TWO BEAUTIFUL BOOKS BY JACKIE MORRIS. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

 I am going to review two books written and illustrated by an artist (and writer) who's very well-known but who somehow, in spite of her talents and productivity, seems to me to be not as much appreciated as she ought to be.

Jackie Morris is on Twitter, where she frequently posts lovely 'work in progress' which delights her many followers and I do urge any of my readers who tweets to follow her. She lives in Wales with many animals and it's perhaps as an artist who both loves and properly sees animals that she's at her best. The first book I'm going to talk about is called I AM CAT and it's not much bigger than an iPhone. While watching her ginger cat, Pixie, sleeping ("curled in warm places, ammonite-tight") Morris was inspired to think of what her pet might be dreaming about. The answer is: other cats. Every kind of feline appears in the unscrolling dreams: cheetah, puma, snow leopard and many others.

Morris paints each creature in delicate colours that sing to us from the page. Even though the scale of the book is small, she manages to convey the grandeur and beauty of every single cat she describes. And she accompanies each spread with her own words which are both simple and poetic. Here is an example, describing the tiger: "s...bright, flame cat of the forest, striped like the shadows, sun-scorched." I can't think of a better way to spend a fiver.  Frances Lincoln have published it most beautifully. This is a gem of a book.

The second book is SONG OF THE GOLDEN HARE, also published by the admirable Frances Lincoln. It's a much grander production, and it tells a mysterious, entrancing story of a boy and his sister. They come from a family who protect the Golden Hare, because there  are others who would hunt and kill it. The story unfolds with all the mystery and suspense you could wish for. The children find the Golden Hare and in the end, the creature is safe for who knows how long on a special magical island, to which it has been carried by an army of obliging seals. It's a lovely tale and again, told in Morris's poetic style, but the art is the real glory of this book. The Golden Hare itself is a wonderful creation, but greyhounds and people and birds and butterflies, not to mention the detailed landscapes, fill every corner of every spread. The colours are glorious and you can spend hours just admiring them and marvelling at the skill of the artist and wishing you could frame certain images and put them up on a wall.  As it is, you'll have to be content with turning the pages, preferably with someone young on your lap, listening as you read aloud the story of the mysterious Golden Hare and the lucky children who are called to care for it.

I AM CAT
Written and illustrated by Jackie Morris
pub Frances Lincoln hbk £4.99
ISBN: 9781847805072

SONG OF THE GOLDEN HARE
Written and illustrated by Jackie Morris
pub. Frances Lincoln hbk £12.99
ISBN: 9781847804501



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WILD THING by EMMA BARNES. Review by Penny Dolan.

 

What’s it like to live with a four year old who thinks she’s a rock star?  Who’s the naughtiest little sister ever? Big sister Kate knows. A PROBLEM!

Emma Barnes has begun what will surely be a memorable new series. Wild Thing – aka Josephine -  is the worst kind of embarrassing, attention-grabbing, self-absorbed loud-mouthed little sister that anyone could have. Kate can just about put up with Wild Thing at home. Kate’s got used to Wild Thing’s messiness, her monkeying-about, the trips to the hospital because she’s pushed something up right up her Wild Thing nose, her favourite Bite-the-Bottom Game and more.

However, when Kate realises that Wild Thing is starting in the reception class at Kate’s school, she knows her life will be a total nightmare. 

Kate is soon dragged into the spotlight by her dreadful little sister’s escapades, when all she wants is a quiet school life - not the kind where Wild Thing causes mayhem at playtimes, refuses to sit down in class, plays air-guitar and sings out rude words whenever she feels like it! Poor Kate secretly longs to create her own identity. Who is she is when she’s not just Wild Thing’s big sister?

Told in Kate’s first person voice, gradually two strands of story emerge and this is what makes the book unique. One strand, of course, is created by Wild Thing’s constant escapades that ruin almost everything for Kate.

