If you haven't read Hannah Kent's books, you should.

Hannah Kent is a fantastic author, with a rare ability to transport the reader completely to another time and place. I have just finished reading The Good People and cannot stop thinking about it. I read it in the car on a journey through France, with 4 others in the car including 3 children, and despite those distractions I was totally immersed in the world she describes.

Hannah Kent has only written 2 novels and both start from a fascinating point of inspiration - old court reports. She takes a particular character from history, out of these court reports and builds a fictional account of their lives and crimes, with the help of contemporary newspaper reports. And the results are engrossing stories with a crime / mystery at their heart, where the reader needs to discover what happens.

The Good People takes place in rural Ireland in the 1820s and tells the story of Nora Leahy  whose daughter and husband die within months of each other leaving her alone to take care of her crippled grandson, Michael Kelliher. She hires a maid, Mary, to help with this task and together they seek the advice of local "wise woman" Nance Roche. In this case, Nance Roche and Michael Kelliher are the real people mentioned in court reports from Tralee, Co.Kerry, in 1826.

The community these characters live in is very remote and life is hard. Famine and eviction are very real, almost constant threats. Whilst godfearing Catholic people, heavily influenced by the local priest, there is also strong belief in fairies, known as "the Good People" and many rituals are practised to discourage fairy mischief in their lives. Nance Roche is often consulted by villagers who believe she understands the ways of the fairies.
The world described is so different to our own, yet the characters are utterly believable and often likeable. Particularly touching is the relationship between Mary and Michael, the boy she cares for. She begins by being frightened off him, but soon grows to love him.

This is a desperately sad story of a community that has their traditional ways and beliefs come sharply into conflict with the modern world, with tragic consequences. 

Kent's debut novel, Burial Rites, is also set in the 1820s, but this time in Iceland. It concerns the story of Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman to be executed in Iceland, who was convicted of murder in 1828. She is given into the reluctant care of a farming family until the sentence can be carried out, and is assigned a trainee minister as her spiritual mentor and the story of her crime is revealed through her meetings with him. Again, the writing is fantastic and the time and place is evoked with incredible intensity. Not a happy story, but a brilliant work of fiction that will totally transport the reader.

I am really hoping that Hannah Kent writes another book soon!

Book Review: Clay, by Melissa Harrison

Clay is quite simply a beautiful book. The writing is hauntingly lyrical and the descriptions of the changing seasons are incredible. Sometimes amazing, detailed descriptions can detract from the plot, but not in this case.

The story tells us about TC, an unhappy 10 year old boy finding solace in the few wild spaces of the city. He loves nature and eventually finds a kindred spirit in Jozef, a Polish immigrant yearning for the land he used to farm, who begins to look out for the boy and pass on his wisdom about the natural world. This unlikely friendship is observed by Sophia, an old lady who has lived most of her adult life on the edge of one of the city's few green spaces and has come to understand and cherish the natural rhythms of the seasons. She is also worried about TC and encourages her sheltered grand-daughter, Daisy to play with him, despite knowing that Daisy's mother would not approve. TC and Jozef discover and delight in a great deal of unlikely wildlife in the heart of the city and observe the microscopic details of their environment with joy and wonder.

As well as being a joyous and beautiful reminder of the importance of green spaces everywhere and the difference contact with nature can make to people's lives, this book examines themes of loneliness, class and urban decay with insight and poignancy. Just fantastic.

Book Review: Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, by Peter Hoeg

This is an unusual book - an unusual setting, an unusual character and an unusual plot - and that is what makes it a cracking read. I have heard it described as an early example of Nordic Noir but it is more than that.

It is the only book I have read set in Greenland and Hoeg manages to make the frozen wastelands being described come alive from the page - no mean feat when to most people the landscape is exactly the same for hundreds and hundreds of miles. And that is where Smilla, the protagonist, comes in - she knows snow and ice. She is a Greenlander, latterly exiled to Denmark and it is her knowledge of this vast and surprising landscape which brings it alive for the reader. Smilla is a fabulous character: tenacious, resourceful, philosophical and perhaps a touch lonely, and single minded to the point of obsession. Again, it is a strength of Hoeg's writing that can make the reader identify so completely with this strange yet likeable heroine. 

This is the only book I have read with an Inuit as the main character and the insights into the history and culture of the Inuit people of northern Greenland are fascinating.  

The son of Smilla's neighbour falls to his death one day from the roof of their apartment block in Copenhagen, and Smilla immediately smells a rat - her "feeling for snow" tells her that the footprints in the snow on the roof point to a different explanation to the verdict of accidental death offered by the coroner. She embarks on an investigation which leads her from Copenhagen to the frozen Arctic Ocean as a thrilling, twisting and deadly conspiracy is uncovered. 

This is a compelling read, and an intelligent thriller. The writing is brilliant - poetic and philosophical as Smilla ponders on her 37 years of life and struggles with her own identity. If you love thrillers but want to read something completely different to all the other thrillers out there then I can't recommend this highly enough.

