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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages, The Rapture – Liz Jensen (pages 2898-3239)

The Rapture - Liz Jensen

The Rapture is a hard book to classify, except to say that as usual, it’s not the sort of book I would have once read. Let’s see if I can make at least an attempt at a summary:

Gabrielle a psychologist with her own physical and emotional challenges, is working in a secure hospital with young dangerous adults. One of these, Bethany, is there because she murdered her mother. However there’s something a little different about Bethany, she has apocalyptic visions of destruction. Given that her father is an evangelical Christian preacher this is perhaps not unexpected. Except that when they start to come true…

I really enjoyed this book. It’s told mostly from Gabrielle’s point of view. She’s in a wheelchair from a car accident and that alone – the perspective of someone with those challenges – made the first part of the book interesting. Add to that the unfolding intrigue of Bethany and her visions. Also there’s a man – Frazer the Physicist – who may or may not be a love interest. Then about half-way through – another growing trend – the plot really kicks in and we’re into a fast-paced thriller-cum-disaster epic.

If this was a movie it would be a cross between One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Day After Tomorrow. In fact I think one of the reasons I liked it so much was that it played like a big spectacular movie in head as I read. But it’s a movie I’ve not seen before. It’s big action blockbuster for sure but it’s not dumb. In fact it’s raising issues to do with climate change and has a global-warming related end-of-the-world scenario that I’ve not heard of before.

There are problems with this book – in particular there’s a relationship-related plot thread that’s pure soap opera or cheesey sitcom. It needed to get resolved a lot quicker as it was too obvious where it was going. And yet I forgave the book that because ultimately it was such a wild ride.

9/10 – the end of the world shouldn’t be so much fun.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 16 – The Innocent, Ian McEwan

The Innocent is my third book by Ian McEwan. You have to go back to Harry Potter a couple of years ago, or further to my Discworld-devouring 20s to find me having read more than a couple of books by the same author. I mention that only to say that to my surprise and despite my own expectations (it’s not genre!) I seem to be becoming a McEwan fan.

The Innocent is the story of Leonard – a naive 25-year-old English phone technician sent to Berlin in 1956 to work on a secret project. Predictably perhaps the books is all about him losing his innocence in various ways. He learns about espionage, he learns to drink, he learns about sex and then love, from a spirited, confident, slightly older Berlin native called Maria.

Given that I was looking for “something lighter” after 1974 those of you who know the story of The Innocent will perhaps smile. I don’t want to spoil but the pivotal event that occurs about halfway through is as dark and upsetting as anything in 1974. Having said that overall the book is much more optimistic.

It’s interesting that I read this enjoying the first half of the book, which establishes the characters, the setting, the relationships and so on. I was enjoying McEwan’s fine insight into relationships and they way they express themselves, especially through sex. I am slightly amused to find on finishing the book that many see this as slightly drawn-out set-up for the central incident and feel that the book is really about the fallout from that. I can see that, and I did enjoy that. I still enjoyed the early part of the book best though.

I guess I was at a disadavantage because before getting to the central event I flicked to the end to check the page number of the last page (to see how far through I was) and spoiled myself by catching sight of two words. Just two words! So what was I expect for some a “twist” was for me a gradual sad build-up to the inevitable. Fortunately the two words were not the final ones and unlike Atonement McEwan was able to rescue it for me on the final page.

9/10 – Innocence lost, hope regained.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 15 – 1974, David Peace

As you know I bought 1974 when I was in search of something I actually wanted to read. My theory was that having liked The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo – which is basically a crime novel – I’d probably enjoy this. The TV adaptation of it was celebrated and so it seemed a reasonably bet that the source material was going to be good too.

My only reservations were: a) would I be happy with merely a page-turner of a crime story? b) was my stomach strong enough for what I had heard was fairly dark stuff?

The answer turned out to be yes on both counts.

