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BOOK REVIEW: Everyone Brave is Forgiven, by Chris Cleave

- Meg

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BOOK REVIEW: Everyone Brave is Forgiven, by Chris CleaveTitle: Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave
Published by Simon & Schuster
Published: May 3rd 2016
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 418
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

From the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Little Bee, a spellbinding novel about three unforgettable individuals thrown together by war, love, and their search for belonging in the ever-changing landscape of WWII London.
It’s 1939 and Mary, a young socialite, is determined to shock her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort. She is assigned as a teacher to children who were evacuated from London and have been rejected by the countryside because they are infirm, mentally disabled, or—like Mary’s favorite student, Zachary—have colored skin.
Tom, an education administrator, is distraught when his best friend, Alastair, enlists. Alastair, an art restorer, has always seemed far removed from the violent life to which he has now condemned himself. But Tom finds distraction in Mary, first as her employer and then as their relationship quickly develops in the emotionally charged times. When Mary meets Alastair, the three are drawn into a tragic love triangle and—while war escalates and bombs begin falling around them—further into a new world unlike any they’ve ever known.
A sweeping epic with the kind of unforgettable characters, cultural insights, and indelible scenes that made Little Bee so incredible, Chris Cleave’s latest novel explores the disenfranchised, the bereaved, the elite, the embattled. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a heartbreakingly beautiful story of love, loss, and incredible courage.

 War was declared at 11:15, and Mary North signed up at noon.

Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven is a wonderful, heartbreaking novel about the people who find themselves at the beginning of and in the midst of a brutal world war. This novel brings the reader to the front and center of the lives of Londoners at the beginning of WWII, and the reader is able to experience how the war affected people both on the home front and at the war front.

Mary North, a young London socialite, is determined to make a difference in her life and in the lives of others, and she volunteers her services to the war effort. She is assigned to be a teacher to children who have been evacuated from London. There she meets Tom, her employer and future lover, and learns about Alastair, Tom’s friend who has enlisted and about whom Tom is distraught.

There’s bravery on the war front, with men and women facing dangers not seen before, but there is also bravery on the home front, fighting class and racial prejudices. It’s a deft combination of all sorts of bravery and how it affects each of the characters while each are dealing with feelings of longing, belonging, loyalty, and love.

If you’ve read Doerr’s All the Light You Cannot See and Hannah’s The Nightingale and want more to read in a similar vein, this one comes highly recommended.

Thank you to Netgalley for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: The Trees, by Ali Shaw

- Meg

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BOOK REVIEW: The Trees, by Ali ShawTitle: The Trees by Ali Shaw
Published by Bloomsbury USA
Published: August 2nd 2016
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 496
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

The Trees. They arrived in the night: wrenching through the ground, thundering up into the air, and turning Adrien's suburban street into a shadowy forest. Shocked by the sight but determined to get some answers, he ventures out, passing destroyed buildings, felled power lines, and broken bodies still wrapped in tattered bed linens hanging from branches.
It is soon apparent that no help is coming and that these trees, which seem the work of centuries rather than hours, span far beyond the town. As far, perhaps, as the coast, where across the sea in Ireland, Adrien's wife is away on a business trip and there is no way of knowing whether she is alive or dead.
When Adrien meets Hannah, a woman who, unlike him, believes that the coming of the trees may signal renewal rather than destruction and Seb, her technology-obsessed son, they persuade him to join them. Together, they pack up what remains of the lives they once had and set out on a quest to find Hannah's forester brother and Adrien's wife--and to discover just how deep the forest goes.
Their journey through the trees will take them into unimaginable territory: to a place of terrible beauty and violence, of deadly enemies and unexpected allies, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness--and also the power--inside themselves.

 The world ends not with a bang but with a whisper.

Ali Shaw’s The Trees begins when overnight trees shoot up from the ground, destroying life as everyone knew it. I feel like I’ve been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic books lately, but this is the most natural. No one knows where the trees come from. Are they from Mother Nature? Alien? This isn’t a novel about where a destructive force comes from; it’s a novel about how certain people react and survive in the aftermath of something so unexplainable. And the people who survive are not your typical “heroes.”

This is a novel about nature’s cruelty, but also a novel about nature’s grace. The real survivors are the apt ones as they’re the ones fit to adapt. Our “hero” of the story is someone who’s introverted, unsure of himself and his place in the world, and overthinks everything. And who/what he becomes in the end was incredibly magical to me. It’s a reminder that everyone has a place and a purpose, and it doesn’t have to be overt, extroverted, and loud.

It’s a long book, but it’s well-paced and never seems to drag. I almost wish there was more. It’s a blend of post-apocalyptic horror, fairy tales, and magical realism. It’s brutal in a natural way, and if you’re disturbed by descriptions of violence toward people and animals, this book isn’t for you. But if you’re intrigued by a different sort of post-apocalypse in which nature takes back the Earth from its parasitic human population, read this. It’ll give you chills.

