Private Peaceful – Michael Morpurgo

“I’ve seen larks over no-mans land. I always found hope in that.”

I read this book because I was telling a boy I baby-sit for how I had suddenly found myself extremely moved by books about the war. I recommended he read The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and, in return, he gave me this book to borrow.

Tommo Peaceful is just a child when the story begins. His father has passed away and he lives in England with his mother and his older brothers, Charlie and Joe. On his first day at ‘big school’, Tommo meets Molly. He falls instantly in love with her.

As Tommo, Molly and Charlie grow into young adults together, Tommo realises that his brother has fallen in love with the same girl. Worse than that, Molly returns his love. In a moment of madness and full of eagerness to prove that he is not a little boy anymore, Tommo signs up to join the army. Desperate to project his brother, Charlie signs up too.

From the start we are aware that things go wrong for Charlie and Tommo. Parts of the book are written in the present tense, whilst the rest is reflecting on occasions from their childhood. Tommo’s musings over his current situation divulge enough that we know that he has found himself in an incredulous situation, the details of which are not revealed until the last few pages. I anticipated predictability, but the ending is politely surprising, desperately sad and, as is mostly the case with novels for young people, there is teaching behind it. I don’t want to divulge too much more in case I ruin it for anybody.

This is a novel for older children, so it’s easy to read. If you had a day you could probably manage it in one. Even as a ‘grown up’, I can confess that I did learn something from it.

It isn’t so overly horrific that you couldn’t give it to your teenager. I think it would probably make them think more carefully about the sacrifice boys not much older than them made during the war and, in my opinion, that can only be a good thing.

If you’re an avid reader then I’m not sure you will like this, unless you are extremely open minded or a teenage boy. If you don’t plan on reading it but you have been left intrigued as to what happened, then feel free to ask me about the story. Or Google it. 

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan

"This is how the entire course of a life can be changed. By doing nothing."

I picked up this book because it was by Ian McEwan and I loved his book Atonement.

I hadn’t ever heard of ‘On Chesil Beach’. It seems to have gone under the radar a little bit, but it is on Goodreads.com and it has some really good reviews. For the first hundred or so pages I had no idea why that was. By the last few it had become apparent.

Florence and Edward are newly weds. They have been dating for around a year and are completely in love. But both are stifling secrets. Those secrets are easily discussed but potentially detrimental to the consummation of their marriage.

Over ninety percent of this book takes place across a two-hour period. During that time we are granted access to Florence and Edward’s inner thoughts. We witness their individual battles with their feelings on sex and their misconceptions about one another. It is really quite fascinating, if not a little bit frustrating.

If it weren’t for the last chapter I wouldn’t think that this book was half as good, but McEwan ties it all up in expertly. The point of this novel, which has remained utterly hidden throughout the first one hundred and fifty pages, only makes itself apparent in the last ten.

It is an urging to avoid secrecy and dishonesty in your relationship. It is a reminder that saying what is on your lips is easier than saying what is on your mind, but can sometimes have drastic and irreparable consequences.

Just as with Atonement, it is a pleading encouragement to be honest about what you know, especially concerning the people who need to know it.

A quick and easy read, with a good, strong, moral message.             

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres

“After the war...”

Whilst reading Captain Corelli’s Mandolin there stirred in me as much surprise as when I read Birdsong. It is a book about the devastating impact of war on young people in the early 1900s.

Pelagia is a beautiful teenager living on the island of Cephallonia. Brought up without a mother, her father has turned her into a forward thinking, intelligent young woman. Still, she falls easily for the charms of a local fisherman. When war tears them apart, she allows herself to become obsessed with his lack of response to her letters. Convinced that he has forgotten her, she forces herself to forget him.

Later in the war, after her fiancé has returned, admitted he cannot read and write and then disappeared to fight again, Pelagia meets Captain Antonio Corelli, who is placed within her home as part of the Italian occupation of her island. He is a man so full of charm that the locals refer to him as the ‘crazy captain’, and he falls absolutely in love with her.

