JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O’Farrell

An electric and shocking memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated Maggie’s life. The childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital.

This is a memoir with a difference: seventeen encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal to us a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. Spare, elegant and utterly candid, it is a book to make you question yourself.

I Am I Am I Am is as shocking as it is inviting. Maggie O’Farrell documents these near-death experiences with what feels like third person narration, separating herself from them so she can accurately describe the events and how they unfolded, whilst also being able to remember and articulate exactly how she felt at the time and how it then affected her life afterwards.

This memoir is intimate, and whilst it is compact enough to read in one sitting, the reader walks away from it feeling like they’ve been punched.

Maggie opens the book with a chapter about her narrow escape from a rapist and murderer:

“On the path ahead, stepping out from behind a boulder, a man appears…I passed him earlier, further down the glen. We greeted each other…he has been waiting for me: he has planned this whole thing, carefully, meticulously, and I have walked into his trap.”

It almost seems fictional, how some of these near-death experiences unfolded — Maggie and her husband are overseas travelling when an armed robber holds a machete to her throat and demands they give him all of their cash. It’s heart-wrenching, but it’s also enticing. You’re sucked into the stories.

Each chapter tells of a different story, and the timeline moves around from the 1980s to the 1990s and then early into the 2000s — the timeline does not move chronologically. Her husband and children weave in and out of the memoir, but Maggie remains the central focus. We are intrigued by her life and determined to read as much as she will give us.

I Am I Am I Am allows the reader to confront their own vulnerability; we become determined to make our lives count. I finished some of these chapters and thought ‘what would I do in this situation? Would I be able to survive it?’

In one particular chapter, Maggie is sitting inside her car with her baby, breastfeeding. They’re parked on the side of a deserted highway and her husband has walked over the hill to watch the waves roll in. Maggie, alone with her child, sees two strange men approaching the car:

“…the men have seen my panic, see my problem, and now they are running and I have no idea what they want — money, car, baby, woman — but I don’t want to find out, I don’t need to know the answer to that question because maybe they don’t even know themselves. Maybe they’re just ready to react and exploit whatever they’ll find here.”

Amidst all of these true stories, Maggie has found a way to embed what she’s learnt into the book. She confronts what she’s gone through and how it affected her, and she often reminisces about these experiences with maturity.

“You do walk out. The nurse tries to stop you but you don’t listen. You’ve been through this enough times to be fully aware of ‘what happens next’. As you take the stairs down, away from the scanning department, you feel the notion, the idea of the child leaving you with each step.”

There’s a nice connection between her childhood and then her experiences as a mother raising her own daughter. Maggie grew up with a rare illness, and her daughter has grown up with severe allergies. As a result, a lot of Maggie’s learnings as a child have helped her parent her daughter.

I can’t fault this book. It draws you in and you find yourself holding your breath almost the entire way through. You know Maggie has survived everything, because she’s written this book, but you are desperate to find out how these events have unfolded. And how she’s escaped them.

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

I am I am I am
Maggie O’Farrell
September 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club

In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cyclone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle stations dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect.

Sybil is the matriarch of Fairvale Station, run by her husband, Joe. Their eldest son, Lachlan, was Joe’s designated successor but he has left the Territory – for good. It is up to their second son, Ben, to take his brother’s place. But that doesn’t stop Sybil grieving the absence of her child.

With her oldest friend, Rita, now living in Alice Springs and working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and Ben’s English wife, Kate, finding it difficult to adjust to life at Fairvale, Sybil comes up with a way to give them all companionship and purpose: they all love to read, and she forms a book club.

Mother-of-three Sallyanne is invited to join them. Sallyanne dreams of a life far removed from the dusty town of Katherine where she lives with her difficult husband, Mick.

Completing the group is Della, who left Texas for Australia looking for adventure and work on the land.

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club is a debut novel by Australian author Sophie Green, exploring the power of friendship within chaotic environments. These five women bond over their love of reading, and they help each other when they’re in need.

Set in the late 20th century in the Northern Territory of Australia, Fairvale Station has been in the Baxter family for generations. Sybil and Joe raised their eldest son Lachie to inherit the station, but he’s not interested in running the property and runs away. Most of Sybil’s character arc is her learning to accept that if her son is willing to leave, she has to let him go. For most of the novel, she’s tormented over her strained relationship with her son and is determined to fix things.

