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A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Hunger by Roxane Gay

From the bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.

In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.

With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be loved—in a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.

Hunger is a memoir that is unapologetic and searingly honest, and evokes heartbreak, admiration and respect from its readers. Roxane Gay is a brilliant memoirist, pulling apart her life in carefully selected sections to allow the reader to delve into her life and better understand how she has become who she has become.

People might notice many things about Roxane – she’s talented, intelligent, honest and brave. But at the same time, Roxane acknowledges that people always notice her weight. Roxane acknowledges that she is morbidly obese, and she is also very tall at 6 foot 3 inches. In Hunger, Roxane wants readers to know that everyone has a story and everyone has a history. Not everyone has come from the same place and not everyone has gone through the same experiences. Roxane’s path has been laid out before us in this book.

“I ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.”

When Roxane was 12, she was the victim of a horrific gang rape at the hands of her boyfriend and his mates. Roxane didn’t know how to come to terms with what happened with her, and she kept the rape a secret for years. She dealt with the assault by eating. She turned to food as comfort.

Hunger oozes a punctual, academic tone. Roxane focus on events and key moments more so than her feelings or emotions about those said events. Roxane is stating what happened to her and how that effected her. She is telling the reader about the key moments in her life, and how they became a catalyst for the later events in her life.

“I am shoved in public spaces, as if my fat inures me from pain and/or as if I deserve pain, punishment for being fat. People step on my feet. They brush and bump against me. They run straight into me. I am highly visible, but I am regularly treated like I am invisible. My body receives no respect or consideration or care in public spaces.”

What happened to Roxane was awful, and I think it’d be really difficult to find someone who read Roxane’s story and didn’t feel heartbroken for her. How she felt afterwards was equally as hard to read about. In a later chapter, Roxane talks about how her boyfriend at the time (who was the ringleader) now has a high-paying, executive job and sometimes she looks him up online to check up on him.

An underlying element of this book that builds and builds quite subtly is Roxane’s determination and passion for writing. Even when she was at her darkest, she would spend hours at her computer writing stories and submitting them. Even when she had no money and no job and no prospects, she was working on her writing. It was actually really inspiring to read about that in her story. Amidst all the horror in her life, she still had the drive to write. There was still something there helping her and pushing her to succeed.

“For so long, I closed myself off from everything and everyone. Terrible things happened and I had to shut down to survive. I was cold, I’ve been told. I often write stories about women who are perceived as cold and resent that perception. I write these women because I know what it’s like to have so much warmth roiling beneath the skin’s surface, ready to be found.”

Hunger is brilliant. It’s so brave and so honest, but it’s also a fantastic read. I finished the book so quickly because of how engrossed I was in Roxane’s story. I really can’t fault this. PLEASE go buy this.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Hunger
Roxane Gay
June 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

Her Mother’s Secret by Natasha Lester

1918, England. Armistice Day should bring peace into Leonora’s life. Rather than secretly making cosmetics in her father’s chemist shop to sell to army nurses such as Joan, her adventurous Australian friend, Leo hopes to now display her wares openly. Instead, Spanish flu arrives in the village, claiming her father’s life.

Determined to start over, she boards a ship to New York City. On the way she meets debonair department store heir Everett Forsyth . . . In Manhattan, Leo works hard to make her cosmetics dream come true, but she’s a woman alone with a small salary and a society that deems make-up scandalous.

1939, New York City. Everett’s daughter, Alice, a promising ballerina, receives a mysterious letter inviting her to star in a series of advertisements for a cosmetics line. If she accepts she will be immortalized like dancers such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker and Ginger Rogers. Why, then, are her parents so quick to forbid it?

Her Mother’s Secret is a historical fiction novel set in America in the early 1900s. Leo’s father has recently died and she’s boarded a ship to NYC to start over. She dreams that her cosmetic creations will be stocked in department stores. She’s crafted lipsticks, glosses and mascaras and despite judgement and scolding, she knows that beautiful, glamorous makeup is what women will want.

