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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Magicians – Lev Grossman (pages 5965-6365)

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a tricky book to review, at least in as much as it’s hard to know how much to reveal. One of the things that I have most to say on is something that is based on a turn of events about 2/3rds of the way through. On the other hand it’s mentioned (briefly) on the back cover.

OK so if you consider back cover blurb spoiler then don’t continue reading this review. Otherwise…

The Magicians has been called a grown-up Harry Potter and you can see why – the first section of the book concerns the hero, Quentin Coldwater, being selected for and training at a magical school, Brakebills. However he’s college age not pre-pubescent and the book doesn’t shy away from descriptions of sex, and drug-taking which you wouldn’t find in even the later HP books. Also, whilst graduating from Brakebills takes 5 years (a little less for Quentin as he gets put forward a year) we’re taken through it all in this book rather than the book-per-year of the Potter novels.

Having said that it being a magical school with exams, practical lessons and even a magical sport (Welters) it’s hard not to compare with HP. This is done knowingly and when one of the characters drunkenly refers to Welters as Quidditch and talks about Owl mail you know Grossman’s not unaware of the parallels.

So I think the HP comparisons are superficial and come almost automatically from having the very idea of a school for magic. Magic in this book by the way is another difference from the Potterverse. Performing a spell is a matter of mastering complicated and precise hand movements coupled with particular incantations (in one of several languages) and possibly strange ingredients. It’s also something where the exact manner of casting depends on the conditions – pointing your wand and shouting ‘Expelliamus’ might work in New York on a still day on a Tuesday in June but not on a windy Friday in London in December for example. So whilst it’s not a science, it’s a very finicky art-form that requires lots of practice, hard work and memorising of exceptions.

But the main difference is that because the characters are already more mature it deals with a more psychologically realistic view of the world. What it might feel like to be in this scenario. Not as an exciting schoolboy adventure but as something you’re doing because you can’t really find meaning in normal life. Well that’s true for Quentin any how. The other characters have different motivations and aspirations and distractions.

One of the ways in which Quentin’s inner life is demonstrated is through the Fillory books. These are the series of magical stories that he read as a child about a land called Fillory that a family of English children go to and have various adventures in. Whilst in the world of The Magicians nearly everyone reads the Fillory novels as children, Quentin never grew out of them and will re-read them as a kind of comfort food equivalent.

And it turns out Fillory is real and Quentin and his friends go there.

And it’s this section of the book that gave me most pause for thought. Because Fillory is quite obviously and deliberately a parallel to Narnia and so the time spent there can be read as either a parody, or a fairly scathing critique of those books. I guess it was wondering whether Grossman wanted me to take some kind of a message away about this that gave me some trouble.

In the end what I decided was that he was just taking a kind of Narnia-like world seriously and how that would play out with his characters and his rules about magic and the story he wanted to tell. So I stopped worrying about whether the books I loved as a child were being made fun of[*] and enjoyed the book.

There’s a couple of other sections to the book and an interesting ending that I won’t go into. What I will say is that again I went back and forth between two opinions – that the book was uneven in tone and that was a weakness or that yes it was but because different tones were appropriate to the different sections.

I’ve read other reviews which found Quentin himself too downbeat or melancholic a character. Personally I empathised with his struggles, with life, magic and relationships and it was him (and the other characters) that kept me interested through some of the ups and downs.

Finally all I will say because it’s probably not clear is that I did enjoy this book and will read the sequel (eventually).

8/10 – It’s Magic Harry but not as we know it!

[*]which is not to say I have a rosy-eyed view of those books now. I have a number of problems with them from varying degrees of subtle racism to “The Problem of Susan”. However I still, on balance, enjoy them.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Anya’s Ghost – Vera Brosgol (pages 5910-5964)

If you recall I’m not really supposed to go on to a new book when I haven’t written up the previous two. Well I’ve completed three since the last 6000 pages update, and NaNoWriMo’s going ot be taking a lot of my time, so in order not to get too far behind I’m catching up:

Anya’s Ghost is another graphic novel, this time an actual graphic novel i.e. written and conceived as a single story rather than issues of a comic book. It’s relatively short (though remember I use the metric 4 comic pages = 1 regular page). I bought this book because it popped up in my Amazon recommendations, the ‘see inside’ preview looked interesting and it has a Neil Gaiman quote on the cover.

