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JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

June 19, 2021

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

June 19, 2021

Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over-especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control.
By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames.

But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Lifestyle of the rich and the famous! Taylor Jenkins Reid’s literary novel Malibu Rising explores one unforgettable night in the life of a wealthy, famous family, where everyone is forced to confront their mistakes and their secrets. Malibu Rising is a beautiful, delightful and enchanting novel, whisking readers away on an emotional journey through time.

Whilst the story moves back and forth between decades, the main storyline is that of the present — the four children of famous singer-songwriter Mick Riva are planning a Malibu party. The events of the book take place over 24 hours in 1983, where eldest daughter Nina is reeling from a failed marriage and cheating husband.

Sporadic chapters propel us back to 1956, where Nina’s mother, June, meets Mick. He’s not yet famous, and over the course the novel we follow their love story. Despite sharing an instant connection, he is not loyal nor is he a faithful husband. After a string of affairs and disappearances, and June’s descend into alcoholism, suddenly Nina must take on the role of caregiver for her three younger siblings. It’s a role she adopts for most of her adult life.

“Now here he was, nearly a year later, barricaded from his own house. But he’d known from the very moment he punched the mirror that this was looming. Maybe he’d known long before that, too. Maybe he’d always known he couldn’t escape himself.”

Taylor’s writing is inviting and emotional — we grow to love Nina and her siblings, we sympathise for them, we root for them. But June’s story is as tragic as Nina’s. She’s sweet-hearted and full of hope. She has dreams that exceed what her parents expect of her. She wants to do more than just take over her parents’ fish and chip shop — she wants to find love and have children and she wants to be blissfully happy. And when she meets Mick, she naively thinks he’ll give that to her.

Nina and her siblings have bonded over quite tragic of circumstances. Even betrayal is short-lived between them, because they’ve weathered worse during their childhoods. Taylor Jenkins Reid has crafted four young characters who have all been broken by the absence of their father — his rejection of them. Their mother did the best she could, but any success they possess is of their own doing, and they’ve spent their relatively short lives purely trying to survive, and I can imagine it’d be exhausting.

“Nina grew more and more anxious with every second. He could fall off, he could lose the board, he could break his leg or his hand or go under. Nina quietly calculated how she would save him, or what she would say if the owner showed up, how she could handle all of this if it went south.”

The novel centres around an infamous and raucous party, but it’s worth noting the party doesn’t really kick off until at least halfway through the novel. For most of the story, we’re in June’s timeline. By the time the party rolls around, the events of the evening seem a bit squished together in an unnatural, fast-paced scene.

Admittedly, the ending did feel a bit farfetched. Not the fire, which is teased in the prologue. But the confrontations between the siblings, and the resolution of Nina’s journey in the book. It all felt a little stretched and over the top, particularly in the dialogue — like a caricature of reality. In most scenes that feature Mick, present or past, his dialogue can border on cringeworthy.

“So Nina knew she couldn’t cancel a party like that. The Rivas might not be like most families, being just the four of them, but they had their traditions. And anyway, there was no good way to cancel a party that never had any invitations. People were coming, whether she wanted them there or not.”

Malibu Rising is recommended for readers of contemporary fiction, and romance. The novel moves between the 1950s-1980s, so those of you who love reading stories set during these decades will appreciate the setting. Readership skews female, 25+

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

Malibu Rising
Taylor Jenkins Reid
June 2021
Penguin Random House Publishers

Leave a Comment · Labels: 8/10, Adult Fiction, Book Reviews Tagged: adult fiction, book review, fiction, literary, literary fiction, review

May 16, 2021

Before You Knew My Name by Jacqueline Bublitz

May 16, 2021

This is not just another novel about a dead girl.

When she arrived in New York on her 18th birthday carrying nothing but $600 cash and a stolen camera, Alice Lee was looking for a fresh start. Now, just one month later, she is the city’s latest Jane Doe, an unidentified murder victim.

