Reading

Why a Grandmother Reads Young Adult Fiction

Leave a Comment
First, to clarify; I’m not that old.

Instead of a rocking chair, shawl and knitting, think professional, competent and cool—and ignore my family laughing in the background. A few years ago, the birth of my first grandchild brought home that I was approaching my mature years, but I didn’t see any reason why that should change my reading habits.

Since my age first hit double figures I’ve been reading books aimed at a wide variety of audiences, whether children, teenagers, adults, female and/or male. There were a few ‘adult’ novels I probably read a bit too early, but that’s what happens when books like that are left around the house and a voracious reader doesn’t have access to enough appropriate literature.

Since I was a kid, I never stopped reading books aimed at kids or teenagers.

I read all sorts of other things as well, but I don’t see any reason to give myself an arbitrary limit on reading material based on what publishers decide is their target readership. When I write I don’t stop writing a story because the protagonist is a particular age. I should probably re-evaluate if it’s a crap story, and that’s the same issue when I’m reading, but protagonist age, viewpoint or intended target audience don’t have anything to do with whether it’s a good story, reading or writing.

9781406311525Sometimes I read a YA book simply because it’s great entertainment, like much-lauded and much-maligned The Hunger Games. Other times they’re brilliant in every sense of the word, like Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls. There are so many excellent YA books, including a huge and growing list of Australian titles, that there’s no way I can keep up with all I’d like to read. If I’d had these sorts of books around when I was a teenager I would have read a lot less inappropriate stuff.

Books with rich subtext and emotional truth abound on YA shelves.

15757486Melina Marchetta’s novels Looking for Alibrandi, Saving Francesca and On the Jellicoe Road are three excellent examples, as are Patrick Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy. The stark realism of A.J. Betts’ Zack and Mia, or the ambiguity of Garth Nix’s Clariel give a lot of food for thought and discussion.

ClarielAmie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s Illuminae, written as found documents in a format which encourages reluctant readers, is a space science fiction epic which encompasses the ethical dilemmas of corporate greed, epidemics, quarrantine, and the lengths we will go to survive. Tristan Banks’ novel aimed at the younger end of YA, Two Wolves follows a boy on the run with his family and how he comes to terms with his origins.

23395680Guilt and grief are themes in Trinity Doyle’s Pieces of Sky, and it would be difficult to surpass the honesty and depth of David Burton’s memoir How to be Happy. Fleur Ferris’s Risk has authenticity 19392551and psychological sophistication far in excess of most adult novels of crime and loss I’ve ever read. There are so many more I could fill up pages, and already have.

The oldest of these books was published when I was more than a decade past the target audience, and several have been published in the past year or two, now that—let’s just say—I’m a long way past the 23603939target audience. Does that mean I should forgo the pleasure of such excellent reads?

25674284Besides, how else is a bookaholic, pop-culture loving grandmother going to keep in touch with what it’s like to be a teenager today? I have no illusions of fitting in to the teenage scene, or that the reading sub-culture represents all teenagers. On the other hand, no sub-culture represents all of them and diversity is improving.

Diversity in Australian YA books is emerging

It’s al24973955so the most accessible to me, except for Youtube and blogs, which I use but find a huge time sinkhole. The experience of reading, of seeing through a modern protagonists eyes, or even knowing what teenagers around you are talking about, helps keep perspective when the inevitable ‘this-generation-doesn’t-do-X-like-we-did’ discussions arise.

But I’ve also found that sometimes I can bring another perspective to YA books. Teenagers, naturally, read YA from the perspective of the teenage protagonists. Those of us who are older—much, much older—read with the protagonist’s perspective, but also with more life experience. One blogger I read recently talked about how her parental impulses when reading some YA books now are making her feel old, and at the time of writing she was the grand age of twenty-one (here). It’s true, though, that sometimes there are things in YA novels that are easier to see from an older, more experienced perspective.

While some teenagers may see things I don’t because they’re immersed in teen culture, sometimes I see things they miss.

I’ve come across quite a few articles disparaging adults who read YA novels. It’s strange. The arguments just seem silly. It’s like telling me I should watch Downton Abbey and trying to shame me for watching Tomorrow, When the War Began. They’re both excellent programs, so why shouldn’t I watch and enjoy both?

Sure, I read other types of books and enjoy them. As time goes on though, I’m finding that I’m getting impatient with some adult books. Not all, just some.

