Review: Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

★★

This book, for me, did not meet the hype that has been thrown about for it. I loved Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, I really enjoy Susanna Clarke’s writing but this book was just a huge miss with my personal tastes. And as much as I hate to say it, this is a marmite book and one that most people seem to be fawning over (much to my confusion).

Piranesi is an ambling story – and one that dragged on for much longer than it’s mere 250 pages would have you believe. For the first 150 or so, absolutely nothing happens. The character of Piranesi is really boring. I found this meandering narrative of corridors and birds that he sees more tedious and frustrating than charming. The characters are endlessly dull too, I didn’t feel any of them were multifaceted (and, let’s face it, there’s only 3 characters in this whole book really).

I kept reading because I enjoy Susanna Clarke’s writing; the world building was interesting and I have to admit, the final quarter picked up pace and is probably what I enjoyed most. Additionally, I did switch to the audiobook at one point and narration did make this marginally more enjoyable. Before the final quarter I was finding this difficult to get through and quite drab. Also, the ending was really anticlimactic.

Honestly, this was like treacle to get through. I genuinely think the 1000+ page behemoth that was Jonathan Strange was easier to get through than this comparatively slim, 250 page volume. I felt like I was reading it for hours, the ending was bizarre, nothing really happened and I just felt frustrated by the time I was done with it. If you want a gushing, positive review there are plenty of those on Goodreads as for some reason, unknown to me, the general consensus for this book is adoration.

Review: A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes

★★

I’m going to preface this with my main thought which is – I think I read this book at the wrong time. I’d read a lot of historical non-fiction, and been listening to exclusively history podcasts, and picking up historical fiction straight off of that may not have been the smartest idea. Also, I partially listened to this and I think maybe reading it physically would have been a better experience.

For me this missed the mark. A Thousand Ships is retelling the Trojan war from the perspective of the women involved and on paper this is a perfect book for me. Greek Myth retelling and giving voices to lost women, heck yes! But in reality, it just didn’t work for me.

When this book is so character driven, it’s really difficult to then enjoy the book when you can’t connect to the characters. However, I felt that no voices were particularly stand-out, they blended in to each other and I didn’t feel I could fully invest in any one of the different perspectives because they all became one perspective to me which led to confusion. And those few that did stand out didn’t for the right reasons – Penelope was in this and her entire selling point is her chapters are letters to her husband, rehashing the Iliad/Odyssey verbatim in letters to Odysseus telling us the reader the plot of the Iliad/Odyssey in a CrEaTiVe way. For me, that felt lazy. Again, this could be an issue with the audiobook – the fact it was narrated by Natalie Haynes was great but each characters voice was the same. It was flat. It lacked personality. And as much as I love an author narrating their own book, and Haynes has a lovely narration style, it was very monotonous and would have suited a more linear/one perspective book a lot more. I’m not usually a fan of multi-narrator audiobooks but I think that this book specifically could really have benefited from more than one narrator.

On the plus side, the prose is lovely. I really like Natalie Haynes’ writing style, and I can see why this book worked for a vast majority of people. I’d like to see more like Children of Jocasta, which I read in 2018 (and apparently didn’t review?) because I feel her prose does suit a more linear, focused on one character narrative.

It’s really difficult to say anything more on this book because it just fell so far from the mark for me. I think rather than backing and forthing in narrative it would have been better being more intense character studies in an interlinking short story collection style (more like Girl, Woman, Other was). The actual structure of this didn’t work for me, the characters felt flat and yes, it just wasn’t for me. It’s not to say that

Review: Sight – Jessie Greengrass

★★

I read this a few weeks ago, shortly after the Wellcome longlist was announced, and if I’m entirely honest I don’t remember much about this book. I wish I could say wonderful things but ultimately if I had to pick one word for this book it would be forgettable.

From what I remember this book follows a rather self-absorbed, 20-something woman who is pregnant with her second child. That didn’t interest me in the slightest unfortunately. I have no desire to procreate, so pregnant narrators are something that are very hit and miss with me anyway. I will say that the idea of a grieving daughter and a soon to be mother assessing her relationships with the females in her life is a good one, however if it had been left at that I think I would have enjoyed this book marginally more than I did.