Ruby Jones is also trying to start over; she travelled halfway around the world only to find herself lonelier than ever. Until she finds Alice’s body by the Hudson River.

From this first, devastating encounter, the two women form an unbreakable bond. Alice is sure that Ruby is the key to solving the mystery of her life – and death. And Ruby – struggling to forget what she saw that morning – finds herself unable to let Alice go. Not until she is given the ending she deserves.

Before You Knew My Name doesn’t ask whodunnit. Instead, this powerful, hopeful novel asks: Who was she? And what did she leave behind? The answers might surprise you.

Jacqueline Bublitz’s debut novel Before You Knew My Name is compelling and powerful literary fiction about murder and grief, but also about what happens to those left behind after someone is killed.

Two woman arrive in New York City on the same day, and although they don’t know each other, their lives soon intersect under tragic circumstances. Thirty-six year old Ruby, running away from love, discovers the body of 18-year old Alice Lee. Raped and murdered in the early hours of the morning, Alice is about to be the latest statistic of women murdered in NYC.

The book switches focus between Alice and Ruby, as we work to find out what happened to Alice in her final days, and how Ruby will cope in the wake of the murder.

“In the beginning, I disappeared on purpose. Extricated myself from a life I didn’t want, just like Ruby did. But unlike Ruby, I didn’t tell anyone where I went. Not even my best friend. I let Tammy think I had stayed right where she left me; I wanted to skip out of my old life unseen. And if certain people stayed on my skin, if they came along in my suitcase uninvited, at least they wouldn’t be able to cause any fresh wounds.”

Whilst Before You Knew Me Name features elements of crime and thriller in the story — peppered but present — I wouldn’t describe this as crime fiction. It’s a character-driven story that dances around the murder, building tension with each passing chapter as we come closer to understanding Alice’s final hours, and how that will intersect with Ruby’s story.

Jacqueline’s writing is a key strength here. It’s reflective and observant — mature. Alice presents this all-knowing voice, which invites the reader in and expertly guides them until the final page. The novel explores so much more than just love and loss. It’s about connection and family, and about someone else choosing where your life is going in a split second. It’s about how to take stock of her life, even when you’re going through the worst time, and choose for yourself how you want to continue.

“I am tired of beautiful things making me sad. I should like to love something without turning it over and discovering exposed wires, cheap parts on the other side. For the first time, I wish he wasn’t so insistent on telling me the truth of things.”

Initially, it does take a couple of chapters to grow comfortable with the style of narration. The novel is written posthumously from Alice’s perspective, but in the midst of telling her own story, she does intermittently focus in on Ruby’s story. Switching between past and present, Alice seems to be all-knowing, offering reflections on Ruby’s life with an intimate perspective.

So whilst the writing is incredibly affecting and delicate, and the story is told in the best possible format, the stylistic elements of the writing — in particular the POV — do take a bit of time to get used to.

“Later, when I look back at all the beginnings that turned me, inch by inch, toward the river, I will see this was the gentlest of them. Shaking the soft, warm hand of an old man, and then a tour of his apartment, with a large, brown dog leading the way.”

Exceptional literary writing that will sit with you for days after completion, Before You Knew My Name is powerful and devastating. As hard as it is to ‘enjoy’ something of this subject matter, it is a phenomenal read. A comparison title would be Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones.

Readership skews female, all ages.

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

Before You Knew My Name
Jacqueline Bublitz
May 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Leave a Comment · Labels: 10/10, Adult Fiction, Book Reviews Tagged: adult fiction, book review, crime, fiction, literary, literary fiction, review, thriller

March 27, 2021

New Animal by Ella Baxter

March 27, 2021

It’s not easy getting close to people. Amelia’s meeting a lot of men but once she gets the sex she wants from them, that’s it for her; she can’t connect further. A terrible thing happened to Daniel last year and it’s stuck inside Amelia ever since, making her stuck too.

Maybe being a cosmetician at her family’s mortuary business isn’t the best job for a young woman. It’s not helping her social life. She loves her job, but she’s not great at much else. Especially emotion.

