“Take a Peek” book reviews are short and (possibly) sweet, keeping the commentary brief and providing a little “peek” at what the book’s about and what I thought. This week’s “take a peek” book:
Synopsis:
(via Goodreads)
In a small New England town, in the early 60s, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers. Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister. Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs Jacobs; the women and girls – including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister – feel the same about Reverend Jacobs. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity.
Then tragedy strikes the Jacobs family; the preacher curses God, mocking all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town.
Jamie has demons of his own. In his mid-thirties, he is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate, he sees Jacobs again – a showman on stage, creating dazzling ‘portraits in lightning’ – and their meeting has profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings. Because for every cure there is a price…
This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever written. It’s a masterpiece from King, in the great American tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.
My Thoughts:
It’s really impossible to quibble with Stephen King. He’s a master writer, and even in his lesser works, his gifts shine through. But for me at least, Revival is a step down from some of his more recent brilliant novels.
Revival is never dull, but it does take a very long time to truly start building momentum. I was at the 200-page mark before I began feeling any urgency in my reading. Perhaps the problem lies in starting the story with Jamie as a six-year-old. A great deal of time is spent on his childhood and adolescence, and while these years matter in the overall story, it’s a very slow build.
The ending is nightmarish, no doubt about it. And yet, I never felt a strong sense of where this story was going. There isn’t a whole lot of black and white, good and bad. The bad guy isn’t, strictly speaking, a real bad guy. The climax is a bit out of the blue, although hints pile up prior to the big event. Jamie himself is an interesting character, and while I was invested in him and his ability to turn his life around, I didn’t quite buy the obsession with Charlie Jacobs or the level to which he influences Jamie’s life.
I enjoyed Revival, and lost a lot of sleep after finishing it at one in the morning. Yes, by the end I couldn’t put it down, and found it intensely creepy and unsettling. Still, overall, I wouldn’t rank it among the Stephen King books that I routinely describe as masterpieces. This feels second-tier to me — but even so, second-tier King is still better than so much else that’s out there, and if you want a book that blends boyhood nostalgia with the most awful feeling of impending doom, you really can’t go wrong with Revival… or pretty much anything else King has written.
(PS – Completely irrelevant to discussion of the merits of this book… but Outlander fans will be amused by the presence of characters named Jamie, Claire, and Brianna in Revival.)
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The details:
Title: Revival
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: November 11, 2014
Length: 403 pages
Genre: Horror
Source: Purchased
Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d depart book-world for this week’s Thursday Quotables post and turn instead to one of my very favorite Thanksgiving moments, the “Pangs” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Willow: Buffy, earlier you agreed with me about Thanksgiving. It’s a sham. It’s all about death
Buffy: It *is* a sham. But it’s a sham with yams. It’s a yam sham.
Willow: You’re not gonna jokey-rhyme your way out of this one.
Giles – “…It’s very common for Indian spirits to change to animal form.”
Buffy – “Yeah, well it’s plenty uncommon for me to freeze up during a fight. I mean, I had the guy, I was ready for the takedown and I stopped. And ‘Native American’.”
Giles – “Sorry?”
Buffy – “We don’t say ‘Indian’.”
Giles – “Oh, right. Yes, yes. Um, always behind on the terms. Still trying not to refer to you lot as ‘Bloody Colonials’.”
Wishing you all a very happy Thanksgiving, filled with friends, family, laughter… and pie.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:
Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!
There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).
This week’s pick:
The Mermaid’s Child by Jo Baker (to be released March 17, 2015 )
A fairy tale for grown ups—the magical story of a young girl in search of her mermaid mother, from the acclaimed author of Longbourn.
Malin has always felt different. The fact that, according to her father, her absent mother was actually a mermaid only makes matters worse. When Malin’s father dies, leaving her alone in the world, her choice is clear: stay, and never feel at home, or leave and go in search of the fantastical inheritance she is certain awaits her. Apprenticed to a series of strange and wonderful characters, Malin embarks on a picaresque journey that crosses oceans and continents—from the high seas to desert plains, from slavery to the circus—and leads to a discovery that is the last thing Malin ever could have expected. Beautifully written and hauntingly strange, The Mermaid’s Child is a remarkable piece of storytelling, and an utterly unique work of fantasy.
The marketing notes for this book describe it as “Fantasy for adults: The Mermaid’s Child is that rare thing, a work of fantasy writing that is aimed at adults. It is sure to appeal to readers of Philip Pullman, and fans of Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and Doug Dorst’s S.” Works for me! This book was originally published in the UK in 2004, but following the success of Longbourn, The Mermaid’s Child is getting its first US release.
