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Review of The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

When I requested this book to read, I had no idea the immense impact it would have on me so many thanks to Tinder Press for a paperback copy of this book. First published in 2012 I am so pleased it has been re-published this year.

 

This is a wonderful grown-up fairy tale carefully woven together with the original story.   

 

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Why this book speaks to me personally: Each year I was given a book token at Sunday School and this one year at the book shop I chose Old Peters Russian Fairy Tales for 7/6d.  Four years ago I sold my house and my library of much loved books, keeping just a handful when I moved onto a narrowboat. Today on my little bookshelf tucked away at the stern of my boat-home, is the little blue leatherette covered book.  Some of the pages have old yellowed sellotape on the missing corners where Patch our dog somehow got hold of it and chewed it. But amongst the chewed pages the stories were my escape from a tough childhood, hiding away in the bedroom I shared with my sister or down the end of the garden amongst the raspberry patch reading the stories over and over.  The illustrations in black and white took me to far off lands of snow where I felt alive.  So, reading The Snow Child to me is like revisiting my childhood excitement in stories.

 

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Eowyn Ivey brought me two of my most favourite passions: Alaska and fairy tales.

 

What I loved about this book? I love how the words are from someone who lives in and loves Alaska; the remoteness and harshness, but the true beauty of the wilderness, where summers are brief and the winter darkness prevails. Just listen to this:

“She had imagined that in the Alaska wilderness silence would be peaceful, like snow falling at night, air filled with promise but no sound, but that was not what she found. Instead, when she swept the plank floor, the brook bristles scratched like some sharp-toothed shrew nibbling at her heart.”

and

‘Outside, the air was clean and cool agains her face, and she could smell the wood smoke from the chimney. She let the snow float around her, and then Mabel did what she had as child – ruined her face to the sky and stuck out her tongue. The swirl was dizzying and she began to spin slowly in place. The snowflakes landed on her cheeks and eyelids , wet her skin. The she stopped and watched the snow settle on the arms of her coat. For a moment she studied the pattern of a single starry flake before it melted into the wool. Here, and then gone.’

I can’t imagine any person who hasn’t done that when they were a child, a simply beautiful description!

 

The struggle of a couple each silently grieving for their stillborn child, to live and survive in the wild. I wanted them to make it work.   Mabel so desperate to get out in the fields with Jack her husband, to get physical release from her grief.   Jack wanting to protect her from the harshness and pain of working outside tasking her to keep house and prepare his meals.   During the turn of the century pioneers had no modern appliances or generators to make living easy, just a horse and a plough if they were lucky, oil lamps for light, and a cast iron stove to cook on and keep warm. There is a real sense of history in the way the lives of the couple are portrayed in their struggle to survive the wilderness, and for Jack and Mabel had most of all the unbearable emptiness of being childless.

Until one day they build a snow child.

 

The love that Jack and Mabel share after thirty years is one of solidness but have never before have they known such love they have for the girl as she runs about amongst the trees and when Mabel remembers her father reading to her the story of the Little Daughter of the Snow from a blue leather bound book she can’t quite believe that this child is of snow.

 

Don’t make the mistake in thinking that this is not an adult book or a soft option to read, this is a great novel written beautifully, it made me cry, and it made me smile, I felt despair when Jack is injured, and grateful that their wonderful neighbours came to help out. The snow child Faina has her own part in the story, and it’s one that I didn’t expect.

 

You get a real sense of Mabel and Jack as people here:

You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hand s as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers.’

and

Jack wasn’t one to believe in fray-tale maidens made of snow. Yet Faina was extraordinary. Vast mountain ranges and unending wilderness, sky and ice. You couldn’t hold her close or know her mind. Perhaps it was so with all children. Certainly he and Mabel hadn’t formed into the molds their parents set for them.’

Their neighbours, the Bensons, bring much warmth and comfort to the book, full of strong boys, and a happy capable woman bottling fruits and shooting bears. What follows is descriptive warmth that conveys a family home full of chaos, love and hope.

‘It was if Mabel had fallen though a hole into another world. It was nothing like her quiet, well-ordered world of darkness and light and sadness. This was an untidy place, but welcoming and full of laughter. ‘

I have visited those homes wishing I could stay a while longer…

 

There is an immense aching sorrow in the ending, but like all good stories there is also hope.
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I am planning a once in a lifetime trip to Alaska with my daughter within the next couple of years before I decline cognitively with dementia (having Alzheimer’s disease) and reading The Snow Child felt very special to me, as if it’s drawing me closer there. This book will be placed along side my 1955 copy of Arthur Ransome’s Old Peters Russian Fairy Tales with illustrations by Dmitri Mitrokhin for keeps.

Stunningly clever thriller!

Dziewczyna z pociągu - Paula Hawkins

 

What is different about this book: This novel evolves through the eyes of different people who each have their own view of life and events. Each person telling their own story, laying bare their lives to be absorbed by the reader. How then can the truth be pieced together when the facts are fragmented and damaged? A brilliant way to read a tense thriller without being told of the plot and I was left guessing right up until the end.

