Rai
The Blurb
I found the blurb for this book, with hindsight, a little misleading. Similarly it's classification in ‘Horror' fiction and whatever algorithm suggested it to me having just finished a ghost story. If you find yourself thinking this is a ghost horror; it's not. There are no ghosts nor any supernatural goings on. To me, expecting a ghost story I was a little disappointed - more on what's actually in the book later.
The Prose
This is written in what I can only think to describe as continuous prose. There are no speech marks and no new lines for dialogue. There's internal and vocalised dialogue mixed in together that is hard to differentiate. It is one long train of thought from the narrator, Sylvie, and it does get hard to follow. I was OK dealing with it around 70% of the time and the remainder I found myself puzzling, re-reading and ultimately being jarred out of the flow of the story. This meant I couldn't fully engage with the story because of both content and style.
The Story
As I mentioned before, there's no ghosts. I kept reading in the hope that some would appear once the eponymous Ghost Wall was constructed by the characters. Still, no. Instead the story is one of domestic abuse and violence enacted by Sylvie's Dad on both her and her mother. The setting of an experiential archaeology field trip is superfluous to the central story of the abuse and the story could have been set anywhere. I found a lot of it an unpleasant read - with a knot in my stomach and a desperate desire to jump into the story and talk some sense into everyone involved. I was frustrated and angry.That is the greatest success of this book: that it makes you feel angry and awkward and impotent at the plight of two women being physically and psychologically abused. It is also for this reason I find it a little disrespectful to classify the book as 'horror'. Not to the author, or the book, but to the real people in real life who have to suffer like Sylvie and her mum. Those situations are horrifying and they are real. I know it's unlikely the exact events of Ghost Wall have happened in real life but many similar things have - and they are not 'horror' fiction.OverallIt is a realistic account of domestic abuse and especially how it can mess with the victim's mind. If you weren't expecting that, then be aware this won't be a pleasant read. The style of the prose is hard to stick with and you may get lost along the way. The story ends just as Sylvie might be getting a chance at something better - and I want to read about that - which was a little frustrating as well. The blurb and classification of the book are a bit off; do a bit more research than I did and read through other people's reviews - don't just look at the average rating.
The combined issues I've highlighted, for me, detracted from the overall experience. I would still say it was an important read even if I didn't like it much in the end. It is certainly not an easy read.
Surprisingly this came as a recommendation from my mother who is very rarely into SF and she gave me her copy to read after she was done. It took me a while to feel ‘in the mood' for SF and I eventually picked it up earlier this year (2019) and I absolutely adored it.It made me think, it made me tear-up, it made me smile, it made me tense and I love the character-driven nature of it all. This is not your average ‘jump in the spaceship and go to war' sort of SF and it is all the better for it. This is a story about people and it happens to be in space. Gorgeous, interesting people with actual relationships that I really invested in.I found the inclusion of gender-variance and the exploration of self-hood very natural and not shoe-horned at all. The depiction of the different races' values and customs was well done and highlights where so much other SF is lacking. Chambers seems to have a mind much like my own in realising SF shouldn't be so human-centric. We shouldn't assume alien races would even want to know us let alone change their entire culture to accommodate us should we ever reach the stars.It doesn't hurt that the cover art for all three of the series is very tasty and I ordered [b:A Closed and Common Orbit 29475447 A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2) Becky Chambers https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457598923s/29475447.jpg 48620653] immediately after finishing this one and I cannot wait to get started. Even if you are not a sci-fi person normally (like my mum), this is still well worth your time. It is an enlightening, inspirational and genuine pleasure to read.
3.5 stars.
As my first completed book of 2019, I freely admit I started it at the end of 2018 (back on 28 Dec) as a group I'm in on Goodreads is having a discussion about it over January with the author. I read this over the course of a week, although if taken without any breaks it was more like 3 days, and surprised myself how quickly I got through it. I was reading the Kindle version having grabbed it fairly cheap over Christmas.
It doesn't have traditional chapters, which confuses the Kindle reader, moreover it has larger sections broken down into smaller parts that are entitled with the character who's viewpoint the passage is in. I'm not a fan of labelling the point of view and prefer to figure it out simply from the text itself however in this case it became useful towards the end of the novel when the action ramps up.
