as I thought or wanted it to be.

Bleakboy and Hunter Stand  Out in the Rain gets 2 stars

Withering-by-Sea gets 4 stars!

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing 

Book Review: Amnesia

From Goodreads: It was a spring evening in Washington DC; a chilly autumn morning in Melbourne; it was exactly 22.00 Greenwich Mean Time when a worm entered the computerised control systems of hundreds of Australian prisons and released the locks in many places of incarceration, some of which the hacker could not have known existed. 
Because Australian prison security was, in the year 2010, mostly designed and sold by American corporations the worm immediately infected 117 US federal correctional facilities, 1,700 prisons, and over 3,000 county jails. Wherever it went, it traveled underground, in darkness, like a bushfire burning in the roots of trees. Reaching its destinations it announced itself: The corporation is under our control. The angel declares you free.
Has a young Australian woman declared cyber war on the United States? Or was her Angel Worm intended only to open the prison doors of those unfortunates detained by Australia's harsh immigration policies? Did America suffer collateral damage? Is she innocent? Can she be saved?

Thoughts: Peter Carey is one of those authors I've been meaning to read for years. He is lauded as one of Australia's greats and at the start of this book I could see why. However, by the end I just wanted it to be over. I listened to this as a audio book, read by Colin Friels and Friels voice may have been the only thing that stopped me ripping my headphones off in pure frustration.

As I said, it started well. The story was intriguing, the narrator someone you were willing to go along with.  Then part two of the book started. I started to wish the narrator would stop whinging, I kept waiting for the story to go somewhere, for the clear storyline from the first part to reappear. It didn't. Or maybe it did but I was so dispirited and confused I couldn't recognise it. Amnesia strikes me as the kind of book that was trying to be too clever for it's own good and in doing so it stuffed up what could have been a really interesting story. I haven't given up on Carey just yet, everyone deserves a second chance, but it may take me awhile before I'm willing to have another go.

Amnesia gets 2 stars

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it

*****   It was amazing 

Book Review: The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher

From Goodreads: In The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Hilary Mantel’s trademark gifts of penetrating characterization, unsparing eye, and rascally intelligence are once again fully on display.
Her classic wicked humor in each story—which range from a ghost story to a vampire story to near-memoir to mini-sagas of family and social fracture—brilliantly unsettles the reader in that unmistakably Mantel way. 
Mantel brutally and acutely writes about gender, marriage, class, family, and sex, cutting to the core of human experience. Unpredictable, diverse, and even shockingly unexpected, each story grabs you by the throat within a couple of sentences. The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher displays a magnificent writer at the peak of her powers.

Thoughts: This is our book group read for May. I'm not really sure what to think. I didn't particularly enjoy any of the stories, but have the distinct feeling I missed something. I'm looking forward to our discussion on it in the hope the other members of my book group can shed some light.

At the moment though, I kind of feel like Mantel was trying to be too clever for her own good. Many of the stories seemed to go nowhere and say very little. In fact, only days after finishing the book, the only stories I can recall in any detail are Winter Break and the title story - The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. The stories were short, which was just as well since by the time I got to the end of them, I was ready to give up on them. The book itself if not long - only running to 300 pages all up. Hmm, will wait and see what the others say.

The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher  gets 2 stars

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it
*****   It was amazing

Book Review: An Abundance of Katherines

From Goodreads: Katherine V thought boys were gross
Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart 
When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.
On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl. Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.

Thoughts: So having really enjoyed The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, I approach any new John Green with excitement and fear. Excitement, because I'm anticipating another good book, fear because what if I'm disappointed.
I wasn't completely disappointed. In fact, if this had been the first John Green I'd read, I would have thought it was ok, but I wouldn't have rushed out to read his other books.
The characters in this just didn't really gel for me. Colin's best friend Hassan I found to be an annoying little twerp and Colin himself was only slightly better. In fact, although I know teenagers are a bit self-obsessed, Colin managed to take it to a whole new level.
And then there was the footnotes. Footnotes work in books if they add something to the story. Pratchett is a master at it. The footnotes in this were just distracting and stopped the flow of the story.
If you are a John Green fan, read it, but be prepared to finish it and just go hmmm.

An Abundance of Katherines gets 2 stars

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it
*****   It was amazing

Book Review: Anna Karenina

From Goodreads: Leo Tolstoy’s classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.
In their world frivolous liaisons are commonplace, but Anna and Vronsky’s consuming passion makes them a target for scorn and leads to Anna’s increasing isolation. The heartbreaking trajectory of their relationship contrasts sharply with the colorful swirl of friends and family members who surround them, especially the newlyweds Kitty and Levin, who forge a touching bond as they struggle to make a life together. Anna Karenina is a masterpiece not only because of the unforgettable woman at its core and the stark drama of her fate, but also because it explores and illuminates the deepest questions about how to live a fulfilled life.

Thoughts: Yay!! I finished! All 38 hours done.  Now to try and review it.

I'm glad I chose to listen to this rather than read. Last year I had an aborted attempt to read Les Miserables, mainly because I struggled with the huge swathes of text that had nothing to do with the story. I found the same with this - pages on farming techniques and political processes that appeared to have little or nothing to do with the main story. However, listening to it seemed easier than reading it - maybe I should try listening to Les Miserables instead.

I find I have to constantly remind myself of the time and era books such as Anna Karenina were written and set in. In particular, I have to remind myself how different the world was for women and how devastating it could be for them to be left on their own. Leaving your husband also meant leaving any children and destroying any social standing you had.

None of the characters in the book really endeared themselves to me. The amount of time spent worrying about what others thought, or assuming what others thought frustrated me beyond belief. Second guessing your decisions constantly also annoyed me. Again, something I think I must accept as part of the time.

But what most probably confuses me the most about Anna Karenina is why it's named Anna Karenina. Her story is only part of the book, and Levin seems to be a much more central character.

In the end, I'm glad I've read (or at least listened to) it, if only to say I have. Would I choose to read it again? Most probably not. I will however, track down a movie version. Any recommendations?

Anna Karenina gets 2 stars

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it
*****   It was amazing

Book Review: Sweet Valley Confidential Ten Years Later

From Goodreads: Now with this striking new adult novel from author and creator Francine Pascal, millions of devoted fans can finally return to the idyllic Sweet Valley, home of the phenomenally successful book series and franchise. Iconic and beloved identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield are back and all grown up, dealing with the complicated adult world of love, careers, betrayal, and sisterhood.  

Thoughts: When this came through the return chutes at work I knew I had to read it. I was a massive Sweet Valley High fan, although I never read the Sweet Valley University books. I also knew it would be cheesy, unbelievable and ridiculous. 
And it was, but it was fun! At no point did I expect anything else.  At the very end Pascal gives a potted history of all our favourite Sweet Valley characters and it's amazing how many people were "as cute as ever" or "had retained their good looks." Not surprisingly  everyone was still either stunningly gorgeous or at least cute.
The funniest thing about this book for me however was the reviews on Goodreads. The number of people who seem surprised at how bad it was. Really? Surely you realise you are reading pulp fiction from your teenage years. To complain about poor writing, unbelievable story lines and poor character development is ridiculous. As much as I loved the books as a pre teen/ teen, I know that's exactly what the original books were like. Any one who thought they would get anything more from them was delusional to begin with.

Ten Years Later gets 2 stars , with one being for the trip down memory lane.

 *        Did not like it
**       It was OK
***      Liked it
****    Really liked it
*****   It was amazing