Prior to boarding the ship, Leo meets Everett Forsyth. He’s gorgeous, captivating and the two of them share one night together. But then Leo meets Everett’s fiancé, and any hope she had of the two of them being together is lost. Leo realises that even though they may be soulmates and he may be the love of her life, she needs to venture out on her own. The two of them part ways.

“Leo searched for the right words to describe her encounter with Everett. He was the first man who’d kissed her with passion, open-mouthed; the first man who’d brought her body fully to life. The first man who’d made her understand what love was. But she couldn’t say that.”

Natasha Lester’s writing style is accessible and easy to read. The characters are inviting and relatable, and we are engaged throughout the entire book. Leo is strong, smart and determined, but she is forced to fight society’s perception of her and society’s gender inequality. Despite being set in the early 1900s, this inequality can definitely still be found in the world today. It was humbling to read about someone who carved her own future despite all the odds being stacked against her.

“So Leo does have something of value.”
“Besides a propensity to sleep with men she shouldn’t,” Faye bit back.
“Didn’t you once say you’d followed a rake to England? I assume you didn’t just hold his hand,” Leo said.

Despite some of the characters being incredibly flawed, Natasha has put together an ensemble cast that compliment each other and really help drive the story. I really sympathised for Leo, who had to work so hard and who had to compromise with other people who didn’t really work hard at all. But, despite this, Leo forms a strong bond with two other women: Jia and Lottie. Together they plan and create the products. They’re not just Leo’s colleagues — they’re her friends. The two of them help Leo through some really tough times, and it was great to see their friendship grow over the course of the novel.

“The salon opened its doors in September 1920. On that day, Leo stood in the main room with Jia and Lottie, eyeing what they’ve done, feeling so proud.”

The factual events in the book highlight Natasha’s research, for example Elizabeth Arden and the Red Door Studio. There is also a lot of information about how Leo makes her cosmetics and the chemistry and science behind them. It’s actually really interesting and intriguing if you don’t know anything about it (like me!) and getting a glimpse into all this behind-the-scenes information was my favourite part of the book (as well as the romance, of course!).

Natasha has crafted a really glamorous, envious setting for most of the book. The people that Leo meets and the connections she makes opens her up to a lot of opportunities she didn’t otherwise have. Yes, she goes through her fair share of struggles but she also paves her own way through a very elite and glamorous group of wealthy people. She’s also a very intelligent woman with a very strategic mind.

Her Mother’s Secret is fun, fabulous and bold. The characters are wonderful, and they make the story pop. I loved this book so much that upon finishing it, I immediately went and bought Natasha’s previous book A Kiss from Mr. Fitzgerald. There have been very few books that I’ve adored so much that I’ve gone and bought backlist without a second thought.

Natasha was inspired to write the book after working as the marketing manager for the head office of L’Oreal. If you want to know more, Natasha has written a fantastic blog post series on her website about writing this book. I highly recommend you give it a read HERE.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Her Mother’s Secret
Natasha Lester
April 2017
Hachette Publishers

Remind Me How This Ends by Gabrielle Tozer

It’s the summer after high school ends and everyone is moving on. Winning scholarships. Heading to uni. Travelling the world. Everyone except Milo Dark. Milo feels his life is stuck on pause.

His girlfriend is 200km away, his mates have bailed for bigger things and he is convinced he’s missed the memo reminding him to plan the rest of his life. Then Layla Montgomery barrels back into his world after five years without so much as a text message. As kids, Milo and Layla were family friends who shared everything. But they haven’t spoken since her mum’s funeral.

What begins as innocent banter between Milo and Layla soon draws them into a tangled mess with a guarantee that someone will get hurt. While it’s a summer they’ll never forget, is it one they want to remember?

I once read an article about how most people go one of two ways after school or university. They either take off, travel, see the world and disappear for a while, eventually returning home to settle down. Or they immediately settle into a career and a relationship and they leave the nomad travelling life until a lot later down the track. In this article, the writer argues that no matter which path you take, there’ll be some point in your life where you wonder if that’s what you were supposed to do. What would my life have been like if I did X instead? What if I went travelling? What if I went to uni straight away and didn’t travel and then got a job a lot sooner?

