Theresa Smith's Blog, page 10
December 21, 2024
Book Review: Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
Audrey can’t leave the house. She can’t even take off her dark glasses inside the house.
Then her brother’s friend Linus stumbles into her life. With his friendly, orange-slice smile and his funny notes, he starts to entice Audrey out again – well, Starbucks is a start. And with Linus at her side, Audrey feels like she can do the things she’d thought were too scary. Suddenly, finding her way back to the real world seems achievable.
My Thoughts:This one was so, so good! I’ve become quite the Sophie Kinsella fan of late, enjoying her books on audio. My latest listen was Finding Audrey, and it was an absolute delight.
One of the themes within this story I loved the most was the idea of us all taking a step back from always needing to know all the gory details about what has happened to someone. Instead, we should accept that someone has been through something traumatic, and that’s the sum total of what we need to know. I really appreciated this concept, and we, as readers, are never given the details about what happened to Audrey, and we don’t need them. It’s enough to know that she has been through something traumatic and is now dealing with it and recovering from it as best as she can.
This story is both laugh out loud funny and filled with deeply meaningful moments. I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I have with all of Sophie Kinsella’s books that I’ve listened to so far. At just over six hours, it’s a quick listen, ideal for this busy time leading up to Christmas. A nice little escape.
December 6, 2024
Book Review: The Thirty-One Legs of Vladimir Putin by P S Cottier & N G Hartland
The Thirty-One Legs of Vladimir Putin welcomes us to a world where absurdity and reality are increasingly indistinguishable and where questions of identity dominate public discourse. The book spirits us off on a playful journey into the lives of a group of individuals whose physical attributes appear to matter more than who they may be.
Fiction winner of the 2024 Finlay Lloyd 20/40 Publishing Prize.
My Thoughts:This short fiction piece is comprised of thirty-one chapters about thirty-one different people around the world who look like Vladimir Putin and are paid by Russia to be on call stand ins if the need ever arises.
It’s an examination of the intersection between identity and politics and also looks at the way in which a person can lose their own identity because they look like somebody famous.
I didn’t even know that Putin doubles was a thing, but I have been since informed that it is indeed a real thing, so within that context, I began to understand the book a bit more. While this is certainly a clever novella, I didn’t particularly enjoy it. The book is neither a cohesive story nor a collection of short stories, but rather, thirty-one very short chapters about people who look like Putin and after a bit, it became somewhat repetitive. I do see the merit in it having won the prize, though.
Thanks to the publisher Finlay Lloyd for the review copy.
December 1, 2024
Book Review: Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.
Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor.
One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A mute, thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.
Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.
My Thoughts:This glorious novel has kept me in good company over the last few days as I’ve wallowed around in misery with a summer flu.
Shy Creatures is my favourite sort of novel, quietly impactful with its deeply explored themes, a story that takes its time to gently unfold and establish, peopled with richly devoloped characters that are flawed, relatable, and worthy of becoming invested in.
Set in the mid 1960s, the story orbits around a psychiatric facility and is inspired by the true story of a man who was discovered within his home, hidden for decades and then transferred to the nearby facility for psychiatric evaluation. Clare Chambers has given this real-life case an imagined backstory and a hopeful future. She tells William’s story in pieces, travelling back through time, slowly revealing his life in hiding and the eventual reasons for why he was hidden away.
Other characters have their own stories within this story, but the main one is Helen, an art therapist working within the psychiatric facility, who discovers William’s talent for drawing and nurtures this to assist in discovering his story and to facilitate his healing. Helen is a gorgeous character, by no means a saint, but indeed a beautiful soul.
I appreciated the insight into mental health care that was at a turning point at this time in history, in some places becoming more holistic and community based instead of clinical and institutional. There was significant research done on this aspect of the story, as evidenced in the final pages of the book.
Shy Creatures really was a joy to read – listen to – and while it was not without moments of deep sadness, it was, ultimately, a hopeful story about human connection and community. I absolutely adored it.
November 28, 2024
Book Review: Fire by John Boyne
On the face of it, Freya lives a gilded existence, dancing solely to her own tune. She has all the trappings of wealth and privilege, a responsible job as a surgeon specialising in skin grafts, a beautiful flat in a sought-after development, and a flash car. But it wasn’t always like this. Hers is a life founded on darkness.
Did what happened to Freya as a child one fateful summer influence the adult she would become – or was she always destined to be that person? Was she born with cruelty in her heart or did something force it into being?
In Fire, John Boyne takes the reader on a chilling, uncomfortable but utterly compelling psychological journey to the epicentre of the human condition, asking the age-old question: nurture – or nature?
