NoViolet Bulawayo’s ‘We Need New Names’

Posted on May 4, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

‘We Need New Names’, the debut novel from author NoViolet Bulawayo, is split into two distinct halves.

In the first section, Darling is growing up in a shanty town in Zimbabwe, playing with her friends on the hot streets and eating guavas. Each chapter takes us through a different aspect of living in Zimbabwe at the time – from the violence or political oppression to religion or AIDS – taking us through the history of the country to how Darling now sees it today, through a child’s eyes. This innocence and the matter of fact style in which Darling recounts events is particularly harrowing – in particular some of the games the children invent and their horrific attempt to abort a child pregnancy.

But even though the author takes us through some of the worst sides of Zimbabwe’s history, there is still a vibrancy to her writing and a really strong sense of culture comes through. The children accept their lives and see the world around them in a way that their parents can’t. They might dream of leaving and going to America, or other developed countries, but even though they have very little, their community is supportive and bound together by strong family and cultural values. Continue reading →

Music, books and lyrics

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

Browsing Twitter earlier today, I stumbled across a recent promo campaign from a top UK band that’s using classic ghost stories to get people excited about their new music.

Coldplay are going all out to promote their upcoming album, the aptly named ‘Ghost Stories’, and their new songs are being unveiled in a way that should excite all the readers out there! Chris Martin’s handwritten lyric sheets for each song on the album are being hidden within the pages of books in libraries all over the globe. One lucky lyric hunter will also find two tickets and a free trip to London to see Coldplay perform at the Royal Albert Hall.

So far, five envelopes have been found – in copies of ‘Hounds of the Baskervilles’ in Barcelona, ‘Mister B. Gone’ in Helsinki, ‘Ghost Stories’ in Singapore, ‘A Christmas Carol’ in Mexico City and, most recently, in Dartford Library, Kent. If you fancy combining a trip to your local library with the chance of seeing the band perform live, keep checking the Coldplay twitter feed for clues to the next book.

Even if you don’t find anything, it’s a great way to get people visiting public libraries, especially at a time when so many of them are facing closure from lack of funding.

A truly extraordinary tale

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

Alice Hoffman’s latest novel, ‘The Museum of Extraordinary Things’, takes us into the beating heat of New York city at the turn of the century.

Born with webbed fingers, Coralie has been raised to be a human mermaid in her father’s museum for the strange and the unusual. From an early age, she’s been trained to hold her breath, withstand extreme cold and swim for miles in the Hudson River. Now eighteen, she performs in a tank for people who come to view her and a whole host of other living wonders for their amusement. Her father, the cold and detached Professor Sardie, rules every aspect of her life, and ruthlessly exploits his star attraction to help bring in business. As the large amusement parks of Coney Island threaten to tempt away his customers, the Professor’s methods become more and more extreme.

Eddie, born in Ukraine and driven to New York with his father after vicious pogroms killed his mother, has spent his life railing against the expectations of his Jewish faith. Now a photographer working for the New York newspapers, he sees first-hand some of the city’s most horrendous crimes and events, including the notorious Triangle Fire. But Eddie also has a skill for finding people that are lost, and when he’s approached by a man hoping to find the truth of what happened to his missing daughter, his world and Coralie’s are set to collide.

But while Coralie and Eddie and their romantic story-arc take centre stage, the story that I fell in love with was the story of New York itself. Continue reading →

A modern gothic ghost story

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

‘Bellman and Black’ is the latest offering from Diane Setterfield, whose bestselling novel ‘The Thirteenth Tale’ was recently adapted as a TV drama.

At the age of ten, William Bellman makes a perfect shot with a catapult. His target, a rook, falls to the ground. As an adult, William Bellman seems to live a charmed life. His drive, determination and willingness to learn have helped him to make his fortunes and build a happy, healthy family around him. It seems as though nothing can go wrong. But then one horrific, unstoppable incident has a devastating effect on the world that William has created. A chance encounter with Mr Black, and a promise of a business deal made in darkness, casts a shadow over his future that he can never shake off or outrun.

