JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

The Aunts’ House by Elizabeth Stead

Sydney, 1942

Recently orphaned, Angel Martin moves into ab oarding house populated by an assortment of eccentric and colourful characters. She’s befriended by the gregarious Winifred Varnham – a vision in exotic fabrics – and the numerically gifted Barnaby Grange. But not everyone is kind and her scrimping landlady, Missus Potts, is only the beginning of Angel’s troubles.

Angel refuses to accept her fate and focusses her affections on her two maiden aunts. Despite their resistance, she is determined to forge a sense of belonging. Her visits to the aunts’ house on the Bay soon expand her world in ways she couldn’t have imagined.

Elizabeth Stead brings her classic subversive wit and personal insight to this nostalgic portrait of wartime Sydney. In Angel Martin, she has created a singular and irrepressible character. A true original.

Literary fiction novel The Aunt’s House is a quirky, charming tale of family, legacy and identity. Sydney author Elizabeth Stead brings warmth and wit to the novel, and a three-dimensional protagonist who readers have no choice but to adore.

The novel is set in 1942, and eleven-year-old Angel Martin is an orphan and the newest addition to a boarding house run by Missus Potts. Her father died many years earlier, and her mother has just passed away whilst living in a sanatorium. Angel is unwanted by her paternal aunts because they believe her mother was responsible for their brother’s death years earlier.

The novel was a bit of a slow start for me, the direction of the story a little unclear and my faith in the story wavering. But, over time, I grew to love little Angel and her resilient personality. The book is written from Angel’s perspective, but in third person, and so we learn to love her voice. It’s a bit stream of conscious, but also really hopeful and glass-half-full. She’s quite a quirky, strange girl and so her narration reflects that throughout the book.

There are moments of humour peppered throughout the story, amidst moments of darkness. A few of the men in the boarding house either try, or succeed, to sexually abuse Angel. She doesn’t seem to dwell on the assault much and pushes it out of her mind, and perhaps this is her method of avoiding and ignoring what happened so that she doesn’t have to confront the events.

“Angel liked to think B and K truly loved each other — she wanted them to love each other and she wanted them to be married and have lots of babies. But perhaps the whole thing might have been just a dream and nothing happened at all. It might just have been hearts on fire at first sight between stops.”

Mental illness is a strong theme throughout the book. Angel’s mother was living in a sanatorium when she died, and a lot of people in Angel’s life think she’s inherited her mother’s mental instability. Angel does what she wants, when she wants, and people find her tough and hard to manage.

Another strong theme is family and companionship. Angel forms friendships with numerous people in town and their bonds strengthen over the course of the novel. In the boarding house, she strikes up a friendship with the insightful Barnaby Grange, and the interesting and eccentric Winifred Warnham. She also regularly takes the tram to see her Aunts, who do not want her in their home. But Angel is determined and loveable, and soon, a connection is formed.

“She tried to remember what her father looked like before the accident but her remembrance was more a smell. Not a tram smell. Sunday was a tram smell, the electric smell of wood and rails and hot cables. No, the smell of her father she remembered was motorcycle racing fuel and the sight of it in leaked black patches on the backyard grass.”

The Aunt’s House is about the complexities of humans, and the importance of not passing judgment onto others. The characters in the book are all very unique, but they’re a clever and fun bunch of characters and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about them all.

I’d recommend this to readers of adult fiction and lovers of literary works. This is incredibly character-driven, and so perfect for fans of complex and dimensional fiction.

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

The Aunts’ House
Elizabeth Stead
April 2019
UQP Publishers

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

A moving story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog.

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatised by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.

While others worry that grief has made her a victim of magical thinking, the woman refuses to be separated from the dog except for brief periods of time. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.

Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.

In The Friend by Sigrid Nunez, the unnamed female narrator inherits a Great Dane named Apollo after her friend, fellow writer, and former mentor commits suicide. She lives in a 500-square-foot Manhattan apartment, is not allowed to own a dog in the apartment, and it also a self-confessed cat person.