I say all this only to justify myself and mitigate my review because I’m not really the target audience for this.

Anya is a high school girl in an American private school. She comes from a Russian immigrant family and is painfully aware of her differences and wants to fit in. She also has the usual teenage hopes and dreams such as whether the cute boy in her class likes her.

Then one day she meets a ghost, a girl of a similar age who died nearly 90 years ago. She befriends the ghost and together they navigate some of the trials of high school. Only maybe her new best friend is not quite all she seems…

As I said above, I am really not the target for this book. So when I say that whilst I thought it was well-drawn and competently told the story was a little too straightforward and predictable, and the issues it dealt with (self-acceptance, peer pressure etc) a little cliche, then I am aware that I’m being unfair. On its own terms and for the market it’s aimed at it works well. For me it was enjoyable but just ok.

6/10 A fun halloween read for a younger person than I.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (pages 5535-5909)


Y: The Last Man is a comic book series. Note it’s not a graphic novel IMHO because although you can buy it in different collected forms it was written as a series of 60 comics over about 6 years and it definitely follows a episodic serial narrative.

It’s probably worth mentioning something about the comic book form here. It’s something I only really came to as an adult – yes I read the Beano and 2000AD but not beyond about 13-14 and both of those were weekly comics. I never had the experience of buying monthly comics under what I think of as the US model. Which are aimed more at adolescents and which come out less frequently. They feature on-going stories but also have ‘arcs’ that typically last 4-6 issues. So the “full” story of Y: The Last Man takes 60 issues and 6 years to play out but is comprised of maybe 10-12 story arcs within that. This feels like an odd, slow way to consume a story to me but I guess real comic book fans have several series on the go at once.

There’s another oddity (to me) which is the timing. It takes maybe 5-10mins to read an issue. So if like me you sit down after the fact and read them in long 1-2 hour stretches like you would a novel, then you get a lot of story, a lot of setup-conflict-resolution or whatever in that time. It’s also true that Although it may take 10mins to read there’s often a lot of visual information on the page that’s adding to the story so it sometimes feels like a much more ‘dense’ experience.

I guess for me it’s most similar to watching serialised TV like Buffy – on-going seasonal arc but with shorter episode–length stories. You get the same sense for example of building up to an ‘act break’ which on TV is an ad break and in comics the end of an issue. However the comic book form feels so much more condensed that these occur relatively more frequently.

Anyway, with that in mind, how was Y: The Last Man?

It’s the story of a man, Yorick, who appears to be the last male human left alive on earth after a mysterious plague wiped out all the other men. I’ve explained the premise to people and the usual reaction is “so it’s basically porn, then?”. Well it’s not, but fair comment I suppose. Actually, possibly in reaction to this there’s almost no sex in the first third of the story. This at first is ostensibly because Yorick is on his way to find his girlfriend who was in Australia just before the plague hit. A little later we find out he has “issues” relating to sex which may explain why he’s not taking advantage of his unique position.

In the mean time we get a sort of standard post-apocalyptic survival tale with a twist. Society hasn’t completely broken down but it has significantly changed. Because certain professions have a very high level of men in them (e.g. airline pilots) this has an effect in how the post-plague world operates. Even without a large gender disparity, all the male car drivers suddenly dying (the plague hits quickly and takes effect in minutes) makes a mess of the roads in a way that takes months to sort out.

The book tries to explore what a female only world would look like. What happens in politics, art, commerce, religion, warfare, law enforcement – all these are touched on. It’s quite interesting although at time it borders on preachy/exposition-dumpy to do this. It also tries to have its feminist cake and eat it. Whilst its heart appears to be in the right place it can’t quite avoid the wider comic book traditions of female depiction (ridiculously attractive with gravity-defying boobs). To be fair different artists[1] vary in this respect and the main comic is usually more balanced than the covers.