Thanks to Netgalley for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: Love for Lydia, by H.E. Bates

- Meg

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BOOK REVIEW: Love for Lydia, by H.E. BatesTitle: Love for Lydia by H.E. Bates
Published by Bloomsbury Reader
Published: May 12th 2016
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 300
Format: eBook
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads

Lydia - shy, sheltered, beautiful and just 19 - glides into Evensford one wintry day, stirring up feeling amongst the town's young men. But it is the young Mr Richardson that she befriends. As winter turns to drowsy summer, his world becomes a wondrous place, full only of Lydia; but a change comes over the once retiring girl as she discovers the effect she has on other men. As his closest friends fall under her spell, the love Richardson feels for Lydia becomes tangled with jealousy and resentment, a rift that may never be repaired.
First published in 1952, Love for Lydia is a poignant look at love through the eyes of a boy growing up. Set amidst the hazy beauty of the English countryside and the crumbling splendour of the British upper classes, Bates demonstrates his ability to capture the complexities of human character, his remarkable talent for contrasting romance against stark reality, and the innocence, joy and sadness of young love.

 In a shorter review, I wrote that H.E. Bates’s Love for Lydia is like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing of neon lights and champagne jazz. Bates’s writing is similar, transposed to the English countryside with pops of flowers against the countryside rather than fireworks against a city skyline.

In Love for Lydia, we follow Richardson (our narrator) throughout his meeting of orphaned Lydia, his falling in love with Lydia, his letting go of Lydia, and everything that transpires between. Richardson is not part of “society,” but he is invited to spend time with Lydia so that she might expand her horizons. During the course of the novel and during the course of Richardson’s and Lydia’s attachment to one another, others are introduced into Lydia’s life and some vie for her attention, which in turn creates resentment and jealousy among everyone in their little friend group.

Nature plays a prominent role in the book. It starts out in winter, thaws out in spring, overheats in summer, and culminates at the brink of autumn. The cycle of seasons is fitting to Richardson’s  behavior and reactions, and serves as an outward representation of his internal dialogue. Richardson’s constant stopping to smell the roses also shows us that he’s aware of the details, of the implications, and the significance of beautiful things. His descriptions of flowers against the drab landscape show us how he feels particularly about Lydia; she’s his flower in the hardship of life.

Lydia, a vixen in her newfound freedom and confidence, becomes aware of her sexuality and uses it to her advantage, but not without destroying the hearts of her beaux. It troubles her; it troubles Richardson who watches it unfold before his eyes.

It’s a love story; it’s a story about parties and obsessive, destructive love in the Twenties; and it’s a very British one at that. Read it if you enjoyed Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Smith’s I Capture the Castle. Apparently it’s a little Hardy-ish, but I’ve never read Hardy, so I can’t make the comparison yet!

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury for a review copy!

BOOK REVIEW: Margaret the First, by Danielle Dutton

- Meg

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BOOK REVIEW: Margaret the First, by Danielle DuttonTitle: Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton
Published by Catapult
Published: March 15th 2016
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 176
Format: Trade Paper
Source: Purchased
Goodreads

Margaret Cavendish is apparently mentioned in Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, and I’ve added that on my immediate to-read list. And I have a renewed interest in Margaret’s own work. I almost wish I could have read it the other way around to see how the author drew from Woolf to create Margaret’s dreamlike exploration of what it means to have a space of one’s own (in the mind, in the house, in society) to be oneself entirely.

This isn’t a historical novel. Ideas and scenes are presented with little more than a place and year. If you’re familiar with Margaret Cavendish and the history of the world surrounding her life, the context becomes clearer. If you’re not entirely familiar with her or that period in history, it’s still enjoyable. I knew enough to place the novel in contextual history, and now after reading I want to know more. It’s a thinky, dreamy read that will transport you away for a little while.

It’s feminist, it’s progressive, and it’s lyrical.

BOOK REVIEW: The Vegetarian, by Han Kang

- Meg

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BOOK REVIEW: The Vegetarian, by Han KangTitle: The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Deborah Smith
Published by Hogarth
Published: February 2nd 2016
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 188
Format: Hardcover
Source: Borrowed
Buy: Bookshop(afflilate link)
Goodreads

Before the nightmare, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary life. But when splintering, blood-soaked images start haunting her thoughts, Yeong-hye decides to purge her mind and renounce eating meat. In a country where societal mores are strictly obeyed, Yeong-hye's decision to embrace a more “plant-like” existence is a shocking act of subversion. And as her passive rebellion manifests in ever more extreme and frightening forms, scandal, abuse, and estrangement begin to send Yeong-hye spiraling deep into the spaces of her fantasy. In a complete metamorphosis of both mind and body, her now dangerous endeavor will take Yeong-hye—impossibly, ecstatically, tragically—far from her once-known self altogether.   A disturbing, yet beautifully composed narrative told in three parts, The Vegetarian is an allegorical novel about modern day South Korea, but also a story of obsession, choice, and our faltering attempts to understand others, from one imprisoned body to another.

 Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a slim novel that is packed with things and ideas that leave the reader thinking long after the book is closed. While I found the characters and the varying points of view interesting, I found that something was missing. Something that feels lost in translation. I think it’s incredibly impressive that Deborah Smith studied Korean for seven years and then translated this book, but I think that her limits definitely showed in her translation. Some parts of it felt clunky, and some parts of it felt skimmed over. What I felt was lacking was a cultural significance as to why the members of Yeong-hye’s family found her vegetarianism so fundamentally shocking.

But most of all, I liked the different insights from other people in Yeong-hye’s life. I thought it showcased the difficulties one woman faced in the midst of a very personal decision. Her decision was never taken seriously, no matter what her reasons were for making it. Yeong-hye lost everything because of her fastidious decision to become a vegetarian, and her decision affected her entire family, essentially cracking the family’s foundation.

It’s a short novel, and it’s certainly worth reading if you enjoy reading prize-winners, international/translated fiction, and fiction about the lives of women in the aftermath of the choices they make.