Author: Jackie

Categories
2009 Orange Prize Recommended books

The Wilderness – Samantha Harvey

Short listed for the Orange Prize 2009

The Wilderness is written through the eyes of someone with Alzheimer’s disease. I shouldn’t like this book, as on the surface the plot is identical to Gilead – old man looking back at his life in snippets, revealing the wisdom he has learnt, but this book is in a league above Gilead. It captured my heart from the very first sentence:

In amongst a sea of events and names that have been forgotten, there are a number of episodes that float with stiking buoyancy to the surface.

When reading a book I note down quotes which may be suitable for my review. After noting down five different quotes within the first few pages I realised this was an exceptional book, and the bar for quote-quality was raised significantly higher!

This book is heart-breakingly sad. The central character is Jake, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, who is struggling to remember the details of his life. He can remember certain things as vivdly as when he was there, but others things, especially those that have happened recently are very elusive. As the book progresses his condition deteriorates, and even the most important things in his life fail to come to him:

She sits at the kitchen table beating eggs. Embarrassing, but he cannot remember her name. So desperately embarrassing because he sleeps with her, he knows her, she is not a stranger.

The Wilderness really opened my eyes to the suffering of old people. They are subjected to embarrassing situations as their bodies begin to fail them, but their minds are just as alert  as they were when they were younger. I think one of the reasons that this affected me so much is that this situation is almost certainly going to happen to me, and everyone else I know. This isn’t about the suffering of war, which however shocking, is unlikely to directly affect me. Old age and it’s degrading loss of dignity is going to happen, and this realisation hit me with a shocking intensity.

I’m not sure I want to recommend this book to you, as it is so heart-breaking that it will proably make you cry. I was unsure if I could give my highest rating to a book which I struggle to recommend to people, but in the end the power of this book cannot be ignored. I couldn’t find any faults with it. It gripped me from beginning to end, and left me a changed person. My money for the Orange Prize 2009 is on this book.

Highly recommended.

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Who do you think will win the Orange Prize 2009?

Have you read this book? Did it change your opinion of the elderly?

Do you recommend depressing books to other people?

Categories
Other

Tags and Categories? Please help me!!

1-1232472552p4l3I need to decide on a new system for organising the posts on my blog. I have been very random in my use of tags and categories, but I think this blog is getting to the size where this isn’t good enough any more. I have looked at a few blogs, and everyone seems to use tags in a different way. Some people display tag clouds on their blogs, and the only ones which seem to be used are ‘review’ and ‘audio book’.

Do you ever use tags on other peoples’ blogs? If so, which words are the most useful?

Categories seem to be used even more infrequently. Is this because it is an option not available to everyone?

At the moment I am mainly using the category section for my challenges, but this isn’t going to be useful in the long-term when I start to repeat challenges, for example the ‘pub challenge’ category is going to be  redundant at the end of the year, so perhaps I should have a ‘Books Published in 2009’ category?

I was thinking of just having categories for each of the book prizes, but I’m not sure how to split tags and categories. Should I be using them for two separate things?

What categories would you find useful?

Have you seen a blog which makes really good use of tags and categories?

All thoughts and opinions very gratefully received!

Categories
2009 Chick Lit

Best Intentions – Emily Listfield

Best Intentions falls into the ‘chick lit’ category, but is the first book I have read which successfully manages to combine this with a convincing thriller.

The book begins with Lisa, a mother of two teenage girls, living a busy life in New York. Her happy world starts crumbling around her when she suspects her husband of having an affair. To make matters worse her job becomes under threat when the company she works for is taken over by new management.

One of the best things about the book was that I knew who was going to be murdered from the beginning. I think that the author intended this to be the case, as all her marketing makes it very obvious. The murder doesn’t occur until about 2/3 of the way through, so for the majority of the book I was searching for clues as to what would provoke violence. This is the only book I’ve read where the majority of the detective work is done before the actual crime is committed. I was unsure as to whether to name the murder victim here, so I’ll leave you to make up your own mind. If you’d like to know who is killed then the book’s website lets you know.

The writing is not  fluffy, like many books in this genre, but is intelligent and thought provoking. In many ways it reminded me of Lionel Shriver’s writing style. The main themes are relationships, trust and parenting. There were a lot of sections where I found myself remembering almost identical experiences:

I turn partially around. “Have a yogurt.”
I’ve already had a yogurt.”
I take a deep breath. “All right, One Cookie. Just One.” I distrust any mother who says she never bribes her children.

The characters are all well-drawn, and behave realistically, the slight annoyance being that it is all written in the first person (although I have to admit that I got used to this after a few chapters).

The ending is satisfyingly realistic, but unfortunately I don’t think it could have been predicted using anything other than pot luck, as all the suspects had equally good motives, and as far as I could tell there were no clues hidden earlier in the text.

Recommended.

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This is Emily Listfield’s seventh book. I haven’t read any of her others, but am particularly interested in her last book Waiting to Surface.

Have you read any of her other books?

Are you a fan of ‘chick lit’?

