Review: 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson

When you think of books in which literary fiction meets horror, it's hard not to think of Shirley Jackson. With her 1959 classic, The Haunting of Hill House she pretty much set the ground rules for what a supernatural thriller should look like. And yet, despite being a fan of hers, I never quite dared to give The Haunting of Hill House a try. Perhaps it was the fear that I wouldn't like it as much as her other work, that I'd be disappointed in one of my favourite authors. Thankfully those fears were all for naught as I absolutely adored this novel!

Original Pub. Date: 1959
Original Publisher: Viking

The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own. 

God I adore Shirley Jackson! Whether it is her short stories, like 'The Lottery', or her essays and letters, like the collection Let Me Tell You, I can't put her writing down. I first experimented with her novels when I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, giving myself a first taste of the terror Shirley could create when given more than a few pages. What has always struck me about her writing is that she seems able to penetrate into what humans fear. As Shirley's Dr. Montague says:

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” 

Shirley brings her characters, and her readers, to that point where they give up on logic, where reason won't cut it and the brain has to accept something seemingly impossible is happening. And this doesn't have to just be ghosts. As 'The Lottery' shows, human behaviour itself can also require us to relinquish logic and patterns. I don't think I've ever seen another author capture it quite so well for me.

The Haunting of Hill House has everything one would consider necessary for a good horror read: a house 'without kindness', a Doctor who wants solid evidence of the supernatural, and three young people who follow him into the house. It's a set up that now feels almost cliche since this is how most supernatural thrillers start, books or movies, but it all came from Jackson. She crafts a tale in which both much is revealed and much left concealed. There is the hilarious banter between the house occupants as they attempt to cope with the mounting pressure of being in Hill House, but there is also the horrible banging on the doors at night. Reading The Haunting of Hill House you'll find yourself both furiously believing something is haunting the house, as well wondering which one, if not all of them, is loosing their mind.

Shirley Jackson is a great writer. She crafts an atmosphere like no other, and she brings the horrors of Hill House to life. Jackson manages to put a lot into a few words, never missing an opportunity to sow doubt and mistrust. Just look at the beginning of the novel:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” 

These few sentences tell us a lot about the house at the centre of the novel. Hill House has seen perhaps too much reality, too much tragedy, and has become 'not sane' as a consequence. There are stark warnings about darkness and something walking the corridors, but also the reminder that it's a sturdy house, strong walls, solid floors. Jackson, from the beginning, sets up all the different ways you can interpret the hauntings going on, and despite giving the reader this freedom she has an intangible grip on the narrative and where it will go.

I give this novel...

5 Universes!

I read The Haunting of Hill House in one sitting because it's simply impossible to put this book down. Jackson created a genre with this book and she set the bar so high with this book I'm not quite sure anyone could top her haunted house. I'd recommend this to fans of Gothic Thrillers and the Supernatural.

Review: 'New Boy' by Tracy Chevalier

From the first moment I discovered Shakespeare for myself I adored his mix of high drama with "low" humour, how he managed to combine laughter with tears. His history plays were always my favourite and I found myself struggling with some of his most famous plays, especially Romeo & Juliet and Othello. Strangely enough, both were made more appealing to me by Bollywood adaptations, Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela and Omkara respectively. They gave me a new insight into the stories that made me reconsider my previous judgement of the plays. Chevalier has now done the same with her adaptation of Othello. Thanks to Hogarth and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.


Pub. Date: 11/05/02917
Publisher: Hogarth; Vintage Publishing

'O felt her presence behind him like a fire at his back.' 

Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat’s son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day – so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again. 

The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970s suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practise a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Watching over the shoulders of four 11-year-olds – Osei, Dee, Ian and his reluctant ‘girlfriend’ Mimi – Tracy Chevalier's powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying and betrayal will leave you reeling.

