October 31, 2016

The Lesser Bohemians - Eimear McBride


Hogarth – Crown Publishing, September 20, 2016.



Four Stars



McBride won the Baileys Women’s Prize for her first novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, and this novel is sure to be considered as well. The Lesser Bohemians is similar in theme and tone, but it is a fresh new story about a young girl finding her way in a big city for the first time. We are plunged immediately into the narrator’s mind, feeling her emotions on an instantly visceral level.


Eighteen-year-old Eily arrives in London for her first year as a drama student. She is filled with the usual hopes of fame and fortune, but she struggles to fit in with her peers. Finally, Eily starts to make friends and create a place for herself in the city, when she meets a much older man who turns everything upside down. Stephen, an established actor, is almost twice her age, but he is damaged in a way that resonates with Eily’s own past experiences. There is a darkness in both of them that provides them with an instant connection.


Stephen is handsome and charismatic, and there is a certain inevitability to their romantic relationship. They move quickly, and the innocence of Eily’s passion is in clear contrast to Stephen’s own sordid experiences – although she does not learn the full story until much later. This novel is most of all an examination of the forgiveness of love, in spite of the deeply flawed main characters.


McBride’s use of language is often difficult, as we are immersed inside Eily’s head. Her first person narration is made up almost entirely of Irish colloquial slang and odd, staccato punctuation. There are moments of clarity, but it is often way too much effort to read the quirky, slangy language. Eventually, I was able to get into the flow of words, and an almost poetic rhythm took over – but it took a long time to get there.


The writing starts to relax about halfway through, as if the author stopped trying so hard to make it difficult and clever. As we become immersed in Stephen’s story, I found myself increasingly caught up in the plot in a way that was lacking before. It was an interesting editorial choice to have Stephen tell his story to Eily over the course of one night – it’s risky because it might not have worked, but it was actually my favourite part of the novel, and it made Eily more sympathetic as well.


Stephen is clearly damaged and emotionally scarred. Eily’s childhood scars are not as clear, maybe because she has not fully dealt with them yet – that is likely why she is drawn to Stephen and his ability to accept his past. Stephen’s past is more obviously damaged and shocking – it is extreme, yet still believable. This novel is brutal and depressing, but it manages to find a sense of redemption in the end. Eily and Stephen experience the power of love to heal, and not just in a cheesy, Lifetime movie kind of way – their story is dark, gritty and passionately real.


I received this book from Hogarth – Crown Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 28, 2016

The Dhow House - Jean McNeil


Legend Press, September 15, 2016.



Four Stars



Rebecca is an English doctor, working at a field hospital in East Africa. She is a surgeon, treating Islamic extremists with the same care and respect as she does for the western soldiers. Because of the conflict in the region – and other circumstances we learn about later – Rebecca is forced to take time off from her work. She travels to her aunt and uncle’s house on the nearby Indian Ocean, where she will rest and recuperate with a family that she hardly knows.


After the stress of her post as a trauma surgeon in a war-torn region, Rebecca relaxes into the glamorous life of her family, enjoying cocktail parties and days on the beach. Her uncle is mostly away, busy with his financial career, and her aunt is distracted by her socialite circle. Rebecca spends much of her time with her enigmatic younger cousin Storm. He has grown up in the gilded expatriate lifestyle of his family, but they are suddenly threatened by the political climate. The white Africans living on the coast are in danger of increasing terror attacks, and Rebecca knows more about it than she is willing to admit to her family.


The novel removes at a slow pace, and it’s difficult to feel sympathy for Rebecca, regardless of everything she has been through. Her increasing intimacy with Storm is dark and dangerous, and even though she tries to protect her family, her very presence is a threat to them. Rebecca’s new friend Margaux grew up in east Africa, and her worldview is callous but truthful when she says, “There are fortunes to be made off poor people… [a]nd there are no rules here. Money makes the rules.” (Loc. 1370)


In her portrayal of the political climate, the author seems to be sympathetic to the white Africans, whose fortunes were made by exploiting others – as colonialism takes a downturn, they are losing their place in Africa. I don’t have a problem with her expressing her opinion, but I still would have liked to see other perspectives as well. Rebecca is a fairly strong character, but the others are pretty one-dimensional. I think this story had great potential, but it could have been expanded on further, especially some of the plot threads that were kind of abandoned. Overall, this was an intriguing, enjoyable novel that, despite of its flaws, was worth the read.