And then something happens to her mum and suddenly Amelia’s got too many feelings and the only thing that makes any sense to her is running away.

It takes the intervention of her two fathers and some hilariously wrong encounters with other broken people in a struggling Tasmanian BDSM club to help her accept the truth she has been hiding from. And in a final, cataclysmic scene, we learn along with Amelia that you need to feel another person’s weight before you can feel your own.

Ella Baxter’s debut novel New Animal explores sex, family, death and grief. Our protagonist — Amelia — is using sex to mask emotional pain. Not quite ready to process the suicide of a friend one year earlier, her chaotic life is disrupted even further when her mother unexpectedly passes.

New Animal certainly feels unique, a compact read sitting at just over 200 pages. It almost feels like a slightly extended short story, delicately weaving through Amelia’s life with intimacy and ease. The reader feels like some sort of passenger along a journey, intimate enough that we quickly grow to love Amelia, but at times so closely following this life that we find ourselves feeling a little claustrophobic — in a good way — when Amelia’s experiments with sex escalate.

Trigger warning around suicide and also BDSM. There is one particular scene in a Tasmanian BDSM club that took me quite some time to process.

“Once, I told a man what I needed from him and he recoiled, appalled. He said that I was basically using people, crushing them between my pincers. He tapped his thumb and forefinger together to demonstrate.”

Ella’s biggest strength is how easily and expertly she writes in first person. The prose is eloquent, as if pored over for hours. But we also get such fascinating insight into Amelia’s state of mind — her pain. Amelia’s observations about others are insightful and imaginative, but the prose is also lean and brief, allowing for a succinct and quick-moving plot.

Another admirable aspect to the book is the family dynamic, and Ella’s ability to capture Amelia’s family with an authentic sense of warmth. Despite Amelia’s struggles, she’s got a really beautiful family who all come together in a crisis. Their voices are very different, and Amelia’s relationship with both of her fathers adds layers to the family make-up.

“People can sometimes act boldly around the bereaved. They can quickly take care to an unfathomable level. It’s part of the horror of it all really. One person rolls out of your life and half-a-dozen others roll right in. I’ve seen people turn up to funerals ready to harass Judy for extra biscuits or seat cushions. In it for the long haul.”

I think there was room to further explore Amelia’s relationship with her family, in particular her fathers. Her siblings in particular are absent for most of the novel, and I think there was more that could’ve been explored with their presence in Amelia’s life.

Interestingly, a lot of messaging around this novel positions it as ‘funny’, which isn’t how I would describe this. I found the story moving and tender, at times situationally awkward. It’s heartbreaking, yes. But I wouldn’t call this a laugh-out-loud comedy.

“Most nights I find myself trying to combine with someone else to become this two-headed thing with flailing limbs, chomping teeth, and tangled hair. This new animal. I am medicated by another body. Drunk on warm skin. Dumbly high on the damp friction between them and me.”

Original and engrossing in style and characterisation, recommended for readers of literary fiction. Ella offers incredible insight into humanity and its multitude of emotions. Readership skews female, 25+

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

New Animal
Ella Baxter
March 2021
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers

Leave a Comment · Labels: 8/10, Adult Fiction, Book Reviews Tagged: adult fiction, book review, fiction, literary fiction, review

January 23, 2021

The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah

January 23, 2021

She will discover the best of herself in the worst of times . . .

Texas, 1934. Elsa Martinelli had finally found the life she’d yearned for. A family, a home and a livelihood on a farm on the Great Plains. But when drought threatens all she and her community hold dear, Elsa’s world is shattered to the winds.

Fearful of the future, when Elsa wakes to find her husband has fled, she is forced to make the most agonizing decision of her life. Fight for the land she loves or take her beloved children, Loreda and Ant, west to California in search of a better life. Will it be the land of milk and honey? Or will their experience challenge every ounce of strength they possess?

