The Ask and the Answer

The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

I’m afraid this whole post will contain spoilers for The Knife of Never Letting Go.  If you don’t want to know what happens in the first book until you read it for yourself, I recommend you skip today’s post.  And go get your hands on the book and read it, for it is made of awesome.  Then come back and read today’s post cos I’m made of awesome too.  *happy*

Todd and Viola have outrun the army of men from Prentisstown to arrive in Haven, only to discover they are now in the hands of their worst nightmare: Mayor Prentiss.  Haven has surrendered to the threat of an army before it even arrives and Mayor (now President) Prentiss is in charge.  Todd is held prisoner by night in the belltower, and by day is forced to work with Davy Prentiss, herding the Spackle prisoners.  Viola, meanwhile, is sent to the healing house of Mistress Coyle, to have her wounds stitched and dressed.  But Mayor – sorry, President – Prentiss has a plan.  Divide and conquer.  He wants both Todd and Viola on his side and is prepared to hurt, lie and manipulate every situation to his advantage.  Mistress Coyle meanwhile has an Answer to the problem of the occupying army – one that involves bombs.  Caught between two opposing factions, both prepared to murder and starve the populace to gain control, Todd and Viola have difficult choices to make.

Where the first in the series was a chase novel, Todd and Viola being pursued by the men of Prentisstown for reasons beyond their comprehension, this is much more of a dystopian study, akin to Brave New World or Farehenheit-451*.  Elements of the world of New Prentisstown are taken from both novels, among others: the separation of the world into ‘civilised society’ and savages; books and reading have been banned with book burnings a first step in creating Mayor (President) Prentiss’s new world; independent thought is punished (especially as everyone can hear every thought in each other’s Noise); people are branded with numbers as a means of control; and torture is actively encouraged.  Haven had discovered a cure for the Noise not long before the invasion and Prentiss uses it as both rod and carrot for the male populace, while separating them from the women as a further means of control.

And whilst the first was Todd against the world, unsure if he could trust anyone, even his beloved foster father Ben, let alone the alien girl travelling with him; the second alternates the narrative between both protagonists.  They spend much of the book separated, either by Mayor Prentiss’s machinations or through circumstance, as Mistress Coyle tries ever harder to recruit Viola to her cause and the Mayor attempts to manipulate Todd into supporting his.  Both forces know that the latest wave of settlers is due to arrive in a few short months and the first person to communicate with them will likely hold the upper hand in the ongoing battle.

Although there is no tragedy in this book to the scale of losing Manchee (and I still want to cry when I think about that), it isn’t devoid of painful moments.  Todd’s mixed emotions at having to play Spackle-herd, knowing they have intelligent thought but resenting their pliability, is wrenching.  Particularly when the branding starts and he has to look at their eyes as he fits them with metal bands that agonisingly weld to the skin.  The transformation both teenagers undergo over the course of the novel is monumental, preparing them for the final onslaught of the third book.  Both are forced into positions of unwilling responsibility, preventing them from running whenever it seems like an obvious solution.

Can’t wait to get my hands on the next one!

*Would recommend reading both, along with We, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Chrysalids and The Handmaid’s Tale, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Beauty

Beauty by Raphael Selbourne

Beauty Begum is a Bangladeshi girl who has recently returned to the UK after her marriage to a mullah failed.  Her family are deeply unhappy with her refusal to honour her marriage and know that prospects for her siblings, particularly her older brother, are low unless they can force her to make it legal.  She’s housebound, only allowed to go out to buy groceries under the watchful eyes of her brothers, but to be given Jobseekers’ Allowance she has to go on a RiteSkills course organised by the local training centre.  Under so much pressure from her family, Beauty runs away from home to a world that is almost entirely foreign to her, where women show their bodies freely.  Mark Aston has to stretch out his benefits from one week to the next to be able to afford ‘baccy and dog food for his staffies, he can’t be arsed with the RiteSkills course he’s been sent on for missing an appointment at the Jobcentre, but he has to go or risk his benefits being cut off entirely.  Late one night, he finds Beauty trying to hide from a car of chavs who are chasing her through the streets for fun and tries to give her a helping hand.  Peter Hemmings has relocated to Wolverhampton to try to escape a needy girlfriend who he doesn’t have the nerve to break up with properly.  He doesn’t know how to deal with Mark, his neighbour two doors down with the terrifying dogs.  When he meets Beauty, he sees a blank canvas who he can imprint with his ideas about religion and politics.

