The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo: A Review

“Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.” – Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic

Readers, do you believe in fairy tales? Not the Disney version with the pretty princesses and the sweet little birds and the happily ever after. You remember the ones – the kind where it is dark and the woods might be haunted; something is coming and you are alone. If you like the old fairy tales, before they were tamed and made gentle for little ears, if the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen is more to your taste, then I think you will like Bardugo’s collection. Originally approached by her publisher to write a prequel to her series, the Grisha Chronicles, she ended up writing the kinds of fairy tales that she thought her characters would have grown up listening to around the fire in the cold of winter. The result is a collection of stories that borrows a little here and there from traditional folk and fairy tales, but is also representative of Bardugo’s style. Things are rarely what they seem and each story is like a little treat to be devoured in a single sitting.

I read these at night and at times I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck rising. They are definitely not stories for little ones, but they capture everything compelling about the old tales while reinventing them in new ways that keep them fresh and interesting. The text is accompanied by beautiful illustrations that contribute to the growing sense of tension Bardugo’s writing evokes. Characteristic of her novels, the line between heroes and villains is seldom clear in these stories, and characters should be very careful what they wish for.

I really loved this book. Bardugo strikes a perfect balance between the familiar and the novel. Each story builds tension and suspense to keep you turning pages late into the night. So, reader, to return to where I began: if you like fairy tales, this is a collection worth picking up.

If you read The Language of Thorns, let me know what you thought! Have you read any other modern fairy tales that captured your imagination? I would love to hear about them. Until next time, happy reading!

Melmoth by Sarah Perry: A Review

“No librarians yet at their post, the ranks of desks miserably empty, like sockets from which teeth had been pulled.” – Sarah Perry, Melmoth

Well everyone, it finally happened. I wondered when I started this little project when I would start a book I couldn’t finish. This was the one. I was so excited to read Melmoth. The reviews were outstanding and I loved the idea behind the story but readers, I have to be honest, I could not get through this book. I debated making myself finish it since I chose it for the blog, but years ago a wise librarian convinced me that life is too short to make yourself finish reading books you don’t like. So I didn’t. Besides, I decided that explaining why I couldn’t get through it is a review of a sort, so here were go:

Keeping in mind I only made it as far as page 80, I have to say I had a really hard time connecting to this novel. The narrative style is overly wordy in a way that seems like Perry is trying to mimic earlier Gothic writers (think Poe: words, words, words) but to me it felt artificial. The novel is set in modern times so at best it was unnecessary but at worst it felt like Perry was trying too hard to evoke Gothic tropes. The characters were really flat. They seldom express much emotion and when they do, they are kind of awful – one of the characters longs to get away from his wife because she has been paralyzed by a stroke and looking after her depresses him; another rejects other children who try to befriend him because they are nice. I am not kidding. I have read books before where the characters are purposefully unlikable but these ones were also oddly devoid of interesting traits. Even in their pettiness or jealousy or cruelty, they failed to elicit enough of a reaction for me to even care if Melmoth the Witness came and devoured them all in the end (or whatever it is Melmoth does, I guess I’ll never know). I couldn’t like them enough to worry for them or hate them enough to root for their destruction. Characters the reader doesn’t care about is never a good sign.

Before giving up entirely, I went back and read some reviews. I thought there had to be something I was missing. Certainly in the past, I have had to take a couple of running starts at a book before I really got into it and I was hoping the reviews would spur me into action. But as a I scrolled down past all the 5 star reviews that called Perry’s work “sublime” or “masterful”, I found my people. The 1 star reviews that said what I was thinking. The characters in this book are not people I would ever want to sit next to at a dinner party. The writing, while beautiful in places is also really boring at times. And according to the intrepid reviewers who made it all the way to the end, that doesn’t change. There was one common descriptor: depressing.

And with that, suspicions confirmed, I firmly shut the book. There are too many other books I want to read.