“So many times Sybil had replayed her last conversation with her eldest son; she would lie awake as Joe slept, straight as a board, beside her, letting it loop around. She didn’t know if she was hoping it would be different the next time it played or if she wanted to cling onto the sound of Lachie’s voice, trying to hear any skerrick of love in it.”

Ben returns home to Fairvale with his British wife Kate, and the two begin adjusting to life in Fairvale. Kate is desperate to get pregnant but she starts to despair when, after months, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen for them. Over the course of the novel, Kate must learn not to dwell on things she can’t control.

“Kate’s parents were thinking of selling their home and moving to Bath, which they’d always loved. This was the house that Kate had grown up in; the only other house she’d known apart from Fairvale…She supposed she should feel upset; show some sign that part of her missed England so much that the news of the impending loss of her family home would upset her. There was no such sign.”

This is written in third person, although the chapters switch POV frequently. This allows the reader to really understand each character’s concerns, fears, doubts and triumphs. We grow to love each character for their individual story. There is a strong sense of realism in the novel.

Sybil’s book club allows the women to form a close bond — a strong friendship. They all become concerned for each other’s struggles and they are there for each other. Their lives are enriched because of their love and support for each other.

There’s a definite sense of isolation throughout the book, particularly during the wet seasons when it’s too dangerous to venture far and so the women at Fairvale and in Katherine are almost confined to their homes. Green has done a wonderful job of writing the isolated, contained environments in the book — there’s a real sense of place. In most scenes, there are a large number of characters present and Green has once again expertly manoeuvred these scenes to allow the reader to easily understand what’s going on with each of the characters present.

What I loved most about this book was how authentic these characters felt; there was real depth to their characterisation and they all felt like different people to me. When you have such a large cast of characters and they are all women, it would be really important to make sure their voices are all unique, particularly considering each chapter switches POV. I think Green did a marvellous job of bringing all these women to life, crafting them all perfectly and allowing the reader to really understand them and relate to all of them.

“The day was almost too hot to be believed as Della sat with Kate on the verandah of Fairvale’s big house. They were well covered by the awning but the heat seemed to swirl up from the ground, wrapping itself around them and staying trapped.”

Despite this novel being set in the 1970s, there are definitely elements of the storyline that feel relevant in today’s society. Kate is struggling to fall pregnant, Sallyanne’s husband is constantly drunk and borderline abusive, and Sybil’s son has run off to pursue alternate careers. At times, I had to remind myself that this wasn’t set in the present!

If I had to point out something I didn’t like, it’d be the pacing and the development of Sallyanne’s story — it was a slow burner throughout the whole novel but then it seemed to solve itself at a rather fast pace in the end.

At first, Sallyanne is scared of her drunken husband and she doesn’t have the courage to confront him because she is concerned her for own safety and for the safety of her children. This is incredibly realistic. However, her husband then chooses to leave her and he’s gone for most of the novel. At the end, he returns briefly and their situation wraps up positively (for Sallyanne) within one chapter. Whilst I felt pleased for Sallyanne, I couldn’t help but feel this storyline was only touched on lightly but should’ve been explored further.

I highly recommend this novel. It’s not just for fans of historical fiction, or perhaps even romance. There are so many layers to this novel that I think all readers will enjoy — it is a testament to family and friendship amongst isolated Australian outback communities.

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

The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club
Sophie Green
August 2017
Hachette Book Publishers

The Reason You’re Alive by Matthew Quick

After sixty-eight-year-old David Granger crashes his BMW, medical tests reveal a brain tumor that he readily attributes to his wartime Agent Orange exposure. He wakes up from surgery repeating a name no one in his civilian life has ever heard—that of a Native American soldier whom he was once ordered to discipline. David decides to return something precious he long ago stole from the man he now calls Clayton Fire Bear. It might be the only way to find closure in a world increasingly at odds with the one he served to protect. It might also help him finally recover from his wife’s untimely demise.

As David confronts his past to salvage his present, a poignant portrait emerges: that of an opinionated and goodhearted American patriot fighting like hell to stay true to his red, white, and blue heart, even as the country he loves rapidly changes in ways he doesn’t always like or understand. Hanging in the balance are Granger’s distant art-dealing son, Hank; his adoring seven-year-old granddaughter, Ella; and his best friend, Sue, a Vietnamese-American who respects David’s fearless sincerity.

The Reason You’re Alive, written by the author of The Silver Linings Playbook, is an exploration of protagonist David Granger’s past and present. The novel examines how our past doesn’t define us, but the secrets we carry from those years can define us. They can irreversibly change us.