The other interesting strand in WILD THING is the family situation, which partly explains why things are as they are, and why Wild Thing is a little indulged.

We soon find out that the girls are looked after by their dad, a charming, guitar-playing late hippy who has given up touring to care for his two daughters. Then we notice that Gran is often around to restore the chaotic house to some kind of calm order and remind Dad about events in the school diary and so on, and then we find out that their mother is dead. So the story, although softly told, is also about a bereaved family struggling to keep “normal life” going.

For me, this second thread is what makes WILD THING – and probably the titles yet to come – much more than a book that gets 8 year-old children laughing because they enjoy reading about rude words and naughtiness. And that's important.

Wild Thing is published by Scholastic.

Review by Penny Dolan

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Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse

Reviewed by Jackie Marchant

This is a beautifully packaged book, with glossy purple edging and shiny silver bits all over the inside covers.  It even has a free little book (written by a mouse) tucked into the end.  All this you’d expect from an illustrator as acclaimed as Chris Riddell, but what I discovered with this book is that he’s a pretty good children’s writer as well.

Told with warmth and humour, this is the tale of Ada Goth, who lives in Ghastly-Gorm Hall with her grief-stricken father, who believes that children should be heard but not seen.  As she hardly sees him, Ada has plenty of time to explore her rambling old home and pick up some interesting friends (and enemies) on the way.  

This book is full of fantastic characters.  As well as Lord Goth, who loves to gad about on his hobby horse, shooting gnomes with his blunderbuss (rendering him mad, bad and dangerous to gnomes) there’s Mrs Beat’Em the fearsome cook, plus a host of other servants, not to mention the ghosts, including the ghost mouse of the title.  Then there Goth Hall itself, which is full of places to explore such as the Broken Wing, the Dear Deer Park and the Lake of Extremely Coy Carp, all delightfully illustrated with wit and humour. 

This whole book is a delight – a worthy winner of the Costa children’s book award.

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'Mr Tiger Goes Wild', by Peter Brown, reviewed by Pippa Goodhart

MR TIGER GOES WILD is a wonderful book in every way.  It is handsome, funny, bold, insightful and surprising. 

The endpapers - brown brick wall at the beginning, lush green wilderness at the end – reflect Mr Tiger’s progression from, literally, buttoned-up gentleman tiger to one who knows what it is to be wild.  But this simply told story is not simplistic.  The happy ending isn’t for Mr Tiger to be totally wild, but instead, having sampled wildness, to reach a happy, flower-shirted, compromise that lets him enjoy the best of both worlds, because ‘Now Mr Tiger felt free to be himself.’

The illustrations are wonderful.  Bold and blocky, but full of character and beauty and wit, the pictures are sepia in colouring except for the bits of Mr Tiger that aren’t covered in frock coat and top hat, and those bits are orange.  The orange becomes more prevalent the wilder the story becomes.  Mr Tiger shocks his repressed animal neighbours by going down on all fours, then ROARING and leaping over rooftops, swimming through a fountain and casting off all clothing before running away to be wild.  But the wilderness can be lonely, so Mr Tiger returns to town, and we can see in the pictures that everyone has learned to loosen-up a little. 

This book is destined to become a classic, I think.  I love it!

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A KISS LIKE THIS by Mary Murphy, published by Walker Books, 2012: reviewed by C.J. Busby

It's Valentine's Day, so I thought I would review something that fitted the theme. A Kiss Like This is not something I'd normally pick up - it's a picture book, and my children are all past that stage - but I really loved it.

The premise is one of those beautifully simple ones that make such great picture books: what are the kisses of other animals like? 'A giraffe kiss', the first page informs us, 'is gentle and tall' - and then, you lift a flap and the giraffe adult is kissing the giraffe baby - 'like this!' Parents will immediately spot the only way to read this book: with an inventive and giggly different kiss for every page.

