11 November, 2006

One Good Turn (Kate Atkinson)

I was really looking forward reading to One Good Turn. I've enjoyed all of Kate Atkinson's other books, to varying degrees, and I loved Case Histories, which shares characters with One Good Turn. However, unfortunately I wasn't too enthralled.

I found One Good Turn to be enormously complicated. So many characters, so many plots (which all tied together in so many ways) - and I realise that's Atkinson's trademark, in a way. But I just wasn't able to keep track of it this time, or at least not in a way that kept me involved with the characters. I'll definitely re-read One Good Turn sometime in the future, and hope that I enjoy it more the second time.

The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler)

I've read The Basic Eight before, and remember really enjoying it. This time around, this satire of American teenagers, pop culture and high school didn't grab me as much, I think because I was reading it with the end twist in mind.

Basic plot outline - Flan and her seven friends (the titular basic eight) deal with their complex love lives, high school classes and creepy biology teachers. Flan, the narrator, makes it clear that the whole narrative is leading up to the tragedy that occurred on Halloween and its a very effective - creepy, engaging, and all that. Great the first time, not so fabulous for a re-read.

Pomegranate Soup (Marsha Mehran)

I read Pomegranate Soup on a plane, and this very mediocre attempt at magical realism was not improved by such uncomfortable surroundings. I don't think I can blame the plane, though - I would have disliked Pomegranate Soup wherever I read it.

I picked up Pomegranate Soup because of the cover, and took it home from the library because of the blurb. Three Iranian sisters move to a small Irish town and start up a cafe - it seemed a pleasantly light and quirky read to take on holiday.

Unfortunately, as Books Give Wings pointed out, Marsha Mehran has copied the plot of Joanne Harris' Chocolat almost exactly. Strangers come to a small town, are greeted with fear and suspicion, and win over townspeople with their magical cooking skills. Unfortunately, Mehran doesn't write nearly as well as Harris, and Pomegranate Soup suffers from her heavy-handed writing, scattering unnecessary metaphors and symbolism all over the place. The sisters are greeted with competely over-the-top hatred and fear by some - the main villian of the piece, Thomas McGuire, is laughable in his constant state of rage. Pieces of "magic" pop into the plot, but because Mehran hasn't drawn the reader into another world, they are ridiculously out of place. I found myself laughing at a scene I think was supposed to be a transformational and triumphant conclusion to the novel. A very disappointing read.

Charmed Life (Diana Wynne Jones)

I enjoyed The Pinhoe Egg so much I immediately wanted to reread some of my favourite books by Diana Wynne Jones, one of which is Charmed Life.

Cat and his sister Gwendolyn, a talented witch, are orphaned in a terrible boating accident, and go to live at Chrestomanci Castle. Gwendolyn quickly becomes enemies with Chrestomanci's two children, and perhaps Chrestomanci himself, while Cat drifts along in her wake.

I am very fond of the character of Cat, who evolves wonderfully from a meek shy boy to someone willing to grasp his independence and his own power by the end of the book. Gwendolyn is deliciously nasty, and Chrestomanci, in his first appearance in Jones' books, is an elegantly eccentric figure who drifts around the castle in a variety of brightly coloured silk dressing gowns. While there are a few questions left unanswered in this book, and a few elements that perhaps weren't thought through quite thoroughly enough, Charmed Life is really excellent YA fantasy.

The Pinhoe Egg (Diana Wynne Jones)

While I adored Diana Wynne Jones when I was a teenager, I haven't been a big fan of her books published while I was an adult. Mixed Magics, a collection of four short stories, was OK, and Conrad's Fate was about the same. I was rather disappointed with The Merlin Conspiracy, which I didn't enjoy at all.

So I was pleasantly surprised with Jones' latest novel, The Pinhoe Egg. This may be because it has appearances by some of my most favourite characters of Jones' - Chrestomanci (the government appointed auditor of magic in Jones' world), his wife Millie, and everyone at Chrestomanci Castle. The Pinhoe Egg is the story of the Pinhoe family, a family of witches living secretly in a village near Chrestomanci Castle and concealing their misuse of magic.

I always fall in love with Jones' characters - her awkward, well meaning heroes, the adults who hide evil under a bland exterior, and the humour that winds its way through all of her stories, not detracting from the tragedies that may occur but making them more poignant. A really fabulous YA author, and I think The Pinhoe Egg is a return to some of her best form.

03 November, 2006

The Breakdown Lane (Jacquelyn Mitchard)

I quite enjoy Jacquelyn Mitchard's family dramas, and I thought The Breakdown Lane was good - traversing illness, parenting and infidelities, it does so without being cloying or overly cliched.
Julieanne's husband Leo goes off to find himself, and is uncontactable when she is diagnosed with MS. Her children sneak off on a road trip to bring their father home, but he arrives with more baggage than they bargained for. The novel is narrated alternately by Julieanne and her teenage son Gabe, which works fairly well - we get both perspectives of betrayal, and can see both occasionally overreacting. And yes, sometimes people in this novel are just too perfect, and everything turns out with a tinge of happily ever after. But it was a very enjoyable tale despite that.

Going Postal (Terry Pratchett)

I've never listened to any of Pratchett's books on audio before, and wasn't sure how his brand of satire (complete with many footnotes) would work when read aloud. Thankfully, it works really well - even the footnotes make their way into the text nicely - and Pratchett's familiar characters really came alive for me in this. I've never felt a particular attachment to Going Postal (yes, it's a book I've read twice before, but I think Pratchett is worth at least several re-reads), but it really worked for me this time. Moist regularly made me giggle out loud, and I loved his very weird romance with the chain-smoking advocate for golems, Adora Belle Dearheart. The next Discworld novel that Pratchett is working on, Making Money, is also going to star Moist - can't wait.

Rebel Angels (Libba Bray)

I listened to Rebel Angels as an audio book, but not really by choice. For some unfathomable reason, my library has A Great and Terrible Beauty as a book, but they only have Rebel Angels, its sequel, as an audio book. So I didn't really have any choice, because I enjoyed Terrible Beauty a lot, and wanted to read more of the story.

I really enjoyed listening to this recording actually - the narrator had a terribly British accent, of course, and the Victorian school girls who populate these books saying all their "W" words with "H"s - so they say things like "hwhat" and "hwhere".

Rebel Angels almost has two main plots side-by-side - there are Gemma's continuing adventures within the Realms, and her search for the Temple in order to bind the magic. Then there is her life in the real world - her father who is addicted to opium and grieving her mother's death, and Simon Middleton, the wealthy young man who is courting Gemma. She is rather torn between wanting to be a normal girl, and being determined to fulfill her responsibilities in restoring order to the Realms. She's a really fabulous teenage character - she darts between feeling jealousy, anguish, remorse, grief, with sparks of a great nobility of character which I expect we will see in Gemma as an adult (if Libba Bray keeps writing about her).

I thought, occasionally, that Gemma and friends almost seemed a little too obtuse about the clues and signs that were spread before them throughout the book. I became a little tired of them being in incredible danger because of their own mistakes. But they are teenagers, after all, and they do manage to resolve things very well.

I think Libba Bray does a really wonderful job at combining the seemingly very different genres of fantasy, historical fiction, and teenage adventure into one story - I can't wait for the third book to be published. I'll just have to wait and see what format the library acquires it in this time.