I received this book from Legend Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 25, 2016

The Conjoined - Jen Sookfong Lee


ECW Press, September 13, 2016.



Four Stars


Jessica has always admired her mother, Donna – she even became a social worker to follow in her footsteps, helping underprivileged and damaged children who are lost in the system. Now, Donna has just passed away, and Jessica and her father are struggling to clean out the cluttered house. Underneath the frostbitten packages of meat in the basement freezer, they make their most gruesome discovery – the bodies of two teenage girls, foster sisters who lived with the family and went missing in 1988.


Casey and Jamie Cheng were two troubled and wild girls from Vancouver’s Chinatown. Growing up in the city’s dangerous Downtown East Side, the girls struggled to cope with their overworked immigrant mother, their alcoholic father, and Casey’s affair with a much older man. After a violent crisis at home, the sisters are moved into Donna’s foster home, where they act maliciously and try to sabotage Donna’s efforts to help them.


Through flashbacks, we see Jamie and Casey’s upbringing, culminating in the reason they were taken from their home and placed in the foster system. Although their behaviour towards Donna is atrocious, it’s easy to see how it was caused by circumstances beyond their control. The girls’ loving mother was doing her best to raise them, but her struggle to put food on the table is the plight of many on the Downtown East Side. Donna’s good intentions are representative of a social system that swallows up girls like Casey and Jamie Cheng, without accounting for their differences.


Donna is of course the prime suspect for the deaths of the Cheng sisters, especially since she claimed that she never saw them again after they disappeared from her home. To clear her mother’s name, Jessica embarks on an investigation of the Cheng’s past, and she ends up getting romantically involved with the police detective, at the expense of her current relationship. This side plot is a bit superfluous, but it does speak to Jessica’s growth as she becomes more independent in the wake of her mother’s death.


The mystery of the girls’ disappearance propels the novel forward, but it is not its main focus. The Conjoined is more about the characters’ development as they are affected by topical social issues. It is also an exploration of our social systems and their effects on disenfranchised people such as the Chengs – for immigrant families, assimilation into foster care is not always a good solution. It is often ineffective, and sometimes even harmful to the children’s well-being. The Cheng sisters are removed from their mother’s care based on a generic checklist that did not work in their favour, and as Jessica investigates them through her work, she realizes that she is part of a broken system.


The Conjoined is dark and uncomfortable, and it forces us to confront a bleak chapter in Vancouver’s history – a time when women frequently went missing from the Downtown East Side. The novel ended suddenly at a climactic moment, which underlines the message that it doesn’t matter how the girls died – it matters why. Although this is a mystery, especially as the Cheng sisters’ childhood connects to Donna’s, it is most of all a well-crafted novel about people who feel real.


I received this book from ECW Press and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 23, 2016

After James - Michael Helm


Tin House Books, September 13, 2016.



Five Stars



 After James is a novel written in three distinct parts, which mirror one another in unexpected ways. Each part pays homage to a different type of genre fiction – gothic horror, the detective novel, and apocalyptic fiction. Helm also masters a different writing style for all three sections, giving them the strength to stand alone, although they are better together. It is an elevation of genre writing, in which they are pieced together to create a brilliant work of literary fiction.


In the first part, “Alice After James”, a Vancouver pharmaceutical company has created a drug that will spark creativity. Alice, one of the scientists involved in the production of the drug, begins to have doubts about it’s safety. She decides to go off the grid for a while, escaping to an isolated cabin in the woods. While there, she gets pulled into the story of a possible murder, although we as readers don’t know if the clues are real or based in madness. Alice’s experiences are like a time-jumping dream sequence – we are made to feel like Alice, or even ourselves, are the ones who took the experimental drug.


