I had started this book a wee while ago, and then paused it to read the Silo trilogy, since I was excited about that because of watching the Silo TV show, and then finished this book after I’d read all three of the silo books, so my impression of it was probably not helped by the disjointed reading.
This is book eight in a series of twelve main books (I’m not sure if it ends at book twelve or if it is ongoing?) and I felt a bit meh about this one. There’s a lot of fighting which I don’t really enjoy and more going over of the same ground – dark mages are bad, light mages are often also bad, our protagonists seem to be constantly fighting for their lives and the will-they-won’t-they romance between Alex and Anna just goes on and on going nowhere. I’ve got this far, so I’ll stick with it, but I’m hoping for some joy or at least light relief to come back into the series.
Early on in this book I was struck (and a bit irritated) by how the plot seemed to borrow so much from two fabulous books that I have recently read: The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley and The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner. Like The Watchmaker of Filigree street, the protagonist was a gifted maker of clockwork models and automata, main characters had the gift of precognition, and were engaged in both diplomatic espionage and same sex romance. Like The Weather Woman, someone hid inside an automaton and played unbeatable games of chess. Of course, no story is ‘new’ and any writer is (hopefully) also a reader, and even on a subconscious level must be influenced by what they have read, and equally, could easily have come up with the same plot by chance. The similarities were so striking however, that I found myself wondering if the writer had read the same article which I once did that suggested the way to write a bestseller was to take an already successful book and re-write it changing one or two details like the setting or the gender of the main protagonist etc. Hmmm, I don’t know.
Anyway, that rant now over, I have to say that the book really grew on me and by the end of it I had to grudgingly admit that I had very much enjoyed it and found the ending satisfying. I liked both of the narrators too.
This is Barbara Kingsolver’s modern retelling of the Dickens’ Classic, David Copperfield. In my late teens/early twenties I went through a Dickens phase and some of them really stick in my mind (Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations) but I couldn’t remember if I’d read David Copperfield, and I certainly couldn’t remember the plot. So this book, as far as I was concerned was a coming of age tale set in America’s deep south and it wasn’t until I was almost finished the book and I read a synopsis of David Copperfield that I got how cleverly the names and characters reflected the original story but in a totally different setting.
The titular character, Demon, was born to a young drug addict mother (his dad was already dead before he was born) and had a rollercoaster of an early life – struggling mum, abusive step dad, several terrible sets of foster parents and colourful family connections. I guess the story shows how the effects of poverty on individuals and communities transcends time and geography. Apparently David Copperfield is semi-autobiographical, as Charles Dickens himself came from impoverished beginnings and ‘made good’. (I did go off Charles Dickens somewhat when I learned that he left his wife of many years who had borne him many children to shack up with a young actress, but ah well.)
Demon Copperhead audiobook reminded me of the Donna Tartt’s brilliant ‘The Little Friend’ which I also listened to on audiobook, and in both instances the narrator had a lovely soft southern states USA accent. I have to admit that my interest in the book dipped a bit in the middle, especially the section when Demon was an aspiring American football star – I’m almost always bored by sports references (!) but picked up again towards the end and on the whole I really enjoyed reading this.
Shift – Book 2 of 3: Silo Series – Hugh Howey – 02.07.23
Dust – Book 3 of 3: Silo Series – Hugh Howey – 05.07.23
I first read Wool ages ago, and found it a bit of a slog, so didn’t bother, at that time, to buy and read the remaining two books in the trilogy. But, then I watched the Apple TV adaptation and was completely gripped by it, so re-read the first book, then bought and read books two and three in quick succession!
Usually, tv or film adaptations are way worse than the book, but in this case, I guess I needed to get to know the characters in the tv show before I cared enough about them to want to read more of the books. I guess the books are a little slow moving, but the vision in my head of the show’s characters had me desperate to know what happened to them so I raced through the books and on the whole really enjoyed them.
This series is set in a dystopian future (not that distant!) where the last remnants of humanity live in huge underground silos which are self contained biosphere ecosystems (whatever – something like that!) because the air outside is extremely toxic. There are 50 silos, but the inhabitants of most of them think that they are the only one. What people know and talk about is very much controlled by a few people in positions of power, and anyone who becomes too inquisitive, or who starts to guess at the secrets that are being kept from them is executed by being sent outside to ‘clean’ which is to clean the camera lens which shows the silo’s inhabitants how dead the outside world is and how toxic, as they see the cleaner die even though they are given protective suits to wear.
