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. 

A Kenyan Reading List

Kenya is a fascinating country, sadly under-represented in literature. These are a few eclectic picks that make interesting reading for anyone wanting to know more about this place and its history.

The Flame Trees of Thika, by Elspeth Huxley is a fascinating memoir from a child who arrived in Kenya with her settler parents in 1912, describing their struggles to farm the land near Thika and the impact of the First World War on white settlers in Kenya. The writing is beautiful and the reader is certainly transported to the time and place. And for anyone who knows Kenya now, the comparison in lifestyles and culture between then and now is very interesting. This was written in the 1950s and there are times when it seems a little dated, but it is an enchanting read and I would certainly recommend it.

It's Our Turn to Eat, by Michaela Wrong is a non-fiction account of  a Kenyan whistleblower who started out as the anti-corruption tsar to the government. I found this book dense and heavy-going but very rewarding as an invaluable background guide to tribal effects on politics in Kenya. Really interesting and so useful to an outsider living in Kenya. A fascinating attempt to answer the decades old questions of why corruption is so rife in Africa, and when Africans might start to put wider national interests ahead of narrower tribal ones. Definitely worth ploughing through.

Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain is one of my favourite books in a long time. It is a fictionalised account of the life of Beryl Markham, the famous aviator, in particular her early life in Kenya before she became an aviator. I was utterly transfixed by it. It is a read-in-one-sitting, get completely transported  to another place kind of book. I did not want it to end. For me the magic of this book is in the setting description - the parts of Kenya that I know now are brought to life, but life 70 years earlier! Enchanting.

Leopard at the door, by Jennifer McVeigh is a relatively recently published novel describing the Mau Mau emergency through the eyes of an 18 year old girl returning home to her father's farm after 6 years at school in England to find everything changed almost beyond recognition. It is a coming of age novel that also documents the Mau Mau emergency in detail, attempting to show both sides of the story. I enjoyed it and while I did learn things about this period of Kenyan history I felt the novel was guilty of projecting modern values onto these characters from 60 years ago, with the result that the  characters and their actions were not always believable. Also, I never felt that the Africa being described was the real Africa. Overall though this is an enjoyable novel with a compelling plot and something to teach the reader about a part of history that is little documented in fiction.

Weep not, Child, by Ngugi Wa  Thiong'o is in many ways similar to Leopard at the Door, being a coming of age novel describing life at the time of the Mau Mau emergency. However, this novel is written from the viewpoint of a young Kikuyu boy trying desperately to continue with his education as his family becomes ever more deeply involved with the Mau Mau. Insightful, personal, and a well-written page turner, this really is a must-read.

The Constant Gardener, by John LeCarre is another favourite of mine. John Le Carre is not an author I would usually pick up, but I was hooked by the film and wanted to read the book and I wasn't disappointed. As is so often the case, the book was even better than the film! Tessa, the young wife of a British diplomat in Nairobi, becomes obsessed with uncovering pharmaceutical company wrongdoing pedalling untested drugs in Kenyan slums, and is killed as a result of what she discovers. Her grieving husband picks up the cause on her behalf and travels the globe on the run, trying to expose the issue. I love the depth of relationship between Justin and Tessa and the way their love for each other shines from the page, even though their relationship is unconventional and makes many people uncomfortable. I wouldn't have expected someone known for writing spy thrillers to be a great emotional writer but the way he captures human emotions in this novel (particularly love and grief) is outstanding. Alongside this huge emotional involvement for the reader is also a fast paced thriller and some superbly evocative descriptions of Kenya. 

A Change in Altitude, by Anita Shreve tells of a young newlywed couple who embark on the adventure of spending a year living and working in Kenya. Once there they are befriended by a British couple and undertake an expedition to climb Mt Kenya with them. During the ascent an horrific accident occurs and all 4 lives are changed forever. A compelling study of how we cope with tragedy and how difficult it can be to forgive. 

Promises to Keep: A British Vet in Africa, by Hugh Cran is the light-hearted memoir of a vet living and working in Nakuru for over forty years. It is anecdotal in tone and highly entertaining, whilst also providing some social commentary. Cran has a great knack for describing the sights, sounds and people of Kenya and this book is highly recommended. Very enjoyable.

Do you have any books you would add to this list?