David is a bigoted veteran who fought in the Vietnam war and is still struggling to deal with the unspeakable things he saw and did during that war. He hasn’t yet come to terms with the traumatic experiences he had during Vietnam. David is honourable and loyal, but he’s also incredibly bitter and wounded and at times, angry. He’s racist, xenophobic, homophobic and he’s brazen and blunt.

“I glanced down at his brand-new boots, and they looked about my size. Mine were waterlogged and had a few holes. Fucking rice paddies. Jungle rot. The meat of my feet was literally falling off the bone.
“His boots are mine,” I said to the rest of the men.
“Why are you claiming my boots?” the FNG asked in the voice of a little girl whose beloved cat is about be put in a sack and drowned in the river.
No one answered him.
Everyone claimed different pieces of his gear as he spun around, looking for eye contact and begging any of us to speak with him. We knew acknowledging him in any way whatsoever was suicide, so we pretended he wasn’t even there.
An hour later, a sniper shot him through his left eye. We returned fire, and no one else was wounded.

David was complicit in the violence and evil in Vietnam, and now, decades later he wants to atone for what he did. It will not only help him ‘move on’ from this time in his life, but it’ll also help him reconnect with his art dealer son, Hank. David’s family relationships are dysfunctional. David’s wife Jessica died when Hank was young, committing suicide by setting herself and her art studio on fire. She was deeply depressed and unable to cope — David first met her after she’d been raped and impregnated when she was very young. He took her in and married her, saving her life. But Jessica couldn’t be saved.

During the Vietnam war, David stole a knife from Clayton Fire Bear, a Native American who liked to scalp others during the war. He would collect those scalps, and David was responsible for ‘discipling’ Clayton. David disciplined him heavily one day and then stole his knife. Clayton swore he’d find and murder David one day, shortly before disappearing into the wilderness. David still feels haunted by that.

“Less than a year after I met him — and only a few weeks after we buried his wife — my Vietnam War buddy was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, which did not surprise me at all, because like I said before, he had bought the bullet. He got his wish and died shortly after getting that death sentence. The Grim Reaper is an efficient motherfucker. Give him an inch to work with, and it’s lights out.”

Whilst David is an unlikeable characters, he’s not wholly unlikeable. The most redeeming quality about David is his love for his wife, which hasn’t wavered in the years since she died. He also dotes on his 7-year-old granddaughter Ella, and helps Hank look after her when his wife Femke leaves them for another man. His interactions with his granddaughter and his loyalty to his wife all these years after her suicide humanise him, and they allow the reader to — at times — sympathise for him.

“My spin class instructor is named Timmy. He’s off-the-charts gay, definitely the woman in his gay homo relationship, and so I call him Gay Timmy. But before you go stereotyping against him, believe me when I say he has the body of a Navy SEAL. You would not want to fight this gay motherfucker, trust me. You might think I hate the gays because I was in the army and am a registered Republican, but you’d be dead fucking wrong. I respect those people.”

The Reason You’re Alive is a quick read, and at times, a surprising read. It explores racism, PTSD, depression, adultery and many other themes. David is certainly an anti-hero, but this novel is surprisingly tender and poignant at times. There’s a lot of swearing and horrible language, and a lot of racist and homophobic remarks. But this novel examines the complex after effects of the Vietnam war and how the war affected the soldiers that fought and survived. It’s complex and dynamic, and this dark tale has many layers for the reader to unpack.

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

The Reason You’re Alive
Matthew Quick
August 2017
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Godsgrave by Jay Kristoff

A ruthless young assassin continues her journey for revenge. The sequel to Nevernight.

Assassin Mia Corvere has found her place among the Blades of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, but many in the Red Church ministry think she’s far from earned it. Plying her bloody trade in a backwater of the Republic, she’s no closer to ending Consul Scaeva and Cardinal Duomo, or avenging her familia. And after a deadly confrontation with an old enemy, Mia begins to suspect the motives of the Red Church itself.

When it’s announced that Scaeva and Duomo will be making a rare public appearance at the conclusion of the grand games in Godsgrave, Mia defies the Church and sells herself to a gladiatorial collegium for a chance to finally end them. Upon the sands of the arena, Mia finds new allies, bitter rivals, and more questions about her strange affinity for the shadows. But as conspiracies unfold within the collegium walls, and the body count rises, Mia will be forced to choose between loyalty and revenge, and uncover a secret that could change the very face of her world.