The story follows an ordeal that besets Wen and her two fathers, Andrew and Eric, when a group of strangers appear at their remote holiday cabin asking for their help to halt the apocalypse. Violence is inevitable from the moment the sinister Leonard starts asking Wen odd questions in the front yard as she catches grasshoppers and the likelihood escalates as three more strangers appear and Wen runs in to her dads to tell them.
After forceably entering the cabin and restraining Andrew and Eric, Leonard et al tell their tale of visions and instructions that lead them all to this “special family” in the cabin with the red door and that, without them, the world will shortly end. Without spoiling any further goings on, what faces the group is a desperate struggle to grapple with damning information and inexplicable actions.
While an entertaining read, I wouldn't describe this as ‘horror' as many others have. It isn't scary or particularly disturbing; similar to ‘Head Full of Ghosts', the book looks at what is a variation on events that have almost undoubtedly happened somewhere at some time in modern history. If you find it disturbing that humans can do terrible things to each other then you may want to consider if you are too naive for Tremblay's work.
Across both ‘Head Full of Ghosts' and ‘The Cabin at the End of the World', Tremblay's prose paints a dim view of organised religion and the part it has to play in the atrocious things people do to one another. While it's primarily focused on Christianity or adjacent faiths, the impression remains that it extends to all organised monotheist religions prevalent in the world today. Whether this is a reflection of the author or simply an easy thread to pull on to add an extra dimension to his stories, I couldn't say.
Overall the prose is well written, with the exception of the let's-hyphenate-a-bunch-of-words-together tendency that crops up a few times throughout the book. If you've read ‘Head Full of Ghosts', you may remember the last minute almost twist at the end and ‘The Cabin...' has a similar mechanism in the last pages. It made me consider the similarities in composition between the two books and, while they tell two different tales, there are a fair few.
In terms of rating, I find myself perhaps a little too cynical for Tremblay's books as none of the content surprises or disturbs me as the genre classifications suggests they should. It has made me wonder if the author wrote these intending to disturb or intending merely to shine a light and point out the horrible things that occur in everyday society. While I'd definitely consider reading more of his work, I shan't expect to be scared by it.
(Review also published here: https://aspectsof.me/2019/01/06/cabin-end-world-review/)
Having read it as one of those titles you “ought” to read in the horror genre, it was at most disappointing. The syntax and grammar are over complicated, even for the era it was written in, and after the halfway point of very little happening I found myself skimming the long descriptive passages to jump forward for some dialogue that might progress the story.
The story doesn't really ‘go' anywhere and doesn't much explore any of the ‘horror' elements. It feels unfinished and, while short, still not worth the time to have read it.
I came across this via a “customers who bought...” suggestion on Amazon while looking at another Essex-based author's horror-ish novel and decided to give it a try. I am not normally one for ‘period' content and was willing to suspend my usual scepticism about Victorian-era “Gothic” horror to see what was the deal with these wooden companions in the spooky, tumble-down mansion in the countryside.
I binge-read it in a few evenings over the course of 4 days and was hooked. I wanted to know more about the characters and the story behind them and the creepy companions they found in the old country house. The writing and dialogue, while dated appropriately, wasn't overwhelmingly obscure and remained accessible (which is what usually puts be off period pieces).
Purcell leaves plenty to the reader to make their own conclusions and if you get to the end and have some of the same questions I did, you'll be pleased that she's answered here on GoodReads!
It is well paced and suitably tense/suspenseful; it is focussed more on the psychological elements of terror as opposed to going after you with jump-scares or gorey descriptions. There's just enough to set your imagination running off with a thread and building the tension further.
To me, the book has some very cinematic elements and I could certainly see the story being picked up and adapted for the silver screen. I would love to see how it could be interpreted for cinema.
As a final note, if you have a house that ‘breathes' at night and value your sleep, I'd advise not reading in bed late at night.
I wouldn't describe this as a horror. To me I wasn't scared or frightened. It is a very clever and depressingly accurate look at a society that allows hideous things to happen to a child/disabled person. If, however, any of that comes as a shock to a you, I do wonder where you've been living these last two decades.
I came to this via the “Audible Original Drama” version of the book and as a long-time fan of the film series I felt like this could add something a little more to the universe for me. The dramatisation makes it a lot quicker to get through the story and is well worth a listen. The voice acting is excellent and production is too; fans of the films will enjoy the extra sound effects.
The story itself expands on what happens prior to the Aliens film and to anchor it within the canon there are snippets of Ripley's story in this one. While I found these a little repetative I expect someone who isn't as familiar with the films would see benefit in the contextualising of the River of Pain story. The voice actor they have to play Ripley did an excellent job, she sounds almost exactly like Sigourney Weaver.
