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!

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty: A Review

“I don’t get the obsession with strangers, her first husband, Sol, once said to her, and Frances had struggled to explain that strangers were by definition interesting. It was their strangeness. The not-knowing. Once you knew everything there was to know about someone, you were generally ready to divorce them.” – Liane Moriarty, Nine Perfect Strangers

Nine strangers. Ten days at a remote health resort. All of them are looking to transform their lives at the hands of Masha, the resort’s owner who promises to help them achieve their potential. Each guest arrives with their own hopes and goals, but within days, they are questioning the wisdom of having given themselves over to Masha and her unorthodox “treatments” in their desire to change their lives.

This novel follows the style of Moriarty’s other books. There is a sharp sense of wit as Moriarty takes tongue-in-cheek aim at health resorts, romance novels and our desire for “happily every after” endings but beneath the surface runs a dark undercurrent of obsession, loss and madness. I always enjoy the way that Moriarty is able to take everyday characters – in this case, a novelist, a lawyer, or a teacher – and put them in circumstances that are exceptional to create tension and suspense. Her books are fun, scary and clever.

Nine Perfect Strangers is not my favorite of Moriarty’s novels (although I know some people who think it’s her best so far). I liked the characters and I’m not going to spoil any surprises but I will say that there is a point in the novel for me where the plot came very close to jumping the shark. Regardless, this book was a page-turner and all of the characters do leave Tranquillum House transformed, just not in the ways they expected. The novel is about change – what drives us to change and what holds us back. Moriarty examines how much of life is what happens to us, and how much is shaped by how we handle those events. But don’t expect this novel to leave you with positive affirmations or new yoga poses … the changes the characters experience come through adversity, not meditation or spa massages.

If you are looking for a novel that is pure entertainment, then this would be a good choice. Until next time, happy reading!

Bonus Book: Lost & Found by Brooke Davis

“The start date and the end date are always the important bits on the gravestones, written in big letters. The dash in between is always so small you can barely see it. Surely the dash should be big and bright and amazing, or not, depending on how you had lived.” – Brooke Davis, Lost and Found

This novel opens with three characters: seven-year old Millie Bird has red hair and wears red rain boots and is otherwise a pretty normal kid until her mother abandons her in a department store. Agatha Pantha is eighty-two and hasn’t left her home since she was widowed seven years ago. She fills her days following a strict schedule and yelling her criticisms of passers-by from her living room window. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty-seven and escapes from a nursing home. This unlikely trio are brought together in search of Millie’s mother and a kind of coming-of-age road trip ensues.

I looked at some reviews for this book and some people criticized it because it’s not realistic. I want to be clear from the start – the story line isn’t meant to be particularly realistic. I mean, who expects a story of a seven-year old and her two octogenarian sidekicks taking off across Australia to find a mother who left her own daughter under a rack of ginormous women’s underwear in a local store to be realistic? But I digress.

This novel is heart-warming and funny and sad. In their search for Millie’s mom, all three characters learn more about themselves and the value of friendship than they anticipated. The chapters move between the three main characters and through their narration, the reader gets a sense of Millie’s fear and loss, Karl’s kindness and Agatha’s fierce, cranky determination. Their voices come together to weave a quirky story about all things lost and found.

Is it too late to pick it up as a belated Jolabokaflod gift to yourself? I think not. I hope you read it and enjoy it as much as I did.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: A Review

“One had followed the rules, and one had not. But the problem with rules… was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure what side of the line you stood on.” – Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

I really, really liked this book. Set in the community of Shaker Heights, Little Fires Everywhere follows the story of two families: the Richardsons – a wealthy family with four teenaged children and their tenant, Mia Warren and her daughter, Pearl. Shaker Heights is a planned community where everything from the layout of the streets to the colours of the houses is carefully designed. The families of Shaker are rich, their children go on to prestigious universities, they give to the right charities, they help those in need. They follow the rules. They do what is right. Nobody embodies Shaker more than Elena Richardson, who was raised in the community and returned there to raise her own family. When Mia moves to Shaker, Elena sees the artist and her shy daughter as an opportunity to help someone deserving. Very quickly the two families become entwined via the children; Pearl becomes a fixture in the Richardson home while Izzy, Elena’s challenging youngest child, comes to idolize Mia. When a white couple in Shaker attempts to adopt a Chinese-American baby who was abandoned by her mother, a custody battle ensues that divides the community, and puts Elena and Mia on opposite sides.