A bee kiss, for example, is 'fuzzy and buzzy':

I can just feel how much fun it would be to give someone a fuzzy, buzzy bee kiss. The illustrations, as you can see, are lovely - simple and colourful, just as they need to be. The story takes us through the kisses of a number of different animals, until on the last page, the reader gets 'your kiss - like this!'

My youngest daughter's first word was 'kiss'. She'd have loved this book. I don't think there's any toddler who wouldn't.


C.J. Busby writes funny magical adventures for 7-11.

www.cjbusby.co.uk

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HIS PROMISE TRUE by Greta Marlow. Reviewed by Ann Turnbull.

You might think from the title and cover that this is a romance.  And certainly it is a love story - but a realistic historical one, set in Tennessee and Arkansas in the 1820s, at a time when large numbers of people were moving west in search of land.

The first-person narrator is fifteen-year-old Maggie Boon, a mountain girl from a poor family in Tennessee.  When the story opens, Maggie, wearing her Ma's best dress and a false bosom made of rags, has been brought against her will to a barn-raising where her Pa is set on selling her into marriage to one of the neighbouring farmers.  There is dancing, the whisky is flowing, and he's determined to strike a bargain before the evening is over.

But Maggie runs off, jettisons the bosom, and meets - and kisses - John David McKellar, the youngest son of a much wealthier family in the valley.  He's celebrating his twenty-first birthday with a little dancing and too much whisky.  John David declares that he will marry Maggie - and Maggie's father, sensing better pickings, has the pair of them tying the knot that very same evening.

It's not the most favourable start to a marriage, especially as the McKellar parents are hostile.  After some bitter rows, John David decides to make the long and difficult journey to Texas to start a new life with Maggie.  And that's when their real troubles begin.

The two main characters are well developed and believable, and their relationship drives the story.  Maggie is a capable but uneducated girl whose home life has made her fearful of "smacks" whenever she makes a mistake.  John David is over-confident, drinks too much, gambles, takes risks - and yet is lovable because he is so good-hearted and loyal.  Both of them grow and change and are tested by the trials they encounter.

I was uncertain whether this book was intended for adults or YA.  To me it seems like one of those "age 13 to 95" books that get passed around the family - though it doesn't pull its punches and adults might like to check it out first.  The style is colloquial and immediately draws you in, and the story is hard to put down.

The author lives in Arkansas, and her book is published by EMZ-Piney Publishing in both paperback and ebook.

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THE FAIRYTALE HAIRDRESSER AND SLEEPING BEAUTY, by Abie Longstaff and Lauren Beard

Modern takes on classic folk and fairytales are very in at the moment, with big budget reboots of Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and Jack And The Beanstalk all hitting the silver screen in the last couple of years.  Now Abie Longstaff and Lauren Beard bring the concept to the 3-6 year reading group with their hilarious series about Kittie Lacey, hairdresser to the celebs of Fairytale Land.

In THE FAIRYTALE HAIRDRESSER AND SLEEPING BEAUTY, Kittie feels ashamed that her once-trendy looking garden is now all overgrown and unkept.  But someone she knows has an even bigger problem, something not even a good shampoo and set can solve.  Princess Rose from the nearby castle has fallen asleep and not even her godparents, the fairies, seem able to wake her up.  Can Prince Florian, hired to tidy up Kittie's garden strim his way through the thick hedge around the castle and wake up the princess?

Longstaff's text romps cheekily through this fast paced fairytale, making it an enjoyable and effortless read.  There are lots of in-jokes for those that know the original story well and the children I read the book to appreciated every single one of them.  Lauren Beard's illustrations are bright and blocky. They had the readers in my group reaching for their colouring pencils trying to emulate them.  A very enjoyable romp!

Saviour Pirotta
Website: www.spirotta.com
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The Quietness, by Alison Rattle: published by Hot Key Books, reviewed by Sue Purkiss

The Quietness centres round two girls, Queenie and Ellen. They year is 1870, and they are both living in London, but other than that they have very little in common, and at the beginning of the book it's not obvious how their lives, one lived in poverty and the other in upper middle-class comfort, can ever intermesh. One longs for quiet: the other has too much of it.