The book is written in second person, directed at the friend who committed suicide, and is the perfect example of when an author executes second person really well in literature.

“Mostly he ignores me. He might as well live here alone. He makes eye contact at times, but instantly looks away again. His large hazel eyes are strikingly human; they remind me of yours… Having your dog is like having a part of you here.”

Suicide is mentioned sporadically, in tune with a human’s tendency to think through issues at different times of the day and in spurts. The narrator will wonder about her friend’s death, and his decision, for a moment or two, and then her thought process will switch to something else. Sigrid has captioned the human experience very well, particularly through the narrator’s internal dialogue.

The tone of the book is mournful, soulful, and rich with remembrance. The narrator is trying to come to terms with her friend’s death, and at times, the reasons behind it. The book shows great friendship between the narrator and her mentor. The two had a long history together, at one point they were intimate but mostly it was just a long-lasting and strong friendship.

At first, Apollo is a burden to the narrator. She takes him reluctantly. The dog is going to cause the narrator to get evicted from her apartment and whenever she leaves the dog for too long, she comes back to find him anxious and depressed. But over time, and particularly in the final third of the book, their friendship and understanding develops and she sees Apollo as a companion.

The fact that Apollo is the only character in the book who is named shows great significance.

“When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have to die and how much longer will it be before you lose the roof over your head, having a huge warm body pressed along the length of your spine is an amazing comfort.”

The book is as much about Apollo as it is about writers and writing, since the unnamed narrator is a writer and a writing tutor. She is often disappointed in what her students produce, and addresses her friend when she talks about the quality of the work she’s reading.

At times, the book feels like a blend between fiction and memoir, since Sigrid Nunez is a very accomplished author who may have once grappled with questions surrounding the nature writing that our unnamed narrator does.

The narrator’s friend was a writer and a writing professor, and he was far from perfect. You learn about his multiple marriages and his womanising. He was charming, but he was also a sexist man. He often slept with his female students, of which our narrator was one. His ex-wives, and the narrator’s interactions with them, all give the reader insight into what the character was like and how he affected those around him.

Our narrator doesn’t forget these things. She knows he was flawed, and he made mistakes. But she was also his friend and she loved him. She doesn’t make excuses for him, and quite a few times throughout the book she expresses her anger at him for what he was like when he was alive.

“I am left thinking about the mastiffs. Besides their great bulk and a mane that makes them look part lion, they are known for being fiercely protective and loyal to their masters. So what does a doh bred for those traits feel when its master lets it be herded onto one of those transport trucks? Does a dog understand betrayal?”

The book explores despair, but also understanding and hope. The character doesn’t understand — and didn’t foresee — her friend committing suicide and must learn to accept that she can’t change what happened.

Recommended for literary fiction lovers. Despite being well-written, the book does read a little dry at times and I feel this is a book best discovered by seasoned readers. There isn’t much plot in the book, so it’s really read for the narrative voice and the writing and the relationship between the narrator and her dead friend, and now her relationship with his dog.

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

The Friend
Sigrid Nunez
January 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

Louis and Louise by Julie Cohen

ONE LIFE. LIVED TWICE.

Louis and Louise are the same person born in two different lives. They are separated only by the sex announced by the doctor and a final ‘e’.

They have the same best friends, the same red hair, the same dream of being a writer, the same excellent whistle. They both suffer one catastrophic night, with life-changing consequences.

Thirteen years later, they are both coming home.

Louis and Louise by Julie Cohen is a novel about gender and identity, and how a child’s gender can — in some instances — predetermine a life and the path a person will take.

Stylistically, this book will remind you of Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. In 1978 Casablanca, Maine, Peggy and Irving Alder are getting ready for the birth of their first and only child. In the first chapter, that baby is born a girl and they call her Louise. In the second chapter, that baby is born a boy and they call him Louis. The book then alternates between Louis and Louise and in 2010, they return home to care for their dying mother.

They’re both hiding something. Their lives turned out very different — Louise is a teacher and a single mum who has grown estranged from her mother, and Louis is a successful author whose getting a divorced from his wife. Both of them have unfinished business in Casablanca, and being home is forcing them to confront what they’ve both been running from.

