angelayoung's reviews
336 reviews

The Book of Evidence by John Banville

challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Many people know the first and last lines of this classic: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... and ... It is a far far better thing that I do ... . But I had no idea how funny Dickens could be. He's an acute observer of human nature, his readers know this, but his humour-in-observation was a revelation. For instance, at the trial of Charles Darnay, near the beginning, the Attorney-General informs the jury that the prisoner before them, Though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. Many instances of the prisoner's treasonable practices are noted, including: That ... the prisoner had ... been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England on secret business of which he could give no honest account.

But then, according to the Attorney-General, the person testifying against Darnay can show proof that: 

The prisoner [was] already engaged in these pernicious missions within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons the jury, being a loyal jury (as he [the AG] knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that they could never endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off.

What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah

emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This collection of stories is awe-inspiring in language and in imagination. And the stories intrigue and involve. A brilliant combination. I'm looking forward to more.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I wonder if it's because Ishiguro - even though he's lived in the UK since he was five - feels that he's an outsider (as so many writers do, wherever they were born and end up living) that his themes are alienation, cloning, loneliness, the difficulty of making emotional connections? Or perhaps where he was born and where he lives have nothing to do with it. Still his themes remain.

Klara and the Sun's theme is human loneliness, set in a future in which emotional connections are difficult to make or understand, a place where children are either lifted or unlifted (states which are never truly explained but have to do with genetic augmentation), a place where lifting can cause physical illness and weakness. The reason that the lifted (or not) states are never truly explained and the emotional connections are fundamentally not (or mis-) understood is that the narrator is an AF (Artificial Friend): she can only understand humans though what she observes. And although she observes particularly well (according to her Manager) she has no hinterland of emotional experience from which to evaluate her observations. 

Which is perhaps why I, although fascinated by Klara and the way she worked in the human world (and what she observed) was left feeling just a little alienated by the story she narrates ... although I did feel compassion for her at the end when she failed entirely to understand what had happened to her, while Ishiguro skilfully conveys what happened to his readers.

Still Life by Sarah Winman

emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I haven't read a novel (apart from Maggie O'Farrell's miraculous HAMNET) for a long time that I thought about when I wasn't reading it and longed to get back to it and never wanted it to end. Brava Sarah Winman, and thank you for writing such a compassionate, thoughtful, deeply engaging, funny, Florence-enlightening, wide-ranging novel of love and loss and humankind. In the acknowledgements, Winman thanks Arts Council England for the 'opportunity to spend time in Florence' and says 'it changed me as a writer'. I've loved Winman's three earlier novels, but Still Life is miraculous (in all senses), magical, moving, funny, compassionate, thoughtful (repetition I know, but these things can't be said enough), clearly beautifully-researched (but not a whiff of the candle): it must have taken a small lifetime to research and write (and learn to cook!). It will stay with me for the rest of life.

And, I've said this before too, it's also funny:

Tree said, Thanks for everything. It's been nice knowing you.
You too, said Cress [man's name, not a plant]. Will you be OK?
I'm a tree. I've done this a thousand times before.
Done what?
Goodbyes.
Really?
Think about it. Leaves.

Read this glorious novel if you love Italy, or Florence, or your lover, or your life. Or all of these things. And if you don't yet love any of these things, this novel will persuade you to find your loves.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders

challenging funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

The subtitle reads In which Four Russians give a Master Class on Writing, Reading and Life. I disagree. It's George Saunders himself who gives that masterclass, through his interpretations of the four Russians' stories.

If you've finished a first draft of a novel, read this book. If you've finished the nth draft of a novel and can't find an agent or a publisher, read this book.

It will make the next stages easier, the redrafting (and re-re-redrafting) and the decisions you'll need to make and the direction your book might take. Everything, really, connected with the delightful (and difficult) art of choosing what and how to write.

George Saunders is a delight. He doesn't use words like structure and plot, but call and response and meaningful action. His anonymous reader is female. He's funny and his language resonates, empathises and encourages. If you're thinking about taking an MA in Writing, read this book first. I've done an MA and various other fiction-writing courses, but George Saunders is the business. (It may be that if I hadn't done the courses first, I wouldn't have got so much from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - George Saunders teaches on the creative writing program at Syracuse University, New York State - but I recommend trying the book first anyway. It might just be all you need.)

What a story is 'about' is to be found in the curiosity it creates in us, which is a form of caring.
and, on causality:
The problem is not in making things happen ... but in making one thing seem to cause the next. ... Causation creates the appearance of meaning.

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The personal and the political are so intricately interwoven in The Glass Room I felt as if I was living through the times the book itself inhabits; and the relationships are so emotionally full (and sometimes not, but both drive the story). And then there's the glass room or the glass house itself, which is a character in its own right. The Glass Room was recommended to me by a friend who rates it the best novel he's read (and we're both of a similarly ancient age ... and both read many novels, although he's much more methodical about the results of his reading: he lists the books he's read and what he feels about them - I simply write reviews here or, in the past, on Goodreads). I don't quite agree with his 'best novel he's ever read' but it's high up there among my favourites. The Glass Room also does a thing that I love in novels: it informs about a time in history and illustrates the effect that time still has on us now through its characters. And the language is lovely.

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a lament for lives unlived, or lives kept hidden until after death. It's lyrically written and its scenes are vividly evoked ... but I, being an eternal optimist, wished for a less-depressing ending (even though the ending felt like the right ending). 

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I was immediately engaged by The One-Armed Sister - and emotional engagement is what I long for in any art form. And I was immediately impressed by Jones's ease in different voices, different persons (you, we) and the use of what I discover are known as modal verbs, verbs that express necessity or possibility (you can be ... we could be). (And this is a first novel.) I was especially impressed because Jones employs all these textual tricks seamlessly (I didn't notice until I'd read for at least a few paragraphs each time). But everything she does, grammatically, textually, technically, serves the story, is buried in the story. I didn't notice the tricks, I noticed that my heart was beating faster, that I was suddenly inside a different person's head, that I felt complicit in the harsh events of the story. Jones truly knows what she's doing technically AND how to tell a story well.

And it is a well-told story. All the voices interlock and just as you're asking yourself how this? or why that? the answers turn up in someone else's story, or a few pages further on in the same story. Jones is mistress of what George Saunders, in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain calls Call and Response (he doesn't like technical terms like structure): in Call and Response in a novel, the writer is always aware of the questions she's planting in her readers' minds and, because the writer knows she's always in dialogue with her reader, in Call and Response with her reader, she has a duty to provide the answers.

I know I've already said I hope Piranesi wins the Women's Prize this year (2021), but now I hope The One-Armed Sister will win. The judges are going to have a hard time deciding ... .

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Piranesi is a glorious, wondrous, marvellous fabulous book (in all the older as well as the more modern meanings). It had the same effect on me that Radio 3's Words and Music sometimes does: it hypnotised me and made me feel that I was sliding into that other World, the House that Piranesi inhabits. It cast a spell on me which I will remember for a long time. It's also very funny: in the exchanges between Piranesi and the Other (a mean-spirited person, bent on acquiring the Secret Knowledge for himself, whereas Piranesi is humbly kind and carefully thoughtful about the World he inhabits, even though he is also heartbreakingly lonely) the Other's crass worldly behaviour is beautifully juxtaposed with Piranesi's gentle otherworldly humanity. Brilliant. I hope it wins the Women's Prize for Fiction this year (2021).