You see, YA novel authors have to be good these days—very good. Why?

  • Competition to be published is, as in all publishing, fierce.
  • There’s generally a limit of around 70-80,000 words, on the higher side for science-fiction or fantasy to account for the needs of world-building.
  • Stories tend to be complex (contrary to the belief of some) so there’s a lot to pack in. YA authors have to write tight.
  • Teenagers have highly tuned crap detectors. If a novel starts getting airy fairy with language that doesn’t convey a clear meaning, teenagers will call it. That doesn’t mean there isn’t beautiful writing—there is—but it also has to be rich in meaning. There’s no reading a line or paragraph three or four times to work out what it’s saying.

So, when I start a huge Booker-nominated door-stopper, and in sixty pages there’s been some lovely airy descriptions and a lot of musing, but I still haven’t reached the premise of the book… I might just use it as a door-stopper.

Once upon a time I would have ploughed on. Someone who’s supposed to know about literature thought this was a great book, so I should finish it and find out why.
 Not anymore. I look ahead and realise that I have a finite number of books I can read in my life.

A boring Booker-nominated door-stopper will take up the time which could be devoted to two or three other books I could enjoy and learn from. One of them might be a different Booker-nominated novel that I love. Another will probably be a Young Adult novel.

Links
#LoveOzYa  for teachers, writers and readers of Australian youth-lit.
Inside a Dog  State Library of Victoria’s Young Adult Page (Home of the Inky Awards)

Confessions of a Writers Festival Volunteer Co-ordinator

Leave a Comment

The intriguing title. The shiny cover. The new book smell as you pick it up and read the blurb on the back.

You flick to the first few pages, run an eye over the first paragraph. Two paragraphs. You snap it shut, running your hands over the smooth surface. It promises so much. You look around, the new book clutched to your breast. So many to choose from; is this the one? Surely I can get two…

Hi, my name is Sheree, and I’m a biblioholic.

You’d think, knowing I have this problem, I should avoid bookshops and all places where writers congregate. Instead I was welcomed on to the board of the Newcastle Writers Festival a few years ago, and am privileged to organise the volunteers who do the bulk of our public interface during the festival weekend.

I lovNWF Logo rectange it. It combines organisational skills and personal interactions which revolve around books and writers. Apart from the buzz of the festival weekend – which is brilliant – I’ve met great people and made good friends. Our volunteers are an awesome bunch, whether students, editors, medical specialists, stay-at-home mums or business executives.

Being the volunteer coordinator naturally limits the number of sessions I can attend at the Newcastle festival. I’ve been to scattered sessions at other festivals, but this year I had the opportunity to attend Sydney Writers Festival for four days, Thursday 19th to Sunday 22nd May. It was the first time I’d had an opportunity to immerse myself in a writers festival with no responsibilities.

27429416It was amazing. More than ten sessions ran concurrently, five sessions a day, at the Walsh Bay area alone, with more in the evening and elsewhere in the city and  suburbs. The sessions I attended ranged from astrophysics and forensic photography of early 20th century Sydney to racial discrimination and fantasy in young adult novels.

One of the great things about writers festivals is discovering new authors.

 Kirsten Tranter discussed her novel, Hold, in which a woman finds a secret room in her new house which seems to have an unsettling will of its own. As I’m a lover of books that are strange and ‘unreal’, a copy of Hold happened to come home with me.

28452843I’ve been intending to get hold of an Emily Maguire novel for a while, so took the opportunity to get a signed copy of her latest, An Isolated Incident. I thought I’d read the opening chapters while sitting at the wharf at Circular Quay, just a few metres from where the ferry was to leave for the trip back to my niece’s house where I was staying. Unfortunately I was engrossed and didn’t notice when the ferry arrived, or when it departed. At least I had a good book to read while I waited an hour for the next one.

I discovered others, but there’s too much from those four days for one post. However, I have to confess to something.

I watched the volunteers. Does that sound creepy?

I also chatted to as many as I could without impinging on their jobs. Maybe there were pointers I could pick up. How were they rostered? What sort of training did they get? What motivates Sydney volunteers?

The results? SWF volunteers – at least, those in the non-representative, convenience sample I chatted with – are motivated by the same things as NWF volunteers. They love books. Some write, and love being around writers, most read voraciously, and all believe in the promotion of books and literacy, and the debate of issues which good writing stimulates.

