BOOK 11/150

So, it was seeing this advert for the book that really made me want to read the book. In some ways, I think adverts for books are a great idea. They help promote books to a wider audience I suppose, but in some ways, for me they help shape the reader’s idea of the book before they read it and possibly diminish the use of the reader’s imagination when reading. When I started the book I very much had the advert in my mind and was looking out for bits in the advert as I read the book. I think it’s a bit of a shame really and wonder whether the characters would have looked completely different in my head had I not seen the advert? Anyway, if you take the advert and the book as two standalone entities, they’re both very good. The advert succeeded in its purpose and did really make me want to read the book. As a student, buying the hardback would have been a bit pricey and waiting for the paperback probably would have killed me, but luckily, Maura Bricknell (@red_books on twitter) from the Headline Publishing group flew to my rescue. She saw a tweet I posted about desperately wanting to read the book, and kindly offered to send me a copy.

So here we are. You probably don’t need my review to get you excited about the book as I think the advert really is wonderful. However I think the book actually goes a lot further than the advert. It follows the life of Elly and her brother and all the people she meets along the way. The book starts when she is around 4 years old and the beginning is written with a very fitting naive innocence that very slowly begins to unravel as we see some of the darker events that affect her life. I won’t say much more than that for fear of ruining the story for you. But there are a lot of very different interweaving storylines through the book with the two main themes being her relationship with her brother and secondly a relationship with a school friend, which comes full circle and is nicely tied up at the end.

Having two brothers myself, it was really interesting for me to see Elly’s relationship with hers, and it made what happened near the end even more heartbreaking and terrible to imagine for me. The book ties in with modern events and there are mentions of the holocaust and of 9/11 for example (something which ends up playing a huge part in the sibling’s relationship). There are also some very touching family moments and some very amusing moments to boot, for example; the children’s disastrous Nativity play. The characters are all engaging and I mean every single one of them; from their parents and dramatic auntie right down to the school teachers and their next door neighbours. There is also a bit of a fairytale-like twist where it comes to the talking Rabbit that they own called God...which also leads to some very funny occurrences. A lot of the book is serious but there are light moments throughout to alleviate this and it really is very true to life.

Finally, I know you’re not meant to judge a book by its cover but When God Was a Rabbit really does have a beautiful dust cover and I felt rather proud reading it on the train to Uni. It got quite a few admiring glances! It’s intricate yet simple...and it’s shiny, which normally helps.

So I’m going to give this 4/5 stars. I’m so glad I read it and it really is wonderfully written but it did not grip me as much as some books have before. It was a comfortable interesting read but not one that I clutched at every spare moment to read it. It’s a great debut novel by Sarah Winman, and I look forward to following her career as a writer as I’m sure she’s going to produce many more great books like this.

Next up to review is The Vanishing Acts of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

-Char x

BOOK 10/150

Firstly, I’d like to apologise for a huge lack of updates from me recently. I have actually been keeping up with my reading and not doing a whole lot else. I’ve had two terrible bereavements in the last two weeks and a few other horrible occurrences and so I’ve just been milling around, not really doing anything useful but trying to get back to normal as much as possible. So here we are, you’re going to get three reviews in quick succession, with a whole lot more to come soon. I’ve got a huge pile of books building up due to lots of love book publishers seeing my tweets and offering to send me things! So that’s brilliant! A huge shout out of thanks needs to go to @red_books on Twitter, and the Headline Publishing group in general. But anyway, on with the reviews! The first one is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro:

I have to admit, I didn’t really know anything about this book before I read it. I mainly chose to read it because I always like to read the book before I see the film, and as most of you probably know, this has recently been turned into a major film starring Keira Knightly and Carey Mulligan. Annoyingly, I still haven’t actually got round to seeing the film yet, so I needn’t have hurried so much reading the book, but it was pretty addictive anyway.

I knew next to nothing about the book, having only heard of the author due to a lot of my friends doing another of his books (The Remains of The Day) for their A Level English course and having picked up on a vague romantic storyline from the film trailer. I was, therefore, fairly surprised by what I ended up reading. There is indeed, a strong romantic thread throughout the book, however, it is in very strange circumstances. And I mean, very. Without giving too much away, it’s set in a boarding school, with a twist, in England in the 1990s. It is a seemingly idyllic place and the characters look back on their childhood fondly, but there was a deep secret lurking at the heart of the community, which only becomes really clear once they leave and try to carry on with their lives, which end up being so completely different from those of a normal person.

You are thrown right into the story at the beginning or “in media res” as my literature lecturers would say (It means “in the middle of things” in Latin, joyful, eh?). I found it very difficult at the beginning to really get what’s going on, and it’s not really explained until a lot further on into the book. The element of suspicion and suspense on our behalf as to what is really going on at the boarding school is evidently created on purpose, but it did mean that I spent the first half of the book wandering through, not really getting what was going on, but enjoying the writing nonetheless.

Kazuo Ishiguro really is a very interesting writer and it’s no surprise that the book was Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Despite the storyline not really being plausible (well I hope not anyway) I did still managed to get completely stuck in and felt greatly attached to the characters throughout their difficult plight through life. I was truly touched at the end, and it is very sad. I’ve heard people say great things about both the book and the film so it would seem it’s not just me that really enjoyed the story, I’d really recommend the book if you want something a bit different to get stuck into and also if you need a fairly quick read. It’s quite short and I absolutely flew through it.

I’d give this book 4/5 stars. It was brilliant, and although it did all seem very realistic, the idea of the secret that lurked behind the children’s lives really did jar with me for some reason, and I did sometimes feel myself reading it from a distance, being a bit cynical about the whole idea. I’d really like to explore Kazuo Ishiguro’s works further though and will try and read some more of his books before the year is out.

Next reviews will hopefully be up tomorrow morning. Was planning on doing them all tonight but this took my a horrendously long time to right.

-Char