Theresa Smith's Blog, page 49

A Month of Reading: August

Books read in August: 11

Until next month…

Book Review: The Song of Lewis Carmichael by Sofie Laguna, illustrated by Marc McBride

About the Book:

A beautiful, illustrated adventure story with a classic feel, about a quiet boy and a talking crow on an extraordinary hot-air balloon ride to the Arctic.

“Matthew stood on the snowy peak and stared out at the world spread before him. Every picture in his books had been limited by the size of the page, contained within frames. Here, there was no frame. Here, the picture didn’t end. Beyond those icy plains, the sea, and beyond the sea, a land that floated on the ice, drifting northwards. Matthew put the binoculars to his eyes and saw valleys and cliffs and rivers all made of snow. Everywhere was white.”

Matthew has dreamed and read and thought about the North Pole for as long as he can remember. And he has done it secretly. It is a place that cannot be tarnished by the world in which he lives – a world in which he struggles to find answers and make friends, while everything seems to come easily to other children.

But one day, a crow called Lewis Carmichael lands at Matthew’s window – a crow who believes in Matthew in the most simple and ordinary ways. Soon, the unexpected voyage of a lifetime begins, and it will change everything…

An unforgettable adventure story from award-winning children’s book author Sofie Laguna, with enchanting illustrations by Marc McBride.

Published by Allen & Unwin

Released 31st August 2021

My Thoughts:

I don’t read a lot of children’s books these days now that my own three are all on the cusp of adulthood. I do miss reading aloud children’s chapter books, fantastical adventures that had all of them pleading for ‘one more chapter please’. All three of mine would have loved this story if it had been read to them when they were younger and it’s this knowledge that has me rating it with five stars, thinking of the story from the point of view of a child filled with wonder, rather than coming to it as an adult. When you’re a child, you don’t think of the logistics of flying to the North Pole in a hot air balloon, nor do you question the existence of talking birds. You just settle back and enjoy the ride. Oh, to be young again! I actually would have really loved this book when I was a kid too, thinking back. I was really into stories like this, adventures that took you out of the real world. The less realistic, the better. And I loved talking animals. That was a deal breaker when I was a kid.

I’m deliberately not going to pick this story apart and examine all of the themes and their proposed meaning. Rather, I’m just going to recommend it to parents and grandparents as a beautiful chapter book for children to read themselves or have read to them. Readership skews ages eight to twelve, give or take depending on your child’s reading ability and interests. In essence, the story is about a boy (Matthew) who feels like he is less than everyone around him. He feels the burden of his parents worry for him. They want him to go to the park to play, yet don’t want him to stay there too long in case something happens to him. In going on his adventure to the North Pole, Matthew is forced to take care of himself, make decisions, do things that his parents would normally do for him, and when faced with danger, no one is holding him back to protect him, he is left to use his judgement and protect himself. When Matthew returns from his adventure, it’s with a new sense of confidence within himself, a shedding of fear, in a way, and possessed with a motivation to experience things that he would previously have backed away from. There is a gentle reminder to parents who may be reading the book that children are like sponges, they absorb your energy, be it positive or negative. It’s hard not to think the worst is always around the corner. Yet children really do need to play and explore and just exist without bearing the burden of that worry for as long as they can. Goodness knows, once they reach adulthood, it’s all that’s facing them for the rest of their lives.  

Illustrated by Marc McBride (Deltora Quest, World of Monsters) the story is brought to life in the most magical way. The illustrations are just exquisite, beautifully detailed and absolutely captivating. The book itself is truly gorgeous, printed in blue ink, both text and illustrations, a lovely touch that sets it apart from other chapter books. A compromise between being a colour picture book and a black and white chapter book, if you like. It must have been such a wonderful thing for Sofie and Mark to collaborate for this book and for Sofie to see her story come to life with each illustration Mark created. The magnificent Aurora borealis double page illustration definitely stole the show. A poster version of that to accompany the book would be a brilliant gift pack idea. I do highly recommend this book if you have children in your life. It is sure to become a treasured favourite for many.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Author:

SOFIE LAGUNA’s many books for young people have been published in the US, the UK and in translation throughout Europe and Asia. She has been shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Awards, and twice been awarded Honour Book by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA). She is also a highly acclaimed author for adults. Sofie lives in Melbourne with her husband, Marc McBride, and their two young sons.