I really loved Longbourn, and I’m eager to read more by this talented author!
What are you wishing for this Wednesday?
Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays? Come join me for my regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. You can find out more here — come play!
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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!
If you’ve been in mourning ever since you watched Serenity once or twice or a thousand times, there’s a glimmer of sunshine waiting for you:
Mal is back! And so is his crew of big damn heroes.
Picking up after the events of the movie Serenity, we rejoin the gang some eight months or so later, on the run, avoiding the Alliance baddies, and trying to lie low and go their own way. But Captain Mal doesn’t manage to stay out of trouble for very long, and some very bad bad guys are trying to track them down.
Meanwhile, there’s bittersweet joy onboard the Serenity, as personal lives have moved forward in all sorts of ways — most pretty expected, but at least one development totally unexpected.
Sigh.
I can’t even begin to express how great it was to spend time with these guys again! River, Kaylee, Inara, Simon… even Jayne’s hat!… and the mule… and so much more.
This isn’t just fan service, though. Serenity: Leaves on the Wind has a story to tell, and it’s a good one. The plot is tight and action-packed, but with the same heart that held together the stories told in the too-brief life of Firefly.
The artwork is a bit spotty at times — sometimes Mal and Simon seemed interchangeable, and ditto for Inara and River. But overall, the likenesses worked well enough to make me happy.
via ThinkGeek
What really and truly sent me over the moon was the dialogue. Words on a page aren’t the same thing as words spoken on a big (or small) screen — but the writers of Serenity: Leaves on the Wind have done a gorram great job of capturing the essence of the characters through the words they speak.
I know! Let’s play a guessing game! Can you guess who says each of the following in Serenity: Leaves on the Wind?
a) Bad people got in my head, put things there, secrets. I could feel them hidden away, dug in like parasites.
b) This job can’t go but one way. Turns out you’re beyond your depth, I ain’t gonna drag you back.
c) This ain’t right, havin’ that man on our ship.
d) Vera’s got this.
e) I marched a lot of young folk to their deaths and had it in mind never to do so again. Anyone shows up uninvited, there’ll be a fine amount of hell to pay, that clear?
f) Plus, you need me, sir.
g) Case you don’t remember, we dealt a pretty ugly blow to a giant wasn’t too fond of us in the first place.
h) I can hear everything, all at once. I can hear the whole ‘verse.
Whee! I could go on all day. But I’ll stop there. Share your guesses in the comments. Whoever gets the most right wins… the undying admiration of your peers!
Serenity: Leaves on the Wind is a hardcover compilation volume of six previously published comic book editions plus a short story comic, “It’s Never Easy”, from Free Comic Book Day in 2012. The story is left open-ended just enough to allow for more Serenity tales to come (although I couldn’t find anything saying one way or the other whether more are planned at the moment).
If you’re a fan, you’ll want to read this. It’s fun. It’s exciting. It’s sexy. It’s moving. It even brought on a tear or two.
But you know what it is, more than anything else?
Shiny.
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The details:
Title: Serenity: Leaves on the Wind
Author: Zach Whedon
Publisher: Dark Horse Books
Publication date: November 5, 2014
Length: 152 pages
Genre: Comics/graphic novel
Source: Purchased
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is about reading plans for this winter. What’s on my to-be-read list? Ha, what isn’t? Not that I ever end up sticking to a plan — but as of now, here are the top 10 books I’m looking forward to reading during the next few months.
1) Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
It’s about time that I finally read this, right?
2) Noggin by John Corey Whaley
3) The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
4) The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian
5) The Hundred Year House by Rebecca Makkai
6) Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
7) The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
8) Washington’s Secret Six by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger (because it’s about time that I venture outside my little world of fiction and read some history, yo)
9) Saga by Brian K. Vaughan (need to re-read volumes 1 & 2, then go on to read volumes 3 & 4)
10) The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue
What books will be keeping you warm this winter?
Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!
If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out our regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. Happy reading!
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Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!
Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.
How did I do with last week’s agenda?
The Martian by Andy Weir: Done! My review is here.
Hello From the Gillespies by Monica McInerney: Done! Stay tuned for the Fields & Fantasies Book Club discussion post, coming up on 11/30.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson: Done! Amazing audiobook listen! I really, really recommend giving it a try.
Fresh Catch:
A couple of books came my way… and they’re on my reading agenda, coming right up!
What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?
My two new book arrivals!
