The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak (AUDIOBOOK) – 14.11.23

This book is told from two points of view in alternating chapters – Ada, a teenage girl who is mortified when she has a loud breakdown/outburst at school on the first anniversary of her mother’s death (at first I thought, oh no, another annoying young adult protagonist, but I got past that when I got to know the characters better) and a fig tree.

The fig tree was brought as a cutting from Cyprus by Ada’s father after he returned to the island of his birth as an adult on a scientific visit. The fig tree narrated the back story of Ada’s parents who fell in love as teenagers against the backdrop of growing civil unrest between Greek Cypriot Christians and Turkish Cypriot Islamists. of course they were on different sides of the divide, and hence their love was forbidden.

The story is told very beautifully, and is heartbreakingly sad, as is any story where former neighbours and friends become bitter enemies due to some minor difference in ethnicity or religion.

I liked the perspective of the tree, uprooted and moved to a new environment, but finding connections in the way trees do with the network of fungus rhizomes that connect the trees roots and form a self supporting community, as well as the symbiosis between plants and insects and wondering why people couldn’t support each other in the same way.

It’s a nice book, I enjoyed it.

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng (AUDIOBOOK) – 06.11.23

Wow! I love Celeste Ng’s writing – so beautiful.

While this book is very much written from the perspective of experiencing bigotry as a Chinese American and/or a mixed race couple (ethnic Chinese and white American) in the 1970s there is so much about the family dynamics in the book which would resonate, I think with all families.

The title is the key – Everything I Never Told You is about miscommunication and misunderstanding and the tragic and heart-breaking consequences.

Both the parents, James and Marilyn Lee, are reeling from clashes with their own parents and vow to give their children a different experience, but in so doing they push too far the other way and end up mirroring the parental pressures they were trying to avoid.

Even their relationship with each other is constantly based on untold feelings and misread cues that drives a wedge between them.

The book begins with the disappearance of Lydia, the teenaged daughter of the Lee family and the discovery of her body. Flashbacks fill in the events that led to the tragedy as well as following the aftermath. We get chapters from the perspectives of all the five family members – the parents, Lydia’s older brother, Nate and younger sister, Hannah, each with a rich inner life that they keep to themselves. Even the discovery by Marilyn of the diaries she gave Lydia every Christmas all completely blank illustrate how difficult the family members found it to bare their souls even to themselves.

I can understand as a dyed-in-the-wool introvert how hard it is to be open, but I am trying to be more communicative, because people need to understand each other better and how can they if you don’t let them in? I wanted to shout at the characters to just tell each other how you really feel, while also acknowledging my hypocrisy when I do the same thing.

The narrator, Cassandra Campbell, was excellent as well – really brought the beautiful lyrical language to life while giving each character a distinct and realistic voice. I loved this book.

Salem’s Lot – Stephen King (AUDIOBOOK) – 02.11.23

I have read/listened to a lot of Stephen King books recently, and I’ve very much enjoyed the experience. Mostly I’ve listened to his more recent works, and many reviewers claim the older stuff is better, so I checked out Salem’s Lot, written, I think in 1970. Stephen King himself gave an introduction to the audiobook, and said that it was somewhat dated now, which it was, although nothing too terrible!

Hmmm, I did enjoy the book – classic vampire fair, but I have to say that I prefer the more recent King books I’ve read.

The Girl Who Broke the Sea – A. Connors – 31.10.23

Near the beginning of this book I was starting to regret reading yet another YA book about a fraught teenage girl acting out, but… very quickly I became gripped by the story and actually by the end of the book I loved it.

Lily is a teenage girl who comes with her mother to a deep sea mining rig. They are both escaping from past trauma, which we get teased out in flashbacks from Lily’s memory. The rig has political tensions between the mining manager, who just wants to maximise profits, and the science team who want to minimise damage to the environment, and also study the unique and fascinating ecosystem that exists in the deepest parts of the ocean.

Lily, like her father who she lovingly remembers in her flashbacks, are both obviously neurodivergent, and one bugbear I had was that Lily was constantly punished for acting out while being given no support or tactics for dealing with her inappropriate impulses. As someone who works in the education system, I found it hard to believe that she wasn’t looked after better.

Lily finds it very hard to fit in with the overachieving children of the rig staff but she does make a friend and together they discover an intelligent species of hive mind micro-organisms that threaten to destroy the rig and kill everyone if they can’t learn to communicate and co-exist.

The book references the novel and movie ‘Contact’ but I actually was reminded more of the fabulous movie ‘Arrival’ by the totally alien nature of the new creature and the difficulties of finding common ground and working together.

I thought it was a very good book and will look for more work by this author.

Red Dwarf: Better Than Life (Audiobook) – Grant Naylor (Author), Chris Barrie (Narrator) – 26.10.23

I had really enjoyed listening to the first Red Dwarf audiobook, so when this one also came up as the audible daily deal I bought it. It was fine, quite fun to listen to, but not as good, in my opinion, as the first one. Chris Barrie’s narration was once again excellent though.