Neither of them is happy. Queenie is sick and tired of the hardships of her life. Her father disappears for a while, leaving her mother to earn some money to keep her children in the only way left to her. When a man comes to their room seeking the mother, and instead seeks to make do with Queenie, it's the final straw, and she decides to leave. She comes across a job with a pair of sisters. They take in babies, it seems, and part of Queenie's job is to help look after the little ones. It's a strangely easy job; the babies never cry and are asleep most of the time - helped by the doctored feed they are given, and by a medicine called The Quietness. From time to time one of the babies disappears - to be taken to a new home in the countryside, so the sisters say. Queenie is happy; she's able to save some money, even to buy herself an unheard of pair of new boots. So when she hears that dead babies have been found, wrapped in brown paper, she works hard to convince herself that they can be nothing to do with the sisters, nothing to do with her...

Meanwhile, not so very far away, Ellen is materially well-cared for, with beautiful dresses and jewels and a comfortable home. Her father is a doctor, but he is strangely cold - her mother even more so. So when a handsome cousin, Jacob, comes to stay, Ellen is only too ready to fall for his sweet words and flattery. But it turns out that he is not what he seems. Ellen falls victim to all of them. In her deepest despair, the only person who is kind to her is Queenie.

We all know from Dickens and others how terrible urban poverty was in Victorian times, and this book paints an unflinching picture of its horrors. The stories of Ellen and Queenie also reveal the hypocrisy of the wealthier classes, and the complete dependence of women from the wealthier classes on their menfolk. Their stories are terrible, and the ending is not an easy one, but the book is passionate and richly-coloured, with two central characters who will not easily be forgotten.

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Two Picture Books - New for 2014

“Suvi and the Sky Folk” by Sandra Horn, illustrated by Muza Ulasowski

“How to Catch a Dragon” by Caryl Hart, illustrated by Ed Eaves

Reviewed by Pauline Chandler

New for 2014 are these two contrasting picture books, one thoroughly grounded in a family life, when Albie visits the library with his Mum, and the other blending a Scandinavian folk tale with the favourite ‘I’m scared! Where’s Mummy?’ narrative, as used in such popular stories as ‘Owl Babies’ and ‘Come On, Daisy’.

Sandra Horn’s story, “Suvi and the Sky Folk” is a delight. Suvi, the baby reindeer, struggles to survive with the rest of the herd, on scarce food supplies, during the ‘long dark’ of winter. Her mother warns her to stay close, but, entranced by the Northern Lights and startled by a long loud howl, Suvi bounds away from the herd and is soon lost. When the wolf threatens her, then suddenly disappears, Suvi recalls Grand-deer’s tale of the Sky Folk who dance in the Northern Lights and snatch away earthbound creatures. She is certain that the Sky Folk have taken the wolf.  Restored to the herd, Suvi recounts her adventure. The truth is a little different from Grand-deer’s story. Nothing to worry young readers though: Old Wolf survives his fall.

There is so much to enjoy in this lovely tale. The text is simple but lyrical. Winter is the ‘long dark’. Predators are ‘yellow eyes and sharp teeth” who come ‘slinking’. On the ground shines the light from a ‘scattering of stars’. There’s humour too, in Suvi’s conversations with the other creatures on the tundra, and there’s also factual information about the lives of the animals of the north. This is a beautifully written adventure story with a satisfying ending, which young children will love.

The illustrations complement the text perfectly, with the focus on Suvi’s face and expressions, inviting the reader to engage with her feelings throughout. Highly recommended for children aged 5-7. Available now from Sandra Horn’s website: www.tattybogle.co.uk and from Tate Publishing, from  Feb 9^th. 2014.