I’m so excited to read the newest Serenity graphic novel! Plus, I’m planning to settle in with some Stephen King reading over Thanksgiving weekend. Let’s give thanks for an amazing and prolific writer!
Elsewhere on the blog:
I wrote a post about my Adventures in Audio. Yes, I’m finally a believer in the glory of audiobooks!
Ongoing reads:
Shared with the kiddo:
Calling on Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #3) by Patricia C. Wrede: It’s getting better, but still not as much fun as the previous two books in the series.
Now playing via audiobook:
Just starting: Book #3 in the Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs, Fair Game. Last Charles and Anna story until the new book (Dead Heat) comes out in the spring.
Book club reading:
Classic read: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. (One chapter per week)
A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon: Reading and discussing two chapters per week, from now through the end of 2015!
Me Before You by Jojo Moyes: Outlander Book Club’s book-of-the-month for November.
Want to join any of the group reads? Let me know and I’ll provide the links!
So many book, so little time…
That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.
This is yet another book that makes me want to write a review that simply says:
Loved it. Read this book.
But that’s not terribly helpful, is it? Unless you trust me so very much that you’re willing to take my word for it, just because. No? Okay, I’ll tell you just what I loved about this smart, funny, dramatic, and utterly entertaining book.
As you’d guess from the cover image, The Martian is the story of an astronaut. Mark Watney is part of a crew of astronauts participating in NASA’s third manned exploration of Mars. Six days into their mission, a massive dust storm prompts an evacuation of the planet, during which Mark is struck by flying debris and believed to be dead. With only minutes to spare before their emergency launch, the mission leader makes the tough call to leave Mark’s body and get the heck off the planet. The world mourns.
Surprise! Mark isn’t dead… but he may be soon. Mark is the sole human on all of Mars, left with the mission’s habitation structure and equipment, a 100-something day food supply, and no means of communication or rescue. The next mission to Mars won’t arrive for another four years. So what’s Mark to do? He has no intention of giving up, and sets about figuring just what it will take to breathe, drink water, and not starve to death in the years he’ll have to wait before he has a shot at returning to Earth.
When NASA finally realizes, thanks to satellite imagery, that they left a very much alive Mark behind, the entire world becomes obsessed with Mark’s survival, and it takes all the brains of NASA and then some, plus the determination of Mark’s crewmates, to figure out a rescue plan with any chance of success.
Ultimately, though, it’s all up to Mark and his incredible brain. As with all NASA missions, the crew members serve multiple roles, and Mark is the mission’s botanist/mechanical engineer. With his knowledge of botany, Mark figures out how to grow crops to sustain himself when the stored food runs out, and with his engineering skills, he’s able to jerry-rig solutions whenever equipment breaks — which is often.
You’d think a book in which the main character spends time calculating the square footage of arable soil needed to produce enough calories for survival or figuring out how to use rocket fuel to create water might get a little weighed down by science-speak… but you’d be dead wrong. I’ve never been more fascinating by geeky science talk. Stuff like this:
I can create the O2 easily enough. It takes twenty hours for the MAV fuel plant to fill its 10-liter tank with CO2. The oxygenator can turn it into the O2, then the atmospheric regulator will see the O2 content in the Hab is high, and pull it out of the air, storing it in the main O2 tanks. They’ll fill up, so I’ll have to transfer O2 over to the rovers’ tanks and even the space suit tanks as necessary.
The point is, the narration here is super-smart yet super engaging. Mark is in battle for survival — but he’s so extremely funny that even in his direst of straits, there’s plenty to make you laugh. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and half the fun is seeing how crazily creative Mark’s solutions are.
One thing I learned after reading The Martian is that author Andy Weir created his own programming in order to figure out things like trajectories and orbits, and his need to make sure that the science works results in a book that’s full of compelling and weird details — which, strangely, don’t weigh down the narrative, but instead let us feel like we’re right there next to Mark, trying to figure out how to rig a heat supply without blowing things up. (I loved Entertainment Weekly’s recent write-up about Andy Weir – check it out here.)
Bottom line? I loved this book. With never a dull moment, The Martian is a treat for the brain as well as providing plenty of laughs along with true suspense and a nail-biting battle for survival. Mark’s voice is what makes reading The Martian such a fun experience, so I’ll leave you with a few choice selections from the logs of astronaut Mark Watney:
If you asked every engineer at NASA what the worst scenario for the Hab was, they’d all answer “fire”. If you asked them what the result would be, they’d answer “death by fire.”
