Book Review

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Choosing The Gilded Ones as my next book to read was a risk, not only because I was initially drawn to the striking cover, but also because I am not a particularly ‘young adult’. Despite being unfamiliar with such jeopardy, the risk paid off. Plunged into the ancient kingdom of Otera we meet sixteen year-old Deka on the verge of the ‘Ritual of Purity’, carried out to find out if any girls are ‘demons’ who need to be weeded out of society. Deka tries to solve the mystery of her origins whilst training in the emperor’s army to defend the population from marauding ‘deathshrieks’ terrorising the kingdom. There are echoes of the author’s upbringing in Sierra Leone in her cinematic descriptions, and everything is not what it seems in Otera’s deeply patriarchal society.

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CONFESSION WITH BLUE HORSES (Novel, paperback)
By Sophie Hardach
Head of Zeus, 2019
Sophie Hardach tells a fascinating and moving story straightforwardly: a woman’s quest for the truth about her family’s past. However, what she remembers of her childhood in Berlin is knotted into the history of a country which died in 1990.
In World War II, Russia had been an ally of Britain, America and other nations in defeating Hitler. At its end, control over Germany was divided, with the USSR (the soviet republic under Stalin) occupying the eastern half. Even Berlin, islanded in the West, was divided. Its residents lived in different countries; many families were split.
The liberal West was popular with the young, and there were frequent attempts to escape the restricted and poorer life of East Germany. A wall with armed guards and checkpoints was built across this great city; people were shot when trying to escape; and a regime of informing upon, betraying, arresting and interrogating ‘suspect’ citizens was established.
Confession with Blue Horses is the story of one family’s struggles, caught up in this mess, which lasted decades. Finally, one of the great moments in European history came when a vast crowd of people arrived at that wall in 1987 and hacked it down, chunk by chunk, while sympathetic or perhaps terrified guards looked on.
The novel begins in London in 2010, where Ella and her brother Tobi both remember their parents’ attempt to escape across the border, while the grandparents stayed behind. But things went badly wrong for them all. Now Ella goes to Berlin to delve into the archives from that era, trying to establish just what happened to her parents. When young she had been told a tale of blue horses representing the children. Had she not seen a painting somewhere showing those horses – three of them? So what happened to her little brother, Heiko? And what of her mother, the bold, risk-taking lecturer in art?
In Berlin, Ella befriends Aaron. He works for the research archive, trying to reconstruct the history of thousands of families. Literally, he pieces together the incriminating evidence deliberately shredded by the regime in its last days. Slowly a much fuller story of Ella’s family begins to emerge. Some of the villains of that time live on. They walk the same streets.
This well-written, thoughtful book avoids sentimentality. Its final message is one of hope.
Ray

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‘Such a Fun Age’ is Kiley Reid’s first book that tackles issues of race and class in a surprisingly light-hearted, funny way. This book has been long listed for the Man Booker Prize 2020.

The book is about Emira, a twenty-five year old black woman who babysits for Alix, a white ‘influencer’. It has a dramatic start, when Emira is stopped by a security guard in a Market Depot and is accused of kidnapping Briar, Alix’s two-year old daughter.

Following the incident in the Market Depot, Alix makes a painful effort to engage with Emira, who is largely indifferent to her employer. The story that develops is fast-paced and contains a few unexpected twists that keep it engaging (no spoilers!).

The plot carries this book. The writing itself isn’t exceptional; it’s not beautiful and it didn’t particularly provoke an emotional response.

Emira, the main character, is likeable and witty. Her primary concerns about what constitutes ‘proper adulting’ definitely touch a nerve. The other characters are less engaging, they feel a bit stereotyped and two-dimensional. I found Alix in particular a bit too annoying, with her awkward attempts to prove her progressiveness and total lack of self-awareness. Her preoccupation with her weight is particularly grating, especially given the fact her brand (#LetHerSpeak) is all about empowering women.

There are some deep issues underlying the storyline of this book but they are by and large skated over in favour of satire and comedy. That being said, the repeated demonstrations of white privilege are all too real.

I did enjoy reading this book but I don’t think I’ll read it again.