Bridge1The vast majority of volunteers I had contact with at SWF were helpful and pleasant. At NWF we discuss how happy volunteers make a happy festival, and I enjoyed seeing that play out at SWF. Cheerful volunteers can make waiting in a line amiable rather than onerous. When someone smiles and asks if you wouldn’t mind finishing your coffee before you go inside it makes you feel so much nicer than if she’d snapped that drinks aren’t allowed.
I finished my coffee with a warm, contented glow, which wasn’t just the caffeine.

Okay, maybe it was partly caffeine, but it felt good to be treated the way we asked our Newcastle volunteers to treat festival attendees. It makes no rational sense, but I felt proud of the Sydney volunteers. I had no actual Love and literatureconnection to them, but I knew how hard they worked. Most of them would have been on their feet much of the day, and it’s surprising how much energy volunteer duties take. Near the end of the day they were still polite and smiling, and doing a great job.

I picked up a few ideas and, though SWF is huge compared with NWF, by the end of Sunday I was left with the same feeling I have at the end of Newcastle’s festival.

Booky people are awesome to hang out with.

I mean booky, too, rather than bookish, with its connotations of prudishness and myopia. Some booky people can be overly fond of debate, and some can be pains; you know the ones, who get up to ask a writer a ‘question’ and spend five minutes making-a-comment/giving-an-introduction/blowing-their-own-horn, etc, etc. But on the whole people who read, especially those who read widely, are great company.

I never fail to learn from booky people, even the occasional pain in the butt. Four days among volunteers, writers and festival attendees in Sydney was brilliant.

I’ve come home with ideas, and maybe a few too many of those shiny, smooth, new smelling books. Hey, they have author signatures, okay? And they’re beautiful…

Hi, my name is Sheree, and I’m a biblioholic.

Links
Newcastle Writers Festival
Sydney Writers Festival
Kirsten Tranter’s webpage
Emily Maguire’s webpage

Getting Back Into Reading. Guest Post by Morgan Bell

3 Comments

2Morgan Bell is a movie and book reviewer for Salty Popcorn, author of Sniggerless Boundulations, contributor to several anthologies and editor of the upcoming Sproutlings. A good friend and supporter of writers in Newcastle, she’s written a guest post for me while I’ve been under the weather.

READING FOR PLEASURE: WHY DID YOU STOP?

You used to be an avid reader as a kid, consuming books ravenously, your library card tattered and maxed out. But now as an adult you can barely concentrate on novels. You buy a lot of books with good intentions but really struggle to read them. You become embarrassed and don’t want to admit you are a slow-reader, and rarely finish books you start.

One of the most common reasons you stop pleasure-reading is that you choose to pursue tertiary education. If you have a lot of reading to do for your academic study, or as part of your job, you become a certain kind of reader who is accustomed to reading specific non-fiction formats.

You can begin to associate reading with work.
It then seems like a tiresome chore.

Academic and professional reading involves a lot of scanning and skimming. It involves gleaning for key words, bullet point lists, and subheadings. Too much time spent exclusively in the business-reading world can make it impossible for you to cope with a text that doesn’t come with an executive summary or a precis.

When you try to go back to reading novels it can be really difficult. Novels are generally free-form with little internal structure. You cannot go into them with rigid expectations.

Here are three tips to getting back into reading for pleasure:

  1. Mix up your media
  2. Rediscover the public library
  3. Start with short stories
MIX UP YOUR MEDIA

It is possible that when you grew up there wasn’t a great amount of diversity in fiction delivery. The technology didn’t exist or the cost was prohibitive or there was a social stigma about delivery modes and/or genre fiction.

We now live in a more tolerant world, where certain comic books are not the exclusive realm of nerds and losers. Where the definitions of “women’s books” or “men’s books” or “children’s books” are slowly losing their meaning.

shortstories
Audible has made audiobooks accessible to everyone. Plug in a set of headphones to your mobile phone and listen to your Audible purchases on your commute to work, while your exercise, or while you do the dishes. Listening is a form of reading.

 

Smartphones have made every phone an e-reader. You don’t need a specialised device. You don’t need to lug heavy books around in your handbag or backpack. And authors have embraced the digital format. There are Kindle Singles, individually published short stories, and electronic versions of literary journals, magazines, essays, picture books, comics, graphic novels, poetry, and zines.

