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.             

Atonement - Ian McEwan

"A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended."

As far as I am concerned Atonement is up there with Birdsong. It is absolutely one of the best things I have

ever read.

I have a rule that I don’t read books if I have already seen the movie adaptation. I don’t much see the point in that. I like to be surprised by my books.

This did surprise me. Greatly. Firstly because the movie adaptation is pretty close to the original book. Secondly because this didn’t take away from my enjoyment of it at all.

Cecilia and Robbie have known each other since they were children. They have lived on the same grounds and played together their whole lives. Cecilia, who was born into a family of privilege, lives in the mansion house at the top of the grounds. Robbie, whose mother is the maid, lives in a cottage at the bottom.

Their differences were never an issue until they went to university, where they suddenly took to ignoring each other. This story begins when they return to their homes after three years in Cambridge. Things are different between them and neither one of them knows why.

Robbie realises it before Cecilia does. He writes her a letter and gives it to her younger sister Briony to deliver. But Briony is nosy. She reads the letter and allows her imagination, which is already full of misconceptions and misunderstandings about her sister and the maid’s son, run away with her. The consequences permanently alter all of their lives.

I don’t want to tell you too much else about what happens. You should read this book. I couldn’t put it down. The characters are vivid and lovable, the story is enthralling and full of twists. In the beginning you will certainly think that this is just a love story, but be warned that it definitely is not. It seems that way for a lot of the book, but by the end that you will see that there are lessons to be learned from it. The last chapter will smash everything you thought to pieces. Especially if you haven’t seen the film.

As it goes the film is a pretty good adaptation of this book. It seems to be scene for scene correct, as far as I can remember, with the exception of the last scene and the last chapter. In the film Briony reveals her story smashing secret to a camera, but in the book she seems to keep it to herself. I don’t know which is better. The latter leaves you yearning for justice, which I suppose is a good thing. When a book leaves you pining for something then it has clearly imprinted on you, and I suppose that is what an author should strive for. I do wish that some of the questions had been answered, though I can’t tell you which ones without ruining it for you. I shall just say ‘Does Briony tell her parents the truth in the one day?’.

I recommend this. Especially if you like books about the wartime period, which I have realised recently I do seem to enjoy.  

Little Bee - Chris Cleave

"If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man."

'Never judge a book by its cover' certainly applies here, but not for the usual reasons. 

I think I would have enjoyed this book more had it not been for the ridiculous number of compliments plastered across its cover and its inside few pages. It was these exact comments that caused me to read it in the first place, but I felt as though the book didn't quite live up to the hype. 

Little Bee is a Nigerian refugee. A chance encounter with a white couple on the beach leads to something terrible. Two years later Little Bee finds herself in the UK and, with not a friend in the world, she seeks out the white couple. Bound together by awful events, they find their adventure together is not yet over. 

The back of the book implies that something absolutely shockingly terrible happens between the book's main protagonists on the beach that day. What happens is indeed horrendous, but my mind conjured up much worse beforehand. I felt as though the reviews on the front and the Editors letter set the book up to fail. There was no way this book could live up to its own hype. I think I would have been much more impressed by it if I had been left to discover its genius on my own, instead of being promised something unrealistic. 

That being said, I read the book in one day on holiday. It is certainly a page turner. Cleaves has a talent for luring his reader into a false sense of security and then stabbing them in the eye with something unbelievable all of a sudden. It leaves you feeling quite offended. Unfortunately, he doesn't inject this talent into his ending. I felt let down on the last page. I wanted a definitive ending. This book didn't give me that.

I gave it three stars because it made me feel ashamed. If it weren't for that I would have given it less I think. Little Bee is so incredibly naive and lovely that she totally forgives the people of our country even though our needs are the very reason her life is falling apart. She is unbelieving of the luxuries of England, concerned always with being attacked, and is well aware that she is unwanted on our shores. I know that I will think before I complain about anything in my life in the near future because of Chris Cleaves' 'Little Bee'. There is something very special about writing that can invoke this type of reaction. A reaction that might hopefully be beneficial to someone else one day.

Recommended, but don't hold it hostage to the reviews on the front.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - John Boyne

"Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

I understand that some people don't like this book because they believe Bruno can't possibly be this naive or that it trivialises the holocaust, but I think that this is exactly what makes 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' special and incredibly clever. 

Bruno comes home one day to find his maid packing up his belongings. His father has been promoted by Hitler and his whole family must move somewhere new. He later discovers that this new place is called Poland. Just a few feet from his nee front door hundreds of people mill around in what he mistakes for striped pyjamas. They are separated from him by a barbed wire fence and they all look sad. Bruno is confused. One day, further up the field, he meets a boy his own age. Even their meeting never clarifies things in his mind. Bruno is innocent. He has been privileged, and he thinks the world is a fine place for all. 

This book is written from the little boy's perspective. Bruno is nine years old and has been lied to and sheltered for his entire life, so much so that he has the mindset of a child much younger. The world is perfect and everyone is as lucky as he is. Even when it is right in front of his face, he cannot see that people might be suffering. In the same respect his friend Shmuel, who he meets every afternoon, can't seem to believe that nobody would be so oblivious to what is happening to the Jews, so he never mentions it to his new friend. 

One of the most wondrous things about this book is that it captures the innocence of children. As a charity worker I often find myself longing for a time before I knew that terrible things happen to people just a few thousand miles from where I live. We were all that young once. Bruno's nativity is exaggerated, but for the purposes of this novel it needs to be. He has to be old enough to explore on his own, but young enough to be totally oblivious to the horrible things happening right in front of his face. 

