I read the book that I won on the excellent Caroline Smailes' blog the other day; Darren Craske's The Lantern Menace isn't aimed at old blokes like me but I have to say that I loved it. Here's the review that I posted on Amazon.
"The Lantern Menace is juvenile or young adult fiction so you may wonder what a fifty eight year old granddad is doing reviewing it. Well, I won a copy of the book on an excellent author's website and I knew that if she was promoting it there had to be something good about it.
And there's certainly more than something good. I'd describe it as great. It's great fun, has great pace and there's a great story there too. I've only read two fantasy novels before - The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings and, like those classics (and, I suspect many other fantasy books) The Lantern Menace involves a quest. Our young teenage heroes Finchley and Princess Castria set off with Rufus Lightfoot on their journey to recover a Limbo Lantern that holds pure evil (it's their fault that it's lost). They have plenty of exciting adventures along the way and the book is action packed throughout.
We usually associate the idea of fantasy with some sort of dark medieval atmosphere and, although there is an element of this - they journey by horse and cart - the language is up to date and the kids are very modern in their outlook; Castria goes for designer clothes and looks for her home decor in interior design magazines. This modernity adds a nice touch to the story and I love the way that author Darren Craske throws in plenty of jokes and clever asides (in brackets).
Although it's aimed at children, the book doesn't talk down to kids at all and uses a refreshingly advanced vocabulary - there's even a lepidopterist in there! Its written in a way that projects pictures into your head and I could see the action happening so vividly that I almost felt that I had watched a film rather than read a book (and what a good film it would make).
I know that both of my children would have loved this book and I'm absolutely sure that thousands of others will too."
It's very true that when people gather at funerals they often say to long lost relatives that they must never leave it so long before meeting up again. It's usually just words and those relatives remain distant until an obscure uncle or aunt passes away. In "The Red House", Mark Haddon's latest novel, early middle aged brother and sister Richard and Angela, buck that trend after their mother's funeral and get back together when Richard arranges a holiday cottage near Hay on Wye on the Welsh Borders and invites Angela and her family for a week's break.
Richard is a successful physician with a new wife and a teenage step-daughter. Angela is married to Dominic who has been significantly less successful than Richard in his career. They have three kids, eight year old Benjy and his teenager brother and sister Alex and Daisy.
The book explores the relationships between the eight characters over the week's break. All have problems - some problems are greater than others but, suffice to say, nobody is in the perfect mood to spend time with a bunch of near strangers and the holiday is predictably a time of tension rather than relaxation.
The bucolic setting reminded me a little of Posy Simmonds' Tamara Drewe comic strip and film but, although there is an opportunity for humour in the situation, it is instead a story of angst. And there is so much angst! Apart from young Benjy, no character has much to smile about and even poor Benjy has his parents to fret over. I feel that this is an aspect of the novel that lets it down. Nobody is upbeat and, because Mark Haddon chooses to write in an unusual (though granted extremely clever) style of hopping from viewpoint to viewpoint to the extent that I frequently found myself turning back a page to see which character was the subject of a particular passage it can at times be a very difficult read. Although the necessity to do this eased as I gradually got into the book and understood the characters I found another technique used by the author ( jumping from the past to the present tense) caused the novel to be somewhat disjointed and I found it a fairly stilted read.
There are some beautiful similes and the story is written in an extremely evocative and atmospheric way that makes the reader almost feel wet from the interminable Borders' rain but I didn't like the characters enough to empathise with them and, whilst I would give an arm and a leg to be able to write so well, I would rate this as four rather than five stars.
There are hundreds of reasons why I eagerly awaited the launch of 99 Reasons Why. Caroline Smailes is a hugely talented author who readers can always rely upon to come up with something new and something original. Her earlier novels included poetic prose forming artistic patterns on the page, small chunks of text in sign language, a beer swilling Jesus living in Malta - she is a bit special, a one off.
So it's little surprise that, in the world of e-publishing, she has once again come up with something original - a book with eleven different endings. No doubt, had the book been released in print, Caroline and her equally adventurous publisher Scott Pack would have included one of these origami fortune tellers to help you to choose your ending. It's a great idea and I wanted to love the book.
