story time books

Adam, like his mother Jem in the first Numbers book by Rachel Ward, sees numbers in people’s eyes, and knows it is the date of their death. When his grandmother moves them to London, he realises that most people around him have the same date, 112027, and he knows something huge is going to happen. But then we get another story, where Sarah is suffering from nightmares as she tries to escape from an abusive father. But her nightmares aren’t to do with her past, they are showing her future, and it shows a huge catastrophic event too. When she meets Adam and recognises him as the boy in her dream, and he sees her as having a death date 50 years in the future, there’s a huge amount of tension created, which Rachel Ward handles skillfully.  Believable characters and a dystopian future which the author renders all too believable make this a stunning read, like the earlier book. Yet another terrific book from the Chicken House.

By “Pittacus Lore,” which appears to be a pseudonym for a couple of American writers, this is science fiction. Some reviewers have seen it as a cynical attempt to be the next big thing, and it seems to divide reviewers dramatically, but everyone I’ve lent my advance reading copy to has liked it. Number Four is one of nine youngsters taken from the planet Lorien in the face of an attack from those from another planet, the Mogadorians. Some Mogadorian assassins have followed. Those from Lorien are being protected until they acquire their “powers”, and a Loric charm has been placed on the nine, so that they can only be killed in order, and so that each knows when others are killed. So the end of Chapter One goes like this: ” In the beginning we were a group of nine. / Three are gone, dead. / There are six of us left.. /  I am Number Four. / I know that I am next.”  So the Lorien narrator in human form as John Smith, is always threatened, always wondering when the attack will come. Nevertheless, in defiance of the odds, he creates friendships, and even the beginning of a love affair. And the rest is the story of the book.  Great tension, realistic characters, and elements of the plot unfold slowly and organically. A good read for those who like a bit of mystery with their serving of plot-driven story. There seems to be a suggestion that there will be a series of six books, and a movie is already under way.

Australian writer Jackie French’s latest is another wonderful read. She says, in the Notes on the Text at the end of the book, “I have written many books: I outlined them, sketched them out, and then followed that design pretty closely. But from the first paragraph, this book changed everything I had meant to say. It was almost as though the story took me over, rather than the other way about.” All I can say to that as a reader is that the story did a pretty good job of telling itself then.  The novel is set in ancient Greece, and begins with an amazing scene in which young Nikko saves his newborn sister from being left on the mountainside to die. From then on he sees himself as Thetis’s protector, and always has one eye on her safety. But Thetis is not an easy person, or an ordinary child. At five summers old she has not uttered a word, and their mother takes the two children to visit a hag in another village. There Thetis begins to speak, but the hag tells her that if she ever decides to be mute she can be again. And as soon as Thetis speaks she shows that she can only speak truth.  Then when Thetis and Nikko are sent to take some of the village’s stores away to hide from the tribute takers they are found on the mountain by an acrobat to the High King of Mycenae, and go with him to become part of the court.  The story is beautifully told, the characters feel real, and the writing is superb, begging to be read aloud for its sound. There’s a huge amount to think and feel about: gender issues, truth and lies, politics and  power, love and cruelty, but the story is good enough to carry all that without it feeling too weighty. Young adult or adult, because of the sophistication, though there’s no content to stop it being read by intermediate age and up.

Verse novels are rare beasts within any genre of fiction, and this is a teenage/young adult verse novel. It’s also Kelly Bingham’s first novel, so it seems like an act of considerable courage to write it in verse. But this novel is not only courageous; it also makes a success of that gutsy act. Not by taking an easy subject either: this is the story of the aftermath of an horrific accident. Fifteen-year-old Jane, aspiring artist,  has lost her right arm, amputated after a shark attack. As if that weren’t trauma enough, the attack was filmed by a watcher, and the footage played repeatedly on television news for a week. Publishers Weekly in  a starred review said, ” a provocative portrait of one girl’s journey… Powerful without being maudlin or preachy… readers will come to empathize with and respect Jane for her strength and brutal honesty.” I can’t say it better than that. That brutal honesty is quite beautiful, and Jane’s journey is counterpointed by letters from people, sensitive and insensitive, empathetic and plain pathetic, sent to her as a result of the tv coverage. Real characters with real feelings, some lovely direct writing, and a great journey to read along with. Another lovely book

This novel by Jandy Nelson is a beautiful book in many respects. Physically, it has a lovely textured lineny semi-hard cover, the text is in blue, and throughout the book there are photographs or facsimiles of found objects, manuscript paper, coffee cups, closet walls, notebook pages, all with handwritten free verse. Much of it is gulp-making free verse, for the story is narrated by Lennie, one of the Walker sisters. Her elder sister, Bailey, a larger-than-life teenage actress, died suddenly four weeks before the start of the story, and Lennie is trying to make sense of her death and her own life without Bailey. There are wonderful characters, especially Lennie and her grandmother, Toby (Bailey’s boyfriend), and a whole bookful of emotional truth, and beautiful writing, verse and prose. It’s a story about grief, about family, about falling in love, about music and growing up. As I said, a beautiful book in many ways. Young adult and adult readers should find this a wonderful sad read, though it is ultimately uplifting.