It’s not just the physical characteristics of the women either. I don’t think it’s entirely unproblematic that we get lots of violence in this book. It’s a very violent book and there is a certain section of the population that just enjoys seeing women laying into one another, whether with weapons or hand-to-hand. On the one hand in a world of only women, women are inevitably taking up all the positions of the moral compass, on the other it can feel at times fetishistic. Overall my feeling was: heart in the right place, occasional uneasiness in specific depictions.

That aside I will say that I enjoyed it. The story lines develop in interesting and unexpected ways. The dialogue had a wit and knowingness that reminded me of Buffy. The ending was not quite what I might have hoped for but not entirely unsatisfying. (I think I read that some were very disappointed. I wonder if I’d have felt more strongly about it after following the characters for 6 years.)

8/10 – Y? Y not? (sorry!)

[1]another comic-book-ism – when different directors shoot a particular episode of the TV show they rarely change the complete look of the show. You almost certainly won’t fail to recognise particular characters because of it.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, My Legendary Girlfriend – Mike Gayle (pages 5183-5534)

My Legendary Girlfriend

My Legendary Girlfriend was a choice driven by two criteria. I’d wanted to do another re-read and it was something light. Light because of the books I’ve got in my “queue”[1] many of them right now seem to be crime thrillers or other “darker” material. A re-read because… well sometimes it’s nice to know what you’re going to get, if you know that what you’ll get you’ll like.

Genre-wise My Legendary Girlfriend is something of an oddity. It’s a kind of male chick lit. There’s was a moment – I suppose around the time when I first read this – when I was self-consciously moving away from (only) SciFi and Fantasy and I thought this might be the genre for me. In the end I’m not sure it was, I’m not sure there were ever enough exponents of it. That’s the genre, what about the book?

My Legendary Girlfriend is the story of Will who at 26 is just starting a new job and possibly career as a teacher. This involved a move from Nottingham to London and therefore it is a real chance for a new start. Why does Will need a new start? Well three years ago he was dumped by his then girlfriend Agnes (Aggie) who he had been with for three years, and he’s still hung up on her. Or is he? Can this new start be a break from obsessing over her too?

The novel takes place over the three and a half days of Will’s first weekend in London. We see him in his grotty flat where his entertainment consists of a few pathetic meals (melted ice cream and sugar puffs being a particular low point), listening to a glib irony-free agony aunt on the radio and various phonecalls, many to the girl who lived in the flat before him. Of course interspersed with this we get the back story of his relationship with Aggie, so the conceit of it taking place over a few days in just the one place is not really true.

It’s a fun read and definitely light. I’m not sure how well it’s aged. Although it was actually fascinating to read a story set in the relatively recent past when so many things were different. Will has no mobile phone, there’s no internet, his fantasy aspirational consumer item is a “flat screen TV”. He has a VCR and travel card. The later he loses, much to his consternation because it means he’s lost the money it cost him. These days a quick phonecall or visit to a website would get his credit transferred to a new Oyster card.

But aside from a glimpse back at cultural artifacts that are so soon forgotten, is there pleasure in the story itself? Yes. I think so. Will is a little annoying at times but that’s forgiveable in one so young. There were times when you think Aggie was right to leave him, or at least you understand why she might. The plot reminds me a little of Clueless (Emma) not in any specifics but in that way you are mis-directed successfully from seeing how things will play out and who will end up with who. Of course that only works the first time. Whereas on re-watching Clueless still seems plausible not to see Cher/Josh coming, the final configuration in Girlfriend is obvious once you know it. But that’s no great sin and there is the pleasure of anticipating the final playing out of the plot.

I’d also forgotten some of the slightly darker moments which are a semi-serious reflection on starting out in life and love in your twenties. But it’s more of a light-hearted book that can occasionally do a little depth than a serious book that also does comedy. It’s not, for example, High Fidelity, even though in tone, subject matter and ambition that’s what it most closely resembles.

Not sure I’ll re-read it for another decade, unless I’m really stuck for something to read.

7/10 – a good light read, not legendary, but not forgettable either.

[1]A list which tends to change, re-arrange and always, ultimately get longer. However its mutable nature means it’s never really possible to predict what the next book in the “queue” will be.
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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Killer Move – Michael Marshall (pages 4827-5182)

Killer Move

A couple of books ago I said it was easy to review a book that I’d hugely enjoyed. Here’s one I enjoyed just as much but it’s harder to review  because, I think I don’t want to give too much away.