About the e-mails that come pouring in once the world realizes Mark is alive:
One of them was from my alma mater, the University of Chicago. They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially “colonized” it. So technically, I colonized Mars.
In your face, Neil Armstrong!
In other news, it’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would case the Great Martian Potato Migration.
The airlock’s on its side, and I can hear a steady hiss. So either it’s leaking or there are snakes in here. Either way, I’m in trouble.
If you at all enjoy reading about space exploration, scientific discoveries, or incredibly inventive men with senses of humor, read The Martian!
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The details:
Title: The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Publisher: Broadway Books
Publication date: 2014
Length: 369 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Purchased
If you’d asked me about audiobooks about three years ago, I would have said (more or less): I understand that some people enjoy them, but they’re definitely not for me.
I now officially eat my words. (Yum, yum)
Maybe it’s because I was never read to as a child… but I’ve always associated listening to stories with boredom and/or falling asleep. When I used to attend summer camp eons ago in my youth, our counselors would read to us at night after lights-out, and I never did manage to stay awake until the end of the story.
But then, as an adult, I started meeting people who swore by audiobooks, and I could see the appeal. For example, a doctor I know described listening to Lord of the Rings on his daily commutes between the two cities where he practiced. Another friend only allowed himself to listen to A Song of Ice and Fire while on the treadmill — and ended up getting in great shape as a result! Hmmm. Might work for me, perhaps?
Well, I never did follow through on my resolve to work out more with audiobooks as an incentive. But I have started listening to books in the last two years, and I’m hooked!
My first attempt was a big fail. I got a book that I’d been wanting to read and decided to listen to it while walking. Maybe it was the narrator (he was kind of drone-y), but I could not keep my attention on the book no matter how hard I tried. I’d be walking along, listening to the story, and all of a sudden — hey, seagull! Look, crack in the sidewalk! I’d realize that I had missed minutes of the narration because I just couldn’t concentrate. I was pretty amazed to discover, when I picked up the hard copy of the same book, that what felt like a massive amount of story that I’d heard only added up to about ten pages. I ended up loving the book itself, but the audiobook was a complete disaster.
Cue my Outlander obsession a short time later, and I thought I’d give audio another try. This time, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, so I decided to listen to books I’d already read, and since the community seems to be wild about Davina Porter’s narration, Outlander seemed like a good place to start.
Success! I was completely sucked into the audiobook, which I listened to during my daily drives back and forth to work and my kid’s school… and soon I found myself looking for excuses to keep driving, or even circling the block one extra time so I could finish the scene or chapter before turning it off for the day.
Since that experience, I’ve been convinced that audiobooks are the way to go, at least while in the car or while on my daily walks, but that they’d only work for me if I’d already read the books once before. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about momentary distractions (like while trying to avoid suddenly swerving drivers or fighting to find a parking spot), and could just enjoy experiencing a story I already loved through a new medium.
I found that most of the time, the audiobooks enhanced the overall story for me — when presented by a talented narrator. I mostly loved Davina Porter’s version of the Outlander books (I’ve now listened to 5 of the 8 books, each one averaging about 40 hours of listening time), and she does a remarkable job (except for her American accent for one character, which is just a bit odd and flat and doesn’t sound like any American accent I know!).
I broke away from Outlander world for a bit and listened to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and loved every minute of it. The narrator’s intonations and speech patterns made me feel like I was really in the main character’s world, and added so much to my enjoyment of the story.
But two books really epitomize the audio experience for me, and here’s why:
First, although I love the Outlander audiobooks, the truly magnificent audiobook versions of Diana Gabaldon’s works are the Lord John books, narrated by Jeff Woodman. Lord John Grey is a supporting character in the Outlander series, who then became the star of a spin-off series of books of his own. I liked him on the page, but was always anxiously awaiting the moment when I could get back to the world of Jamie and Claire. John was an interesting guy, but I didn’t quite love him… yet. In the audiobooks, Lord John simply sparkles. Jeff Woodman’s narration perfectly captures John’s intensity, his understated dry humor, and his constant attention to propriety and social nuances. If you’re an Outlander fan and you’ve been on the fence about reading the Lord John books, go straight to audio. It’s a treat, plain and simple.
My second audio experience that was really eye-opening for me happened just this past week, when I decided to break from my safe routine and give a listen to a book that I hadn’t read already. I picked up Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle when it was an Audible Daily Deal recently, but thought I’d read a hard copy first before listening to it. That never happened, and when I found myself looking for the next audiobook to start, I figured I’d give it a whirl, despite almost psyching myself out by focusing on how hard it can be for me to concentrate while listening.