The books raise interesting questions about people in power feeling that they have a duty to control the fate of the masses and how even fairly noble intentions can have terrible outcomes. Also how a small number (or even only one) person in a powerful position, can cause terrible misery to countless innocent people. The obvious example from history is Hitler, but I’m thinking of many politicians who play dice with the economy and social infrastructure like its a game of risk seemingly caring little for the horrible effects their actions have on the day to day lives of so many real people.
It’s hard for me to do this book justice with a review, because of a fault that I have which is that I don’t like narrators with very post English accents. I’ve looked up the narrator of this series: Marisa Calin and she was born in America, and yet she talks like a member of the royal family, or maybe someone who worked for the BBC 50 years ago. I know that there’s nothing wrong with being posh, and I’m sure lots of lovely people are but in my mind I associate it with colonialism and the class system and unearned privilege. The irony is that Marisa Calin is actually one of the best narrators I’ve heard in terms of putting meaning into the words and putting the emphasis on the right part of the sentence and all that – she’s also really good at giving the characters different regional accents! It’s clearly something I need to work on to get over my prejudice, but for me it was hard to see past the poshness and properly engage with the story. Which is a pity because this series is full of things I generally love in stories.
A sequel to The Lefthanded Booksellers of London, Susan is learning more about her status as the child of an ‘old one’ a sort of immortal mythical being or deity and is discovering how much she has inherited – learning about powers and trying to still be normal and not pulled over into the magical mythical side too much. She had to use her powers thought to rescue Merlin from an angry old one and then attracts the attention of this being who also has a semi-mortal child who she is trying to save from illness.
The book has nostalgia from the 80s which is the era when I was a teenager, as well as from the ancient ways from old mythology and an exciting rollicking plot and there was a lot about it that I really liked.
At first this seems like yet another book about a person on the autism spectrum getting things comically wrong by being too literal – the book begins with Sally Diamond putting her adoptive father’s dead body in a trash bag and into their homestead incinerator because he had made a (we assume joking) comment to her that she should do that when he dies and she had taken him literally.
There is a lot more to this story though. We learn with Sally that her adoptive parents (her ‘mum’ had died some time ago) had kept a lot from her about her life before she has lived with them and as these secrets begin to creep out and mysteries unfold some preconceptions are turned on their heads.
The book has a lot of food for thought – how our genetics and our early experiences shape who we become as adults (the old nature versus nurture debate) and how to help children and adults to cope with what has happened to them.
**SPOILER** Don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled.
I really enjoyed the book, right up until the end which was such a downer. I had loved that by being part of a community and seeing a therapist, Sally had begun to grow and develop in to a happier and more functional person, but then finding out that her adopted dad had not been the good guy she thought he was, and that her brother had become like their biological father had pushed her back to maybe worse than ever. I wanted there to be an epilogue where Sally had worked through everything again and was doing better. I know life doesn’t necessarily give happy endings, but I’m a sucker for happy endings in fiction all the same.
Still, it was a good read – another one recommended to me by my daughter Becca – thanks Bex!
This was another book recommended to me by my daughter, Becca. I do like sharing reading with others, I feel like each shared book links our interior worlds a tiny bit more and makes us a little closer to being kindred spirits.
So, The Silence Project is written as if it’s a true story (with faux citations of academic articles, newspaper articles and websites) from the point of view of a woman (Emilia) whose mother (Rachel) began a movement (or cult) when Emelia was 13 (in fact, on her 13th birthday). It began with Rachel just living in a tent on the edge of a piece of land that they ownned and stopping talking. It grew into a group of women committed to combating global problems though listening and not talking.
The ‘Event’ which is a pivotal point in the story (although referenced from the beginning so not really a spoiler) is Rachel, as well as thousands of other women around the world burning themselves alive in a bid to get people to listen.
Emilia is understandably scarred as well as angry by her mother’s behaviour and this comes across in her telling of the story.
I did enjoy the book on the whole, although I felt it dragged a bit in the middle, and the style of it, pretending to be a serious biography I felt made it feel a little dry at times.