1974 – set in the eponymous year, is the story of a journalist, Eddie Dunford, a crime reporter, on the Yorkshire Post. He’s recently returned from an unsucessful spell in Fleet Street and just buried his father. What seems to be a pretty ordinary missing girl case becomes far stranger when the body turns up. She’s naked, has been sexually abused in a bizarre way and has the wings of a swan stitched into her back. Then there’s the sniff of local government corruption around the sale of (what should have been) council houses, the harassment of a settlement of gypsies and the seemingly unrelated story of a man who killed himself and then his sister – the so-called ‘Ratcatcher’ – the story of which made Eddie’s name.

1974 starts slowly but soon picks up pace and then it simply does not let up. I read the first 100 pages over a couple of days but I read the remaining 200+ in a single night. Many books are said to be un-put-downable, I definitely found this one so. Peace has a slightly stylised way of writing, which once used to I liked. Although given the strange nature of some of the crimes and incidents in this book I wasn’t always sure what was going on when he mixed in the dreams and thought-life of Dunford with the ‘real’ action. It was effective though.

It was also quite a challenge. Not just for my stomach – though it was gruesome – but also because it was fairly bleak regarding human nature. If you get to the end of this book thinking there were any purely ‘good guys’ then I’d be surprised. And despite that, and despite even the slightly far-fetched explanation (which I only partly guessed – damn!) I did really enjoy this book. But I also felt the need for something lighter next. I have got the follow up, 1977 (which by all accounts is even darker) but I’m waiting a while to start it.

9/10 – dark, disturbing but very gripping

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, Book 14 – Beowulf

So, speaking of monsters…

Here’s where my pretensions start to break down a little. As much as I like to read (and despite whatever, I do) I am not really a student of literature. So what have I to say about this ancient classic of narrative poetry? Isn’t it ridiculous to review it alongside Nick Hornby and score it out of 10?

Probably but I am going to anyway. Mostly because I did read it and I don’t have the tools to tackle it any other way – nor am I likely to acquire them any time soon.

Beowulf, in case you don’t know, is the story of a hero who fights and defeats first a monster, then the monster’s mother and then a dragon. Somewhere between the last two Beowulf becomes king and rules for 50 years.

I have to say I appreciated the translation. The language was plain and had the feel of an earlier, earthier culture without seeming false. Also it retained a sense of poetry. However I did find that it got in the way of the story a little for me. There were times when I read a phrase, or a stanza, enjoyed it and then realised I needed to go back to see what was actually happening. That made reading Beowulf less of a treat and more of a chore than it might have been. Maybe I’ll re-read it one day and the familiarity with the basic story will help.

The other thing that was odd was the story-telling structure. Probably things have changed in a thousand years but I still found it odd that we get a fuller description of parts of the second fight when it’s being recounted later, in passing, than we do at the time.

This is another one that I’m glad I read rather than enjoyed the reading per se.

7/10 – poetic, epic but slightly confusing.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, Book 13 – Let the Right One In

Despite my love for all things Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I am not normally drawn to straight horror. And whilst Let the Right One In is a twist on the usual vampire story it is still horror. But I had heard it was good, actually I’d heard the movie was good, and more atmospheric than gorey, so I gave it a try.

Turns out it was good.

Question: How do you make a monster sympathetic?

Possible answer #1: have an even worse monster as the real ‘villain’

Possible answer #2: make your monster vulnerable, say a child

The central character in Let the Right One In is Oskar, a loner and child of a single mom who is being bullied at school. He makes friends with a strange child he meets in the neighbourhood called Eli. Eli is more than she seems, and not only because Eli is a vampire.

Let the Right One In is atmospheric-scary, but it also has its gory-scary moments. It is a gripping page-turner of a what-happens-next thriller. But at its heart it’s a sweet touching reflection on love and friendship. The fact that one of the two ‘lovers’ is a person who needs to kill to survive and that we still care about Eli and Oskar is something of a triumph. Although I think it’s achieved partly by making another character more horrible – both morally and in terms of the threat they pose – and also by showing how much of the death and mayhem that inevitably follows Eli around isn’t really her fault.