 

It starts with Rachel on a commute to London. Personally for me train a journey is like being in another place and time, and reading this I felt like I was on a train remembering my days of travelling to work with the same people every day:

 

“I just want to lean back in the soft, sagging velour seat, feel the warmth of the sunshine streaming through the window, feel the carriage rock back and forth and back and forth, the comforting rhythm of wheels on tracks.”

Rachel describes her train journeys with such intimacy that I was drawn into her life and travelling with her. This was not just a commute for her it was a journey through her miserable life with a destination still unknown.

 

She routinely watches out of the window, especially at the row of Victorian houses where she sees Jess and Jason on the patio in the mornings having coffee. Of course that is not their names, she has built them a fantasy life in her head.

 

“I can’t see Jason and Jess this morning, and my sense of disappointment is acute. Silly I know. I scrutinise the house, but there’s nothing to see.”

She is creating a fantasy relationship in her head but the line between reality is blurring.


A few doors away she sees Anna - who is real and is now married to her ex husband and living in her house. They have the baby she never had.  When Rachel describes the time she knew her husband was cheating on her, Hawkins uses such a beautifully put line: 

 

Sometimes its a text or a voicemail message; in my case it was an email, the modern-day lipstick on the collar.”

Oh, I could go on waxing lyrical about the life of Megan and Anna too, but I would would not want to spoil the book for you, let me just say, their lives are equally as interesting as Rachel’s and very pertinent to the plot.

 

The disappearance of Megan starts Rachel hurtling towards self destruction as she tries to find out what happened manipulating her need for attention, recognition, self worth, and maybe something else. As reality and fantasy become confused Rachel knows she has important information that could solve what has happened to Megan. She draws you into this journey with her, with the fear that it is not going to end well.

 

Throughout the book Paula Hawkins gives an insight into alcoholism and its effects on oneself and others. This felt so real it was a warning, I have met ‘Rachel’, seen her in the pub, and avoided her on the street.

 

This is a tense thriller, at a pace which echoes the commute of the train, with imagined scenes from the window with the stops at the lights. I loved each and every character; Rachel got my sympathy and my cringing annoyance - come on pull yourself together girl! Jess; who would have thought she was as complex as that, and her secret - wow thats deep!  I wanted to dislike Anna, because she broke up Rachel and Tom’s marriage, but you know that she is not that nasty. I enjoyed how the characters of the men were real even the strangers; someone speaks to you, they are in your head somewhere, but you can’t quite place them and you are not sure whether you are afraid of them.

 

Listen to this line, absolutely the best quote of the book for me:

"LIFE IS NOT A PARAGRAPH AND DEATH IS NO PARENTHESIS.”

I recommend it to everyone who loves a different psychological thriller.

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Many thanks to the Publisher for an ARC via NetGalley in return for an honest opinion.

""LIFE IS NOT A PARAGRAPH AND DEATH IS NO PARENTHESIS""

I just love this quote, it is from The Girl On The Train, by Paula Hawkins

An excellent read which I recommend to all who love an intelligently thought out book

Dark Prayer - Natasha Mostert

Jennilee is a girl who is in a ‘fugue’ state - having reinvented her identity after an amnesic episode. Eloise as she is now known is having a shatter ('flashback') of memory not necessarily her own and not only that but someone is trying to kill her.

During a moment of a shatter Mostert beautifully describes a moment:

It was a letter that told of music in the darkness and daffodils in the spring. The memory of it was strong. Or perhaps, she thought as she continued to stare with aching heart, it was a memory of things she never knew.

Along comes Jack who agrees to his father's demands to travel to London to help find her but discovers that the people who want to bring her back have motives that are not wholly benevolent. A photograph of a group of people which includes Jack’s own father and Jennilee’s mother reveals a mystical group of scientists calling themselves the Order of Mnemosyne. The mystery around her lost memory deepens when they dig deeper into finding out what’s behind it all.

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This is the first of Natasha Mostert’s books I have read and thoroughly enjoyed it. What I liked about it best was the mixture of philosophical ideas of memory and identity. As someone living with memory dysfunction I identified with the whole discussion around memory as a crucial component of identity.

 

Think of this; if your memory was altered or manufactured from the original who would you be? If your memory could be altered to wipe out distressful events how would that change you? Even more important who would you want to be? Losing one’s memory is one of the most feared aspects surrounding dementia, and with it one’s identity. The issues of memory that Mostert discusses in detail are so knowledgeable and thought provoking.

 

There is a line which casually invites you to think about it:

As he flicked off the TV remote, he wondered idly at what point unreliable memories started affecting one's sense of self.

