Boy Swallows Universe – Trent Dalton – 06.02.24

Wow! I just finished this book yesterday evening (actually it was close to midnight because I couldn’t’ stop reading even though it was way past my sleepy time!) and I am still reeling from the beauty and emotional impact of this amazing book.

At first I didn’t know what to make of the writing style – it’s from the point of view of a twelve year old boy (at least to begin with) with a really profound and unique way of viewing the world. The sentences are all poetic and symbolic to the point that until I got my head around the style I was finding it difficult to follow what was going on.

Once I did though, I was so drawn in to the world of Eli Bell, with the absent father and drug addict mother and the big brother who had been mute since some unmentioned trauma a few years previous. They are raised by their mum’s boyfriend Lyle, who is a drug dealer, and are babysat by Slim, an ex-con famous for his many daring prison escapes, and yet Eli sees goodness and love in these people. It depicts a dangerous and in some ways hopeless childhood and yet is told with wonder and whimsy, a little magic and lots of unquenchable optimism . Apparently it is semi-autobiographical which is nice because you really want the good people to come through to better times.

I’m excited to check out the adaptation of the book that is on Netflix, and also to read more from this author.

Relight My Fire: The Stranger Times, Book 4 – C. K. McDonnell – (Audiobook) – 03.02.24

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I am still very much enjoying the Stranger Times series by Caimh McDonnell, especially the fabulous narration by Brendan McDonald (I am sure the author adds in as many accents as possible to take full advantage of the narrators incredible vocal dexterity giving life and colour to so many characters from so many regions!).

In this book, a disgraced doctor uses science and magic to reanimate the sort of people who could afford to have their bodies cryogenically preserved – so basically a horde of fabulous (darling) zombies!

Like all the book in this series it is funny and clever with great characters and just the right amount of heart. Roll on the next one!

Beyond Broadhall: The ’86 Fix Conclusion – Keith A. Pearson – 28.01.24

I was quite scathing in my review of The ’86 fix, which is the first in this two book series, although that could have been because the audible narrator was so dull. I wanted to know how the story resolved, so I bought this sequel on kindle, thinking my internal monologue narrator would do a better job!

Well, I have to say that taken as a whole with the resolution in this second book I feel much more favourable towards the story. I don’t know if I would agree with the book cover’s declaration of ‘page turning brilliance’ but I did quite enjoy the second book, and think it lifted the first book. It is a take on the old ‘if you change bad things in the past, other bad things might happen which are just as bad or worse, so you should have left well enough alone’ conundrum. I did think it was interesting and thought provoking and quite sweet. I’m not sure if I would seek out other books by this author though.

The Change (Audiobook) – Kirsten Miller (Author), January LaVoy (Narrator) – 22.01.24

I really enjoyed listening to this story!

The premise is that some women contain genetic predisposition to certain supernatural powers which only truly manifest once the they reach menopause. Nessa (the seeker) sees dead people – specifically people (usually girls) who were taken and murdered and Nessa’s roll is to find their bodies so their families can find peace. Jo (the protector) has this sort of explosive heat power that builds up and can be used as a weapon against bad men, and Harriet (the punisher) has a way with nature – she grows and nurtures all kinds of medicinal plants and makes powerful potions to heal or to harm and also seems to be able to communicate with and ask for help from insects and animals.

These women (and many others they meet) have been treated badly by men with power over them all their lives and are only now getting the means to redress the balance and give these men what they deserve.

It is certainly a feminist book, in that most (but not all) the male characters are bad men who abuse their power and most (but not all) of the women are innocent victims of that abuse. Saying that, it was great fun and very satisfying to read/listen to especially as a ‘women of a certain age’ myself! There’s a mystery to solve with some nice twists and I liked all the main characters. I loved it!

Kala – Colin Walsh (AUDIOBOOK), Narrated by: Frank Blake, Moe Dunford, Seána Kerslake – 19.01.24

I thought this book was enjoyable enough, without being blown away by it. The narration was excellent, which helped, so I wasn’t ever bored.

Old school friends meet up 15 years after tragedy in their small Irish town blighted their lives. We learn from memories and flashbacks the twists and turns of what happened and why so many people carry secrets. I didn’t see all the twists coming, and if you like mystery thriller type books then this is a good one, I think, although this is not my favourite genre so I’m perhaps not the best judge. (Often I hate this kind of book, so the fact that I enjoyed it at all is actually saying a lot!)

All My Mothers – Joanna Glen – 14.01.24

I recently re-read Joanna Glen’s first book: The Other Half of Augusta Hope for my book group and was reminded of how much I’d loved it, so immediately upon finishing I looked on Amazon for more from the author and bought this.