After reading the book I watched the film and enjoyed it. I think the book is my favourite overall but they both have their strengths. The film is shorter – showing how much could effectively be editted from the book. The book has some intriguing bits of back-story that would be hard to dramatize on screen.

It says something either about me or the strength of this book that one of the most moving scenes was also one of the most gruesome. Must be the book, definitely…

8/10 – gory and touching.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 9, Heaven Can Wait – Cally Taylor

Heaven Can Wait
Heaven Can Wait

So this is an interesting one for me as a reviewer. I vaguely know Ms Taylor. Well not really but I first became aware of her through SlingInk one of the writing sites I visit. About the time I was trying to “get serious about my writing” I joined that forum and she was one of the people there. I must’ve followed a link in her posts or profile because I’ve followed her blog ever since. In that time she’s gotten herself an agent and got her first novel published. I pre-ordered it from Amazon as soon as it was available to do so because I felt a sense of kinship with her having followed her progress.

Why do I sound like I’m preparing excuses? Well because I feel this sense of vague connection it doesn’t feel like I’m reviewing a stranger’s book and that makes me want to be nice. At the same time Heaven Can Wait is not really my usual fare and I doubt I am its target audience. It’s quite squarely and unashamedly chick-lit, albeit with a supernatural twist. So perhaps I’m not best placed to review it – I’m neither really objective nor am I truly a lover of this genre and as I may have said before I’m wary of criticising something in a genre I don’t care for.

Having said that I do own a copy of Undead and Unwed which in my case is Undead, Unwed and unread. However I have in the past read male chick-lit, am as we know a fan of rom-coms and supernatural fiction definitely attracts me. So I think I’m qualified.

First thing I want to say is that I enjoyed this book. It was a light and easy read. Given my on-going battle to get my 25 Books score up a bit that’s no small thing. I also want to say that up front because it would be very easy for me to list a lot of little things I didn’t like about Heaven Can Wait and I may easily give the impression that I didn’t enjoy it as a whole. In fact I’m going to try to resist the temptation to give a long nit-pick list.

So Heaven Can Wait is the story of Lucy Brown, who dies the night before her wedding but on arriving in Limbo is given the opportunity to return to earth and gain ghost status by fulfilling a task – that of finding a soulmate for a hapless computer nerd. Along the way she has her fellow wannabe-ghosts and her best friend’s designs on her ex- to deal with.

One of the things that’s definitely odd about reading a book aimed clearly at women when you’re a man is trying to identify with the main character and wondering, at the points where you fail, whether that’s you as a person or you as a man that don’t get the character. I think overall I sympathised with Lucy, the book’s hero although I struggled to like her at first. I think that in part was deliberate – the plot requires her to have unfinished business and regret at her behaviour just before she died plays into that.

Another thing that I didn’t quite get was the humour of the book. This is not unusual for me. Ask my friends and they’ll tell you I’m often the one telling the joke no-one else finds funny and vice-versa. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the amusing tone of the book. When I was younger I read the Stainless Steel Rat series of books which I knew were not ‘serious’ SciFi but was slightly shocked to discover some people found ‘hilarious’. Still, the fact I never found them laugh out loud funny didn’t stop me enjoying them. I feel a bit the same about Heaven Can Wait. It’s not my kind of funny but that’s not a problem, for me anyway.

Another potential issue was that I found the plot fairly predictable. Again though this needn’t be a problem, and I suspect most fans of this genre would welcome it in the sense that they like to know they are getting the kind of story they like. It won’t shock you to hear that pretty much everyone ends up happily and that’s probably as it should be.

The best thing about this book, for me as a non-typical reader, was that it was light, easy to read (short chapters!) and kept me interested. The worst…? I guess I found some of the male characters a little stereotypical. Archie, the geek Lucy has to find love for, is the male equivalent of the supermodel in horn-rimmed glasses who, halfway through the movie, takes them off, lets down her hair and reveals her ‘inner’ beauty. Well I’ve seen enough female versions of that so fair’s fair I guess.