Life is full of what if questions. And when you’re 17/18 and finishing school, it can be impossible to know what you want to do for the rest of your life. Some people know straight away, diving headfirst into a uni degree or a job and they’re content that they’ve picked the right thing. But some don’t know, and some people take a lot longer to figure it out than others.

Remind Me How This Ends illustrates that there’s nothing wrong with waiting — taking some time to figure out your next move. Milo grew up in Durnan, a small town six hours away from Sydney. He’s graduated high school but he’s not sure yet what he wants to do in life. Does he want to study? Does he want to travel? His father is pressuring him to sort his life out, but he’s not entirely sure how to do that. His high school girlfriend, Sal, has moved away to university in Canberra and is having the time of her life. Sal knows what she wants to do, and the longer she’s away, the more it seems like Milo doesn’t fit into that life.

“That’s the thing. Everyone else is doing stuff. Real stuff. The sort of stuff you can brag about. Studying law and accounting and nursing and actuarial science. I don’t even what that is, but it sounds hard core.”
-MILO

On the other hand, we have Layla, who grew up in Durnan too but who hasn’t been back for a few years. Five years earlier, her mother died suddenly and Layla and her father left town. They moved from place to place and Layla never really had the opportunity to mourn her mother’s death or confront her feelings about the loss. And when she returns home to Durnan, she runs into Milo and their lives intersect.

They reconnect their friendship, building it back up again with trust and respect and understanding. There’s also plenty of banter and hilarity and adventure. For both of them, they are no longer alone. And together, they overcome the doubts and worries that have been plaguing them for some time now.

“We left most of our belongings behind for removalists to move into storage later, only taking what fitted into the car. Turns out there’s only so much of a life you can fit in the car. As we left town, Dad told me he couldn’t stand one more night in the house where she’d lived. There were too many memories trapped within those walls.”
-LAYLA

This book is beautiful. It’s sweet and funny, but also heartbreaking and wonderful. The writing is effortless, lyrical and poetic, and the characters are fully fleshed out and so very real. For anyone who has approached the end of school and thought, ‘well what am I supposed to do now?’ then this book is for you. For anyone who is working in a professional environment and suddenly realises that they don’t like what they do and they need a change, then you’ll love this book. That’s the great thing about Remind Me How This Ends. It may be a young adult novel, but the experiences in the book are universal. People can feel lost at any age, not just in those teenage years.

There is also another element to this novel worth mentioning. Remind Me How This Ends explores grief, with Layla struggling to even visit her mother’s grave, let alone talk about her. She’s lost the connection with her father, and she’s avoiding the fact that he has a new woman in his life. For many readers, they might understand what Layla is going through.

“I close my eyes and try to pinpoint what Mum would want me to do. If I can’t be with her, then I have to think like her.”
-LAYLA

There are a lot of teenagers in society who have a really tough life. They might have had a tough childhood, or their parents might be split up. Perhaps they’re an orphan or one of their parents have died. It’s nice to read a young adult novel that allows those readers to feel like they’re not alone. They can read this and feel okay that perhaps they haven’t yet dealt with their emotions or feelings. It takes time, and Milo and Layla are both in need of a little time.

Remind Me How This Ends
Gabrielle Tozer
April 2017
HarperCollins Publishers

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, The Hate U Give is about sixteen-year-old Starr who lives in the ghetto of Garden Heights and is the sole witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer.

“I remember something else Daddy said. If you’re with somebody, you better hope they don’t have nothing on them, or both of y’all going down.”

The novel is set in two different worlds: Garden Heights, where Starr and her family live, and Williamson, Starr’s privileged, posh high school. She acts differently in each location and we learn that she doesn’t really feel like she belongs at the school. Her friends and her boyfriend are wealthy and very privileged and she feels out of place. They don’t understand her world. They don’t understand what it’s like to grow up in the ghetto with hardly any money and to work in your father’s store every weekend to earn some money. Her boyfriend, Chris, is sweet and means well, but at times is so caught up in his own Williamson world that he doesn’t understand how different he and Starr actually are.