Published by Penguin Books Australia
Released November 2024
My Thoughts:Fire is the third instalment in John Boyne’s loosely linked quartet named after the elements. Each of these novellas is becoming progressively more of a moralistic conundrum.
Fire explores the concept of nature versus nurture. I found it to be a gripping read but deeply uncomfortable for the majority of the story. John Boyne is a superb writer, though, so matter how uncomfortable these stories make me, I will continue to see the series through to the end.
Freya, the main character in this tale, is a deeply troubled, and troublesome, woman. A traumatic incident that is revealed within the first lines of the novella define her entire life. Yet, as the story progressed, I wasn’t entirely convinced of this incident being the catalyst, rather, I started to wonder if it were merely the excuse. Her actions, in retribution for the trauma and then ongoing as an adult, seemed to me to outweigh what she had endured and also did not serve any purpose other than self-serving. Nature versus nurture is a bit of a chicken or the egg scenario, one usually informs the other in some capacity, but it’s hard to not see Freya as anything other than a monster.
The fourth instalment, Air, is due out in May 2025, and has one of Freya’s victims as its main character. I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it all pans out.
November 17, 2024
Book Review: Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister’s death in this unforgettable story of grief, identity, and the complexities of family.
The three Blue sisters are exceptional—and exceptionally different. Avery, the eldest and a recovering heroin addict turned strait-laced lawyer, lives with her wife in London; Bonnie, a former boxer, works as a bouncer in Los Angeles following a devastating defeat; and Lucky, the youngest, models in Paris while trying to outrun her hard-partying ways. They also had a fourth sister, Nicky, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reeling. A year later, as they each navigate grief, addiction, and ambition, they find they must return to New York to stop the sale of the apartment they were raised in.
But coming home is never as easy as it seems. As the sisters reckon with the disappointments of their childhood and the loss of the only person who held them together, they realize the greatest secrets they’ve been keeping might not have been from each other, but from themselves.
My Thoughts:This book!! My heart still feels a little pummelled by it. I started this one on audio but didn’t click with the narrator, so I swapped to the ebook and never looked back. I adore this book. It hit all the right notes for me.
Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky are three sisters who used to be four. The story opens a year on from the death of Nicky, and all three sisters are scattered from each other and not coping with the loss. As they come together, broken and brittle, they begin to heal, knitting together in a new way, without their beloved Nicky.
It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and ending; it was all the time in between that was so hard.
Motherhood and sisterhood are deeply entwined throughout this story. For most of the story, the sister’s mother is portrayed as a ‘bad’ mother, a selfish mother who was disinterested in her daughters. In the final chapter, she enters the story in person, and I liked how this played out. It was an excellent portrayal of perspectives and a terrific example of how it’s never too late to accept, understand, and move on. Motherhood is also a theme underpinning Avery’s issues within her marriage, and of course, Nicky died as a consequence of her desire to one day be a mother.
In terms of the sisters themselves, Bonnie was my favourite storyline. The boxing aspect of her story was fascinating to me, and I liked how solid she was, how much of a good person. I spent much of the novel disliking Lucky and not being all that taken with Avery either, but I ended up loving Avery as much as Bonnie by the end.
Avery had previously thought love was built on large, visible gestures, but a marriage turned out to be the accrual of ordinary, almost inconsequential, acts of daily devotion – washing the mugs left in the sink before bed, taking the time to run up or downstairs to kiss each other quickly before one left the house, cutting up an extra piece of fruit to share – acts easy to miss, but if ever gone, deeply missed.
Blue Sisters is such a real story about the bonds of family and the catastrophic way that addiction can run through its members. The overall effect of the story was profound, and I was deeply moved by it. A firm favourite for the year and an excellent one for book clubs.
November 16, 2024
Book Review: Love Objects by Emily Maguire
Nic is a forty-three-year-old trivia buff, amateur nail artist and fairy godmother to the neighbourhood’s stray cats. She’s also the owner of a decade’s worth of daily newspapers, enough clothes and shoes to fill Big W three times over and a pen collection which, if laid end-to-end, would probably circle her house twice.
The person she’s closest to in the world is her beloved niece Lena, who she meets for lunch every Sunday. One day Nic fails to show up. When Lena travels to her aunt’s house to see if Nic’s all right, she gets the shock of her life, and sets in train a series of events that will prove cataclysmic for them both.
By the acclaimed author of An Isolated Incident, Love Objects is a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching and deeply compassionate novel about love and family, betrayal and forgiveness, and the things we do to fill our empty spaces.