Overall though the highest complement I can give this book is that I finished it less that 48 hours in a year when I’ve only read 9 books to date.

7/10 – probably not my kind of book really but a light, fun read nonetheless.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, book 3, Skellig

So having Set Aside The Crow Road what did I pick to read next? Well I was in Waterstones as I said and saw a display of books recommended by Nick Hornby. I picked up Skellig by David Almond largely because it was short. It turns out it’s another book aimed largely at kids – that makes three I’ve read since Christmas. If I had done so deliberately I’d start to worry that I’m ‘dumbing down’ my reading choices, however in each case I’ve genuinely not realised until I actually had the book that it wasn’t aimed at adults.

Anyway it’s an enjoyable and easy read – as you’d perhaps expect from something aimed at children.

The book is a fairly simple and straightforward story – there are no real surprises in the plot itself – of a boy who meets a strange and mysterious person in the crumbling garage of his new home, the eponymous ‘Skellig’. Who or more importantly what Skellig is is one of the major questions of the book.

It’s written with a child’s voice but also has a particular tone to the writing which will either strike you as lyrical or overly stylised depending on how well you’re enjoying it. I was mostly in the first camp with a few forays into the second.

I’d definitely recommend it to any adult looking for a light charming read or any child with a love of the unusual.

7/10 – a delightful little fable.

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25 books book reading reviews

25 Books, Book 1: The Servants by M.M. Smith

The Servants by M.M. Smith
The Servants by M.M. Smith

This is the first of my “25 Books” proper which I started to read on the 7th Jan 2009. I finished it on the 10th which was actually quite a long time since it’s fairly short. But that shouldn’t mislead you, I enjoyed it a lot, it’s just I was away that weekend.

Firstly I should say that “M.M. Smith” is yet another pseudonym for Michael Marshall Smith who writes fantasy/sci-fi under that name and crime fiction as Michael Marshall. I haven’t read any of the later because it’s pretty violent and I’m a little squeamish, but M. tells me it’s very good. I did enjoy his first book Only Forward which has a very particular (and funny) voice and is very inventive.

It was interesting to read this immediately after Slam because it’s also a book in which the main character is a boy, in this case he’s 11. Again it raises the question of whether it’s aimed at readers of that age. Again I think it’s written in a way they could follow but it’s also perfectly accessible to older readers too.

The Servants follows the story of Mark, his mum and stepdad, David. They’ve moved from London to Brighton. They’re living in a big house owned by David. In the basement there’s a tiny flat in which an old lady lives. Mark befriends her and she shows him something very interesting and special.

I really liked this book. I liked it because the writing, the setting and the story are very simple. I tend to like things that are simple, classic and unfussy and this has that feel. There are really only 4 characters, most of the action takes place inside the house and it’s all very simply written.

I also liked it because it does something that I admire. It lets us see through the eyes of a character things that that character himself does not see. To me that’s clever writing. It means that we see David as a bit more sympathetic than Mark does, which makes Mark in danger of seeming a little brattish. However he mellows and without giving anything away, he eventually sees it too.

I read something somewhere about it being a kind of ghost story but I don’t think it’s quite that. However it does have the atmosphere of a ghost story and there is a fantastical element to it.

The key to living anywhere is to know how to live there – just ask any snail.

9/10 – simply written but moving story.

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book reviews

Slam – Nick Hornby

So, I bet you’re thinking this is the first of my “25 Books” right? Well you’d be wrong. I read this over the Christmas period whilst at my parents. I have since finished my first 25-er (that’s sounds naff but I need some sort of shorthand) but I felt like I owe this one a review first.