Godsgrave is the second book in the Nevernight Chronicles, an epic fantasy series about a young assassin and her desire for revenge. She deliberately sells her freedom so that she can compete in the gladiatorial games and kill the two men who were responsible for her father’s death — Scaevo and Duomo.

I’ve just realised that despite having read Nevernight (book one in the series), I haven’t yet reviewed it for this blog. SO after this I’ll be returning to where it all began so I can provide a review for the beginning of the Chronicles. If any of you haven’t yet started this series, don’t read my review of Godsgrave — too many spoilers! And believe me, this is not the kind of book you want spoiled. Jay Kristoff is the master of unexpected twists and turns and leaving the reader feeling like they had absolutely no idea what was coming. He leaves the reader in shock, awe, surprise, and at times devastation (he doesn’t shy away from killing beloved characters).

“Pig’s blood has a very peculiar taste. The blood of a man is best drunk warm, and leaves a hint of sodium and rust clinging to the teeth. Horse’s blood is less salty, with an odd bitterness almost like dark chocolate. But pig’s blood has an almost buttery quality, like oysters and oiled iron, slipping down your throat and leaving a greasy tang in its wake.”

The second book in a fantasy series usually falls victim to ‘second book syndrome’, where the plot is really just the characters plodding along and devising action and being mad about whatever revenge they need to get. Really, book two is just the characters getting from point A (the origin of the story in book one) to point B (the amazing showdown that occurs in book three).

However, Godsgrave is a marvellous sequel. It furthers the plot, which is what a sequel is supposed to do. We’re supposed to feel like there’s a mini story in each book of a series, and Jay Kristoff definitely delivered. All of the characters are three dimensional and you are really draw into each of their struggles. I wouldn’t be friends with some of them if I met them in real life, but I loved reading about them and I sympathised for them in the book.

“How did you come here?” she asked, looking at the track about them, the silhouette of Crow’s Nest in the distance. “This place?”
Bryn sniffed. “Bad harvest. Three years back. Village didn’t have the grain to pay our tithe to the Itreyan administratii. They locked our laird in irons, had him and his whole familia flogged in the stocks.”
“We didn’t like that,” Byern explained. “Me and Bryn were too young for our da to let us go, but anyone big enough to swing a sword march ed up to the magistrate’s door. Dragged him down to the stocks and gave him a flogging right back.”

Additionally, we come to understand more about Mia in Godsgrave. She is the orphaned daughter of an executed traitor. She wants revenge. Besides being an amazing swordsman (or swordswoman!), she’s ruthless, clever, intelligent and devious. At times she seems unfeeling, but she’s also inquisitive and trusting and funny. She develops a relationship with a female character (no spoilers as to who it is!) and we learn a different side to Mia. There’s more of Mia’s feelings and doubts written into this book. She starts to feel more relatable in Godsgrave compared to Nevernight. I finished the book feeling like I knew her better — her desires and motives. She struggles to embrace her darkin side and what it means to be darkin, especially after she meets another character in the book who is also darkin. I think that Mia’s darken side will be further developed in the next Nevernight Chronicles book.

What is my name?
“CROWCROWCROWCROW!”
Dark delight in her belly.
Warm blood on her hands.

Godsgrave is more brutal than Nevernight, upping the violence, fighting and death and describing it in more detail. The sex scenes in the book are also longer and described in more detail, and Jay writes these with sensitivity and understanding (for a man, he actually writes F/F sex scenes rather well). Once Mia is inside the gladiatorial collegium and fighting for her life amongst other warriors, she soon learns that what she thought was real might not be. Who she trusted might have betrayed her and she may need to realign her allegiances.

“Who’s Arkades?”
“The Red Lion, they called him,” Mia said.
“…Executus used to be a slave like us?” Matteo asked.
“Not like you, you worthless shit,” Butcher snarled. “He was fucking gladiatii.”
“Victor of the Venatus Magni ten years back.” Mia spoke softly, voice hushed with awe. “The Ultima was a free-for-all. Every gladiator who’d been signed up for the games was released onto the sand for that final match. One warrior sent out every minute until the killing was done. Must’ve been almost two hundred.”
“Two hundred and forty-three.” Butcher said.

I have to give a shout out to Jay for the ‘refresher’ at the beginning of the book. Normally, fantasy books just dive straight into the plot and it’s usually been at least a year since the last book and so I have no idea what’s happened. But there’s a few pages at the beginning of Godsgrave that list all of the characters and what happened to them in the first book. It was amazing. I didn’t have time to go back and reread Nevernight so I LOVED that I could read a recap in three pages. Thank you Jay!