I’ve been putting off writing this review for two or three weeks now because I’ve been having serious trouble deciding what I think of it.  The main cast of characters – Beauty, Mark and Peter – are all well rounded and leap off the page.  Even though they all speak with their own idioms and accents, Mark’s being the most impenetrable as a native Wolverhamptoner (is that even a word?), the overall narrative is clear and concise.  Selbourne writes in the third person, but as the focus moves from one character to another, so too does the style of language – so the register moves from working- to middle-class as Peter picks up the narrative where Mark leaves off.  The peppering of Bangladeshi words in Beauty’s sections of text aren’t off-putting, they add colour, texture and a sense of authenticity.  Even Mark’s speech, which I had to whisper to myself to work out what it meant, enriches the novel rather than detracting from it.  But despite it being very well constructed, it was still a little bit… boring.  Not to underestimate the difficult situation Beauty finds herself in, at no point in the story is she lacking in backbone and she seems perfectly capable of dealing with her family’s expectations at the beginning of the book.  The emotional journey she takes involves a better understanding of the differences in culture and race that other people negotiate easily on a daily basis, but involve skills that her brothers have not allowed her to acquire.  Peter and Mark both seem to fairly stereotypical – the white guy with a shaved head and dangerous dogs, the repressed middle class salesman who watches questionable porn – and neither truly break out of their respective moulds.

I’m still not really sure whether I liked this book or not.  I can’t say I particularly enjoyed it, but nor is there anything especially wrong with it.  The ending might be true to life but lacked a certain emotional resonance, which didn’t help me make up my mind at all.

meh.

What Was Lost

What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

Kate is in training to be a detective, watching the local banks at Green Oaks in her free time in case something goes down, aided by her faithful companion Mickey the stuffed monkey.  Her first and only case is for Adrian, who works at his father’s newsagent, trying to prevent shoplifters from stealing the penny sweets.  When her father died, Kate’s world fell apart and she was left with her Grandmother who wanted to send her to the local boarding school – and at 10, Kate couldn’t say no.  But before she can take the entrance exam, Kate goes missing.  Fast forward 20 years, and Adrian’s little sister Lisa is Deputy Manager at Your Music in the Green Oaks shopping arcade, bored and uninspired by the life she is leading.  Meanwhile Kurt the somnolent security guard keeps seeing images of a lost little girl on his monitors, clutching her toy monkey and a notepad.  Together, they begin to look for her and an unlikely friendship forms.

One of the things I’ve learned from the guides to writing that I’ve read (it’s telling that I’ve read a number of guides and yet write very little, isn’t it?) is that it’s important to get your facts right or it’ll throw the reader off and they won’t be able to stay immersed in the story.  I find it incredibly annoying when I see something that’s wrong, whether grammatically or factually.  I can’t say much bad about this book, it was hugely enjoyable to read, but I can say this: children in Birmingham don’t say Mom.  Nowhere in England, in fact.  And it’s weird, because I’m reading a book published in the UK and written by someone who is a native Brummie, so why is it there?  Anyway, it threw me and meant I had trouble staying inside the story for a while.  I’m not sure if it was that first stumbling block or something about the narrative as a whole, but I never found myself wanting to read it.  Whenever I’d put it down, I’d have to remind myself that it was well written and I had to finish it in order to take it back to the library, or I’d never have picked it up again.  In the end, I took it into work with me because I’d rather read something I really hated (nb. this doesn’t fall into that category) than nothing at all on my lunchbreak.