In James’ section, “Decor”, several characters become obsessed with the anonymous poems being posted to a website called “Three Sheets” – they begin to feel like the poet is speaking directly to them, about their unique experiences. James is hired as a cyber sleuth by a wealthy benefactor in Italy, who feels that the poems are clues to the whereabouts of his missing daughter – a daughter who has some surprising similarities to Alice. James’ part of the novel is filled with poetic language, accentuated by his hyperactive thoughts which he refers to as a “cha-cha”, making intriguing connections between contrasting ideas. James’ ADHD brain jumps around rapidly, leaving the reader with no safe space to put the book down and reflect on things.


Celia is the main character in the final section, and in some ways she brings it all together – in other ways, she adds even more unanswered questions to the novel. At first, Celia seems more conventional and clear-minded than both Alice and James, but she is quickly manipulated by an older, experimental artist who co-opts her whole life for his gallery show. The free association of repeating symbols is underlined in this section – the relationships between fathers and daughters, travel to isolated lands, experimental lifestyle drugs, and missing women, to name a few. The concepts of art and creativity are very important, and the layers of the novel build a meta-fiction with no basis in reality – who is “real”, who is dreaming or hallucinating, and is the author under the influence as well?


The writing here is dense, and saturated with references to artists and scientists. While the stories are connected, it is difficult to fully understand how – After James should probably be read multiple times to grasp it all. In fact, I think it might be helpful to read the sections in reverse, although this is just a theory. Instead of a clear ending, we are left with thematic and symbolic connections that are less than obvious. Although it sounds confusing, I really enjoyed reading this – although it’s hard to explain or even comprehend why. I found myself highlighting constantly, hoping to piece it all together. I think it’s best summed up by Celia’s conversation with her father, in which he tells her, “[w]onder’s the very thing that makes us human.” (Loc. 3182) It is a sense of wonder that bonds Alice, James and Celia – it is wonder that really makes us who we are, and what makes this novel so great.


I received this book from Tin House Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 18, 2016

The Empress of Tempera - Alex Dolan

Diversion Publishing, September 13, 2016.



Three Stars



As this novel begins, Katie Novis has just renounced her former identity and is now Paire Anjou. It is a ridiculous name, but perfectly suits her new persona and her ambition to become an artist in New York City. She has left behind her unhappy past and her dysfunctional, criminal parents to pursue a future with her up and coming artist boyfriend, Derek Rosewood.


On her way to Derek’s showing at the Fern Gallery, Paire stops outside to admire a striking painting of an empress dressed in red, staring defiantly out at the viewer. Beside her is a man who is staring at the empress and sobbing – before Paire has a chance to react, he pulls out a letter opener and stabs himself in the chest. This is her first introduction to the painting that will change her life.


The painting is the last known work of a Chinese dissident artist named Qi. When Paire is offered a job at the Fern Gallery, she witnesses the vast crowds of people who swarm to the gallery to see the painting that inspired the suicide – and Paire becomes obsessed with the painting as well. Meanwhile, her life veers towards her family’s criminal past as Derek introduces her to his world of illegal, Banksy-style public art installations. As their crimes escalate, Paire and Derek plan an ambitious heist of the empress painting, but their harmless prank goes terribly wrong.


When the painting disappears completely, Paire is led down a dangerous path into the backstory of Qi, his family, and his artistic career. Her journey leads to bribery, death threats and eventually a gruesome murder. Although it takes a while for the story to coalesce, it eventually becomes more complex than I expected. In the first half, the characters are one-dimensional, but they gradually become more real and interesting. Paire is somewhat sympathetic, but often frustrating and unlikeable – there was a lot of angst about her past that should have been explained early on instead of being dragged out throughout the novel.


You definitely don’t need to be an art expert to enjoy this novel, although a rudimentary understanding of the art world may help you get more out of it, especially the technical details and historical aspects. I wouldn’t call this a thriller, but it is certainly action-packed, and it kept me reading despite the flawed characters. While it started out slow, it quickly got more interesting and I’m glad I stuck with it until the shocking end.


I received this novel from Diversion Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 16, 2016

The Tea Planter's Wife - Dinah Jefferies


Crown Publishing, August 27, 2016.



