JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jewish fist-fighter in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up, and closed down.

This was a re-read for me, and I finished it just prior to Dymocks announcing that The Book Thief had topped the Top 101 books list.

This story is amazing, and extremely difficult to review. Even when I give something a 10/10, I try to point out at least one fault in the story, because not every story is perfect, right? Wrong! This novel is beautifully written, and uses subtly to highlight the horror of the Holocaust and the immense loss of life – the line ‘death has never been busier’ achieves this all by itself.

The unique thing about this book is that it’s written from the point of view of Death as he travels across Nazi Germany and collects souls during the Holocaust. His point of view allows for a reverent tale. He’s honest, and he travels around to showcase different characters. I liked that Death would mention things that would eventually happen to a character – it would completely blindside the reader. Death liked to talk about someone in the story, and then give a fleeting mention on how they’re going to die, or when, or even if they’re going to die soon. This intrigues the reader and propels the story forward.

This book is sad. Because of Death’s narration (and his foretelling), you know that certain characters are going to die, but you just don’t know when or how. And waiting for that is both a cruel and genius writing technique.

The character development is definitely one of the strengths of this novel. Leisel grows to love her foster parents, who have many flaws, and they grow to acknowledge the injustice surrounding them. Leisel and Max bond over storytelling and writing, and Leisel’s best friend Rudy helps to show a different side of Leisel – she’s determined, bold, and she knows what she wants. She evolves throughout the story, and stops being so timid and naïve.

I recommend this novel to everyone. It’s fantastic, and it’s something you should keep on your bookshelf for a reread.

My Score: 10/10
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The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.

Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.

At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.

Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth . . .

I’ve wanted to read this book since before I read Broken Monsters – mostly because I love the cover (I really need to stop judging books by their covers) and I was told this book is different to most crime/thriller novels. It’s not really a crime novel as such. It has elements of science fiction in it, and the jumping-back-and-forth style of storytelling is different to that of most crime/thriller novels.

The serial killer, Harper Curtis, is not glorified in this book – nor is his only survivor, Kirby, who starts tracking down his other victims in an attempt to catch Harper. Lauren Beukes always has such great characterisation. Each victim – and they may only be featured on a couple of pages – really feels unique, and you come to understand them, their desires, and what motivates them. And then they leave the story, and you feel depleted.

Beukes does a fantastic job of highlighting social prejudice. Harper travels through different time periods in order to kill these ‘shining girls’, and by doing so, the reader is subjected and thrust into the harsh, sexist or racial criticism that isn’t as prevalent in society today.

Sometimes I found myself having to reread a few pages in the first third of the book when Harper was travelling in and out of different time periods – when he was travelling back to his murders and leaving things at the scene. But this was only until I got the general idea of how his house worked, and how he was travelling back in time. Once I got that, I could follow the story quite easily.

The book ends on an almost ambiguous, especially between Kirby and the detective. I like this, because what Kirby experiences would dramatically affect how she reacts with other people. I recommend this book to people who love reading crime/thriller novels. The science fiction aspect (Harper being able to travel back and forth in time) is but a small aspect of the story, and shouldn’t act as a deterrent to those people who are always like ‘ew science fiction. No thanks’.

My Score: 8/10
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A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell

How do three sisters write a single suicide note?

In the waning days of 1999, the Alter sisters—Lady, Vee, and Delph—finalize their plans to end their lives. Their reasons are not theirs alone; they are the last in a long line of Alters who have killed themselves, beginning with their great-grandmother, the wife of a Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who developed the first poison gas used in World War I and the lethal agent used in Third Reich gas chambers. The chemist himself, their son Richard, and Richard’s children all followed suit.

A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent tale of fate and blood, sin and absolution; partly a memoir of sisters unified by a singular burden, partly an unflinching eulogy of those who have gone before, and above all a profound commentary on the events of the 20th century.

Title: A Reunion of Ghosts
Author: Judith Claire Mitchell
Publish Date: April 1st, 2015

This novel was promoted/described as being ‘like the Virgin Suicides’, and, as a huge Eugenides fan, that’s why I picked up this book. But I’ll be blunt: this is nothing like The Virgin Suicides. It’s not even close to being like it. There’s no mystery to these main characters. Everything about them is said (mostly by themselves), in a way where nothing is left to the imagination and the reader feels like they’re being talked at for 400 pages.

The ancestors’ history was somewhat interesting, but they seemed bland and lacking dimension. Their actions seemed unmotivated – they dragged along in their respective chapters. Also, there didn’t seem to be enough of an emotional connection between the three main characters and their ancestors. They seemed too separate.

