JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road focuses on a father’s relationship with his son as they journey through a post-apocalyptic America. The novel possesses common themes and binary oppositions of speculative fiction: familiar vs. unfamiliar, insider vs. outsider, isolation, and the discovery of the unknown. These are essential in speculative fiction and dystopian novels; McCarthy’s uncanny, surreal location is a vital part of the story and propels it forward.

McCarthy omits a lot of information about the past, and in the flashbacks he instead focuses on the relationship between the father and his deceased wife. This left me wondering what happened to America prior to the events in the novel. Ultimately, McCarthy uses the dialogue between the man and his son to reveal back story; however, he reveals very little of it. The man’s flashbacks are only about his wife because in that situation, that is all he thinks about.

The dialogue effectively illustrates the relationship dynamic between the boy and his father. The boy is growing up in a post-apocalyptic world and their bleak, disruptive surroundings make me wonder why they want to continue living. The lack of punctuation and the disjointed conversation are a stylistic technique that’s not often seen in speculative fiction. This emphasises that not only has the man’s country collapsed, but civilisation has as well. Memories and dreams are revealed sporadically throughout the novel and are often cut short. Backstory is usually a major part of speculative fiction; however, McCarthy has omitted a lot of information and instead focused on the collapse of language and the breakdown of speech between the father and his son.

McCarthy’s manipulation of language is an innovative way of drawing parallels to the characters’ surroundings. The fragmented, expositional sentences compare to the fractured lives of the man and his son, and these sentences align with the characters’ fragmented process of sensory perception. These references can also be made through the objects that the man and the boy have to throw away, including the boy’s flute, which represents a contemporary medium for language. When the boy and his father discard this flute, a parallel is drawn to the loss of language that now inhabits the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road.

My Score: 8/10

Deeper Water by Jessie Cole

Innocent and unworldly, Mema is still living at home with her mother on a remote, lush hinterland property. It is a small, confined, simple sort of life, and Mema is content with it.

One day, during a heavy downpour, Mema saves a stranger from a flooded creek. She takes him into her family home, where, marooned by floods, he has to stay until the waters recede. And without either of them realising it, he opens the door to a new world of possibilities that threaten to sweep Mema into the deep

‘They say every hero has to leave home, but what those first steps are like I’m yet to know’

Jessie Cole’s latest title is quite similar to her debut novel: an outsider’s life intersects with someone from a small town. The novel is very character-driven (again, much like Darkness on the Edge of Town) and allows the reader to seep into these characters’ lives unnoticed and observe their somewhat personal circumstances.

The story is subtly tragic – Mema’s growing desire for the stranger disturbs the reader because they know that they don’t quite fit and that it’ll never work out. They live two completely different lifestyles, and Mema’s isolation from society is highlighted even further when she saves the stranger. He’s obsessed with gaining access to his email accounts and his laptop, and Mema struggles to understand why those things are important to him.

The characters intersect at the right moments so that the reader doesn’t feel overpowered by the plot or character relations. And the development of character is gradual and graceful. The novel illustrates a comparison between two separate lives and details the resulting conflict when those lives clash.

At times, the pace of the story seemed to be slow and the characters seemed stagnant. But if you can get past that and appreciate the fluidity of the writing and the raw beauty of the characters, then you’ll enjoy this novel.

My Score: 8/10

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

As a child, Kathy – now thirty-one years old – lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.

And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed – even comforted – by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.

Ishiguro is a stylistic genius. This novel is written almost in stream of consciousness and jumps all around between past, present, and future. And yet, it all seems to make perfect sense. And his writing is poetic and lyrical and beautiful.

Kathy narrates the novel in first person and details her time spent at Hailsham with Ruth and Tommy and how they’re destined to finish their lives as donors for people in the ‘real world’. Ishiguro weaves past and present together seamlessly, and manages to break up sections of each chapter so that you know where the story is headed. Although some believe that the story moves a little slowly, this novel is meant to be character-driven and not plot-driven. Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy are all deeply-imagined characters that have been fleshed out and presented as three-dimensional protagonists.

Since I consider this novel to be a classic, I’d recommend it to anyone who reads and loves classics. I’d also recommend it to those people who are looking for something that’s ‘easy to read’ (I don’t really know how to define something like that). This conversationalist style of writing that Ishiguro has employed definitely proves easy to read and easy to follow.

My Score: 9/10

Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

In Detroit, violent death – along with foreclosure and despair – is a regular occurrence. But the part-human, part-animal corpses that have started appearing are more disturbing than anything Detective Gabriella Versado has ever seen. As Gabriella works the case, her teenage daughter Layla embarks on a secret crime-fighting project of her own – hunting down online paedophiles – but it all goes horribly wrong…

TK has learned how to make being homeless work for him and his friends, but something evil is threatening the fragile world he’s constructed on the streets…

Ambitious blogger Jonno is getting desperate. The big four-oh isn’t that far away, and he’s still struggling to make his mark. But then he stumbles across some unusual and macabre art, which might just be the break he needs to go viral…

Lauren Beukes travelled to Detroit and spent time taking photos of the city, and then walked around and spoke to locals about their experiences there. Lauren wanted to capture the beauty of Detroit, even though it’s a decaying city full of crime and run down, abandoned buildings. This book is about seeing the beauty in broken things, and presents a serial killer who the reader can sympathise with and feel sorry for.

Lauren illustrates a few different characters and captures each of their voices uniquely. Each point of view adds a different element to the story, and enriches the tale. Stephen King recently read this novel and said that it was “Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn’t put it down. Next month. I’d grab it, if I were you.”

You wouldn’t want to read this novel at night – a boy is attached to a deer and a melted woman is found in a kiln. It’s a haunting tale that brings chills to the reader, and it’s written beautifully with realistic dialogue and three dimensional characters. I must admit, I was a little confused and taken aback by the ending – I won’t give it away, but prepare for paranormal presence that seems a little jolting. Despite this, I would happily recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys crime, thrillers, or who-dunnit novels.

My Score: 9/10

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

The novel is notable for its controversial subject: the protagonist & unreliable narrator, a 37–38-year-old literature professor, Humbert Humbert, is obsessed with the 12-year-old Dolores Haze, with whom he becomes sexually involved after he becomes her stepfather.

Ah Nabokov. If only I could bottle up your talent and use it.

There are so many ways that Nabokov could’ve written this story, and so many stylistic techniques he could’ve used to achieve it. The novel is poetic, lyrical, and subtly written and although it’s in third person, it really seems to be written from Humbert’s point of view. You find yourself sympathising with him, and then you become slightly horrified and confused when you realise it.

The reader is given a (disturbing) insight into Humbert’s paedophilic desires and not only is Humbert a richly fleshed out, dimensional character, but Lolita is as well. She almost seems to seduce him at times, and then is quite happy to move on when she feels it is the right time.

“I am convinced however, that in a certain magic and fateful way Lolita began with Annabel.”

Humbert’s paranoia and – at times – murderous desires capture a truly disturbed mind willing to do anything to attain and keep Lolita. And then Humbert believes he’s being followed and he and Lolita roadtrip around to various motels and hotels so that they – but mostly he – can remain undetected.

My Score: 9/10