Three Stars



Gwen is only nineteen when she marries older widower Laurence and moves from England to his tea plantation in Ceylon. She hopes for a life of quiet domesticity, but she gets much more. Amidst the workers’ unrest and the mysteries of Laurence’s past, Gwen quickly becomes uncertain about her choice to move far away from everything she has ever known.


On the ship to Ceylon, Gwen meets an Indian man named Savi, who expresses surprising animosity towards her new husband. There are hints of a love triangle to come, but instead Savi infiltrates Gwen’s life in unexpected ways. As a painter of portraits, he shared an intimacy with Laurence’s first wife, and he seems to know much more than he is willing to say. Meanwhile, Laurence doesn’t speak of his past at all, and it is only a dusty trunk of dresses, an abandoned nursery and two overgrown graves that remind Gwen of her predecessor’s existence.


Gwen has doubts about her husband almost immediately, but he seems to be a kind and gentle man, and they soon try to start a family. However, when Gwen gives birth, disaster strikes in an unexpected way, and her uninformed decision changes the lives of everyone around her. In a modern context, it is impossible to sympathize with Gwen’s choice, but her naivety makes the situation plausible.


This novel moves at a slow pace, and even its most dramatic incidents aren’t all that exciting or surprising. The characters are set in their ways, and don’t seem to grow or change throughout the book. Even the conflict between characters, such as Gwen and her sister-in-law Verity, is anticlimactic and could have been developed much further. I was not able to get emotionally invested in these mostly unlikeable characters, and it was difficult to sympathize or even fully comprehend their decisions.


The setting is lush and gorgeous, with interesting historical details, but I wished for more depth in regards to the political situation. The conflict between the Tamil and Sinhalese is critical to the story, yet their perspectives are treated superficially. With all of the issues this novel presents, such as worker rebellions, issues of race and class, and the economic crash of the 1920s, I think there was just too much going on to fully explore everything. I enjoyed the gothic elements – the glamorous mansion and mysteriously deceased wife were reminiscent of Rebecca – but in the end Gwen’s story was troubling, sad, and difficult to read.


I received this novel from Crown Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 13, 2016

The Spawning Grounds - Gail Anderson-Dargatz

Knopf Canada, September 6, 2016.



Three Stars



This novel is set in the Thompson-Shuswap region of British Columbia, and it is saturated with the history of the place. Woven throughout with First Nations mythology and spirituality, it is at heart a family history that bridges the white and Native communities that reside on either side of a powerful river.


The story goes back generations to the arrival of a man named Eugene Robertson in 1860 – he came to the fictional Lightning River for the gold rush and stayed as one of the original homesteaders. Throughout the novel, we learn how his life became entwined with that of a First Nations woman, and how their troubled relationship affected the two groups of people for generations to come.


While the gold rush was the beginning of the end for the river, it is now fully entrenched in environmental disaster. In the present day, Hannah and Brandon are sister and brother, descendants of Eugene Robertson. They are struggling to save the river’s ecosystem by carrying salmon across the shallows to their traditional spawning grounds. The group helping the salmon is part of a larger protest against the development of the area, led by their indigenous neighbour Alex. In contrast, Hannah’s grandfather Stew is a staunch supporter of development, and he happens to own the land that is in contention.


When Stew and Brandon almost drown in the river during the protest, both of them are drastically changed. Alex believes that the river’s spirit has taken over Brandon’s body, while his own spirit is lost and wandering. In the world of western medicine, Brandon is diagnosed with schizophrenia, which his mother also supposedly suffered from – however, Alex blames her condition on the spirits as well. In any case, Brandon experiences extreme confusion and begins to doubt his reality. His visions embody the myths and traditions of Shuswap culture, and illustrate a tragic history. For Hannah, it seems like her own family’s mistakes will repeat until they get it right.


