The Lost Man by Jane Harper - Review

This was the February book choice for my book club and as usual it wasn't something I would have ever looked at twice I don't think. But I was incredibly intrigued by it so picked it up at the beginning of February. It took me a week to read because at the beginning I didn't really get it and was taking ages to read just a few pages. But then something clicked in and I realised it was all coming together and a lot of hints had been there to guide you into realising what happened. I raced through the last third. 

So, the book is about a family who live in the middle of the outback absolutely miles away from anywhere. Nathan is the protagonist of the book. Right at the beginning he is driving with his son to the stockman's grave, which is on the Bright cattle station, which is huge. It's in the far south east of the property, which isn't too far from the road that runs north/south. Nathan's property is much smaller, and is to the southern border of the Bright ranch. He struggles to run it, for reasons that become clear. Nathan's son Xander is sixteen and is visiting from Brisbane for Christmas. Nathan's ex, Jacqui, left him like a decade ago and is remarried, and they don't get on, but Nathan misses his son and wants to bridge the gaps between them. 

They arrive at the grave alongside Bub, Nathan's youngest brother. There they have been told is the body of the middle brother, Cameron. A police officer and a nurse, Steve, turn up to investigate the death. Cameron's car is found about ten kilometres away, on a rocky outcrop near where the north/south road meets the east/west road, which leads, in three hours' drive, to the local town, Balamara. Cameron could have walked away from his car, but why? He clearly had no supplies with him and has died from the heat and dehydration from being exposed near the grave. There are no injuries on his body. When they find the car, they realise he could have kept himself going for a while if he had stayed close to it - he had water, food, first aid, fuel - all the things that the whole family needs to keep in their cars in case they get stranded or something. So why would he walk away? And why was he at the grave?

Nathan and Xander head back to the Bright house and don't go back to Nathan's. There a few people also live. There's Liz, the men's mum. Her husband Carl was killed in a car accident and his grave is on the homestead. He was a nasty and abusive person and throughout the book we learn some of the horrific things that he did to Nathan, Cameron, and Bub. There isn't much of a gap between Nathan and Cam so they grew up together, but there's then a decade between them and Bub, so he had a different experience of childhood. 

There's Ilse, Cameron's widow, and their two children, Sophie and Lois, who are like eight and five or something. Ilse is Dutch and she was a backpacker in the area and actually she had a bit of a thing with Nathan to begin with, but then he got into trouble in the town and she met Cameron, not realising they were brothers. Nathan clearly still holds a thing for her and tries to not be around her too much. Sophie has hurt her arm on her horse, which is one of the many things that becomes significant later. 

Harry also lives on the site, in a cabin. He is a ranchhand, and has been there since before Nathan was born. He's dependable and reliable, but he was heard arguing with Cameron shortly before his death. Then there are two backpackers from England, Simon and Katy. Katy is supposedly teaching the girls and Simon helps on the station. They are obviously weirded out that their boss is dead, and don't really know what to do. 

Nathan has been living a really lonely life because he is a pariah in the town. I won't spoil why but I think this will be an interesting discussion at book club as to whether we think he was justified or not. He finds it hard to be back in the cradle of his family, but he does want to know what happened to Cameron. 

The book has a really gothic feel to it. The isolation and the heat all conspire to add insecurity and fear to the book. It's oppressive. The Bright house seems dark and oppressive throughout the whole thing, looked upon as it is by the grave of Carl Bright. The isolation is just loopy - the spaces involved are just incomprehensible to my English brain. There's a map in the book which did really help. 

I really liked Nathan and wanted him to succeed. I did guess what the outcome might be as I was racing through the final third and I was glad I got it! I'm giving this five out of five and I'll definitely read something else by Jane Harper in the future. 

A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville - Review

This was February's book club book, chosen by Rae. I hadn't ever heard of the author so picked this up without much expectation. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the book and would read something else by the same author. 

