The Revenant, book review. (Michael Punke)

Okay, so you've seen the film right?

No? Yes? Well, that doesn't really matter because this is quite different. No less dramatic mind but different all the same.

Along with, Eowyn Ivey's, The Snow Child, this is the book you read if you want to know what it feels like to be cold, really, really cold. It is also the book you read if you want to know what it's like to be truly alone. Not sitting alone in a room, or walking the streets at three in the morning alone but I-could-be-the-last-person-on-earth alone, and that feeling of loneliness, of isolation, envelopes you about halfway through this book and wraps you in its cold blanket all the way to the bitter end.
I recently read and blogged about Birdbox, (26/10/19) which makes you feel alone, I've read John Wyndham's, The Day of the Triffids, and Robert Matterson's rather excellent, I am Legend, which leaves you utterly desperate as it concludes, and this book runs it a close second; truly isolating you in ice and snow until you're in need of some good company, a warm fire and a large measure of your favourite tipple.
Based on true events whilst the Americas were still being mapped and discovered by the Europeans, the story centres around the fur trade, animal pelts, and on one expedition in particular, where Hugh Glass and his group of men are attacked by a tribe of Native Americans and are lucky to escape with their lives.

Then, there's the bear attack, superbly written as is the film shot, and you get so much from Punke's writing you almost feel the animal's claws ripping through your own flesh, and then the book is off, decisions are made, promises are broken and Hugh Glass finds himself alone and as close to death as one can be without passing.

Those first few hours, those first few days, the hopelessness of it all encompasses the reader in a way that you just have to keep going, keep turning those pages, 'cause let's face facts, everyone loves an underdog. So you start routing for him, willing Glass on, wanting him to push through the pain, both physical and psychological. There are other attacks, too, more Native Americans to outwit, more rivers to cross, bears to avoid, and how Hugh Glass actually managed to do what he did, survive what must have seemed un-survivable, is I suppose why this book makes for such good reading and why the film was made. Isn't it in our hearts, humans, in our very core, to survival, whatever the odds?

Four ice-covered stars for, The Revenant then and heartily recommended.

The Almost Moon, book review. (Alice Sebold)

Having purchased Alice Sebold's 'The Lovely Bones' for a work colleague and it receiving high praise, I decided to purchase 'The Almost Moon' when it cropped up in my local charity shop. 

The book is set over a single, twenty four hour period, and starts with Helen Knightly tending her mother. The tension between them is tangible and within a few chapters, Helen Knightly is a murderer. 

Sebold handles what is a very personal crime, with great skill. During the book, Helen seems to go from slightly deranged, she has sex with her best friends son (he's an adult), to being childlike, she confides in her ex husband that she's killed her mother, and everything in between, like going to work, which happens to be life modelling.

This is a short book, and an odd one too. The subject of matricide is one that I hadn't come across before, but an interesting one all the same; and as you read further, a history of agoraphobia and other mental illness's in the family are revealed. So, reasons for Helen's instability become apparent, and the author could easily have tried to justify the murder this way, but she doesn't, she just uses the past to explaining why Helen might have murdered her mother. 

So, a good little book then. Three and a half stars, but not four, so I'll settle on three.

Now all I have to do is borrow 'The Lovely Bones', which I saw on film but haven't read yet.

The Snow Child, book review. (Eowyn Ivey)

This one came about simply because I saw it everywhere.
I'd see it on peoples shelves on coffee tables, I'd see it in shop windows, on Goodreads, I'd see it in my local charity shop, and as you might know by now, when the charity shop has a book, I find it hard to resist. 
So, not recommended in any way, I went into this book with my eyes wide open. 
I read the end before the beginning, which sounds weird but it’s a good idea because you get a sense of the history behind the story and the author’s influences, which sets things up nicely. (I'd recommend you start there.) 
The story itself was intriguing. A couple who can't have children relocating to the isolation that is Alaska, to avoid the questions, the looks, the pressures.  
So, having settled in, our two main characters start to make a go of it, but there's always that nagging doubt, that unspoken word, that the move was wrong, that they should go back home, give it all up. That is until a child appears, a young girl hidden in the snow. 
I liked the main characters, and the sense of isolation that only a good book can portray. I liked the mystical aspect too, which reminded me a little about how I write. Was this magic, Gods will, or just dumb luck? I liked the cold, the chill, the ever present danger of being lost, or worse, attacked by wild animals in the vast northern tundra of Alaska. Reading this book in the summer did nothing to warm me.
So, why only three stars? Well I suppose the book just wasn't me. The writing was good, the characters fine, the story was somewhat quirky, which isn’t always a bad thing, and I did enjoy it, but I didn't bond with it.
I guess, some you do, some you don't.