You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.92 AVERAGE
2.92 AVERAGE
1.5
Maybe this would have been better if it was from 2 perspectives instead of the 6 or so that were portrayed. You don't really get to know any character and there wasn't really a plot. It was just a bit of a mess...
Maybe this would have been better if it was from 2 perspectives instead of the 6 or so that were portrayed. You don't really get to know any character and there wasn't really a plot. It was just a bit of a mess...
*3.5*
Overall I enjoyed this book. It takes place in a boarding school in England during the early seventies. It follows mostly students at this school and the secrets that they keep.
Of all the books I've read with multi-perspectives this one did a very good job at distinguishing between the characters and their point of views. The style of writing was very different for each character and there were distinct personalities shown.
That being said I think that there were too many perspectives. It was a relatively short book (275 pages) and covered 8 different characters. It felt more like a bunch of short stories with overlapping characters than a fully fleshed novel with a distinct plot. I think there should have been fewer perspectives with more focus on each or it should have been a longer book.
I enjoyed the characters and would really liked to have known more about them, or heard more about their individual stories. I felt that we missed a lot at times because we were hearing things from so many people.
That said I did like this book and almost wish that there would be another book with the same characters. I definitely want to know more about their lives!
Overall I enjoyed this book. It takes place in a boarding school in England during the early seventies. It follows mostly students at this school and the secrets that they keep.
Of all the books I've read with multi-perspectives this one did a very good job at distinguishing between the characters and their point of views. The style of writing was very different for each character and there were distinct personalities shown.
That being said I think that there were too many perspectives. It was a relatively short book (275 pages) and covered 8 different characters. It felt more like a bunch of short stories with overlapping characters than a fully fleshed novel with a distinct plot. I think there should have been fewer perspectives with more focus on each or it should have been a longer book.
I enjoyed the characters and would really liked to have known more about them, or heard more about their individual stories. I felt that we missed a lot at times because we were hearing things from so many people.
That said I did like this book and almost wish that there would be another book with the same characters. I definitely want to know more about their lives!
I debated pretty hard between 3.5 and 4 on this one. There's an underdeveloped quality to it: too many stories, too many strands all going at once. And mostly, they weave together very nicely but some - Percy's, say, or Nico's - don't really need their own focus. I suspect the author was trying to mirror Nico's mother's short story in some metaphorical way or something but it was too much. Sometimes a story needs only so many layers as it naturally has.
That's the thing about this book. It switches POV a LOT. Some don't even repeat more than once, and I don't think any go more than three times, maaaybe four. Trimmed down to, I don't know, Robbie, Brenda, Jenny, and Penelope, I think it would have been fine.
Set during the Vietnam war, the first chapter (Jenny's) follows an American girl to England where she is spending a semester abroad in a boarding school as a ...statement of support(?) for her draft-dodging brother, who also goes to England for college. (And then we proceed to see very little of him, which I think is a shame. Ditto Matt, their childhood friend who ends up in the war. So much of both their stories - Tom's and Jenny's - revolve around Matt's situation, but we see so little of those relationships that it all feels a little theoretical.)
The story proceeds to fold in other cast members' stories: Robbie, a townie who struggles with his sexuality; Penelope, a boarding school girl who struggles with, well, everything; among others. Only Robbie and Jenny's stories felt concluded or rounded out by the end - Penelope, especially, I would have liked to have more closure with, even if it was negative.
All this critique aside, Jocelyn grapples with serious issues among teens and does a great job with it. She highlights the imperfect but (mostly) bearable, and the concept of camouflage and blending in - major stuff for teens. Things get a little racy - I wouldn't recommend this to anyone under 15; Jocelyn's very frank about sex, masturbation, and desire, though never in a distasteful way and it's all very appropriate for the boarding school/teen environment.
That's the thing about this book. It switches POV a LOT. Some don't even repeat more than once, and I don't think any go more than three times, maaaybe four. Trimmed down to, I don't know, Robbie, Brenda, Jenny, and Penelope, I think it would have been fine.
Set during the Vietnam war, the first chapter (Jenny's) follows an American girl to England where she is spending a semester abroad in a boarding school as a ...statement of support(?) for her draft-dodging brother, who also goes to England for college. (And then we proceed to see very little of him, which I think is a shame. Ditto Matt, their childhood friend who ends up in the war. So much of both their stories - Tom's and Jenny's - revolve around Matt's situation, but we see so little of those relationships that it all feels a little theoretical.)
The story proceeds to fold in other cast members' stories: Robbie, a townie who struggles with his sexuality; Penelope, a boarding school girl who struggles with, well, everything; among others. Only Robbie and Jenny's stories felt concluded or rounded out by the end - Penelope, especially, I would have liked to have more closure with, even if it was negative.