As I said above, I initially didn't like Othello, at all. I thought it was overly dramatic and Othello himself also rubbed me wrong. When I watched Omkara, however, I gained a whole new understanding of the play. By transposing the play from its Western setting and the cultural baggage its collected over the years, the film presented its themes in a new and interesting way. The effect of racism and colourism, the differences in class, Iago's feeling of betrayal and Desdemona's powerlessness in the face of Iago's scheming and Othello's paranoia felt a lot more real. The story deals intensely with how we see ourselves. Othello is worried his race will always colour how people see him, no matter how successful he is. Desdemona is aware that her position and skin colour should stop her from following her heart, but believes that her love should help her overcome those obstacles. Iago is intensely jealous and I've always thought of him as a man who feels much more is owed to him without putting in the work. These people have so much to loose, especiallt in their own eyes, that talking about their fears becomes almost impossible, allowing Iago's intrigue to work.  Omkara shows us these developments very well and  I was hoping for the same from New Boy. Although Chevalier definitely refigures some of the play's themes in an interesting way, something about the novel felt strangely shallow.

From the blurb I was expecting New Boy to be set in high school, not an elementary school. Setting it at such an early stage in life, all the characters are "reduced" to 10 to 12-year old children, which brings up some really interesting topics. At this age, children are still very much copying what they see in adults and Chevalier shows very clearly how racism, for example, is learned and copied. She also shows portrays the desire for popularity that starts showing itself at this age very well. However, I couldn't help but feeling that the story of Othello lost some of its spark in this setting. Some of the story elements that feel so dramatic and poignant in the Shakespeare play are undermined by the melodrama of an elementary school setting, especially since New Boy takes place during a single day. O and Dee 'go with each other' within what seems like an hour and are somehow deeply attached to each other despite their young age, and similarly the feelings of jealousy and betrayal also arise during this one day. These children are very much acting out what they have seen adults do, and although that is interesting, this means that at the heart of it we don't get the same exploration of the self, but rather a commentary on society.

Osei, or O, is the son of a Ghanaian diplomat who has moved around for much of his young life and now finds himself the new boy once again towards the end of a school year in the 1970s. Chevalier dedicates a lot of time to showing us how O has experience being new, how he has developed certain strategies of coping both with the suspicion of anyone new and with the different forms of racism and prejudice he frequently encounters. Chevalier makes him an incredibly sympathetic character and I felt almost saddened by how quickly this characterisation dissolved when the plot really took off. Within a single day O seems to forget everything he's learnt and this didn't feel entirely realistic to me. Similarly, Dee seemed like a very level-headed and smart girl, yet once she starts 'going' with O she lost some of her sparkle. Perhaps it's also simply that I can't wrap my head around 11-year olds becoming this fascinated with each other so quickly or that a schoolyard bully could come up with such a convoluted ploy to hurt the other students, but the novel didn't feel as immersive and deep as I would have liked for it to be.

Tracy Chevalier is a great writer and I loved her writing in Girl with the Pearl Earring. She knows how to set a scene and how to describe those tormenting emotions. There are great moments in New Boy where this does show, especially when we see the teachers betraying their own racism, but perhaps it is the relative brevity of the novel, less than 200 pages, that prevents her from going deeper more frequently. Because of the reasons described above I feel this novel swims somewhere between Middle Grade and YA fiction. The lessons to be learnt from reading New Boy are very obvious and in many ways it is a good novel to set up a conversation with a child about racism and bullying. Switching between the narration of the different children, Chevalier is able to show multiple points of view, which works occasionally. But except for some moments with O, New Boy doesn't delve very deeply into the insidiousness of inherited racism and the obsession with popularity. I think Hogarth's range of Shakespeare adaptations is a brilliant idea because the reason his plays are so popular is because they touch on a range of intensely human emotions. I will definitely be reading more of the series, even if I didn't connect with New Boy quite the way I hoped I would.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

I enjoyed New Boy but it didn't entirely work for me. For a young reader, however, this is a great introduction to the themes that make Othello a fascinating play. However, for an adult reader I don't think this novel holds quite enough to make it a worthwhile read. I'd recommend this to fans of Middle Grade and YA fiction.