Have you ever given up on a book or do you finish whatever you start? I know readers tend to fall into one category or the other so I would love to hear from you. And if you read and loved (or hated) Melmoth, I would be interested to hear that too. Until next time, happy reading!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: A Review

“Later – and for the rest of his life – James will struggle to piece words to this feeling, and he will never quite manage to say, even to himself, what he really means. At this moment he can think only one thing: how was it possible, he wonders, to have been so wrong.” – Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

In this novel, Celeste Ng explores what happens to a family when one of the children, Lydia, dies. The circumstances of Lydia’s death are unclear – she left the house in the middle of the night, and later she was found, drowned in the local lake. The family struggles to come to terms with her death – was it murder? An accident? Suicide? And in seeking the answers, they begin to tear apart their bonds as a family. The parents, Marilyn and James Lee, and Lydia’s two remaining siblings, Nath and Hannah, are left protecting their secrets – and each other’s – as they struggle with their grief.

Ng excels at writing work that is both page-turning and deeply sympathetic to her characters. The tension created by Lydia’s death and the resulting reactions of her family developed so much tension that my chest actually felt tight as I read this book. It was only near the end, when Ng reveals the truth about what actually happened to Lydia that I felt like I was able to breathe again. Her writing evokes the vulnerability, loss and pain of her characters so realistically that at times I found it hard to keep reading. Marilyn and James, both thwarted in their own ambitions through circumstance, seek to realize their dreams through their children. The ambitions the Lees have – especially for Nath and Lydia, the two oldest – come from a place of love and the desire to create a better life for them, but result in both children hiding their true selves in an attempt to match themselves to the visions their parents have of them. Only Hannah, the youngest and often ignored child, notices all the small things the others miss: a significant look, a forgotten item, the sound of the front door opening and closing in the middle of the night.

The novel is an exploration of the ways in which families can both save and surrender us. They are the keepers of the deepest secrets, creators of the sharpest cuts. The Lee family clearly loves each other and this makes the story even more painful as the loss of Lydia drives them apart. Ng mingles perception, memory and truth to examine how complicated it is to truly see another, even those we think we know the best.

I have to say between this book and Little Fires Everywhere, any new novels by Celeste Ng will likely go straight to the top of my TRP. Have you read Everything I Never Told You? Drop me a line and let me know what you think. Until next time, happy reading!

January Line Up

Happy 2019 everybody! I hope you rang in the New Year in style. Thank you for all the comments and support in December – I was way behind schedule and you were very patient as I got back on track. It has been incredibly cool to hear all the people who have been reading and sharing the blog and I am really grateful to you for following along with me and sharing the books you are excited about.

I really enjoyed a lot of the books I reviewed last month and I hope my luck holds out for January. The theme for this month is going to be “keeping secrets” for no reason other than that all the books I really want to read next have secrets as a common feature. If you have read any of them, I would love to hear from you!

January 5, 2019 – The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

If you are following along at home, you might be thinking, “hey, she was supposed to review that last month.” And you would be right dear reader, but December was a month with 5 Saturdays and the novel is 471 pages long (I already started and it’s really good by the way) and well, I just couldn’t get through it all on time. Luckily, this is my blog and I get to make up the rules as I go along so I am reviewing it as my first book of 2019. (And I will catch up. I promise. Probably not until July though.)

January 12, 2019 – Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

I enjoyed Little Fires Everywhere so much that when I dug Ng’s other novel out of my pile, I couldn’t resist adding it to the January list. The story centers around the death of Lydia, the favorite child of the Lee family. Her death brings secrets to the surface and unravels the bonds that hold the Lees together.

January 19, 2019 – Melmoth by Sarah Perry

This novel is set in Prague but also jumps time and space to 1930s Cairo, the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, Manila, central Africa and London. It is modern Gothic (which, if you haven’t noticed yet, I kind of have a weakness for) but seriously – there is a mysterious letter found in a Czech library, a surprise confession, the legend of Melmoth, a dark creature who seeks out the cowardly and complicit across history and a sudden disappearance – how can I resist all that? It seems like a perfect dark story for such a dark month.

January 26 – The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic by Leigh Bardugo

I am normally not a fan of short stories but I have read Bardugo’s YA fiction and she is a first-rate story teller. Her work infuses elements of fairy tales, folk lore, religion and magic in a world of her own creation. This new book is a collection of modern fairy tales influenced by the stories Bardugo read in her youth. While her subject matter is very different from Ami McKay’s, their writing shares that same quality of stories told by firelight with darkness all around.

I hope there is something here that inspires you to pick up one of these books this month. If you plan on reading any of them along with me, comment and let everything know your thoughts.

Now I have to go – there are still 300 more pages of The House at Riverton to get through before Saturday! Until then, happy reading!