Released November 2022
My Thoughts:After loving her latest, Rapture, I pulled this one off my shelf, keen for some more words from Emily Maguire. I ended up doing a hybrid read, listening to the audio in the car, and then reading the book in between listening sessions. This way of reading is fast becoming a favourite of mine.
Love Objects is a deeply complex story of family love, inherited trauma, and hoarding. This is the second novel I’ve read that explores the complexities of hoarding and the difficulties in addressing it. I found this novel to be both sensitive and confronting. Sometimes, I could understand Nic’s hoarding of treasured memorabilia. Other times, I was stunned by her inability to see what the problem was as she collected random junk, cramming it into her house like a bower bird building a nest out of rubbish.
Told from three perspectives, Nic, along with her neice Lena and her nephew Will, the story gives a balanced portrayal of a family in crisis. Class – yes, we don’t live in a classless society here in Australia – underpins much of the story and raises some significantly thought-provoking threads.
I enjoyed this novel, and while at times it pierced my comfort zone, I relished that for its intelligent exploration of a serious mental health issue and its engaging narrative.
Belated thanks to Allen and Unwin for the review copy.
November 1, 2024
Book Review: Politica by Yumna Kassab
SHORTLISTED FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND FICTION BOOK AWARD
A captivating literary journey that delves into the intertwined lives of a town, its people, and a region shaped by revolution and war.
The war broke out and she decided to call her dad.
Weeks and weeks we do not speak, and the weeks become months and then they are so many years.
She imagines herself starting this story.
She imagines how she will tell this story later to someone else.
We hadn’t spoken for years but then the war broke out…
As conflict plays out across an unnamed region, its inhabitants deal with the fallout. Families are torn apart and brought together. A divide grows between those on either side of the war, compromises are struck as the toll of violence impacts near and far. We learn about those who are left behind and those who choose to leave in a great scattering. As the stories of those affected play out they weave together to show the whole of a society in the most extreme of circumstances. Even after the last shot is fired, their world will never recover.
From the acclaimed author of The House of Youssef, Australiana and The Lovers comes a powerful new novel that asks again if it’s possible to ever measure the personal cost of war.
Released January 2024
My Thoughts:Politica by Yumna Kassab is a powerful novel about life in a war-torn region. Specifically, through its fragmented pieces of perspective, it focuses on the individual. This is a complex novel, more a series of vignettes than a cohesive story, but it was all the more impacting through the use of this style.
There were times throughout when I was moved to tears, others when I felt overcome by a sense of shock and disbelief. Life is so different for so many people, and I have once again been reminded about how blessed I am. The cost of living might be nipping at my heels right now, but I have feeedom, a job, a house, and a sense of security that none of that will change. I have never had to worry about bombs, never had to contemplate fleeing my homeland, nor have I had one of my children die in my arms from a bullet wound, caught in a crossfire while walking to the shops, immortalised forever as a consequence of war.
Yumna Kassib is a brilliant writer. This wasn’t an easy read, but it was definitely a worthwhile one.
Thanks to Ultimo Press for the review copy.
Book Review: In the Margins by Gail Holmes
Inspired by a real person, In the Margins is the story of spirited book-collector, Frances Wolfreston—the woman who uniquely preserved the earliest part of Shakespeare’s legacy.
England, 1647. As civil war gives way to an uneasy peace and Puritanism becomes the letter of the law, Frances Wolfreston, a rector’s wife, is charged with enforcing religious compliance by informing on her parishioners. This awful task triggers memories of her mother, Alice, who inspired Frances’s love of books and secretly practised Catholicism at great risk. Conflicted, she doesn’t report a reclusive and mysterious midwife to delay her going to gaol.
As Frances takes increasingly bold steps to help the women and children of the parish, she attracts the ire of a patron of the church who questions why Frances collects books that she charges are entertainment. When her mother is gaoled for religious crimes, the secrets Frances hides from her husband begin to surface, and she is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the strict dictates of the new laws, or risk everything to free the women she cares for.
In this tender and powerful work of imagination, the life of a remarkable woman who wrote and lived in the margins in a time where women’s voices went unheard is restored to history. Beautifully written and deeply moving, In the Margins is a testament to the way literature can illuminate our inner lives and set us free when the world around us is covered in darkness.
Released September 2024
My Thoughts:They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but this new release by Gail Holmes is an exception to that rule. The story contained within is every bit as glorious as the cover adorning it. Set in the mid 1600s, In The Margins is a story for book lovers and book collectors, an ode to the home library and the ownership of fine books.