I knew something horrific was going to happen at the end, but it still broke my heart in two. Still, nothing startled me so much as Boyne's flippant and sarcastic comment at the end. It really made me think. We are coming to a time now in which there will be no holocaust survivors still alive. The whole event will, at some point, become just something that once happened in history. To someone else and once upon a time. 

I don't think Boyne was trivialising the holocaust at all. I think he was making a social statement about the mindset of people today. To many of us the holocaust is something that happened once a long time ago, to nobody we ever knew. We are all as naive as Bruno if we believe these types of things are not happening across the world right now, or if we believe that it could never happen again. 

I really recommend this book. It is an easy but a powerful read. Drink in the message and remember it. The last five pages move quickly and make the slow start and slightly annoying repetitiveness well worth it. Maybe don't read it on a sun lounger like I did, though. Unless you are prepared to pretend you have sun lotion in your eyes for a couple of hours afterwards.

Dracula - Bram Stoker

“How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there are monsters in it.” 

If you ignore all of the sexism and the incredible coincidences, Dracula is an epically addictive novel. It is story telling at its finest. It is sensational. It is the ultimate page turner.

Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to meet with a client. On his way he receives a series of warnings from locals about his destination. Nobody thinks to tell Jonathan that his client is actually a dead monster, though. Obviously.

Jonathan realises very quickly that all is not well. He is quite instantly a prisoner within Dracula’s castle, where he spends his day times wondering what the hell is going on and his evenings avoiding the clashing gnashers of three sexy, female vampires.

Count Dracula leaves Harker at the mercy of his menacing minxes and travels by boat to the United Kingdom, jumping on land at the port in Whitby. Here, Harker’s lovely fiancé Mina happens to be staying with her beautiful friend, Lucy. (Note: One of the massive coincidences you need to forgive).

Dracula reigns terror on the seaside town, infecting Lucy with his deadliness and making her ill. The local Doctors and noblemen are perplexed by her sickness, and call on the help of Dr Van Helsing of Amsterdam, who quickly realises that the United Kingdom is under the attack of a vampire.

A nail biting, hair raising hunt then begins for Dracula. Together with their other friends, Harker, Mina and Van Helsing swear to hunt down the Count and kill him, or to die trying.

This book is strung together through a series of diaries written by its main characters, which is slightly weird to comprehend at first, but about half way through you realise it’s a clever and effective way of creeping you out. The characters learn things at separate rates, so whilst some of them are aware, for example, that Dracula can transform into mist, others are reporting waking up to find a thick cloud of foggy stuff hanging over them when they woke up that very morning. It is very disconcerting at times.

As previously mentioned, Dracula is a hugely sexist novel. The women are all flowery and obedient and frequently described using words like ‘loyal’ and ‘soft’. The men proclaim, more than once and with surprise, that Madam Mina has a ‘man’s brain’. Usually these proclamations are made after Mina has made a revelation or thought up a cunning plan. If you are a modern woman you need to get yourself into the habit of constantly reminding yourself that this book was written in 1897. Therefore, for her time, Madam Mina was quite unusual in her bravery and behaviour. (Note: If she were alive now she would be one of those Facebook girls. You know the ones who ‘found’ themselves when they met their boyfriends? The ones who now feel complete and don’t need anything else anymore?)

The pace can be quite slow throughout, which is fine, except it progresses really quickly towards the end. It left me feeling a little bit overwhelmed. I missed this book when I was done reading it, though. It felt weird not having it in my life everyday anymore, which is exactly how I like to feel after I have read something. As though it has dumped me, I suppose.

Highly recommended, though be warned that the book is a little bit unsettling. I don’t believe in vampires, but I found that this story regularly left me unnerved. It is not as fluffy as Twilight and nowhere near as obvious as Lost Boys. Its eeriness is very clever and magically subtle. I do most of my reading in bed before I go to sleep, and I have to say that this is probably the only way that Dracula should be read. Put on some candles, let some shadows creep across your room and settle down to read this. If you like a story you can sink you teeth into (ha!) you will be really, really glad you did. 

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.

  

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

"Zendagi migzara - Life Goes On"

This is nothing short of a beautiful book. But it is far from a beautiful story. Khaled Hosseini’s ‘The Kite Runner’ depicts the ugly side of the Middle East through terrifying storytelling.

At the age of twelve years old, Amir witnesses something on the streets of Afghanistan that will change him forever. He will never forgive his twelve year old self for being gripped with the fear and selfishness that stopped him intervening. Even the Russians invading his country does not leave Amir as psychologically scarred as the things he let happen that day. He moves to America to start his life again, but he never forgets the horror, even in adulthood.

Through every milestone in his life, Amir wonders about the harelipped kite runner he used to call his best friend. Hassan and Amir had once been inseparable. Now, because of Amir’s cowardice, they were thousands of miles apart. He had let his friend suffer a terrible pain and humiliation, and would never be able to make it right. Amir believes his punishment is to live with the guilt for the rest of his life. But fate has other ideas. Blissfully, Amir is given an opportunity for retribution. 

The Kite Runner is epically sad and thoroughly addictive. I was constantly surprised by it. When I was sure there was going to be happiness it was cruelly snatched away. Then, concerned about getting my hopes up and resigned to reading in sadness, there would suddenly shine a well-earned glimmer of hope.

When I love a book, I want to lend it to everyone in the world. I have already tried to force this one upon most of my friends. I have promised my copy out to countless people.  Seriously, I am going to have to develop a borrowing system because of this book. I want to recommend it to everyone, and I insist that you add it to your bedtime reading list.  It might be a bit morbid for a holiday read, but snaffle up every word of this on the beach if you aren’t as emotional as I am.