“Lou, driving the rental car, shakes his head. He tries not to think about Benny. Tries not to think about the Casablanca he grew up in, except in dreams where he can’t wake up in time, but the scent of sulphur is enough to set it off again.”

The book is a little confusing at times because the author shortens both characters’ names to ‘Lou’ so when a new chapter starts, it can take a few paragraphs to work out which Lou we’re reading about.

There are lessons to be learnt here, about the expectations of men and career. About family owned businesses and sons taking over the business, even if they don’t want to. It’s about ‘boys will be boys’ and fathers passing on horrible behaviour to their sons.

But the book is also about fate and destiny, and whether we’re destined to make the same mistakes regardless of what gender we are or what job we have, or where we’ve ended up as an adult. Louis and Louise leaves a lot for the reader to ponder.

“Allie’s twin Benny had a grace to him — he was all tanned limbs and muscles — and he was crude, sometimes, but also funny and sharp and unexpectedly kind. He was good-looking, with dark hair and grey eyes like his sister’s. And Benny on the baseball field was something else. Lou went to the games just to watch him.”

This novel is sentimental and at times, and incredibly moving. It shows us how small decisions can have a consequential effect on our lives. The novel also explores forgiveness and mistakes, as Lou is forced to confront people who hurt her/him and never acknowledged their mistakes.

Louis and Louise is about what someone’s life would be like if they’d been born a different gender. It’s entertaining and evocative, perfect for fans of Julie Cohen’s writing. I’d recommend this to contemporary fiction readers, and anyone who is a fan of the dual POV narrative style.

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

Louis and Louise
Julie Cohen
February 2019
Hachette Book Publishers

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason

From the bestselling author of The Piano Tuner, comes Daniel Mason’s The Winter Soldier, a story of love and medicine through the devastation of the First World War.

Vienna, 1914. Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War One explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, expecting a position at a well-organized field hospital. But when he arrives, at a commandeered church tucked away high in a remote valley of the Carpathian Mountains, he finds a freezing outpost ravaged by typhus. The other doctors have fled, and only a single, mysterious nurse named Sister Margarete remains.

But Lucius has never lifted a surgeon’s scalpel. And as the war rages across the winter landscape, he finds himself falling in love with the woman from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine. Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the lives of doctor, patient and nurse forever.

From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front; from hardscrabble operating rooms to battlefields thundering with Cossack cavalry, The Winter Soldier is the story of war and medicine, of family, of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and, finally, of the mistakes we make, and the precious opportunities to atone.

The Winter Soldier by Daniel Mason is a literary novel set during World War I, about a young medical student who enlists and is stationed at a field hospital in a Church in remote Eastern Europe.

Lucius is in over his head. He’s not experienced enough to be the sole doctor in this tiny field hospital, and he must learn fast. He’s suddenly in charge of amputations and treatments and diagnoses, but he’s overwhelmed.

Luckily, there’s a nurse at the Church called Margarete. She has already been there for some time and she trains Lucius, mentors him. Over time, he gains confidence and skill and is able to help the men who have been injured in the war.

“They started in the nave, near the door, in Fractures and Amputations. Traction ropes hung from the roof beams, and little towers of wooden scaffolding with rope and counterweights had been set up on the floor…She had amputated his leg above the knee and reset a wrist fracture, and kneeling, she inspected the wounds quickly, showing them to Lucius.”

The prose is quick and effortless, the story moving at exactly the right pace for the reader to understand the characters and their motivations, but for the reader not to be bogged down in unnecessary detail.

The setting and time period is a huge part of the story, and Daniel has captured the unrelenting winter so well. They’re in such a remote location that it must be very cold for most of the year, and this often impacts wounded soldiers. Sometimes it takes days for them to arrive at the hospital after they’ve been injured in battle, so by the time they arrive with Lucius and Margarete, they’ve got frostbite and they’re forced to amputate.