All this critique aside, Jocelyn grapples with serious issues among teens and does a great job with it. She highlights the imperfect but (mostly) bearable, and the concept of camouflage and blending in - major stuff for teens. Things get a little racy - I wouldn't recommend this to anyone under 15; Jocelyn's very frank about sex, masturbation, and desire, though never in a distasteful way and it's all very appropriate for the boarding school/teen environment.
I don't know if this book will be for everyone, because there are a lot of characters narrating but if worked for me. It actually felt a bit like a Maeve Binchy YA book, but that could because I'm currently reading Binchy too. Full review to come soon!
For more reviews, gifs, Cover Snark and more, visit A Reader of Fictions.
Marthe Jocelyn’s What We Hide was a completely unknown quantity when I picked it out. I’d never heard of it before it appeared in the YABC book haul, the cover tells me nothing, and no one I know has read it. Books like this don’t come along often, but it’s always a joy to find a hidden gem like What We Hide. This book has so much to love, for readers who appreciate slower-paced, thoughtful fiction. Through brilliant use of multiple points of view, What We Hide tells the story of a small British boarding school’s inhabitants.
Through the course of What We Hide, Marthe Jocelyn touches on a lot of important themes. While I can’t say she deals with any of them in a deep way, I think the novel promotes thought and understanding in a really healthy way. My favorite discussions were those of The Vietnam War and of homosexuality. What We Hide is set in the early 1970s, and the draft is what creates the frame story for the novel. Jenny’s brother Tom has to go to college to escape the draft, and his parents want to be sure that he won’t get pulled anyway by sending him abroad. Jenny, though not at risk, gets to go to a nearby British boarding school for a semester. Though the Vietnam War is very distant from the plot itself, it does come up in small ways throughout, and I really enjoyed that aspect.
Marthe Jocelyn tells this story from a bunch of different perspectives and even uses some different formats. Most of the narration is straight forward first or third person, but Oona writes letters and Percy writes film scripts. Mixing styles like this is very tricky to pull off, but all of the narrative really worked for me, and there weren’t a lot of quick switches which helped keep things clear. I’m very impressed whenever authors do multiple POVs well and Jocelyn succeeded I am proud to say. Aside from the perspectives being distinct and fitting the characters, they were all interesting. When the POV switched, I was always okay with it, and glad to get new information.
There’s not a whole lot of plot to What We Hide; it’s very much a portrait of this place and time. The multiple points of view enable the reader to see the small group of characters from all angles and really delve into their characters. You get to see what Oona, for example, says about herself and then see how others react to her. It builds a fuller picture than just one perspective and leaves the reader to make a few judgment calls on precisely what went down in some cases.
As the title suggests, the real point is that everyone is hiding something. They all have secrets that they’re keeping, and the ending shows a couple of them getting past that and owning up to their lies or pretenses. Jenny’s pretending to have a boyfriend off at war. Nico’s pretending he doesn’t have a famous mother who wrote about his childhood. Percy’s hiding his famous dad who never visits. Robbie and Luke are hiding the fact that they’re gay. Brenda’s keeping the school doctor’s inappropriate touching quiet. Oona’s trying to keep her betrayal from her best friend. My favorite plot line was definitely that of Robbie and Luke, which is pretty heartbreaking, because they’re so cute and people are such assholes.
What We Hide could benefit I think from a bit more direction, but I did still find it a satisfying read, and I greatly enjoyed its uniqueness. It’s not the typical high scandal boarding school book. It’s slow and thoughtful and beautiful for those who appreciate these sorts of more experimental stories.
Marthe Jocelyn’s What We Hide was a completely unknown quantity when I picked it out. I’d never heard of it before it appeared in the YABC book haul, the cover tells me nothing, and no one I know has read it. Books like this don’t come along often, but it’s always a joy to find a hidden gem like What We Hide. This book has so much to love, for readers who appreciate slower-paced, thoughtful fiction. Through brilliant use of multiple points of view, What We Hide tells the story of a small British boarding school’s inhabitants.
Through the course of What We Hide, Marthe Jocelyn touches on a lot of important themes. While I can’t say she deals with any of them in a deep way, I think the novel promotes thought and understanding in a really healthy way. My favorite discussions were those of The Vietnam War and of homosexuality. What We Hide is set in the early 1970s, and the draft is what creates the frame story for the novel. Jenny’s brother Tom has to go to college to escape the draft, and his parents want to be sure that he won’t get pulled anyway by sending him abroad. Jenny, though not at risk, gets to go to a nearby British boarding school for a semester. Though the Vietnam War is very distant from the plot itself, it does come up in small ways throughout, and I really enjoyed that aspect.