Killer Move is a novel by Michael Marshall, a name he goes by when writing crime fiction. When writing his earlier SciFi novels, such as Only Forward, he went by Michael Marshall Smith. And, when he wrote The Servants, which you’ll remember I also loved, he was M.M. Smith.

Anyway this is the first of his crime books I’ve read. I’ve avoided them partly because I knew that there was some fairly grim subject matter in the likes of The Straw Men. I carry around in my head that I don’t like such things but let’s be honest I’ve read and enjoyed Let the Right One In and 1974, and at least read 1977, all of which have material that’s as dark as any you’d find.

Still, the reason I picked up this book rather than the earlier crime ones was the intriguing blurb about it, and the fact that it didn’t on the face of it seem to be dominated by gruesome murders. And in fact that’s true. Mostly.

Killer Move is about Bill Moore, a florida realtor who’s ambitious and trying to push his career to the next level. He’s actually got a very nice life – a lovely home, a successful wife who he loves and enough money for a comfortable lifestyle – but he wants more. One day he receives a business card with the single word “Modified” written on it. From then on weird stuff starts to happen to him and slowly his life starts to unravel.

The thing I really like about this book is the way it slowly builds. Things happen at a pace that mean that initially it’s just intriguing, then gradually it becomes stranger, more involved, more dangerous until you’re in a full-on thriller. By the time the gruesome stuff shows up – and it does – it feels like you’re too wrapped up in the story to really worry about it. Plus it has become integral to the story anyway.

But it’s more than just the finely tuned mechanism of the plotting, it’s the slow reveal and/or evolution of Bill’s character. This is an ‘extraordinary things happen to an ordinary person’ type of story and what’s interesting is that the person he is at the beginning – obsessed with success, listens to self-help podcasts, reads positivity blogs and attends branding seminars – isn’t particularly likeable, but he slowly reveals himself to be more interesting than he first appears. I loved the main character of Stark in Only Forward, but I loved him from the first page with his dry wit and cool persona, Bill I grew to like as he both showed more of himself and was changed by the experience.

That’s what sets Killer Move apart from say a John Grisham thriller, though they share a clockwork precision of plot, the characterization. There are characters you sympathise with, ones you instantly like (like Stark), or dislike, or are appalled and intrigued by.

And there is some tough stuff in there but more of it is implied than seen. Certainly it doesn’t have that unrelenting grimness and all-humanity-is-scum feel of 1977.

It would also make a terrific movie.

My only quibble is the title – Killer Move is so generic as to be meaningless and it really doesn’t connect with anything specific in the book. There is an obvious one-word title but I suspect that it was rejected because it doesn’t say enough about what kind of book this is.

9/10 – an excellent gripping read and one that slowly builds up both tension and character development.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Carpe Jugulum – Terry Pratchett (pages 4402-4826)

Carpe Jugulum

Carpe Jugulum is the 23rd Discworld book and as you’d expect from the title is concerns vampires (or vampyres as they prefer it – they’re trying to be “modern”). It’s also a Lancre Witches book which is a good thing as I’m a fan of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg and Wyrd Sisters is probably my 2nd favourite Discworld book. (Mort, since you ask).

The book begins with the preparations for the christening of King Verence and Queen Magrat’s baby. Unfortunately the King invited a family of vampire nobility and inviting vampires in is one thing we all know you shouldn’t do. Perhaps even worse is that although they sent an invite to Granny Weatherwax it went astray. Not inviting the Kingdom’s most powerful witch may have been as catastrophic as inviting blood-sucking fiends.

Into all this arrives an Omnian priest Mightily Oats who has been summoned to perform the christening. He’s an interesting character defined more by lack of certainty than actual belief. Oh and we have the 4th member of the Lancre coven, Agnes Nitt, who’s in two minds about everything, literally.

Carpe Jugulum is certainly a lot of fun. It has some interesting things to say about Faith. I’m not sure there was anything radically new in it. As I’ve said by this stage, book 23, we’ve touched on most of Pratchett’s favourite subjects before, so there’s a lot of familiar ground. But these are characters I enjoy spending time with. I liked the vampires, I like Agnes and I still like Nanny and Granny – though her black-and-white belief in her own rightness pushed me on that.