Friday Friyay: Book Beginnings and Friday 56

It's Friday and it's pouring rain here in Shanghai like you wouldn't believe! I'm quite grateful for it since it's been incredibly hot here and this will hopefully cool it down a little bit. Also, this is my last week on sick leave! My eye is pretty much healed and the cornea only a little bit scarred so this time next week I'll be teaching English once again. I'm quite glad to get to do something productive again although I've also enjoyed the last few weeks of intense reading. But let's get on to the Friday fun! Book Beginnings and Friday 56 are hosted by Gilion over at Rose City Reader and Freda from Freda's Voice. Hop over their to join in on the blogging fun!


For this week's Friday Friyay I've chosen a book I just started, The Swan Book by Alexis Wright!

Oblivia Ethelyne was given her name by an old woman who found her deep in the bowels of a gum tree, tattered and fragile, the victim of a brutal assault by wayward local youths. These are the years leading up to Australia’s third centenary, and the woman who finds her, Bella Donna of the Champions, is a refugee from climate change wars that devastated her country in the northern hemisphere. Bella Donna takes Oblivia to live with her on an old warship in a polluted dry swamp and there she fills Oblivia’s head with story upon story of swans. Fenced off from the rest of Australia by the Army, its traditional custodians left destitute, the swamp has become “the world’s most unknown detention camp” for Indigenous Australians. When Warren Finch, the first Aboriginal president of Australia invades the swamp with his charismatic persona and the promise of salvation, Oblivia agrees to marry him, becoming First Lady, a role that has her confined to a tower in a flooded and lawless southern city.

Let's get to the quotes!


BB:

'Upstairs i my brain, there lives this kind of cut snake virus in its doll's house. Little stars shining over the moonscape garden twinkle endlessly in a crisp sky. The crazy virus just sits there on the couch and keeps a good old qui vivre out the window for intruders. it ignores all of the eviction notices stacked on the door. The virus thinks it is the only pure full-blood virus left in the land. Everything else is just half-caste. Worth nothing! Not even a property owner. Hell yes! it thinks, worse than the swarms of rednecks hanging around the neighborhood. Hard to believe a brain could get sucked into vomiting bad history over the beautiful sunburned plains.' 1%

I really liked this beginning although it also confused me. I'm not sure I'm entirely following the metaphor yet, although I get the idea of a virus in your head poisoning how you see the world. However, I already love Wright's writing. It's very lyrical and descriptive.


F56:

His artfulness in disappearing and reappearing was so strange, that as the swamp people had believed he was somewhere else, he could still make you feel that you had never seen him - that he was never there at all. This is why they were out on the genies' country.' 56%

I haven't gotten this far in the book yet, so it was quite difficult to find a quote without spoiling myself or you. This one is very good at intriguing me though. Who are we talking about, how does he keep 'disappearing and reappearing' and what is 'the genies' country'?


Also, I want to share some adorableness with you! I'm using the last week of my sick leave to foster two absolutely tiny kittens and they are simply too cute so here is an Instagram I took a few days ago!

I've named them Luke and Leia because I'm an unmitigated nerd.

So, what do you think of The Swan Book? And aren't the kittens adorable?

Review: 'The Second Sister' by Claire Kendal

It has been a good while since I read a psychological thriller and I couldn't wait to jump back into the genre. There is something about this genre which I can't help but love. Maybe it is that the standout books from the genre always leave you with some deeper insight into yourself, especially your own dark side, or maybe it's that I just like scaring myself. But for whatever it's worth, I keep returning to psychological thrillers as a kind of palate cleanser after a row of non-fiction and literary fiction books.. For my return, I chose The Second Sister by Claire Kendal because nothing says 'this book is going to mess you up' like family and disappearances. Thanks to Harper Collins and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 23/03/2017
Publisher: Harper Collins

The chilling new psychological thriller by Claire Kendal, author of the bestselling novel, THE BOOK OF YOU, which was selected for Richard and Judy in 2015. Perfect for fans of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN and DISCLAIMER. 