Illustrator:

MARC McBRIDE is the illustrator of Emily Rodda’s New York Times bestselling Deltora Quest series, which has sold over 18 million copies worldwide and has become an anime TV show. He has illustrated more than 200 book covers and 10 picture books, including writing and illustrating World of Monsters. Marc has exhibited with the New York Society of Illustrators, been shortlisted for the CBCA Awards and Aurealis Awards, and has won the Aurealis Awards twice.

The Week That Was…

International dog day:

Mine celebrated by trying to blend into the rug that he is NOT allowed to lie on! Well played Zeus, you picked your day right but still no.

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A thing of joy (that only readers will understand):

I was early to the ebook scene, straight in once they were released and the proud owner of an iRiver eReader way back in 2008. It wasn’t even wifi enabled! To put books on it you had to plug it into your computer and transfer them on through Adobe Digital Editions. Over the years, I’ve had platforms where I’ve bought from become obsolete, some I’ve just moved on from and then came reading apps for your phone and tablet, so those were added in as well. The end result: ebooks all over the place needing to be read in different apps and on different devices. I had gotten to the point where I had no idea what was where and it was making me itchy.

Last year I got a Kindle, primarily so I could read NetGalley arcs with no expiration date. I love it and have purchased books on there as well as the arcs, but that didn’t solve my problem with all the other ebook libraries I have because they’re all epubs and not compatible with the Kindle.

So I decided to buy a Kobo, even though I think that Kobo are expensive for their ebooks, they are attached to Booktopia and that meant that already, two of my library platforms were automatically merged onto the one device. It was a start.

About 12 hours of exporting, downloading, importing and merging later, ALL of my epub ebooks from all the various platforms I had are nestled in my new Kobo.

Cue the applause!

And now, my ebook reading life looks like this:

Two little matching blue ereaders, fully loaded and ready for reading! A thing of joy indeed.

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Joke of the week:

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What I’ve been watching:

Remember I started rewatching Friends some time back? Well, this week I hit season 7 and discovered pretty quickly that I had never seen these episodes before. Messaging with a friend about it led to the deduction that it would have originally aired around the time my first child was born so that completely explained my having never seen it. I used to have to vacuum every night with her strapped to my body in a sling just to get her to stop crying (I have no explanation as to why the vacuum soothed her but it wasn’t enough to just run the thing, we had to be rocking and moving and actually cleaning for it to work). Anyway, utter joy to be now watching and loving a season of Friends I’ve never seen before. Like a gift from the past!

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What I’ve been reading:

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Until next week…

Book Review: Freckles by Cecelia Ahern

About the Book:

Five people.

Five chances.

One woman’s search for happiness.

Allegra Bird’s arms are scattered with freckles, a gift from her beloved father. But despite her nickname, Freckles has never been able to join all the dots. So when a stranger tells her that everyone is the average of the five people they spend the most time with, it opens up something deep inside.

The trouble is, Freckles doesn’t know if she has five people. And if not, what does that say about her? She’s left her unconventional father and her friends behind for a bold new life in Dublin, but she’s still an outsider.

Now, in a quest to understand, she must find not one but five people who shape her – and who will determine her future.

Told in Allegra’s vivid, original voice, moving from modern Dublin to the fierce Atlantic coast, this is an unforgettable story of human connection, of friendship, and of growing into your own skin.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia (HarperCollins GB)

Released 1st September 2021

My Thoughts:

This was an absolute gem of a novel. I’ve always enjoyed Cecelia Ahern’s novels, so I was expecting a good read but even taking that into consideration, I was still surprised by how much I loved this novel. Meet Allegra Bird, twenty-three years old, working in Dublin as a parking warden. She lives in a flat above a gym in the backyard of a power couple’s mansion, gets her breakfast from the same bakery each day, eats the same packed lunch on the same bench each day, and walks the same beat each day. And for the past fortnight, she has also been giving the same person multiple parking fines each day. Enter Tristan, YouTube entrepreneur. When he catches Allegra issuing him with yet another fine after a fortnight of multiple fines each day, he loses his temper, tears the ticket up in her face and says to her:

‘You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.’

And more specifically, that her five people must be losers because that’s what she is. This gets into Allegra’s head, and she can’t shake it out. Not his aggression, or the tearing up of the ticket, not even him calling her a loser, but the concept that she is the average of the five people she spends the most time with. Because she doesn’t know if she has five people. And thus begins Allegra’s mission to get her five.

Allegra is a character I really enjoyed spending time with. She takes her job incredibly seriously, cares deeply for her father and his well-being; she’s witty and intelligent, and despite thinking that she’s no good at reading people, she gets it right more often than not. But she has a gap inside of her and a burning urgency to fill it and she does so with empty encounters and meaningless associations. On her quest to find her five, Allegra neglects to recognise that her five are right in front of her and she eventually realises that people can be more than you give them credit for while others, no matter how much you wish otherwise, can be far less.