3 Fantastic series to start your children on chapter books

The transition from picture books to chapter books can be a daunting one for many parents. When should we start? What should we start with? are common questions around this subject. We all want our children to enjoy reading and I firmly believe that the key to this is to read them quality fiction from as early an age as possible. I began reading chapter books aloud to my children when they were about 4 and  a half years old. And these series are the ones we started with. A series is especially engaging because you always want to read the next book. These series all have in common strong, likeable main characters; emotionally engaging or exciting storylines and high quality writing. My older children have enjoyed reading these themselves at the same time as I am reading them aloud to younger children. Do seek them out. You will enjoy reading them and your children will absolutely love the characters and  be desperate to know what happens next...

The Sophie Stories, by Dick King Smith

Sophie is probably my favourite character in children's literature. She is 4 years old when the series start, and "small, but determined". She is a wonderful character for girls to relate to: confident, funny, adventurous, loyal and determined, and my son liked her too. She absolutely loves animals and her ambition is to become a lady farmer. These books are humorous and heartwarming, with a fabulous and lifelike family dynamic portrayed throughout. A real joy. I am sure Sophie will become a big hit in your household too. A perfect introduction to chapter books.

Sophie's Snail is the first book in the series.

The Anna Hibiscus Stories, by Atinuke are a recent discovery in our family, recommended by a friend here in Kenya and we have spent the last 3 months or so reading them at bedtime with my 4 year old daughter (although my 10 year old daughter and 7 year old son have been hooked too!). We were all very sad when we reached the end of the series. I cannot praise them highly enough and believe they should be read by all children, everywhere. Anna Hibiscus lives with her extended family in a large white house in an African city (while never made explicit, it would seem to be Lagos, Nigeria). Her mother is Canadian and her father is African. The series begins by introducing her family and giving the reader a feel for life in the large white house and then moves through various adventures such as singing for the president, visiting her grandmother in Canada and going to stay in the African village where her grandparents were born. Anna is another strong character that children can relate to and look up to: she is compassionate, friendly, funny and very likeable. 

These books portray Africa so well, and do not shy away from the difficulties of living on the African continent - nothing is picture-book perfect in these stories. The wealth gap in Africa is dealt with in a sensitive and age-appropriate way throughout the series and Anna's compassionate nature comes to the front to help people less fortunate than herself many times. This means that there are many sad moments in the books, and many talking points as you are reading them with your children.

For us living here in Africa the books talk about day to day life and what it is actually like to live here and for African children this is a fantastic series with a heroine who is just like them, someone they can really relate to. There is not much children's literature out there set in modern Africa with African characters, so this series is a real gem. And for children living in the rest of the world these books show them what Africa is really like (not the mud huts, lions and famine view that is so often perpetuated) with all its colour, noise and contrasts. 

Please, please, please find them and read them to your children. You will laugh, you will cry, you will learn about modern Africa and you will absolutely love the little girl that is Anna Hibiscus.

Anna Hibiscus is the first book in the series

The Akimbo Stories by Alexander McCall Smith 

These are also set in Africa and do not need to be read in any particular order. Akimbo lives in a game reserve where his father is a ranger and the series follows him through many adventures trying to protect the wildlife and the habitats he loves so much. Each book focuses on a different animal: lions, baboons, snakes, elephants and crocodiles and they contain a lot of information about each species. They are fast paced and adventurous and there are some scary parts (think snakebite, Ivory poachers etc,) and again, plenty of talking points. My children said that Akimbo and the Snakes was their favourite as they learned the most from this one.

A real plus point to the Akimbo books for me is that they contain a male leading character, as well as being very well written, exciting and appealing for children and enjoyable for grown ups to read aloud. I have really struggled to find another series that is as engaging for my son. There are many books and series out there that appeal to him, with action and adventure and male characters, but the writing is not as good, the plots are formulaic, the characters are 2-dimensional  and they are just not as appealing as an adult to read aloud, or even for him to want to return to again and again (an exception to this is the "How to Train your Dragon" series by Cressida Cowell, but these are not really suitable as first chapter books).We all know that good literature cries out to be re-read and the series' I have mentioned above have all been read and enjoyed many times in our house. I would really appreciate it if you have any recommendations for quality series' that appeal to boys! Please!