One of the things I most enjoyed about this book was how unexpected so much of it was. As the novel progresses, secrets are revealed that threaten to pull both families apart. The narrative moves between Elena, Mia and each of the five children. Ng’s writing is like a slow burn. I found myself drawn in almost without noticing, and then I couldn’t stop reading. Ng reveals the complexities of family, especially the relationships between mothers and their children. She also examines what it means to follow the rules, and what it means to break them. Both Elena and Mia are strong characters with faith that their actions are the right ones and this sets them on a path that will eventually result in heartbreak for both of them. I think the reason the novel works so well is because Ng is careful not to create heroes or villains. Each character’s choices and feeling are understandable given their circumstances and this makes the events that unfold – some of them shocking – feel inevitable. Ng’s writing creates an immersive world in the suburbs of Cleveland that feels both familiar and alien as she pushes the readers’ boundaries about who is right and who is wrong in the conflicts she creates.

If you are looking for a book to read in the new year, you should pick up Little Fires Everywhere. I would really love to hear what you think about it and if you loved it as much as I did! Until next time, happy reading!

The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley: A Review

“‘I’m just a girl,’ I said, hating myself even as I said it. ‘Ever so many girls have mousy hair. I’m just one of the mice.'” – Alan Bradley, The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place

Apologies, dear readers! I’m afraid the holidays have me way behind schedule posting my December blogs. I will do my best to have everything back on track for you before the new year. I will post on each of the Jolabokaflod books in the coming days, and hopefully you will have the chance to put your feet up and do some reading too.

If you have never read on of Alan Bradley’s “Flavia de Luce” mysteries, I would recommend starting with the first book in the series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Bradley is Canadian but the novels are set in the English countryside in the early 1950s. Throughout the series, Bradley is able to play on conventional British murder mysteries but his choice of detective (an eleven-year-old girl with braids, knee socks, and a passion for chemistry) makes them stand out. The main character, Flavia, is a refreshing change as a sleuth; instead of a hardbitten former police officer with a drinking problem and an ex-wife, picture Sherlock Holmes meets Wednesday Addams and you will have an idea. Flavia is brilliant and maybe just slightly intrigued by all things death. Bradley infuses his novels with dark humour as Flavia judges (and often finds lacking) the wit of the adults around her.

If you have read other novels from this series, then this one won’t disappoint. On a boating afternoon with her sisters and their loyal servant, Dogger, Flavia discovers the corpse of a young actor drowned in the river. This unexpected turn of events forces the group to stay in the local village while Flavia, often slowed by the efforts of the police investigation, attempts to solve the mystery of the actor’s death. Often frustrated by being the target of condescension and suspicion, Flavia never doubts her own intellect and flouts authority and rules in order to be the one to solve the case. True to his style, Bradley colours the novel with local eccentrics and looming dangers that threaten Flavia as she comes to close to revealing the truth. Set against the back story of the family’s recent loss of their father, the mystery can also be read as Flavia’s attempt to find order and predictability in the chaos their lives have been thrown into.

I can’t help but be charmed by these novels every time I pick one up. They are both familiar and unexpected at once. Bradley’s wry humour is contrasted by surprising moments of vulnerability as Flavia tries to overcome the grief and worry her father’s death has left behind by portraying herself as a cool and saavy detective. She is one of my absolute favourite fictional people and if you are looking for a good mystery over the holidays, one of Bradley’s novels would be worth picking up.