REDISCOVER THE PUBLIC LIBRARY

Over your life your tastes change. Your opinions change. Your values change. Maybe not 100%, but they shift, expand, shrink, skew. It is possible that what you are going to enjoy reading today is different to what you enjoyed reading a decade ago, or in your youth.

Browsing the library is the book version of free samples. Grab a few books from different shelves and sections, take your stack over to a table, and, in the relaxing cool and quiet, read the first pages of a whole bunch of books. Have a yes and no pile. The books won’t be offended.

You might start to see a pattern in what you find the most readable or intriguing. You might have new preferences for narrative voice, point of view, tense, experimentation, tropes, escapism, self-reflection, hooks, slow burns, conflicts, themes, or even happy endings.

Libraries also lend magazines, periodicals, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks and e-books these days.

START WITH SHORT STORIES

The shorter the better.

Nano, micro, vignette, flash … then maybe stretch yourself to a novella.

It can be a difficult adjustment to get back into self-motivated, self-directed, solitary reading. The studies that you have undertaken during your pleasure-reading sabbatical may have left you waiting for someone to assign you a book before you read it, and then test you on your comprehension of it afterwards.

You may feel like reading materials ought to be increasingly challenging to be worth your time. While you are relaxing into the idea of reading as a carefree exercise, you should tap into some meaningful and engaging short story collections.

My top five are:

  1. The Devil’s Larder by Jim Crace
  2. Dark Roots by Cate Kennedy
  3. The Turning by Tim Winton
  4. Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
  5. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

I am currently reading a paperback of An Astronaut’s Life, a collection by Sonja Dechian, listening to the audiobook of Tenth of December, a collection by George Saunders, and e-booking Snow & Shadow, a collection by Dorothy Tse.

Short stories are ultra-condensed little lessons on life, the meatiest little chunks to savour and consider. They don’t ask you for the over-investment that a novel does when you are focussed on evaluating style and messages. They respect that your time is precious, your patience finite, and your joy is inextricably linked to analysis.

I hope you enjoyed my suggestions for short story collections to read. If you would like the full list there is an Editor’s Choice Reading List as a $2 pledge reward on the Kickstarter for the anthology of flash fiction I am currently editing.

kickstartersproutlingsfacebookcoverThe paperback of Sproutlings: A Compendium of Little Fictions is just $20 delivered to your door in Australia – when pre-ordered through the Kickstarter – and features over 40 delectable slices of flash fiction about wicked plants. It might be just the thing to pull you out of your reading slump!

Find the Kickstarter campaign here.

Your Anti-library: Why your unread books are important.

4 Comments

We all have them.

Booktalk2

Image by gerhard-tinned via https://openclipart.org/

If you’re even a casual reader you know what it’s like to have books on the shelf you’ve been meaning to read for ages. They stare at you every time you walk past, accusing you, whispering insults about laziness just below the level of human hearing.

You want to read them. You just haven’t managed to get to them yet. But, with all those unread books on the shelf, why do you keep adding to them?

I came across a post today that resonated with me so strongly it felt like I was coming home. The website Brain Pickings (which comes up with a variety of fascinating information) quotes scholar Nassim Nicholas Taleb, saying,

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones.

Why? The books we haven’t read are those that hold knowledge and understanding that is not yet ours.

Have you ever stepped over the threshold of an unfamiliar library and felt the wonder of so many books to be explored? Or wandered into a second-hand bookstore or big book sale, and felt the anticipation of discoveries awaiting you?

books6bWhile favourite books hold a special place, there’s something exciting about the promise of a book you’ve never read before and the secrets it holds within, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. It’s about the unique way your mind expands in fiction, becomes someone else, seeing the world though different eyes and understanding life in a new way. It’s also about the way in non-fiction you’re led through another person’s life or experiences, or their knowledge, interests or theories, in ways that only text can fully demonstrate.

Of course, the more you read, the more you know, but that only makes you realise how much you don’t know. So no matter how much you read, you feel the need for books even more, and so the shelves of unread books grows larger. Taleb calls this collection of unread books an anti-library.

Rather than a library of books you’ve read which can become an ego-booster to show off to others, a anti-library of books you haven’t read is a reminder of what you don’t know, which might help keep such vanity in check.

Brain Pickings quotes first from Lincoln Steffens, an American journalist in the early 20th century, who said,

It is our knowledge — the things we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.