A rather entertaining part of the novel is Mister Kindly. He’s a shadow who wears the shape of cat (although he is not really a cat at all) and he accompanies Mia on her journey. He lives by eating her terror. Some may think of this as a bad thing, but Mister Kindly allows Mia to be fearless. He takes away her fear and she is free to be her usual, badass self. As a result, she ventures head first into danger with no thought about her own safety. Luckily for her, she’s skilled enough to survive.

And of course, Jay Kristoff again provides hilarious footnotes throughout the book that not only provide backstory to the plot but also witty aside. In my opinion, they are optional. You don’t need to read them to understand the plot of the book but they are a fun, snarky aside to read throughout.

This book is an emotional rollercoaster. The stakes are higher and the pace moves faster and faster until you can’t put the book down and you’re desperate to get to the end. Just like in Nevernight, Mia has to go through trials and tests to come out as victor. But in Godsgrave, there’s more at risk. She needs to win. And win she will.

I recommend this to adult readers, because of the content. This is NOT a YA book. Most people would know this if they’ve read Nevernight, but I’ll repeat: this is not a YA book. It is a novel for adults. I also recommend this to lovers of fantasy. It’s an amazing series and I can’t wait to read the next book in 2018.

Godsgrave
Nevernight Chronicles #2
Jay Kristoff
September 2017
HarperCollins Book Publishers

Together by Julie Cohen

This is not a great love story.
This is a story about great love.

On a morning that seems just like any other, Robbie wakes in his bed, his wife Emily asleep beside him, as always. He rises and dresses, makes his coffee, feeds his dogs, just as he usually does. But then he leaves Emily a letter and does something that will break her heart. As the years go back all the way to 1962, Robbie’s actions become clearer as we discover the story of a couple with a terrible secret – one they will do absolutely anything to protect.

Together is a superb, compelling, beautiful love story that spans over four decades. It is about love that transcends circumstance. Robbie and Emily are in their 80s and are blissfully happy. Robbie is losing his memory – bit by bit – and decides to remove himself from Emily’s life as a favour to her. As the reader, we have no idea why he would do this. And then the story starts shifting backwards.

“She was still asleep. She hadn’t moved. He gazed down at her. Her hair had threads of silver and sunshine, her skin was soft in sleep. She was the girl he’d met in 1962; the girl he felt like he’d waited his whole life up until then to meet. He thought about waking her up to see her eyes again.”

As we read about the decades that these two characters have been with each other, we come to understand the complexities of their relationship. We come to understand their doubts and their struggles and all that they’re worried about. Emily’s family have ostracised her. She no longer speaks to her sister or her parents, and they have no wish to speak to her. We don’t know why but we know it has something to do with Robbie.

“The glass of water in his hands, the bites and powerless water. He wound back his arm and threw it as hard as he could. It disappeared into the darkness and he heard it smash on the fence. Heard the water and broken glass and ice falling to the ground.
‘I’m not going to lose another child,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to lose him.’

Together is structured so that the narrative unfolds in reverse, causing the reader to believe in the couple’s love before they know the real reason why Emily and Robbie can’t be together. If you read the origin of their love story first, you’d really believe they should be apart. But because Julie Cohen makes us fall in love with these characters before we find out the reason, we suddenly get to the end of the book and question whether the reason they were supposed to be apart was actually that bad? In Together, you can see how amazing Emily and Robbie are for each other, and how amazing their lives were together.

“Ten years had done nothing to her. She was the girl he had seen on the station concourse, the girl he had kissed in the rain, the girl who had said goodbye to him in her father’s car. Robbie’s heart paused and then it thumped two beats at once and happiness rushed through him, a physical presence more than an emotion, grabbing hold of him and stopping his movements and his breathing, the bourbon pooled in his mouth waiting to be swallowed.”

This book is filled with bittersweet emotion, as well as raw, gut-wrenching truths and three-dimensional characters who you want to devour. Emily and Robbie were once forced apart by circumstances that they couldn’t control, but they chose to reunite with each other and they chose to live together and be happy for decades to come. Despite the taboo around their relationship, they chose to sacrifice so much in order to be together.

This is a beautiful novel — so well written and so lyrical and poetic in its construction. You love the characters just as much as they love each other, and you venture through the book desperate to read every page.

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

Together
Julie Cohen
July 2017
Hachette Book Publishers