Book Review: Five Miles From Outer Hope, by Nicola Barker

6ft 3in 16-year-old Medve lives in a decrepit old hotel on an island in Devon, with her father and her younger sister and brother. Her mother and two elder siblings are elsewhere in the world, and Medve appears to be quite happily running things back at home, as much as they can be run with minimum effort, until a red-haired South African stranger, going by the name of La Roux, appears to disrupt things and drive Medve to frustration and humiliation.

Five Miles from Outer Hope is a weird book. I quite often really like weird books, but ultimately there was too much that seemed to be missing from this one for me to rate it as anything above 'okay'. I enjoyed it for the most part, I didn't get bored, but I found it unsatisfying in the end, even a little bit irritating.

It's literary fiction, and the blurb is completely ridiculous. 'An instant classic of teenage self-discovery' it says, of a book I'd never heard of before and only read because I happened to pick it up in a shop! So when I turned the first page I was anticipating a certain level of pretentiousness, but happily, it's not all that pretentious. It is quite funny, in places, although some of the humour is of the gross out, vulgar variety, and I didn't really laugh more than once at the quirks of the different family members.

Unusually for literary fiction, I found the teenage voice to be really strong. Medve's character comes across really well in her narration. But there were far too many italics. Italics, in my opinion, should be used for occasional emphasis, but in Five Miles they were used so frequently they became pointless very quickly. Maybe the author was trying to make it look like Medve herself, thinking it was a cool thing to do or something, had written it down like that, but I just found it annoying. Otherwise I liked the style of the writing, it was well balanced between description, interior monologue, and dialogue, and there were some really great descriptive sentences.

I know why Medve was chosen to narrate the story - it's about her growing up and possibly falling in love - but to be honest, I found her to be the least interesting of the bunch. She's vindictive, has issues with her older sister Poodle/Christabel, and wants to be the queen bee in the family, as much as she refuses to admit it to the reader. Yet I was more intrigued by the almost-intellectual, devious, Patch, who Medve initially writes off as being needy. La Roux had a whole history that was continuously hinted at, sometimes briefly delved into, but never fully explored. I also wanted Big, Medve's father, to have a bigger part in the story. I didn't feel like I got enough of an idea of what he was actually like as a parent most of the time.

I was about to accept that this book was an overgrown snapshot-style short story (the kind I generally don't get on with), until I got to the italic section in the last few pages, which jumps into the future like an epilogue. It places the rest of the novel into the context of Medve's whole life, and raises more questions than it answers. This part just made the whole thing seem ever more odd and unsatisfying as a novel. A lot that I would have quite liked to read in more detail was just skipped over.

I don't think I'll be rushing out to try another book by this author, but other readers might really like it. If you do like what I call snapshot short stories, those that focus on tiny segments of  characters' lives, then you might enjoy Five Miles From Outer Hope, especially as you do get to find out what happens afterwards in this one. It is a short novel with less than 200 pages, so if you're a fast reader you won't be risking much time.

Book Review: Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, or, I saw something nasty in the woodshed!

Or,  how I learned to love (some) film adaptations, and didn’t have to learn to love Cold Comfort Farm - five minutes in we were mates for life.

Trailer for Cold Comfort Farm (1995) on YouTube

I used to be one of those people who could rarely bear to watch a film if it was based on a book that I wanted to read. If I watched a film adaptation of a book I enjoyed, then I would be really critical and nine times out of ten consider the film to be vastly inferior to the book. Then I did a course at university about adaptations, and I discovered that some adaptations actually build on the story in the book, or partially critique it, and I now look forward to seeing films that do this. (Great example: Sally Potter’s Orlando)

I also discovered that if I watch the film first, then it doesn’t usually spoil my enjoyment of the book, and I decided that I wanted to watch every film and read every book on the reading list. I didn’t get very far. I watched a couple of adaptations of Alice In Wonderland, got really interested in that, and did my class presentation on it. I watched The Handmaid's Tale. And then, after hearing Brenda Dayne talk about it, I decided to watch Cold Comfort Farm. About ten minutes in I was in love, but somehow it took me almost two years to get around to borrowing the book from the library. The plot of both film and book is as follows:

