Don't Believe A Word by David Shariatmadari - Review

I came across this book when I was searching for something else on my local library system (I'm not even sure what, now) and it intrigued me, so I requested it and picked it up when it came in. I ended up taking it on holiday and finished it while I was on the plane to Mallorca, haha. 

So something you might not know about me is that I did English Language A level way back in 2002, and a big part of that was about child language acquisition and how that happens. I found it fascinating. I find language in general fascinating - as I said, I was in Mallorca and I don't speak any Spanish but liked looking at the signs to see what parts of words I did know (thank you French and Latin) and also looking at the differences between the Spanish and the Catalan. So this was a perfect book for me, and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in language and how it works, too. I also think it is written in a really accessible way and even if you haven't ever studied anything about this, you would still understand it all. 

Each chapter looks at a different myth about language and deconstructs it. I really liked how I didn't feel like the author was judging anyone, whatever their linguistic traits or otherwise. If there's one thing I felt was missing, it was that there wasn't a lot on dialect words which are a particular interest of mine being that I'm from Yorkshire. But in all I'm giving this four out of five and would recommend it!

Kerrang! Living Loud by Nick Ruskell - Review

So one thing you might not know about me is that I love music. I'm a big fan of indie music, punk music, Irish music, some metal, some pop, some country. I've been into music ever since I was a small child, and when I was thirteen I got really into Placebo and the Manic Street Preachers. I then got really into metal for a bit (while still loving the Manics) and then punk when I met Lee, and then I fell out of music for a bit until I got really into The Libertines when I was twenty one. Then I got into 3rd generation emo in my mid 20s, and the Gaslight Anthem, and now I just listen to what I want to and while I don't really keep an eye on music, I did see that this book came out and wanted to read it. I first of all read NME and Melody Maker, but when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I bought Kerrang religiously. I used to buy it from a newsagent on the way home from school, and the owner would keep a copy for me especially. I scoured every page of it weekly, looking for stuff about my favourite bands but reading all of it. I kept articles and stuff cut out from it for years. In fact, I probably still have them somewhere. There's definitely some issues of Kerrang hidden under my desk right now. I bought it again for a few years in my 20s, and I know it has remained important to some of my friends. 

The book is a pretty straightforward history of the magazine from its inception in 1981 to now, from when it was weekly in the 90s to the rise of its website and its own TV channel through to the present day when it's published quarterly. I learnt a lot about the history which was interesting, as well as the type of bands it would cover to those it wouldn't, and those it got criticised for covering (for example Muse). I will say that one of my only criticisms is that there is too much about the band Metallica, who were instrumental in the magazine's success I guess, but I really don't care about them and there was a LOT. I also think there's a lack of women (both in bands and in the writing team) featured, but metal music has always had that problem so it isn't surprising that the magazine reflected this. From my own memories I do remember them looking at some women, but often in a really sexualised way - and I do think they piled on the hate of Courtney Love in the years after Kurt Cobain's suicide. That's not a failing of this author or this book, of course, but it could maybe have been looked at. 

There are pages inserted throughout the book from different musicians that have feature a lot in the magazine and are particular faves, like Dani from Cradle of Filth, Muse, Ozzy Osbourne - a wide va\riety of people I think. I liked these and it really made me feel as a reader that the writers and the bands had had a lot of fun together and that there was a lot of mutual respect in most cases (although I utterly don't understand what the hell happened with Axl Rose...) I liked mentions of some of the high profile deaths that have happened, like Metallica bassist Cliff Burton, Kurt Cobain of course, and more recent deaths like those of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington. 

It was a really nostalgic look for me at the past and at my teen years when I knew all the writers (and had my faves, of course) and the bands by glance if not more. I kept reading bits out to Lee and I really want him to read it. He is a secret Metallica fanboy so he'll probably love it! I am giving this four KKKKs out of five - thanks lads, for all the music. 

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo - Review

I've read other books by Elizabeth Acevedo and really enjoyed them, so when I discovered she had written a book for adults I was excited to read it and I requested it at the library. I was the first person to loan out the book! I picked it up just after I brought it home. 

However, it took me a week to read it as I just couldn't get into it. I can't explain why I didn't like it and why it just didn't gel, but by 4/5ths of the way through I was just bored and wanted to give the book two out of five. I did feel like the end did redeem the book somewhat so I am ending up giving it three out of five, but for me that's quite sad and I just wish I liked this book more. 

The book concerns the Marte family, who are from the Dominican Republic originally, but all the siblings end up living in New York City. Flor, the middle of the five children, has a magical gift - she has the gift of dreaming when people will die. Knowing this, the rest of the family is worried when she announces she will be holding a living wake for herself. What has she seen? Is she about to die? She engages her niece Yadi to cater the event, and the whole book is taken up by the time between her announcement and the wake itself.

