~Beasts Of Extraordinary Circumstance Ruth Emmie Lang If a little bit of happy is what you’re in need of then you’ll enjoy reading this enchanting book. It’s warm and inviting and light and charming, without ever being silly. On the day Weylyn Grey was born, the doctor knew there was something special about him when it started to snow…in the middle of June. Years later when Weylyn’s parents die in a car crash during a snowstorm, he grabs the emergency money from underneath the mattress and runs away to the woods where he is taken in and raised by a pack of wolves. He proceeds to spend his money buying meat for his new wolf family from the local butcher, which is how he meets Mary Penlore, the butcher’s daughter. Mary runs away for a short time to be with Weylyn until she ends up back home and Weylyn finds himself being taken from the wolves and placed in a foster home, where he becomes brother to Lydia Kramer. After a while he moves from here and lives with a teacher, Meg. And so the book goes on jumping around in time and place following Weylyn throughout life with everything told through the eyes of those who cross paths with him. Some come to know him well, others hardly know him at all. Regardless, he leaves an impact on all of them in one way or another although it is Mary who remains a lifelong constant. This book is full of quirky people and magical happenings: Weylyn, sweet, innocent and endearing, has a horned pet pig, the ability to make trees grow overnight and can start and stop some pretty fierce weather. The latter is an extraordinary ability indeed, but it has a tendency to manifest itself at the most inopportune of moments and consequently produces some devastating ramifications for Weylyn. As a result he struggles to form attachments with people. At its heart this book is a love story, delightfully written, poignant and whimsical. There’s a lot of wry humour and the magical realism feels seamless and the descriptions of forests and snow and nature, along with Weylyn’s odd but kind hearted nature, make you remember this book as a calm, quiet oasis in a crazy world. This one is guaranteed to warm the cockles of your heart…and if it doesn’t then you might want to check and make sure that you have one.
~Bonfire Krysten Ritter Right out of high school, Abby Williams fled her small town Indiana roots for big city life in Chicago where she becomes an environmental lawyer and creates a nice life for herself. Ten years later she must return in order to conduct an investigation into Optimal Plastics, a company that may or may not be polluting the local water source with its chemicals. Optimal Plastics, like all good, huge corporations, has quite literally bought its way into the hearts of the people in Barren, Indiana and so when Abby comes poking around asking questions, everyone is none too happy about it. Meanwhile, during her high school years Abby had been friends with Kaycee Mitchell, who later shuns her and teams up with a handful of other girls to bully her. This, combined with her abusive father is why Abby was so quick to escape Barren with nary a backward glance. And it turns out Kaycee had the same idea, for she too left once high school ended, never to be heard from again. But not before experiencing a mysterious and unexplained illness, which a few other girls experienced along with her. However, once Kaycee left town, the other girls copped to the fact that it was all a hoax. Ten years on and investigating her case, Abby is not so sure it was a hoax after all. She becomes convinced that the past and the present are intertwined and she’s damn well going to prove it even if it means pissing everyone off and losing her job in the process. Unfortunately, facing your demons, which includes her now dying father, is thirsty work and Abby indulges in a bit too much alcohol at times which may… or may not… cloud her judgement. You get the picture. So, here’s the thing. I didn’t particularly enjoy this book. It failed to pull me in and the writing, which I found to be rather trite, had that edgy, smart ass tone. Now, in and of itself that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The only problem I had with it was that it made me continually think of Ritter’s role in Jessica Jones (which I loved, by the way). That is who I saw throughout the entirety of this book, despite it not fitting the description of our environmental lawyer protagonist in the slightest…and it was a huge distraction. And something else that really bugged me, even though it is inconsequential, was the fact that Ritter described Abby’s old friends as having thinning hairlines and paunch bellies. They’re ten years out of high school for god’s sake, which makes them 28. Hardly the age for such a thing. 48 maybe, but not 28. At any rate, there were many times when I almost stopped reading this but the inevitable pull to see if something brilliant occurs kept me going. As far as I was concerned it didn’t. Now, don’t get me wrong, Ritter is not an awful writer and it’s very possible that if she keeps going she’ll end up somewhere half decent. But here’s the thing I found most confusing. I stand virtually alone in my dislike of this book. When I went back to check reviews, nearly everyone liked it, loved it in fact. Usually when a book I’ve heard such good things about fails to capture my imagination, I’ll check reviews and discover that a huge proportion of people shared my viewpoint. Not this time. Where I saw a recycled plot which was one dimensional and lacked spice, in a book that felt tedious at times, others saw “compelling”, “dark, moody and twisty” and “addictive and gritty.” So you might not want to trust my judgement on this one!
~Pachinko Min Jin Lee This is a wonderfully written, lush, engrossing novel from start to finish. It’s one of those sweeping generational stories that picks you up and carries you off. In 1900’s Korea, Sunja is the treasured daughter of Yangin and Hoodie, born after they have already lost three children. For many years life is good, but when Sunja is 13, her father dies leaving her and her mother distraught. But life must go on and bills must be paid, so they continue on with taking in boarders, despite a house which is only about 500 square feet, and struggle to make ends meet. At 16, Sunja falls pregnant by an older, wealthy man who turns out to have a wife and children in Japan. As luck would have it, one of their boarders, a kind hearted minister, Baek Isak agrees to marry Sunja and raise the child as his own, saving her from a life of shame. They move to Japan and live with Baek’s brother and sister-in-law and so starts this epic story of family love, heartache, joy and betrayal. But, for me, the most fascinating part of the book was the portrayal of the Japanese attitude towards Koreans. I had absolutely no idea about the mistreatment, discrimination and poverty endured by the Koreans at the hands of the Japanese. It is truly shocking. They were treated as second class citizens, looked down upon and not allowed to have passports, all things which have a deep impact on the characters in this book, affecting their relationships and choices over the years. So not only is this book a wonderful story about family, so elegantly and gracefully written and one which you can’t put down, it’s also an enlightening and educational book about a cultural clash in history which deserves to be remembered. One of my favourites of the year for sure.