When Flora Poste’s parents die and fail to leave her a hefty enough inheritance, she can’t face the thought of getting a job, and decides instead to live off relatives. She writes to several, but when her cousin, Judith Starkadder, mentions a wrong that was done her father, and offers her a home at the ominous-sounding Cold Comfort Farm, Flora decides to go live there. She meets a whole host of weird and wonderful characters, from Amos Starkadder, terrifying preacher, to ethereal, poetry-obsessed Elfine, and seeing potential amongst all the mess, decides to single-handedly drag them all into the twentieth century.

Cold Comfort Farm is a satire of a type of rural family drama that was popular around the time that it was written. I guess it’s the 1920s-30s equivalent to the Twilight parody books that are out today, except that it’s actually good. I’ve tried reading a couple of the Twilight parodies and they lay it on so thick that I’m bored by the third page. Cold Comfort Farm has a subtlety and lasting charm that those books can only dream of, and I find it hilarious even though I haven’t read any of these rural family dramas. It’s a good story in its own right, being not entirely unbelievable. The characters, eccentric as they are, could really exist, which makes it all the funnier.

The thing I love most about the story is that although it’s satirical, it’s still strangely heart-warming. It’s not depressing, like my other favourite satire, Vile Bodies, or cruel as some can be – I’ve never enjoyed a satire in which all the characters are mean people being mean to each other. It’s satisfying to see Flora sorting everyone’s problems out. I cheer for her, even though she’s essentially smug, lazy, and shallow.

I’m still not sure whether I prefer the book or the film. The book of course has more going on in it; some of the characters were combined for the film, some lines changed character too. But there’s something about seeing Seth walk up to Flora whilst she’s sitting in the kitchen having afternoon tea, and attempt to creep her out/seduce her with his stare, that I find absolutely hilarious.

'Sure you did, but did it see you, baby?'

Book Review: Green Fingers, by Paul May

by *clairity*

Kate is not happy about moving to the countryside, leaving her friends behind, and having to start over at another new school, but she's just a kid, what can she do about it? She really wants her parents to be happy, but she finds reading so hard, and the teachers think she's stupid. Dad loves the new house, and insists he will be able to fix it up and make it into their ideal home, but he lacks the DIY skills and one disaster follows another. After much arguing, Mum decides she can't cope with it, and she is needed at work back in London, so she leaves.

Suddenly Kate realises that she has to do something. She has to try to learn to read and to make things better at school, and she also decides that she will do her bit towards making the new house a home and sort out the garden, which her Mum was attracted to when she first saw the house, but remains a mess. With the help of her new friends, Louise and her grandfather Walter, Kate plans to create a beautiful garden and save her family.

I read a lot of teen/YA fiction but I hadn't read any younger children's literature for a long time, and when I decided to read this short novel as it has similar themes to the YA book I am writing, I didn't expect to be absorbed by it. To my surprise I loved Green Fingers! The characterisation is great, lots of serious issues are explored but the tone is optimistic, and I kept turning the pages and cried at the end! Kate is a sympathetic, determined girl and I really enjoyed my time with her. It's nicely modern too - Kate's Mum has a job in the city that she loves, whilst her Dad works from home on his computer and takes care of the children.
I think it is just the right length, although I was sad to leave the characters and put the book down.

I think this book is aimed at 8-13 year old children, and it strikes me as a particularly good book for reading aloud. There are illustrations at the start of each section and chapter, these were drawn by Sian Bailey. Paul May has written seven other fiction books and seven non-fiction books for children, and on his website he says that Green Fingers is his favourite book. I would definitely recommend this to my own cousins!

Book Review: The Mammoth Cheese, by Sheri Holman

From The British Library

The Mammoth Cheese is rather a mammoth story (sorry, I know...). It's about a small town in Virginia, called Three Chimneys, and the people who live there during the time after the town first gets a lot of media attention when one of the women gives birth to eleven babies.