Unfortunately I didn't love it. The novella is told in the voice of twenty-two year old Kate. Kate talks to the reader in an authentic North Eastern voice and I felt as if I was being told a story by Sarah Millican. So far so good. The voice is brilliant. Kate is reclusive, thinks that Princess Di was her mother and is being paid £90 every week by a shady uncle (who may or may not be her dad) to monitor the comings and goings at the Kevin Keegan day nursery opposite her house. She spends her free time buying Princess Di memorabilia on eBay. This is fascinating stuff but, whereas I could empathise with the miserable existences of characters in Caroline's Black Boxes and In Search Of Adam, I couldn't warm to Kate and her ghastly parents who would fit perfectly into the cast of Shameless - feckless work shy dad and foul mouthed lazy mum. Smailes' skill as an author presents the reader with visceral images of Kate and her bodily fluids - blood, vomit, piss and more, in situations that would have evoked my sympathy in other books but here just left my nose wrinkling and "yeuch" in my mind.
It's a page turner, cleverly written in short chapters or "reasons"and it's a must read for anyone who appreciates something different. But by the time I reached the choose an ending process I wished the whole family dead. Unfortunately as I hit on a happy ending, my wish was not fulfilled. Of course I went back and found a Tarantino ending which might have been preferable first time around but there was something strange about going back to a new ending that for me didn't feel right. I tried several more endings but felt that once I'd been to an ending I was out of the loop of the story and to get the most from the process I would have to start back at page one.
So it's five stars from me for originality and exceptional writing but, as I didn't enjoy the experience, it's sadly not going to join Caroline Smailes' other books amongst my all time favourites. Well three out of four ain't bad.
I'm a bit of a lazy so and so when it comes to choosing books and, as Marion has such brilliant literary taste, I tend to simply read what she's bought - I'm rarely disappointed. This is even easier now that we both have Kindles and we can read the same books at the same time. But just before we headed up to the caravan on Saturday I decided to pop into Waterstones in Liverpool and choose some reading for the long dark hours in St Andrews. I made a list after looking at the covers from a wide range and then went home and downloaded them onto the Kindle (sorry Waterstones but at least you sold me a panini and a cup of coffee). I wanted something that might make me laugh so I chose The Rotters Club by Jonathan Coe, Rabbit Run by John Updike and Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. In addition I picked a few that were not for laughs and bought Pigeon English and The Slap because both are best sellers and have some critical acclaim.
I finished The Rotters Club pretty quickly. It was a well written novel about adolescence interwoven with seventies nostalgia and Trade Union politics. I enjoyed it although it did not provide the laughs suggested by the cover. Skippy Dies took far longer to read and it was almost a week before I finished it today. The Kindle version does not have page numbers but the percentage bar at the bottom of the screen kept telling me I was far from finished and I just read that it runs to almost 700 pages in paperback. I feel somewhat exhausted and a little let down as, yet again, despite being well (nay brilliantly) written, I failed to find the humour proclaimed on the back cover. Set in a posh Catholic boys school in Dublin there is plenty of scope for adolescent laughs but this tale of 14 year olds is simply too dark to be a comic novel and I found myself disappointed that I have failed, yet again, to find the holy grail of a book that will make me smile. Many years ago I enjoyed Tom Sharpe's Wilt novels and, whilst I bet they are terribly dated today, they were written just for laughs. If anybody can point me in the direction of a modern equivalent, I will be very grateful - mind you I've still got the Updike to redeem my choice.
We're off to the wonderful Old Course hotel tomorrow for three nights. You may wonder why, when we have our caravan to stay in, we should up sticks and head for a luxurious five star hotel with an outstanding spa, huge comfortable rooms, deep baths and magnificent breakfasts. A mystery. But one with a logical solution. It's quite simply because many months ago, in our pre caravan owning days, the hotel tweeted an unbeatable special offer for November and I booked it. The excellent deal had a no cancellation clause so I suppose we'll just have to grin and bear it. Poor us.
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| My Novel |
While I am up here in Scotland I hope to be putting the finishing touches to my novel. I wrote it over two years ago and then had to shelve it due to work commitments but since retiring it has been professionally critiqued for me by a leading light in publishing and I have done a rewrite taking everything he said on board. I think its quite good (apologies for the immodesty) and I am now looking at ways of self publishing it for the Kindle. I will be pleased when it is finally finished as I feel that I have learnt an awful lot about writing and can't wait to start my next one. Maybe I will try and write something that will make people laugh.
