Claire Hennessy's Blog, page 14

Book Review: Between Sisters

I needed something comforting and warm and engrossing to read, in the middle of a dark, cold winter. Cathy Kelly’s It Started With Paris was there, on my bookshelf, yet to be read. So I gobbled that up. And then I checked my Kindle and yes, I did have Between Sisters, so I read that. And after that I needed another fix so I purchased the new one, Secrets of a Happy Marriage, and I remembered that she is damn talented and also so, so good on female friendship.

There is an idea that people have – people who don’t read what used to be called ‘chick lit’ – that ‘women’s fiction’ is the same as ‘romance’. That it’s all these stories of girls desperate to find Mr Right, and therefore dangerous and unfeminist (when women write love stories, they are Silly; when men write love stories, they are Literature). But no. The focus is on the emotional, interior lives of women – and all the relationships in their lives.

It Started With Paris shows how the engagement of one couple impacts on the lives of those around them, from the future bride’s best friend, nursing a heartbreak, to their parents caught in their own relationship dramas. Secrets of a Happy Marriage does something similar, only this time it’s a seventieth birthday party that provokes the members of the Brannigan clan into action. (It also includes a glorious storyline set in the world of publishing, which pleased me immensely.)

But it’s Between Sisters that tugged on my heartstrings the most. Coco and Cassie have successful careers – Coco owns a vintage boutique, while her older sister Cassie works in event management – but dysfunctional personal lives. Coco’s fear of commitment means she hasn’t let anyone close to her since a betrayal from the love of her life four years ago; Cassie’s struggling with her husband’s obsessive devotion to his manipulative elderly mother.

Both were raised by their grandmother and a distant, sad father who died too young. Their mother’s abandonment still haunts them both, with Cassie’s ever-increasing dependency on ‘wine o’clock’ (a superb portrayal of alcohol abuse among working mothers) echoing her mother’s addiction issues. Neither Cassie – who has two teenage daughters of her own – or Coco – now taking care of her hospitalised best friend’s daughter – understand how she could have left them, without ever getting in touch.

Naturally, said mother is about to return – and some truths about the past will be revealed. Sympathetic characters and an optimism about humanity – even as there are some people who’ll just never learn – make this an engaging cosy-blanket of a read.

Book Review: Baby Doll

Twenty-four-year-old Lily’s been held captive for eight years. Now she’s free . . . and dealing with how her family’s moved on, including her twin sister, Abby (who’s ‘moved on’ with Lily’s teenage boyfriend, too). Through a variety of perspectives, we watch the what-happens-next – including the fall-out for her captor, Rick, viewed as a ‘good guy’ within the community until this story broke, and who’s determined to find a way to get Lily back.

Thematically similar to Room, though narratively less original, this is still a very readable, page-turny book about family dynamics, especially sisterhood. I’m looking forward to seeing what Hollie Overton writes next.

Baby Doll is one of the Richard & Judy 2017 bookclub picks.

2017-internet-me

I’ll be offline (or trying to be) more in 2017, because even though I love social media it is a) a time suck and b) occasionally horrible. (Yes, yes, who cares, Claire?) But I’m also planning to be more consistent about book-blogging – also a resolution last year – and will have new book reviews up here every Friday. I like yammering about the books that I’ve read, especially ones I’ve read just for pleasure, and as handy as it is just to do a flattering tweet, I do prefer thinking-in-paragraphs. Hope you enjoy!

Favourite ‘grown-up’ books of 2016

In non-fiction, the books I loved this year:

Louise McSharry’s Fat Chance , a thought-provoking memoir about body image, health, and addiction.
Mad Girl by Bryony Gordon, a very funny and readable account of OCD and related mental health difficulties
Real Artists Have Day Jobs, a gorgeous collection of short and relatable essays from the very funny Sara Benincasa, touching on health, art, creativity, friendship, love, sex and more

As for novels, dark-twisty-ladies featured heavily:

Girls On Fire by Robin Wasserman
Lying In Wait by Liz Nugent
The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
Sisters and Lies by Bernice Barrington
You Will Know Me by Megan Abbott

Here’s to more twistiness in 2017!

Christmas books!

A selection of Christmas books and best of children’s and YA fiction 2016 in The Irish Times today.

The shiny humans over at Children’s Books Ireland have also put together a list of all the different kidlit bookish roundups here, and there’s plenty of recommendations over at Twitter using the hashtag #bookelves16.

Happy holiday reading, everyone!

A quick note on reviewing

I review books (mainly children’s and YA, sometimes ‘proper grown-up’) for a number of venues. I am also chock-full of potential conflicts of interest – as a writer; as someone who’s been published by or is published by Irish and UK publishers; as someone who knows an awful lot of children’s and YA writers in Ireland, the UK, the US and beyond; as a friend to editors and other employees in different Irish publishing houses; as an editor myself.

If I’ve been asked to specifically cover a book – e.g. for Inis magazine (Children’s Books Ireland) or radio (e.g. Arena) – these factors come into play. It is best not to put yourself in the position of reviewing something when you’ll be seeing the author (or anyone else involved in its publication) – you run the risk of being too gushing or too honest or too harsh, regardless of how you feel about the title in question.

With the books I choose to talk about, though – here on my blog or for the Irish Times kidlit/YA column – there’s a limited amount of time in the day, so I select books I like. Unless it’s a title I’ve actually worked on in some capacity, everything else is up for grabs – whether I know/like/am apathetic towards the author/editor/agent/publisher/publicist/sales reps or not.