However, it wasn’t just left at that (of course it wasn’t!) instead we had random sections about figures from history thrown in – something I really didn’t enjoy. I found the dichotomy between the present day story and historical figures jarring. Just when I felt I may be getting in to the present story I was pulled out of it by a tangent about Freud or the man who discovered the x-ray, and while I think this could have been a good tool if applied correctly, I don’t think it was applied correctly.

As I said, I don’t really have a lot to say about this book unfortunately as 2 weeks have passed since I read it and I actually forgot I had read it until I checked my list of books to review. I can understand that this might work for some people, but for me it was a massive miss unfortunately.

Review: One Hundred Shadows – Hwang Jungeun

★★

This book first came on to my radar around 18 months ago, and was the book that introduced me to Tilted Axis Press – a publishing house, founded by Deborah Smith who rose to notoriety translating Han Kang’s works (which went on to win prize after prize). Tilted Axis focus on translated works, especially those which otherwise may not have otherwise made it to the English market. While I’ve now read a handful of books from Tilted Axis, I’d yet to read the one which brought the publisher to my attention and once again in the mood to read a book in one sitting this little 150 page book was top of the pile.

Describing this story is difficult because, honestly, I don’t really know what went on in it. The story takes place in a run down area of Seoul and follows two young people; Eungyo and Mujae. They both work in shops in the district which are at risk of being shut down as the area is described as ‘a slum’. These two characters bond over their mutual situation, and their relationship develops over the course of the 150 pages. There is also the aspect of Shadows and their power over an individual – I wish there was more focus on this aspect of the book because I think if this had gone further in to magical realism I would have enjoyed it a lot more. A lot is left to the imagination and I did feel that my brain was constantly playing catch up to try and pick up threads.

The description of the book is “off beat” but I don’t quite think that covers the confusion I felt. Rather than off beat I think it was completely lost. The writing (and the translation) were beautiful but the actual plot left me confused and a little cold. I didn’t feel any particular connection to the characters, and while I read it in one sitting I did find myself distracted easily and never completely immersed.

The author has another book which has recently been published by Tilted Axis, and I will check that out because I did like the style of writing. I hate to judge an author on one book (unless the book is actually awful, which this wasn’t, it just wasn’t entirely my cup of tea and that’s fine).

Ultimately this was a 2 star read for me – I liked it, but it isn’t a book which blew me away, nor is it one I think will stay with me in any way long term. But it’s an author I’m interested by, and I do intend to look at buying her other book in English.

Review: Lagoon – Nnedi Okorafor

Rating – 2*

 Lagoon is a book I absolutely picked up on a whim. I was in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section of my local bookshop, looking for something out of my usual comfort zone, and stumbled upon this. I’ve heard a lot of incredible things about Nnedi Okorafor (particularly her Binti series) and was interested to see that she’s actually a very, very prolific author!

I’m relatively new to the Sci-Fi genre in fiction – so I can’t really place this anywhere in particular on a scale. But I really enjoyed a lot of it – it’s a first contact story, but not little green men from mars like you probably think of when you hear Sci-Fi. The invasion of Nigeria comes from the seas, not the skies, which is what drew me to the book in the first place.  I love the idea of creatures from the deep coming to the surface!

The book also draws a lot of inspiration from a lot of Nigerian folklore and fairy tales, and I really enjoyed how they were blended in with the science fiction elements. I also felt that more than anything this was a book that looked at the humanity of a small population, and how something so big (such as an alien invasion) divides them and unites them simultaneously. While there are three main characters, there are also view points from several smaller characters – which are interesting but made the book feel crowded in my mind.

While I enjoyed the first half, I felt the second half lost a bit of momentum, and lost my interest. The ending was okay, it all came together nicely but I feel like it could have ended half way through and had the same impact on me. I gave this two stars, maybe because I didn’t fully understand it at the time of reading. In parts it felt cramped and overworked, in other places it was sparse and not thought out enough. It felt quite meh come the end, and I don’t feel that much was resolved.