As with other recent Discworld reads I found I enjoyed the story more than the humour which felt a little predictable in its patterns and rhythms, though there were still laugh out loud moments such as:

‘Indeed?’ said the Count, turning to his son. ‘Right about what, prey?’

I smiled at the subtlety.

8/10 – a fun romp with enjoyable characters and some thoughtful ideas about faith, right and wrong – and the importance of a nice cup of tea.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Before I Go To Sleep – SJ Watson (pages 4037-4401)

Before I Go To Sleep

Before I Go To Sleep is an easy book to write about for two reasons – it’s got an easy to understand concept and I really enjoyed it.

This book is told from the perspective of Christine who, when she wakes up in the morning is in unfamiliar surroundings. This happens every morning because Christine has a condition where she doesn’t form new memories, so each new day is a kind of reset. So she wakes up every day, not knowing who the middle-aged man in bed with her is. In fact she doesn’t really recognise the woman she sees in the mirror as she remembers herself to be much younger than she actually is. Slowly, patiently the man explains that he’s her husband and he gently reminds her about some of the other facts of her life. Something he must have to do every day.

The reason this book works so well is that the early chapters work simply as an experience of what it must be like to have this kind of memory condition. If you’ve seen the movie Memento then you’ll have some idea already but this is a slightly different take on the idea. The fact that our hero is female and the setting domestic gives it a different feel. Gradually, we as the reader begin to build up a picture of Christine’s life and also some of what has happened to her. This starts to raise questions which we become aware of before she does and the remainder of the book is almost a thriller, certainly we want to know what has happened and how it will play out if and when Christine starts to discover the truth.

So in the second half of the book you lose some of the psychological subtlety of the first part but you gain a page-turning what-will-happen-next plot. It really works, I found it gripping.

9/10 – both an insight into a different kind of life and a thrilling ride.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (pages 3733-4036)

Never Let Me Go

OK, first of all, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t really want to know anything about a book before you read it, the kind of person who won’t watch trailers of movies in case they give too much away, then you should really skip this review. Not that I’m planning to ruin the book, I won’t give away the ending, but I can’t sensibly talk about it without talking about the central premise.

Still with me? Good.

Never Let Me Go is a kind of SciFi novel in that it’s set in a world almost exactly like ours but with one difference i.e. it’s an alternative present. Still I say only “kind of SciFi” because although good SciFi is always more interested in ideas than shiny tech, this really isn’t interested in tech at all except in how it changes society. In that way it reminds me of something like Children of Men.

Kathy and her friends Tommy and Ruth grew up in a boarding school called Hailsham. There they are prepared for the life that is ahead of them and we soon see that this is not quite the kind of life one might expect. Nevertheless they have a close relationship and the early part of the book is about their experiences together, their loves and aspirations and conflicts within the relatively small world of the school. There’s an intensity here that may relate to their role in the world or may just be a consequence of that enclosed environment.

We follow them as they grow into adulthood, learning some measure of independence but always with an eye towards a particular future. You see these are human clones who have been bred for the specific purpose of providing organ donations. They live relatively normal but short lives, “completing” once they have made 2,3 or at most 4 donations. Some of them, Kathy in this story, work as “carers” to the “donors” supporting them through the medical procedures. But even the carers eventually become donors themselves.

This is a thoughtful intense book. I enjoyed it for the most part. One annoying habit the author has is in the early part of the book he tells various incidents out of order. Nothing wrong with that per se but the way he does it appears to have no real reason. He’ll be telling you about an incident between two characters and at the end he’ll say something like “…but maybe that’s because of what had happened with the tape.” Then he’ll go back and tell the story of the tape ending it with “…which is perhaps why she fell out so strongly with Tommy.” Then he’ll skip forward and tell you about the argument with Tommy. He’ll do this several times in a row and it left my head slightly spinning and I couldn’t think of a good reason why he couldn’t just describe events in the order they occurred.