Kristin Hannah’s The Four Winds is one of my highly anticipated releases for 2021. I absolutely adored her previous novel, The Great Alone, and have been holding out for this new one for months now.

The Four Winds is impeccable — a sweeping, masterful historical fiction feat. It’s emotional and moving, inspiring and just absolutely heartbreaking at times. This is the perfect adult novel, I can’t fault it.

The novel brings to fruition the early 1930s Great Depression and Dust Bowl migration, laying bare the challenges and struggles that American families faced trying to feed their children. Many husbands fled their responsibilities, leaving young women to care for children alone. It was a time of great suffering and prejudice.

“The next morning, Elsa woke well before dawn and found Rafe’s side of the bed empty. He’d slept in the barn again. Lately he preferred it to being with her. With a sigh, she got dressed and left her room.”

Set in Texas, when Elsa and Rafe sleep together outside of wedlock and Elsa falls pregnant, they’re forced to get married. Rafe’s plans to go to college are pulverised, and Elsa is abandoned by her parents — her disgrace has hurt them beyond repair. Elsa and Rafe move in with Rafe’s parents and years pass. Another child is born.

The drought has considerable affect on the family’s farm. Everyone works all day to keep the family afloat, but it’s impossible without any rain. And then one morning, Rafe abandons them and Elsa is forced to make unbelievable sacrifices to keep her children alive.

The Four Winds explores a mother’s sacrifice and determination to provide for her children, but it also explores love and family, friendship and loyalty. In the end, Rafe’s parents end up being more of a family for Elsa than her cold, harsh parents ever were.

“She saw how red his cheeks were from the cold, saw the plumes of his breath and the weight loss that had sunken his face and eyes. For a man who had two religions — God and the land — he was dying a little each day, disappointed by them both.”

Written in third person, Kristin Hannah has crafted emotionally rich characters, people you want to cheer for and people who make you keep turning the pages because you’re desperate to discover more about them. Her books are set in some of the worst conditions, and they show us how resilient and determined people can be when they have something to live for — to fight for.

An underlying theme in the book is that of dreams — wanting a better life. When the harsh and unrelenting Dust Bowl hits, many nearby farmers abandon their homes and travel West in search of a better life. But conditions there aren’t necessarily any better, and people are judged and ostracised for where they’ve come from. There’s little work, even smaller wages to be earned, and the conditions in which they must live are inhumane. And still, Elsa perseveres.

“Another scorcher of a day, and not even ten in the morning. So far, September had offered no respite from the heat. Elsa knelt on the linoleum kitchen floor, scrubbing hard. She had already been up for hours. It was best to do chores in the relative cool of dawn and dusk.”

Gritty and beautiful, highly recommended. I couldn’t fault this even if I tried.

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

The Four Winds
Kristin Hannah
February 2021
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Leave a Comment · Labels: 10/10, Adult Fiction, Book Reviews Tagged: book review, fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, review

November 20, 2020

REVIEW AND AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Life After Truth by Ceridwen Dovey

November 20, 2020

Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers. Eloise, now a professor who studies the psychology of happiness, is troubled by her younger wife’s radical politics. And Jomo, founder of a luxury jewellery company, has been carrying an engagement ring around for months, unsure whether his girlfriend is the one.

The soul searching begins in earnest at their much-anticipated college reunion weekend on the Harvard campus, when the most infamous member of their class, Frederick – senior advisor and son of the recently elected and loathed US president – turns up dead.

Set in 2018, Ceridwen Dovey’s Life After Truth is contemporary fiction centred around a 15-year Harvard college reunion, and how the weekend of re-connection affects a diverse group of five friends.

Reunions evoke soul-searching in even the most secure of people — reflecting on your past life, what you’ve become, have you reached your full potential? Are you where you thought you’d be?

The premise of this novel is a catalyst for a lot of emotional growth in a character, and in this novel there are five of them. Ceridwen’s novel is a breeding ground for a group of people who are forced to decide what they want in their life, and cast away what they don’t. The book explores raw, emotional issues that many readers will be able to relate to — parenthood, marriage, relationships, desire, regret.