‘How To Catch a Dragon’ is another of Caryl Hart’s riotous romps through childhood. Like Shirley Hughes, she focuses on everyday experiences that children share, told through a child’s eyes. Albie has to draw a dragon for his homework, but he’s not sure where to start. He’s never seen a dragon. When Mum calls him to go with her to the library, Albie takes his drawing along. Maybe he’ll find some ideas in the library. He makes a new friend, whose imagination takes them into an amazing adventure with a grizzly bear, a hairy troll, knights and, finally, dragons! Albie soon finishes his homework.

  ‘How to Catch a Dragon’ is a laugh-out-loud book that children will love. It has a serious message though, about libraries and about friendship, with Albie and his friend looking out for each other on this shared adventure. It’s a perfect read-aloud book, with plenty of opportunities for funny voices and sound effects. Ed Eaves’s eye-catching illustrations are bright, colourful and full of action and humour. Highly recommended for children aged 5-7

Pauline Chandler

www.paulinechandler.com

         

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RABBITYNESS  by Jo Empson. Published by Child's Play, 2012.

 Reviewed by Dawn  McNiff

A bright splash of a picture book by author-illustrator, Jo Empson. A quirky book that grapples with bereavement and loss, whilst remaining fun and hopeful.

Now, I imagine you've guessed that the star of the show is Rabbit...Well, our Rabbit is a bit of a nutter - bouncy, wild and eccentric. He likes doing rabbity things as well as loads of un-rabbity stuff. And he is a bit of a leader too, so all his rabbit friends join in his mad antics.

First off, I reckon that a rabbit is a great choice of animal for a picture book. So many young children I know either have a rabbit, or really, really want one. Rabbits just WIN - and this big rabbity fest feels spot-on for infant-classers...

Copying seems a good theme for this age-group too. They're great little mimics themselves, and appear to be obsessed with either playing 'copying'; or arguing about who's copying who, and then 'telling'. It's a hot topic when you're 4.

And Rabbit is a guy well worth copying. Off he goes, boinging through the pages doing cool stuff, and spreading his rabbityness and joy. Splurgy paints in the pictures represent the colour and fun he brings into the woods.

Until one day he's just not there any more....

And he leaves behind a dark hole in everyone's lives, and on the page. This is shocking moment, but not so chilling that it would scare a more sensitive child under his bed for a week. The book deals with this loss and death with a light touch, but without trivialising it.

We see how the other rabbits learn to deal with their grief by doing all the happy, unrabbity things that Rabbit taught them to do - and in this way he is remembered, honoured, and not entirely lost to them.

I just wish I'd had this book 15 years ago. I will always remember a holiday to Yorkshire with my now-grown-up, 3 year old daughter. We did loads of fun things, but the highlight for her was the squashed, dead mouse we came across on a path near our holiday cottage. Every morning we had to take a detour to visit it. She'd hold my hand, and we'd stand and gaze at it solemnly. She'd ask what had happened to the mouse and why. Where had the mouse's life gone? Was it sad that it'd died, and why was it sad? Was the mouse's mummy sad? And its friends? All achingly sweet, poignant and funny from an adult's point of view - but she really was wrestling with some proper existential angst.

I'm not at all sure that I provided adequate replies to her questions. A book like Rabbityness would've been a very welcome prop.....

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SALVAGE by Keren David; reviewed by Gillian Philip

Salvage comes with an alarming tagline: Not everything that’s broken can be mended. Maybe that’s what gave me a mounting sense of dread as the paths of Cass and Aidan and their bewilderingly extended families converged. Not that the tagline is the only arresting thing on the very striking cover: there’s the tattoo on the back of Aidan’s neck, the single word Hope. It’s an ineradicable symbol that begins, at one point in the story, to look like a terrible joke.

Cass and Aidan are sister and brother, separated not at birth but when they were four and six respectively. She has no memory of her birth family; he remembers too much. They’ve had upbringings as different from one another as it’s possible to imagine: she’s now the high-achieving, Oxford-bound daughter of an MP, he’s the product of a care system that has failed him – and a product is what he seems to feel like, as much as the damaged goods on sale at the salvage shop where he works. By a chance of fate and Facebook the siblings find one another, twelve years after they were separated, and arrange a meeting that will have desperately frightening consequences for them and everyone around them.