The book is about Elizabeth Macarthur, wife of John Macarthur, one of the first settlers in Australia. I hadn't heard of either of them, but I understand that John Macarthur is well known in Australia and appeared on a bank note there at one point. John was in the British Army and in 1790 sailed to Sydney to be an officer there. He had to come back to England twice as he was court martialled, and while he was gone, Elizabeth looked after their farm. 

The book is written from her point of view, and purports to be her memoirs, written when she is an old woman and found much later on. Several of her letters really still exist so quotes from them exist in the book. 

Elizabeth was born in Devon and lost her father when she was just four. When she was eleven, her mother remarried and Elizabeth went to live with her grandfather. Later, the local vicar and his family take her in, where she shares a bed with Bridie, who remains a lifelong friend. The two are courted when they are young women by Captain Someone and John Macarthur (I can't remember the captain's name, and anyway he doesn't stick around so it's fine). Elizabeth ends up falling pregnant to John and a wedding is quickly arranged. Her son Edward is only tiny when they travel to Australia (which took six months) and on board ship John makes an enemy of the Captain and Elizabeth delivers a baby, who doesn't survive. When they arrive in Sydney, it's no place for a lady and her child, but she has to make the best of it. John manages to get them a better house than most, and two convicts as servants to help. 

The book mostly focuses on the couple's early years. John is cruel and often dismissive towards Elizabeth. There's no genuine love between them. He is nasty and manipulative and prone to challenging people he's come up against to a duel. Elizabeth learns how to play him and how to mostly get him to leave her alone. 

I liked the book, and I liked the imagining of giving a voice to a woman who may not otherwise have one. I did think that Elizabeth's meetings with the indigenous people of Australia and her feelings towards them may not actually ring true - it's probable she was just as racist and horrible towards them as most white settlers were. It'll be interesting to see what everyone else in my book club thinks about that. But I was entertained by the book and am giving it four out of five. 

The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton - Review

This book was the June choice for my book club, and I read it back at the beginning of June. It was chosen by Margaret, an older lady in our book club who used to be a teacher. She is very widely read and she always chooses really good books. You wouldn't think she and I would have very similar taste in books, so I'm always quite surprised when I end up loving her choices. Last year she chose Fire in the Blood which I liked, and a few years ago she chose Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift which I really liked.

So this book is a coming of age novel about a teenager called Jaxie Clackton. He lives in Western Australia and at the beginning of the book he is on a highway in a stolen car. The book looks back in time to show the reader how he got there.

He left home to begin with because he found his abusive dad dead. Jaxie is around fifteen or sixteen - later in the book he tells Fintant he is seventeen, but isn't believed. His mother has already died of cancer, leaving Jaxie just with his dad. He is physically abusive towards Jaxie. Jaxie comes home and finds his dad dead under his car, thanks to a faulty car jack. Everyone knows what kind of man Clackton Sr was, and Jaxie is convinced that the finger will point at him, that everyone will assume he murdered his dad. So he packs a bag and takes off out of their small town, intending to head north (I think) to Magnet, where his sort of girlfriend Lee lives. He avoids the highway, and towns, so that police can't find him. He ends up in basically the outback.

In the first part of the novel he's alone, and he finds an old prospector's shack that he stays in for a while. He hunts kangaroo, and one day, further away from the shack than usual, he happens upon a shepherd's hut. He watches it for a while, then finally meets the inhabitant, Fintan MacGillis. The two end up keeping each other somewhat uneasy company. Fintant is an ex priest and has been abandoned in the middle of nowhere to basically get him out of the way and as penance for sins he never confesses to. This is the second part of the novel.

I won't spoil the third part, but the reader learns a lot more about Jaxie's background, family, and about Lee. She's his first cousin, so while the two of them have been together, they've been stopped from seeing each other by Lee's mother. He doesn't know what kind of reception he'll get in Magnet.

