Best Review Contest (for Spring 2023)

[SRC Moderator, Moderator]

This is the thread where you can submit reviews for the Best Review contest. The thread is open for submissions and will close at Midnight EST on February 15, 2023. Voting will start the next day and run until the end of the GR day on February 28. The person whose review gets the most votes will have the opportunity to design a 20 point task for the Spring Challenge.

To be eligible for this task opportunity you must have achieved at least 100 points on the Winter 2022 Challenge Readerboard by midnight Eastern Time on February 14, 2022. Only one task per person per challenge.

Just a reminder that each person can only submit one review - but you can make edits to your review up until the end. The review does not have to be any particular length and doesn't have to be a positive one (i.e. you can choose to review a book you didn't like).
Please include your Readerboard Name.

PLEASE DO NOT comment on people's reviews in this thread - this is for submissions only - you will be able to comment when voting begins.

SPOILER ALERT!- These reviews may include spoilers

[Lucy-Bookworm, Moderator]

An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean - Antarctic Survivor


Like most people, I have heard of Robert Falcon Scott & Ernest Shackleton, the great polar explorers of the early 20th Century, but how had I never heard of Tom Crean?

Crean was a farmer’s son from County Kerry who joined the British Royal Navy at the age of 15. In many ways he was in the right place at the right time to be chosen for Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, a decision that would change his life & see him undertake three significant expeditions over the course of 15 years. He served with Scott and Shackleton on the three most famous Antarctic voyages (Discovery, Terra Nova and Endurance), spent longer on the ice than either of them, and outlived them both.

A giant of a man, with huge physical strength & stubborn determination, Tom Crean’s name really deserves to be much more prominent than it is in history. The story of survival in dire circumstances is not romanticised here, we hear about the unrelenting cold, the lack of food, the tedium that they faced day in & day out, and the desperate measures taken to survive.
Crean was in the final group of eight men that reached the polar plateau with Scott. However he was not in the final group that Scott selected for the pole attempt. This decision could be seen as one which saved his life, but the author argues that it might also have contributed to the death of those who did remain. Tom Crean was regarded by his fellow teammates as one who improves morale – he had a wit and positivity that could lighten any moment, often broke out into song and kept morale up in often desperate circumstances. His 35 mile solo trek to get help for his incapacitated friend Evans, was certainly worthy of the Albert Medal he was awarded.

I liked that the author touched on Crean’s life after his naval career, and his family were the reason he didn’t join Shackleton's final expedition. His reluctance to speak about his Antarctic career might have been down to his desire for a quiet life, or might have been an astute decision given the political instability of Ireland at the time. He was a proud Irishman that had served in the British Navy returning home at a time when tensions between Ireland and England were high.
He didn’t entirely shy away from his past, opening a pub in Kerry, aptly named the South Pole Inn, where former sailors & explorers would often gather.
It’s a shame he died from something that today would likely be treatable (appendicitis).

I listened to the audiobook and the narrator Gerry O'Brien did a fantastic job of bringing the text to life. I wanted to keep listening, to read more, to look up the places & people mentioned.
Tom Crean wrote little (he had poor schooling), and did not give press interviews following his polar trips so there is perhaps not a lot of new information here for people who have read widely about the early days of polar exploration, however as somebody who had not previously heard of him, the book gave a fascinating introduction to the man & particularly how respected he was by both Scott & Shackleton.

Reading this book indoors in the warmth when a cold spell has hit the country gives you a totally new understanding of what these early polar explorers endured. We really have no idea at all of what cold feels like!

The heroism, physical and mental strength displayed by Crean & his companions will leave a lasting impression on the reader and the tagline could not be more appropriate:
An Unsung Hero is an unforgettable story of triumph over unparalleled hardship and deprivation.

Review Here

[Laura H L]

Laurah30

Looking for Jane by Heather Marshall

Looking for Jane is a well written novel that articulates the long fought battle for women to own their own decisions regarding their bodies.

What I really appreciated about this book is that it describes a period of history in Canada when unwed women who were pregnant were given very few options. The forced residency into maternity homes was a reality post World War 2. Societal norms dictated that single mothers were unacceptable and a disgrace to the family. As a result these young women were forced into homes, often run by the Church, and treated terribly with the end result of giving up their babies without any choice.