Two voices tell the story, and they’re masterfully done. Aidan is one of those characters who could so easily lose the reader’s sympathy, but Keren David has previous when it comes to damaged young men (see When I Was Joe and its sequels) and she unfolds Aidan’s complex, terrible story with subtlety and grace. She has said in this interview that she found Cass harder to write, because the girl has so little self-awareness. Is there anything more frustrating than a character so pathologically self-contained she won’t even talk to her author? (I speak from some experience, *cough*.) Well, however David managed it in the end, it works beautifully. Cass might do her damnedest to alienate the reader, but in the end she’s too human to succeed. By the halfway point I wanted the best of everything for them both, and there are no guarantees they’ll get it.

It’s not unknown for nuanced main characters to be let down by a touch of cardboard in the supporting cast. No worries here. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book where I can picture the characters so clearly, and hear their voices. For me that doesn’t come with physical description, but by that mystical process where they’re just there, suddenly, in the movie in your head. I’d single out Will and Ben as particular delights; Will’s relationship with Cass is lovely. (Cass’s father, by the way, looks like Rupert Graves. Take my word for it.) I confess, I had a tremor of doubt in the opening pages, which bring us a situation that’s almost a cliche of our times. Uh-oh, I thought: plot thread, please don’t play out like I fear you will … Oh, silly me. I shouldn’t have worried. Of course Keren David doesn’t develop a cliched situation in a cliched way.

Not everything that’s broken can be mended. True. But I’m not going to give the slightest spoilers about what does and doesn’t get fixed in this story. If you want to know – and you will – go on, read it. 

SALVAGE by Keren David: published by Atom Books

www.gillianphilip.com

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Star Girl by Karin Littlewood reviewed by Lynda Waterhouse

Gracie has a special star. It shines and sparkles in the night-sky just for her. Each morning she says, “I wish you were here with me all the time.” So one evening she takes the star and brings it home.

Out of context the star is grey and dull and lifeless and no amount of effort on Gracie’s part can renew its sparkle. She tries dressing up in her starry dress and dancing. She thinks the star needs some friends so she places it in a rock pool amongst the starfish. No matter how hard she tries to please the star she cannot make it shine. Gracie comes to realise that it would never shine for her again…until she learns to let the star go.

Karin’s beautiful illustrations, rich poetic text and affecting theme make this picture book sparkle.  I can’t wait to read this story aloud to a group of children.

Star Girls is published by Frances Lincoln Picture books ISBN 978-1-84780-146-3

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THE MEMORY BOOK by Rowan Coleman - reviewed by Tamsyn Murray

By complete coincidence, I've also chosen an adult book to review this time around as well. My choice is The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman, published by Ebury Press and out on 30th January 2014.

The Memory Book opens with Claire and Greg. On the surface, they seem like a perfect couple but it soon becomes apparent that there’s a shadow hanging over them – Claire has been diagnosed with an illness, one that she’s all too familiar with – Early Onset Alzheimer’s. Claire’s mother knows the disease too - it took the life of Claire's father years earlier. So both women are dreadfully aware of what the future holds – bit by bit, Claire’s memory will be stolen away, until she can no longer remember her name, her husband or even her own children.

The story is split between Claire and her teenage daughter, Caitlin. Interspersed between these two narratives, there are extracts from the memory book, a record of stories and events involving Claire over the years. Some of them are by Claire herself, written while she can still access her memories. These provide a poignant counterpoint to the unfolding story and give great insight into each of the characters, especially Greg and Claire’s mother.

As Claire’s condition worsens, her family struggle to keep her safe and tensions increase, especially as Caitlin is facing demons of her own. When Claire blurts out a long-held secret about Caitlin’s father, the family begins to disintegrate. Can Claire hold onto herself long enough to pull everyone back together? Or will her illness tear all of them apart?