Business wise it seems that he can’t fail. From the mill, where he started his career, to the Bellman and Black emporium of mourning that he creates, William has an unerring sense of how to succeed. He fills every minute of his day in a frenzy of activity, trying to block out the darkness by sheer force of will. But as his life goes on, we end up longing for him to turn the same attentions and intuitions to his personal life. Continue reading →

Pierre Lemaitre’s ‘Alex’

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

It’s very difficult to explain the plot of ‘Pierre Lemaitre’s Alex’ without giving away too much. We open with the kidnapping and torture of a girl. The attempts of the police to track down this girl, with no evidence to show that a kidnapping has even taken place, help to start unravelling a web of lies, violence and deceit.

The book is split into three separate sections, each of which turns the story on its head and takes t in a completely new direction. It’s like solving a mystery within a mystery – each section throws up a new conundrum and completely changes our views on what has come before.

All of the characters are hiding secrets and our perceptions of different people shifted depending on the titbits of information that the author slowly released over the course of the novel. The pace moves along at a breakneck pace, shifting how we see characters with just a few short sentences and well-timed revelations. Continue reading →

‘The Son’ by Jo Nesbo

Posted on April 10, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

When Sonny was a teenager, his father took his own life. His suicide note revealed that he was a mole in the Oslo police force, passing information to the mysterious and shadowy figure of the Twin, a dangerous criminal with a network of resources at his disposal. This shattering revelation set his family on a path of destruction and ruin.

Now a heroin addict, Sonny has been in prison for 12 years. Since his incarceration, he’s gained an almost mythical status amongst his fellow inmates as a receiver of confessions and a cleanser of souls. But when one of these confessions strikes particularly close to home, it throws everything that Sonny has ever believed about his father’s death into question.

Homicide Inspector Simon Kefas was once Sonny’s father best friend. On the surface, his current cases are random acts of violence, driven by petty theft or drugs. But as Simon investigates, he begins to suspect that the perpetrator is driven by a much more powerful motive. And he isn’t finished. When the crimes of the present become caught up with the ghosts of the past, Simon may be the only one that can help Sonny to uncover the truth he needs.

‘The Son’ is filled with a whole cast of unsavoury and untrustworthy characters and layer upon layer of deceit. But somehow, Jo Nesbo manages to turn our perceptions of good and bad completely on their head, as the lines between justice and law and right and wrong become increasingly blurred. Continue reading →

‘Perfect’ by Rachel Joyce

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

I loved Rachel Joyce’s first novel, ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’, but found her second one harder to get through.

On the one hand, we follow the lives of Byron, his family and his friend James over the course of a summer in the 1970’s. An accident, two additional seconds and a childish need to right a wrong will have devastating effects on the lives of everyone involved.

In the other, Jim cleans tables at a café. Having been in and out of psychiatric care all his life, he keeps his head down and avoids contact with others as much as possible. He lives alone, and only by following a strict regime of rituals and routine does he feel safe.

These two threads weave together, until the truth behind what happened in 1972 is finally revealed. Continue reading →

‘Wool’ by Hugh Howey

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

In Hugh Howey’s breakout self-published fiction novel, generations of people live and die inside a giant underground silo. Their only glimpse of the outside world comes through a dirty camera lens. The worst punishment is to be put outside, where the air is so toxic that people are overcome by it in minutes.

The hills are littered with bones. But still, a seed of rebellion refuses to be put out. There are those that do not believe the outside world is as fatal as they’ve been told. Spurred on by drudgery, endless rules and conspiracy theories, these people will fight to the bitter end to uncover the truth.

This is easily one of the best books in its genre that I’ve read for a while. Continue reading →

Markus Zusak’s ‘The Book Thief’

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Emma @ The Stacked Shelf

The Book Thief opens with a crowded train, snow and the death of Liesel’s younger brother. This is the first death to touch her life. There will be many more. This is also the moment when she steals her first book, a gravediggers instruction manual.

When war breaks out, it will affect everyone living on Himmel Street – including Liesel and her new foster family. It will drive wedges between fathers and sons, and cause others to give up all hope. It will make people keep secrets from their best friends. It will force families into impossible dilemmas, as they have to choose whether or not to sacrifice their principles by staying silent and protecting themselves and those that are dependent on them.

Unlike other books set against the backdrop of WW2, The Book Thief moves away from the action of the battlefields and instead takes us inside a typical German home, on a typical German street. Rather than being a story about war, it’s a story of how war and events impacted on the life of individuals. Continue reading →