Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

Contemporary writers are mining a rich seam of psychological thrillers and, within this genre, I seem to be particularly attracted to stories featuring comatose protagonists. Comatose protagonists? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? True, you do normally expect a protagonist to, well, do something. And Deborah Mee's heroine Sarah does nothing at all, other than listen, and try and remember, from her unconscious state. In her narrative she offers us nothing more than fractured memories and snippets of conversations from around her bedside. Yet with these meagre tools she helps the reader build up a vivid picture of what is happening around her, of her own character, and of the events leading to her hospital admission. As a reader you gradually piece together what made Sarah what she is today. At first you see an apparently successful career woman in a loving marriage but, as layers are gradually removed, what lies beneath becomes apparent. Sarah's controlling husband has a sinister brother who comes to sit by her bedside, while her toxic mother wages an ongoing war of words with Sarah's spineless father... At times I wanted to weep for what happened to Sarah; at other times I wanted to scream at her for letting it happen. Full review...

The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin

Janie is a single mother, living in New York with her pre-schooler Noah. It's just the two of them, so it's rather disconcerting when Noah screams out in the night, calling for his real mom and asking when he can go home. Night after night this happens. There's other things, too. He hates water and regularly goes to nursery stinky because his mother simply cannot get him in the bath. He has the odd bizarre turn of phrase that comes out, far beyond what one might expect for a child of his age. He knows certain things, too, without anyone understanding how he picked up this knowledge, whether it be the names of different reptiles or the plot of books he's never read. Full review...

Fame! (Dirty Bertie) by Alan MacDonald and David Roberts

Book eleventy-thump in this series, and there is still no let-up in the situations that Dirty Bertie can be clumsy in, have a naughty approach about, or be accident-prone throughout. And while these three short stories may not be everyday circumstances, they have a universal recognition for the very young target audience – probably the seven-to-tens. So we have Bertie successfully apply for a part in a TV presentation – only to find it crosses a line; we see him get taken fishing, only for him to be bored and therefore naughty (and therefore successful, of course); and we have him and his friends trying to play as Robin Hood, only to find the sharing-out bit that normally follows the robbing just that bit too hard… Full review...

Mr Men Adventure with Dinosaurs by Roger Hargreaves

The Mr Men and Little Misses are branching out. No longer content with simple stories focussing on just one character, they're getting together with their friends for bigger and bolder adventures. Of course it would be Little Miss Curious who, in a curious way, finds the footprint to begin with. She turns to Mr Clever to find out what it is and, being clever, he tells her immediately: it belongs to a dinosaur. How exciting! The pair, along with some friends, set out to find the dinos. Full review...

The Nest (Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space) by Tom Huddlestone

The risk continues. Having faced great danger in their search for knowledge about their kidnapped, explorer parents, Milo and Lina are tracking a rebellious radio broadcast. But once again you can probably bet your life on their quest taking them into great danger, and in a mysterious world of bizarrely crashed spacecraft and wild life, danger is certainly around… Full review...

The Snare (Star Wars: Adventures in Wild Space) by Cavan Scott

Milo and Lina are used to haring around the universe, but never quite like this… They have seen their parents kidnapped by the Empire, in need of the adults' knowledge from exploring as scientists in the Wild Space area. They are hastening to the watery planet Thune to seek help, but unknown to them, they may be heading not so much away from the fire but towards a right frying-pan… Full review...

Modesty Blaise - Ripper Jax by Peter O'Donnell and Enric Badia Romero

Graphic Novels

Is there any stopping Modesty Blaise? Well, inasmuch as there are only ten stories left that have not been anthologised in these lovely reprints, yes – just three books to go, by my reckoning. That reckoning should be quite accurate, if I can be immodest, for there is a lot that is routine about these stories. They all had three panels a day, six days a week (with one day's output being less relevant to the story for those papers that didn't carry the comic on weekends), for twenty-one weeks. But rest assured there is also a lot that is unusual about Modesty and her output, including a never-ending variety to the locations, to the manner of the baddy's crime, and to the action Modesty and her Willie are forced to undertake to win the day. And nobody, but nobody, has undertaken so much action and come out looking so attractive… Full review...

