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. 

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

"Because when we love we always strive to become better than we are." 

I am really confused about how I feel about The Alchemist. On the one hand the story and its repetitiveness irritated me. On the other hand, I am not ignorant enough to think that this is a simple story about a shepherd and his adventures. 

An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago dreams one night of a treasure that he knows in his heart is his destiny. Affirmation from a gypsy and a meeting with an extremely knowledgable king confirm that his dream was in fact a premonition, and he sets off in search gold. What he acquires on the way turns out to be much more valuable than what he seeks. 

If you're a spiritual person, this book might affirm your belief. It might encourage you to look for signs and whisperings in your own life about destiny and fate. At the same time you might become frustrated with it in the same way that you might become frustrated by your religion. It will cause you to question why we bother doing anything if everything is written and decided for us anyway. It might give you an excuse to plod along with your ordinary life, safe in the knowledge that what is meant to happen will happen. Or, it might just encourage you to go out in search of a more exciting destiny. 

What I loved the most about it was its tolerance of the three faiths. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all feature, and its characters, when they battle, do not fight over religion. In fact, they all accept each other despite their differences in belief, and appear to accept each other's Lords in the presence of one another. It's as if they all accept that they are worshipping one creator. 

The Alchemist is less than two hundred pages, so can be read in under a day, and I think it is well worth investing that time in it. It is a story of self discovery and God. If you're an atheist I don't think you will like it. If you're contemplating religion or are spiritual, then I think you have things to gain from reading it. It might encourage you to listen a little harder to life's omens. It will certainly give you a renewed optimism. 

Recommended. 

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.

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 Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Whenever you feel like criticising anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the same advantages that you’ve had.”

I prefer to read books without knowing anything about the story. I like to be surprised. I was very surprised by The Great Gatsby.

Firstly, I though that this novel would be written in the first person and from his perspective, or third person omniscient at the very least, but its written in first person and from the perspective of a gentleman called Nick Carraway.

Carraway was born into a wealthy family. He had a top class upbringing and was given a fine education. As a result, he has accumulated a gentlemanly attitude and an array of equally wealthy friends.

After a stint in the army, Carraway moves to a suburb of New York. His neighbour there is the incredibly rich and insatiably sociable Jay Gatsby, a man who earned his own money in a manner that nobody is quite sure of. Every weekend Jay Gatsby’s house is privy to a party lasting from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. It is here that they meet for the first time. An unlikely and unconventional fondness brews between the pair.

Gatsby turns out to be nothing like Carraway imagined. He is a man tortured by a lost love. A love that Nick happens to know.

The Great Gatsby is a story of high society, wealth and the American dream. It is an easy read and, if you pay a little bit of attention, it contains some important life lessons. Having money doesn’t mean you can have everything you want, nor does it necessarily make you happy. As long as you are willing to do whatever it takes to get it, you can earn more money than you could ever imagine, but you would still not be able to buy the heart of somebody else. And, on top of that, even rich people are miserable a lot of the time.

This is a good, easy read. There is very little suspense and, as my good friend Jade said, it isn’t exactly a page-turner, but the story is good, the characters and vibrant and the end, whilst not being favourable, is at least conclusive. Well worth your time!

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 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.

The Hundred-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson

“It had been exciting, the entire journey, but nothing lasts forever, except possibly general stupidity.”

I bought this book because I had already heard about it when it was for sale for £0.20 on Kindle, so I thought I would give it a go. The title is far too long for me to keep typing it, so I will be referring to it as ‘The Hundred-Year Old Man” from now on. People seem to know which book you mean when you call it that, anyway.

The Hundred-Year Old Man tells the story of Allan Karlsson – a man about to celebrate his 100^th birthday. In the beginning, Allan is sitting in his room at an old people’s home in his slippers. He is waiting for his party to start. Journalists are invited, as are the local dignitaries. Everyone is making a fuss, and Allan decides he has had about enough. Given the stories title, what happens next is utterly predictable. Allan climbs out of his window, slippers still attached, and runs away.

What is not predictable is pretty much everything that happens next. Allan embarks on an adventure of epic proportions. It involves a suitcase full of money, a bus ride to nowhere, a group of criminals, an elephant and a beauty. Allan is first suspected of being kidnapped, and then accused by the local press of being a murderer. He locks a man in a fridge, leaves his slippers behind and goes on the run. Well. It’s more of a stroll. Allan can’t walk very fast.

The public, papers and police can’t believe the stories about Allan are true. He is, after all, a hundred year old man! But had they any idea who they were actually chasing, they would have had very little doubt about what Allan Karlsson is capable of doing. Accidentally, of course. Allan’s current story is interrupted every few chapters with tales of a past that includes dinner with Chairman Mao, the development of the atom bomb, and Albert Einstein’s stupid brother Herbert.

This book was very funny in a way that only books can manage. Allan Karlsson is particularly hilarious. He is written as a character who has that incredible bluntness old people possess without knowing it. I could imagine my grandparents saying some of the things he says, and then staring at me quizzically when I laugh about it.

It was a great story, but I think it was slightly above my intelligence level. It was like ‘Forrest Gump’ for clever people. Though I laughed out loud several times, I am certain that I missed a lot of the irony. I just don’t know enough about key events in the twentieth century.

It is slightly predictable in parts, once you have reached the gist that anything can happen to Allan Karlsson, but it was obviously written that way. I was suitably satisfied with the ending. Everything was tied-up as it should be.

This book is perfect for people who love history and read for entertainment, but suitably enjoyable for all if you happen to stumble across it.

The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene

"We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts."

I picked this book up for a little bit of light reading. It was on the bookshelf in my living room, and is the favourite book of my friend’s mother.

 

Published in 1948, The Heart of the Matter tells the tale of long serving police officer Henry Scobie, who is

working in a British colony on the West Coast of Africa during World War II. Scobie is a respected professional. He is equally liked by the black and white communities living in the area, and has built up a reputation as a fair and just individual.

Scobie is married to Louise, a woman who tries desperately to fit in but cannot seem to make a single friend. Louise hates her life in Africa. She knows she makes Scobie miserable and begs him to find the means to send her away. Scobie believes that he loves Louise, and that his own misery only exists because she is upset. He vows to do everything he can to make her happy, even if that involves borrowing money off a Syrian diamond smuggler.

Louise’s departing coincides magically with the arrival of young Helen Rolt, a woman who, like his wife, needs protection and craves his love. Far from finding himself happy, Scobie is suddenly tempted and in turmoil. A strict, Catholic man, he believes whole-heartedly in the threat of damnation, but cannot resist the urge to sin.

The Heart of the Matter is an old English love story set on exotic shores. The characters are stereotypical of the time, but the story is not a happy one. It contradicts all romantic belief that affairs are exciting. Scobie’s wife is thousands of miles away, but his guilt is as strong as if she were still living with him in their house. This story explores the ugliest side of the most complicated aspect of any human’s life: Love.

Don’t read this book if you aren’t willing to concentrate, but if you are it’s a great bedtime story about a likeable old Englishman loving with a heart he didn’t think he had.