Farm Lane Books Blog

Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter

Winner of the Prix Goncourt 2011, Selected for Waterstones 11 2013

Five words from the blurb: meningitis, death, son, grief, life

Michel Rostain’s teenage son died suddenly from a virulent strain of meningitis. The Son is the fictionalised story of a family who lose their son to the same disease. It is written from the perspective of the teenage boy, Lion, and this omniscient narrator gives the book a special inquisitive perspective. The realistic nature of the text leads me to believe that much (all?) of this book is based on real events and this insight makes other books about grief seem insignificant.

This is one of the most emotionally powerful books I’ve ever read. It is one of the only books that has enabled me to completely understand what it is like to go through a devastating sequence of events. I hope I never have to experience anything like this, but if the worst happens this book has given me the comfort of knowing that life can go on afterwards.

The depth and range of emotion present in this book is breathtaking. It never becomes overly sentimental or shys away from showing the darker side of humanity. Shortcomings are open for all to see and this vulnerability only adds to emotional impact of this book.

I’ll be dead four hours later and Dad’s spending money in a supermarket. As of now, he will forever loathe the inevitable stop-off for the weekly shop. He’d always been disparaging about those nowhere-land places – shitty music, mediocre products, insidious layout, stooped ghost figures trundling from one shelf to another. But he still went every week, one of many contradictions. To think he lost some of the last few moments he could have spent with me alive – the memory of it destroys him.

The deep sadness is layered with hope; showing how friends and family can help each other through grief. It is a roller-coaster of emotion, and does have more downs than ups, but I think it is worth the emotional investment. The ending is beautiful and I only hope that Michel Rostain and his family had a similar outcome to their own tragedy.

Highly recommended.

Five words from the blurb: diary, girl, tsunami, change, life

A Tale for the Time Being is an unusual mixture of Japanese and Western literature. The book begins with Ruth, a woman living on a remote Canadian island, discovering a lunchbox on the beach. The lunchbox is one of many items to be washed across the ocean by the tsunami and on opening it she discovers the diary of Nao, a teenage girl who is being bullied at school. Through reading the diary Ruth learns about Nao’s family: her suicidal father, her great-grandmother’s life as a Buddhist nun, and her great-uncle’s experience as a kamikaze pilot during WWII. Ruth develops a bond with this family and begins a quest to find them; longing to know whether or not they survived the tsunami. 

The book begins really well. I loved Nao’s modern, chatty style and quickly warmed to her; feeling as though I understood her thoughts and motivations.

I don’t mind thinking of the world without me because I’m unexceptional, but I hate the idea of the world without old Jiko. She’s totally unique and special, like the last Galapagos tortoise or some other ancient animal hobbling around on the scorched earth, who is the only one left of its kind. But please don’t get me going on the topic of species extinction because it’s totally depressing and I’ll have to commit suicide right this second.

The diary format worked well and this the first book I’ve read that successfully manages to include you tube, mobiles and the Internet without feeling forced or experimental. 

Ruth’s character was also well developed and I particularly enjoyed her vivid descriptions of life by the sea. The entire book was packed with atmosphere and, although this made the book slow to read, it was well worth the time. 

I enjoyed reading the entire book, but it didn’t impress me as much as I thought it might. The main reason for this is because the majority of the philosophical elements were familiar to me. The ideas were beautifully presented, but Schrödinger’s cat and multiple universes have been done many times before. I also found that the Japanese elements, for example the ghosts of the dead and the crow symbolism, didn’t feel as fresh and alive as they do in the hands of Murakami. It feels wrong to criticise this novel when there is technically nothing wrong with it, but the scientist in me didn’t quite accept some of the theories.

Despite my minor quibbles, the positives far outweigh the negatives. It perfectly captures life at the present time and I recommend you read it soon, before it inevitably becomes dated.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…the line between fiction and reality is not clear-cut in this novel, which makes it all the more enthralling and appealing. Bookmagnet’s Blog

 A Tale for the Time Being isn’t a bad novel, but it doesn’t need all the padding that the meditations on time and quantum physics require; I think it could be shorter and better. Necromancy Never Pays

The humanity of the novel is enormous and takes your breath away in most places. Of Books and Reading

Five words from the blurb: child, violence, Asperger’s, psychological, connect

As you may know, I make an effort to read as many books as possible that contain characters with Asperger’s syndrome. On Autism Awareness Day Hannah pointed out that The Uninvited fitted my criteria and so I added it to the top of my wish-list. By a strange twist of fate I was offered a review copy just a week later and so I accepted, keen to try one of Liz Jensen’s books for the first time.

The Uninvited is a psychological thriller in which children start attacking adults for no known reason. The central character, Hesketh, is an anthropologist. He is sent to Taiwan to investigate fraud within the timber industry, but quickly finds himself involved in the global child violence crisis.