This novel is funny and sad in equal parts but ultimately uplifting and life affirming. It’s exactly the sort of fiction that many of us are seeking right now and I recommend it wholeheartedly. A few of Cecelia Ahern’s novels have been made into movies and I’d love to see this one adapted. It has a quality about it that would translate perfectly to the screen. If you’re looking for “ALL THE FEELS” from your reading presently, you won’t go wrong with Freckles.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Book Review: People Like Them by Samira Sedira (trans. Lara Vergnaud)

About the Book:

Winner of the Prix Eugène Dabit

There are no monsters. Only humans.

Anna and Constant Guillot and their two daughters live in the peaceful, remote mountain village of Carmac. Everyone in Carmac knows each other, leading simple lives mostly unaffected by the outside world – that is until Bakary and Sylvia Langlois arrive with their three children.

The new family’s impressive chalet and expensive cars are in stark contrast with the modesty of those of their neighbours, yet despite their initial differences, the Langlois and the Guillots form an uneasy friendship. But when both families come under financial strain, the underlying class and racial tensions of their relationship reach breaking point, culminating in act of abhorrent violence.

With piercing psychological insight and gripping storytelling, People Like Them asks the questions: How could a seemingly ordinary person commit the most extraordinary crime? And how could their loved ones ever come to terms with what they’d done?

Lullaby meets Little Fires Everywhere, this intense, suspenseful prize-winning novel explores the darker side of human nature – and the terrible things people are capable of.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing – Raven Books
Released 3rd August 2021

My Thoughts:

Inspired by a true story of a mass homicide committed in 2003 in a village in France’s Haute-Savoie region (Author Note). What an excellent novel this was. It tells the story of a man who murders the family next door, but as reflected upon by his partner, Anna, who through her narration is clearly trying to make sense of what has happened, if that is even at all possible after such a tragedy. I found Anna’s voice arresting, her story gripping, the way in which she took us back to before, painting a picture of her partner, the man he was before the man he became known as. In doing so, she moves us through the motivation, bears witness to his unravelling, and then finds herself sitting in a courtroom, the facts of the case dissected before her, her partner, the father of her children, unable to fully defend himself, almost unable to even follow his own trial coherently. This novel is very much Anna’s story, of how his crime has impacted upon her life, as well as her children’s and his parents. Her voice is relatable, she is a nice woman, someone I would easily be friends with. Together, Anna and her partner, Constant, were nice people. Everyone said so. No one saw it coming. No one ever does.

‘A murderer’s wife is reproached for everything: her composure when she should show more compassion; her hysteria when she should demonstrate restraint; her presence when she should disappear; her absence when she should have the decency to be there; and so on. The woman who one day becomes the murderer’s wife shoulders a responsibility almost more damning than that of the murderer himself, because she wasn’t able to detect in time the vile beast slumbering inside her spouse. She lacked perceptiveness. And that’s what will bring about her fall from grace – her despicable lack of perceptiveness.’

Casual racism abounds in the village of Carmac and People Like Them is a psychological study on this as a motivator for crime. Bakary Langlois is the only person of colour in Carmac, wealthy, outwardly so, somewhat ostentatious with it. From the outset, he and his wife and their three children are viewed with suspicion. Part of this can be attributed to their wealth, but most can be attributed to the colour of Bakary’s skin.

‘Here, we laughed openly at Germans, because it was allowed – the war gave us that right. Same for the Dutch and the Belgians. We basically viewed them as an extension of the Germans. But we’d never had any Black people in Carmac.’

Bakary’s wife Sylvia is white, but the case is built around the murders being racially motivated. Bakary had stolen money from Constant (and others in the village) under the guise of an investment in a Swiss Banking scheme. When pressed to return the money, it became evident there was no such investment and, there was no longer any money. Constant maintained that this was his motivation: he murdered two adults and three children over the loss of eight thousand euros. The prosecution argued that there was more to it. That Constant felt entitled to murder Bakary and his family over eight thousand euros because Bakary was black and Constant was white. Sylvia and the children were simply collateral damage. For much of the novel, in the parts reflected back upon by Anna, we do see Constant riddled with jealousy over Bakary and all that he possesses, not just materially, but also the social standing and power his wealth affords him. In terms of the financial loss, Constant’s eight thousand euros is the least of the amounts gone; others lost far more and they were not possessed with a murderous rage that they acted upon, suggesting that there were other factors at play for Constant. The themes of entitlement running through this novel are thought provoking. The insidiousness of the casual racism and the way in which wealth created an instant divide; the novel has the most perfect title. It really does convey so much in so few words. You can almost hear the inflection of the sneer as you read it.

