JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Purity by Jonathan Franzen

Young Pip Tyler doesn’t know who she is. She knows that her real name is Purity, that she’s saddled with $130,000 in student debt, that she’s squatting with anarchists in Oakland, and that her relationship with her mother – her only family – is hazardous. But she doesn’t have a clue who her father is, why her mother has always concealed her own real name, or how she can ever have a normal life.

Enter the Germans. A glancing encounter with a German peace activist leads Pip to an internship in South America with The Sunlight Project, an organisation that traffics in all the secrets of the world – including, Pip hopes, the secret of her origins. TSP is the brainchild of Andreas Wolf, a charismatic provocateur who rose to fame in the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now on the lam in Bolivia, Andreas is drawn to Pip for reasons she doesn’t understand, and the intensity of her response to him upends her conventional ideas of right and wrong.

Finishing this novel felt like finishing a marathon — a long, exhausting marathon where I needed to concentrate on every sentence or I’d miss some vital information. Don’t get me wrong, this novel is fantastic. The writing is beautiful and the characterisation is marvellous and the development of the story is organic and realistic and believable. BUT this novel is an absolute beast. It’s 600 pages of big paragraphs and no chapters. That’s right. There are NO chapters in this novel, just sections. And each section ranges from 80 pages to 150 pages.

Franzen writes flawed characters so well, and pretty much every main character in this novel has a major flaw. Pip (the main character) never knew her father and later in life, she makes a habit of forming inappropriate attractions towards older men. She seems to willingly make mistakes or serious errors in moral judgement, but she is unapologetic and seems unwilling to learn from her mistakes. At times, she seems like a passive character, overshadowed by the characters Tom and Andreas and unsure about her place within the storyline.

Franzen creates these almost unlikeable, flawed characters so that readers can’t not talk about them. I had to take a couple of breaks when reading this book just so I could chat to a couple of my friends who’d read the book. I even stopped reading Purity and read two other novels before going back to it. I needed a break. This book is literature at its best, and each sentence is vital to the storyline. At one point in the novel, an entire storyline was actually a flashback and I didn’t realise. I obviously must have missed the sentence where that flashback started. Franzen gives you the backstory of pretty much every main character, but there always seems to be some ambiguity to their character, and it seems that the only way the reader can come to understand this is to talk about it. And that is one of the many things that Franzen excels at as a writer.

Each section in the novel focuses on a different character, or a different time period. Some sections go into pages-long flashbacks, or pages-long tangents. But Franzen ties it all together and everything makes sense, and the characters’ motives are fleshed out through three-dimensional characterisation and his beautiful, lyrical prose. Just read these wonderful quotes from the book:

“I am in love. I’m the least beautiful girl at Los Volcanes, but I’m funny and brave and honest and he chose me. He can break my heart later—I don’t care” – page 284

“His long sexual drought had recently ended with his bedding of a sophomore poet who was obviously going to shred his heart but hadn’t got around to it yet” – page 349

“Fog spilled from the heights of San Francisco like the liquid it almost was” – page 517

Franzen’s characters all resonate with the reader. Some readers might even relate to these characters and find themselves drawing similarities to Pip or Tom or Andreas or some of the minor characters.

A lot happens in this book. Andreas murders someone and is haunted by it for the rest of his life, and Pip manages to track down her father. Despite the fact that the book is long and very, very detailed (almost too detailed) and there’s about 5000 tangents, Purity is wonderful and well worth the long slog of reading it. I recommend this book to every reader. Even if you only read the first hundred pages, you’ll still be able to admire Franzen’s extraordinary writing ability.

My Score: 10/10

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

I wish that I didn’t know this was written by Neil Gaiman until after I’d read it, because I think I made excuses for the storyline based on the fact that the author is NEIL GAIMAN. But in all honesty, what the hell happened in this book? There was fantasy mixed in with reality and it was all a little confusing, and it was hard to work out what was real and what wasn’t.

Okay, let’s start with the positives. The writing is beautiful. Neil Gaiman can write beautiful, lyrical prose and realistic dialogue. He can construct great characters and he can build upon them with fantastic imagery and description, and the relationships between the main characters seemed authentic and engaging and uniquely brilliant.