When the Italians turn on the Germans and the British fail to evacuate them, Corelli and Pelagia are faced with their own mortality. The war brought them together and it is about to tear them apart. In a world in which war is everywhere, they are just one couple in millions trying to navigate their love through a world of destruction.

This book is, at heart, a love story. I fell in love with it almost immediately. The beginning is reasonably slow. You will find yourself waiting for Corelli to arrive and he doesn’t until almost a third of the way through, but towards the end it becomes entirely obvious why we needed to read about a time when Corelli did not exist in Pelagia’s life. It is so that we can fall in love with her father, with the gentle giant in the village, with the pets that she takes care of and the olive tree in her garden. It is necessary for us to fall in love with these things so that we can be devastated when everything is ripped apart.

I fell in love with Antonio Corelli and I think that it is very important that this happens when a woman reads a love story. I also found myself remembering those who were both young and old during the war, the alternative impact it had on their lives in relation to their age, the experiences they shared and the events that they witnessed. I cried and I laughed when I read it.

At the end I had learned some lessons. Like how important it is not to waste time. And how detrimental it can be not to tell the truth about the way that you feel. And how stubbornness can ruin lives. And how, even though we might grow old, we are always going to be the exact same people. Thirty-two pages before the end I started crying, and I didn’t stop until there were just two pages left. On those two I laughed. 

I recommend this book if you love Birdsong, romance novels or war literacy, but to be honest I think it’s a great book for anybody. I learnt stuff and felt stuff. I don’t know what more you could want from a novel. Highly recommended.

The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

“Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”

How on Earth do you write a negative review of a book that everyone tells you is a classic – even the people who haven’t read it?

I turned the first twenty or so pages of The Catcher in the Rye with eager anticipation. It had been on my ‘To Read’ list for a long, long time. I was bitterly, bitterly disappointed.

Holden Caulfield is a troubled teenager. A student at a prestigious school called Pencey, his story begins shortly after he has been thrown out for failing every one of his classes except for English. Holden only has a few days left before will need to break the news to his parents. He is so frightened about it that he can barely stand it.

Holden hates everybody he goes to school with. He thinks they’re all ‘phonies’. He decides to leave earlier than he should and travel to New York, where he plans to take some time for himself before he has to tell his parents that he’s been excluded. The problem is, Holden is lonely and depressed. He wants to be around people constantly. Even people he hates.

Over a few days he arranges meeting after meeting with people from his past, but they only ever make him feel better for a little while. Mostly he just ends up hating them more than he did before.

Nothing much more happens in this book than that.

Before I read The Catcher in the Rye I felt sure there must be a movie of it out there somewhere, and I was surprised I had never heard anything about it. There isn’t a movie as far as I can find. The reason for that is that nothing happens in this book. Not really. There is no definitive beginning, middle and ending to Holden Caulfield’s story, and there appears to be no real resolution to any of his problems. It is merely a depiction of a small period in a troubled young man’s life.

I will say this though, Salinger is a master at writing a character. I knew Holden Caulfield so well towards the end of this book that I could predict what he was going to say next. Impressively, even though he was totally weird, I could identify with him. His teenage angst was written perfectly. I remember feeling that lost and alone when I was younger.

Reading The Catcher in the Rye feels like being stuck inside the head of someone who is borderline bipolar. It is an exhausting and unsettling experience, and you will most certainly spend the majority of it anxiously waiting for Holden to go on some sort of killing spree or end his own life. I understand why there is no movie now – there is no way that anyone could effectively portray this character without some sort of corny voiceover revealing what is happening inside his head, because his actions never correspond with what he thinks. He is one of those characters who is so complex that only cleverly constructed written words can effectively portray what is happening in his mind and in his surroundings simultaneously and in a believable way.

Read this if you like ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’. The tone is very similar. Somber, thought provoking and frustrating in an enticing way – the type of frustrating that keeps you reading.