July round up

Summer is here, reading has recommenced. Last summer it was all  about the teen fiction; this summer it's slightly more varied.

So here's what I read during July- only three books to my shame, but three different and brilliant books.

First up is Please Don't Come Back from the Moon by Dean Bakopoulos

After reading My American Unhappiness and really enjoying Bakopoulos’ style of writing, I absolutely could not pass up the chance to read Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon. Once again, Bakopoulos is able to describe the effects of industrial and economic decline in America; and the impacts it has on the regular folk who live there.
Please Don’t Come Back from the Moon, through the eyes of teenage boys who we follow into adulthood, tells of how the fathers of a small community all left for the moon. It shows how the boys had to take their father’s place, and their confusion through their anger towards their fathers and their need for a father-figure.

This is a beautifully crafted novel: I could feel the sticky summer nights, and the chill of winter. I empathised with the boys who’d lost their fathers and willed for their business, education and family-life attempts to succeed. Most of all, I felt the strength of brotherhood in these characters, that shared identity through having lost their fathers to the moon. The absence creating a unity between the characters, which is at once understandable and entirely believable.

I really enjoyed reading this book- it’s definitely one I’ll read again. And, I look forward to Bakopoulos’s next creation.

Next I read Bernard Schlink's The Reader

A book I’ve been meaning to read since I heard about the film adaptation (which I deliberately haven’t seen). It started out a bit like your standard coming of age tale, but turned into an exploration of guilt and coming to terms with the Holocaust. 

What appealed most to me while reading this book were the questions; sometimes more pensive, sometimes quite direct, but clearly very deliberately placed throughout the story to put the reader in the character’s situation and to make him/her think. This is especially poignant when a judge is asked "Well, what would you have done?" Even though, within the confines of the book, this is directed at the judge, the tangible pause which Schlink cleverly creates in the narrative makes it obvious that this question is directed at the reader. As a reader we are forced to question our own attitudes and responses to an extreme and harrowing situation.

In addition to the questions posed by the narrator and the other characters in the story, I found myself also questioning ‘who is The Reader?’ Is it Michael, the narrator? Is it the young girls reading to the camp guard? Is it Hanna? Is it me? Each potential answer placing a different spin on my reading of the book.

Throughout all of this: the questions posed by the narrator, the questions I, as reader, am also attempting to answer, is a love story. 

Reading in 2013 and from a British perspective, I am not as emotionally attached to the subject matter as other readers may be. However, as Michael himself points out, nowadays thanks to films such as Schindler’s List, readers can imagine quite easily the scenes and horrors of the Holocaust. The questions which Schlink presents to the reader, however, enable any reader to become involved and immersed in the situation and moral dilemmas which Michael finds himself. 

This is really a fantastic book, dealing with a difficult subject matter. It forces a reader to stop and really think about their own moral standings, while also attempting to understand how the next generation of Germans had to come to terms with the Holocaust and the actions (or lack) of their parents during the Second World War.

And finally, My Name is Mina by David Almond

“Words should wander and meander. They should fly like owls and flicker like bats and slip like cats. They should murmur and scream and dance and sing.”

I don’t want to over-analyse this book as what I enjoyed most about it was its innocence.

In short, this is the prequel to Skellig and tells the story of Mina, the young girl who lives at home with her mother (having lost her father) and struggles with school. Mina is instantly likeable, with a genuinely unique outlook on life. Although Almond is addressing a child coming to terms with a parent’s death, My Name is Mina is not a sombre, grief-stricken read; in fact I found it quite uplifting. This is definitely due to the character of Mina. I will be recommending this book to anyone looking for something quirky and charming to read, and I will be asking some of my classes to read this in September.

I’ve not been particularly drawn to Skellig, but now I’ve read My Name is Mina and fallen for Almond’s style, I’m hooked. Skellig is now on my August reading list.

So there we have it. I've just started To Kill a Mockingbird, and I've planned to read Almond's Skellig  and Donna Tartt's The Secret History during August. Hopefully I'll get another book in, but I'm moving house soon so... We'll see.