Silas Marner - Elliot

This book is one of my attempts at tackling the classics, and it didn't disappoint.

The book tells the story of Silas Marner a weaver who is a loner as a result of an incident earlier in his life, he lives a secluded life and is obsessed with the gold he collects. Then his life changes when he is suddenly the adopted father of a small child, Eppie. She brings into his life new joys and new people.

A well told story but I only gave it 3 stars, for most of the book is fantastic but it seemed to really drop off in the middle, and there was a few random chapters where I was completely lost and confused.

Definately worth a read.

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A A-Z Challenge, The City of Beasts - Allende

I was attracted to this book because of its eye-catching cover and was unaware that it was a YA book untill I started reading it as I brought it from the adults section of the bookshop. Despite this I thoroughly enjoyed the read, was a great relaxing read for the long lazy lay-ins of the bank holiday weekend.

The book tells the story of Alex a 15yr old boy from California, as his mother is seriously ill he is spent to live with his grandmother, a travel writer. He joins her in the Amazon in search of The Beast, a 10 foot tall creature who kills humans on sight with his stench. All sounds a bit far fetched but was a great fantasy novel.

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Regeneration - Pat Barker

I read this novel for 2 reading challenges and really enjoyed it.

It is set during the war in a recovery centre for soldiers who have return from war as they are suffering some form of mental breakdown. The author builds this story up out of the real life meeting and relationships between the British poets Robert Graves, Seigfried Sasson and Wilfred Owen.

The book is fantastically well written and shows the horror of the war through the mens, memory and deteriation.

A 5 star read

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Milkweed - Jerry Spinelli

I was attracted to Milkweed just for the cover, but when I started to read it I was immediately sold. This is a book that grabs you from the first few lines.Its tells the story of a young street boy living in Poland in 1939. With no family or friends he believes he is called 'Stopthief' and does not know his name or if he is a Jew. He is taken under the wing of an older boy and gradually he learns more. This book shows the lead up to the holocaust for Jewish people in Poland from the eyes of an uneducated, naive bystander.

The prose is innocent and sparse, the short chapters move through the events so quickly that it is often a few pages on when it hits you what he has seen.

In my opinion even better than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

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Tatty - Dwyer Hickey

Hailed by the critics as a masterpiece, Tatty is a devastating, yet hilarious,
depiction of a troubled Dublin family told through the lively, charismatic voice
of a little girl. With brutal honesty, Tatty tells the story of her life with
her beloved, feckless Dad, her tormented Mam, her five siblings and the booze
that brings them down. This not just an entertaining tale, but also a
heartbreaking account of a disturbed childhood that makes for compulsive
reading. From Amazon.

I randomly picked this up from a display of Orange Prize Nominees in the library. I'd seen it mentioned elsewhere earlier this week, though I have no recollection of where.This was a superb, though very short read. The author creates the childs voice superbly, although I could never get to grips with which narrative voice she was using, sometimes it appeared to be in the second person, sometimes in the third and sometimes I felt like the child was talking about herself in the third person. This would normally irritate the hell out of me, yet in this book it didn't matter. I was transported to a world of a five year old; trying to get to grips with the intricacies of the pub and her Dad's workmates, a 7 year old watching her mother struggle to get her disabled sister into a normal school, a world of many Aunts who bad-mouthed your father and the escape of boarding school. The charatcer is loveable, standing out from her tumbled family, dealing in her own way with her parents alcoholism and abandonment.If you liked Carry Me Down, My Sister's Keeper or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time try this.

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The World Unseen - Shamim Sarif

Maybe I'm ignorant but I had no idea that there was a large Indian population living in South Africa, let alone that this community were part of the heirarchy of races in 1950s South African race issues.

A really enlightening and informative read for me. This book discusses the lives of two Indian women who have recently moved to Indian areas of S.A. The women have to battle against the rules of their own culture, whilst finding themselves in a country where they are regarded as superior to black people yet inferior to white people. A really good read, a book which has sat on my TBR pile for far to long.

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The Night Watch - Sarah Waters

As a lover of two of Waters' other books, Tipping The Velvet and Fingersmith I was kind of apprehensive about reading this new novel. I had heard others, who loved her previous work, criticise this book, a few having put this down without having finished it.

Yet, I loved it. It had everything I love about her writing. Fantastic characters. The ability to transport the reader back to another age, and for the reader to feel that they are almost there, standing in the periphery watching the characters in action.

The book is disjointed, it deals with the lives of several young people in WW2 struck London. Each story gradually being built upon, all slightly touching one another, yet never in too corny a way. She has of course her customary lesbian relationship, but various other relationships also exist.

A MUST READ!

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