Marthe Jocelyn tells this story from a bunch of different perspectives and even uses some different formats. Most of the narration is straight forward first or third person, but Oona writes letters and Percy writes film scripts. Mixing styles like this is very tricky to pull off, but all of the narrative really worked for me, and there weren’t a lot of quick switches which helped keep things clear. I’m very impressed whenever authors do multiple POVs well and Jocelyn succeeded I am proud to say. Aside from the perspectives being distinct and fitting the characters, they were all interesting. When the POV switched, I was always okay with it, and glad to get new information.
There’s not a whole lot of plot to What We Hide; it’s very much a portrait of this place and time. The multiple points of view enable the reader to see the small group of characters from all angles and really delve into their characters. You get to see what Oona, for example, says about herself and then see how others react to her. It builds a fuller picture than just one perspective and leaves the reader to make a few judgment calls on precisely what went down in some cases.
As the title suggests, the real point is that everyone is hiding something. They all have secrets that they’re keeping, and the ending shows a couple of them getting past that and owning up to their lies or pretenses. Jenny’s pretending to have a boyfriend off at war. Nico’s pretending he doesn’t have a famous mother who wrote about his childhood. Percy’s hiding his famous dad who never visits. Robbie and Luke are hiding the fact that they’re gay. Brenda’s keeping the school doctor’s inappropriate touching quiet. Oona’s trying to keep her betrayal from her best friend. My favorite plot line was definitely that of Robbie and Luke, which is pretty heartbreaking, because they’re so cute and people are such assholes.
What We Hide could benefit I think from a bit more direction, but I did still find it a satisfying read, and I greatly enjoyed its uniqueness. It’s not the typical high scandal boarding school book. It’s slow and thoughtful and beautiful for those who appreciate these sorts of more experimental stories.
[Note: I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for a review. Many thanks to both Netgalley and the publisher!]
I really hate to say it, but this book was a huge disappointment to me. It seemed like it was going to be everything I love - a POV-switching, character-driven historical novel about teens with secrets - but all of those things fell flat for me.
Most egregiously, the characters never managed to actually feel like people. That's a huge problem in a book that relies so much on character and character development to keep the reader going; there's no actual "plot" here. They all felt like caricatures, with the possible exception of Percy, and there was very little differentiating the narrative voices. As other reviews have said, there were also too many characters, and I don't feel like some of them - Nico, say, or Oona - added anything to the story at all, and they left the author with not enough space to deal with things like Penelope's mother or Robbie's hostile family situation in any kind of detail.
The setting also added very little to the story. Why set a novel during the Vietnam War if you're not going to deal with much of anything specific to that era? It almost felt like an excuse to explore gay-bashing, through Luke and Robbie, in a setting where it was slightly more likely to happen than now. (Which is weird, because it still happens now, and there are ways to deal with it without turning your novel into the capital-I Issue book that this one seemed to be at times.) That might make sense if the majority of the characters weren't hetero, cisgender teenagers, but in this novel, they were.
STILL: there were things I enjoyed about it, to the extent that I almost feel bad giving this only two stars. As flat as the characters often felt, I became very fond of a lot of them. Percy was extremely sympathetic, Jenny was charming, and I love self-destructive mean-girl characters like Penelope. The boarding school setting is also a really effective one for characters who need to keep secrets but can't seem to; I could read about all of these kids awkwardly and self-centred-ly negotiating their claustrophobic world all day. I was just really hoping for a lot more in the way of character development than I actually got.
I really hate to say it, but this book was a huge disappointment to me. It seemed like it was going to be everything I love - a POV-switching, character-driven historical novel about teens with secrets - but all of those things fell flat for me.
Most egregiously, the characters never managed to actually feel like people. That's a huge problem in a book that relies so much on character and character development to keep the reader going; there's no actual "plot" here. They all felt like caricatures, with the possible exception of Percy, and there was very little differentiating the narrative voices. As other reviews have said, there were also too many characters, and I don't feel like some of them - Nico, say, or Oona - added anything to the story at all, and they left the author with not enough space to deal with things like Penelope's mother or Robbie's hostile family situation in any kind of detail.
The setting also added very little to the story. Why set a novel during the Vietnam War if you're not going to deal with much of anything specific to that era? It almost felt like an excuse to explore gay-bashing, through Luke and Robbie, in a setting where it was slightly more likely to happen than now. (Which is weird, because it still happens now, and there are ways to deal with it without turning your novel into the capital-I Issue book that this one seemed to be at times.) That might make sense if the majority of the characters weren't hetero, cisgender teenagers, but in this novel, they were.
STILL: there were things I enjoyed about it, to the extent that I almost feel bad giving this only two stars. As flat as the characters often felt, I became very fond of a lot of them. Percy was extremely sympathetic, Jenny was charming, and I love self-destructive mean-girl characters like Penelope. The boarding school setting is also a really effective one for characters who need to keep secrets but can't seem to; I could read about all of these kids awkwardly and self-centred-ly negotiating their claustrophobic world all day. I was just really hoping for a lot more in the way of character development than I actually got.