This young adult book by Australian Scott Gardner is a rewarding read. It uses events in the wider world to counterpoint the ordinary life of one boy, Larry, otherwise known as Laurence Augustine Rainbow.  One reviewer whose opinion I’ve just read found that awkward and contrived, but I liked it. The madness of newsworthy events, from the response to the death of Princess Diana to the invasion of Iraq gives a context for a more ordinary (or is it less ordinary) life. There is some lovely descriptive writing and good characterisation as Larry grows from a newborn to a teenager. It’s always a dodgy business comparing writers, and perhaps it’s a nationality thing, but I found myself thinking of some of the novels of Tim Winton (and I really like his writing.) Larry is an interesting character, a boy who is not sure whether he is going to end up falling in love with girls or boys; his parents are interestingly complex; and the neighbours are amusingly eccentric. I liked this book a lot and recommend it to teenagers and adults as a satisfying read, with a lot of issues raised and no simplistic solutions given.

I don’t usually buy young adult novels in hardback, but when it’s by Louis Sachar, author of the amazing Holes, an exception has to be made. And it has caused me several occasions today of looking up from the book to see a customer waiting, which is not a good look. This is not going to be a book which will grab everyone. Books about games can be popular, but when the game at the centre of the book is contract bridge, it’s somewhat less likely to reach a wide audience. Having said that, Louis Sachar is such a good writer that he pulls you into that world. It’s not necessary to understand the complexities of bridge, though that would certainly add another dimension. Sachar cleverly uses the precedent of Moby Dick and a whale symbol to allow the reader to skip the full explanations of games and strategies and go direct to a summary. Of course the book is about far more than the game of bridge. Writers as good as Louis Sachar are always writing about the game of life, and this novel tocuhes on and explores the ideas of success, sanilty, family and love, among others. Alton becomes the cardturner for his blind great uncle, a  very good bridge player, who teaches him about much more than bridge in an incredibly off-hand and hands-off way. Fantastic characters, lovely writing and a lot to think about. It even has  an appendix on “Deciphering Bridge Gibberish and Other Bridge Commentary” by Syd Fox (a character in the book.) As in Holes, part of the enchantment is the influence of the past on the present, and there are some most unusual twists in the tale. Wonderful.

This novel by Ann Kelley is inevitably compared with Golding’s Lord of the Flies. There are similarities and differences: the book is about young people caught on an island during a war; those marooned are all female, and there is one “adult” who turns out to be less competent than the teenagers. Bonnie McDonald is the narrator, the book being her journal of the events which occur after their small boat has motor failure and the Thai boatman will not stay with them, apparently being afraid of something on the island. The time is May 1974, towards the end of the Vietnam War and Bonny is one of five senior and four junior Amelia Earhart Cadets who go camping with Layla Campbell a young widow admired by all of them.  Admiration quickly turns to frustration for Bonnie and some of the others as Layla proves to be a lush who moves on to plant drugs for her intoxication once the whisky is gone. It’s a rattling good yarn as the girls improvise survival skills, but as with Lord of the Flies, most of the interest is in the relationships between people under stress. Any more plot detail would ruin the suspense, but it’s a well told story with realistic characters with strengths and weaknesses who develop in sometimes unexpected ways in the course of the story. Intermediate age and above, and a good book for secondary librarians to recommend to those who have read Golding’s book.

I’ve written nearly 700 reviews here, and this is one of the most difficult to write, simply because there’s so much in this book, Patrick Ness’s successor to The Knife of Never Letting Go and The Ask and the Answer. As with the earlier books, the plot rattles along. It’s difficult to talk at all about the plot without spoiling the effect for those who haven’t read the earlier books, so I won’t.  I can’t think of anyone who does beginnings better than Patrick Ness. The opening sentences of the first book are almost legendary now, and this one is as good.

‘”War,” says Mayor Prentiss, “At last.”

“Shut up,” I say. “There ain’t no at last about it. The only one who wants this is you.”

“Nevertheless,” he says, turning to me with a smile. “Here it comes.”‘

The ending, which I’m not going to quote, is fantastic as well. This book and the earlier volumes have a lot to think about: gender, terrorists/ freedom fighters, love (parent/child and boy/girl and man/woman) and in this book particularly the relationship between indigenous peoples and colonisers. The themes, the story, the characters and the storytelling are all cumulative, so this is not a book to read in isolation. The first book was all in Todd’s voice, the second in Todd’s and Viola’s voices, and this time the voice of the indigenous people, the Land (formerly known as the spackle) is added. And to go with the intellectual content there is (at least for readers like me) a huge emotional content. Each volume left me thinking and feeling for a long while afterwards.  This trilogy has been one of the most profound reading experiences of my life, and I’ve been reading novels for over fifty years. Ness’s characters are complex, conflicted, real beings who continue to surprise even when we feel we know them almost as well as ourselves. Fantastic, wonderful, shattering fiction.

The second volume of Mandy Hager’s  Blood of  the Lamb trilogy , which began with The Crossing,  is here, and it’s just as good as the first. It’s a young adult/teenage read, beautifully written, with characters full of complexity and doubt, but the plot also rattles along at a hectic pace. Too often in novels one or the other (plot or character) dominates, while the other is less well developed, but there’s a good balance here between the two, so that the story will appeal to those who like a rattling good yarn as well as those who read for enlightenment about the human condition. At the end of the first volume Maryam, Joseph, Ruth and Lazarus had escaped Onewere, and set off into the unknown world. The story continues as they search for other places, and the budding  relationship between Maryam and Joseph develops. I’m determined not to give away the plot, so won’t say more than that, but it’s an emotional roller-coaster as Ruth’s faith competes with Maryam’s angry doubt to explain what they find. Highly recommended for teenagers or adults, and the third book will be eagerly awaited.