The winter soldier mentioned in the blurb of the book actually isn’t in the story for very long, but he changes Lucius and Margarete’s lives without meaning too. Lucius makes a choice to keep Horvath in the hospital because he thinks he can cure him. But it’s a selfish choice, not for Horvath’s benefit but really for Lucius. And keeping him at the hospital longer than necessary triggers a chain reaction that flows for the rest of the novel.

“Looking down at his thumb, he could still feel the wet pills crumbling as he pushed them deep into Horvath’s cheek. He had no explanation for the strange magic he had just discovered. But most advances in medicine involved some serendipity. What was important now was that he watched and studied carefully, and learned.”

This is an epic novel about war, loss and pain, but also love, connection and the bond that can form between two people who find themselves in an impossible situation.

The Winter Soldier is also about how one decision can be a catalyst for so much, completely changing a person’s life and connection with someone else. It’s a novel about accepting what you cannot change, and about forgiving yourself and learning to move forward with your life.

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

The Winter Soldier
Daniel Mason
October 2018
Pan Macmillan Publishers

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

In his much-anticipated debut novel, Hank Green – co-creator of Crash Course, Vlogbrothers and SciShow – spins a sweeping, cinematic tale about a young woman who becomes an overnight celebrity before realizing she’s part of something bigger, and stranger, than anyone could have possibly imagined.

If you came across AN ABSOLUTELY REMARKABLE THING at 3 a.m. in New York City . . . Would you keep walking? Or do the one thing that would change your life forever? 

The Carls just appeared. Coming home from work at three a.m., twenty-three-year-old April May stumbles across a giant sculpture. Delighted by its appearance and craftsmanship – like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armour – April and her friend Andy make a video with it, which Andy uploads to YouTube. The next day April wakes up to a viral video and a new life. News quickly spreads that there are Carls in dozens of cities around the world – everywhere from Beijing to Buenos Aires – and April, as their first documentarian, finds herself at the centre of an intense international media spotlight.

Now April has to deal with the pressure on her relationships, her identity and her safety that this new position brings, all while being on the front lines of the quest to find out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is a debut novel by American author Hank Green, a quirky and strange tale about fame, social media, obsession and radicalisation.

After April discovers a giant metal statue in New York City, she films it and uploads the video online. What she doesn’t know is that these strange statues have appeared all over the world at exactly the same time, with no footage available showing how they got there and who erected them.

April becomes famous; everyone is fascinated by these statues and what they mean, and they feel like April has the answers to all their questions.

April is a very self-centred person, and at times she’s actually awful. And she knows it. She says horrible things to her girlfriend and treats her terribly, but then uses her girlfriend and her intelligence when she needs help solving some of the alien puzzles throughout the book. I kept reading this book because of the plot, not because of the characters.

“There was a bit of silence then. Her emotions — oh, they were everywhere. Anger, pain, disappointment. Disappointment in me, specifically, no in the situation. I got the impression that she was unsurprised that I had turned out to be exactly what she expected me to be.”

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing grapples with the unpredictability of social media and viral fame, and how that can change a person or simply highlight their true personality.

The book also — in a light-hearted, bizarre way — highlights many of society’s flaws. People react badly when they fear something, or when they don’t understand something, and that can harm others or have a domino effect on the rest of civilisation.

“After that, I lowered myself into the news storm. The president hadn’t mentioned me by name in her speech, but there was reference to my work. I was now inextricably linked to this story. Not because I discovered Carl, and not because I was the first person with a following to come out and say he was an alien, and not because I seemed to be the reason his hand fell off and ran across Hollywood, but because I was all three of those things.”

This is a very weird book, but in a way, I enjoyed it. I kept reading. I found myself interested in the Carls and the puzzles and quizzes that filled the book, and I wanted to know what the Dreams meant.

I don’t think this book is for everyone. At the end, there isn’t much of a resolution and so I think a lot of people will find themselves disappointed. But I think seasoned readers, particularly readers who like the quirkiness of some fiction, will find this book quite fun.

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

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
Hank Green
September 2018
Hachette Book Publishers