The novel is written in a stream of consciousness way, without direct speech. It's full of bad language, which gives the reader such a good impression of the type of person Jaxie is. You feel for him entirely, I really wanted him to succeed and get free and start a better life. I loved the setting of the Australian wilderness, with prospector's shacks and mining holes and all the wildlife and following tracks in the earth. I don't know too much about Western Australia so I kept looking things up.

While this is not specfically a novel for teenagers, it is a novel about a teenager, and I think it would appeal to teens if they don't mind the bad language. There's a lot of violence, lots of graphic parts, lots of mentions of death, and so on, but that shouldn't detract from what is a brilliant novel, especially for a mature reader. I'm giving this five out of five.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty - Review

This was the choice for my book club this month, and I really wanted to read it, so although I can't go to the meeting in a couple of weeks I decided to read it anyway and email my book club with my thoughts, which people often do if they can't make the meeting. Caroline chose the book, and she and I have similar taste in books, I often like the ones she chooses. I have read The Husband's Secret by Liane, but nothing else by her.

So in this, nine people turn up at a health resort in the outback in Australia under the tutelage of Masha, who uses somewhat unorthodox methods to transform everyone's lives. She has two second-in-commands, Delilah and Yao.

The novel is told from the points of view of all nine guests, plus Masha, Yao, and Delilah. To begin with I found this a bit confusing but eventually I really liked it and thought it added a lot to the book.

The nine guests are:

1) Frances, who is mostly the main character. She's a romance writer, she's fifty-two, and she's just been rejected by her publisher and has had a review that has bruised her ego a bit
2) Carmel, a mum of four whose husband has left her and whose confidence has nose-dived
3) Lars, a very pretty man aged thirty-five, whose partner wants to have a baby, but Lars isn't sure
4) Ben, a young man with a yellow Lamborghini who, along with his wife, has won 22 million dollars on the lottery
5) Jessica, Ben's wife, who is somewhat of a fitness guru and who has had a lot of plastic surgery
6) Tony, an ex sportsman who is just feeling a bit lonely and unfit
7) Napoleon (really), a man who, along with his wife and daughter, is spending the anniversary of his son's suicide at the retreat
8) Heather, Napoleon's wife, who is harbouring guilt about the death of her son, and,
9) Zoe, their daughter, grieving the death of her brother.

Upon arrival at the resort, Masha insists on five days of silence, and everyone has one to one counselling with her.

So until about halfway through the novel, that's that. The reader learns more about each character, and about what motivates them. I was convinced it would carry on like that to the end, with each character learning more about themselves and undergoing some kind of transformation, when the novel goes totally off-piste. I won't give any spoilers, but I still say that I didn't see it coming, and I loved it. I loved what happened after that, I just couldn't see how it was going to end. This was a compulsive read and I was really gripped. I really liked Frances and most of the other characters. The ones that were annoying are meant to be, I think. I really enjoyed the book, it kept me guessing and I think it was really well-crafted.

I'll trigger warn for suicide and discussion thereof. You may know that I lost my dad to suicide when I was just 24, so it's something close to my heart and I think in this novel it is written about really well. Liane says in the acknowledgements that she read No Time To Say Goodbye, which is a book by a survivor of suicide for survivors of suicide, and I think it shows. I read the book myself back in 2008 and found it really helpful. I thought that what Napoleon, Heather, and Zoe go through was extremely real, really well written, and done really sensitively. They definitely weren't to blame for Zach's suicide and I really hope that comes through in the book.

I'm giving this eight out of ten.

Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah - Review

Where did I get it? Penistone library a few weeks ago, I had to renew it actually as I hadn't got round to it in the three week loan period!

What's it about? I have to say first of all that I thought this book was new - certainly the copy I had was new to the library, so I assumed. It isn't - it was published in 2005, and I think it's obvious just how far YA publishing has come in thirteen years. I didn't like this book very much but I was compelled to keep reading it to the end because I wanted to know what happened.