Manda Frank, didn't want eleven babies, who would? She wanted one, having already had one daughter, and generally preferring her dogs to people. But she gives birth to all eleven, after the local pastor convinces her not to selectively abort any, and as a result makes the national news, and is bombarded with gifts and offers of help that she would rather not need. Her old house was too small and a new one is being built around her as she lives in it, but when some of the tiny, weak children die, the gifts and help stop coming, and she, her husband, her first daughter and her village are left to deal with everything (including a court case brought against her "on behalf" of the children who didn't survive).

Meanwhile, Margaret Prickett's cheesemaking farm is failing, and she decides to make the mammoth cheese of the title and take it to Washington to get media attention for herself and other struggling small farms and to hold the newly elected president to his promises. She is so busy with this and the electoral campaign for the man she thinks will save her, she fails to notice that the pastor's son August Vaughn is in love with her, and her daughter Polly is falling in love with her charismatic, rebellious history teacher, Mr March.

There are a lot of characters to keep track of, and the story moves point of view a lot which made it hard for me to empathise with all the characters and make up my mind what I thought about them and their actions. The plots don't interweave as much as I expected them to, which was disappointing, I though the characters should have had much more impact on each others lives.

It's a very American story. Its location is vitally important, a character itself. The nature of American politics is an important 'theme' in this novel, with characters discussing it in conversation as well as plotlines being based around an presidential campaign. I didn't think this was particularly well introduced, this book was intended primarily for an American audience and as a British reader I didn't get some of the references or understand how the system worked, but I do know more about Thomas Jefferson now than I did before!

I never really felt pulled into this story. At no point was I really excited to find out what happens next, I finished it because I found the descriptions of cheesemaking interesting and I don't like to leave a book unfinished. I also didn't like the Christian point of view lots of the characters had, I am not religious myself and so I felt really alienated. The particularly religious characters didn't even feel bad about encouraging Manda Frank to have all the babies despite the consequences for more than a few pages. Some details about the characters were repeated far too often, and I didn't feel that the author got Polly's characterisation right. Even when the story was focused around her, it felt like her actions were being described by an distant adult, and that her thoughts were much too simplified.

I was glad to finish this book, and still have mixed feelings about it. I didn't really enjoy the book as a whole and I thought the plots could have been stronger, but I did like learning about all the little details of rural life. I probably won't read any other books by this author or this one again. I would only recommend it to readers who regularly enjoy stories set in small-town rural America, or who find the plot description really appealing.

Book Review: The Hawk Dancer, by Diana Saville

From The British Library

Claire Farley, a calm, professional writer of history articles living in Herefordshire, has tolerated her husband's many affairs, forgiving him each time, and after the most recent, believing that she was partly to blame because she stays in the countryside most of the time whilst he goes to London to work. She tries to convince herself that he is getting too old to have affairs, but her unhappiness is growing

When a son of a friend wants a pet hawk, she offers to house it and help look after it. She ends up fully participating in its training, and as she learns to train the wild bird, her confidence grows. She also meets a wildlife photographer and begins to build a relationship with him. She's never been able to tolerate the idea of having an affair herself before, but this time, things might be different.

I did enjoy this book but it didn't "grab" me and I wasn't convinced by the characters. They are all very middle-class, nobody in the novel has anything really to worry about beyond their relationships. The writing style was hard for me to get into, there was some lovely description, particularly of the hawk training around which the story of the human relationships is built, but the author just tells us how the characters felt a lot of the time and avoids showing us their thoughts and physical reactions. They are all very reserved people and this annoyed me, I just couldn't relate to them. The book stays mostly with Claire's point of view but sometimes switches around, and I felt that the characterisation of the other characters was weak, especially Claire's daughters.

I received this book through a swap at ReadItSwapIt and I probably never would have bought it myself. It's unlikely I'll re-read it or bother picking up anything else from this author, but it may be someone else's cup of tea.