The other reservation I have is about why the characters don’t try harder to escape their fate – to run away or rebel. I know the answer but it’s not one given in the story itself. Remember I said this was a kind of SciFi? One of the things that SciFi often prompts people to do is ask “why?” questions – “Why don’t they just use the transporter to beam out of there?”. Often there’s a reasonable answer that the author has alluded to but not gone into detail on because he doesn’t want to distract from the story itself. I’ve been a defender of this kind of story-telling. It’s about suspension of disbelief. You accept certain things to allow the story to be what it is.

Well anyway, this is similar to that but the answer to the “why?” question is “because this is a metaphor” and for the metaphor to work the donors need to be accepting of their future. Why don’t I let Ishiguro himself, talking when the film of the book was released, explain:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jCB59pPG7k&NR=1]

So as a meditation on the meaning of life, its brevity and inevitable end, the book does have some interesting things to say. I confess to being just picky enough to be bothered by the “why?” question. I can extrapolate from hints in the text that it’s because they’ve been socialised their whole lives to be compliant, but still…

7/10 – A thoughtful, challenging book.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, True Grit -Charles Portis (pages 3509-3732)

True Grit

I decided to read True Grit after hearing it recommended on a podcast around the time of the recent film version being released. The John Wayne film version is one of the few Westerns I’ve watched and enjoyed so I thought it was worth a read. Was I right? Read on.

True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross, a fourteen year old whose father has just been killed by an outlaw called Tom Chaney. Leaving her mother to grieve and look after her younger siblings, Mattie makes a trip to sort out her father’s business affairs and find justice for his death, since Chaney has fled to lawless Indian Territory and no-one seems too interested in pursuing him.

So she secures the services of Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn and sets off to capture, and kill, Chaney. They are soon joined by a Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf who is after Chaney for crimes committed in Texas and for the reward.

The plot moves forward in a fairly straight-forward A-follows-B manner. What really draws you in is the main character and her relationship with Cogburn. Her determination and “grit” are what define her and what I suspect would be a very annoying tendency in real life of nagging til she gets her own way, makes you admire her.

The book is written in her voice, and at first I thought that Portis had cleverly captured that childish simplicity of speech. Then I realised that this was written as an older Mattie looking back. I did find the style a little wearing at times but I suppose it does work as a not overly-educated woman of that era writing her memories of these events.

Even so I think you have to take this style, along with her tendency to go off point and talk about religion (complete with scripture references), politics and unrelated history, as tongue in cheek. I’m not sure it was hilariously funny but it occasioned the odd wry smile and chuckle. However it also illustrates the “nasty, brutish and short” nature of life at that time and place, which was a counter point to any humour.

However the book was very readable and not too long. So overall I found it a good read.

7/10 – a good read, probably still prefer the movie though.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The News Where You Are – Catherine O’Flynn (pages 1220-1539)

The News Where You Are

The News Where You Are is yet another book about a middle-aged man coming to terms with what it means to get older. Well sort of. Either I keep being drawn to these books because of the theme or (more likely) I see this theme everywhere because of my stage of life.

Frank Allcroft is a local news presenter with an apparent penchant for bad jokes in his links. He also takes an interest in some of those he’s reported on – specifically those who die alone. One such passing appears to be linked with his friend and predecessor who died in a hit-and-run accident, and Frank is drawn into finding out more about what actually happened.. Meanwhile the buildings his father architect put up in the 60s are one by one being pulled down.

This is an odd book. On the one hand I want to say that it’s a light read because it’s easy to read and has a gentle humour and is well-disposed towards its characters. On the other it is about death and loss and what, if anything, we leave behind. On the on hand it’s clearly structured around a kind of mystery plot (why and how did this person die), but on the other it’s not particularly plot driven and takes time out of the whodunnit to look at Frank’s family relationships and so on.

The characters are well-drawn and sympathetic. Mo, Frank’s daugther is the perfect picture of a particular type of precocious child who is entirely endearing without ever being sentimental. As is, in a completely different way, his mother.

I think it is a good read but it slightly left me wanting something a bit more to get my teeth into. Also it had about 3 attempts at an ending. However given that the chapters are short that’s really a minor quibble.

7/10 – a light read which never takes its darker themes too lightly or too seriously.