December Line Up

OK, so, have you ever heard of Jolabokaflod? If you haven’t, get ready for this: it’s an Icelandic traditional that roughly translates to ‘the Christmas book flood’. It turns out that every year, publishers in Iceland release their new titles in the run-up to Christmas (side note: turns out the Icelandic are a very bookish people). So every year, the ‘Book Bulletin’ – a catalogue of the new books – is published and then everyone spends the next several weeks going through it and deciding what books they are going to give (and hope to get) for Jolabokaflod. Which is all very nice except I haven’t gotten to the best part – on Christmas Eve, Icelanders exchange books and chocolate and then sit around in their pjs reading their new books and eating their new chocolate. HOW GREAT IS THAT? So while I clearly do not need any new books this Christmas (don’t take that as a hint not to get me any), I thought I would go through my TRP and choose the books I would most like to read for the December Line Up – a little early Jolabokaflod gift to myself. So without further ado, here goes:

December 1: The Grave’s a Fine and Private Place by Alan Bradley

This is the ninth novel in Bradley’s Flavia de Luce mystery series. Flavia is a twelve year old chemistry genius with a penchant for solving murders. I love Bradley’s novels because they are darkly comedic and while they play with conventions of British mystery novels, they are not at all predictable. And … Bradley’s next novel in the series is coming out in January so I really do need to get a move on.

December 8: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

This one came up on so many “best of 2018” lists this year that I felt like I had to read it. The novel follows the stories of two families who are connected but ultimately divided by a community conflict. It deals with the price of secrets, the nature of art and identity and the dangers that come from following the rules.

December 15: Half Spent Was the Night by Ami McKay

I really enjoyed Ami McKay’s novels The Birth House and The Virgin Cure. This novella follows the three witches from Witches of New York (which is also in the TRP) in the nights between Christmas a New Year’s. They receive an invitation to attend a New Year’s masquerade ball at the home of a stranger – and as the witches go into the New York night to meet their mysterious host, they may be facing unknown dangers.

December 22: Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty

I think I’m at the point where Liane Moriarty could publish the phone book and I might buy it. I have really enjoyed her other novels which are big, generous, gossipy stories set in contemporary Australia. In this novel, nine people gather at Tranquillum House, a health resort, to recover from what ails them. The main character, Frances, is soon fascinated by the houses’ owner. Within days, all the guests are asking, should they surrender to the “recovery” that Tranquillum House offers, or run while they still can?

December 29: The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

This one came recommended by a friend. The House at Riverton reminds me of The Thirteenth Tale – a story line that shifts between the early twentieth century and the contemporary world, a shocking death and secrets revealed. It sounds like the perfect book for unraveling in front of a warm fire over the holidays.

I am really excited for this month’s books. If you are planning on reading along, let me know. Happy Jolabokaflod, everyone. I wish you books and chocolate this holiday.

Bonus Book: Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple

“That’s right,’ she told the girls. ‘You are bored. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it’s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it’s on you to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.” – Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette

In terms of getting out of here, Where’d You Go, Bernadette definitely fits the bill. It’s another novel that I find myself frequently recommending to friends and coworkers and just about anyone who will listen, really. Maria Semple, the novel’s author, was a former writer on Seinfeld and this novel sings with funny, sharp writing that touches the heart. Bernadette is a genius, an architect, mother, wife, and she is agoraphobic. Increasingly, Bernadette cannot leave her house for even the simplest errands, but when her fifteen-year-old daughter, Bee, gets straight As on her report card, Bernadette is supposed to honor her promise to take Bee on a trip to Antarctica. Then Bernadette disappears. It is left up to Bee to try to figure out what happened to Bernadette and the story follows her attempts to navigate a path that will lead her back to her mother.

I love this novel because the plot manages to be so unexpected while the themes deal with the familiar: what it means to be family; how far will we go for someone we love; how much of us is who we feel we are, and how much is how others perceive us? There is a dogged hope in Bee that just won’t give up because no matter what, she loves her mother and she is going to find out what happened to her: “I can pinpoint that as the single happiest moment of my life, because I realized then that Mom would always have my back. It made me feel giant. I raced back down the concrete ramp, faster than I ever had before, so fast I should have fallen, but I didn’t fall, because Mom was in the world.” In this novel, there is adventure and humour and tragedy and love all rolled into one.

I confess, I have never seen the movie (and I don’t really want to in case it ruins the book for me), but if you are looking for something inspiring and different to read over the holidays, you might enjoy Where’d You Go, Bernadette. That’s it, that’s my pitch. Now, go get reading.