I’m a fairly selfish reviewer. I’m not interested in tearing down a particular author or title (it means having to actually read a book you dislike) or praising something out of obligation. There still isn’t nearly enough coverage of children’s and YA fiction, particularly in print, so if I’m choosing a title to devote column inches to, it needs to earn it – by being something I’ve enjoyed and loved and was impressed by and want to honestly and credibly recommend to other people. Anything else, at that moment, has to be white noise.

Quickfire mini-reviews (grown-up books!)

Sharon Guskin’s The Forgetting Time will appeal immensely to fans of Jodi Picoult, focusing on the mother of a four-year-old boy who seems to remember a past life. Is Noah making it all up – or is it possible that he really is the reincarnation of an older boy who died tragically? Enter Dr Anderson, who’s been shunned by the medical community for his research into this field – and who has limited time left to make his case before dementia takes over. A very readable page-turner.

The Girl With The Lower Back Tattoo is a surprisingly wide-ranging memoir from comedian Amy Schumer, focusing on rape, sex, the treatment of women, gun violence in America, as well as – most fascinatingly – her up-and-down childhood as her parents went from rich to broke. The most moving parts of the memoir, as plenty of reviews have noted, are when she discusses her father’s diagnosis of MS and the horror of watching a loved one suffer. Not as laugh-out-loud funny as you might expect, but definitely moving.

Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe is a gorgeous account of what it is to be a teenager in an era before obsessive child-protection laws. 15-year-old Lizzie is nowhere near equipped to work in a care home for the elderly, but nevertheless ends up working there (partly because she wants money to buy beer shampoo) and gets entangled in its chaotic decline. A very fun read.

Another memoir from a lady comedian! Cheer Up Love: Adventures in Depression with the Crab of Hate by Susan Calman is an entertaining and wry look at mental illness, though – is this obligatory in these books? – makes sure to note that she does not think medication is for her. I suppose ‘was sick, took medication, got better’ isn’t much of a Dramatic Journey but even so, it’s a pattern I grow weary of. Still a good read, though.

These are not recently-published titles but I went on a mini-Laura Lippman binge, working my way through What The Dead Know, The Power of Three, and Life Sentences. She is my kinda writer – plenty of strong, compelling and dysfunctional girls and women at the heart of her stories – and I adored all of these. The Power of Three, which focuses on teenage girls and a dead body, is most pleasing indeed, but I absolutely lapped up Life Sentences, about a memoirist returning to her home town to uncover the truth of the events she’s made a living from.

And then, having got into the Baltimore vibe, it was time for some Anne Tyler: Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant. I love the quiet precision of her work. She’s just a joy to read.

Finally, back to recent releases: Sabine Durrant’s Lie With Me has an absolutely bonkers conclusion but is nevertheless a delightful (and twisted) read. Paul Morris is a failed Great Novelist long past his prime, and incredibly unpleasant yet compelling as he lies his way into going on holidays with a couple of old friends and their families. On this idyllic Greek island, the lies begin to unravel, and the truth about a missing girl from a decade ago – the last time they were all here – threatens to derail everything. As noted, bonkers conclusion, but a very enjoyable book all the same.

YALC snapshot!

Two bits of news!

So, Nothing Tastes As Good has been nominated for the Irish Book Awards in the Senior Children’s category, along with a bunch of fabulous other titles. You can vote for it here, or indeed vote for any of the others – I’m on a list with so many cool and brilliant humans, it is delightful.

Also and more importantly, am honoured to be included in Looking at the Stars, an incredible anthology of Irish writing edited by Kerrie O’Brien with all proceeds – the full cover price of the book, in this instance – going to the Emergency Rough Sleepers Team of The Simon Community. The book is beautifully put together, and the contents and contributors are really impressive, and it is for one of the most important causes – and crises – that Dublin is facing at the moment. You can pick it up in Books Upstairs, the Gutter Bookshop, Dubray Books, or order online here.

Book Review: The Lone City trilogy

This trilogy, kicking off with The Jewel, was pitched as dystopian on its release, but although it has much in common with recent dystopian trilogies – walled-in cities of privilege, girls meeting cute rebellious boys – it’s actually fantasy, with no clear link to our own society. Instead, Violet Lasting, the narrator of the three volumes (there are also two novellas, from the point of view of supporting characters) discovers that she and the other ‘surrogates’ purchased by wealthy families are the descendants of a magical race that lived on the island long ago. From the beginning we see they have magical powers that mean they can affect colour, shape and growth of the objects around them – the third, of course, being crucial in their role as baby-making vessels for the nobility within the Jewel.

There is plenty that feels derivative here, but I’m an absolute sucker for novels that look at female bodily autonomy, and I raced through these books. Even though the relationship between Violet and ‘companion’ (male prostitute) Ash is completely uninteresting, it’s not the most important one in the series. Both Violet and her best friend Raven have been abused by the women who own them, and those dynamics are fascinating. Violet’s friendship with the leader of the rebellion, Lucien – an inventor and ‘lady-in-waiting’ who’s been castrated – is also engaging, propelling the action as Violet moves from docile surrogate to a powerful rebel. I love the way the trilogy looks at gender and what it means to be abused, in all kinds of ways. I adored the darkness of the medical treatments the surrogates are subjected to. It sounds strange to describe reading these books as ‘enjoyable’, given the upsetting content, but the hopeful – if hard-earned – ending is satisfying.

(In short: anything that pitches itself as ‘The Handmaid’s Tale meets X’ will always delight me.)