Guys. Wow. I’m so glad I went ahead it with it.
To put it mildly — this book rocks. Bernadette Dunne is just brilliant as the narrator of the audiobook. She voices the book’s point-of-view character, Mary Catherine Blackwood, with a girlish voice that hides all sorts of shades of craziness and delusion, and the other characters — from the hostile villagers to decrepit Uncle Julian — are distinct, recognizable, and just completely spot-on. When I got a few chapters in, I borrowed a hard copy of the book from a friend so I could compare certain passages — and maybe it’s because I was already hooked on the audio, but I just didn’t get the same rich flavor from the words on the printed page. Bernadette Dunne does an amazing job of conveying the sing-song flavor of some the character’s lines, where key words and phrases get repeated and repeated, giving the whole thing a slightly unreal, otherworldly feel, even while describing terrible events and awful emotions. The story of We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an amazing portrayal of the intersection of madness, fantasy, and decay. If you enjoy your books with a touch of gothic creepiness, then there’s nothing better than hearing:
Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!
If you’d like to hear a sample, check out the book’s Audible page, here.
What have I learned thus far from my audio adventures? One, that I love audiobooks far more than I could have imagined a few years ago. Two, that I’d rather listen to books while driving or exercising than listen to music, and that the time just zips by in the company of a good book. Three, that in the hands (or voice) of a gifted narrator, an audiobook can bring the nuances and depths of a story to life in a whole new way. And four, that I am, in fact, capable of enjoying a story entirely through the spoken word — which is a might big revelation for me!
How about you? Do you enjoy audiobooks? Are there any that really stand out for you? Please share your thoughts!
I’m delighted to be participating in the blog tour celebrating Us, the brand-new novel by David Nicholls, author of the amazing One Day. Thank you, TLC Book Tours, for inviting me to participate!
Us is the story of a marriage that may or may not be ending, how it got that way, and what a man in love will do to hold onto what he’s about to lose.
Main character Douglas Petersen is a desperate man. His wife has just informed him that once their teen son Albie leaves for college in the fall, she’s planning to leave too. According to Connie, their marriage has “run its course”, and it’s time for her to move on to the next chapter of life.
Douglas is an odd but determined man. He’s a scientist, very logical, very methodical; the opposite, in many ways, of free-spirit Connie, who was an artist when they first met but has since moved into the business side of the art world. And then there’s their son Albie, a typically sullen 17-year-old with nothing, it seems, but contempt for the father who just doesn’t get him.
The family has a European vacation planned for the summer, the classic “Grand Tour”, and Douglas views it as a last chance to save his marriage and hold his family together. And of course, it’s a complete disaster. Douglas has every step of the trip planned down to the minute, including viewing every piece of important art and historical artifact in Europe, with no time left in the schedule for spontaneity or fun — which pretty much encapsulates his approach to life in general. Finally, there’s a blow-up, and Albie takes off on his own, leaving Douglas to pursue him in a one-man quest to make amends and repair something that may be irreparable. And, Douglas thinks, if he can come home triumphantly with Albie by his side, Connie may see the error of her ways and stay with him after all.
Nothing goes as it should. Douglas is a crazy smart man, but his people skills are sorely lacking. Time and again, he does just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. It’s no wonder Connie wants out and Albie wants away. Douglas must be insufferable to be around — and yet, Us is Douglas’s first-person narrative, which is a wonderful trick on the part of the author. Seen from the outside, Douglas would be awful. But seeing through his eyes, the picture is quite different: Here’s a man, full of awkwardness, madly in love with his wife from the moment he met her, who tries his best, yet always comes up short. His perception of the world around him makes perfect sense; it just doesn’t necessarily mean that the world understands.
Us is a sad story of what happens to a marriage over the course of many years, no matter how much love it starts with and how much true caring exists between the partners. Over time, the newness erodes, and familiarity takes the place of discovery:
Of course, after nearly a quarter of a century, the questions about our distant pasts have all been posed and we’re left with “how was your day?” and “when will you be home?” and “have you put the bins out?” Our biographies involve each other so intrinsically now that we’re both on nearly every page. We know the answers because we were there, and so curiosity becomes hard to maintain; replaced, I suppose, by nostalgia.
The writing in Us is absolutely sparkling. This is one of those books that will make you very annoying to your friends and family, as you’ll be wanting to read the clever and funny bits out loud constantly — and there are clever and funny bits on every page.