Who is Jack; an American rich boy, bit of a waster, no job, just living it up, drinking and fighting etc, you get the picture. Then big-guns Daddy, tells him he has to go to England to help look for a missing girl and bring her back to her ward Daniel a friend of his. Jack a free runner, agrees to find Jennilee Gray who also loves the activity of ‘parkour’.

Now calling herself Eloise Blake, Jack falls in love with her and helps to unravel the mystery surrounding her which involves the Order of Mnemosyne, their parents, memory and scientific experimentation. What will Jack and Eloise find out about her life, and how will she deal with it?

 

There is a wonderful mix of exciting story telling and deep thinking around spirituality and psychology. This is a book that you are unable to read without looking at yourself and questioning what makes you, you.

 

Stunningly clever stuff.

 

I loved the complexity of the characters and the plot, each with their own agenda’s. References to Aleister Crowley gives an understanding to the type of order behind the plot, and having read a great deal of Crowley it gave me the insight of the darkness of the order. If you haven’t read or don’t know Crowley, no matter, because Mostert gives enough details for you to understand completely.

 

I had heard about Free Running but not in any detail; what a thrilling activity it is! Oh I wish I was 40 years younger because I would just love to do this. Just reading it gave me a real sense of what it feels like to do it, and that is a mark of a great writer!
Just listen to this snippet:

Free running can be exhilarating. It can be like flying...
Movement is life. That was what parkour was all about. Never look back. Find another way.

Mostert has gauged the reading pace of the plot completely right, is not too much to be too complicated to follow, and enough to be exciting.


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Many thanks to the Publisher for a digital copy via NetGalley for an honest review.

Before I Go To Sleep by JS Watson

Before I Go To Sleep: A Novel - S. J. Watson

synopsis

Memories define us.

So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight.

And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.

Welcome to Christine's life.

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My Review

Having not read any reviews of this book I started it as a fresh blank canvas. 

I found this book is so exciting I could not put it down, no really, I couldn’t stop reading. I started reading just before 8am and finished it around 9.30pm.

 

An edge of the seat read, each ‘day’ bringing a new roller coaster of emotions.

The plot not only explores the notion that memories define us but shows a hint of personality being more than memories.  It stops and makes you think about yourself and your own memories, you try and imagine yourself in Christine’s place…not knowing…

It is a book that lingers in your mind after you have finished, you search back into your own memory to see if there was a point that you guessed the outcome.  Nope, I didn’t guess right up until the end.  

 

Psychological thrillers can often be a disappointment, but this one is so intriguing you cannot let the story go.

 

Watson shows how scary it must be to wake up in a strange house, next to a strange man, and seeing yourself 20 years older that you know yourself to be, every single day.  A husband you don’t remember, and your own face aged. 

 

I loved the characters in this book, as they performed different to how I wanted them to, and there was always a hint of not really knowing anyone.

 

I could imagine the way Christine starts each day as if its the first day of your life.  The loneliness it must create.  Being based on the life of amnesiacs, this also has a small resonance of living with dementia, when you can wake up in the morning having forgotten the past few days, progressing to not knowing your own family members, living each day in isolation.  

 

I usually find that films do not match up to the excitement of the book, although if it stays true to Watson’s story it will be worth watching.

 

Psychological thriller at its best - no question about that.  Nicely written this is a must read.

 

Source: http://mrshsgbookreviews.wordpress.com

Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson

 

 

Synopsis:

Memories define us.
So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?
Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight.
And the one person you trust may only be telling you half the story.
Welcome to Christine's life.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

My Review:

Having not read any reviews of this book I started it as a fresh blank canvas. 

I found this book is so exciting I could not put it down, no really, I couldn’t stop reading. I started reading just before 8am and finished it around 9.30pm.

 

An edge of the seat read, each ‘day’ bringing a new roller coaster of emotions.

 

The plot not only explores the notion that memories define us but shows a hint of personality being more than memories. It stops and makes you think about yourself and your own memories, you try and imagine yourself in Christine’s place…not knowing…

 

It is a book that lingers in your mind after you have finished, you search back into your own memory to see if there was a point that you guessed the outcome. Nope, I didn’t guess right up until the end.

 

Psychological thrillers can often be a disappointment, but this one is so intriguing you cannot let the story go.

 

Watson shows how scary it must be to wake up in a strange house, next to a strange man, and seeing yourself 20 years older that you know yourself to be, every single day. A husband you don’t remember, and your own face aged.

 

I loved the characters in this book, as they performed different to how I wanted them to, and there was always a hint of not really knowing anyone.

 

I could imagine the way Christine starts each day as if its the first day of your life. The loneliness it must create. Being based on the life of amnesiacs, this also has a small resonance of living with dementia, when you can wake up in the morning having forgotten the past few days, progressing to not knowing your own family members, living each day in isolation.

 

I usually find that films do not match up to the excitement of the book, although if it stays true to Watson’s story it will be worth watching.

 

Psychological thriller at its best – no question about that. Nicely written this is a must read.

Source: http://mrshsgbookreviews.wordpress.com