Ultimately, my problem with the book was that it was about ennui and disillusionment, about life slipping through your fingers if you’re not careful, which I’m sure is great to read about if you’re in the mood – but I never seemed to be in that mood.  I wasn’t compelled and I like books to be compelling.  Even the Twilight Saga, which I think is laughably bad, was at least compelling, if nothing else.  Lisa works at Your Music, drifting aimlessly from work, to the pub, to home, to work again.  She has a list of things she could do instead of going to the pub – think, read, walk, take photos – but somehow nothing ever gets ticked off.  Kurt knows that he’s drifting.  He stayed home to look after his dad instead of doing his exams and ended up taking a job as a security guard because his family needed the money.  He’s aware that it was supposed to be a stopgap position but can’t seem to make himself look for other jobs, so he haunts Green Oaks at night, patrolling its endless grey corridors.  And that’s essentially the plot of the book – two people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives, not doing anything.  It’s brilliantly written, O’Flynn’s prose captures the mood of disenchantment perfectly and her characters are well drawn.  Best of the bunch is Kate, the ten year old whose narrative opens the book.  I could have read a lot more of her following people and making notes along the lines of “Middle-aged man in tatty coat lost something in one of the bins.  Saw him put his arm in and pull stuff out.  Thought security guards were coming to help him but instead they just led him off the premises.  Noticed he had got confused and put an old hamburger that someone had thrown away in his pocket.”  The momentum for me to finish reading the book was trying to find out what the resolution was to Kate’s story, rather than being interested in the Kurt/Lisa narrative and how their lives intricately tangle together.

I wanted to like this book, I really truly did.  I can acknowledge a number of awesome things about it and I am fully aware that many other people will – and do – adore it.  But it’s just not for me.

Cast a cold eye on life, on death…

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney

Laurent Jammett was killed by someone who really wanted him dead – his throat was slit and his scalp removed.  The most likely suspect is 17-year old Francis Ross, his only real friend and who disappeared the day of the murder.  People are drawn to the isolated settlement of Dove River, home to Laurent and Francis – hunters who traded furs with Jammett, searchers with the Hudson Bay Company, men who want to find the secrets they know he concealed – and, one by one, set off in search of Francis, following the trail north from the dead man’s cabin into the tundra and wilderness.  Can they find what they think they’re looking for before the trail – and the weather – get too cold?

This is a truly evocative novel, it almost made my lungs hurt with cold to read about the journeys taken across the icy landscape.  That may also be because I’ve been ignoring the inevitable and trying to avoid turning the heating on, climbing into bed with warm pyjamas, tea and my book instead.  It’s difficult to believe that Stef Penney suffered from agoraphobia and has never been to Canada, instead doing all her research in the British Library, something that apparently similarly surprised the Costa Book Award judges.  The story opens with Mrs Ross’ discovery of Jammett’s murder as she is looking for her son, Francis.  Mrs Ross’ full name is as much of an enigma as her personal history, despite the fact that she has the only first-person narrative to appear through the book.  The focus of the narrator switches between a limited selection of other characters, giving us an insight into Donald Moody, the company man chasing down Francis, but not to Jacob, his Native American protector, nor Mackinley, his antagonistic and bluff factor.

The story quickly develops to something more than a simple murder mystery.  In fact, it doesn’t ever get off the ground as a murder mystery – Jammett’s death is the catalyst for the characters to move across the incredible landscape like pieces on a chess board, always trying to keep an eye on what the other pieces are doing and to anticipate the next move.  Of course, it’s not a book without flaws.  Several apparently key plot points are either underdeveloped or ultimately go unexplained, Mrs Ross is not the most friendly of characters and the subplot involving an affair at a religious commune is a bit unnecessary.  On the whole, it’s draws you into its world and is an absolute pleasure to read.