Book Characters that your 2-year-old will love...

Two-year-olds love repetition. They will very happily read the same story over and over again long after it has started to drive the adult reader mad, and can sometimes request exactly the same bedtime story night after night for weeks on end. Although I have sometimes been known to hide books and / or pretend they are lost in order to alleviate this problem (bad mummy!) I have also found 2 less drastic solutions:

Firstly, the library! My two-year old loves the library and she totally gets the idea that she has to return her books in order to borrow more. And since we visit the library every week we have a regular change of favourite stories!

Secondly we find characters my daughter loves. That way we get new stories involving the same characters - a sure fire winner with kids and less repetition for the adult readers. Win-win.

So which characters does my two-year old love right now? There are 2 stand out winners here:

Pip and Posy by Axel Scheffler : a series of books about Pip, a rabbit and Posy, a mouse, two friends who engage in the everyday life of toddlers. They play the same games and take part in the same activities as my two-year-old so she can really relate to them. Each book contains a small drama of the sort that toddlers find really upsetting (for example in The Big Balloon, the ballon bursts and in The Super Scooter, Posy snatches Pip's scooter and rides off on it) and the two friends work together to find a solution. These are fantastic books for talking about emotions and for modelling how to handle those big toddler emotions. There is even a Pip and Posy book about using the potty (The Little Puddle) which has been a big hit in our household lately. These are lovely books with gentle stories of things that toddlers do and the trademark Axel Scheffler illustrations are, as always,bold, colourful and full of interesting details. It is well worth seeking these books out and they are helpfully available as both board books and paperbacks.

Wibbly Pig, by Mick Inkpen : a series of stories about a lovable pig, his stuffed toys and his pig friends. Wibbly is a great character for growing with your child. Some of the books,such as Wibbly Pig Likes Bananas and Wibbly Pig Likes Playing, are great for very young toddlers as they contain very little text (usually just one sentence on each page) but show Wibbly doing all the things toddlers like to do and asking questions to promote discussion and encourage children to voice their opinions. Then there are longer stories and even lift-the-flap books, such as Everyone Hide From Wibbly Pig. My daughter's current favourite is Is It Bedtime Wibbly Pig? because Wibbly finds lots of ways to put off bedtime in exactly the way that my daughter does and she loves to join in with what he says. That is the appeal of Wibbly Pig - he is fun, a little bit cheeky and gets up to all the same things that toddlers do. 

What characters would you recommend for 2-year-olds?

The Man Booker prize 2017

So the winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced tomorrow. I always try to read as many as I can from the shortlist, but this year I have only managed to read 3. I have enjoyed all of them but none of them set my world on fire or made me want to go out and recommend them to everyone, so trying to predict a winner from the half of the shortlist I read is hard, but I'll give it a go! All 3 books that I read have in common the themes of a broken society and how society treats people at its margins, and 2 of them specifically address the issue of British attitudes to immigration.

 

Autumn, by Ali Smith is an easy and engaging read. This is the second of Smith's novels that I have read (the other being How to be Both) and the style of writing is very similar. The prose is beautiful - there are many times when you want to stop and reread passages to savour them properly - and the characters are extremely well drawn. The actual experience of reading the book is enjoyable but afterwards I found it hard to recall what I had enjoyed about it. It tells the story of a young woman and her friendship with an elderly man who is dying in a care home. Through their interaction (and a lot of memories from earlier in their friendship) we also learn about a long forgotten British female artist from the 1960s and receive a searing comment on the state of British society at a very specific moment in recent history- Autumn 2016. 

Exit West by Moshin Hamed started well for me but tailed off. It tells the story of Nadia and Saeed who meet and begin a relationship then make a heartbreaking decision to leave their country of birth as the fabric of their society begins to crumble amid civil war. I enjoyed (if enjoyed is the correct term for the emotions evoked by reading about the hardships Nadia and Saeed faced in the country of their birth and the harrowing decision they had to make to leave) the first part of the book, up until Nadia and Saeed arrived in London, but after that point the book stopped being about society now and began to imagine a dystopia in the near future and I found this leap grated with what had gone before. Yes, it highlighted the extreme and polarised ways that society can treat outsiders but I felt sticking to a real and not imagined immigrant experience would have worked better for me and made the book more powerful. It is however a moving portrait of a relationship under stress and both Nadia and Saeed are characters that I liked and cared about. I have only read one other novel by Moshin Hamed (The Reluctant Fundamentalist) and I much preferred Exit West. 

Elmet, by Fiona Mozley tells us the story of Daniel who is now heading north, looking for someone, and recounting his earlier life with his dad and his sister Cathy - a simple, largely self-sufficient life in a forest somewhere near Doncaster, and a happy one. The lyrical writing really makes the setting and characters come alive and this highly readable novel is a real page turner (although the characters' accents can seem a little impenetrable at times, you do get used to this ). Events gradually become more sinister as it becomes more apparent just how hard it is to exist on the fringes of society as these characters do and the mystery of who Daniel is looking for (and why) is eventually revealed in a dramatic climax. This was my favourite of the 3 shortlisted books I read - I felt it was a fantastic achievement for a debut author.