For me, there were three dominant themes in the book: racism, family, and identity.

RACISM

The Hate U Give is powerful, necessary, shocking but also really eye-opening. It shines a light on what prejudice is like in the 21st century. The book may be fictional, but this storyline has happened many times in real life: a black kid is unarmed, innocent, and is shot dead by a white policeman.

The cop believes (or claims to believe) that the kid was armed, but he wasn’t. And so begins a court case to determine who is telling the truth. This is such a topical issue at the moment, and Angie Thomas has highlighted how racism can be overlooked and how assumptions can be made that undermine people of colour.

“When I was twelve, my parents had two talks with me. One was the usual birds and bees. The other talk was about what to do if a cop stopped me.
“Starr-Starr, you do whatever they tell you to do,” he said. “Keep your hands visible. Don’t make any sudden moves. Only speak when they speak to you.”
I hope somebody had the talk with Khalil.”

Starr is afraid to tell the truth. She was in the car with Khalil when he was shot, and she’s the only witness. But the police don’t believe her story, and the media are painting Khalil to be a drug dealer who deserved to be shot. The cop’s family are being interviewed on the TV, acting innocent and worthy of sympathy. Starr doesn’t know what to do, and the reader grows increasingly frustrated and angry at the racism towards Starr and her family.

“Get a good look at the cop’s face. If you can remember his badge number, that’s even better.”

This story may be fiction, but it represents very real racism in society today.

FAMILY

What a beautiful, beautiful family that Starr has. Her parents are compassionate, caring, supportive and they’re very present in her life. Unlike a lot of young adult fiction, Starr’s parents are in most scenes in the book. They help her deal with the loss of Khalil and they encourage her when she decides to speak to the police about what happened.

“Momma squeezes my hand. “Breathe”
I didn’t realise I had grabbed hers. I take a deep breath and another, and she nods with each one, saying “That’s it. You’re okay. We’re okay.”
I feel eyes on me from all around. Uncle Carlos hands me a sweating bottle of water. Momma puts it up to my lips.”

Starr is also close with her extended family, in particular Uncle Carlos, who took care of her when she was younger and Starr’s dad was in prison for three years. Uncle Carlos acts as a second father figure to her. It’s beautiful to see that Starr has support coming from so many different people in her family. As the reader, you’d think that Starr’s boyfriend and her friends would be the closest people her life, but this book actually shows that it’s her family who she’s closest with.

“I was three when Daddy went in prison, six when he got out. A lot of my memories include him, but a lot of my first don’t. First day of school, the fist time I lost a tooth, the first time I rode a bike without training wheels. In those memories, Uncle Carlos’ face is where Daddy’s should’ve been. I think that’s the real reason they’re always fighting.”

It’s so important for a teenager to feel like they have a support system and Starr really has that in this novel. Her mother and father are so encouraging and I loved that Angie was able to emphasise their closeness and their devotion to protecting their child.

IDENTITY

In the book, Starr feels like she’s two different people. She acts a certain way around her family and friends in Garden Heights, but differently around her school friends and her boyfriend Chris at Williamson.

“Williamson is one world and Garden Heights is another, and I have to keep them separate…Nobody mentioned Khalil at school today. I hate to admit it, because it’s like throwing him the middle finger, but I’m relieved.”

Starr doesn’t want her friends to know that her friend Khalil was the boy who got murdered. She thinks they won’t understand and she thinks they’ll make racist comments. And they do.

“I hope none of them ask me about my spring break. They went to Taipei, the Bahamas, Harry Potter World. I stayed in the hood and saw a cop kill my friend.”