“Eloise had made up her mind, back then, that when Jules was with her she’d let her feel free to be nothing much at all — as her friend, she could be a refuge from all the demands other people made on her. They could talk or not talk, be silly or serious, silent or boisterous, share dirty jokes or painful childhood memories.”

Narrated in third person and moving between each of the characters, most of the book is reflecting on the past. Delicately constructed chapters weave a tale of past mistakes, reflections and altercations. The five friends share an intricate past, and tensions rise when they meet for the Harvard reunion.

Ceridwen has a real talent for carving out a characters’ nature using glimpses of their past. Events from their youth have shaped who these five have become today — their attitudes and personalities, but also their worries and concerns, their trigger points. There are moments of bitterness, jealousy, misunderstanding.

By learning about their past selves, we come to understand how these relationships and friendships have evolved over time. Some have dwindled, some have strengthened. Some are on the cusp of something great. There are a couple of connections that threaten to break — secrets left unsaid, tensions unresolved. It’s a fascinating exploration of human society and the middle class. A worthy choice for a book club.

“He hadn’t seen Jules in a while, not since Thanksgiving. He wondered if she had anybody in her life to come home to in the evenings. She was a person who did not naturally share this kind of information even with her closest friends; whether it was because of her nature or her fame, it was hard to tell.”

I think there was room for a little more humour — more lightness. The mood of the novel is a sombre one, very thoughtful. And surprisingly, this novel isn’t really the crime or thriller novel that the blurb suggests. Frederick’s death is discovered at the beginning of the novel, and then it’s resolved again in the very final pages. In between, the story is all about the past. At times, the reflection felt a little overwhelming. I would’ve loved a bit more plot in the present — a bit more interaction between the characters of now, not just the characters from years past.

Other than that, Ceridwen has crafted a novel that really forces a reader to ponder their own life — if you’re thrust back into another time from your life, mingling with people who you spent your youth with, how would you feel about the person you are now? The life you lead?

“Rowan had not really ever had much to elevate him above his similarly brilliant, overachieving peers except that he’d had the great good fortune to meet his ‘soul mate’ on the very first night of college, when he’d laid eyes on Mariam at the freshman ice-cream social held in the Yard.”

Recommended for fans of literary fiction.

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

Life After Truth
Ceridwen Dovey
November 2020
Penguin Random House Publishers

***

AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH CERIDWEN DOVEY

Life After Truth switches focus between numerous characters, all with their own distinct voice. How did you manage the task of crafting the story and capturing each character authentically? Were there difficulties illustrating the timeline for each of these storylines?
This was the first time I’ve ever written using alternating third-person focalized narration (in other words, while inside that character’s consciousness, even though it’s third-person narration, I wouldn’t let them know or be able to express what any of the other characters were thinking in those same scenes/sections). While I’m still quite partial to first-person narration, I really loved writing these different voices like this – something about the third-person helps to give you, as the author, a bit of distance and perspective on the character. It’s not that relentlessly personal “I.” You can play a little more with what the character knows and what only you know as their creator. I didn’t worry too much, while I was writing, about making each voice sound different or distinctive on the page in terms of word and sentence choice, but really just focused on creating equally rich and interesting back stories and emotional dilemmas for them. I did have to be careful with the timeline, especially with Jomo’s sections, which are so crucial to understanding the choices Jules (from whom we never hear directly) makes in the end.


Reflection is a major part of the novel – thinking back on where you once were, and questioning where you are now. Are any events in the novel based on life experiences? 