Ten years ago, Ella’s sister Miranda vanished without trace. Now thirty, the same age as Miranda when she disappeared, Ella has grown to look dangerously like the missing woman. Ella becomes convinced that the man who took Miranda is watching her family. To Ella, this is an opportunity as much as a prospect of fear. It makes her more determined than ever to find out what happened to the beautiful and mysterious Miranda. Because who better than a sister to see what the police overlooked and to understand the missing woman? Especially as the perpetrator leaves new evidence that only Ella takes seriously. Is Ella paranoid, or intensely intuitive? She idolised her older sister, but now she will need to face some difficult truths. How was Miranda, a nurse, able to pay cash for her flat and her luxury car? What made her write a will when she was still pregnant, asking that custody of her child be shared between Ella and her parents? The price of learning Miranda’s fate will be far higher than Ella imagines…

As I said, family and psychological thrillers are the perfect mix. Nothing sets up both drama and redemption better than the tight-knit circle of family. Usually the families shown in psychological thrillers are intensely fractured and toxic, which is why I loved that The Second Sister went the other way. Although Ella's family is not perfect and there are fights, tears and betrayals, there is also that deep love and concern that many other novels miss. Because of the relatively warm atmosphere this creates, the darker aspects of the novel feel extra dark. Psychological thrillers are often overly dramatic when it comes to plots. Psychopaths hide behind every corner and protagonists have iron strong wills that nothing can stop. Although Kendal fully joins in with the drama of her chosen genre, the slow burn approach of her novel allows it all to feel a little bit less over-the-top.

The Second Sister only really spans a period of three weeks, in which years of secrets, lies and fears unravel, but Kendal takes her time, setting up the core relationships and the family dynamic before really letting her mystery run wild. As such, the reader can't help but become quite invested in Ella, and in her nephew Luca who is utterly adorable. By giving herself this space at the beginning of the book Kendal also makes it seem more plausible that Ella would have an insight into her sister's disappearance that the police could never have, while also making us realise the changes in Ella as she gets sucked deeper and deeper into her own investigation. Ella's voice in The Second Sister is very strong and I found her very likeable. She is caring and passionate, and has trained herself to be alert and watchful since her Miranda vanished. You want her to succeed in finding answers, as much for her sake as your own. The characters around her vary from clearly untrustworthy to slightly untrustworthy, everyone seemingly having hidden motives that stop Ella along her mission for justice.

Claire Kendal really knows how to drop you in a scary situation and make it seem as real as possible.  By putting you directly into Ella's head Kendal is able to mine each situation for all it's got. Some of the scenes in the book are incredibly visceral, described down to the minutest detail until you almost want to stop reading. There are a lot of twists and turns in this book and I found myself suspecting everyone towards the end of the book. Once you think Ella is safe, Kendal puts another spanner in the works and throws the reader for a loop. She is also very good at setting up story lines early on and then letting them come to fruition later on. This should be expected from a thriller novel, but I find it's surprisingly rare to see it done well. Kendal does a good job at tying up loose ends towards the end of the book, but there is one story line in particular I still find unbelievable. Although I can't go into it without spoiling the book, it seemed like a far fetched idea that didn't sit well in a book that otherwise tries to be as realistic as psychological thrillers allow. As said, their plots are always slightly ridiculous and over-dramatic, but this one aspect involving a rather mysterious yet important man just felt overwrought. Overall, however, The Second Sister is incredibly thrilling and I couldn't put it down.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

I really enjoyed The Second Sister and it completely had me in its thrall. Elle is a great protagonist, one of my favourites of the genre so far. Kendal will have you constantly wondering who you can trust and what is going to happen next. You might anticipate some of the surprises, but how she presents them will still delight. I'd recommend this to fans of psychological thrillers.

Review: 'Johannesburg' by Fiona Melrose

I never thought that moving to China to teach English would mean that my circle of new friends would be almost entirely made up off South Africans. Thankfully thye're utterly lovely people, and getting to know them has also made me more curious about South Africa and its history. We all know Nelson Mandela and now, thanks to the Daily Show, we also know Trevor Noah, but its history and culture were still unknown to me. So when I saw Johannesburg I jumped at the chance to get a sense of this amazing city. Thanks to Corsair and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 03/08/2017
Publisher: Corsair; Little, Brown Book Group

6 December 2013. Johannesburg. 

Gin has returned home from New York to throw a party for her mother's eightieth birthday; a few blocks away, at the Residence, Nelson Mandela's family prepare to announce Tata's death... 