Although the Lightning River is fictional and this novel contains elements of magic realism, the ecological crisis in the Thompson-Shuswap area is very real. Hannah, Brandon and Alex represent a younger generation that must work to find a way forward – a way to preserve the river’s ecosystem while blending white and First Nations cultures. The Spawning Grounds explores cross-cultural concerns that are defined by a common cause – the preservation of the spawning salmon and the ecosystem that they represent. There is a transformative path here towards hope for the future, and a way of working together. My only complaint is that the overarching message of the novel eclipses the development of plot and character, but overall, an interesting read.


I received this novel from Knopf Canada and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 10, 2016

Three Years with the Rat - Jay Hosking


Penguin Random House, August 9, 2016.



Four Stars



Three Years with the Rat is the story of an unnamed narrator who is dealing with the loss of his sister and, soon after, her boyfriend – both Grace and John have disappeared suddenly, leaving only a few ominous clues to their whereabouts. When the narrator goes to their apartment to clean it out, he finds a former lab rat named Buddy, a mysterious human-sized box, and a note that says “This is the only way back for us.” If he can figure out the connection between them, these may be the clues he needs to find his sister and his friend, in whatever dimension they have disappeared into.


Meanwhile, the novel flashes back to several years previous, when the narrator has just arrived in Toronto and joined his sister’s circle of friends. He meets troubled chef Nicole, and they begin a rocky yet passionate relationship, marred by Grace’s disapproval. Grace starts to push everyone away, beginning with Nicole and ending with her own boyfriend John. While she has always been acerbic, her moodiness is now veering into sudden rages, mainly directed at John. When she goes missing, John becomes a prime suspect due to their tumultuous relationship.


Grace is a grad student in the field of psychophysics – the branch of psychology that deals with physical stimuli and its effects on our mental perceptions. Grace and John’s experiments with Buddy and their mysterious box are an exploration of alternate dimensions, and as the narrator plays with these elements, his own reality begins to change. The novel questions the nature of time and its adaptability, as well as considering the alternative selves that we all carry within us – the choices we make and the possibilities of what could have been.


This subject matter is clearly very ambitious, and it is treated well by Hosking, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience. However, the plot was often bogged down by scientific asides, which made it not as exciting as it could have been, considering the subject matter. It’s difficult not to compare it to a similar novel that was published this summer – Blake Crouch’s Dark Matter. While that novel was more pop-culture speculative fiction, this one has more authentic science, but it is at the expense of plot and character. Three Years with the Rat is intellectually stimulating, but it doesn’t always ring true on a human level – the characters are undeveloped and lacking in realism. I still really enjoyed this novel, and it definitely made me think.


I received this novel from Penguin Random House and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 07, 2016

Valley of the Moon - Melanie Gideon

Ballantine Books, July 26, 2016.



Four Stars



In San Francisco in the 1970s, Lux has created a life for herself and her young son Benno, whose father was killed in the Vietnam war. Lux has a close group of friends in the city, but she is estranged from her parents and she never quite feels like she belongs in her own life. She grew apart from her father after several rebellious incidents as a teenager, and Benno’s biracial heritage was the last straw in their already difficult relationship. However, as Benno gets older, he takes his first trip to stay with his grandparents – and Lux has her first time alone in years. She decides to go camping in the nearby Sonoma Valley, in an area known as the Valley of the Moon.


In the middle of her first night in the valley, Lux emerges from her tent into an eerie fog. She tries to find her way and eventually stumbles into a community called Greengage. Everything in Greengage seems very old-fashioned, and Lux thinks it may be part of a reenactment society – but she soon learns that she has in fact stepped into the past. According to Greengage’s founder Jacob, the members of the community have been trapped there since the 1906 earthquake. While only a few months have passed for them, they are shocked to learn that for Lux, it has been almost 70 years since the earthquake.


Greengage is unmoored in time, with the days slowing down and speeding up during the full moon. No one who enters the fog has been able to survive, with the exception of Lux who seems to be able to come and go as she pleases. And she does come and go over the years, whenever she has the chance to escape to the Valley of the Moon. She finds herself increasingly drawn to the simple life of Greengage – and especially to Jacob, who embodies all of the community’s values. It is a communal setting where everyone works together, sharing all the necessary tasks. On the farm with Jacob, Lux finally feels like she belongs.