I was curious to see how the story would play out given my foreknowledge of survivors based on the films. I wasn't disappointed on that front and was pleased that my assumptions weren't all correct about how the story ends.
I listened to the audiobook of this and I'm not sure if that made me more aware of some of the book's downfalls - e.g. repetition of descriptive phrases - as they're being read out loud to you.
The idea is sound and could easily have been a longer book, however it didn't build any tension for me. I was hoping for a horror story that would give me chills, or at least make me tense to see what happens next, but Gillespie House didn't do that for me.
While I found the prose and phraseology occasionally jarring, the premise of the story is a very interesting one and I think Malerman has done well to leave a lot to one's imagination - much like the characters you aren't given all the information and you end up wondering.
The main character, Malorie, I didn't engage with very well as you see so many different facets to her in such a short period of time it is difficult to latch on to just one. The character of Tom is only presented as one version of himself so he's a lot easier to engage with.
The story itself feels quite compact and short (regardless of page counts) and the frequent ‘chapter' breaks make it easy to read a little bit in short bursts. There are better composed novels admittedly; and this one is still worth reading. If you have a completionist mentality, it might nag at you all the things that are not answered in the book. That is the point, though.
~I listened to the Hachette Audio UK produced audiobook version read by Robin Miles~
To say that I have only ever finished two audiobooks and one is The Fifth Season is testament to how much I genuinely enjoyed it. I came across it as a title I was interesting in by pure chance browsing through “similar titles” on Goodreads and resolved to read it. With a free month of Audible I thought I'd give it a go as I'm a terribly slow reader and wanted to see if I liked N.K. Jemisin.
I have never been able to stick with audiobooks before as I often get agitated by the readers voice. Robin Miles has done a great reading in this version and now I have her voice ringing through my head and can't imagine continuing the series without hearing her read it.
The story itself I enjoyed greatly; some of the revelations in the latter part of the book I did predict but in a way where I hoped I was right and was glad when it was revealed I was right. There were a couple of twists I didn't see.
Jemisin has made me care about these characters expertly in her portrayals and the concepts behind the world we read about were fresh and the prose doesn't fall into the traps of many fantasy offerings.
I enjoyed it immensely.
The blurb is a little misleading, promising more sinister action than ever takes place. Despite this, it is worth a read. Charming in it's simplicity. It is a page-turner borne out of curiosity as opposed to excitement although the ending seems a little weak.I can see why it was longlisted for the Guardian's First Book Award and I can also see why it didn't win. It is expertly written and still, it has room to evolve yet hasn't. It is an excellent exercise in character building and the slow reveal of different facets of each of the protagonists.Swapping the voice between an omniscient narrator and John diarising his experiences gives the reader a bit of a change and allows different characters to be explored in other ways.I definitely liked the book, and enjoyed it, though as I have said it has some space to develop further that I would like to have seen. I would consider reading another [a:Sarah Perry 480401 Sarah Perry https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] novel in the future if it piqued my interest.
Billed as being accessible physics concepts for the non-expert, the book breaks down some of the keystones of modern physics into neat little “lessons”, making it easy to pick up and put down after each one if you need a moment to mull each lesson over. Admittedly, it does seem to fall down a little in the aim of making complex theories available to ‘the masses', as some of the threads are hard to follow if you are a non-expert.
Despite that, I found it to be a brilliant book as a cursory peek behind the curtain and, for some, a glance may be enough. For others, I suspect, this will leave you yearning for more substantial works.
This is a worthwhile read to anyone who is frustrated with the elusive Happiness that seems to evade them. It highlights that Happiness as we are fed by society and the media and social conditioning is not the same as happiness. While not all the letters flow well in between each other they are all interesting and offer a variety of perspectives.
While I do suffer from depression and I've read this while I'm in an OK place, I would not be able to get through this or listen to any of the advice if I were down in ‘that place'; the hole we can all sink to where the light doesn't reach. Some depressive types might be able to use it as a catalyst to push into an upswing but that it down to you to decide!
It is a book for anyone though, not just people who have suffered or are suffering from mental illness, as it is a great reminder that Hollywood Happiness is actually the thing that's destroying real happiness.
I was unsure as to whether the title was supposed to be ironic, given that one simply runs out of book to read; there is no conclusion, no finish and certainly no send of an ending. That is the one thing that struck me most about the book.