It does go backwards and forwards in time, though, and sometimes it's not clear who or what every piece of story belongs to. The matriarch of the family was Mama Silvia, who ruled over her children strictly on the campo in the Dominican Republic. The eldest child was Samuel, who is barely mentioned in the book (somewhat thankfully as there are a lot of characters). The eldest sister is Matilde. She is married to Rafa, who is a philanderer and who left her at the hotel on their wedding night to go sleep with someone else. They have never had any children, which is painful for Matilde. She knows her husband has affairs but seems unwilling to do anything about it. She loves dancing, salsa dancing, and is very good at it. She meets a new instructor in the book and it seems like she might have an affair with him. She's around seventy and she doesn't have any magical gifts like her sisters. Dancing is her magical gift, though! 

The next child is Flor who as I said has the gift of seeing death. She was married to Pedro, who has died. She seems to have found childhood difficult but I didn't really pick up why, but she came up against Mama Silvia a lot. She wanted to join the nunnery (there is also a nun aunt) but ended up getting married and having Ona. 

Pastora is the next sister - she is married to Manuelito and they seem to have a genuinely good marriage. They have a daughter, Yadi. Pastora works in a clothes shop. She also sees Matilde's husband Rafa and a younger woman who is heavily pregnant and wants to tell Matilde about it, but Matilde doesn't want to hear it. Pastora has the gift of being able to discern who is telling the truth and how. She was disgraced as a child and sent to Mama Silvia's sister, whose name still cannot be mentioned within the family, and seems to have suffered trauma because of that. I probably liked her best. 

The youngest sister is Camila, born at least ten years after everyone else and who was perhaps least badly treated by Mama Silvia. There's very little about her in the book, but her magical gift is that she can heal with herbs. She is married to Washington, and there's a bit about their wedding/marriage which shows that it's a sexless marriage. 

Ona's magical gift is a magical vagina. She lives with her boyfriend Jeremiah and they're trying for a baby, but Ona had surgery not too long ago and isn't sure if she can conceive. Ona is sort of the overviewer of the entire narrative, but her aunts do keep their secrets from her. 

The book is told kind of from an anthropological point of view, supposedly in interviews that Ona has conducted (she interjects history and opinion into the narrative at many points). She is studying anthropology and has turned to her own family as a subject. I did like this aspect and I did like the look at DR history and emmigration. 

Finally there's Yadi, who owns a cafeteria and is a vegan. Right at the beginning of the book her childhood friend Ant appears back in her life. He has been in prison for like fifteen years and is now out. They were in love as teens and there's still a spark between them but Yadi isn't sure what she wants. 

Seriously there are so many strands to this book and I just didn't feel like they were all needed and while an expansive narrative can be amazing, it just didn't work for me here. 

I felt there were too many people for me to keep track of, and I definitely lost which man belonged to which sister. I also didn't understand some of the Spanish - at times it was clear in context what it meant, but at times I had to google a word or phrase that I didn't understand. I'm still not sure what was meant about the water that Rafa's mistress asked Pastora for and feel like that did affect my enjoyment of that arc and what came afterwards. The phrasing didn't seem to be able to be translated fully. 

I'm sad I didn't like this very much; onwards and upwards to Elizabeth's next book!

The Trial by Rob Rinder - Review

I was intrigued when I was in the Lake District back in July and I saw this book in every book shop I went in (which was a lot. I like books). Because you know Rob Rinder, right? Also known as Judge Rinder. I never saw his TV show but I've seen him on Celebrity Gogglebox and I also liked his documentary about his family and the Holocaust. I'm also quite interested in the phenomenon of celebrities turning to writing books, which I've talked about before. So I was intrigued enough to give this a go. 

First off I have to say that Rob is actually a decent writer. The writing flows perfectly well for me. There's a sprinkling of humour throughout. The plot flows really well; one of my only criticisms is that I feel like the end all came together a bit quickly. I also think that this reads a lot like the first in a trilogy or a series, and I wouldn't be sad about that because the writing is good. Better than some writers for sure! 

Secondly, I know that Rob was a barrister and judge so it's no surprise that the main character, Adam, is also a barrister. There are bits in the book that I think "Oh that definitely must have happened" whether it's something in court or something in chambers, and whether it's something good or something bad. 