I suspected from the very first chapter that The Memory Book would make me cry and I wasn’t wrong. It's a moving, compassionate, heart-rending account of an illness that must be desperately hard to live with - I defy anyone to read it without sobbing in places. But it’s also a compelling read that is uplifting in so many ways. As the mother of a toddler who hasn’t got the hang of sleep yet, I rarely allow myself the luxury of reading into the early hours these days but with this book, I couldn't help myself; the urge to find out what happened next was overwhelming and I couldn't put it down. And even though you know there can be no happy ending for Claire, The Memory Book still manages to end on a high, which is a major tribute to the skill of its author, Rowan Coleman. Once I’d finished reading, I immediately wanted to go back to the start and begin again to pick up all the subtle clues that lead eventually to that beautiful, clever ending.

Look, I know it's only January, and I never usually say things like this, but seriously, you can call off the search already – I’ve found my book of the year.

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LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson, reviewed by Penny Dolan

I’ve chosen a grown-up book - Kate Atkinson’s latest novel LIFE AFTER LIFE - for this January review. The novel is currently in hardback (or as a kindle edition) but the paperback is due out soon.

First of all, for all Jackson Brodie enthusiasts, LIFE AFTER LIFE is not another in the Atkinson crime series. The novel spans the first half of 20^th century, so it could possibly be described as historical fiction. Certainly, I felt,  it is the popular “historical” knowledge of the World Wars and surrounding decades that helps to hold this unusual book together.

In the very first chapter, Atkinson introduces the idea that this is a differently constructed novel: in 1930, a young English girl enters a café in Germany and attempts to shoot Hitler. Then, in the next wintry chapters, each dated 11^th February 1910, we find three alternative versions of the birth of a baby girl, Ursula, including as a stillbirth. So the book continues.

 

All through this novel, Atkinson offers alternative versions of the Ursula who survived. We see her through family childhood, during girlhood, as a young woman and wife and aunt, as an early professional career woman, as a firewatcher in the 1940’s - and on into her eventual retirement in the 60’s. 

The “plot” of the novel loops back time and again, retelling and revising incidents, revealing different versions of Ursula’s life and the altered relationships between the characters. Often her stories end badly, with the refrain "Darkness fell".

I admit that, at the beginning, I noted down the dates and years used like chapter headings to get some hold on when we were, as well as where. The places and the people are strongly and clearly written. Atkinson writes some harsh and shocking scenes but never wallows in the awfulness. 

The book has moments of quiet humour. I enjoyed the way that Maurice, the older brother, is continually an unpleasant character, and the times when already known characters such as Renee, reappear as  strangers.  Death is sometimes a surprise but rarely a dreadful experience for Ursula. There's a feeling of relief when, after another story “goes wrong”, the novel shifts and a younger Ursula appearing, with another chance of happiness.

The poignant sadness of one tale is balanced by hopeful moments in another. For example, Ursula's vindictive husband is not married on her second trip through time. Several themes re-appear, structuring the book: Atkinson writes of loneliness and deprivation; of innocence, ignorance and deceit; of childhood abuse, domestic violence and the brutality of war.

In all her alternative selves, Ursula remains a constant, brave and likeable character for the reader. The book gains pace through the reader’s curiosity. How will this current loop work out? What the next story will be? LIFE AFTER LIFE is a hard style of book to conclude: Atkinson offers variations of the ending, suggesting the differences between what happens and what you would want to happen - which is, I suppose, what fiction is all about.

You might be thinking, as I once did, that this book sounds a bit too bothersome to read among so many other things to do. All I can say is that LIFE AFTER LIFE works. The book is "believable" and, possibly against the odds, some of the moments stay with you.  There should be hardback copies in your local library, if you don’t want to wait for the paperback - and it is available as a kindle e-book too.

Penny Dolan

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