andintothetrees's reviews
554 reviews

Friendly Fire by Patrick Gale

4.0

My friend Fanny, who is a huge Patrick Gale fan (and who I interviewed here) gave me a copy of this several birthdays ago but for some reason I never got around to reading it until now, despite thinking that it sounded excellent from the synopsis. I think it was one of those cases of “saving” a book indefinitely and not wanting to be without the option of picking up something that I knew was a good read. Anyway, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I need to read more books by Patrick Gale. He is excellent, and if his books were people they would be witty, slightly neurotic and rather creative introverts, with whom I would like to be friends.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/friendly-fire-by-patrick-gale/]

Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson

5.0

That rare thing – a book set in Dundee! It was a joy to read a novel with a familiar setting, mentioning the names of streets I have walked down and even locations within the university I attended. Admittedly this may have biased me somewhat, but I’m sure this would have been at least a 4 star book anyway – it’s bloody genius!

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/emotionally-weird-by-kate-atkinson/]

The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen

2.0

I was about to open this by saying “Liz Jensen is one of the best authors I’ve discovered in 2012″, but let’s be honest, she’s not. Yes, I’ve also read The Rapture and My Dirty Little Book Of Stolen Time this year, and gave them 4 and 3 star reviews respectively, and yes, she does consistently deliver quirky plots and intriguing main characters, but Liz Jensen’s novels are sadly not up there with the likes of Kate Atkinson – certainly my best discovery of 2012 (and yes, I realise I’m very late to the party with finding her work!). I do still intend to read through Liz Jensen’s entire back catologue as there are aspects of her work I relish, and I wish more authors dared to be as original and wide-ranging in their narratives/subject matter, but all three of her books that I have read have fallen shy of being truly special.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/the-ninth-life-of-louis-drax-by-liz-jensen/]

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

4.0

I had been meaning to read this book for quite some time, and admittedly, it took me quite some time to read it once I started – three weeks in fact. I wouldn’t say that it is not a readable book, however I would say it is perhaps not the easiest book to read when your reading time is limited to short fits and bursts as it takes time to reassemble the arguments in your head before you can pick up from where you left off. Anyway, Richard Dawkins was, if you’ll excuse the phrase, preaching to the choir when I read this as I already identified as an atheist, albeit a bit closer to an agnostic than I felt once I’d finished the book. Whether or not this strengthening of my opinion was directly due to the book’s content or because it lead me to concentrate on thinking about the issue far more than I normally would is anyone’s guess.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/the-god-delusion-by-richard-dawkins/]

Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson

4.0

Grace Williams is a novel about the eponymous character who we follow from her girlhood to middle age, whilst she lives in a hospital (and subsequently the community) in the UK in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, with a focus on her teenage years. Grace is an unusual heroine, as she has physical and intellectual disabilities (although I was never entirely convinced of the latter – more on this later) and is part of a section of the population who was shut away from the public (quite literally, as in the hospital portrayed here) during the period the book is set. The novel loosely centres around Grace’s relationship with a boy called Daniel, but I felt it was more of a study of attitudes towards disability, and the taking of an opportunity to tell the story of a person from a community whose stories are not often told.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/grace-williams-says-it-loud-by-emma-henderson/]

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

3.0

On paper, this novel has many elements that I love – a dysfunctional family, life lived away from the mainstream, characters who are celebrities and an insight into the art world. It tracks a few months in the lives of thirty(ish)-year-olds Annie and Buster Fang, an actress and writer respectively, who have hit trouble in their adult lives and ran back to their family home to take stock and regroup. Their parents, Caleb and Camille, are perfomance artists who take their work very seriously – work which included Annie and Buster when they were children, and which we are invited to observe through flashbacks. Caleb and Camille disappear shortly after Annie and Buster move back home, and the two set about hunting for them, lending the book a slight road trip narrative arc.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/the-family-fang-by-kevin-wilson/]

Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

4.0

This is a book that addresses a topic I am always interested in, but rarely get to read about, as it doesn’t seem to be a popular subject: life in a cult. It follows Amaranth, a mother, and her two barely-teenage daughters Amity and Sorrow, in the aftermath of their escape from a Mormon-inspired closed community somewhere in the US. Amaranth is the first, and (only) legal, wife of the cult’s founder and played a role in developing its traditions and practices (although more by lack of protest than deliberate design, most of the time). Her daughters have never seen the outside world, which lends their points of view an other-worldly quality as they see what to us is the everyday through new eyes – marvelling, for example, at how much uncessary stuff there is to buy in the average shopping street. The family escape by car, but are involved in a conflagration with a tree which renders them unable to continue driving, and instead they pitch up on a farm owned by the gruff, introspective, initially indifferent but ultimately good-hearted Bradley who is kept company by his elderly father and a young employee/unofficial foster son, Dust. Flashbacks are used to inform the reader about what life in the cult was like – stories are told of the fifty wives and their many children, how they came to join the “family” and how everyday life was managed there.

When She Woke by Hillary Jordan

4.0

When She Woke is one of those books whose title and cover do it a disservice (or at least the cover pictured, which is on the copy I read, does – there are other editions with more fitting artwork): they make it seem much more “chick lit”-y than it is, and the image of a pale-faced girl runs contrary to the entire point of the book, as I will explain…

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/when-she-woke-by-hillary-jordan/]

Game Control by Lionel Shriver

2.0

Lionel Shriver is one of my favourite authors – We Need To Talk About Kevin is one of my favourite books, and thoughts about So Much For That still linger closely months after I finished it – but sadly this is the first novel of hers that I’ve read and just didn’t like. I pondered over giving it three stars just because Lionel Shriver writes so well, but skilled phrasing alone wasn’t enough to rescue this book – if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t have finished the book at all, and at times I did feel like giving up. It took me over a week to get through this and I found myself wanting to surf the internet on my phone or watch TV during my usual reading times just to avoid it, so in the end told myself just to power through the last half, which still took two days. Admittedly the second half was better than the first, largely because it has An Actual Plot, unlike the novel’s opening, but this in itself was rather bizarre – why introduce thriller elements to what has began as a character study/sort-of-love-story (albeit without any love or even sex)?

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/game-control-by-lionel-shriver/]

The Boy Who Fell To Earth by Kathy Lette

1.0

This book joins the Fifty Shades Trilogy in being awarded one star (and both of them only get that because What Hannah Read doesn’t have a zero star rating). I wondered whether that was perhaps too harsh, but I honestly can’t think of a single thing to recommend it. Admittedly, this book is way more “chick lit” than my usual choice of reading material, but I gave it a try anyway – partly because I try to keep an open mind about genre (especially as “chick lit” is such a dismissive and sexist term) and thought it might provide a little light relief after Game Control‘s relentless seriousness; but mostly because I thought the plot sounded interesting. The eponymous Boy is main character Lucy’s son Merlin, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, and the novel’s blurb presents it as a quest for Lucy to find a new partner whilst balancing Merlin’s needs. Unfortunately Merlin is little more than a sideshow to the main event of Lucy “choosing” between two equally unappealing men – a misogynistic, stinky (ok, I can’t verify this as thankfully the novel didn’t come equipped with smellovision, but there was something undeniably skanky about him), lazy, ageing rockstar called Archie who apparently channels all his energy into being good in bed, as he never bothers his arse to do anything else; and a misogynistic, workoholic, upper class twit called Jeremy* who fathered Merlin and then buggered off with a young TV presenter.
*Side note: why is this such a popular name among annoying TV presenters? Kyle, Clarkson and back in the day, Beadle? It’s also my dad’s name, ha.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/the-boy-who-fell-to-earth-by-kathy-lette/]