It’s also a story of religious suppression, war, tyranny, witch hunting, and misogyny. The writing is beautiful, the story is compelling, the characters finely wrought and well fleshed out. I read this one rather swiftly as it was near on impossible to put down.
Highly recommended. Five stars.
Thanks to Ultimo Press for the book review copy.
October 26, 2024
Book Review: A House Built on Sand by Tina Shaw #AYearofNZLit
Winner, Michael Gifkins Prize, New Zealand, 2023
Maxine has been losing things lately. Her car in the shopping centre carpark. Important work files—and her job as a result. Her marbles? ‘Mild cognitive impairment’, according to the doctor. Time for a nursing home, according to her daughter, Rose.
Rose has her own troubles with memory: a recurring vision of a locked cupboard, claustrophobic panic. Something in the shadows. Something to do with the old family house in Kutarere.
Back in that house by the beach, Maxine and Rose try to find their bearings. But they can’t move forward without dealing with the past—and the past has a few more surprises in store.
Full of suspense and heartbreak, A House Built on Sand is a haunting novel about family secrets, the hazards of memory and ghosts that linger.
Released July 2024
My Thoughts:I’ve been rather neglectful of my #AYearofNZLit, but this new release, A House Built on Sand by Tina Shaw, was just the title to get me back on track.
Unfolding over only a couple of days, this is a story of the tragedy that is early onset dementia. Maxine is only fifty-eight years old – eleven years older than me – and has been experiencing a rapid decline in her cognitive ability. Her only daughter Rose, in her early thirties, is bearing the brunt of dealing with her increasingly erratic and unsafe behaviour. She has a lot going on in her personal life as it is, along with some repressed memories she’s working through related to claustrophobia. The frustration bleeding into worry about her mother was realised with such honesty throughout the narrative; I really felt for Rose.
As Maxine’s mental awareness deteriorates, the past begins rushing into the present, confusing her and giving rise to a disturbing truth about Rose and another little girl, Jade, who went missing thirty years previous. Maxine’s chapters were written so well, like shifting sands, the present and past mixing together, along with delusions associated with her illness. They were often chaotic and confusing, a mirror of what Maxine’s mind must have been like, with occasional shards of clarity.
The novel is structured with alternating chapters between Maxine and Rose. They were short and kept the story moving swiftly along. There is a lot of thought-provoking material within this story. I don’t judge Maxine for what she did, but I do wonder at how she buried it within her and maintained the lie for the remainder of her life. It just goes to show how damaging grief and trauma are to the human brain and how, when faced with the alternative, some people have the capability within them to do the unthinkable. As time presses on and the secrets erode away, what matters most? The truth or a life lived with love? Just a few of the questions I was left with at the end.
Another good one for book clubs.
Thanks to Text Publishing for the review copy.
Book five of #AYearofNZLit.
October 25, 2024
Book Review: Catherine Wheel by Liz Evans
Five years ago, Kate’s partner, Max, abandoned her for his pregnant lover. The affair has long since crumbled, but Kate has become fixated with Vee, her ‘replacement’. In a bid to find out what compelled Max to leave, she moves to Bridgewell, which stands in the shadow of St Catherine’s Chapel, where Vee is now raising her four-year-old daughter, Iona.
Warm and trusting, Vee is juggling work, single parenthood and a controlling ex-partner, Max, with whom she is still secretly sexually involved. Glad of Kate’s friendship, she nevertheless wonders what has brought this glamorous but brittle woman to such a quiet corner of middle England.
When Vee meets charismatic artist Tom, she is hopeful of establishing her first meaningful attachment since Max. But Kate has her own plans…
Against a backdrop of ancient ghosts, mystical forces and long-buried tragedy, Vee unwittingly yields to Kate’s cruel agenda, until the past and present collide with devastating consequences.
Released August 2024
My Thoughts:What a read this one was! Catherine Wheel by Liz Evans is a gripping slow burn literary psychological thriller about the ruinous effects narcissistic men have on the women they use and abuse. From the outset, this novel reeled me in with its atmosphere of quiet dread and beautiful writing. From the halfway mark, I couldn’t put it down.
Liz Evans deeply explores the inner most depths of her two leading ladies, Kate and Vee, and has crafted a plot that unfolds as gently as a hot blade slicing through butter. There are no absurd twists or sensationalist plot lines. This novel is far more classy than that with its thought-provoking threads.
I highly recommend Catherine Wheel. It would make for an ideal book club selection. Five stars.