What I will say though is that I did enjoy the writing though, so I think I’ll be picking up more Okorafor in the future.

Review: Norse Mythology – Neil Gaiman

Rating – 2*

I love mythology. I’ve always had a keen interest, and it’s been something that I often come back to on occasion, in phases. My first love was Egyptian mythology, and then I moved on to Greek (and to a lesser part, Roman) but I have to admit I never really stumbled much upon Norse myth until I was older. So before going in to this book my knowledge of Norse Mythology was quite lacking, and in all honesty it’s still quite lacking on the other side.

Neil Gaiman can tell a good story, of that I’m certain. I’m just starting to wonder if I read his work in a completely different way to others. I’ve honestly never read a Gaiman book that I’ve loved and there are a number of reasons for that, and it always seems to come back to one key feature – he’s really, really bad at writing female characters. There are some incredible women in Norse mythology, and yet all they do in this book is stand to one side, flicking their golden hair and pouting. While I understand that most current understanding of Norse myth comes from MCU, there is more to it than Thor, Odin and Loki – yet this book didn’t seem to cover all that much of it. In fact, it was just one big ole sausage fest and as many of you dear readers may know, I don’t do sausage.

But this book confused me, at times it read like a children’s book but then there were moments which were certainly not for children. I found as the book went on it became all very monotone, even as an audiobook I found it flat and found myself getting more and more disconnected as it went on.

I recently read Stephen Fry’s retelling of Greek Myths and this is pretty meh in comparison. I can only imagine how incredible Stephen Fry’s Norse Myths would be based off of that.

So I gave this 2 stars, because there were moments of brilliance but they were few and far between for me unfortunately. And I think it’s fair to say I’m not going to be reading any more Gaiman because, honestly, every one of his books I’ve read I’ve been disappointed by.

 

Review: A Guide to Being Born – Ramona Ausubel

Rating – 2*

This is one of those books which has been sitting there, itching to be read, for a number of years. I think I bought this way, way back on a friends recommendation and have had such high hopes for it since that I just didn’t want to pick it up – it wasn’t quite the right time.

I think I may have gone in to this book with expectations far too high because, well, I didn’t enjoy it. Ausubel’s writing is beautiful, there’s no escaping that. How she uses language, her turns of phrase, her imagery and atmosphere is incredible but the actual stories as separate entities? Those I didn’t enjoy so much.

So many reviews of this collection say that they (as readers) were swept up in her worlds, and loved the creativity and whimsy of what she created. Said that stories in here were beautiful. For me, I didn’t get that. Some of the stories physically repulsed me – and I get that that was the intention, to blur those lines between reality and fiction, to have questionable ethics and plots to make you think. But, honestly, some of it for me went too far over the line for me to enjoy.

I so wanted to love this book, but in the end I carried on reading out of a sense of obligation. Not because I necessarily wanted to. I hoped – fruitlessly – that I would find that story in here, that one that made me forget all the faults and issues I had, the one that swept me up and made me love this collection as everyone else on my GoodReads friends list seems to. But it didn’t happen. The stories did get better, but not enough for me to recall them at any given moment – never mind a week after the event in a review! And the stories I do remember I don’t particularly wish I could, I wish I could erase them from my memory.

As I said, Ausubel is clearly a talented writer to evoke this emotion from me – because I don’t think I’d feel so passionately about a book being packed full of stories I disliked if I hated the writing. I’d have just thrown it to one side and forgotten about it. But, with this book, I didn’t feel I could do that. Only go in to this book with a strong stomach and preparation that it isn’t quite the ‘Cath Kidston’ of short story collections like many of the reviews make you believe.

Review: Plot 29 – Allan Jenkins

Rating – 2*

I am getting so close to finishing the longlist of the Wellcome prize now (as I write this it is the 15th of March and I have 5 days before the shortlist is announced and 2 books to finish!).

