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I absolutely adored this novel and am amazed by the literary genius that must have gone into it.
It is definitely in the Top 2 Best Novels I Have Read, up there with Middlemarch!
My new favourite book; simply fantastic.

This book spans 1805-1820 during the Napoleonic wars between Russia and France. We follow such a variety of characters and how their lives are affected by this conflict, with additional messages of love, family, marriage, bravery, and how to be happy in a very imperfect world!

Even at a staggering 1215 pages, it was worth the time. Do not worry too much about the history/philosophy essays; you are well within your rights to skim and scan those sections. Focus on the wonderful characters, the lessons they learn, and above all, the phenomenal writing!

A very readable, fun, and mind-broadening book that you will completely fall in love with, despite the length.

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From the first days of learning to read we acquire some basic rules: read left to right, top to bottom, exactly what’s on the page. We leave creativity and inventiveness to the illustrator. Agreed?

B J Novak’s The Book With No Pictures pokes gentle fun at the idea that reading just reciting the printed word, by taking the pictures out completely. Instead it gives room for the reader and audience to play with that assumption. After establishing the “rules” of reading a book, the reader is then stuck calling himself a monkey, speaking in silly robot voices, and repeating nonsense words, to the great delight of the listeners.

It’s super fun for all ages, and can prompt some thought-provoking discussions about what reading a book is all about. Teachers – and especially those interviewing for teaching posts – have been snapping it up for building literacy lessons around it, but you can just have a good laugh with this one, no matter how many times you read it.

(For a glance at the magic in action, you can catch videos of the author reading to audiences’ great delight on YouTube.)

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Within three pages of picking up this first novel, I knew I was in the hands of a clever, witty writer with complete control of the uneven field she’d taken on. Placing the narrator of a book in the throes of dementia creates a number of challenges. But as the story of the 82 year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer unfolds, we understand her story, and get drawn into the real mystery behind the misunderstanding. As long-ago memories surface amongst her broken grasp on the present, Maud begins to confuse the absence of her best friend, Elizabeth, with the disappearance of her sister, seventy years before. Is something sinister going on now – and has she finally found the clues to resolve the past?

Emma Healey studied at the UEA, and we’re not surprised that this hugely readable, engaging, thought-provoking novel has just been long-listed for this year’s Bailey’s Prize for Women’s Fiction.

April 2015

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In June I received a proof copy of Kick. It arrived in a bright yellow package, tied with a black football boot lace.

The publisher Usborne are a major international player, so only a truly exceptional book would have brought them to treat it so specially. And Kick is an exceptional book: for a start it’s a kids’ book completely about football that appeals to girls and has the endorsement of Amnesty International UK.

As the story progresses we see Budi, a 12 year old Indonesian boy who works in a sweatshop sewing football boots. He isn’t that different to 12 year old boys here in Wymondham: he looks forward to his birthday, he watches Premier League matches, and he imagines he’s scoring a winning goal when he’s playing football in the street.

Then the differences become clear, not least when a stray football goes through the window of dangerous criminals, who then force Budi to make difficult decisions that put his job and his family in danger.

The book is well-written with likable characters, but its appeal is partly that it authentically recognises that in these conditions, there are no easy answers, and life is just tough. Because Budi is quite naive, a younger reader probably won’t pick up on some of the harrowing aspects of life in Jakarta, which adult readers would find more disturbing. However there is plenty to talk to children about without destroying their innocence, as Johnson makes very open discussion of advertising and capitalism.

Despite the realities it covers, Budi and the book itself are full of hope. Johnson says that he hopes that both adults and children will leave the book reassured that they must never give up their dreams of achieving a better life.

I am not the target market for this book: I am an adult female and have daughters, but as my eldest said, “It’s more about the people.” And it’s true, Kick is a story about how the world we live in affects us all. So it’s not only a great selection for sharing with the young people in your life, it’s a great story to get us all to stop and think.

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When the celebrated US comedian Bob Hope lay dying, his wife asked him, ‘Would you prefer to be buried or cremated?’ After a pause came his answer: ‘I don’t know – surprise me.’
A strange kind of humour, black or gallows, exists shockingly alongside whatever understanding we living people may think we have of death. It is this strangeness which Canadian writer, Miriam Toews, explores in her novel: All My Puny Sorrows. The subject-matter is essentially bleak – the attempted (and further threatened) suicide of a woman’s sister, followed by the efforts of family and friends to save her – yet the tale is told in a rich, informal North American style, heightened by mordant wit. Most of the humour comes from Yoli’s observations of others around her, and from her own reflections upon these grim family circumstances. The novel is graced with interesting, believable characters who have eccentricities and do believable things.
The two sisters are Elfrieda (brilliantly successful, intelligent, world-famous pianist with devoted husband), and Yolandi (struggling mother and would-be novelist, who feels unsuccessful in love or marital relations, and more or less in everything else). The personal names derive from the family’s background in the Mennonite religious community, many of them descended from refugees to Canada who fled persecution across various parts of Europe – especially Bolshevik Russia. Elf, the successful musician, sees no point in living. Yoli desperately seeks ways, things to say, do or bring, which may save her beloved sister who lies in the hospital bed, so wretchedly keen for death. Toew’s dialogue cleverly conveys their closeness.
The prospect of a suicide poses moral dilemmas for loved ones. Elfrieda wants Yoli to take her secretly to a Swiss clinic where patients ‘weary of life’ may choose to end it all. In a rescued private moment out of the hospital, Yoli consults her unconventional friend, Julie:
Do you think you could live with yourself if you did it? she asked.
Or if I didn’t? I asked.
Either way, she said.
At one point, Yoli has to return from the Toronto hospital to Winnipeg for a beloved Aunt’s funeral, which requires her to leave Elfrieda’s bedside. Yoli’s straightforward account of the words she spoke to her silent sister is beautifully written, and finally most moving.
Yolandi’s family life as a middle-aged mother of two goes on, as it must. Yet the prolonged strain of her anxiety over her sister seems to influence everything she does, and she becomes prey to excessive emotional reaction. An amusing instance occurs at the airport, where her son Will is about to leave for a summer job in New York:
Are you OK? he mumbled, and I said yes, more or less. I love you, he said, you’re a good mother. Oh my god, I said, thank you! My eyes filled with tears instantly. You’re a good son! We stopped hugging and stood apart, smiling. And you’re a good sister, he said. The tears fell, it was hopeless. I apologized and Will waved it off. He took my hand and held it for a few seconds. And you’re a good brother! I added. Okay mom, he said, I have to go. I’ll see you in a month or so. I’ll call tonight.
One of the beauties of a good book is that readers can relax trustfully in the hands of an author whose writing, for all the blood sweat and tears actually involved, manages to convey a sense of effortlessness in the execution. (Indeed, like the live performance of a superb pianist, able to ‘express her emotions at will’.) To be at ease with the writing allows us to give the work our fullest, deepest attention, which All My Puny Sorrows fully deserves and repays.
Ray Rumsby
September 2017