Although a little difficult to follow at first the reader is quickly brought into the elephant lingo and lore. Though visions, memories and other gifts the elephants start on an odyssey of pain, suffering, endurance and hopefully ultimately, joy. I loved this book and was swept up into caring and hoping for the best for these incredible creatures.
First Line: "All day there are glaring omens that go undetected."
Rating:
(4.0/5)
When Laura comes to town with her father the preacher during WWII, each brother falls in love with her.
This story is told in the past (WWII era) and the present. In the present the doctor's son, Ian is smitten by Laura and goes to help out on the farm where once again Arthur and Jake are forced to face each other.
This is a well-written story with a somewhat predictable ending. However, predictable or not the reader is drawn in and engrossed in the details of the small framing community and the lives of the Dunn brothers.
First Line: "There was a summer back when they were kids, when Arthur Dunn was thirteen and his brother Jake was eight or nine, when for weeks on end Jake pestered Arthur to play the game he called knives."
Rating:
(4.0/5)
The author writes only little snippets of what happened. The boys seem more like stalkers than in sleuths trying to find out why. The parents while portrayed as being very strict don't seem strict at all but just cautious.
I found this read very unsatisfying as nothing is resolved. It is left to the reader and personally was 'beyond' me. It appears to me that the author was very interested in writing the first part of the book and then lost his way or couldn't really figure out the ending either.
First Line: "On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicides - it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese - the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope."
Rating:
(3.0/5)
Laura was on an expedition for Coca-Cola in the Antarctic with two other colleagues when they lose their communications. Her colleagues headed out to get help, but after weeks of waiting and not getting any news, Laura decides to make the journey herself. As she travels, she remembers small moments in her life with other people, who are now in the city. She fights to survive, not knowing if she is the last person on earth or not.
Though this really does fall into the sci-fi genre, it doesn't read as one. The focus isn't on the events happening so much as it is on the memories of those living and dead. It's incredibly easy to get into this book and the pages keep turning as you wait to see what ends up happening to Laura, though there are some hiccups along the way. The chapters switch back and forth between Laura and the city, and I found that one of the city chapters about the religious man I couldn't determine the relevance of it, which made me skim through it.
This book definitely gets points for creativity though, so I would recommend it!
First Line: "When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had travelled across a desert of living sand."
Rating:
(4/5)
World War II intervenes. Tsukiyama paints such a vivid picture of the war years in this suburb; the shortages, starvation, home front police bullies and the awful air raids. Each of the brothers is affected. Hiroshi's training is stopped or rather never really starts and Kenji's sensei or master eventually disappears.
This book covers a span of about thirty years. It deals with both the war and the occupation and finally the Americans leaving Japan. It deals with the brothers and the growth of their passions and their search for how they fit into the traditional Japan and the post war modern Japan. The brothers and their loves, their sorrows and joys and triumphs are very well portrayed and brought to life.
I loved this book and the way Tsukiyama described life. It felt so real. The way of life for sumo wrestlers and the traditions and amount of work involved in the Non mask carving were extremely interesting.
First Line: "A white light seeped through the shoji windows and into the room, along with the morning chill."
Rating:
(4.5/5)
It was interesting to read about the differences in culture and how a clinic for babies operates. They weigh babies and place each baby's weight in a chart the shows green for healthy, yellow for underweight, and red for severely underweight/malnourished. However the story that draws you in is how Holloway and Monique came to be such good friends. You can't help but smile when Monique explains how she thought people travelled via airplane. This was an uplifting story and a great read.
First Line: "Your two-year assignment is in the country of Mali, West Africa."
Rating:
(4/5)
After not finding the celebrities' wife in the grotto, Marley heads home and is forced to deal with her brother's mess after a drinking and driving incident. There's a real question of right vs wrong and how far Marley can push her moral boundary. I got quickly wrapped up in Marley's story, which I found to move much quicker than the case Caffery was working on.
True to Hayder style, this book was a page turner. While Hayder usually writes stories that make your skin crawl, Skin was tamer than usual and would appeal to a wider audience.
There was a two book phase where Caffery became really weird and I wasn't sure if I liked him anymore or not but he seemed to be back on track this novel. He's a smart guy and isn't the typical 'do-gooder' that other fictional detectives are. Caffery has his flaws and grapples with his history constantly.
All of the previous Caffery novels I've found could stand alone, but the reader would benefit from having read Ritual before reading Skin. The case from Ritual is mentioned and some of the suspects from that case make re-appearances in this novel.
As always, I'm looking forward to Hayder's next novel!
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First Line: "Human skin is an organ."
Rating:
(4.5/5)
It took me about 40 pages to figure out whether the main character was a female or male and what her name was. In the end, I looked at the back of the book to help me figure it out. Surely this should be one of the most important things a writer needs to communicate at the beginning of a book?
I found that there were parts of this book that was kind of pointless. When Stone was meeting with inmates that were child predators, the knowledge she gained from those conversations and the arguments she had with the people there felt like an afterthought in the book.
This book was an easy read. You could easily figure out who the murderer was. This is the first book in the series and I don't think I would actively look for the next in the series.
First Line: "I don't think most people's reaction to finding a dead body on a dock would be to call their kid to come look at it."
Rating:
(3/5)
It's hard to tell how much of this novel is from actual accounts and how much is made up, but Mantel does a good job of portraying Cromwell as a brilliant, yet emotionally distant man. Cromwell obviously cares strongly for his family but he finds a way to detach himself from work. You can't help but think that if Cromwell lived in current times he would be one of the guys that gets away with the downfall of a major company like Enron or AIG because of his mischievous ways.
Due to the fact that there are so many characters in this novel, if you have a background in the area (my background was only watching The Tudors and having read another book or two in the same time) you'll find things much easier to remember. Even with some knowledge of the characters, I still found it hard to determine who was speaking to who and what subject they were talking about. For this reason, it took quite a while for me to get into the book.
The book goes up to Thomas More's trial for refusing to take an oath of Boleyn's heirs and that Katherine was no longer Queen. I would have liked it to go up to Cromwell's downfall, and think it could have if it hadn't dwelled on less important points. When I picked this book up I was really looking forward to it but overall found it mildly disappointing.
First Line: "So now get up"
Rating:
(3.5/5)
The boys are looked on very suspiciously as that is how the rebels travel and the rebels destroy everything in their path. It is very hard to find a roof over their heads let alone something to eat. For months Ishmael travels having many close calls with the rebels and eventually losing his brother and other comrades. He ends up in a village controlled by the army and giving the inhabitants a small measure of security.
After losing too many militia to the rebels the army tells the villagers to either join them or leave. Ishamel joins and is soon caught up in the anger and violence of the army and the drugs the army provides to deaden what the boys are required to do.
One day the UN comes to the village and seems to buy some of the boy soldiers. They take them back to Freetown to a compound for rehabilitation. It is a long and drawn out procedure with much patience shown by the UN staff. Ishmael, eventually becomes a human rights advocate for children.
This book was very illuminating. Ishmael has had to endure experiences no child should even come close to. I, too, found the ending abrupt and wished the story had been extended a bit. This is such a powerful story of how one can turn hate and violence into something positive.
First Line: "There are all kinds of stories told about the war that made it sound as if it were happening in a faraway and different land."
Rating:
(4.5/5)