Plot 29 is a book which I found quite confusing. I think as a memoir around fostering, childhood neglect, and the struggle of finding a biological family it would be good, and as a book about keeping an allotment it would be good, however the combination of the two I found rather bizarre if I am entirely honest and something that as I reader I didn’t enjoy all that much. As with another memoir on the list I really struggled to find how this is relevant to bioscience or health – the link is just too tenuous for me (especially as I believe it was put on the list because of the mental health aspect of the piece, which I didn’t even pick up on!) So, for me this wasn’t really something I would have continued reading if it wasn’t for me wanting to read the entire longlist cover to cover!

The book essentially revolves around a year on an allotment in London – Plot 29 – which Jenkins is caring for. The book is based around this plot, and the year in a life of it. But that’s where the logic to the chronology ends. Within chapters there is so much jumping about, one moment we’re in 2016/17 and the next we’re in another decade – even the flashbacks and fragments of the past aren’t in any sort of order. This for me made even the major personal events in the book really anticlimactic and dull. And they shouldn’t have been, as I said initially if this book focused solely on his experience as a foster child, finding biological relatives, and also followed a logical chronology I think it could have been a really powerful piece of writing.

Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me – I feel a bit like it was mis-sold if I’m entirely honest. I appreciate this is someone’s life, and I am not in any way saying that it wasn’t moving but I found that as a book the way it was positioned felt a bit cramped. I find it interesting that it was originally to be a book about gardening and a year in an allotment with a little bit of personal stuff thrown in, but over time it grew in to what it became. I know a lot of people who have loved this book, and will love this book if they read it – but if we all liked the same things it’d be a dull old world!

Review: To Be a Machine – Mark O’Connell

Rating – 2*

Another day, another book on the Wellcome prize long list! Today it’s To Be a Machine – a book which is essentially about how technology may one day help us avoid death. I don’t really know how to describe this book as, well, I didn’t really enjoy it!

Transhumanism is at its core the art of extending life using technology to do so – ideas like uploading our consciousness on to data chips, and cryogenic freezing are just the tip of the iceberg (if you’ll pardon the poor taste pun there!) of what this subject encompasses. If I’m entirely honest, I’m not all that interested in what this book was talking about which is maybe why I didn’t enjoy it all that much.

I feel that this book could have been an essay outlining the key points – I found the interviews with people who are very much in to the transhumanism movement a bit eye roll worthy, and I found the writing often crude and jarring. I’ve no issue with swearing or anything of the sort in context, but in this book I just didn’t feel it suited the tone. It was just over 250 pages and, honestly, it could have been something a lot more profound if it were half the length.

For me this just wasn’t something I enjoyed reading. I know a lot of people have really loved this book based on the goodreads reviews, but it just didn’t quite hit the right mark for me. I also feel that as I get further through the Wellcome longlist it’s becoming harder to not compare books to each other – and compared to some of those I have read recently this is a little short of the mark.

Review: Mayhem – Sigrid Rausing

Rating – 2*

Another day, another review for the Wellcome Prize longlist. Today I’m talking about Mayhem – which is a memoir about addiction and the impact it has on a family. While it was interesting, and intimate in parts, I didn’t find myself blown away by it, in fact I don’t feel there is much to say about it.

Rausing is the granddaughter of the man who found Tetra Pak, and her brother Hans is who this book is ultimately about. In 2012, after being arrested for possession of class A drugs, his London home was searched by the police where Eva – his then wife – was found dead. She had been dead for 2 months when the police found her. At the crux of it all was drugs – and this book (told from his sister Sigrid’s perspective) is essentially his side of the story, how he came to be addicted, how he and Eva tried to conquer their demons and ultimately the disease which is addiction.

I found the sections which focus on the science of addiction, the whole is it nature or is it nurture debate, really interesting and compelling. I can see why, based on these sections alone, it was longlisted but for me it lacked something. It was a personal story, but I felt constantly detached from the narrative. While I can tell that this is an emotional book for the author to write, it can’t have been easy reliving what was an absolutely awful period of history for her family, it came across to me as a bit narcissistic.

For me, personally, I don’t understand why this book is on the Wellcome longlist. It’s okay, it’s a memoir, but it doesn’t have that impact that things like When Breath Becomes Air or even The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks did – and they’re comparable having both been shortlisted (and winning) the prize in the past. On the whole, a bit of a miss for me.