bookrblog

This Real Night

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 | Uncategorized | No Comments

I stumbled across Rebecca West’s sequel to The Fountain Overflows at the library. What a find - it is a fantastic book. The children from the first book are now reaching young adulthood, having to accept their father’s death and the way in which they are different from other people in the world, and each other, too. It is in the age just before war, and somehow they know everything will be ended by the war, everything that is important in their lives.

She is such a wonderful writer; her characters are people you wish you  knew, and her insights evoke smiles and tears from the reader. I loved this book and I hope I can dig out the final unfinished novel  in the trilogy.

To Serve Them All My Days

Saturday, April 10th, 2010 | British Literature | No Comments

I read this book by R. F. Delderfield back in my first year of teaching. It is the story of a young man who becomes a teacher in a second-rate boys’ boarding school just as WW1 is ending. He ends up staying there permanently, moving to headmaster. It covers his loves, his children, his friendships, the political situation within the school and in the wider community as the poverty of the ’30s transforms into the war of the ’40s.  While it’s pretty basic, it’s incredibly readable and has both humour and pathos. I enjoyed it when I first began teaching, and I enjoyed it now. A good read.

The Piper’s Son

Saturday, April 10th, 2010 | Children's Literature | No Comments

This is Melina Marchetta’s latest novel, and it follows on from her previous novel, Saving Francesca. A drop-out Uni student, Tom, goes to live with his aunt after he’s kicked out of a share flat. He is trying to recover his life which has been lost in extreme grief after the loss of his uncle. His entire family was shattered when his uncle, Joe, was killed in the London Tube bombings. They pushed away those who loved them - Tom, his girlfriend; his Dad left his family and became an alcoholic; and his aunt got pregnant on a one night stand with a cheating ex. All of these issues are resolved, of course, with “the help of friends”, which is Marchetta’s consistent theme throughout every novel she’s written.

It doesn’t feel as though Marchetta has moved on at all with this book, she hasn’t explored anything new in her own ability or within the subject. I hated the theme that people who grieve are selfish and should consider those around them; I think people who grieve are expected to get on with things pretty quickly and those around them should actually give them a bit more time. This book isn’t as good as most of her others, although it’s a lot better than the poor attempt at fantasy she tried earlier. I think Marchetta is generally a great writer but I wish she’d move on a bit,  beyond her usual themes of pure friendship being everything.