Unfortunately, Lux soon discovers that time does not move at the same pace in Greengage as it does in San Francisco – and her time spent with Jacob may mean sacrificing time with Benno. She is torn between the two worlds. It is unclear how the time travel actually works – Lux is able to travel back and forth, but no one else can. Time passes almost randomly in Greengage, speeding up exponentially and losing Lux’s time in the real world. This is clearly a fantasy novel, without any scientific details about time travel – but that’s what I like about it. It’s certainly necessary to suspend disbelief, but if you can, it’s definitely an enjoyable, almost magical, read.


This novel is being compared to The Time Traveler’s Wife, and it is of course similar in theme – but in tone, Gideon’s writing is much more like Alice Hoffman. It is much more magic realism than sci-fi – it’s a nice, easy read with a twist. There is a slow, believable love story, although it is not the main focus of the story. More than romantic love, this is a story about family – those we are born into, and those we create. The ending is surprising but also kind of inevitable, and brings Lux’s story full circle.


I received this novel from Ballantine Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

October 04, 2016

Crossing the Horizon - Laurie Notaro


Gallery Books, October 4, 2016.



Four Stars



In the 1920s, the field of aviation was exploding with new innovations, and many pilots joined the race to be first to fly across the Atlantic. In Notaro’s new novel, Crossing the Horizon, the focus is on three aviatrixes who compete to be the first female to make the flight, following Charles Lindbergh’s successful attempt. The women are very different – Elsie Mackay, daughter of a British Earl, who grew up in a life of wealth and privilege; Mabel Boll, a glamorous American society girl with a rich South American husband; and Ruth Elder, a beauty pageant contestant turned actress who uses her pageant winnings to pay for flying lessons. The novel is based on the lives of these three real women, who were eclipsed in fame by Amelia Earhart and Beryl Markham.


These three women were very different, almost to the point of cliché, yet here their voices all sound similar and indistinct. The novel is meticulously researched and follows the historical record, but it doesn’t manage to fully come to life. These women led incredible lives, and their accomplishments are showcased here, but they didn’t feel real in the same way that Markham did in Paula McLain’s recent novel, Circling the Sun.


The novel started out slowly, but it did pick up when the women began to embark on their aviation adventures – their achievements showed that women could be equally as capable at men even in this dangerous arena, and at a time when they had only just been given the right to vote. It is amazing to witness what these women were able to accomplish, in spite of being oppressed in other areas of their lives – perhaps that is why they were so determined to succeed and be free in the world of aviation. It was interesting to see how their relationships with men were affected by their ambitions – each of the women basically lived separately from their husbands in order to pursue their dreams.


The text of the novel is supplemented by historical photographs of the Mackay, Boll and Elder, as well as letters and newspaper articles. These materials did help bring the women to life, although I still wished for more depth of character – I never felt like I truly understood the women and their motivations on a deeper level. This was especially true for Boll, who became a caricature of a spoiled, whiny rich girl. It often seemed like she was just there for easy laughs, and I felt that she was treated frivolously. All three were strong, independent women, but they often came across here as shallow and silly girls.


Regardless of my issues with the novel, it is always exciting to read a historical novel about women that have not really been explored before in fiction. These three women challenged female norms and opposed a society that denied women an equal opportunity for adventure and success. They didn’t all cross the horizon, but they were able to explore their dreams of flight in new and exciting ways.


I received this novel from Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

October 02, 2016

The Heart of Henry Quantum - Pepper Harding


Gallery Books, October 4, 2016.

 

Three Stars


 

I wasn’t expecting to really like this seemingly lighthearted novel about a man buying perfume for his wife, but there is actually much more to it than I initially thought. Henry Quantum is a complex man with multiple hyperactive thoughts running through his brain, from the nature of the universe to the hidden meanings behind the gift he purchases for his wife. It is told in four parts, each one adding insight into the relationship between Henry and his wife, Margaret.