Amal is the main character, she is sixteen and goes to high school in Melbourne. Right at the beginning of the book she decides to start the new school year wearing hijab full time. She's worn it before, including at her old Islamic school, but never full time. She knows it's going to attract a lot of comments and attention. There's Tia, a racist bully, to contend with, and Adam, who Amal has a crush on. 

She has two best friends from her Islamic school, Leila and Yasmeen. Leila is also a "full timer", ie she wears the hijab all the time out of the house, and her mum is determined to set her up with an eligible man instead of letting her go to university like she wants to. Yasmeen's family is mixed race - her mum is white, and is a convert to Islam. 

Amal also has two friends at school. Eileen is Japanese, although we don't learn too much about her, and Simone is white and overweight. They both stand up for her when she faces racism and negative comments. The three girls also end up becoming closer to Adam and to Josh, who has a crush on Simone. 

The storyline about Amal and her hijab and what it meant to her and what her religion meant to her was a good one. I liked how her decisions were shown, I liked how Islam was portrayed, and I liked what happened with Adam. I think that this storyline is great for any modern teen to read, whether they're in the UK or Australia or American, whether they're Muslim or not, whether they know people who wear hijab or not.

But. One of the subplots includes Simone's weight, and I just found this tiresome at best. She's constantly hounded by her family because of her weight, and she body shames herself and constantly diets and goes on about what she is or isn't eating. She isn't "really fat" though, which annoyed me because, what if she was??? I found this whole part so depressing and fat shaming, and I really think that if the book was published now it would have been edited to make this subplot better. 

What age range is it for? 13+ 

Are any main characters LGBTQ+? No. You'd think none of them had ever even considered anyone could be queer, which I also found annoying. 

Are any main characters people of colour? Obviously. There's a lot of discussion of race and culture, which I did like. 

Are any main characters disabled either mentally or physically? No 

Is there any sex stuff? No 

Are drugs mentioned or used? Marijuana I think may be mentioned? 

Is there any talk of death? No 

Are there swear words? No 

What criticisms do I have? See above 

Would I recommend the book? Honestly no. I think there's far better examples of Muslim teens

Why did I choose to read it at this point in life? I had picked it up in the library because I thought it was new, I was quite disappointed it wasn't. 

What other books is it like? It's a lot like Saints and Misfits by S K Ali only not as good. 

How many stars? Four out of ten 

Where is the book going now? Back to the library if I remember to take it!

Everything Beautiful by Simmone Howell - Review

Where did I get it? I saw on Goodreads that Kath had liked it because the protagonist is fat, so I scoured eBay for it. 

What's it about? Riley Rose is a rebel. Finding things hard after the death of her mum and her dad's new

girlfriend moves in, she rebels by staying out all night, drinking, going to parties, all of that stuff. Norma, her dad's girlfriend, thinks that Jesus Camp is the best place for her, so she's packed off. There she meets bullies, people who are far too much into Jesus for her liking, and Dylan, who is hot, and who is disabled. She's dead set on rebelling at camp, too, but maybe she's not as much of a badass as she'd like to think. She's unapologetically plus size, which I liked.

What age range is it for? A mature 14.  

Are any main characters LGBTQ+? It's not said 

Are any main characters non-white? Yes, although it's a bit clumsily done. 

Are any main characters disabled either mentally or physically? Yes, Dylan, and it's handled sensitively.

Is there any sex stuff? Yes, two incidences, and I think they're both extremely well written. One is really beautiful, too!

Are drugs mentioned or used? Yes. 

Is there any talk of death? Yes, but it's not explicit or gory. 

Are there swear words? A few, not many.

Would I recommend the book? Yes, I liked it. Riley is a likeable character mostly because she is so flawed, and I liked reading a YA novel set in Australia. 

How many stars? 8 out of 10 

Where is the book going now? I'm not sure - I'll probably keep it