So begins Johannesburg, Fiona Melrose's searing second novel.

An irascible mother, an anxious daughter trying to negotiate her birthplace and her past, her former lover, their domestic workers, a homeless hunchback fighting for justice, a mining magnate, a troubled novelist called Virginia - these are the characters who give voice to the city on a day hot with nerves and tension and history. 

Set across the course of a single day - that of Nelson Mandela's death - Melrose's second novel is a hymn to an extraordinary city and its people, an ambitious homage to Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, and a devastating personal and political manifesto on love.

Whether it's James Joyce's Ulysses or Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of Vanities, many authors have used fiction to immortalise their cities, to show us the streets they so love or that particular way the light has of hitting the roofs. It's difficult to truly encompass everything a city has to offer in a novel without the author coming across as a tour guide, but Melrose finds a way. Rather than wax lyrical about different buildings or streets, she aims to show the lives lived in Johannesburg. In a way Melrose makes the reader a bird flying over the city, landing here and there before flying off to visit someone else. It gives Johannesburg a distinctly poetic and lyrical quality, both achingly immediate and oddly removed. You have to mine some of the passages for their meaning, consider what it is Melrose is actively trying to tell you, but this effort is worth it in the end.

Johannesburg covers only a single day, but splits its narrative between a set of different characters. Melrose aims to include as many different perspectives into her novel in order to truly bring Johannesburg alive on all its different levels. The day is the 6th of December, 2013, the day Nelson Mandela died. It is also the day of Gin's birthday party for her mother, another day of hard work for domestic workers Mercy and Dudu, another day of protest for the homeless September, and a day on which a dog is lost. Initially it is difficult to see how all these stories work together and occasionally you do get confused as to who is speaking, whose life we are currently observing. The characters I feel got the most time were Gin and September, drastically different but both with their own kind of burden to bear. I would have loved to hear more of Mercy and Dudu, who I thought were amazing characters and had a lot of interesting insights into their city and country. Whether I know more about South Africa now I can't really say, but Melrose does infuse her novel with the kind of spirit I have seen in my friends as well, with the difficult but passionate love they have for their country.

Melrose has a talent for describing a larger scene and then zooming in on a surprising detail. A clear example of this is the style of the novel. Most of Johannesburg is written in third person, allowing the reader to both get close to the characters while maintaining something of a distance. Occasionally, however, Melrose dips into a first-person narrative to share her characters' most intimate fears and thoughts. It was towards the end I truly started to understand Johannesburg as an 'homage to Virginia Woold's Mrs. Dalloway'. Melrose lets her characters' thoughts ramble in a way that initially seems odd. I mean, why dedicate so much time to things that are seemingly pointless? It isn't until later, when the reader has spent more time with the characters, that this writing pays off because we can see what it is these characters obsess about, can't help but think about and even prefer not to think about. Many things are hinted at but not really developed and at the end of the novel you don;t necessarily know much more about any of the characters. The ending is not typical and may leave some readers a bit unsatisfied, but I enjoyed the elegiac nature of it.


I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Reading Johannesburg was a very interesting experience. Melrose shows you the day in the lives of many different people and rather than pass judgement or explain, she leaves it to the reader to draw their own conclusions. Her love for Johannesburg shines through, however, and that is the real heart and soul of the novel.

Review: 'Concentr8' by William Sutcliffe

I remember when I was in primary school that something of a ADHD-craze hit the Netherlands. Across the country more and more boys, especially, were diagnosed with ADHD and medicated to control their behaviour. I also remember my parents thinking this increased diagnosing of children younger than ten wasn't a good idea. So when I saw a novel addressing this very topic, I knew I wanted to read it. And I was immensely and positively surprised by Sutcliffe's novel.

Pub. Date: 27/08/2015
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children

In a future London, Concentr8 is a prescription drug intended to help kids with ADD. Soon every troubled teen is on it. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Keep the undesirable elements in line. Keep people like us safe from people like them. What’s good for society is good for everyone.

