Menu #3: Unlikely Adventures

Starter

Silver: Return to Treasure Island - Andrew Motion

Serving suggestion: With apples, as an homage to the infamous apple barrel of the original.

Andrew Motion's unofficial sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's beloved 1883 Treasure Island is a wonderfully grown up tribute. Motion's version is a lot darker, although this blackness is cleverly hidden in the subtext for the majority of the novel, making it equally suitable for children as for adults who grew up with the original. With utmost respect for the story told by Stevenson in the nineteenth century, Motion introduces new issues ignored by the original, most importantly that of slavery.

It perhaps lacks the charm of the original; Motion's writing is beautiful, but a contrast to the old-fashioned simplicity of Stevenson's. His treatment of the characters of Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, held dear to the hearts of so many, is harsh and unresolved. Readers may find themselves indignant at the undignified fates of characters that had so proudly stood the test of the last two centuries. The novel's ending is abrupt and uncertain. Perhaps this is with a further sequel in mind, but it appears unnecessary, and indeed unsuitable for a novel that is clearly aimed at an audience that includes children seeking an adventure tale before bedtime.

Overall though, it is an engaging and unexpected return to the island that has formed part of so many English childhoods.

3/5

Main Course

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce

Serving suggestion: With bread and butter sandwiches.

Take a deep breath, and a big box of tissues, and curl up on the sofa. Rachel Joyce's debut novel goes from touching to heartbreaking as her protagonist, Harold Fry, walks from Devon to Berwick-upon-Tweed to save a woman from his past from cancer. All she has to do, he says, is wait. He will keep walking, and she must keep living. It is a pilgrimage across England, but also through a lifetime of buried memories, through his own feelings for his distant wife, and through pain and anger to find acceptance. 

The novel is filled with so much human tragedy that it is often hard to bear. Joyce tackles inevitabilities such as shame, loss, and the fear of forgetting the memories that once meant everything, that we usually try to hide from. She is not afraid to show the reader the things they don't want to see.

This is all beautifully and powerfully woven together, however, by a glorious hopefulness. Harold Fry's extraordinary journey up England means something different to everyone he encounters, and readers will find that it means something deeply personal and hopeful to them too. The pain and heartache suffered by each character leaves Harold Fry, and the reader, with no judgement towards others, however different their lifestyles may appear. Joyce's powerful insights into human experience mean that Harold does not appear remotely cliched when he muses that 'the world is made up of people putting one foot in front of the other.'

4.5 /5 (loses .5 only for a scattering of unnecessarily cheesy lines)

I hope they don't make it into a film, because I want to do it first!

Pudding

The Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson

Serving suggestion: Consume in bite-sized chunks, with no background music - this one's noisy enough. Enjoy with a bottle of vodka, and if you take a drink every time the hero Alan Karlsson does, you'll barely even notice by the time the elephant joins his entourage.

This is Sweden's answer to Forrest Gump, and it's completely ridiculous (if you watched Eurovision - what else were expecting from Sweden?). It's also brilliantly clever. I read it translated from its original Swedish, but that didn't detract from the humour that fell, deadpan, from every page.

Jonasson's novel combines two parallel storylines: one begins on Allan Karlsson's 100th birthday, when he escapes from his nursing home, inadvertently steals a suitcase of money, and nonchalantly begins the most charming crime spree since Thelma and Louise; the other tells the story of his life so far, and how he finds himself accidentally responsible for the biggest historical events of the last century.

I'm giving this one a shorter review, as you deserve to be as surprised as I was by each outlandish plot twist. Suspend your disbelief, and take your time with this one - it's a rare treat.

5/5 doesn't even cut it!

Leave a message in the comments if you have thoughts on any of the books in this menu!

- Reviews by Emma Oulton

Menu #2: Slip Inside The Eye Of Your Mind

 Starter

Picture Perfect - Jodi Picoult

 

Serving Suggestion: A steady stream of snacks and catchy background music, as you will probably want occasional distactions from a less than captivating novel.

   

Picture Perfect is not one of Jodie Picoult’s strongest novels, lacking the emotional intensity of The Pact and the strength of plot of My Sister’s Keeper (no, this praise doesn’t extend to the film version!). Picture Perfect strays dangerously towards being a trashy chic-lit read; the protagonist has a film-star husband, innumerable assets and has had a classic rags-to-riches life. However, true to Picoult’s novels, all is not quite so straightforward and the novel retains much of her signature soul-searching plot lines that shake up the potentially vacuous narrative.

The novel delves interestingly and effectively into the often-overlooked scenario of domestic abuse and its causes and ramifications. The writing allows a fairly open, unbiased account which challenges the reader to contemplate the matter and draw one’s own conclusion. However, none of the characters are developed enough to ensure that the reader fully understands their motivations and identifies with them, which leaves purportedly tense and emotional scenes rather flat.

Furthermore, the Native American aspect is incredibly token and comes across as a convenient supplement, included only to serve one small aspect of the plot, and otherwise irrelevant, a great shame as literature concerning Native Americans is already rather limited. All in all, an interesting, easy-to-read novel but not one that will stay with you for any longer than it takes to donate it to a charity bookshop.

