Friday Memes and 'Yuki Chan in Brontë Country' by Mick Jackson

It's been a while since I really dug into the Friday madness of book blogging so today is going to be the day where I trawl through the blogosphere with a strong cup of coffee for a few hours. Today I'm sharing a novel with you which I absolutely loved reading last month: Yuki Chan in Brontë Country by Mick Jackson. I just posted the review for this charming book as well so hop over if you want to indulge in some more Brontë-madness.

The new novel from Mick Jackson, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Underground Man and Ten Sorry Tales.

'They both stop and stare for a moment. Yuki feels she's spent about half her adult life thinking about snow, but when it starts, even now, it's always arresting, bewildering. Each snowflake skating along some invisible plane. Always circuitous, as if looking for the best place to land...'

Yukiko tragically lost her mother ten years ago. After visiting her sister in London, she goes on the run, and heads for Haworth, West Yorkshire, the last place her mother visited before her death. 

Against a cold, winter, Yorkshire landscape, Yuki has to tackle the mystery of her mother's death, her burgeoning friendship with a local girl, the allure of the Brontes and her own sister's wrath.

Both a pilgrimage and an investigation into family secrets, Yuki's journey is the one she always knew she'd have to make, and one of the most charming and haunting in recent fiction.

Book Beginnings and Friday 56 are hosted by Gilion over at Rose City Reader and Freda over at Freda's Voice respectively.

BB:

'Your only hope of getting a half-decent photo of the Post Office Tower is to shoot it from a distance. You can try standing directly below it, but the concrete base just gets in the way/ There may be something in between these tow perspectives, but Yuki couldn't find it. Which is kind of odd, since she long considered the Post Office Tower to be as much an icon of her beloved Swinging Sixties as Biba, The Beatles and Mary Quant.' 1%

You admittedly don't get a very strong taste of the book from this beginning. But Yuki also only stands at the beginning of her tale here and everything is still quite contained and sane.


F56:

'And there he was, in back and white, sitting in his mountainside laboratory, with a sheepskin hat on his head and the flaps down over his ears, apparently talking quite earnestly, with the warmth of his words turning to steam before his face.' 56%

Yuki is here looking at Ukichiro Nakaya, a Japanese scientist who made the first artificial snowflakes. I loved this part of the book because just like Yuki I can get really obsessed with random things like snowflakes and start researching that thing like crazy.

Does Yuki Chan in Brontë Country like your kind of book? Share your Friday post link in the comments!