Review of book The Girl on the Swing by Ali Cooper

12/06/2011

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Though this book insinuated itself onto my Kindle – nudging aside a couple of others ahead of it on my to-be-read pile -  at a very busy time, it engaged me from the beginning and I could barely put it down. 

Largely narrative and written in first person present tense, the writing was beautiful, the settings well rendered and the protagonist believable and real.

While there is an underlying theme of reincarnation in the book, it is rather a story of one woman’s struggle to find meaning in life again after the tragic loss of her only child. She feels estranged from her husband and very alone in her
grief.

Julia is an obstetrician from a middle class background; her ambitious husband from a stiff-upper-lip aristocratic family. She is finally getting ready to return to work when a wrongful death lawsuit is brought against her and she is forced to take an extended leave from her profession. This sends her spiralling down again. She begins to have unsettling visions of a past life. She dares not mention these to her husband and when she does so to her psychologist friend, it is suggested she keep busy doing volunteer work. 
 
Julia decides to try it out and through a twist of fate ends up visiting a prisoner who is in jail for murder. There is an eerie connection with this man and the story begins to take some skillfully written, surprising twists and turns. 

There were a few loose threads around minor characters that could have been tidied up, but we come to know and like most of them well enough for the story. Near the ending there is an unexpected twist that stirs Julia out of her fog a bit and helps her face the uncertainty of her future, and a further lovely bittersweet turn that offers promise of resolution and hope.

The Girl on the Swing is literary fiction with a compelling storyline. A most enjoyable read with a touch of suspense and mystery, and one I will remember for a very long time...

4 stars out of 5!

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Review of The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

10/11/2011

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This book came highly recommended to me and I resisted reading it for some time. After all who wants to read a book about Death – as in the ‘being’ Death, if such a thing exists, who narrates the story while collecting up bodies and assisting them to Heaven. On top of all that it is listed in the Young Adult category; a genre I seldom read.

Forget all that. The  Book Thief is purely and simply one of the most original, intelligent and  authentic books I have ever read. It is a book one wants to remember. Not just  the story, but the extraordinarily imagined characters and the beautiful  writing.

The hero, Liesel, does not know how to read when the story begins. Over the course of the book we watch with humour and poignancy, her discovery of words. It is the words and the writing of them that are so remarkable in this tale. There are only twenty six letters in the English language, twenty six characters  with which to make words, and Zusak fashions from those characters words that  sing. Sometimes he makes up words like a mature Dr. Suess. The author was not  afraid of going outside the conventions of novel writing, yet the story is so  lyrically written he pulls off an extraordinary feat, deftly managing to take a  dark subject and making it an enchanting read.

The Book Thief should be on the shelf of every young adult and those who are eighty.  Baby Boomers, a product of some of the events of the story, might particularly appreciate the book. Zusak does not dumb down words nor does he  use pretentious ones. He simply writes with the words that best fit – whether big, small, made up or profane.Though there was pathos galore, it was also laugh-out-loud funny at times. The story line was profound on more than one level. The narrator, as mentioned, was Death, albeit sometimes reluctantly so. Liesel was a nine year old uprooted from her Communist parents in Nazi Germany. There are tender moments and moments that are beastly. In the end it is a book  about the human spirit.

 Sometimes a book entertains, sometimes it edifies. The best books combine the two and this book presents a story which should be told to every generation, in a way that is most edifying without being preachy and entertaining without being frivolous.

Moving, profound, innovative, creative, refreshing, astounding. Brilliant!

And the thievery? Well, you’ll just have to find out for yourself.

Steal this book as fast as you can...

5 stars

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