The three main characters – Lady, Vee, and Delph – seemed like cardboard cut outs. They’re interesting at first and their lives seem to be a comedy of errors. But then they bored me so much that finishing this book was a real struggle. There didn’t seem to be anything about these women that I could relate to – they seemed sad and desperate, but with no redeeming qualities. At times they were funny, but that was it.

The setting in this novel was Manhattan, but it lost (or perhaps never really had) any real vibrancy. The author did nothing to use setting to the character’s advantage. In some ways, the setting was just as depressing as the three main characters.

My Score: 4/10
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The Book of Lost and Found by Lucy Foley

HERTFORDSHIRE, 1928
The paths of Tom and Alice collide against a haze of youthful, carefree exuberance. There’s champagne and excitement, but above all there’s the beginning of a love story that finds its feet by a lake one silvery moonlit evening.

PARIS, 1939
Alice is living in the city of light, but the pain of the last decade has already left its mark. Against the shadow that sweeps across Europe, she and Thomas Stafford – now a world famous artist – meet once more…

LONDON, 1986
Bestowed with an old charcoal portrait from her grandmother, Kate Darling can’t possibly imagine the secrets that have been lost to time. Kate’s journey takes her to Corsica, Paris and beyond, and as time melts away she is catapulted into the heart of a love story as epic as it is life changing…

I was reluctant to start this book because I really dislike the cover – it doesn’t scream LITERARY FICTION to me. But everyone else seemed to like the cover, so I’ll just move right along.

The first 100 pages are slow and hard to understand. There’s two different time periods, but for the same characters. And then there’s another time period more in the future, featuring completely different characters. It’s not until you get one third of the way through the story before you realise how the storylines connect. But, it’s worth it.

Lucy Foley captures Kate’s curiosity well. She wants to find out what happened to her maternal grandmother, but isn’t unrealistically too eager about it. And in this circumstance, her behaviour is believable. Her relationship with Thomas Stafford and his son is fleeting and polite, and her brief fling with his son is unresolved. I liked that. It makes the reader fill in the gaps left deliberately by Lucy Foley, and the reader knows that relationship never would’ve lasted anyway. It gives the relationship immortality and youth, and it gives the reader room for reverence.

I recommend this book to literary lovers – the writing is poignant, flowing, and descriptively imaginative.

My Score: 8/10
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Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

Maya is in love with both her boyfriend and her boss. Sadie’s lover calls her as he drives to meet his wife at marriage counseling. Gwen pines for her roommate, a man who will hold her hand but then tells her that her palm is sweaty. And Sasha agrees to have a drink with her married lover’s wife and then immediately regrets it. These are the women of Single, Carefree, Mellow, and in these eleven sublime stories they are grappling with unwelcome houseguests, disastrous birthday parties, needy but loyal friends, and all manner of love, secrets, and betrayal.

In “Cranberry Relish” Josie’s ex—a man she met on Facebook—has a new girlfriend he found on Twitter. In “Blue Heron Bridge” Nina is more worried that the Presbyterian minister living in her garage will hear her kids swearing than about his finding out that she’s sleeping with her running partner. And in “The Rhett Butlers” a teenager loses her virginity to her history teacher and then outgrows him.

Single, Carefree, Mellow is a collection of short stories about love, deceit, and betrayal. In fact, every short story (except for one) involves a couple where the female in the relationship is having an affair. And it’s usually introduced in the opening sentence. One particular cheater is the main character in three of the short stories. That’s a lot of betrayal for one book. I didn’t actually realise this before reading it, but then got to about the third or fourth short story and started to notice a trend.

And coincidentally, the one short story I didn’t like was the one where there was no affair. I’m going to assume it’s because without the cheating and scheming that I had grown accustomed to reading from the other stories, I found this particular short story a little boring. Even though it was about this mother’s struggling need to make her son’s birthday party a success, despite the trivial scenario, it dragged on and was quite unnecessarily detailed and started to bore me.

Katherine Heiny is a skilled short story writer – she opens her stories with a reflective, but morally-challenging paragraph that draws the reader in. And then she finishes her story with enough of a conclusion that the reader is satisfied, but they’re still hoping that character turns up in a later story. It was lovely that Maya’s story returned in two other stories – it helped me follow her story through.

Katherine Heiny’s writing style is quite reflective and the characters are unapologetically flawed. I enjoyed reading them and recommend this to fiction and romance readers, even you don’t normally read short stories.

My Score: 8/10
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