This is swiftly tied to a quote from Plato;

Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance,
but hostile to anyone who points it out.

It goes on to explain how Taleb’s ‘Black Swan’ theory centers on “our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises” because we underestimate the importance of what we don’t know. Most of us tend to take what we do know “a little too seriously”.

books5bAn anti-library of books of many kinds may aid us in fighting the tendency to become comfortable in our own ignorance. Not in order for the books to remain unread, of course, but to keep replacing the ones we read with new ones, reminding ourselves that there is always so much more in this world to understand, so much more to learn, than one person alone can ever know.

These days there’s a tendency to think that a few hours of research on the internet on any topic tells us all we need to know. Books disavow us of that notion. There are books written by those who are misguided, of course, but well researched, knowledgeable authors can teach us so much, through both fiction and non-fiction of all types.

So next time you pass by your anti-library shelves of unread books, keep in mind that perhaps those whispers just below the level of human hearing aren’t admonitions about your failure to read them yet. Perhaps they’re practicing, whispering the knowledge and experiences they intend to share with you.

Long live the anti-library.

Links:

Brain Pickings: Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Facebook page, webpage
Lincoln-Steffens: in Britannica

The Kiss, by Lucy Courtenay

2 Comments

Aphrodite kissed a mortal once by the light of this moon, many thousands of years ago. It drove him crazy. The next person that he kissed – boum. The craziness travelled like this …

So Delilah is told by the gorgeous French guy in the sand dunes on the edge of the Mediterranean. When their lips meet the kiss lives up to the hype.

Back home from holiday in the UK it’s time to get sorted for the new challenge of tertiary study, but life doesn’t seem to be going the way she plans. With the memory of that kiss lingering, she urges best friend Tabitha to live a little instead of settling down with new boyfriend Sam, which only ends up making them both miserable. Her carefully saved cash has been used up way faster than she realised, so she has to find a job to make some more. The guy  at the bar where she’s hired is hot, but every girl’s eye is on him, and even if he seems interested in her, how can she trust anyone after what happened with her ex?

25617446Besides, if the Aphrodite’s kiss thing is true, the first person she kisses will be crazed by it. Does she want someone just because of a kiss? Not that she believes in it …

The Kiss* is a romance where circumstances and personalities conspire to keep both the two main characters, Delilah and Jem, and the secondary couple, Tabitha and Sam, apart. Delilah is the first-person narrator, a well-rounded character with flaws that keep making difficult situations worse, but still caring, loyal and likeable. Tabitha and Jem have enough depth for the story, and there’s an interesting assortment of minor characters that add flavour. My personal favourite is Oz, Delilah and Tabby’s boy-friend from school, a little overweight and never popular with the girls, who becomes the go-to man for parties and what’s happening socially.

I wouldn’t describe this book as hilarious or a rom-com as the blurb says, though there is humour. The blurb also emphasizes the effects of Aphrodite’s kiss, and that’s only a small part of the plot – and could have been written out without changing a lot of the story. It’s really about transitioning into young adulthood and new relationships, and what’s important in those relationships. It does that well.

A subplot involves the staging of a musical production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and there seems to be some inspiration from it in the story, including Jem’s friendship with a dodgy character and an incident where he sees Delilah in a situation and mistakes what is really happening.

The Kiss is well written and is a good read when you don’t want to work too hard, but still want a story with emotional engagement and a believable plot in a contemporary setting. You might get frustrated with the protagonist’s choices, but when doesn’t that happen? Courtenay keeps a number of subplots running, and brings them together well for a satisfying resolution.

Netgalley badge(Just don’t expect Aphrodite’s Kiss to really be the thing.)

  • I received an e-copy of this book for review through Netgalley.

Details
The Kiss by Lucy Courtenay
Hachette Children’s Books
ISBN: 9781444922868
Published: 2 July, 2015

Links:
Lucy Courtenay’s Facebook Page

Throne of Glass, by Sarah J. Maas

Leave a Comment

An eighteen year old girl, a trained assassin, has been imprisoned for a year and is given a shot at freedom. This first book Sarah J. Mass’ series isn’t what I expected.