A Song of Comfortable Chairs (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Book 23) – Alexander McCall Smith – 27.10.23

There was a time when I was excited by a new No 1 Ladies Detective agency book, but I think I’m just getting a little tired of the same old same old nature of these stories. In this novel very little happened and it felt like a rehashing of the old sentiments of the series – Mma Ramotswe loves Botswana, Mma Makutsi is vain but good hearted, Violet Sepotho is bad, Charlie is funny but growing into a very nice young man etc.

It was fine. Nice even, but nothing special.

If It Bleeds (AUDIOBOOK) – Stephen King – 23.10.23

I listened to this collection of short stories because I love the Holly Gibney books, and one of these stories features her (it’s a sequel to The Outsider, and since I read it after Holly, I’ve got my chronology a bit off!).

I actually thought all the stories were very strong and affecting and thought provoking. One of them ‘The Life of Chuck’ describes the end of the world – the internet failing, power outages, weather catastrophes, wars etc and I found it very uncomfortable reading since many of those things are happening right now! (the resolution of the story was a twist that I hadn’t seen and an interesting thought experiment.)

There’s also a writer making a Faustian deal with a rat(!) An old man communicating from beyond the grave via mobile phone. Stephen King is such an amazing writer who moves with the times embracing the modern zeitgeist even though he’s a man in his late seventies!

Holly (AUDIOBOOK) – Stephen King – 17.10.23

I’m still on my Stephen King Holly Gibney odyssey, and this is one of my favourite so far.

SPOILER ALERT – don’t read this review if you haven’t read the other books in the series yet.

Holly is still reeling from the death of her partner Bill Hodges, and has to come to terms with the death of her mother, with whom she had a very complicated relationship (I know of several people, myself included who can identify with the mixed and chaotic feelings aroused by the death of a ‘difficult’ mother figure). Her feelings toward her mother are further wrenched by discovering that her mother had lied to her in a pretty big way.

The mystery in this novel is not supernatural, but it is horrific – a series of abductions and murders by some very twisted people.

The book was very much set during the height of Covid, and the pandemic is almost one of the main themes or even a character in itself. Some people say this will date the book, but it is a valid historical period and no less interesting a setting as a book set during a war or other huge happening.

This book has a female narrator, and I was glad to get a way from the weird Holly voice that the male narrator in the other books in the series does.

Forged: An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka – 16.10.23 Risen – An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka – 20.10.23

In the last two books of the Alex Verus series the excitement really ramps up. Alex started as a mild and meek kind of character who tried to do the right thing but kept getting caught up in things that pushed him into dangerous and morally questionable scenarios. I often felt like he was constantly tossed about in a storm not of his own making, but after advice from his lovely spider friend to pick a side, he, in these final books, finally decides to take charge.

His beloved Anne is possessed by a Djinn intent to destroy humans and everyone is tying to kill her to stop it. Alex has to try and save her – not an easy task. Meanwhile he is also being influenced by the artificial hand imbued item that is giving him amazing power but also threatening to take over his whole body which would probably kill him.

I have complained in my reviews of this series so far that I get bored by all the action and fighting, and there was action and fighting in these last two books, but somehow I think the climactic endgame nature of the battles made them necessary and therefore they annoyed me less (hardly at all!).

I did like the ending, how everything was wrapped up and I almost felt sorry that the series was over (I had previously thought that I would see it through, but would be kind of glad to see the end).

I read the author’s note at the end of the final book, and how happy he was to have the whole series published after he had such a hard time with rejections when he was starting out as a writer, which made me like the writer more 🙂

The Outsider (Audiobook) – Stephen King (Author), Will Patton (Narrator) – 15.10.23

I’m really enjoying reading/listening to the Stephen King Holly Gibney books. This one starts with a small town police officer investigating a horrible child murder where the DNA of a local well loved baseball little league coach is all over the crime scene, but he also has a rock solid alibi for the time of the murder.

I was somewhat impatient with the first part of the book because I was waiting for Holly to appear, as she was the reason I wanted to read it, but she did eventually, and since she had been through an experience with a supernatural evil entity, she was able to gently open the minds of the investigating team to the possibility that something spooky was going on.

I know there are lots of people who don’t like magical realism, or supernatural elements in stories, arguing that it’s not real therefore stupid. I actually really like that in the world of fiction we can bend the prosaic rules of what is real and introduce magic. I don’t believe any magical stuff in real life, but I do in stories. After all, fiction is all about ‘what ifs’. I don’t think that introducing supernatural elements to stories belittles the realism – I read books about serial killers knowing that almost certainly (and certainly hopefully!) I will never experience these situations in my real life, but it’s a way of vicariously working through fears and I can wholeheartedly enter into the spirit of things as a reader, and the same is true of supernatural stuff.

Will Patton is a great narrator on the whole, although I don’t love his portrayal of Holly Gibney’s voice as very stilted with unnatural pauses and emphasis. I think females on the autism spectrum are generally good at blending in (hence why autism is much more underdiagnosed in females) and that Holly would be able to talk more naturally, but that is only a small peeve and I do think he is very good other than that.