We bought a Kindle in March. We both enjoy reading but there was something of a reluctance to take the plunge with e-books and, although we have had the device for six months, we didn't download anything until the week before we went on holiday.I still had plenty unread on the shelves so had no incentive to go digital and Marion loves the feel of books and was extremely reluctant to make the change. But with us travelling by air for the first time in ages, a case full of paperbacks would have played havoc with the baggage allowance. Marion is a great list maker and had a long list of novels that she had seen reviewed recently so we went onto Amazon and bought half a dozen. An added benefit was that we were able to download the Kindle App onto both the iPad and the iPhone giving us three copies of each book which meant that we could both read the same book at the same time which would have allowed us to talk about them if we had actually done so.
The experience was a delight. The screen is clear and the device is extremely light. Turning a page is simplicity and the book is always at the right page when you pick it up again. I reckon that using the Kindle allowed me to get through a novel in far less time than it would have taken me to read the same in book form. As a consequence I got through all six of Marion's book choices in the seven days we were away as well as a free Charles Dickens selection that I downloaded.
Marion used the Kindle and I used the Kindle for iPad and iPhone. There is no question which is better. The iPad is much heavier and the screens on both iPad and iPhone are more difficult to read in bright sunlight. Having said that I still found using them a good experience. The latest Kindle is on offer at Amazon for just £89 and, at that price, anybody who enjoys reading should log on and buy one now.
So what did I read on that marathon readathon? All the books probably fall into the category of light reading and tending towards the feminine taste, both of which suit me fine.
Tim Pears' Landed tells the story of a young father separated from his wife and kids. It opens with a hard but idyllic childhood spent on the Welsh hillside with farming grandparents but life is turned upside down by a motor accident which wrecks the future. This is a very easy and highly descriptive novel which moves to becoming (intentionally) surreal in the closing stages. We would have preferred it without the surreality as both of us found the ending unsatisfying.
For me, another strange ending marred the excellent Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown. A story of relationships and family told by the long suffering teenager Jake and his alcohol dependent mother Mary the book constantly flits between decades and demands concentration but that concentration is rewarded by an intriguing jigsaw that fits together beautifully and, I felt, should have ended when that last piece was put into place.
The Return Of Captain John Emmett is a bit of an Edwardian whodunnit (although there's no chance of you guessing the solution). It's entertaining and enjoyable. Perfect for a sun lounger.
The White Woman On The Green Bicycle was my favourite of the holiday reads. Set on the tropical paradise of Trinidad, the book evokes colonialism to perfection. It is the tale of a glamorous young couple who travel to the Caribbean for the husband's career. It's supposed to be a short term thing so the suffering young wife, who dislikes the place intensely, makes an effort to cope but watches in horror as her husband becomes a lotus eater who is totally bewitched by the island's charms. With strands of politics, relationships, racism, family and love, this is a complex and beautifully written novel that will appeal to a wide range of readers.
I felt that I could see what was coming in A Mile Of River from a long way off. If things hadn't turned out as expected it would have been a brilliant novel but as clues were flagged up almost in block capitals I was disappointed. A rites of passage tale of a young woman in the long summer drought of 1976. As I said, "brilliant" could be applied to the writing but not, sadly, to the plot.
Another very pleasant read, The Opposite Of Falling is a good love story with plenty to keep you guessing. I thought that the flying devices around which the whole thing revolves felt a little contrived but the characters are strong and believable and it's a very nice book.
And talking of nice things, I'd like to finish today with some words of praise for Signor Bonifacio Brass and his staff of Locanda Cipriani on Torcello. We had to leave the hotel at eight in the morning. This was before breakfast starts but on the previous evening one of the waiters offered to get up an hour early and come to the hotel and make breakfast for us. What fabulous service! We declined the waiter's offer - the poor lad wasn't knocking off until late at night and we had plenty of time to eat at the airport but when we got up, Signor Brass, the owner of the Locanda, made us coffee. That's the sort of attention to detail and hands on management that has made the place the massive success that it is. Success that is well deserved. You wouldn't get many hotel managers doing that, let alone owners. Thank you.