You’re right that reflection and reassessing one’s own past in relation to others is a key theme in the novel. All the characters are approaching middle age, and there’s nothing like a reunion to throw a spanner in the existential works and make you question all your life choices! I structured the novel over the reunion weekend so that there would be certain scenes in the immediate present (reunion events, etc.) but with plenty of space and time for each character to be casting his/her thoughts backwards, trying to remember who they had once been on that same campus. There are bits and pieces from life experience that I’ve used – I did once think I was actually going to be killed by feral bush pigs while camping above the Ngorongoro Crater, for instance! – but the wonderful thing about writing fiction, as any writer out there knows, is that it never takes the same form on the page as it does in real life. If anything, I would say it was the emotional cadences of my own Harvard reunions that I drew on the most and tried to render in language: the highs and lows, the constant internal monologue interspersed with the forced high sociality of these reunion events, the way they make you look both backwards and into the future in a way that can be very confronting, and also moving or inspiring.

What motivates you to write?

I started quite young on this journey as a writer – I wrote my first novel when I was 23. And I turn 40 this week! So I’ve had a lot of years now to try to answer that question, and I have to admit I still don’t really know. If I have to justify it in concrete terms, I’d say something about the cathartic effect of shaping the messiness of lived experience, or the way I don’t know what I feel or think until I’ve put it into words, or the sense of always standing slightly outside of the normal passage of time and life, peering in, and writing lets me translate that disconnection into connection at a remove. Yet I’ve come to see there’s also something mysterious about what draws a person to write fiction, and thinking about the ‘why’ of it too deeply is a bit like asking a centipede how many legs it has and then expecting it to continue walking on all those legs unselfconsciously. You have to guard the most intimate motivations for why you write fiction otherwise I suspect you’d lose all will to do it in the first place…

Would you be able to delve into your editing process. Once you’ve written the first draft, and you’re ready to tackle the second, third, fourth draft etc, what is your process? How do you mould your first draft into your final one?

Life After Truth is my fourth work of fiction, and with every single one I’ve had a completely different writing and editing process (I think this is why I find writing so addictive: every time, I am literally starting over from scratch with a new method or process, and feel like I don’t know what on earth I’m doing – and as a result, it also always feels like an unknown and exciting adventure). But one thing I have been surprised to learn over the years is how radically different the drafting process (the messy, pour-it-down-on-the-page creation phase) is to the crafting process (the more reasoned and critical let-it-cool-down-and-then-carve-it editing phase). It’s amazing that we expect one human to have both capacities, as they often strike me as drawing on very different skillsets and sensibilities. During drafting, you have to give yourself permission to speak – which is much harder than it sounds! – and switch off every critical faculty in your brain so that you’re not paralyzed by uncertainty or lack of confidence. But then, in the editing phase, you have to be your own harshest critic, be ruthless and severe, and look at what you’ve created with a sceptical eye in the cold light of day. With Life After Truth, this editing process was not quite as devastating as it has been for past projects (where I’ve been trying to excavate my own psyche) because all of the characters were invented, and the stakes weren’t quite as high in an ethical sense, so I found it quite satisfying to hone the narrative. But I think that’s also because the drafting process was so much fun for this novel, and came relatively easily, so in the editing phase I didn’t feel that I had to craft a sculpture out of a lump of clay (as I have felt sometimes in the past) – it was more like just using a tool to refine and polish.

If you could go back in time to when you were working on your first novel, what writing advice or guidance would you give your younger self?
I would tell the early-20-something me, just starting out, incredibly anxious about my ‘right’ to write, to enjoy that experience more. There’s nothing like writing your first novel, because you are writing it for yourself alone, in a fundamental sense – you are writing it with no idea or sense that anybody else will one day read it (even if that is your hope). You only get to experience that once, because after that first novel is published, you are always aware that – even though not all drafts of novels live to find an audience – there is a chance that it might become a public document at some stage. That does something weird to your mind, and I think that’s why the notorious second novel is such a challenge: you’ve lost the feeling of doing something very private and secretive and personal; you’ve lost the sense of writing to figure something out for yourself alone.

Leave a Comment · Labels: 8/10, Adult Fiction, Book Reviews, Interviews Tagged: adult fiction, author interview, book review, fiction, interview, literary fiction, review

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