I see and understand the techniques the author is employing and while it seems to appeal to a great many people (this book won awards, after all), it didn't appeal to me. I found it a bit too clumsy and, in honesty, months later I have almost entirely forgotten the plot. That's all I can say with surety: that it was a forgettable book save for it's infuriating lack of a finish.
While it kept me interested there was little explanation or interrogation of what was happening or why. It's left a number of unanswered questions.
It was OK, I kept reading in the hope there'd be more exploration of what dark dealings where going on but alas was met with an abrupt, sadly predictable, ending.
But it was free on the Kindle Lending Library so that's a plus. That and it's short.
I started the book because it was short and seemed like one of those titles everyone was reading and talking about (more likely because of the film release).
The idea behind it - to view the Holocaust from the eyes of an unknowing child - is sound enough but executed extremely poorly.
Why would a boy who doesn't seem to understand what is going on around him interpret his native language German into English words? Fury, Out and With are English words, not German ones. It is ridiculous to enforce an English perspective of language onto the character of a German boy.
The rest of the plot plods along until the inevitable conclusion that anyone could predict with plenty of time to spare. Overall it seems quite like a get-rich-quick attempt off the back of a heinous period of our history.
I fear I must be some sort of literary contrarian as despite this book's huge acclaim and following, I genuinely did not find it anything other than boring bluster. I can see and pick out all the ideas and techniques Salinger uses and I can also see why other people appreciate and revere those same techniques. To me, however, because I can see what he's trying to do it feels very obvious, that he's trying too hard, and at that point the book just becomes dull. There are many better “must reads” out there.
2022 Awards for BooksJust a few award categories I thought up to make this a bit more interesting than just a “Top 10 of 2022” type post. Best Debut: [b:A Touch of Light 60154484 A Touch of Light (The Ashes of Avarin, #1) Thiago Abdalla https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642527564l/60154484.SY75.jpg 94676600] Best Bookclub/readalong: [b:We Are the Dead 42602296 We Are the Dead (The Last War, #1) Mike Shackle https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553351197l/42602296.SY75.jpg 66304228] Best Creature: [b:Of Blood and Fire 56750401 Of Blood and Fire (The Bound and the Broken, #1) Ryan Cahill https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1611043983l/56750401.SY75.jpg 88695878] Best Cover: [b:The Seep 45448133 The Seep Chana Porter https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1556928267l/45448133.SY75.jpg 70212127] Book that came closest to making me cry: [b:A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell 61624249 A Cup of Tea at the Mouth of Hell (Or, an Account of Catastrophe by Stoudemire McCloud, Demon) Luke Tarzian https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1658289412l/61624249.SX50.jpg 97195341] Book that made me laugh: [b:The Kaiju Preservation Society 57693406 The Kaiju Preservation Society John Scalzi https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1624897234l/57693406.SY75.jpg 90049719] Most impulsive buy (read): [b:Dinosaur Therapy 57652959 Dinosaur Therapy James Stewart https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1618849951l/57652959.SX50.jpg 90303078] Biggest Heart: [b:The Last Gifts of the Universe 60103317 The Last Gifts of the Universe Rory August https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1642529071l/60103317.SY75.jpg 94769767] Most effort to get through: [b:Crossings 25743715 Crossings Ashley Capes https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526030291l/25743715.SY75.jpg 45584254] Darkest of Grim Scenes: [b:Gunmetal Gods 55777447 Gunmetal Gods (Gunmetal Gods #1) Zamil Akhtar https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1624243972l/55777447.SX50.jpg 85052502] Don't Judge a Book by its Cover: [b:Pallas Lost 60758000 Pallas Lost Jake Morrison https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1649212477l/60758000.SY75.jpg 95801205]For the more traditional ‘Top Books of the Year' list, see: [post incoming]For my top anticipated releases of 2023, check out my post here: https://aspectsof.me/2022/12/30/top-anticipated-releases-2023/
I have had to DNF this title after around 30% for a couple of reasons:
First, I was expecting the narrative to be from Tikka's perspective as an adult as opposed to as a child.
Secondly, I didn't get on with the writing style and prose. There seemed to be a simile or metaphor every other page and that became very jarring and distracting. There was a lot of unnecessary description and the story was progressing very slowly.
Owing to this, I was not enjoying the book and have decided not to force it and move on to something else.