 

The first section is narrated by Henry as he sets off to Macy’s his beloved city of San Francisco, and gets sidetracked along the way. When he runs into an ex-girlfriend named Daisy, he begins to question his entire marriage. Of course we see Margaret as the villain through the eyes of Henry and Daisy, but she is given the chance to redeem herself in the second part.

 

Although Margaret is having an affair of her own, she still somehow comes across as sympathetic, which is a testament to Harding’s writing skills. We witness Margaret en route to her meeting with her lover, and when she gets stuck in traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge due to a suicide attempt, she gets out of her car and yells at the jumper to just do it already. She shouldn’t be likeable at all, but she is certainly the most interesting character in the novel.

 

The third and fourth parts are focused on Daisy and Henry, respectively, as the day reaches its conclusion. All of the characters are expressed through a loose stream of consciousness style, although the voice is distinct for each of them. There is a lot of meandering through random ideas that I had to force myself not to skim over, although they did allow me to understand the characters in a different way.

 

Henry finishes the novel with surprising revelations about life and love – it definitely did not go where I expected it to. This is a light, funny read, while still managing to touch on complex subjects, although they are not treated in a truly serious matter. There could have been much more character development, but this is not really a literary novel so that’s not surprising. This is not my kind of novel, but overall it was still an entertaining story with high quality writing and fun characters.

 

I received this novel from Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster in exchange for an honest review.

October 01, 2016

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things - Bryn Greenwood


Thomas Dunne Books, August 9, 2016.



Five Stars



Eight-year-old Wavy is a troubled little girl, struggling to survive in a rural farmhouse with her drug-addicted, meth-dealing parents – her dad barely acknowledges her existence, and her mom rarely gets out of bed. She is sent briefly to live with her aunt and cousins, who partially narrate her story, but Wavy is unable to relax in their normal, suburban home. Her inability to function around other people includes an aversion to any kind of physical touch, as well as a refusal to speak unless absolutely necessary. Life is difficult for Wavy, who spends most of her time taking care of her baby brother Donal, sacrificing her own childhood to make his more bearable.


Other than her brother, Wavy hasn’t found anyone that she can be completely comfortable around – until one night, she is outside alone watching the stars when she witnesses a motorcycle crash on the road beside the farmhouse. The driver is twenty-something Kellen, one of Wavy’s father’s hired thugs. Kellen is huge, intimidating, and covered in tattoos – but at heart, he is gentle and loving, and he directs all of his good intentions towards Wavy after she saves his life on the road that night. He begins to spend time with her and Donal, caring for the children when their parents are unable or just unwilling.


Kellen has had a difficult life as well, but Wavy puts all of her faith in him – they are each the first to show the other any real love or affection. Kellen drives Wavy to school and makes sure there are groceries in the house, while Wavy teaches Kellen about the stars and gives him the adoration he has never had. Their connection begins innocently, but as the years pass and their unlikely friendship continues, the two fall in love. Because of their significant age difference, it is a forbidden love. This is a difficult book to read and review, because you know their relationship is wrong, but you can’t help rooting for Kellen and Wavy to eventually find a way to happiness.


The love between Wavy and Kellen begins in a truly platonic form, as they support and care for each other like no one else has. With both of their histories of neglect, abuse and loneliness, this reads like an extreme version of the new adult genre, in which very damaged people manage to overcome obstacles and fall in love. However, it is still incredibly hard to read this without thinking the worst of Kellen – the novel is unconventional and shocking, and it’s surprising to find yourself hoping they will survive together against all obstacles.


The many different points of view are unsettling as we slowly learn Wavy’s story through the eyes of others, but it works because the plot is gradually revealed and the author is never telling us how to feel. The writing style opens the reader up to new possibilities in a way that we wouldn’t accept if it was told in a more straightforward way. A man in his twenties seducing a pre-teen girl is not a romantic story, but in her ability to disturb and provoke, the author exposes us to the complexities of their characters. We see Kellen and Wavy as individuals, instead of just a distasteful story we might hear on the evening news. Regardless of whether you enjoy it or are repulsed by it, Greenwood must be given credit for writing an incredibly engrossing story – All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is sure to be one of the year’s most controversial novels.


I received this novel from Thomas Dunne Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.