JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

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

Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Harmless Like You
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
September 2016
Hachette Publishers
Literary Fiction

Harmless Like You is a dual POV literary fiction novel by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan. We’re introduced to Japanese-American Yuki in 1968 when she is 16 years old and has not one friend in New York City. Her parents have moved back to Tokyo and she decides to stay and live with her friend, aspiring model Odile. The book alternates to the year 2016, where gallery owner Jay – whose father has recently died – is accepting his role as a new father. He believes that he is a happily married man, but it’s the year that he will finally confront his mother Yuki, who abandoned their family when he was two years old.

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan explores the blurred boundary between love and pain, selfishness and sacrifice. This novel highlights that the meaning of ‘home’ is complicated and that by starving for a sense of connection, our main character Yuki has actually detached herself from her roots. She’s strayed so far from what she envisioned herself being, that the sacrifices she made almost seem to have been made without real intention to do so. Yuki does not seem to be in control of herself, and she does not seem able to climb out of the painful hole that she finds herself in when she enters an abusive relationship. She is also a deeply lonely character who strives for artistic fulfilment.

“He deposited the bag on the table. Silently, he bent, picking up pages, stacking them, smoothing the edges of the manuscript. He came right to her, still silent, and eased the last sheet from between her fingers, tapped the pile three times, and dropped it back in the drawer. The drawer clattered as he punched it shut. He crouched, eyes level with Yuki’s. He hit her – not hard, but she was unprepared. She fell, landing on the point of her elbow. Her limbs went loose. She slid across the floor. His nail had caught her lip and she tasted blood. Out the window, she saw aeroplane trails. And she didn’t move. She lay and watched them decay.”

Harmless Like You explores the notion that children can inherit identity from their parents. Pain travels through the generations in this novel. Jay, having been abandoned by his mother when he was two years old, is finding fatherhood travelling and his marriage even more so. He loves his wife, but he is not attentive or present, much like his mother Yuki.

“I think the real cowards are the ones over there killing harmless little girls like you”

This novel is unflinchingly honest and captures some of the ugliest aspects of life that a person can experience. Harmless Like You highlights the messier side of life – both Yuki and Jay struggle with fidelity, and at one point, Jay wonders if he loves his child at all. He wonders what it would be like if he just dropped her.

Both characters are looking for fulfilment in life, and this resulted in Yuki abandoning her child. It seems like Jay is thinking the same thing. By delving into Yuki’s past, we come to understand her as a character and the need she has for artistic fulfilment, and how that trumps her being a parent to Jay. The separate stories from her life allow the reader to see why she left her husband and son and why she never came back.

Harmless Like You is an elegant and moving novel that explores the difficulty of life, love and family. It’s extremely well-written and beautifully eloquent and Rowan leaves more unsaid that said. The reader comes to understand the complicated relationships between parents and children, and how actions can cause unintended consequences.

A World of Other People by Steven Carroll

A World of Other People rightfully co-won the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards for Fiction in 2014, and is a literary fiction novel set in 1941 during the Blitz. This novel traces the love affair of Jim, an Australian lot in Bomber Command, and Iris, a forthright Englishwoman finding her voice as a writer. The two struggle to build their future together amidst secrets and malign coincidence, and their lives are plagued by the constant presence of society’s disapproval.

Steven Carroll is a wonderful writer, weaving beautiful descriptive prose alongside realistic, haunting dialogue and characterisation. A World of Other People documents Jim and Iris over many years, and through circumstance, coincidence and life, the two weave in and out of each other’s lives over the years. In most cases, they disappear from each other’s lives not out of choice, but out of necessity or pure circumstance.

Steven Carroll is able to describe their lives with such detailed, imaginative prose, that this story, which really only possesses enough of a plot to be a novella at most, has become an illustrious novel filled with multi-dimensional characterisation and class act writing. The reader becomes immersed in Iris and Jim’s love story, both doubting their future together, and fighting for it.

There aren’t many sub plots in this book that accompany Jim and Iris’ storyline, but since Jim and Iris are separate for most of their lives, Steven Carroll uses those times in the story to follow each of their storylines and show the reader the two sides to the couple. Steven then brings them together for short periods of time to emphasise both their compatibility and their intense need for each other during that time in their lives.

The pace is extremely slow and the plot seems almost non-existent, but by exploring this young couple and their time (or lack there of) spent together, Carroll pulls on heartstrings and produces a beautifully written but heartbreaking novel.

My Score: 7/10

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood

Living in their car, surviving on tips, Charmaine and Stan are in a desperate state. So, when they see an advertisement for Consilience, a ‘social experiment’ offering stable jobs and a home of their own, they sign up immediately. All they have to do in return for suburban paradise is give up their freedom every second month – swapping their home for a prison cell. At first, all is well. But then, unknown to each other, Stan and Charmaine develop passionate obsessions with their ‘Alternates,’ the couple that occupy their house when they are in prison. Soon the pressures of conformity, mistrust, guilt and sexual desire begin to take over.

I am a huge Margaret Atwood fan. I haven’t read all of her novels (who has? There’s about 40 of them. Who has that kind of spare time?) but this is the best one I’ve read so far. Yes, I enjoyed this more than The Handmaid’s Tale. More than Oryx and Crake. And more than last year’s release, Stone Mattress: Nine Tales.

Whilst I was reading The Heart Goes Last, I was trying to work out why I loved it so much. Were the characters any more three dimensional than in her other works? No. Was the plot development any more realistic than her other works? No. But there were a few things that I think set this book apart from the others.

Other than literary novels and young adult novels, I love campus novels (stories set within a university campus). That is, novels that are set within a secluded and enclosed environment. The characters seem trapped. The entire plot of the novel takes place at the same location, and it’s almost like the characters can’t escape their problems. It’s fantastic for a reader, and this kind of enclosed setting/environment is seen in The Heart Goes Last. The main characters, Charmaine and Stan, volunteer for a social experiment where they live within a gated community. The spend every second month working in the community, and every other month locked in prison.

Margaret Atwood does a fantastic job of creating characters that are flawed but realistic as well. They might be narrow minded, but they offer interspersed societal comments that reflect well on their current situation. They might be ignorant, but they’re ironically very aware of their own feelings and emotions and desires. In The Heart Goes Last, Charmaine and Stan aren’t the most likeable. Stan seems complacent and unassuming and well, a little boring. Charmaine is the real star of the book, but she at times seems naive and silly.

The novel is meant to be funny. The most absurd and bizarre things happen, including robots that people can have sex with. Prostitute Robots, I call them. And it makes the book seem like black comedy. Odd, utterly bizarre characters and odd, utterly bizarre happenings within this social experiment.

I love it because of that. I love it because Margaret Atwood never does what you think she’ll do. She never does what she’s done before, and she uses beautiful, lyrical prose to flesh out her characters, no matter how unlikeable they may be.

My Score: 9/10