Which of the shortlisted books have you read? And which was your favourite?

Roald Dahl recommendations

Today is Roald Dahl day and the fabulous author would have been 101 today! With this in mind I asked my older 2 children (aged 8 and 10) what their favourite Roald Dahl books were...

The 10 year old chose The Giraffe, And The Pelly and Me, which I have to admit surprised me. I think this was because it is one of his lesser known stories and tends to get a little overlooked. The ladder-less window cleaning company (consisting of a giraffe, pelican, monkey and boy) are hired by a duke to clean his windows and interrupt a robbery. 

It is a short, funny story with some interesting characters (great for reading aloud, if you like doing lots of different voices) and has a neat, well structured story with the right amount of adventure, peril and happy ending! A real winner - especially as a read-aloud to younger children just starting on chapter books.

The 8 year old chose Danny The Champion of the World - one of my favourites too. One evening Danny wakes to find himself alone in the caravan he shares with his father and inadvertently discovers his father's deepest darkest secret. This is a story full of adventure and mystery and love! A deserved classic.

I wanted to nominate my own favourite too. My initial thought was Charlie and The Chocolate Factory - probably his most famous novel and loved by millions. Charlie bucket finds a golden ticket admitting him, along with 4 other children, to the most famous chocolate factory in the world. What follows is a sumptuous feast for the imagination as well as a tale with a moral.  I love reading this book aloud for the sheer pleasure of the songs, made up words and word play contained within. The imagination that created these characters and the wondrous Wonka chocolate factory is truly something to be admired. 

So I love Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, but I couldn't let this opportunity pass without mentioning Matilda. It is the character of Matilda Wormwood that I love, more than the story. She is such a fantastic role model for girls - a strong, intelligent girl with a love of reading! I will let a couple of quotes from the book speak for themselves:

Through Matilda Dahl does a fantastic job of extolling the benefits and joys of reading. 

And finally, I wanted to give a mention to Dahl's memoirs  Boy and Going Solo. These are some of the most entertaining autobiographies I have ever read and an excellent introduction to autobiographical writing for children. Dahl describes his own life in ways that are as zany and entertaining as any of his fiction - well worth a read. 

What are your favourite Roald Dahl books?

Book Review: The Power, by Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman's The Power was the winner of the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and it's easy to see why. This is a fantastic, subversive and thought provoking novel that will leave you questioning so many things in your everyday life and examining your own thoughts and ideals on just about every page. 

Imagine a world where everything is suddenly turned on its head and women hold all the power - literally. At an unspecified moment in time teenage girls around the world begin to discover that with a simple touch of the hand they can inflict agonising pain and even death through a jolt of electric current. There follows a worldwide revolution and society, religion and governments are utterly transformed. We follow the stories of 4 main characters: Roxy, the only daughter of a notorious London gangster; Allie, an American teenager in foster care; Tunde, an opportunistic Nigerian journalist; and Margot, an ambitious American politician, as the course of their lives is forever altered by this turn of events.

This really is fabulous satire. With her intelligent, engaging and subtly humorous writing Alderman illuminates with glaring and startling obviousness the extent of sexism in society today. By reversing the situation and showing men as "the weaker sex" she shows how ridiculous it is that women are routinely treated in this way. Although she touches on many serious and shocking practices in the world today such as female genital mutilation and sex trafficking, the subtle instances of casual sexism, as in the following observations, show with a brilliant irony how prevalent sexist attitudes are in all areas of life.

No one mentions that Olatunde Edo's videos have been such a hit because he's handsome as hell. He's half naked in some of them, reporting from the beach in just Speedos, and how's she supposed to take him seriously now, when she's seen his broad shoulders and narrow waist and the rolling landscape of obliques and deltas, glutes and pecs

There were many times when reading when I found myself with a wry smile reflecting on the truth of these subtle situations, so humorous when describing men in this way, yet so true in the media when you swap the gender roles portrayed. And particularly pertinent when many prominent women working in the British media are asking questions about why they are treated differently to their male colleagues. Does this scene describing the presenters on a local news / tv magazine show seem somehow familiar?

Matt laughs and says, I couldn't even have watched! He's very attractive, a good ten years younger than Kristen. The network had found him. Just trying something out. While we're at it, Kristen, why don't you wear your glasses onscreen now, it'll give you more gravitas. We're going to see how the numbers play out this way.

This is undoubtedly a feminist novel, and a very important social commentary, but it is also a very readable and razor sharp satire. It also touches on the nature of truth and propaganda and how easy it can be to rewrite history or at least to skew history towards a certain viewpoint. A really good novel and a worthy prize winner. Read it and hope that in the future your grandchildren will read it and wonder how it was possible that sexism could have been so prevalent in all societies in 2017.