Book Review: Afterwards
06 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: arson, crime, england, family, fiction, mother daughter relationship, supernatural, suspense, thriller
Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton (pub date 4/24/12)
“And for a moment he feels my presence. For a second I am a draft on his back, a tingling in his scalp, something touching his thoughts. A mother. A guardian angel. A ghost.”
Imagine being the victim of a terrible incident, and wanting to help uncover the truth about what really happened but being unable to. Not because you are too afraid to speak up, but because no one can see or hear you. For the protagonists in this excellent novel, this is their reality.
Set in England, Afterwards is both a thriller and a story about the power of a mother’s love. Grace is a typical upper middle class wife and mother, whose teenage daughter Jenny and eight-year-old son Adam attend a prestigious private school. On a seemingly ordinary day, Grace is rushing to get her children to school for its annual sports day. Later that day, a fire breaks out in the school, and Jenny is trapped inside the building. In an attempt to save her daughter, Grace runs inside the building and is injured when part of the structure collapses on her.
Grace and Jenny are rescued and rushed to the hospital. Both are in a coma, and it is unsure if either one of them will survive for long. Shortly after arriving at the hospital, both Grace and Jenny find themselves having an out-of-body experience. They are able to see their own bodies, to move around the hospital, and to see and speak to each other. But tragically they are unable to speak to their loved ones, or to the police who are investigating the fire. Grace’s husband and sister-in-law are determined to uncover the truth about who started the fire, and piece by piece, the key players and clues are revealed.
I really enjoyed this inventive and suspenseful novel. Afterwards combines a Law & Order type of story with supernatural elements, creating an engrossing book. The story pulls you in from the first page and keeps you guessing until the very end. The characters feel very real, and Lupton does a great job of depicting the attitudes and social politics of the parents and teachers at the school.
Afterwards is a perfect book for anyone who enjoys thrillers. But it’s also a deeply moving story about the nature of a parent’s love. It’s altogether a compelling and well-crafted book.
Book Review: Mother’s House Payment
09 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: bipolar, child abuse, depression, fathers and daughters, memoir, mother daughter relationship, neglect, nonfiction
Mother’s House Payment by Ronnie Schiller (Kindle only, 2011)
“Depression follows mania. A manic person falls like Icarus, plummeting away from the sun into the depths of the sea.”
One of my professors recently said something very simple yet very brilliant about the difference between fiction and nonfiction: we want our fiction to be realistic and we want our nonfiction, especially memoirs, to be larger than life. There is some truth to that statement in this short but powerful memoir by the author of the Infernal Stock series.
Mother’s House Payment is the story of Schiller’s own life, and how she struggled to overcome her traumatic childhood. Born to a mother who never wanted her, Schiller’s childhood is marked by abuse, neglect, and being passed around among parents and step-parents. Still fighting deep emotional scars in her teen years, she experiences mental illness which leads to self-harm and eventually hospitalization. As an adult, she finds difficulty in maintaining healthy romantic relationships, and tries to finally break free of her unhappy, co-dependent marriage.
This is not an easy book to read. It’s raw, gritty, and uncomfortable. But it’s also very well written, and a story that deserves to be told. It shows just what happens to victims of abuse when they grow up, the burden they carry with them into adulthood. And the sad fact is that there are many abuse victims who were not as fortunate as Schiller to have gotten help and turned their lives around.
Mother’s House Payment is a sad but hopeful memoir, and I give a lot of credit to the author for finding the strength not only to help herself, but to share her story with the world. The book is currently selling well in the Kindle store, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it got picked up by a larger publisher sometime in the future.
Early Review: A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar
28 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
in New Release Reviews Tags: fiction, missionary women, mother daughter relationship, muslim land, muslims, relationships, sisters, travel, women's relationships
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson (pub date 5/22/12)
“The tide had moved up the shore at an incredible rate and with the sound of shingle dragging up, and drragging down, taking away with it all the lies she had been told as a child. . .”
Now that summer is fast approaching, this is a great book to read for the season. Full of exotic travel, interesting characters, and excellent writing, it’s a summer read with substance.
A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar is an inter-generational drama about love, loss, and betrayal, peppered with the intrigue and danger of the mysterious Far East. In 1923, sisters Evangeline and Lizzie are on a missionary journey in the Turkish city of Kashgar. Led by the matronly figure Millicent, the ladies are spreading the Gospel in a land mostly populated by Muslims, while Evangeline takes notes for the travel guide she is planning to write. When the trio finds themselves the subjects of a local dispute, their lives quickly change in ways they never thought possible.
The 1923 story alternates with a story set in present-day London. Freida Blakeman is a world-weary young woman about to embark on a journey of self-discovery. She is aided by Tayeb, a Yemeni national living illegally in England, whom she recently befriended. Slowly, the connection between the alternating plots is revealed.
This is a rich book, touched with sadness yet still full of hope. The story sucks you in from the first page, and is well written throughout. I enjoyed the contrast between the two stories, not just in the settings, but in the situation the characters find themselves in. Evangeline, Lizzie, and Millicent are three British women in a foreign and sometimes hostile Muslim land, while Tayeb is a Muslim in England, a land foreign and sometimes hostile to him. And while the three missionary women face mainly external conflict, Freida’s conflict is all within herself. It’s s story about finding your roots, and about making your own destiny.
This is a great book for anyone who enjoys literary fiction, or stories about women’s relationships. A nice debut novel from a promising new writer.
Book Review: Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea
20 Jan 2012 3 Comments
in New Release Reviews Tags: coming of age, fiction, mother daughter relationship, new england
Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea by Morgan Callan Rogers (pub date 1/19/12)
This is a book about the meaning of the mother-daughter relationship, and the devastation felt when that relationship is lost. Set in beautiful coastal Maine during the 1960s, Red Ruby Heart is both a coming-of-age story and a story about the strength of the human spirit.
Twelve-year-old Florine has lived a pretty sheltered life in her rural Maine town. She has two loving parents, a doting grandmother, and a spirited best friend. The most drama she experienced in her young life so far was when she and her friends got into trouble for accidentally starting a fire at a neighbor’s summer home. Then things in Florine’s life begin to go wrong when her mother goes on a weekend getaway with a friend and fails to return. Her mother’s absense begins to affect her family in different ways, and Florine experiences a storm of emotions. She rages against the mother whom she sees as having abandoned her, yet is still pained by her love for her.
Red Ruby Heart is both tragic and uplifting. It’s the story of a girl forced to grow up early, set in a time period when a generation of women were growing up and reclaiming their independence. We are sad to see Florine enter into womanhood without her mother’s guidance, but feel her happiness and pain as she struggles to reclaim her identity without defining herself by her relationship with her mother. Rogers manages to capture the wide range of feelings that teenage girls experience (the joy, the heartbreak, the uncertainty) and creates a dynamic character that readers can sympathize with. The book concludes with a bittersweet ending that is both fitting and memorable.
There are a lot of coming-of-age stories out there, but this is one of the good ones. Though it will likely be classified as “chick lit,” I think this is a story that men and women can equally enjoy.