‘I don’t know if we’re all capable of killing with as much savagery as you had. I still don’t understand where it could have come from. That mystery will probably haunt me until the end. What I do know, however, is that no one around you was innocent. We stood back and let it happen. Like a chain reaction, each of us contributed to an outcome. A horrific act. A tragedy. Our tragedy. I also tell myself that maybe there were words that would have kept you from sinking, except we didn’t even know that we were losing you; we hadn’t understood that yet.’

The author does not attempt to garner sympathy for Constant, yet, she also doesn’t cast judgment upon him; he is all too human, possessing his own vulnerabilities and motivated by a complex jigsaw of thoughts, disappointments, emotions, and morals, all crashing together in a chaotic symphony of inexplicable tragedy. Anna is the star of this story, for me. I was so invested in her introspective processing of all that is happening and what this means for her life from here on in. People Like Them is another quality translation (I’ve read a few of late), the atmosphere conveyed with what I expect was the author’s intent. Once again, I didn’t feel as though I was reading a translation; this novel read as though it had been written in English. Translators are incredible, as not all words can be easily transcribed from one language to another; they do an immense job for which I am grateful for. We have access to so much more quality fiction on account of their efforts. This one is recommended to fans of crime and suspense, with a focus on the characters and their reactions to the fall out. We know what the crime is and who did it from the get-go. It’s the why that this novel focuses on, and more particularly, the what now for those who are left in the wake of the tragedy. A stunning work of fiction. I’d love to see more of Samira Sedira’s novels translated, her style and the depth within her work is exactly the sort of writing I crave.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

The Week That Was…

I had a few plants on my front balcony with my bird statues and I decided this weekend that a little expansion was in order, particularly the injection of some flowers. I do really love flowers but actual gardening in garden beds is not my strong point, nor is growing things from seeds. But so far, my pot plants have thrived in this space on my balcony so I thought I might really set to with creating a little balcony garden made up of pot plants.

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Joke of the week:

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What I’ve been watching:

True confession. I am a Batman fan from way back. And while this movie isn’t a Batman movie, it’s part of the same world building and that’s good enough for me. I really enjoyed this. It’s absolutely bonkers and incredibly violent, but also very funny. Plus, the female empowerment put a smile on my face.

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What I’ve been reading:

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Until next week…

Book Review: Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

About the Book:

1970s Mexico City: while student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite seeks escape from her humdrum life in the stories of passion and danger filling the latest issue of Secret Romance.

She is deeply envious of her neighbour, a beautiful art student apparently living the life of excitement and intrigue Maite craves – so when Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman, journeying deep into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents.

But someone else is also looking for Leonora, at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: he loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ‘n’ roll. Watching Maite from a distance, he comes to see her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart.

As Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the dangers threatening to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents and Russian spies all aiming to find or protect Leonora’s secrets – at gunpoint.

Velvet Was the Night: an edgy, passionate, simmering noir thriller from a writer at the very top of her game.

Published by Jo Fletcher Books

Released 17th August 2021

My Thoughts:

I haven’t come across another author who is as much of a changeling when it comes to style as Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Each of her books vary in genre but each of them are so good. Whenever I approach a new book by her, I simply expect the unexpected and I’m never disappointed. Her latest release, Velvet Was the Night, is a pulp fiction political gangster novel set in Mexico City, 1970. Here’s some historical context about what inspired it from the author herself.

‘One Thursday in 1971, a shock group funded and organized by the Mexican government attacked a group of students marching through a large avenue in Mexico City. The Hawks (Los Halcones) had been trained by Mexican authorities with support of the CIA in an effort to squelch communism in Mexico and suppress dissent. Hundreds of protesters were injured or killed during what became known as El Halconazo or the Corpus Christi Massacre. President Luis Echeverría and local authorities, including Mexico City’s regent, Alfonso Martínez Domínguez, denied the existence of the Hawks or shifted the blame. As a result of this attack, simmering guerrilla action in Mexico increased, as incensed students decided that one could not reason with the authorities. Meanwhile, the Hawks were disbanded. However, repressive action against activists and guerrilla fighters did not cease. Through a group known as the Brigada Blanca, the government abducted, tortured, incarcerated, and murdered Mexican citizens during the decade of the 1970s. This was known as the Dirty War (Guerra Sucia).’ – Author note.

