The Places I've Cried in Public by Holly Bourne, reviewed by Dawn Finch

First the blurb...

Amelie loved Reese. And she thought he loved her. But she’s starting to realise love isn’t supposed to hurt like this. So now she’s retracing their story and untangling what happened by revisiting all the places he made her cry. Because if she works out what went wrong, perhaps she can finally learn to get over him.

Note - Trigger warnings in this book for abusive relationships and mental health issues

Amelie thought she was in love. Well, it certainly seemed like love and she imagined a future that was all about Reese and their life together, but what did she mean to him? She genuinely thought he loved her right back but is real love meant to hurt this badly? Does real love have so many tears, and so many places marked by crying? Amelie retraces the steps of her relationship with Reese to try to understand how she ended up here, and in doing so sees things with clarity for the first time.

As an adult reader, this book is full of all the terrible warning signs of an abusive relationship, but seeing this is perhaps something that comes to us with age. Amelie doesn't know what Reese is doing to her and doesn't have the tools to see the warning signs. Like many girls (and women) her love blinds her to the obvious. It's only when she gets help, therapy, and distance from the abusive relationship that she can begin to see the harm that has been done to her.

This is an incredibly powerful book about the subtle slide from devotion to obsession and from adoration to abuse. It is at times a traumatic read, but also one of gentle humour, sensitivity and caring. It's not a book that preaches, despite it delivering some very powerful life lessons. I wanted to be able to rescue Amelie. I wanted to sweep her away from her situation, and hug her, and give her a good talking to, and keep her safe. I think we have all had friends that we want to rescue, and have at times, maybe, needed rescuing ourselves. My hope is that if all young women have access to books like this, maybe they’ll be better placed to rescue themselves and others.

The Places I've Cried in Public by Holly Bourne is published by Usborne Books.

Reviewed by Dawn Finch, author and librarian.
@dawnafinch
www.dawnfinch.com

Usborne have a link to some resources that might be useful if referring to this book in a school setting.
https://usborne.com/browse-books/catalogue/product/1/14585/the-places-ive-cried-in-public/

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What I Couldn't Tell You by Faye Bird, reviewed by Dawn Finch

First the blurb....

When love turns to jealousy, when jealousy turns to rage, when rage turns to destruction...

Laura was head over heels in love with Joe. But now Laura lies in a coma and Joe has gone missing. Was he the one who attacked her?

Laura's sister Tessie is selectively mute. She can't talk but she can listen. And as people tell her their secrets, she thinks she's getting close to understanding what happened on that fateful night.



YA books about young people with "issues" are very on-trend at the moment and so, when a friend recommended this book to me, I must confess to some resistance as I've read far too many "worthy" books recently and was becoming a little jaded with them. Don't get me wrong, many of these books are important, but there are an awful lot that are not. I was wrong to dump this book in with the masses, Faye Bird has given us quite a different thing. This is a book about a girl who is caught up in a terrible event, a girl who desperately wants to know what happened to her sister, a girl who wants more than anything for her life to go back to what it was before the attack, a girl who like all teens just wants to be happy and to have friends - and this girl happens to be selectively mute. 

Faye Bird has achieved a remarkable thing here, she has managed to deliver to the reader a very detailed understanding of the life of a SM young person, without ever being patronising or giving us infodumps. She does this by putting us firmly in Tessie's shoes. The prologue sets the scene by introducing us to Joe and Laura, but when we move on to the next chapter we are with Tessie. Bit by bit details of the attack on Laura trickle into our laps but, just like Tessie, we are mute. As readers we want to shout out to Tessie, to warn her, to tell her what we think, to tell her what is really going on... but we can't. We want to tell Tessie to go to someone, we want to share what she knows but we too are mute and can't be heard.

Characterisation is so well handled in this novel that I bonded quickly with Tessie as she is incredibly likeable. I became so fond of her and found myself missing her when I finally closed the book. Her frustrations and confusions become ours, we feel her struggle and I know that YA readers will find a great deal to identify with in the twisting and turning sub-plots.

I particularly like the fact that Bird does not neatly solve everything with a perfect happy ending. Life isn't like that and not every broken thing can, or should, be fixed.


What I Couldn't Tell You by Faye Bird was published by Usborne in May 2016 and is available in both print and e formats. You can find out more about the author on her website www.fayebirdauthor.com

Review by Dawn Finch, children's author and librarian. www.dawnfinch.com





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'A Voice in the Distance' by Tabitha Suzuma - reviewed by Rosalie Warren

 

 A few months ago, I asked my fellow authors on 'An Awfully Big Blog Adventure' what novels they had read featuring characters with bipolar disorder and which ones had best stuck in their minds. I was looking for books for adults as well as ones for younger readers, and was delighted to be introduced to several I hadn't previously known about, right across the age-range.

One of these was A Voice in the Distance by Tabitha Suzuma. This book says on the back cover: 'Not suitable for younger readers', but I would be happy to give it to anyone of about 13-14 upwards, though of course it's difficult to generalise. It's written in a very responsible way, but some of the content may be upsetting to some younger readers, or simply 'beyond their ken'.

Flynn Laukonen, the main protagonist, is a brilliant young pianist with a a wonderful career ahead of him. His girlfriend Jennah is a musician, too. Both are students at the Royal College of Music and share a flat. But Flynn is bipolar and relies on his daily medication to keep him from the wild excesses of mania and the depths of depression. Early in the book, he is hospitalised when his medication suddenly stops working, and Jennah is called upon to support him through this horribly difficult time. As the story progresses, tensions develop between Flynn's need of medication and his ability as a performer. His new pills cause his hands to shake, which is out of the question for a concert-level pianist. And, without them, Flynn believes he can attain heights of brilliance that are blocked by the medication.

The resulting chaos strains Flynn's and Jennah's relationship to the limit, and the book ends with some incredibly difficult decisions on both their parts. I found it impossible to predict how the story would end, and the conclusion left me in tears. It was all beautifully done, and I felt that the way alternating chapters were narrated by Flynn and Jennah worked very well indeed (after, I have to say, some initial scepticism on my part about this technique). I was given deep insights into both their personalities and the difficulties faced not only by people with bipolar but their friends and loved-ones too.

I also throughly enjoyed being immersed in the world of music students. The one thing I found a little hard to believe was their apparent lack of money worries, but apart from this, the scenes of student life, lectures, practice and so on were very convincing. The characters were all well-drawn, including the supporting ones, with plenty of mention of family as well as friends, which made a pleasant change from many books for this age-group.

Flynn's love of music shone from every page, as did his terrible struggles with his mental demons. I particularly liked the description on p.179 of how it feels to have depression. I am a sufferer from this condition myself and am not sure I have ever read a better account (and I include in this the US writer William Styron, whose Darkness Visible is my depression bible).

Any young person with a mental health problem would benefit, I'm sure, from the honesty that pervades this book. But the story is for anyone - the characters are alive, real and at times very funny. The narrative swings along at a good pace and keeps you hooked. In these days when many of us are clamouring for more novels (for all ages) that feature mental health - this is a joy to read. Suzuma does not hold back from confronting some of the toughest issues many of us will ever have to face.

Very highly recommended.


Book Details:
Title: A Voice in the Distance
Author: Tabitha Suzuma
Publisher: Definitions (Random House)
Publication Date: May 2008


This book is a sequel to A Note of Madness (2007).

All best wishes,
Ros

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