Troy, Femi, Lee, Karen and Blaze have been taking Concentr8 as long as they can remember. They’re not exactly a gang, but Blaze is their leader, and Troy has always been his quiet, watchful sidekick – the only one Blaze really trusts. They’re not looking for trouble, but one hot summer day, when riots break out across the city, they find it.

What makes five kids pick a man seemingly at random – a nobody, he works in the housing department, doesn’t even have a good phone – hold a knife to his side, take him to a warehouse and chain him to a radiator? They’ve got a hostage, but don’t really know what they want, or why they’ve done it. And across the course of five tense days, with a journalist, a floppy-haired mayor, a police negotiator, and the sinister face of the pharmaceutical industry, they – and we – begin to understand why.

This is a book about how we label children. It’s about how kids get lost and failed by the system. It’s about how politicians manipulate them. Gripping and controversial reading for fans of Malorie Blackman and Patrick Ness.

One of the things I liked about Concentr8 is that it's a novel that is not just a story, but also aims to be a lesson. Not in an overly pedantic way, but in an attempt to raise awareness for a topic that is clearly close to the author's heart. The way we treat the children in our societies is crucial and yet often neglected. Whether it's the continuously growing pressure on children to succeed in standardised tests or neglecting to take their concerns seriously, it is not necessarily an easy world for children, let alone for those living in war zones. I am always happy to see fiction novels pick up such controversial yet important topics and Sutcliffe's approaches his with the seriousness it deserves. Between chapters he quotes research on ADHD and his narrative also makes it clear he did a lot of research for this book. Of course he has his own opinion on the matter, but he doesn't force it down the reader's throat.

The novel is split up into different parts, one for each day of the hostage crisis. These parts are then set up into different chapters, each narrated by a different character, either a member of Blaze's gang or another one of the relevant characters. Initially this takes some getting used to and it can be occasionally confusing, but Sutcliffe does his best to give each character a different voice and make the transitions feel relevant. Each character has their own tale to tell, their own version of events, and it is by bringing these all together that Sutcliffe is truly able to make his point. Halfway through the novel I realised I really couldn't relate to any of the characters in the book, except perhaps for the journalist, but this one realisation was followed by another. Although Literature with a capital L likes to write about "the underdog", the poor orphan in the workhouse or the immigrants searching for work during the Great Depression, they are seemingly always imbued with an innate goodness and purity that ennobles them but belies the true consequences of growing up without options, without possibilities. Sutcliffe's teenagers are perhaps not very likeable, but they are human and real. It is a credit to this book that actually none of the characters are very likeable and yet you still want to hear their stories.

Concentr8 is a mix between different genres. On the one hand it's a dystopian novel about how we treat our children in a distant future, on the other hand it is a YA novel about children growing up in a world that doesn't care for them. It's also social commentary and, to a certain extent, science fiction. This mix is quite heady and probably not for everyone. I struggled through the first few chapters as Sutcliffe attempted to capture the voice of London teenagers, occasionally writing without punctuation and using slang. But once I got into it, I found that Concentr8 really worked for me. There was an insolence in how the novel addressed readers like me: relatively well-settled in life and having never had to deal with poverty or class. It doesn't make reading Concentr8 fun, but it does make it relevant. Sutcliffe doesn't give you a clear cut answer and doesn't even attempt to end with a classic happy ending, but it will leave you with a great set of questions to consider.

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Despite struggling at the beginning, I ended up being really touched by Sutcliffe's Concentr8. He gives a voice here to teenagers who aren't often heard, highlighting a problem we prefer to forget about. Although it may be a struggle, I'd recommend this to those interested in YA fiction and social commentary.

Review: 'The Wolf in the Attic' by Paul Kearney

Fantasy was the first genre that truly captured my attention and fuelled a desire to explore the different mythologies around the world. Is it thus that I ended up annoying my family during a holiday to Greece as I relayed to them some of the more gruesome Greek myths over dinner. Or while walking. Or as they tried to sleep. Basically, I really loved myths and legends and I still do. As such, it is no surprise that The Lord of the Rings became one of my favourite books. It should also come as no surprise that Kearney's The Wolf in the Attic, with its suggestion of Tolkien, Lewis and mythology, captured my attention straightaway. Thanks to Rebellion and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 10/05/2016
Publisher: Rebellion; Solaris

1920s Oxford: home to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien... and Anna Francis, a young Greek refugee looking to escape the grim reality of her new life. The night they cross paths, none suspect the fantastic world at work around them.