The book begins well, with a vivid scene in which a seven-year-old girl kills her grandmother with a nail gun, but unfortunately that level of tension failed to re-appear later in the book. The scenes of violence were too fragmented and the explanations for the attacks were too far fetched for me to become fearful.

Hesketh has Asperger’s and I found him to be well developed, with realistic traits for someone on the spectrum. I liked the way Asperger’s was portrayed in a positive light, but I found mentions of the condition too frequent. The reader is made aware of the Asperger’s early on, but I found the continual reference back to it burdensome. If you don’t know much about the condition then you will find it useful, but I wish it hadn’t had such a dominant role.

One of my chief coping mechanisms, in mental emergencies, involves origami: I carry an imaginary sheaf of delicate rice paper in my head, in a range of shades, to fold into classical shapes. When the image of Freddy shooting Kaitlin first reared up I swiftly folded eleven of the Japanese cranes known as ozuru, but I couldn’t banish it.

The Uninvited has a lot to recommend it. It is a fast paced, entertaining read that treats Asperger’s with sensitivity, but I’m afraid the plot lacked the realism required to give it real impact.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…one of the most genius and bizarre pieces of literature I’ve read in a very long time. A Bookish Libraria

…everything was bogged down in tedious and ultimately tiring details… Judging Covers

 While the book showed lots of promise, ultimately the ending ruined it for me. Book Addiction

Five words from the blurb: weekend, handsome, man, property, trap

Chloe Hooper was shortlisted for the Orange Prize her debut novel, A Child’s Book of True Crime. Her new book, The Engagement, is getting a lot of positive press in Australia and since I had an unsolicited review copy sitting on my shelf I decided to see what all the fuss was about.

The Engagement is psychological thriller with a Gothic atmosphere. The book is set in Melbourne, Australia, where Liese is working for her uncle’s estate agency. She agrees to show Alexander around a range of properties and they end up having sex in each of them. Alexander then offers to rent Liese for the weekend, leading to the strange situation where Liese is locked, voluntarily, in his house.

The writing in this book is fantastic. I loved the atmospheric descriptions of the Australian landscape and the Gothic feel of narrative.

As we drew closer the house was all windows, reflecting the blankness of the darkening sky. Grey clouds rolled over the glass, camouflaging whatever waited behind it. This building sat in the dust, expectant and watchful, emitting a low piercing sound. Every nearby tree was alive with bird-din. Hundreds, thousands of them were seething in the branches. They signalled to each other, the garden vibrating with their calls – although more truly the sound seemed to come from the stone walls of the house, from deep inside one of its rooms.

Unfortunately the plot wasn’t of the same standard as the writing. Liese and Alexander were both well developed characters, but their actions were unrealistic. I couldn’t understand their motivations, several of the plot twists were bizarre, and the ending left me feeling particularly unsatisfied.

If you enjoy reading books just for their brooding atmosphere then this is a must, just don’t expect any realism from the plot. 

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…a strange mixture of banality, naivety and menace… Euro Crime

…a brilliant novel that disturbed and enthralled simultaneously… Write Note Reviews

 …if you loved Gone Girl then this is it’s grown-up cousin. The Writes of Woman

Five words from the blurb: Earth, species, starfaring, space, future

I hadn’t heard of this book until I read about it in Moondust a few weeks ago. Intrigued by the idea of an astronaut writing a scientifically accurate sci-fi novel, I ordered a copy from my library. I’m pleased that I did because this is one of the best pieces of science fiction I’ve ever read.

Encounter with Tiber is a fantastic story that travels through time and space. I was gripped throughout the 500+ pages; thrown from moral dilemmas to heart stopping scenes of disaster. It predicts how human space travel will increase over the next few decades, explaining how technology will evolve to enable us to travel increasingly large distances. It also shows the problems faced when alien life is detected, giving thought-provoking insights into our society.

The wonderful thing about this book is the way everything is based on scientific fact.  The plot is firmly rooted to the first moon landings and the science behind everything is clearly explained. Some people may find that it gets a bit technical in places, but I loved the detail and enjoyed Aldrin’s predictions for the future.

“We’re going to the Moon, but only to go treasure hunting, and once we’re there it probably won’t be long before we’re taking soil that hasn’t been disturbed for four billion years, bulldozing it up in carloads, and pumping it through helium extractors. I wonder when they’ll open the first casino up there. Probably within my lifetime.”

Buzz Alrdrin also used his experiences in space to give realistic descriptions of the thoughts, feelings and fears of those leaving our planet. This added a unique spark to the story and is the main reason this book should be considered a modern classic.

There are several things I should probably criticise (for example, the writing wasn’t perfect and the characters all had the same voice) but these problems didn’t seem to matter – I was far too engaged in the story. The only real issue is that this book was published in 1996 and so many of the events in the 1990-2010 section had already happened/not happened. Had I read this book on publication it would have had a far greater impact.

If you think you don’t like science fiction you should give this a try – it effortlessly blends historical events with predictions for the future and the scary thing is just how possible it all seems.

Highly recommended.

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