13519397Celaena Sardothien has toiled for a year in Endovier, a salt mine and prison so harsh that few survive more than a few months. Even at her tender age, though, her name was known and feared as the greatest assassin in the country of Adarlan before she was captured. Now she’s been given an offer; be Crown Prince Dorian’s entrant in a contest devised by his father, the king. Thirteen weeks, twenty-four contestants sponsored by nobles of the court. The winner will become the King’s Champion – or rather, his assassin. If she wins and serves for four years, she’ll have her freedom.

Celaena, (pronounced Sell-lay-nah, according to Maas’s website), naturally takes the offer, though she’s no supporter of the king. He invaded her country when she was small, and continued to conquer surrounding lands, committing atrocities with abandon. However, she has little choice; she must compete, or go back to Endovier to die.

A lot of the interest in the book is on the growing relationships Celaena has with Prince Dorian and the Captain of the Guard, Chaol, who first took her out of the mine to meet the prince and continues to serve him. They are both attracted to her, and she to them, though she is drawn more obviously to Dorian. She also develops a friendship with a visiting princess from a neighbouring country that has been subdued, and a there is a subplot of a jealous courtier who wants Dorian for herself.

This book has some great fantasy elements, and Celaena is an engaging heroine. There is a system of Wyrd magic which delivers some great moments and which promises more in the subsequent books. Maas has created a court of complexity and intrigue, and I particularly like the disparate attitudes of the king and prince

A couple of things surprised me about this book. One was how the contest was handled. The first test (one per week) didn’t occur until about a quarter of the way into the book, and I found myself impatient for it. It wasn’t that the rest was boring, because it wasn’t. I was just eager to get to the meat of it. The reader also doesn’t get to see all of the tests, as quite a few of them were skipped over in one sentence and I was a little disappointed with that. I understand that thirteen might be too many to write, but then maybe it would be better to have fewer tests, and maybe even fewer contestants? I just hate to miss out on the action.

The other thing that surprised me was Celaena herself. To have spent a year in what was essentially a death camp (including severe whipping), already the most famous assassin in the country by seventeen having been trained from the age of eight, I expected there to be some hardness in this character. I thought there would be defensiveness, emotional walls, evidence of trauma. Instead, the prince and his captain could have been picking her up from soccer camp.

A lot of the book is written from Celaena’s perspective, and it reflects the emotional and psychological tone of a young athlete rather than a trained killer who’d recently suffered torture and deprivation. There are a few references to the trauma she suffered when her parents were killed, and a couple of anecdotes of her training, but it doesn’t play out in her present psyche. When there’s a killer stalking the halls at night, she’s terrified and can’t sleep. She reads romances, wants to socialize, and gushes over puppies. I couldn’t buy it.

That said, though, I decided to put that aside. If you can accept the non-emotionally scarred, non-hardened, non-traumatized, sweet teenage super-assassin, it’s a good book. Once I entered into it, it’s a good read and I finished it quickly. I’m even looking forward to the next books, Crown of Midnight and Heir of Fire.

Throne of Glass is a good read. Just don’t believe the ‘A heart of ice, a will of steel’ tagline. She looks badass on the cover (great cover!) and her fighting skills are without parallel, but she isn’t a cold-hearted killer. She’s the assassin with compassion.

Details
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Bloomsbury
ISBN:9781408832349
Published: Aug, 2012

Links: Sarah J. Maas Website
ACOTARoriginalReview of Court of Thorns and Roses
by Sarah J. Maas

Pieces of Sky, by Trinity Doyle

Leave a Comment

What happens when your life revolves around water, then you can’t bear to get back in the pool?

23603939Lucy had life under control. A champion backstroke swimmer, she was always either training or at school. When her older brother, Cam, drowned while he was away with his mates, her world collapsed. Now her mum has zoned out, her dad ignores her, and her well-meaning aunt is running the family.

On the first day of Year 10 it’s also her first day back to swim training. But as she prepares to dive in, she’s gripped by panic. She can’t do it. The water killed Cam. It feels like it’s killing her.

Pieces of Sky is the story of Lucy trying to make life work again. More than that, it’s also about the people left behind when a young person dies suddenly; the family, the friends, and the community, in this case a coastal town.

Narrated by Lucy, the story begins eight weeks after Cam’s death, when the initial shock has worn off and those closest to him are trying to take up normal life again, when the real effects begin to reveal themselves. Feeling distant and ignored by her parents, her relationships with her friends take centre stage, including the new boy at school, Evan.