So, Adam is a trainee barrister. He's twenty five. He's on a tenancy year (I think that's the name) alongside another trainee, Georgina, and at the end of the year he or she will be taken on permanently. So it's a big deal. And Adam feels like he's been failing the whole time. Georgina is much more outgoing, much more social, and she has the backing of her pupil master. Adam doesn't fully get how to play the game, and his master is Jonathan. Jonathan is a serial adulterer, and he's quite lazy as a lawyer and gets Adam to do a bunch of donkey work. They have one case with a guy called Kavanagh, who has been accused of fraud, and who Jonathan is trying to keep on the good side of because he has a lot of money. Then Adam's mum is always on the phone to him trying to set him up with young (Jewish) girls his age and he's trying to fob her off. So that's where we find Adam at the beginning of the book. 

Right at the beginning of the book a police officer is giving evidence in a trial. He is Grant Cliveden and he's somewhat of a celebrity - he used to be a bodyguard for the Queen and once saved her from an assassination attempt, and then he's brought down a bunch of big time drug rings, and he's been on TV a lot. He's known. He is in the Old Bailey giving evidence when he has a funny turn and ultimately ends up dying. At first they think he's had a stroke, but then it turns out he's been poisoned. 

There's one suspect: Jimmy Knight. Jimmy had a few convictions for petty crimes in his youth, and was then banged up ten years ago for armed robbery of the post office he was working in. He swears he didn't do it and that Cliveden framed him. He's been out for two weeks and met up with Cliveden in a nearby pub on the day of his death. Plus his laptop shows that he was googling Cliveden when released, and there's a phone found in his flat which had sent messages to Cliveden. Jimmy maintains that the phone isn't his, and says he didn't do it. He can't really explain himself but is adamant he didn't do it. 

The case is on a legal aid basis so Jonathan wants to spend as little time on it as possible. But Adam kind of believes that Jimmy didn't do it. He starts investigating - but that threatens his own life because he has secrets in his past that he doesn't want to come to light in his current profession.

I liked Adam a lot and I liked the story. I did guess some of the twists, but didn't mind it. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Vengeance of Samuel Val by Elyse Hoffman - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my stop on the tour for The Vengeance of Samuel Val by Elyse Hoffman! It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do have a click round and read some of my other reviews. 

So this is a novella and I think it counts as Young Adult because Samuel is himself a young adult through the book. The book is set in World War Two. Samuel is Jewish and he is in synagogue one morning with his family - mother, father, and three little sisters - when one his sisters needs something from home. He goes to find it, but while he is gone the Nazis move in and set fire to the synagogue, killing everyone inside. Samuel runs to the scene, but is shot by a Nazi leader. Samuel is Russian and his entire village is gone. 

He is saved by the Black Foxes, an underground resistance movement. He swears vengeance on the Nazi, but he also gets involved in the resistance movement and is given the task of getting a fellow Jew to safety. He escapes prison in an SS uniform, with the other person, Amos, alongside. He has to get Amos to safety with another Black Fox, but as he does, he gets the chance to take his revenge. Will he do it? 

I liked this novella and would read something else by the same author definitely! You know I like World War Two fiction anyway, and especially that to do with the Jewish experience of such. This is a good addition to the work, especially because of the age of the protagonist. I'm giving this four out of five. Thank you so much for having me along on the tour! 

Where the Light Goes by Sara Barnard - Review

When I was at Northern YA Lit Fest in July, Sara Barnard was one of the panellists and she was as always brilliant and she was talking about this book so I bought it and got her to sign it. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago and although I found it a very hard read I also thought it was absolutely brilliant. 

You see, it is about a sixteen year old girl, Emmy, whose famous sister, Beth, takes her own life. That is a harrowing subject anyway, but this is also something I have personal experience of. My dad took his own life way back in 2008 when I was just 24. I fully believe that I lost my mind for a while afterwards in the grief, and I have certainly never been the same person since. I have spent the last fifteen years trying in small ways to destigmatise suicide and I've read with interest The Samaritans' tips on how to report suicide, and I never use the phrase "commit suicide" for instance as it's just SO bad. So I was immediately interested when Sara talked about the fact that she lost a friend to suicide a few years ago and that she is a volunteer for The Samaritans and that she had paid good attention to the media rules and had woven this into the book. She made the point that we should never know exactly how someone high profile has died which is definitely not something that the press has done in recent years and which they definitely should be ashamed of. 

I spoke to Sara briefly about this as she was signing the book and mentioned my dad and said how I feel like having police involved in a death is just adding insult to injury. It's horrible when you have to do a public inquest and your own dad is in the newspaper and stuff like that. I feel like because Beth in the book is famous, this point was really brought across to the reader because obviously there's massive press interest in her story, in her life and in her death. 