I watched the movie with Tilda Swinton ‘3000 Years of Longing’ and loved it, so I wanted to read the book (or short story) on which it was based. The other stories in the book are more traditional type fairy stories, but the Titular story, on which the movie was based is about a academic narratologist, Dr Gillian Perholt, who travels around the world speaking at conferences about the history of storytelling. She finds an old lamp in a antique shop in turkey and buys it not realising that it houses a genii (or djinn) (played gloriously by the lovely Idris Elba in the movie!) and that she is owed three wishes.
I’m glad that I watched the film and read the book so close to each other, because there were some things I preferred in the book, and others in the movie. In the book, there are some quite long passages which were talks given at the academic conferences and though sort of interesting, that were a bit over my head and I felt my attention waning. On the other hand, the ending in the film didn’t quite sit right, and I feel it is handled much better in the book.
I liked that Dr Perholt had always had imaginary friends, or seen things which no one else could see, which left open the interpretations between everything that happened in the story being real versus it all being in her head. I loved the tales that the djinn recounted about his past experiences and he seemed like a wise and good and deep feeling individual and I’m not at all surprised that Dr Perholt fell in love with him (especially looking like Idris Elba!). The way the story unfolded and the ending of the book was beautiful and tragic and inevitable. I loved it.
I very much enjoyed listening to this audiobook! Loved the story, loved the narrator, I even loved the bit at the end where the author talks about writing the book!
I’m back from my recent trip to Japan and one of the things I brought back was a kit to make a miniature old fashioned Japanese sweet shop, and I added a second kit for a whole Japanese street from Amazon UK, so as well as listening to this book while out walking and running and enjoying the spell of lovely weather we’ve been having here in Belfast, I listened while cutting and sticking teeny tiny pieces of Japanese stuff together and had a very lovely time!
Anyhoo, back to the book!
11.22.63 is the date that Kennedy was shot and killed in America. The book is about a diner owner who discovers that the storeroom in his diner contains a kind of wormhole that you can walk through and arrive in 1959. He discovers that however long you spend in the past, when you return through the wormhole only two minutes have past in the present, and the next time you go back, you go to the same day in 1959 and any changes you might have made on your previous visit have been reset, as if you were never there.
A girl is accidentally shot in a hunting accident and paralysed during the time he is in the past so he goes back and tries to prevent her accident – he finds that he encounters many obstacles, as if something is trying to protect the timeline, but he does eventually manage to save her, and upon returning to the present, looks her up and she lived a full life without being paralysed. Of course every time he goes back he has to save her again or the timeline would just reset.
Then the diner owner decides he wants to prevent the Kennedy assassination.
He brings with him lots of sports results, so he can make a living through gambling and finds out all he can about Lee Harvey Oswald and other theories around the assassination and armed with this knowledge, goes back.
Unfortunately, he develops terminal cancer, and can’t stay in the past long enough to fulfil his mission, so he ropes in his friend, Jake Epping, a high school/adult education teacher, and Jake is the main character of the book – we follow him as he learns about the wormhole, experiences the past, has his own mission to fulfil, and his attempts to honour the request of his friend against growing opposition from whatever it is that is protecting the timeline.
I thought the book was fabulous – even though I don’t know that much about American history, I’ve seen enough American TV and Movies to get a lot of the references, and the story was great – human interest, love, moral dilemmas, mystery and intrigue, excitement, even some humour – I was gripped and enthralled.
I only realised after reading that there’s a tv adaptation (on Netflix or Amazon Prime I think) which I’ll have to check out.
I don’t like biographies (especially not ‘celebrity’ biographies) but my daughter, Becca, recommended this one, and I do love all things Potter, so I gave it a go.
Hmmm. I don’t know what to make of it. In some ways it’s nice to get a feel of what it was like to be a child actor in the Potter movie franchise, but in other ways it’s too much drawing back the veil and chasing away the magic with humdrum reality.
Tom Felton seems to be fairly honest and self-deprecating – he admits that he was cast because he was a cocky kid and a bit of a trouble-maker and therefor fitted Malfoy’s character, and I admit that it’s quite hard not to judge the actor at least a bit by the character he played. Like Malfoy, however, the real Tom Felton had insecurities and experiences that hurt and shaped him into a well rounded person with good and back qualities (like us all).
His life so far seems to have been a bit of a rollercoaster (to coin a phrase) but I genuinely hope after reading this that the rest of his life will be happy and fulfilling.
Sarah Wray Writer 