Before I Go to Sleep

When Christine wakes every morning she does not recognise the man beside her. Sometimes her last memories are of early childhood. Sometimes they are from her early twenties. As the result of an accident she is unable to hold onto new memories for more than a day. They are lost when she goes to sleep.

The story is told through a journal she has started to keep at the suggestion of her therapist, Dr Nash. Her meetings with him are kept secret from her husband, Ben, as her journal leads her to believe she does not trust him. Christine begins to suspect Ben is keeping things from her, as she struggles to piece together her past.

This is an extraordinary thriller. Watson uses the journal to tease out details and develop the characters while allowing you to question what is real and what may be a false memory. This suspense story is also not without heart. The themes look at the important role memory plays in our identity, and what happens when we forget the people we love. It also looks at how we change memories, and the ability we all have to mould them into what we want them to be.

I particularly enjoyed that Watson took his time to explore Christine’s pain and the absolute unfairness of her situation. While the pacing is good he does allow room for her to mourn the life she does not remember and also contemplate the point of her existence. Would you want to rebuild who you are every single day? She must also question herself, and decide which parts of her journal to trust.

The ending does not disappoint but it does feel rushed. There is a slump before the climax where you are begging for Christine to piece things together, and then it all comes rushing at you in the finale. Despite this, it is a fantastic debut novel and I couldn’t put it down.

4/5

Deep Secret

The blurb:

The Barnes family has lived in one tiny village for generations.

Twins Madeline and Grace, their cousin Elspeth, Colin and Oliver, old Aunt Susan – all there forever, in a place barely touched by time.

The twins have a secret. So does Aunt Susan.

Secrets are everywhere in this place.

But nothing is forever – people die, and even the most beautiful places have to change.

However deep the secret, you have to tell somebody sometime...

The story is set in a small village that lies at the bottom of a valley. They are a community lost in time. The men and women fill stereotypical roles and young people are expected to find love, marry, and settle down.

Twins Medline and Grace share an unbreakable bond. They are so alike even their mother occasionally mistakes one for the other. When tragedy strikes the town is beside itself with grief. This is compounded with news that the valley is to be flooded and turned into a reservoir. These two incidents shake the town to a point where its secrets start spilling out.

It’s not hard to see why Berlie Doherty has won the Carnegie Medal twice. Deep Secret is filled with sentences that could be straight from the lines of a poem. It’s a deeply moving book with characters that are rich and alive. You feel a sense of community, like you are a part of their town, and want to fight alongside them. The flooding of the village is taken from the true story of the creation of the Ladybower Reservoir. Doherty was fascinated by the  destruction of a town, and with it, the history of its inhabitants.

This is a hard book to review without giving anything away (there is a big ‘wow I didn’t see that coming moment’ quite early on), so I will just say that Doherty explores identity in a very interesting way. The story looks at the identity of individuals and of the village as a whole. Madeline and Grace are characters that you fall in love with and it’s fascinating to look inside the bond only twins can share.

My only criticism is that I think it went on a little too long. I didn’t mind the length of the actual book but more the time span. I felt I was starting to tire of the characters a little and felt the pace had slowed. I enjoyed the first two thirds the most. In saying that, this is really only a small criticism, and I love this book so much I finished it in two days.

4/5

The Help

 

The blurb:

“Enter a vanished world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962.

Where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver....

There’s Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from college, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared.

Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely on one another. Each is in search of a truth. And together they have and extraordinary story to tell...”

This novel has not been without its controversies. There have been a lot of discussions about the appropriateness of a white woman writing in the dialect of a black maid from the 60s, and how authentic that voice could ever be. I have to admit, it was the first thing that struck me about the book. I kept saying to my partner, ‘I don’t think it’s right. It just doesn’t feel right when I know this was written by a white person.’

The good news is; I soon got over this. The characters are so warm, rich, enjoyable and entertaining that you forget about the voice and become totally absorbed in the story. Skeeter is the woman I hope I would have been during the civil rights movement. She begins to look at her friends like an outsider and see people, not coloured people, when she speaks to the help. Aibileen is wise, funny, and has a big heart. She is still carrying the hurt from the loss of her son and throws her love towards the children she cares for. Minny is as tall as her mouth is big. She is known for her frankness and is trapped in an abusive relationship with a man she just can’t seem to stop having babies with.

One of the big successes of the book is that the characters are equally entertaining. We have all read multiple POV novels where we can’t wait to get back to a certain character. In The Help Kathryn Stockett has created characters that you are sad to leave, but are equally happy to return to the next.

