THIS IS NOT FORGIVENESS by CELIA REES. Guest Review by LINDA NEWBERY

Awfully Big Reviews is taking a short break until the New Year. Thank you, writers and readers, for the wonderful range of books and other materials mentioned here over the last few months.


So here's wishing everyone - especially all the regular Reviewers - a most Happy Christmas and a cheering and comfortable New Year for 2012. With plenty of interesting reading, of course.

To conclude our Reviews for 2011, here's an excellent Awfully Big Guest Review from the Carnegie winning children's and Y/A author Linda Newbery.

 Best wishes from Penny Dolan and all the Awfully Big Review team.

Most of Celia Rees’ readers will know her through her excellent historical novels such as Witch Child, Sovay and The Fool’s Girl. But before Witch Child broke through to major success and well-deserved acclaim, its author specialised in contemporary thrillers, and she returns to this genre with her latest book.

This compelling new novel bears similarities to my favourite Celia Rees book, The Wish House (which is not meant to imply any criticism of This is not Forgiveness; just that The Wish House is the one I wish I’d written myself). Both have a somewhat gullible and inexperienced central male figure who is captivated by an intriguing, seductive girl. Both novels take place in the summer break from school, during which the boy is drawn into this girl’s world and experiences first love, first sex, first death, as the cover of The Wish House so memorably puts it. Both Richard in the earlier novel and Jamie in this one are irrevocably changed by their experiences, left with complicated feelings of shame and guilt.

Here, the seductive girl is more dangerous than Clio, the artist’s daughter in The Wish House. She is Caro, already viewed with suspicion and distaste by Jamie’s well-grounded sister, Martha, when Jamie takes up with her. From the moment Jamie meets Caro, we know that he’ll do whatever she wants. And she has the same effect on Jamie’s older brother, ex-soldier Rob, invalided out of the army and now left purposeless, but armed with knowledge of military tactics and equipment which Caro intends to put to practical use.

Having gone through a phase of Tarot-reading, she’s now moved on to Red Army Faction anarchism. She “doesn’t do love”, as she makes clear to both brothers; only sex; she is adept at keeping them both in thrall, playing one off against the other. When an idea presents itself as a way of emulating her idols in the Baader-Meinhof gang, she easily recruits Rob to her cause.

We know from the opening chapter, in which Jamie describes his brother’s bleak and sparsely-attended funeral, that Rob won’t survive. But who will he take with him?  The narrative is shared among the three characters; Jamie’s first-person account dominates, but is interspersed with Rob’s podcasts and Caro’s journal entries.

Such is Rees’ skill that the reader doesn’t feel capable of condemning either Rob or Caro; impressions must be constantly adjusted. As for the ending: the reader will certainly be waiting for the explosive situation to detonate, but will more than likely be as surprised as I was by how this happens.

 This is not Forgiveness is a powerful thriller which will readily engage its readers, but also it explores with painful honesty the overwhelming compulsion of teenage love and lust, the attraction of identifying with a cause to give some purpose to life, and the ways in which relationships can be manipulated and loyalties misplaced. It will surely be one of the most impressive young adult novels published this year.

Linda Newbery

www.lindanewbery.co.uk

Linda's new novel for Orion, THE TREASURE HOUSE, will be published in May 2012, along with reissues of THE SANDFATHER and CATCALL, with new covers. THE DAMAGE DONE, one of Linda's own favourite young adult titles is now available as a Kindle edition

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE

THE WISH HOUSE by Celia Rees

The Wish House reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr

I loved this book. I grew up rebellious and grumpy. At age twelve on holiday in a new city, I once asked my parents to walk on the other side of the road to me. They being kind, loving and understanding parents, complied. Later as an awkward fourteen year old all I wanted to do was get away from what I thought was my very humdrum, ordinary family. I lived in a small seaside village and in the summer of ’61 when a local artist asked me to help in his studio/shop I thought I had reached the pinnacle of sophistication. So when I read Celia Rees’s The Wish House I had a strong sense of déjà vu.

The Wish House is that perfect story that tells of this transition between childhood and a very different more adult world that confuses and excites. Rees has said on the backflap: ‘Everyone has special places and special summers, special people, that combine to create times they will never forget.’

Richard on his annual camping holiday in Wales goes exploring and finds the passions, undertows and intrigues he yearns for in the messy, bohemian lifestyle of the summer people living in the Wish House. The contrast between his own caravan-holiday family experience and this family with its rowdy mealtimes, pot-smoking son, half-naked mother and brooding artist father, is vast. He can’t keep away. And he especially can’t keep away from the daughter Clio, with her dark hair and mysterious violet eyes.

Celia Rees constructs her novel in a compelling and mystical way, adding new dimensions brush stroke by brush stroke so that just when you think you know what's happening, something new is revealed. She’s clever at with-holding information. The reader, like Richard, is almost beguiled into believing one thing when in fact the reality is something else.

The way Richard and Clio meet up in the forest is a perfect example of her ability to capture an inchoate moment that leads breathlessly on to something far more powerful. The forest with its wildness and lack of containment unleashes in them both a wild playfulness. Their energy and awkwardness goes into playing highly imaginative almost childish games of gods and hunting that bring them to edge of what Richard truly wants to experience… a sexual encounter.

The characterisation is superb. Clio, Richard’s obsession, could easily have in a lesser writer become a cardboard figure but Celia Rees manages to imbue her with unexpected reactions so the reader, like Richard, can’t pin her down. She remains remote almost adult, but in brief moments, the shellac of her character cracks to reveal the fragility of her youth. These surprising moments of vulnerability are what make Celia Rees’s writing so powerful... that and her ability to evoke scenes, whether a crazy bonfire moment on the beach or a wild Bacchanalian feast, or the bleakness of the caravan park itself, that imprint as vividly as film in the mind.

The story is interspersed with descriptions of paintings from Clio’s father’s retrospective exhibition. But Rees uses a very different language for these descriptions. The words are coldly analytical and dispassionate even though they are describing scenes with undertones of sexuality that reveal a tangled web of intrigue. The removed voice adds texture and expands and almost reflects as if in a mirror for Richard, his own sexual awakening and experience of what happened that summer.

As in all her books, Pirates, Witch Child, and Sorceress, Celia Rees writes strong female characters so that even though this story is essentially about Richard and told through his viewpoint, the reader feels it's also Clio’s story. For them both, the summer has been a period of growing up that evokes deep memories. In revisiting the summer through Clio’s father’s retrospective exhibition, Richard is able to see it as a capsule in time and is able to move on.

Highly recommended for someone who wants an unusual and vibrant read that perfectly captures a moment of vulnerability.

The Wish House published by Young Picador UK in 2005 ISBN 978-0333947395

The Wish House published by Candlewick Press US in 2006 ISBN 978-0783629519

Reviewed by Dianne Hofmeyr www.diannehofmeyr.com

Celia has a blog up today Sat 8th on ABBA http://awfullybigblogadventure.blogspot.com/2011/10/notebooks-celia-rees.html

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE