The Radleys by Matt Haig

I had this book pushed onto me, and told I HAD to read it, by someone I usually trust implicitly to know what I will like. But Vampires? I haven’t read vampire fiction (modern at least) since I read Anne Rice in my teens and I was therefore really unsure. But I read it anyway, and I’m really glad I did.

The Radleys are vampires. Although unless they told you, you wouldn’t know it. Peter and Helen Radley live in a normal, pleasant suburban street with their two teenage children Rowan and Clara. Rowan and Clara don’t even know themselves that they are vampires, as their parents have never quite found the right moment to tell them. It would not be immediately obvious to them because the family are abstainers, meaning they consider blood drinking to be morally wrong, and although the craving itself never goes away, they attempt to live normal lives. There are issues however. They still have extreme reactions to sunlight, can’t abide even the smell of garlic, and eat copious amounts of rare meat! The children have these oddities explained away to them as sensitive skin and so on, but problems arise when fifteen year old Clara decides to turn vegan! Whilst at a party a drunken boy pushes her a little too far, and in her deprived state, she loses all control, and reverts to her true nature.

This event is the crucial point of the whole novel. In essence, the book revolves around the revelations and events that this discovery has on the whole family. Peter and Helen have to deal with the natural repercussions of this event, as well as the double shock for the children, who realise both that they are vampires, and that they have been lied to their whole lives in one evening. Add into the mix the appearance of Will, Peter’s brother, a fully practicing and out of control vampire, and the whole façade of normality Peter and Helen have constructed for themselves threatens to come crashing down.

There is so much about this book that makes it readable. It mixes an original story, humour and moments of intense darkness together very well. Because as much as this book is about abstaining vampires, not all vampires abstain so there is blood drinking, killing, and persecution. And some pretty sadistic vampires out there. The humour comes from a book within the book, known as the Abstainers Handbook. Chapters from this are interspersed throughout the novel, with ‘helpful’ tips, such as

“if blood is the answer, you are asking the wrong question”

That such a book could even exist is amusing in itself, but the way it is written is so condescending, it is impossible not to smile at some of its ‘advice.’

There is so much more to this book though than a slightly quirky vampire story, although it does do that very well. In fact I felt that the vampirism was just a representation of difference, and how we all try to protect ourselves from being seen as different. Because as much as Helen and Peter attempt to create an outward impression of normality, it never quite succeeds. They manage to hide their vampirism, but their neighbours still think there is something not quite right about them, and comment to themselves about their odd behaviour. Being set in suburban England, it is portraying scenes that are completely understandable for many readers of this book. Many people live in the vicinity of people who don’t draw their curtains, or exhibit other slightly strange behaviour. I thought the book was brilliantly observational on how ordinary people live, and how even slight differences can provoke comment, usually in so called liberal minded people. I liked the fact that I could imagine the places easily, and even some of the people.

In the end though, the book is about accepting who you are, and not trying to build too much of a façade up around yourself, and reconciling your own life and preferences with other peoples. It is about the Radleys progression from almost denying themselves, to learning to accept what they are, but also how to temper that with what is required to live in a civilised society. And it was brilliant. I loved it.

Let The Geat World Spin by Colum McCann

I’m finding it difficult to actually summarise what Let The Great World Spin is actually about. It actually includes a fictionalised account of Philllipe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the two towers of the World Trade Centre, but it’s not really about this. It is actually a series of stories about a rather large cast of characters, all of whom ether witnessed, or were in some way involved in Petit’s daring stunt. The stories are all set in New York, and although we are presented with a ‘no holds barred’, gritty overview of New York, particularly its darker, grubbier side, this book is not really about that either. It is more about the personal stories of the characters themselves and the connections between the characters, although in the majority of cases they are connections they are not aware of.

Although the action takes pace mainly on the day of the high wire walk itself, with each character, we get a view of what they are doing on the day, usually interlinked with their history, so we discover the situation they are in now, as well as finding out how their life has panned out to get them there. It is difficult to detail the connections as that is part of the beauty of this novel, the connections between the characters do not become apparent until the latter half of the book. We start with an Irish Jesuit priest living in the Bronx, being a friend to the prostitutes and struggling with a personal dilemma involving his vow of celibacy and falling in love. There are also stories involving a drug addled bohemian couple, at least one of who’s life is turned around in a car accident, a prostitute telling her story from jail, and her daughter (also a prostitute), as well as a group of women all grieving the loss of children in Vietnam, and a judge presiding in court the day the tightrope walker is brought in.

All of the lives detailed in the book are precariously balanced, an obvious parallel to the walker high above the city, precariously balanced himself. I think thats what I liked most about this book. All of the characters have some horrendous things thrown at them, whether through circumstance, their own making, or a little of both, yet somehow, they seem to carry on, in some way or another. They all seem to find ways of coping with heartbreak or grief, and most of the characters seem to find a point or meaning to their lives. They are all characterised so well, and in a way they all seem so individual, yet the ordinariness of their lives and their daily struggles seem so universal, even though most of their situations are alien to me. To each character, their life is all they have, and all they are fighting for, yet as a reader, with the knowledge of all the characters, it was fascinating to see how small events and small kindnesses in fact can have an impact on someone else’s life. It is almost managing to convey that life is so small, but also so big both at the same time.

I think there is so much more in this book than I could possibly write about here. I loved it. I think I loved everything about it. From the troubled Irish Priest to Tillie, the career prostitute, I loved them all, I was rooting for them all. Tillie particularly was heartbreaking. Her voice telling her story from prison, lamenting the fact that her daughter ended up in the same position as her, even though she promised her she never would. Somehow, through all their faults, and all their bad choices, I felt so much for these people. And of course, the tightrope walker. I need to know more about him. I did read a bit about him here, but I think I will be searching out more about him, and this event in particular. And of course, it was interconnected stories, always a hit with me anyway, especially with the gradual reveal that makes everything come together at the end.

Favourite bits.

“It had never occurred to me before, but everything in New York is built upon another thing, nothing is entirely by itself, each thing is as strange as the last, and connected.”


“We have all heard of these things before. The love letter arriving as the teacup falls. The guitar striking up as the last breath sounds out. I don’t attribute it to God or sentiment. Perhaps it’s chance. Or perhaps chance is just another way to convince ourselves we are valuable.”

Room by Emma Donoghue

I usually try not to read books when everyone else is reading them (or writing about them), mainly because I think too much information previous to reading a book will always lead to a sense of disappointment when I do actually read it. But I really wanted to red Room, so tried to avoid as much as possible anything written about it, and come to it as fresh as I could. This wasn’t altogether successful, but it didn’t matter in this case, because I loved this book!

The basic concept I think everyone knows by now, that Jack and his mother are imprisoned in a single room by Jack’s Ma’s kidnapper, and Jack himself was born into the room (or Room as he knows it) so has never known anything else. Room, and everything in it, is his world. He does watch television although only in small amounts, but he believes everything he sees on TV to be pretend, an idea given to him by Ma, so that he doesn’t feel he is missing out on anything.

This could have been a depressing, almost unreadable book, if not for the fact that it was narrated by Jack himself. I thought the way he narrated the story, and the language he used, particularly giving each object in Room a proper name really gave an insight into how he saw the room as the world. It was ‘Bed’ ‘Wardrobe’ ‘Plant’ etc, just as we would say school, home, work. And once in the outside world, his actions and thoughts are indicative of exactly how difficult it will be for him to adjust to living in society, and how many apparently simple things he will have to learn that come naturally if you’ve grown up in ‘Outside’, as Jack calls it.

“There’s something going zzzzz, I look in the flowers an it’s the most amazing thing, an alive bee that’s huge with yellow and black bits, it’s dancing right inside the flower. ‘Hi’, I say. I put out my finger to stroke it and- Arghhhhhh,”

I liked Jack’s insight into this whole story. And it really was what saved it from being too heart wrenching to read. When the focus is totally on Room, and Ma’s efforts to entertain and educate Jack, it is easy to forget the torment she must be going through cooped up in a small space, repeatedly raped, and being forced to have Jack sleep in the wardrobe, in order for him never to see her kidnapper. But what would her mental state be when they do finally make it out of captivity? And how difficult would it be to read her conversations when she actually has someone else (other than a six year old) to talk to them about.

However, because everything is seen through Jack’s perspective, and because this is so well written, any of the issues and traumas that might be affecting his mother are seen through his eyes. That is, with total bewilderment, and mainly relating to how this affects him, and how he is going to deal with this totally new world in which he has found himself. Issues that she might face are briefly touched upon, and suggested, but filtered through Jack’s odd, stilted language, they become issues to ponder, rather than have it spelt out.

Even though this book is told totally through Jack’s eyes, there is still a strong sense of love that comes through. Jack loves is mother unconditionally, as he would, as he is he only person he speaks to. But the sense of total and unconditional love that ma feels for Jack is portrayed so well, even when the narrative is written from a child’s perspective. Love for Jack is what keeps Ma going, and it is amazing to me the imagination she put in to keeping her child entertained and educated all day, everyday in such a small, claustrophobic space. I think that says lot about the nature of love and motherhood, and in a way, society as a whole.

I can’t really praise this book enough. It kept me gripped all the way through, I was constantly picking it up ‘just to read that little bit more’, and left me thinking bout the whole situation, and about love, and motherhood, and what it really means.

The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna

The Birth of Love is really four different stories, two set in the present and one each in the past and the future. There are slight connections between the stories, but really they are just four different perspectives on childbirth and motherhood. We start in turn of the century Vienna with a man named Semmelweiss imprisoned in a horrific lunatic asylum for daring to suggest that many more women could survive childbirth if doctors washed their hands between performing autopsies and attending births. We then move to Brigid, just beginning to feel early contractions with her second child in twenty-first century London, and from there on to Michael Stone, a reclusive author struggling to deal with the publicity involved with the publication of his first book, which happens to be about Semmelweiss, and struggling to decide whether to visit his aging mother whom he has not spoken to for many years. And finally, a story set in 2153, when climate change has caused irreversible destruction of the planet, and all reproduction is carried out in laboratories. Women are harvested for eggs at eighteen and the forcibly sterilised. In the midst of all this, a woman somehow gets naturally pregnant and escapes from the compound, although this story is told through prisoner interviews once the escapees have been recaptured.

The running theme throughout the novel is of motherhood as a powerful force in nature. The women in all of the stories are dealing with different aspects of childbirth and motherhood, but they all feel an overwhelming urge to have children, and protect their children. The women in the first section are terrified of the hospital for fear of losing their own lives, and that of their babies. Brigid constantly talks in terms of her body doing this to her whilst she is in labour, Michael feels the need to visit his mother a final time, even though she will not really know f his presence, and the women in the final section feel unfulfilled and incomplete because of their forced sterility. And obviously, the child born from a supposedly closed womb is an obvious symbol for the natural and all-encompassing nature of motherhood.

It is difficult to say which of these was my favourite thread, because they were all interesting, and very different. I found it difficult to understand how such a simple thing as hand washing could be refuted, and fascinated by the different theories that the doctor in charge of childbirth hospitals came up with to avoid having to wash their hands. And the images of the treatment/incarceration at the lunatic asylum were difficult to read .Childbirth in the past was obviously a much more dangerous procedure. Brigid’s story was pretty graphically described, and not pleasant reading in places, as it spares no details about the nature of childbirth, but the realism in he description was necessary to get across the impression of childbirth as all consuming, and a powerful experience. And the sparse almost robotic language used in the interrogation of the prisoners in the futuristic section contrasted well with Brigids section as it makes clear that this force and power is what they are missing from their lives. With familial terms replaced with words such as egg and sperm donor, and progeny of the species, all human ties with reproduction have been severed and what we are left with is an emotionless, businesslike society, but without love.

I did enjoy the slight moments of interconnectedness between the various threads in this story (but then I always like that in a novel), however, I think it was the differing experiences of childbirth and motherhood that I found most appealing, however difficult they were to read. Giving birth today is described in full detail, but as much as childbirth is painful I think we have it lucky. I can’t imagine a society where just going into hospital to give birth is a life and death situation, or conversely, a situation where childbirth and family relationships are stripped away altogether. I really hope we never end up in such a dystopic society.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is not a happy story. It is a brilliant book however. Telling the story of two women living their lives through some of the most tumultuous times in Afghan history, it is sad, harrowing, depressing and ominous. But I loved it all the same.

Mariam is the illegitimate child of a wealthy Afghan and his housekeeper, who was forced to leave his service when her pregnancy was discovered. Having lived a very solitary life with mainly just her mother for company, and revelling in the weekly visits from her father, she leaves to live with her father, who she is sure will be overjoyed to receive her. However, this is not the case and at fifteen she is married off to a much older man and sent to live in Kabul. She gradually adjusts to her new life and eventually stars to enjoy it, but as her husband Rasheed, gets more and more impatient that she cannot produce a child his behaviour towards her becomes more and more violent and degrading. Eventually, a local girl, Laila, ends up staying with Rasheed and Mariam as her parents are killed in a rocket attack and Rasheed also takes an interest in her, also fifteen.

This book is really the story of these two women, and how Afghanistan has treated them over the course of their lives. Although they are characterised very well, both individually, and the turbulent development of their friendship, the tragic events that happened to them could have been that of many women in Afghanistan. It’s a bit of a portent when Laila’s father says early in the story ‘it’s a good time to be a woman n Afghanistan’. At the time he said this, it was. Education and career prospects for women were more available than ever before, yet as readers we know this is all about to change. And when the Taliban finally roll in, Mariam and Laila are in the forefront of our minds, as we already know that they are trapped with a man who believes the Taliban to be a good thing. In a way it is possible to read the interplay between Rasheed, Mariam and Laila as a microcosm of Afghanistan as a whole, male leaders oppressing women as mere possessions and baby making machines, and God help them if they don’t produce male heirs.

I leant a lot from this book. I was well aware of recent events n Afghanistan but I wasn’t aware of the violent history that had preceded it, and because this book encompasses a relatively long period of time it also shows how the fighting and wars preceding the Taliban’s emergence into power devastated the country, both physically and emotionally. I also think this book does a very good job of pointing out that the Taliban did not come to power with totally new ideas. The attitudes they based heir theocracy on, and enforced brutally, were already present in many area of Afghan society, and when the Taliban took power, by many people they were simply legitimising attitudes already felt by many Afghan men.

Despite all the moments of horror and degradation, especially for women, this book is tempered with stories of how individual people fight the theocracy, in small but very relevant ways. Female doctors breaking the law to operate without Burkha (nurses posted on watch) and orphanage staff trying to look after children with no resources and still taking in children in need.

However, this book is essentially about Mariam and Laila. Their plight can come to represent that of all Afghani women, but the story of their friendship and bond is central to this story. Although at first they hardly speak to each other, they eventually develop a bond that is as close to mother and daughter as either of them has ever known, as they both had emotionally distant relationships with their respective mothers. With women being the central theme of this novel, it comes as no surprise that one of is strongest elements is mother/daughter relationships, especially living in a country where being female was a distinct disadvantage. The juxtaposition of the emotionally deficient relationships of both Mariam and Laila with their mothers, and the love Laila shows her daughter is enlightening.

It might be obvious that I loved this book. It was so well written, and with both large and small themes juxtaposed, but neither made more important than the other. It was harrowing, and upsetting. But also informative, and overall about love, and how that is the most important thing in the world.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

What do I want to say about this book? I don’t really know what to say about it. Part of that is because it’s been a few week since I read it, and although I remember it clearly, I can’t seem to produce any articulate thoughts. So I might just ramble, and hope some of this makes sense.

It was David Mitchell’s first novel, and is similar both in structure and theme to Cloud Atlas. As with Cloud Atlas there is no real central story, as the novel is comprised of nine very different, but all slightly interconnected stories. Starting and finishing with Quasar, a member of the Japanese apocalyptic cult that gassed the Tokyo Subway, this story is concerned with his retreat from Tokyo once the attacks are carried out. From there we move to a love story between two youngsters, a British banker in Hong Kong who is involved in some dodgy deals that are all about be uncovered, his girlfriend has left him and his apartment is haunted, a souls progression through various hosts in search of a particular story he can remember, art theft and the Russian mafia, a ghost writers life and loves, a quantum physicists refusal to co-operate with her American employers in creating new and more deadly weapons, and finally a new York late night radio show and the host’s annual conversation with some apparently cognitive artificial intelligence.

The individual stories themselves are fascinating enough. We seem to move throughout the twentieth/twenty-first century and in all of them the sense of place and atmosphere is created quickly and seemingly effortlessly. Mitchell tackles so many theme in this book it is possible to identify them all but there is a definite emphasis on modernisation, commercialisation and so called progression, usually with a negative slant.

But the stories themselves don’t make the novel. It is the interconnectedness of the individual stories that makes the whole thing complete. Characters from the various stories turn up, both characters we’ve already read about, and ones that we have yet to meet. I did find there was always a slight jolt when moving from one section to the next, but that didn’t last long and the scene setting was so well done, with numerous ‘ah ha’ moments when previous events or characters were referenced, that the whole concept came together very quickly.

It’s difficult to say much about how this interconnectedness is so important without giving away too much of the conclusion of this book (if it could be said to be that), but there are definite ideas of interconnectedness, chance and fate running throughout this book. How much of what happens in our lives is because of random meetings and events, and how much is destined to happen to us anyway. A lot of the meetings and crossed paths in this book seem to be total chance (one of the characters even plays in a band called ‘The Music of Chance’), but one memorable quote from the book for me was

"We're all ghostwriters, my boy. And it's not just our memories. Our actions, too. We all think we're in control of our own lives, but really they're pre-ghostwritten by forces around us."

This book is full of little gems like that, but unfortunately that was the only one I noted down before returning this book to the library!

And just as a point of interest, and definitely another one of those ‘Aha’ moments, there are characters named Luisa Rey and Timothy Cavendish in this book (from Cloud Atlas), and one of the characters has a birth mark shaped like a comet! There may well be other references I didn’t pick up on, but they were the ones I spotted.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox was a book I found impossible to put down, and one that will stay with me for a long time. It had an odd structure, written from three perspectives and without any real chapters, but I really just couldn’t stop turning the pages. For a book, that can only be high praise!

Esme Lennox has spent nearly all of her adult life in a psychiatric institute, and when the institution is being closed down, and all the patients re-located, she is judged to be no danger to herself or society, so is being released into the community. Her named family member is Iris Lockhart, her great-niece, but the first problem here is that Iris doesn’t know of her existence since she had always been told that her grandmother was an only child. And just to throw another spanner in the works, Kitty, Iris’s grandmother is herself in an institution, with fairly advanced alzheimers, so is unable to answer when Iris asks about Esme.

Esme and Kitty grew up in India, in a relatively well-to-do, society family, where there were huge expectations placed upon them on the proper way to behave. Having suffered a horrific family tragedy they return from India to Scotland when the sisters are still young, to live with their paternal grandmother, who makes even more of proprieties and conforming than their parents. Kitty falls into line with this, and even revels in it, but Esme becomes more and more averse to the ideas purported by her family, and wants to go her own way, and do her own thing. She doesn’t like dancing, enjoys books and doesn’t want to get married. Her ‘unruly’ behaviour leads her parents to despair of her, although in fact all she is doing is refusing to conform to expectations.

So why was Esme locked away at sixteen years of age, and why does nobody know of her existence? What secrets are waiting to be discovered? The answer to that is plenty, but they are revealed slowly and in a very non-linear way throughout the book. The book jumps around both from point of view and in time, as it is told from the viewpoints of Iris, Esme and Kitty. From Iris we see what is happening with Esme and how she goes about dealing with the knowledge and physical presence of a relative she didn’t know she had. The sections told from Esme’s point of view are a little more confusing, as she jumps between the present and the past, as something that happens will remind her of her previous life and she goes off into a reverie about life in the asylum, or before she was committed. And then probably the most illuminating sections are the chunks of internal stream of consciousness thought from Kitty, whose sections are difficult to read, but read in conjunction with Esme’s memories, eventually create a complete picture of the events that lead to Esme’s committal and abandonment.

The two sisters are portrayed really well through the varying narratives, and it’s easy to see how Esme was different when she is juxtaposed with her sister, who tried to do everything that was expected of her, make the good marriage, take up embroidery and the like. That juxtaposition was necessary, both to illuminate how a well-to-do girl of this era should behave, and show how Esme’s rebellion would have been viewed by their social circle. Ultimately though it is Esme I felt sorry for, and Kitty who comes across as selfish, self-absorbed and superficial. I actually felt angry reading this book at what Esme went through at the hands of her family, more and more so as more of the truth was revealed in glimpses from the sisters memories.

I really enjoyed this book, particularly the actual act of reading the disjointed narratives and piecing them all together to try and decide what really happened. It does however paint a pretty damning picture of life for women in the early part of the 20th century, particularly if they want to veer even slightly off course from what is expected of them. I think this is what interested me most about this story. This subject has cropped up in a few novels, and each time it does I get the urge to find out more about the reality of this, and then ever do. Maybe this time I will.