The story is told in alternate chapters through the perspectives of Maite, a thirty-year-old legal secretary who is obsessed with romance graphic novels and American music, while moonlighting as a petty thief, and Elvis, a twenty-three-year-old reluctant thug who also loves American music and books, but who is a member of the Hawks gang. This isn’t a good girl meets bad boy romance novel, not by a long shot. When Maite agrees to take care of her neighbour’s cat for a couple of days, she is unwittingly drawn into a dangerous political situation when her neighbour disappears. All Maite is initially concerned with is getting her money for pet sitting; her car is stuck at the mechanic and she needs to pay the overdue bill. But her loose involvement with her missing neighbour puts a target on her and Elvis’s crew are sent in for surveillance, however, they are not the only group watching her. Her neighbour was in possession of some explosive evidence that more than one group want to get a hold of, and they all believe that Maite is now the keeper of it.

Through this novel, we get a glimpse of Mexico City in the 1970s, the political unrest, the fear of ‘commies’ and ‘reds’, the violence against students, the guerrilla warfare in wider Mexico, the tousle between gangs and the political corruption. And then we also see, through Maite’s life, the Mexico of the ordinary working woman, young, looking for a husband while also relishing her own independence, even if it does come with the price of a boring job and an expensive apartment. Maite really grew on me throughout the course of the novel, as did Elvis, both with their quirks and awkwardness, and I felt for them both, the situations they had each found themselves to be in. I really liked the ending of this novel, the hopeful promise of a new beginning for each of them. It was lovely. The novel does get quite violent as it progresses, think Pulp Fiction meets The Godfather with a bit of Taxi Driver thrown in. As the pace picks up towards the end and violence increases, there is some chaos in the action, but I never found it difficult to follow and I liked the twist towards the end when one person’s true identity was revealed – I hadn’t suspected a thing and it was a real gamechanger.

Velvet Was the Night is an engrossing novel that had me captivated from the beginning. I love this window into Mexico that I get to peer through each time I read a novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, particularly as she sets each of her novels in a different era. I recommend this one to those who like to read crime stories set within a political context, but with fully fleshed out characters that you get the chance to become invested in. This novel has all the all the feels of a gangster film. I loved it.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Book Review: Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

About the Book:

The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author: a haunting portrait of a woman, her decisions, her conversations, her solitariness, in a beautiful and lonely Italian city.

The woman moves through the city, her city, on her own.

She moves along its bright pavements; she passes over its bridges, through its shops and pools and bars. She slows her pace to watch a couple fighting, to take in the sight of an old woman in a waiting room; pauses to drink her coffee in a shaded square.

Sometimes her steps take her to her grieving mother, sealed off in her own solitude. Sometimes they take her to the station, where the trains can spirit her away for a short while.

But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun’s vital heat, her perspective will change forever.

A rare work of fiction, Whereabouts – first written in Italian and then translated by the author herself – brims with the impulse to cross barriers. By grafting herself onto a new literary language, Lahiri has pushed herself to a new level of artistic achievement. A dazzling evocation of a city, its captures a woman standing on one of life’s thresholds, reflecting on what has been lost and facing, with equal hope and rage, what may lie ahead.

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing

Released 4th May 2021

My Thoughts:

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four novels and one work of non-fiction. This latest release, Whereabouts, is the first novel that she has written in Italian; she also did the English translation herself. Creatively, I find that very interesting. Fortunately for me, Jhumpa Lahiri is on the program for this year’s Melbourne Writer’s Festival with a digital session, so I’ll be purchasing a ticket for that in the hopes that she speaks about her reasons for writing in Italian this time around. This novel is illuminating and observational, so perhaps she felt she could convey the atmosphere better in Italian, particularly since most of the observations were made whilst the protagonist was wandering around an Italian city.

‘I tidy up the house and put the remaining pastries in a tin so I can savour them slowly at breakfast for the rest of the week. Then I go check on the book he’d wanted to take away. I hope the cover hasn’t been stained by jam or chocolate. Thanks goodness he hasn’t left a trace. No doubt he thought: This woman owns thousands of books and yet she’s unwilling to lend me even one. But I treasure this volume, and I doubt that he’d be able to appreciate a single word of it.’