Categories
Other

Things which have caught my eye this week…..

The winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize was announced yesterday. The winning book is The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas of Australia.

 

 Chair of the judging panel the Hon Justice Nicholas Hasluck commented on the  winning book:

“A controversial and daring novel, The Slap uses the iconic scene of a suburban Australian barbecue to examine identities and personal relationships in a multicultural society. Offering points of view from eight different characters, it taps into universal tensions and dilemmas around family life and child-rearing. This book is sure to challenge readers and provoke debate.

It sounds really interesting, so I actually attempted to buy a copy, but it’s price and rarity put me off. I’ll have to wait until it’s inevitable reprint.

The winner of the best first book was A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. This was short listed for the Booker prize last year, and has been on my wish-list ever since then – I’m still on the look out for a bargain copy! 

Other books which have caught my eye this week include:

The Rooftops of Tehran as reviewed by Gautami Tripathy. I don’t think I have read many books set in Iran, and this one really stood out for me. It’s gone straight on the wish-list.

Matthew’s continual repetition of his love for The Master and Margarita managed to persuade me to part with my cash, and I now have a copy winging it’s way to me – I hope it lives up to his claims!!

Jo wrote a great review of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells. She has really inspired me to read it –  I didn’t realise how short it was! I’ll have to try and get hold of a copy soon.

On a lighter note……

I smiled quite a few times when I found this blog dedicated to finding things that are wrong!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an interview with a stick of butter before!

Has anything special caught your eye this week?

Have you read any of the books I highlighted?

Categories
Other

How many book cases can you buy for £18,000?

Here in the UK the major news this week has been about MPs fraudulently claiming things on their expenses, which the UK taxpayer has to foot the bill for. The latest scandal is that Labour MP Tam Dalyell is said to have claimed £18,000 for book cases. The thing I was most shocked about is that you can actually spend that amount of money on a book case, and so I decided to look into how what you can buy for that amount of money.

Cost: £27.99

Number you could buy with £18,000: 642

Cost: £49.99

Number you could buy with £18,000: 360

b-pop-up-kartell-8005
Cost: £329

Number you could buy with £18,000: 54

Cost: £659.99

Number you could buy with £18,000: 27

 

flexa
Cost: £1529

Number you could buy with £18,000: 11

b-pop-up-driade-frame-pCost: £8163

Number you could buy for £18,000: 2

I don’t know what he spent his £18,000 on. All I can say is that I wish I had that amount of money to spend on book shelves, and a home big enough to put them in.

Do you like any of these book cases?

What is your idea of the perfect book case?

Categories
Orange Prize Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Read-along Complete!

Winner of the Orange Prize 2007

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The second half of this book was very different from the first. I actually found it quite difficult to read in places, as it was so emotional. The suffering of the Biafran people, as they were murdered, abused and starved was heart breaking to read. This book really highlights the horror of war, the way people abuse their power, and the depths they will stoop to in order to survive.

Sometimes it was the simplest of quotes which conveyed the strongest message:

“How have you been, my brother?”
“We did not die,” he said.

If any further explanation had been given, it would have in some way belittled the events they experienced. If the only good thing you can say is that you did not die then, the magnitude of the devastation is enforced.

In my first post, many of you said that you thought my high opinion of Ugwu would change when I read the final section of the book. I don’t want to give anything away, as I realise that there are still lots of you out there who haven’t read this yet, but Ugwu remains my favourite character. I know he did a terrible thing, but I can understand how peer pressure and war can make people do things they would never normally do. Ugwu felt immense guilt and remorse afterwards, and because of this I will forgive him. It actually makes me feel more compassion for him, as I think he will suffer from the guilt of his actions for the rest of his life.

In my first post I also stated that the female characters didn’t come across very strongly. I have to say that in the second half of the book they came into their own. Each and every one of them showed an inner strength that I admire. By the end of the book I loved every single character in some way. Perhaps it is just that everyone who has had to endure the horrors that they did gains sympathy in my eyes, and are stronger because of the things they have gone through. Is this wrong? Or do you think that war can turn everyone into better people?

The one thing I didn’t like was the way they referred to the six-year-old girl as Baby. For a long time I assumed she was a baby, and it really threw me when I first realised how old she was. This is probably some symbolism I just don’t understand – so please bear with me!

I can’t say that I ever really enjoyed reading this book. I am really pleased that I read it, but the subject matter was so distressing that I don’t feel I can recommend it to everyone. The fear oozes from every word:

The first explosion sounded distant. Others followed, closer, louder, and the earth shook. Voices around her were shouting, ‘Lord Jesus! Lord Jesus!’ Her bladder felt painfully, solidly full, as though it would burst and release not urine but the garbled prayers she was muttering.

This really is an incredible book though, the writing is powerful, the characters realistic and multi-layered – the only thing this book is lacking is happiness.

It will become a classic. Highly recommended.

stars4h

 

 

What did you think of this book?

Will it still be read 50 years from now?

Did you find it distressing to read?