The story is well paced, warm, and at times heartbreaking. I felt continually confronted by the thought that these events took place only 50 years ago. It is glaringly obvious that it’s written by a white person and that is ok. Because, really, that’s what it is: a white woman trying to understand what her own maid was thinking in a time when the ‘coloured’ help had different bathrooms in their employer’s homes. The only way Stockett could have delved deeper into the ugliness of the time would have been to drop the black characters perspective, because a more in-depth analysis with the existing point of views would never have been as authentic. Then we would have been left with the story a white woman’s feelings about racial segregation, and the book would not have been as enjoyable as it is without Aibileen and Minny.  

4/5

Books I should have read by now.

Ever feel like you are the only person that hasn’t read a particular book? You know, the one people always rave about and you sheepishly say, ‘Ah, yes, it’s definitely on my list of books to read this year.’

Well, here is my list.

The Princess Bride.

I’m not sure why I have never read this one. I know enough about the plot to know that it should be right up my alley. Just haven’t gone there yet.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

In my defence, I have certainly tried. Every time I start The Fellowship of the Ring I get a little bit further. The story is awesome in every way but it is just so slow. So it appears I am going to match the pacing and will still be reading about Middle Earth in a retirement village.

Anything by Helen Garner.

No good excuse here.

Cloudstreet.

I think sometimes literary novels scare me. I pick one up, become 15 again, and fear I will be the only kid who doesn’t like the latest fad. In fact I have never read anything by Tim Winton. You see, I did a writing course, and he was mentioned a lot. To the point where you wonder if the teachers were looking around the room and wondering if the next Tim Winton was sitting there, scribbling in their notebook. Too. Much. Pressure.

The Great Gatsby.

I have been proactive with this one and recently purchased it. Haven’t quite got to the reading part.

One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Like The Lord of the Rings, I have actually started this. But then I saw something shiny, got distracted and haven’t gone back yet.

What books have you always been meaning to read?

The Forest of Hands & Teeth

The Forest of Hands & Teeth by Carrie Ryan is a young adult, post-apocalyptic zombie love story. Yep, it’s all of that.

Mary lives in a village in the middle of the Forest of Hands & Teeth. They are surrounded by a fence built before anyone can remember to protect them from the Unconsecrated. The Sisterhood ensure everyone leads a life of spirituality and the Guardians patrol the fence to keep the Unconsecrated at bay.

After a series of tragedies Mary loses her faith and begins to question the motives of the Sisterhood. She is also dealing with being outcast to the only family she has left while realising she will never be betrothed to the man she loves.

When the fence is breached all hell breaks loose. Mary must decide if she believes there is anything past the fence worth living for.

I was ready to love this novel. It was quite well reviewed and I am going through a big YA fiction phase at the moment. Sadly, I did not feel the love.

The story starts off well and getting the low down on how the village works was fun. They are old school: a man ‘speaks for’ a woman when he wants to begin courting her.

There was also a lot of action throughout and while I didn’t connected deeply with the characters, I did want them to make it to the end.

The most disappointing thing was that it tackles some great themes but they are bogged down by a Twilight-esque love story. There were too many over-the-top teen declarations of ‘I can’t live without you.’ This space could have been better used exploring Mary’s conflict with what love is supposed to mean and how you really know if you love someone.

The supporting characters are two dimensional and don’t challenge the protagonist enough. The ending was obvious and I had no doubt that things were going to be ok.

In short: I won’t be buying the sequels. If you are partial to some dramatic love and watered down zombie descriptions then this is the book for you. Really. I think there is a market for this kind of book but it certainly reads like a first novel.

2/5

Life As We Knew It

In Life As We Knew It the world is assaulted by deadly natural disasters after a meteor hits the moon and knocks it closer to earth. It begins with giant tsunamis that wipe out much of coastal North America, and continues with, earthquakes, super storms and volcanoes.

The story is told through the journal of sixteen-year-old Miranda. She starts out like any teenager; worried about friends, boys and school. When the disaster happens she does not understand the full impact and has an almost naive hope that everything is going to be ok. She scoffs when her mother, planning for the worst, forces them to stockpile as many supplies as they can, and becomes jealous when her little brother is given more food rations than the rest of the family.

Pheffer’s pacing is spot on. The disasters and climaxes are well placed, making the book difficult to put down. The breakdown of society is touched on but not explored as deeply as it would be in an adult novel.

The best thing about this book is Miranda’s growth. At the beginning there are moments of selfishness and immaturity that would be expected of anyone her age. At this point I actually found her a little annoying, like I was just waiting for her to wake up, snap out of it, and grow up. It’s not until she really begins to see the sacrifices her mother is making that Miranda does this. From that point on the story focuses on her strength and what she is willing to sacrifice to keep her family alive.

It has funny moments mixed with scenes of deep sadness that make you wonder about how you keep going when it appears there is nothing left. I read this book in one day; I think that says it all. 

4/5