This is one of those novels where I’d be hard pressed to tell anyone what exactly happened, yet I really enjoyed it and thought it exceptionally thought provoking. The protagonist is similar in age to me, single and childless, she has a reliable circle of friends, a nice apartment and a good job. She lost her father when she was fifteen, her memories of him are complicated, as is her relationship with her mother. She has lived in the same city all her life and knows it well. Through her wanderings, we come to know it also. The chapters are short and each one contains a different observation within a different space and context. Sometimes it is about a place, at other times it’s more intimate and about a person; occasionally we see both converge. The story is always moving forward and all the way through the novel, we get the sense that our protagonist is searching for something. It’s not that she’s unhappy or has a great void in her life; rather there is a strong sense of there being something more out there waiting for her and she just needs to step out of her comfort zone and seize it. In this, Whereabouts is a journey novel, but with a subtlety that gives way to experiencing another place rather than following a character all over it.

‘Outside, there’s a ferocious noise coming from the crashing of the waves and the roar of the wind: a perpetual agitation, a thundering boom that devours everything. I wonder why we find it so reassuring.’

I really enjoyed the way that Jhumpa Lahiri writes. There is a lyrical quality to her prose yet it’s also clean and crisp, not a word wasted. I devoured this novel in an evening and was a little sad to leave it once it ended. I felt like I could have happily kept wandering with our protagonist in a different city and then back again within her own. As a translation, it is impeccable, but I suspect that there would have been no chance of it being anything less so with the author herself, fluent in both Italian and English, doing the translation. What a talent she is to be able to write in more than one language. I wonder now if she plans on writing more of her novels in this way, Italian first and then English. Perhaps I’ll find out in the MWF session. I’ll endeavour to write about it as a follow up to this review. This one is recommended to readers who love literary novels, of the type that deep dive into a character and allow the reader a sensory and wholly atmospheric experience. It was also lovely to read some contemporary Italian fiction. I haven’t had the opportunity to read much like this, most of the Italian novels I’ve read have been historical in setting. I rarely comment on the cover of a novel but a shout out to Bloomsbury for this one, I find the cover of the Australian edition particularly appealing and restful to look at.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

Book Review: Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

About the Book:

From the author of the international bestseller Migrations comes a pulse-pounding new novel set in the wild Scottish Highlands.

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team tasked with reintroducing fourteen grey wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but a broken Aggie, too. However, Inti is not the woman she once was, and may be in need of rewilding herself.

Despite fierce opposition from the locals, Inti’s wolves surprise everyone by thriving, and she begins to let her guard down, even opening up to the possibility of love. But when a local farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, she makes a reckless decision to protect them, testing every instinct she has.

But if her wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will she do when the man she’s been seeing becomes the main suspect?

Propulsive and spellbinding, Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable tale of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves. Part thriller, part redemptive love story, Charlotte McConaghy’s profoundly affecting novel will stay with you forever.

Published by Penguin Random House Australia – Hamish Hamilton

Released 3rd August 2021

My Thoughts:

Once There Were Wolves is a novel that pulses with rage whilst blinding you with beauty. It’s a profoundly moving novel, one to linger over and take your time with. Charlotte McConaghy is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to writing impactful eco-literature. In Once There Were Wolves, she examines the concept of ‘rewilding’ and the vital importance that apex predators, in this case, wolves, have on the forests and wild areas of the northern hemisphere. Inspired by the successful reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in North America, McConaghy imagines the implementation of a similar project into Scotland, a place where wolves were hunted to extinction long ago, the forests now bearing the devastating impacts of this.

Once There Were Wolves is a multifaceted story. Alongside the reintroduction of the wolves into the Scottish Highlands, this is also a story about violence against women and deeply entrenched trauma, its repercussions and far-reaching effects. There is a vein of despair that runs through this story, it will blindside you at times and have you weeping at others. The wolves are magnificent. I love wolves, have always been drawn to them and there were moments within this story that felt so profound and significant that it brought me to tears. It was a true pleasure to revisit the brilliance of Charlotte McConaghy’s writing, she has a way with words that touches the soul. I loved Migrations and now Once There Were Wolves sits alongside it on my shelf where I keep all the best books I’ve read.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

The Week That Was…

Thinking of everyone in lockdown and wishing you all ongoing health and safety. Life is tough for many at the moment. I hope that there are some things bringing you joy, even in a small way, each day.

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Joke of the week:

Sshhh! Don’t tell my children this…

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What I’ve been watching:

I watched the first episode of this a couple of weeks ago and then had a busy week and didn’t watch any more. I finally got back to it this week and wow, absolutely excellent. But seriously frightening in so many ways.

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What I’ve been reading:

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Until next week…