2/5

Main Course

Still Alice - Lisa Genova

Serving Suggestion: Everything you love. Indulge and appreciate.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova is an incredibly emotive novel about a fifty year old woman who has to cope with the fact that she has developed early-onset Alzheimer's Disease. It is simply and beautifully written: Genova writes saliently and without pity or flamboyance from the mind of her protagonist. The narrative voice ties in relatable everyday occurrences that ground the novel in reality and therefore allow the emotional impact of Alzheimer's kicking in to be fully felt. Implanting a well-known but infrequently discussed disease in the mind of the reader allows real empathy for sufferers and concerns that they may have, such as the fear of passing the disease on to their children, the terror of becoming a burden to the family they love and losing the simple functions, akin to basic human rights that we continually take for granted.

I read this novel whilst waiting to hear my degree result and it was a harrowing and humbling reminder that no matter how much seemingly monumental events may concern or distress us, we are incomprehensibly fortunate because we are in control of our own bodies and in possession of our own minds.

5/5

Dessert

 Silver Linings Playbook - Matthew Quick

Serving Suggestion: Something sweet to soothe the occasional sniffle brought on by this deep yet easy read. 

 

Silver Linings Playbook is a beautiful little book that’s a quick read yet deceptively deep. Following the life and thoughts of Pat, the reader soon realises that he has some sort of disorder that manifests itself in his obsession with exercise, an even deeper obsession with his estranged wife Nicki and endearing belief that every story, including his own, must have a happy ending. Pat’s tale unobtrusively demonstrates the emotional impact a trauma can impart on the life of not just the immediate sufferer, but on their entire family. His integration back into normal life, having left a psychiatric unit, involves a difficult, slow bonding with his father, an emotional development with regards to his mother, whom he begins to appreciate, and a surprising and touching friendship with Tiffany, a similarly distressed soul.

Most beguiling though is his childlike, insightful view on life. There is a lesson to be learnt from Pat who is practising ‘being kind, instead of right’. Although idealised, his innocence draws attention to the slightly darker aspects of mass culture, such as his horror and anguish at losing control and punching an opposing football team’s supporter in front of the man’s son, only to be congratulated by his brother and friends.

Similarly, the sadness and confusion he feels at the insensitivity shown to a celebrity who had been so unhappy as to attempt to commit suicide is a subtle reminder at the often cold manner with which humans can treat each other for insignificant reasons. As well as a sweet and emotional story, this novel pulls slightly deeper to consider relationships between many people and aspects of society as a whole, in a tale that warms the heart and wets the eye.

4/5

 

-Christy

Menu #1 - A World Not Quite Our Own

Starter

Time's Arrow - Martin Amis

Serving suggestion: Devour all at once, with a glass of something sweet to balance out the bitter taste.

Time's Arrow is flawed, but thought-provoking. It is a unique premise: told from an unknown consciousness inside the head of another man, witnessing this man's life entirely in reverse from death to birth. It questions our assumptions about life beautifully; the narrator repeatedly voices his frustration at this life that doesn't make sense. He sees servants paying their masters, doctors injuring the healthy and sending them bleeding on their way, troubled women running backwards from shelter to shelter until they are horrifically cured by violent rape. It is disturbing. It is frightening. It is very, very sad.

Amis's novel is fantastically evocative, but it is not perfect. For example, the narrator continually shows surprise at people walking backwards, and yet as this is all he has ever seen, it should surely pass unnoticed. It is a shame to find signs of carelessness in a novel like this, as it turns the premise into a convenient vehicle, when it is so close to being a work of art.

3.5/5

Main Course

The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

Serving suggestion: Outside in the sun. Bring supplies, you won't be moving for a while.

In the middle of the current overkill of end-of-the-world thrillers, The Age of Miracles manages to stand out as something totally new. Perhaps it's the lack of action sequences; this is not an explosive apocalypse, but a devastatingly slow extinction of life on Earth. 

When the Earth's rotation begins to slow, days turn into weeks, and years lead towards the end. Humans fail to unite in the face of danger, instead violently judging each other. Birds fall from the sky. Food runs out. A generation of scientists with the answer to everything flounder, and fail. 

And in the midst of this, 11 year old Julia struggles through middle school, loses friends, watches the disintegration of her parents' marriage, grows up too fast, and too slowly. The story is beautifully told. It is a horror, it is a political commentary, it is a fantasy, and first and foremost it is a bittersweet tale of a childhood in which 'firsts' are replaced with 'lasts'.

5/5

Pudding

A Possible Life - Sebastian Faulks

Serving suggestion: Slowly in the evenings with a glass of wine. And when you've finished, start again.

I found this novel absolutely mesmerising. It is made up of five short stories, separated by oceans and centuries, and yet intangibly linked. It is not until the third/middle story, set in the near future as scientists make a revolutionary discovery about the human consciousness, that Faulks really begins to spell out for the reader why these stories fit together. And through these stories, and their blink-and-you'll-miss-them connections (a building, an experience, a realisation), Faulks paints a portrait of mankind as beautifully connected, and hauntingly unoriginal. 

The last story of the five is perhaps the strongest. Its ending does not hit the reader, but instead slowly settles, a sad yet gently reassuring loneliness, that will make you want to search through the pages from the start, looking for an answer to the intriguing and provoking reality at which Faulks hints. 

Many novels make the reader think; A Possible Life stops thought, and allows the reader to be. 

4.5/5

-Emma Oulton