Beetle Boy by M G Leonard

Children's Rhymes and Verse

When Darkus's dad disappears from a locked room in the Natural History Museum, everyone's desperate to discover what happened. However, when no clues are found, the police and the newspapers rapidly lose interest and Darkus is left to solve the mystery. Luckily, he has some very special friends to help him. Full review...

Defender of the Realm by Nick Ostler and Mark Huckerby

Teens

Alfie does not feel like he's the right person to be heir to the throne. He's awkward, bullied and always in the front page of the news for his latest mishap. His brother Richard, as the papers love to remind him, would be much better suited to the part. But when their father the King suddenly dies, ready or not, suitable or not, Alfie is no longer the heir, he is the king and with that defender of the realm. Together with an unlikely ally in the anti- royalist Hayley, Alfie learns his true heritage, protecting the kingdom from all the monsters no one knows exist... Suddenly all the royal duties he'd been expecting don't seem so onerous in comparison. Alfie must quickly grow into the King the country needs, or who knows what will be left of the country? Full review...

Vertigo by Joanna Walsh

Literary Fiction

The short stories in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soul, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of the ordinary and every day. The narrative voice appeared to me to be the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the case. The style of the stories is that of short vignettes, mostly written in a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poetic. Full review...

My Book of Stories: Write Your Own Adventures by Deborah Patterson

Children's Non-Fiction

If you happen to have two children, born five years apart, you can count on having to live through practically four full years of school holidays – and that doesn't include Bank Holidays or teacher training. Weather permitting, that's well over 1,400 days where the impetus is on to take them somewhere, or spend money. So what better and cheaper place to take them than their own imagination? And if you can't quite unlock the door that leads there, we can certainly suggest this book. Full review...

Now We Are Six by A A Milne and E H Shepard

We can see the signs in The House at Pooh Corner that Christopher Robin is growing up and now he has school work to do. But he's a lucky little boy as he has Winnie the Pooh to help him. Or is he lucky, given that Winnie is also known as 'the Bear of very little brain'? Actually, Pooh has a message for us in the introduction: he says that he walked through the book one day, looking for his friend Piglet, and sat down on some of the pages by mistake. He hopes that we won't mind. Full review...

Why We Came to the City by Kristopher Jansma

Literary Fiction

'We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit.' Full review...

Supermarket Gremlins by Adam Guillain, Charlotte Guillain and Chris Chatterton

Have you ever wandered down the aisle at your local Super Marché and found some frozen peas in the bread section, or a lonely carrot hanging out with the cereal. What can be the cause of all the mistakes, spills and wobbly wheels that plague every superstore known to man, women and child? Incompetent staff and lazy customers dumping stock? Nope, these problems are all caused by the sneaky Gremlins who lurk in every shop. Full review...

Jim Reaper Son of Grim by Rachel Delahaye

It's the age-old story. Boy (Jim) fancies older girl, in a distant, can't-talk-to-her-without-dribbling sort of way. Naturally, Jim won't discuss this with his best friend Will Maggot because by some evil twist of fate, the girl is Will's sister, and everybody knows sisters are definitely off limits. Not that Fiona's given him any encouragement: in fact the only time she speaks to either of them is when she's pointing out what losers they are. Full review...

The House at Pooh Corner by A A Milne and E H Shepard

The title of the book comes from the first story, in which Winnie and Piglet build a house at Pooh corner for Eeyore, but perhaps the most famous story in this second book is at chapter six, when the game of Pooh Sticks is invented. We also meet Tigger for the first time and as with the first book Winnie-the-Pooh each chapter is a short story in its own right, except for chapters eight and nine which have a degree of continuity as Owl's house is blown down in chapter eight and a new one is found for him at the Wolery in chapter nine. It's still not overly long even if you end up reading both as a bedtime story! Full review...

Pets A Slide and Play Book by Surya Sajnani

Pets is two in one, a book and a game, and for little ones who can't or won't sit still long enough for a full story, it's a great way to introduce books while keeping it fun. Full review...

Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World by Adam Grant

Popular Science

Did you know that procrastination could actually aid creativity? No? Neither did I, but it's a piece of information that I shall embrace and wield in my defence from here on out, because Adam Grant says it is so. Filled with interesting snippets and fascinating cases, Originals is not just entertaining, but instructive as well. Full review...