But unfortunately, the characters and the quality of the writing were overshadowed by the almost forced (and sometimes unnatural) insertion of fantastical elements into this realistic setting. It detracted from the story, and it stopped me from really appreciating the meaning of the story and the meaning behind the storyline. The fantasy elements stopped me from paying attention to the character relations and the development of the story. I simply read along to find out what happened, but I was no longer as invested in the characters or the story as I was before.

People who love Neil Gaiman will love this book because it’s Neil Gaiman. People who haven’t read Neil Gaiman might be a bit disappointed with the book. If you’re planning on reading this book, then I’ll give you one piece of advice: read it with an open mind.

My Score: 6/10

The Revenant by Michael Punke

Rocky Mountains, 1823

The trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is one of the most respected men in the company, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker.

But when a scouting mission puts Glass face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two men from the company are ordered to remain with him until his inevitable death. But, fearing an imminent attack, they abandon Glass, stripping him of his prized rifle and hatchet.

As Glass watches the men flee, he is driven to survive by one all-consuming desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, he sets out on a three-thousand-mile journey across the harsh American frontier, to seek revenge on the men who betrayed him.

The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution

This book is the ultimate story of vengeance. Hugh Glass is mauled by a bear and the two men he was travelling with rob him and leave him to die. And then Hugh Glass vows to survive so he can seek his revenge. In other words, this is a role that’s fantastic for Leonardo DiCaprio, who will play Hugh Glass in the move adaptation (out January 2016 – trailer at the bottom of this post).

The opening chapter is fantastic, and you’ll anticipate this just from the first sentence alone: “They were abandoning him”. The ominous tone of the first chapter immediately draws the reader in, as well as the detailed way that Michael Punke describes the bear attack and the subsequent events that lead to Hugh Glass being alone and vulnerable in open plains. Michael Punke gives detailed descriptions of setting and actions. Hugh Glass spends the first third of the book trying to survive on his own and create shelter, find food, and fight off predators etc. Punke uses descriptive sentences to tell us how Glass survives, and strays away from mentioning Glass’ feelings and emotions during this time.

The story switches between Hugh Glass and the two men that abandoned him. One of the men was a young boy who was influenced by their other companion, Fitzgerald. In the film adaptation, Thomas Hardy will play Fitzgerald, who is cold, ruthless, and has no remorse. The other men lie and say that Hugh Glass is dead, and Michael Punke has written their characters so that you feel nothing for them — you don’t hate them and you don’t sympathise for them. You just know, by the development of the story, that Hugh Glass will eventually catch up with them.

There are many near misses in the book when Hugh Glass is almost killed by Indians and is forced to watch his other companions (that he met along his journey) be murdered and mutilated. This helps to fasten the pace of the story and maintain the reader’s interest.

At times, the story felt a little slow. For the first third of the novel, Hugh Glass is all alone, trying to survive in the harsh winter, and after a while, the reader is desperate for his story to develop. The reader is desperate for some other characters, and for some interaction between the now scarred and injured Glass, and other men he meets on his way to finding Fitzgerald and the boy. But Michael manages to pick this up in the final 50 pages of the novel when Hugh Glass actually does find the two men.

I would recommend this book to people who love Western novels. This novel is based on true events, and it’s hard to believe that anyone could survive the horrific injuries that Hugh Glass sustains after the bear attacks him. The Revenant is set in the early 1800s, and is raw, rich, and rewarding for the reader.

My Score: 7/10

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y]

Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.

But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.

This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?

This is such a heartbreaking novel from such a talented young writer. The novel is written from the point of view of Maud, an elderly woman suffering from dementia. Slowly, her memory gets worse to the point where she notices something, and then one sentence later, she forgets what she’s noticed.

Emma captured the relationship between Maud and her daughter extremely well. Helen – her daughter – becomes frustrated by Maud’s memory problems, and although it seems horrible and cold at first, you begin to understand her frustrations. You, as the reader, begin to grow a little frustrated with Maud. She’s an extremely unreliable narrator. At one point in the novel, she calls the doctor because she is injured and you find out that she’s actually already called the doctor quite a few times that week. Because Maud forgets things so easily, she doesn’t even tell them to the reader, so you have to find out second hand from a different character. It’s an extremely effective stylistic technique that highlights just how advanced Maud’s dementia is and just how unreliable she is as a result.