The main character, Eva, realises at an early age that her family are not ‘normal’. Her father is almost always away on business, and her mother, though physically present is off in her own world of depressed withdrawal. Eva’s suspicions are further aroused when there are no baby photos of her, and details of her early live are hazy.

She makes it her life’s work to find the truth and in doing so travels to Cordova in Spain (a region where the writer lived as a student and writes about with obvious love and knowledge).

I love Joanna Glen’s writing style, and I loved this book – a heat wrenching and beautiful story of finding one’s place in the world and the different ways people can be mothers.

The Body – A Guide For Occupants – Bill Bryson (AUDIOBOOK) – 15.01.24

I’m not very good at reading non-fiction – without a story I get bored, and indeed I did start this book over a year ago, and then got bored and left it for a long time before taking it up again to finish it.

I did enjoy listening to it (in two halves!) and was constantly annoying my husband with wee titbits of information from the book. Having studied biochemistry and molecular genetics there was a lot of stuff that I knew once and had forgotten, and some stuff which I’d never really thought about. A lot of interesting history of science stuff and factoids about health and diet etc in different parts of the world. Fun.

My Father’s House: The Rome Escape Line, Book 1 (AUDIOBOOK) – Joseph O’Connor – 11.01.24

This novel is based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’ Flaherty, an Irish priest working in Vatican City who helped many escaped prisoners to flee the city under the noses of the Nazis.

I loved the narration – I have been watching the tv adaptation of Mr Mercedes (by Stephen King) and I was reminded of Brendan Gleeson’s fabulous betrayal of Bill Hodges – the irascible grumpy Irishman with the heart of gold and courage of a lion, in the character of Hugh. (As I re-read the previous sentence, I’m struck by my use of the hackneyed idiom: ‘courage of a lion’. Not only was it lazy on my part, but it seems to me that it is the small creatures who need more courage – it’s easy to appear brave if you’re bigger and fiercer than your peers, Like saying the Nazis were brave but actually they just had power. Surely it is the tiny creatures who face so many dangers and struggles who should be lauded as being brave – so the idiom should be brave as a dormouse, or brave as a wren. Just sayin.)

So, back to the book which was exciting and portrayed the whole gamut of human personalities from the very bad to the very good and shades in-between. I enjoyed the read.

Human Traces – Sebastian Faulks – 08.01.24

It was interesting to me to read this book so soon after I read Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, as both books are set in the same era (early twentieth century, in the lead up to the war) and cover similar fields (medicine – although while The Magic Mountain had doctors floundering in the field of tuberculosis, without the benefit of modern understanding and equipment, in this book the field of study is disorders of the mind).

The two main characters came to ‘mad doctoring’ from very different backgrounds – Jacques was the son of a poor French farmer whose brother was kept chained up in the stables because he suffered from what we would now call severe schizophrenia. Jacques intelligence was nurtured by a local priest who enabled him to study and follow his dream to help his brother and others like him.

Thomas was from an upper-class English family, and as the younger son was expected to train for some respectable profession. His interest lay in literature, especially Shakespeare which led him to wondering how our minds evolved to create art which led him to studying the brain and it’s disorders.

There was a lot of interesting information about the history of this field of medicine, and vivid portraits of the horrors of the early asylums which I found fascinating. As a story though, I felt the characters were somewhat lost behind the weight of the historic setting and although I found the book interesting (if a little over long), I wasn’t that invested in the people at the heart of the story (the ending did move me though).

The ’86 Fix (AUDIOBOOK) – Keith A. Pearson – 06.01.24

I have read and enjoyed other Keith Pearson books, and I generally like books about time travel, and yet… this book (or at least the first half of it) really dragged for me. I’m not sure if it was the slow plotting or the plodding narrator (or both) although when I increased the audible listening speed it did help reduce the boredom a bit.

There is a lot of setting up of the plot – Craig is 46 and in a loveless marriage and a dead end job and overweight and miserable. Then (finally) about half way through the book, when tidying his childhood bedroom he finds a computer game he’d written in his youth about time travel, which whooshes him back into his teenage self.

I preferred the second half, because who hasn’t wished to go back and relive events armed with adult knowledge and maturity and do them differently. There are some quite poignant scenes, although the sex scenes were uncomfortable.

The ending surprised me with a big cliff-hanger, so much so that I bought the second book (this time as a kindle book not an audiobook, both because it was cheaper and also because the narrator was so boring in the first book). Time will tell if things resolve nicely in the sequel.