So Beth has been famous since she was sixteen and at the time of her death she is twenty one. She got famous on something a bit like The X Factor with her band, The Jinks, which was comprised of Beth, aka Lizzie Beck, and her best friends Jodie, Aiya, and Tam. However, she has had drug and alcohol problems and she was on the verge of leaving the band. She had been in rehab. Her and Emmy's dad, Malcolm, was one of the band's managers, so in the weeks after her death he is quite absent, doing band things. 

Emmy is sixteen and has just finished drama school, at a place called Shona Lee, but she hopes to return to it for the sixth form. She absolutely idolised her sister and she is a singer herself and wants to be famous too. But she understands that there's a difference between Lizzie Beck the pop star and Beth her sister. She knows that Beth was far from perfect, but she just can't get her head round Beth's suicide. She has a best friend, Grey, and two other girls she's really close with, but she ends up pushing them away because she just doesn't know what to say. She also pushes away her boyfriend, Scottie. 

The story is so well told, told in the ninety days following Beth's death. The times when Emmy just can't put herself together. The times she needs her mum, who hides herself away and won't talk to Emmy. The times when she needs her dad, who is still busy with the band, who Emmy thinks have betrayed Beth. The times when Emmy herself does bad or misjudged things which are the reader you TOTALLY get. As I say, I did some fucking weird things in the aftermath of my dad's death, and I was a fully grown adult who was married and had a job! Suicide is its own particular kind of pain and Sara encapsulates that beautifully. You can tell she has experience of it. 

I will also mention the writing. The book isn't told in prose, wholly. There's more prose towards the end and I think this is when Emmy begins to see the light at the end of the tunnel. At the beginning, when she's massively grieving and is just reeling from the shock, the writing is all over the place. There are just little vignettes as Emmy lurches from day to day. I think this is a brilliant way of writing grief. 

I would recommend this book a hundred percent if you think it's something you can cope with. The writing is beautiful. The story is lush - you desperately want Emmy to be okay, you want to give her a hug, and I wanted to tell her that she would survive, that she would not only survive but she would thrive, that she would be happy again, and that she would always always miss her sister, but she would always honour her memory too. If I could give this more than five out of five, I would. 

The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes = Review

This was the third novella I got out of the library at the same time and A Meal in Winter and A Month in the Country and I'm really glad I got it because I liked it, even though I'm not sure I understood it entirely. I've got the film to watch too, which I'll try to get to soon. I also think I'll ask people at book club if they've read it because I bet they have! The hype around this book (it won the Booker Prize in 2011) totally passed me by at the time but I'm glad I finally got to it! 

So, the book is narrated by Tony, who at the time of writing is in his late sixties. He is divorced, but remains friendly with his ex wife Margaret. They have a daughter together, Susie, and she has at least two children. Tony is removed from her but can't really explain why. He is a very unreliable narrator, speaking 'truth' at one point but then contradicting himself only a paragraph later. 

Tony relates his youth and his time at sixth form and university. He and his friends Alex and Colin were studying history in the sixth form and were firm friends, and were then joined by Adrian. He was much cleverer than them and their lessons got very philosophical. The four boys would engage in really quite deep philosophical thought with their teachers, which I liked reading about. They all went off to university - Adrian to Cambridge, and kept up via letter (where they would use really pompous language to each other which was funny and endearing).

Tony met Veronica and started going out with her. Although they explored sexually, they didn't have 'full sex' until 'after they broke up' as Tony first tells it - but then makes it sound like SHE didn't know they had broken up at the time! It's bonkers. Anyway he visited her family with her and felt slighted by her dad and brother - who is also at Cambridge - but welcomed by her mother. It is confusing as to what is actually real in this visit and what isn't, but no matter. 

Tony then gets a letter from a solicitor telling him that Veronica's mother, Sarah Ford, has died and left him five hundred pounds in her will, alongside Adrian's diary as a bequest. Adrian died by suicide aged around 22, I think, something which the other three young men thought about in detail at the time and found to be a really noble ending, in a philosophical sense (sorry to keep using that word, but there's a lot of it in the book). Adrian and Veronica had been going out after she and Tony broke up, and Tony wrote a very angry letter to them afterwards which, when you as the reader see it, explains some things. 

However, Veronica will not hand over the diary. Tony starts to harass her by email, wanting to understand what happened and why he's public enemy number one. I do believe he was sorry for sending the letter, even if time had meant he had somewhat forgotten what it said. There's a lot in the book about time and memory and old age, which I did like.

I'm not really sure though if I fully understood the ending. I've looked at some reviews since I finished it and they all seem to say that it was obvious and that there are clues throughout. I'm really not sure if there are, unless you're massively misogynistic. However, I did like the book and I'm giving it four out of five. It's thought provoking for sure!