Doyle brings in the layers of Lucy’s relationships step by step, including Cam’s friends and former girlfriend, weaving them together in a web of social ties that feels organic. The relationship between Lucy and Cam is portrayed as somewhat hero-worship, making it even more difficult for her to adjust to his loss.

The ambivalence Lucy now feels towards water – and so perhaps to Cam and his senseless drowning – is difficult to miss. The opening paragraphs of the novel set the scene beautifully:

Mum painted my brother’s coffin.
It was beautiful, if such a thing can be – the waves of the ocean, gradients of green to blue mixed with the white of sea foam. Despite the grim irony that the ocean which smothered his lungs should cover him in death, it suited him.
Cam was made with more water than most.

Gradually Lucy discovers there was more to Cam than she knew, and maybe even more to what happened on the night he drowned than anybody was saying.

Pieces of Sky is not just about loss and grief, though. It’s about Lucy rediscovering life. Her time has been so regimented – train, study, train – that now she’s unable to go into the water, she has to learn how to live outside of a strict timetable. She’s let friendships and other interests slide. Without her brother, who introduced her to new things, and swimming, that let her go through her days without having to make decisions, she has to forge a new path on her own.

With a premise that sounds somber, Pieces of Sky has plenty of lighter of moments. It’s well written, and I wanted to hurry up and get back to it when I had to do something else. That’s always a marker of a great book.

Details
Pieces of Sky by Trinity Doyle
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781760112486
Published:  June 2015

Links: Trinity Doyle’s webpage

Aussie-Author-Challenge-2015-300x264 50Aussie Author Challenge

 

awwsml-2015Australian Women Writers Challenge

Why I don’t give star ratings for book reviews

6 Comments

I know it’s accepted. I know it’s expected. I also know a creative work with the complexity of a novel can’t possibly be reduced to a five point rating scale.

300px-Star .svgI’m not saying other people shouldn’t use them. It’s the standard convention, and it seems to be what’s expected of reviewers. I’m just saying I have a lot of trouble with assigning them, so I avoid them if I can.

What does three or four stars mean, anyway? “I liked this book, but not as much as other books I’ve read.” Maybe. It doesn’t say anything about what I liked or didn’t like about it, whether I thought the language was beautiful or verbose, if the plot was well structured, whether it was paced skillfully or if the tone was uneven and confusing. A star rating says nothing about whether the characters were rounded and believable, too perfect or too evil, inconsistent or grew with the story arc.

Giving a rating also says nothing about whether a book is within my usual reading preferences or if I’ve stepped out to try something else, which can have a huge impact on my response to it. I’ve known some people to be blown away by the ‘amazing’ concepts of a literary novel with a smattering of science fiction, which were standard tropes in sci-fi twenty years ago. The reverse is also true, that those not used to the conventions of a genre can dismiss a novel out of hand because they don’t understand what the author is getting at in the first couple of chapters.

If I review a novel, my reasons for liking or disliking aspects of it can be just as important as how I respond to it. I’m unlikely to review a slasher horror novel because I don’t like reading that material, but if I did it would be unfair for me to give it a star rating out of five. I know – before reading it – I’d be unlikely to enjoy it, so while it might be an excellent slasher horror novel, it couldn’t get an honest high star rating from me.

We all respond to stories differently, and have different preferences. When I read a review I find the most interesting things are the details of the reviewer’s response to the novel. Do they think it was well written? What did they think of the characterization? The plot? Were there particular things they liked or didn’t like? Was this a typical genre for them, or a stretch? If not typical, does it encourage them to read more like this?

A star rating tells me none of this. I look at books I’ve read, and the thought of trying to reduce them to a number out of five makes me incredibly sad. I hate the thought of reducing the countless hours of imagination, toil and angst their authors have put into those words down into a number of stars.

Imagine if we did this with visual art. You would go into a gallery, and before each work everyone was able to write a review, and give the painting, sculpture or other artwork a rating out of five stars. It would be averaged and the rating displayed alongside the details of the piece. Perhaps the Archibald Prize People’s Choice Award would be the 300px-Star .svgone with the highest average stars. Of course, we could extend it backwards and give a star rating to the masters; Monet and Van Gogh, Raphael, Michelangelo, Da Vinci …

Okay, maybe that’s going too far, but you see the point. Novels, good novels, can’t be reduced to a five point scale any more than works of art can be. So, I’m going to stick to reviewing without stars.