Anna Francis lives in a tall old house with her father and her doll Penelope. She is a refugee, a piece of flotsam washed up in England by the tides of the Great War and the chaos that trailed in its wake. Once upon a time, she had a mother and a brother, and they all lived together in the most beautiful city in the world, by the shores of Homer's wine-dark sea.

But that is all gone now, and only to her doll does she ever speak of it, because her father cannot bear to hear. She sits in the shadows of the tall house and watches the rain on the windows, creating worlds for herself to fill out the loneliness. The house becomes her own little kingdom, an island full of dreams and half-forgotten memories. And then one winter day, she finds an interloper in the topmost, dustiest attic of the house. A boy named Luca with yellow eyes, who is as alone in the world as she is.

That day, she’ll lose everything in her life, and find the only real friend she may ever know.

The world is deeply imbued with myth and magic. Each corner of the Earth has a tale, has a history and has a meaning and this is one of the things I love. I voraciously read books that collected these myths, legends and even fairy tales from all across, in a desire to understand humanity because these tales are of us and our desires. These myths and legends have also inspired countless authors who  who have gone on to add their own stories to the mix. Kearney aims to capture this magic in The Wolf in the Attic, to draw back the veil of modernity and reveal the Old World beneath the concrete. In a way, The Wolf in the Attic is also an ode to Oxfordshire, and the English countryside as a whole. Kearney really brings to life the magic that lingers in the landscape, as well as the history that has shaped it to be so powerful to the imagination.

Anna Francis is a Greek refugee who grows up in the Oxford of the 1920s, slowly forgetting her home country and yet always feeling other in England. Anna is a great character, spunky and passionate but also aware and mature beyond her age. Both her experiences fleeing her home country and the racism she encounters in her new home make her quite insightful, but Kearney never forgets to also let her be an eleven-year old. The first half or so of the novel focuses on Anna in Oxford and has a distinct 'historical fiction' feel to it. This is also where Tolkien and Lewis feature. Their appearances are entertaining, but only half-relevant to the plot. Were it not for the importance of myth and fantasy to the story, their presence would be a major disturbance. Now, it feels like a nod from an apprentice to a master, a way of saying thank you for what they have created. The second half of the novel enters the territory of myth and fantasy and here, unfortunately, Kearney occasionally loses the thread. Although the retains a fluidity of style and a talent for beautiful imagery, his lore is not as worked out as it should have been. What occasionally makes Tolkien seem so dry is his academic approach to world-building and his hammering on about history. It might not be to everyone's taste, but it's what builds his world so thoroughly. Kearney incorporates a lot of different mythology into his work but they don't come together seamlessly. Also, central to the story are people akin to the Romani and I'm still not entirely sure whether I'm happy about their portrayal or not. I will have to think some more on that.

Kearney's writing is beautiful. He has a knack for describing detail and through Anna's eyes we get to see Oxfordshire in all its glory. Whether it's snow gently falling or Anna's memories of Greece, Kearney makes them evocative and beautiful. He also captures Anna's voice really well and makes her a character you truly come to care for. But, as said above, there is a distinct two act-feel about this novel, with the first part being set in the modern world and the second in the Old. The transition isn't quite as fluid as I'd hoped and there are a lot of things that are left unexplained. In a way The Wolf int the Attic feels like the first novel in a trilogy that leaves the large part of the world building to the second book, which I've seen other reviewers comment on as well. If Kearney had given himself a few more pages of exposition here or there, this would have filled up those gaps nicely and prevented some of the confusion and, I'm sad to say, slight disappointment. In the end, The Wolf in the Attic is a beautiful novel that leaves something to be wished for.

I give this novel...

3 Universes!

Although I adored Kearney's writing, The Wolf in the Attic could have done with some more background, a deep dive into its subject material. However, it is a beautiful novel about the Old World that occasionally soars very high. I'd recommend this to fans of Fantasy and Historical Fiction.