After Khalil dies and the police decide not to investigate the office who killed him, most of Starr’s classmates organise a protest. It seems noble at first, but really, the only reason they’re doing it is so they can get out of class. Throughout the novel, Starr’s friend Hailey makes subtle comments and mutterings that some people perhaps wouldn’t consider to be racist. But they are racist, and Starr builds up the courage to confront her. This illustrates the systemic racism that undermines Starr’s world and the reader begins to understand what it’s like for people of colour in a society where racism is so prevalent.

“Dammit, Starr!” Hailey yells, recovering the ball. “Hustle! Pretend the ball is some friend chicken. Bet you’ll stay on it then.”

“I’m not apologising for what I felt,” I say. “I don’t care what your intention was Hailey. That fried chicken comment felt racist to me.”
“Fine,” she says. “Just like I felt it was fine to protest. Since I won’t apologise for what I felt, and you won’t apologise for what you felt, I guess we’ll just watch TV.”

In addition to these three themes in the book, Angie Thomas has illustrated a very realistic premise with very realistic characters. The dialect in the book represents the dialect in places like Garden Heights, with shortened words and common phrases/words. You can really hear the characters when you’re reading the dialogue, and this is one of the strongest linguistic elements in The Hate U Give.

I can’t praise this book enough. It’s relevant, necessary, heartbreaking. If you’re looking for a book to read that perfectly illustrates racism in the 21st century and what that is like for a person of colour, then this is the book you should pick up.

The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
March 2017
Walker Books Australia

A Beginner’s Guide to Losing your Mind by Emily Reynolds

A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is a memoir about a girl with bipolar who spent years trying – and failing – to cope with her symptoms. Emily was diagnosed in her early 20s and spent many years trying to understand how to live with the diagnosis. She knew something was wrong even before being diagnosed; she couldn’t get any doctors to believe her.

This memoir is both hilarious and moving. Emily makes light-hearted jokes throughout the book and is brutally honest about her life’s experiences. She doesn’t shy away from talking about the tough topics. There’s a whole chapter dedicated to self-harm/suicide and how they enveloped her life and worsened her condition.

“But whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that I was miserable all of the time. ‘Sad’ doesn’t quite capture how I felt – ‘sad’ is melancholic. Sad is soft. Sad is gentle. Sad is looking out of a window wistfully. What I felt was more vicious than that.”

Emily wrote this book because she couldn’t find a self-help book that actually helped her cope with her symptoms and she wanted something she could pass on to others.

A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness. Unflinching and brutally honest, Emily Reynolds has detailed exactly how depression affected her life. She dedicates a chapter to self-care and how she didn’t possess any, harming herself in her bed and then sleeping in bloodied sheets. Emily had empty wine bottles all over the floor, and used a cheese grater as a spoon because she didn’t own any cutlery. Sanitary products cost money and would require her to leave her apartment to buy them, so she didn’t, and she rarely showered.

This is an incredibly brave memoir about navigating mental health, but it’s also a fantastic resource for any reader struggling with it themselves. After the end of every chapter, some of which focus on education, relationships and self-harm, Emily gives advice for anyone going through the same thing. And even though I’m not the target audience for that section of each chapter, the advice seems reasonable and practical. She wrote it because all the self-help books that she read gave impractical advice that didn’t really help her. So, she wrote this book in the hope that she might be able to pass her knowledge on to anyone else struggling with depression.

“Empathy can’t – or shouldn’t – be limitless; there’s a point in which you really should stop making excuses for other people’s shitty actions.”

This benefits readers who want to understand what mental illness is like and how it can affect a person’s life, in case they have a loved one going through it and needing help. Emily talks about her family, and she offers advice to those who may have a loved one going through depression. She advises them to be a listening ear because there’s no quick or easy fix to that person’s condition. You need to be patient and understanding and not bully or judge the person for their condition.

I loved this book so much and devoured it in one sitting. It’s shocking, hilarious, eye-opening but also extremely well written. This is the book you should pick up if you’re interested in gaining more insight into mental illness.

Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a review copy of this title.

A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind
Emily Reynolds
March 2017
Hachette Publishers

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