The Dog with No Name by Neil Griffiths and Janette Louden

Ella and Harry had been nagging their parents forever about getting a dog, but it wasn't until after the death of the goldfish and the Russian hamster, which they'd only seen five times because it was nocturnal, that their parents relented. Off they went to the dog rescue centre and after what seemed like ages and lots of red tape they had their very own dog. He'd not been in the centre long and had no name but the whole family fell for him and brought him home. Full review...

When The Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea

That was the order in which things happened: the sky fell apart, Jersey's beaches were bombed, Clement the island's butcher went up in flames where he stood and then the arrival of the German army. This will change the life of the island including herbalist Edith, neglected child Claudine, former fisherman Maurice and English Doctor Carter. Each of the four lives on the perimeter of the island's community but each will come to depend on the other three in order to continue living. Full review...

The Senility of Vladimir P by Michael Honig

In the not-too-distant future, Vladimir Putin is slowly succumbing to dementia, hidden from the world at large in a secluded private nursing home. Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev has what sounds like the most difficult job in the world: he's the old man's nurse. Full review...

My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster

Autobiography

Love them or loathe them, the houses we live in have a way of defining our lives. Author Margaret Forster decided to take this idea a stage further when writing her autobiography. Instead of putting herself centre-stage, she allows the houses that she has lived in to tell her story instead. From humble beginnings in a council-house on the notorious Raffles estate, we see Margaret's fortunes improve as her writing career blossoms. Student digs in Oxford, a shared house on Hampstead Heath, a villa in the Algarve and a remote cottage in the Lake District all have their time in the spotlight; but it soon becomes clear that only one very special house can earn the most precious title: HOME. Full review...

Thin Ice (Officer Gunnhildur) by Quentin Bates

Crime

Gunnhildur's family life is a bit complicated. Her son Gisli is now the father of two children, only they're not the traditional year or two apart, but just a few weeks and there are - as you might have gathered - two mothers involved. He's now living not with the one that Gunna might have expected but doing his best to maintain contact with the other, and his other son, of course. At work, two small-time crooks have robbed Reykjavik's most infamous drug dealer of a couple of hundred thousand euros, but couldn't get away as their getaway driver failed to turn up. Two women - mother and daughter - have disappeared along with the mother's car and a thief has died in suspicious circumstances. Full review...

Polly and the Puffin by Jenny Colgan

Emerging Readers

Polly was in bed when there was LOUD bang from downstairs. It wasn't the storm which was raging outside. It wasn't a monster or an alien from outer space. It was a puffin who had crashed through the front door and he had a broken wing. Polly's mummy got the first aid kit out whilst Polly went to get the puffin some food and the next day they went to see the vet. By then Polly had decided that the puffin would be called Neil and the vet asked her if she would be able to look after Neil until his wing was better, on the strict understanding that he would then have to return to the wild. Full review...

Blood Brothers by Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)

Literary Fiction

It's Berlin, and the Nazis are on their way to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselves. The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willi. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same? Full review...

Promises of Blood by David Thorne

Crime

I love getting in on the ground floor. Thanks to this very website I was one of the first in this country to read the Twilight series and was smitten from the start. We'll ignore the films, the books are worth a look! In a completely different genre, but no less a lucky fluke it was through here that I stumbled across East of Innocence by David Thorne and put in an old-fashioned baggsy for whatever followed. On reading the second of the series Nothing Sacred by David Thorne I commented that I hoped that in the next outing Connell would see him up against, or siding with, some kick-ass-don't-take-it female. So far his women do tend to be 'birds or victims' . I'm pleased to say he's moving in the right direction… women are central to this story one way and another. For the first time he's given us female characters who (despite their plot-device roles, which is varied and not always predictable) are stronger than they look – strong in a number of different ways – he hasn't simply opted for my "kick-ass" option, he's more subtle than that. Full review...

Little Home Bird by Jo Empson

Little bird loves everything about his home. All his favourite things are there or very nearby; his favourite branch, his favourite view and his favourite music too. All is happy in his little world until autumn draws near and his older brother tells him that they do in fact have two homes and the time has come to travel far to the south to move to their second home. Little bird is saddened by this news and knows that he will miss all his special, favourite things. Then little bird has a good idea! He will take his favourite things with him and then wherever he goes it will always feel like home. So we accompany little bird on his long journey and discover how he finds happiness in his new home in ways he had not expected. Full review...

Dozy Bear and the Secret of Sleep by Katie Blackburn and Richard Smythe