She looked fresh, healthy and tasteful, and yet I found myself instinctively wanting to do up an extra button. I wondered if I might be the only man in the world to have dressed a woman with his eyes.
Douglas may be a rigid and opinionated middle-aged man, but he’s also funny, smart, and full of love, even though the love he feels never quite translates into dialogue that sits well with his wife and son. They’re constantly amused at his expense, seemingly cool and in the know in a way he can never be.
A humorous (yet sad) ongoing theme is Douglas’s inability to understand art — particularly sad, given that his wife is an artist. He’s always stuck for what to say in a museum, resorting to either parroting the audiotour narration or making inane observations on the colors or details of a painting. “Look at the reflection in his eye!” or “I love the blue!” And the more desperate he is to connect, the more he fails:
They stared and stared and I wondered, what was I meant to take from this? What were they seeing? Once again I was struck by the power of great art to make me feel excluded.
Finally, it takes Douglas’s hitting an emotional bottom of sorts and finding himself completely bereft of his usual resources and coping mechanisms before he’s able to achieve any measure of rapprochement with Albie. The father-son relationship is not easy, but there’s still love there, despite the years of snarkiness and incomprehension.
“Da-ad!” he growled, shielding his eyes against the light. “What’s up?”
“I got jumped. By some jellyfish.”
He sat up. “In the water?”
“No, on the land. They took my keys and wallet.”
Interestingly, towards the very end, the author takes a few pages to show us how the same story might have been told by Connie or by Albie, and of course, it’s completely different. And yet, it’s thanks to Douglas’s narration that the not so very unusual tale of a disintegrating marriage becomes something unique.
Us is funny and sad, familiar in its slice of life approach to ordinary people, and yet with many moments that are surprising and unexpected. Any family has its ups and downs; any long-term marriage has its pain, boredom, and exasperation — but there’s still hope, and tenderness, deep caring, and the possibility that there are still more surprises and fresh chapters to explore.
I recommend Us wholeheartedly. Full of crisp, snappy writing and quirky yet relatable characters, Us is a story of love, how it can change over time, and what it means to be a family. For anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction about people and relationships with a ring of truth, don’t miss this terrific new novel.
Find out more:
Check out the Goodreads link, or watch this book trailer:
David Nicholls’s most recent novel, the New York Times bestseller One Day, has sold over 2 million copies and been translated into thirty-seven languages; he also wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film adaptation starring Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway. Trained as an actor before making the switch to writing, Nicholls’s previous novels include Starter for Ten (originally published in the U.S. as A Question of Attraction), adapted into a film starring James McAvoy, for which Nicholls also wrote the screenplay; and The Understudy. He continues to write for film and TV as well as writing novels and adapting them for the screen, and has twice been nominated for the BAFTA awards. He lives in London with his wife and two children.
Find out more about David at his website and connect with him on Facebook.
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The details:
Title: Us
Author: David Nicholls
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: October 28, 2014
Length: 396 pages
Genre: Adult contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of TLC Book Tours
For further information, stop by TLC Book Tours to view other blog tour hosts.
Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
(published 1962)
One passage really isn’t enough to sum up the wonderful oddity and weirdness of this book – so I’ll include a few select quotes this week:
“It was a fine morning,” Uncle Julian said, his voice going on and on, “a fine bright morning, and none of them knew it was their last. She was downstairs first, my niece Constance. I woke up and heard her moving in the kitchen – I slept upstairs then, I could still go upstairs, and I slept with my wife in our room – and I thought, this is a fine morning, never dreaming then that it was their last.”
Another:
I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come. I wrote the first word – melody – in the apricot jam on my toast with the handle of a spoon and then put the toast in my mouth and ate it very quickly. I was one-third safe.
And one more:
“The Blackwoods always did set a fine table.” That was Mrs. Donell, speaking clearly from somewhere behind me, and someone giggled and someone else said “Shh.” I never turned; it was enough to feel them all there in back of me without looking into their flat grey faces with the hating eyes. I wish you were all dead, I thought, and longed to say it out loud. Constance said, “Never let them see that you care,” and “If you pay any attention they’ll only get worse,” and probably it was true, but I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. “It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance said, “it only weakens you,” but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.
I’m listening to this one on audiobook, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesomely creepy the narration is. Bernadette Dunne does a brilliant job of shifting voices for the different characters, and the first-person voice especially comes across as an ever-so-slightly unhinged young girl. I listen to books while I drive, and since I started We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I find myself taking the long way home.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:
Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!
Bookshelf Fantasies 