Slam is about a 16-year-old skater (skate-boarder) called Sam. Sam loves skating and has read the autobiography of his hero Tony Hawk hundreds of times. So much so that when he needs to confide in someone or ask for advice he talks to a poster of Tony who “talks” back in quotations from the book. Sam’s life is turned upside down when he meets Alicia, a short-lived girlfriend who becomes the subject of a (hopefully) lifelong relationship. She becomes the mother of his child.

I liked this book. Mostly. For a start it was very readable. I find Hornby so anyway but here, where he’s trying to emulate the voice of a 16-year-old, it was even more so. No surprise then that I finished it in only a few hours over a couple of days. Although that may have had something to do with trying to escape watching soaps and gameshows with my parents.

If there was anything I didn’t like about the book it wasn’t the fault of the writing per se, it was the subject matter. As a mumble-something-year-old man who’s still single, probably would like not to be but who’s always ben iffy about having kids, it pushes lots of buttons for me. It caught me off guard as the back cover doesn’t mention pregnancy and I hadn’t read any reviews – I bought it because it was the latest Hornby. Anyway this is a book review not a discussion of my issues.

Had I read any reviews (which I did immediately after) I’d have seen that it’s viewed as a book for “young adults” simply because the main character is that age and it’s told from his pov. I’m not sure how I feel about this. Isn’t the point of reading (and perhaps writing) to see the world through another pair of eyes? In any case I’d recommend it to anyone who likes Hornby’s brand of gentle observational comedy. I say gentle because it’s nowhere near as sharp as “High Fidelity” was, but then that’s my favourite of his and I don’t think anything since has been as good.

What lets the book down slightly for me is that it tries to sort of have its cake and eat. It wants to have something approaching gritty realism but it wants to wrap it in a softer, gentler and above all optimistic view of human nature. So it shows us that teenage pregnancy is a life-altering, if not life-wrecking event (a “slam” in skating is when you fall and hit the ground hard) and that it makes things tough at an age when you’re not necessarily equipped to deal. However it pulls out an ending, which while it doesn’t negate any of that, allows the reader some relief from thinking, “this is just going to be hard grind of juggling school, work and baby-care”. To do this Hornby uses a device on top of the Tony Hawks device, something which up until that point I could have happily lost. When the ending occurred I could suddenly see why he’d done it. It felt a little like a cheat, slightly unearned. However it was a genuine relief to have some sense of ongoing happiness for these characters.

Apologies for being a little vague. For once I don’t want to give away the ending.

7/10 – for the humour, the readability and the main character.

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book reviews

Chesil Beach (far away in time)

On Chesil Beach is the latest book by Ian McEwan and I read it recently. Now I know what you’re thinking, why on earth do you trust him after Atonement? Why spend your hardly-earned cash on one of his books. Well in my defence it was a 3-for-2 deal, plus I had heard good things about it. Anyway bought it I did and read it too. And you know what? it’s good.

But it’s not completely – how shall we say? – unproblematic. It has at its centre an idea, a pivot to the story, not quite a plot twist but certainly a, erm, plot kink, that is inherently frustrating. I don’t want to give too much away but it has a somewhat downbeat ending. The structure of the book also lends itself to a certain disappointing dilemma. The heart of the book is about sex. The central event in the book is the wedding night of a couple in the 1960s. We meet them first on this night as they enjoy their dinner together and look forward (or not – he’s eager, she’s fearful) to the consummation of their relationship. Then, in various flashbacks we get the story of their lives and their meeting, everything leading up to this point in fact.

Now as I said about Atonement McEwan writes about sex well. It feels real and therefore carries a certain erotic charge. Plus the building anticipation of how that key moment will play out creates a drive to know what will happen. So unfortunately, the rather well written passages about their earlier lives, which are actually most of the book, feel at times like a distraction from what I really want to know.

Maybe I’m just shallow.

Still, even with this and the not-so-happy ending, I still prefer On Chesil Beach to Atonement. It’s well written and evocative. I think it should be required reading for anyone who thinks sex education is a bad idea.

8/10