Marshall tells the story of Evelyn and Maggie, Evelyn has lost her fiancé weeks before her wedding and is dropped off at the home by her father. Maggie finds her self pregnant after being raped by her father's friend and her parents refusing to believe her story. The two women find friendship at the home with one another as they endure the harsh conditions and the lack of sympathy from the nuns, As an example of this, the young women are frequently referred to as "inmates". During this part of the story the point is driven home that these girls have no say about their residency, they are treated poorly and they aren't even aware of what is happening to them until they are forced to give up their baby in the "good bye room".

A second part of the story relays the present experience of Angela and Tina, who are desperately trying to have a baby through in-vitro insemination . Angela finds a letter at her antiques shop one day that is written by a mother who wants to let her daughter know that she wanted to keep her. As an adopted child herself, Angela feels strongly that she needs to find the intended receiver of the letter.

The third party of the story involves Nancy and is set in the 1980's. Nancy supports her cousin in getting an abortion when it was illegal. She witnesses first hand the difficulty of accessing a procedure and the danger around back alley abortions as her cousin ends up almost dying from the process. She find out about the Jane Network - a group of women helping one another get access to abortions when she encounters a sympathetic female doctor in the emergency room.

This novel reflects the journey of legalizing abortion in Canada. It does so in a way that is sensitive and compelling. Women should have the sole responsibility for determining if and when they decide to be mothers. I so appreciate that this debate is over in my country as a result of the Supreme court ruling in the late 1980's.

[Trish]

Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Reviewed by trishhartuk – 5*

This book that caught my eye as a Kindle Daily Deal about three months ago. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I started reading it in the Winter challenge, but it ended up being my first five-star read of 2023.

In a backstreet in Tokyo is a small café that’s been there for over a hundred years. It’s off the beaten track, and never particularly busy, and has a weird urban legend reputation that if you go there, you can travel in time. But surely that can’t be true, or everyone would be doing it, right?

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There are rules, and not everyone is willing to accept them – or think it’s worthwhile to bother, given that one of them is that the present won't change - but for those who do, it’s an opportunity to either see someone now gone, or to face up to a regret, or to correct a wrong. As long as they can say what they need to say in the time it takes the special coffee to go cold.

I’d definitely categorise it more as Magical Realism than either SF or Fantasy, as the fantastical/time travel elements are almost played down, even though they’re key to the book.

The book is split into four vignettes, each concerned with an individual trip in time, and it’s obvious from early on that the relationships are more important than the underlying time travel mechanism: relationships between the staff, who are an interesting group in their own right; their interactions with the customers; and most importantly, the scenes between the customers and those they choose to visit.

It has amusing bits; it has sad bits; and I really enjoyed it, even if the last of the four vignettes brought tears to my eyes.

Recommended for people who like magical realism, soft fantasy/SF, and books like The Travelling Cat Chronicles and The Cat Who Saved Books.

[Katy]

All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien

Okay, you know the kind of book that sends you to Google time after time, giving you the pleasure of going down that delightful Google rabbit hole and learning about something totally new to you?

This is that kind of book.

Also, you know the kind of book that draws you in, makes it feel like you’re actually there in that setting, with those people, so that when you come up for breath you’re almost a little disoriented?

This is also that kind of book.

All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien is set in Australia in the 1990s, in a community of Vietnamese refugees. The timing means that the parents in this story left Vietnam during and after the war, and the young people were babies or toddlers (or in some cases, not yet born) during the years of war, refugee camps, and culture shock. In the story, Ky, a young woman who is working as a journalist in a city far from her Sydney neighborhood, has come home for the funeral of her little brother Denny, who was brutally killed at a high school graduation party. Looking for answers, Ky searches out witnesses who were at the restaurant as well (all of whom have told the police they saw nothing). Ky’s chapters are interspersed with narration from the point of view of some of the witnesses, creating a kaleidoscope of perspectives on the experience of being Vietnamese in Sydney in the 1990s.

Though in some ways this book is a mystery – we’re hoping to discover who killed Denny, and why – in other ways it really isn’t. By the end, it almost doesn’t matter who must be brought to justice, because the other issues that emerge seem so much bigger. It’s a testament to Lien’s work that saying this DOESN’T bother me. I am a long-time mystery reader and have very little patience with investigations that don’t go anywhere. In this case, though, it worked.

For me, this was a book that transported me to a time and place I was unfamiliar with, and yet made me feel like I could connect with the characters. If you like beautiful, engaging writing, or if you like powerful, memorable characters, or if you like thoughtful windows into challenging lives, you will like this book.