Because Maud is an unreliable narrator, you doubt everything she says and you wonder whether she is telling you the truth. You start to sympathise with Helen and with her granddaughter, who are trying to take care of her so that she doesn’t have to go into a care home. Also, you want to find out if Elizabeth is actually missing, or if perhaps she’s passed away.

There are two plots in this story and they weave together seamlessly. Maud’s search for Elizabeth reminds her of when her sister Sukey went missing shortly after World War II. The chapters are interspersed with stories from Maud’s past, but also from Maud’s present. And in the end, both mysteries are solved and surprisingly, they both connect together.

This novel is not something you can read in one sitting. Maud’s memory loss and constant back-and-forth can be exhausting to read, but the writing is beautiful and the characters are wonderful and it’s worth it. Stick with it, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the story upon finishing it.

My Score: 9/10
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Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee

From Harper Lee comes a landmark new novel set two decades after her beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Maycomb, Alabama. Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – returns home from New York City to visit her aging father, Atticus. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights tensions and political turmoil that were transforming the South, Jean Louise’s homecoming turns bittersweet when she learns disturbing truths about her close-knit family, the town and the people dearest to her. Memories from her childhood flood back, and her values and assumptions are thrown into doubt.

Written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman imparts a fuller, richer understanding and appreciation of Harper Lee. Here is an unforgettable novel of wisdom, humanity, passion, humor and effortless precision – a profoundly affecting work of art that is both wonderfully evocative of another era and relevant to our own times. It not only confirms the enduring brilliance of To Kill a Mockingbird, but also serves as its essential companion, adding depth, context and new meaning to an American classic.

This is definitely one of the most highly anticipated novels of 2015, and despite my initial concerns, reading it did not change my opinion of To Kill A Mockingbird. This novel is set two decades after To Kill A Mockingbird finishes – same characters, different society. What this novel does most is add depth to Harper Lee’s earlier novel. Scout has grown up to be proud and defiant and – like most people in their 20s – she thinks she knows everything and feels entitled to make her opinion known to others.

Structurally, I didn’t like this book. There are a lot of flashbacks to the time period between when To Kill a Mockingbird is set and when Go Set A Watchman is set. Sometimes there’d be whole chapters that tell a story from ten years earlier. Sometimes there’d be a couple of pages where Scout remembers an incident or scenario from earlier in her life, but then she’ll switch back to the current setting. This was quite confusing, and I’m not sure I liked it. Although it was interesting to read about these stories and it DID add a lot of depth to not only Scout’s character but also to the others (Atticus, Dr. Finch etc), it felt like a tangent.

Harper Lee seems to jolt around between events. The novel felt like it was going around in circles, until the final 50 pages when Scout and Atticus really explore their relationship and Scout confronts her father over what’s bothering her: Atticus is now a racist and it appears that he is not quite ready for equality within the South.

I had to re-read quite a few chapters because I’d get to the end of a chapter and although I followed the story, I was sure I’d misunderstood the real meaning behind that section. This is both a testament to Harper Lee’s lyrical writing but evidence of the hazy nature of the storytelling.

The final 50 pages are the most significant, naturally, but I think it took too long to get there. Perhaps it’s because I recently read To Kill A Mockingbird and adored the realistic progression of events and the chronological telling of events. Perhaps it’s because I didn’t think it was necessary to include all of the flashbacks. Or perhaps I’m picking a fight with this book because it is and always will be impossible to top To Kill A Mockingbird.

Harper Lee was never going to be able to match the literary brilliance of To Kill A Mockingbird, but this novel helps us further understand both Scout and Atticus, and also the social relations between white and black people in the South during that time period.

I recommend you read or re-read To Kill A Mockingbird before reading Go Set A Watchman.

My Score: 6/10
Buy at BOOKTOPIA or BOOKWORLD