Room by Emma Donoghue

It’s easy to see why this book was shortlisted for both the 2011 Orange Prize and the 2010 and Man Booker prize. It is very well written and keeps the reader guessing until the end.

Girl with a White Dog

I bought this book because tomorrow I am delivering a lecture on fiction written for children about the Holocaust. Its author, AnneBooth, and I have corresponded quite a bit about this theme on Twitter and via email as we have both been writing about that era. I was fortunate enough to enjoy a sabbatical awarded by the University of Salford three years ago and spent quite some time researching the background to my own novel, The House on Schellberg Street that also comes out shortly. Last week I spoke about that and the novel I’m working on now, Clara’s Story, a sort of prequel-sequel.

The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson

We all love Dickens and ought to remember that before his works became literary masterpieces they were very much pieces of popular fiction and possibly a little frowned upon by the serious reader: all those unbelievable coincidences, those slightly larger than life background characters, and all those impossible twists and turns. But that is what we love about his novels and for that matter the Christmas pantomime and Shakespeare’s comedies. Of course, Shakespeare also wrote tragedies and some of Dickens’ novels end on a sad note. Nevertheless, they both tell a great story.

Should Iva Ibbotson join those two great writers? Possibly she should. I’ve not been as delighted by a tale for some time as I have by that of The Star of Kazan.

We have the twists and turns, but they are all logical. We don’t have the unlikely coincidences though there is some high drama. The background characters are a little larger than life but still believable and completely likeable – even the more wicked ones. We even have a boarding-school with a harsh regime. Well, there are two, in fact. Does this mean that Ibbotson is possibly even better than the two masters?

We really can’t help gunning for the mild-natured Annika, and her adoptive family that includes the two warm-hearted servants and the three slightly eccentric but talented professors. We even forgive the money-grabbing Edeltrauts and the stuck-up Eggharts – for after all Herr Egghart leads the car-chase – with just a pinch of self-interest.

With plenty of colour and a beautifully crafted setting in old Vienna and a spa town in Germany, this book offers a thoroughly good read. It’s one that you are at once sad to finish and immensely satisfied about because of the upbeat ending, where in true Dickens and Shakespeare tradition, all loose ends are tied up. 
            

Angel, Angel Fire and Angel Fever by Lee Weatherly

Angels have been the new vampires for some time now and Lee Weatherly’s stories do not disappoint. We’ve probably all been waiting for some time for the novels that would give us the same mix of high romance and paranormal adventure that we enjoyed in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Here we have them. Except that the Angel series is much better.

We no longer have the worry that the female lead is being pursued by a man who is actually over a hundred years old. True, there is some time slippage in the Angel series but it just leaves the two main characters a little nearer in age.

Angels are not benign creatures in these novels. They are a sinister form of parasite though not every human realises this. Alex and Willow and the team they build have to fight the hold they have over mankind. The adventure is full of pace and tension and alongside this their romance goes through some tricky moments.

The three novels are well written and the story-telling is such that it is difficult to put the books down. There are three hefty volumes yet I read them very quickly. This was not because of any over simplicity in the language but rather because we get to know Alex and Willow so well and we must find out what happens.

I believe these characters have lived with Lee for a while. I’m so glad she has brought them out into the open.     

While No One Was Watching by Debz Hobbs-Wyatt

Okay, so Debz is a good friend of mine and a business partner as well. But there is no nepotism here. Nothing makes its way on to this blog unless it takes me out of my editing head. No more than I’ll like anything I don’t actually like on Facebook just because I like the page-owner.

And this book certainly did make me forget to chunter.  

Set in the modern day and also in 1963 with the JF Kennedy murder as a background, the story is in part about the girl who disappeared while no one was watching because all eyes were on JFK. But it is also a story about the 21^st Century people who looked for her and who tried to solve the mystery.   

Here we have richly drawn characters, plenty of tension and a fast pace. Every one of the characters is believable and lovable. This novel’s plot is carefully controlled and the novel is certainly page-turner. We’re kept guessing, about quite a few points, long enough to want to read more.

I’m a fast reader normally but had to take my time a little more with this one. This was no bad thing: there is a richness of language here that makes one think a little. And even so, it took me not more than ten days to read.

A really pleasing first novel. I look forward to the next one.    

   

   

Flying for Frankie by Pauline Fisk

Charis Watts and Frankie Bradley are unlikely friends. Charis comes from an ordinary, slightly awkward family. Frankie is a bit of a princess and her family are unbelievably rich. Yet they become the best of friends – which is just as well because Frankie really needs a friend when she becomes very ill with cancer and so does Charis when her family nearly falls apart as her father all but starts an affair with Gran’s friend who also happens to be one of Frankie’s nurses.

As I’m a writer myself and also lecture in creative writing I suffer from extraordinarily acute episodes of the jabbering critic and it wouldn’t quite go away with this one, even though normally the trigger for a book being listed here is that it shuts that critic right up. I wondered here why the writer didn’t allow us to watch the development of the girls’ friendship a little more closely. I sometimes thought that the young protagonist couldn’t possibly think in some of the language the writer had used.

Yet despite all for this the book engaged me enough to be listed here. How?

It is the authenticity of the emotions portrayed that make this book appealing. We experience everything through Charis’s viewpoint. At times she is very frail and sometime she is very strong. And we are kept reading because we wonder how she is going to fulfill the promise of the title. That too brings some surprises.      

Deep Secret by Berlie Doherty

This is an extraordinarily good tale. Tragedy strikes, there is confusion over twins and what seems like loss actually leads to some rediscovering some old treasures. The various strands of the plot are skilfully woven together and we are kept guessing throughout.

As a teacher of creative writing I could potentially quibble with some of the narrative techniques Berlie Doherty uses. At times the point of view shifts a little too swiftly and a little too often. I’m not sure the voice is always right for the teen reader. Yet she maintains that appropriate balance of dialogue, action, description and exposition.

The story takes place over several years with a concentration on the years in which the new reservoir is constructed and the village and valley are drowned. It’s all left a little open-ended at the end with the protagonist actually absent.