Second time around, but worth it! ...by Adèle Geras

This review was posted a while ago on another website to which I contribute, together with Linda Newbery and Celia Rees. It's Writers Review and you can follow it on Twitter @writersreview1 

I felt that this book was so unusual that it deserved to be brought to everyone's attention more than once. It's a picture book for adults, and as such quite a rare beast. I am also putting up this review again because I reckon it's the perfect Christmas present for a FAMILY: the kind of family where generations come together to enjoy sharing a beautiful thing. I also think any classroom would benefit from having a copy on its shelves. There's so much to look at, pore over, enjoy again and again.

It might LOOK expensive at £25.00 but just consider  the other things you might buy at such a sum....and the answer is: not very much at all and nothing I can think of which will give such pleasure nor last as long.  Keats said it best: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. 

Here's the review! And hope it's not too early to wish everyone a very  Merry Christmas and lots of good things in 2017.

Adèle 

I came home one day from a trip to London to find a huge parcel waiting for me. It was this book: THE QUIET MUSIC OF GENTLY FALLING SNOW, written and illustrated by Jackie Morris,  the very well known artist and writer of many wondrous books for children. The volume  measures 37cms by 28cms. It's a   a picture book for adults and I believe it would be good if there were more of these published, because we don't stop appreciating beauty when we leave our childhood behind.  It's published by  Welsh publisher,  Graffeg, and they've done Morris proud. It costs £25 which seems to me to be excellent value. 

The book has an  usual genesis. Since the year 2000, a charity called HELP FOR MUSICIANS UK has commissioned Jackie Morris to create a Christmas card for them. All of the cards are reproduced at the back of the book. This book knits and crafts those cards together into a single volume made up of many stories, weaving their threads (a favourite word of Morris's) into a beautiful tale (or tales)  of loss and love and music. Because of the origin of the cards, the stories are about music; its creation, its destruction; its fragilities and strengths. Morris's love of music comes over in every story and there's a sort of counterpoint that runs through them.  

Morris has added pictures as well as stories. The creatures who inhabit these tales are ones we know she loves from her other books: bears, swans, hares and birds. The ingredients of fairy tales (towers, snow, forests, ships, trees) fill the narrative, skilfully woven into something singular and strange. Reading the book is very much like listening to different songs, different tunes drifting into your consciousness.They're described as lullabies for grown ups and that's very accurate. The narratives are loose and flowing. The characters appear and reappear and disappear and the animals change and become creatures different from the ones we first thought we'd met. The rhythm of the prose sets out to lull the reader and succeeds in doing exactly this. 

The instruments, depicted many times in the wonderful paintings on every page, are fiddles, flutes, lutes and drums. Anyone interested in identifying them can spend many happy hours looking at each double page spread and seeing what can be found in each one. 

The pear tree in the  'partridge in a pear tree' illustration is also the Singing Ringing Tree which goes on to create forests which it takes seven weeks to walk through. That seven is of course another link with the world of the fairy tales.

This book would make a most beautiful Christmas present for any adult who enjoys fairytales, music, and above all, rich and gloriously coloured illustrations which depict people, creatures and places which are buried in our imagination and which, thanks to Morris, we can pretend are real.  She has moved the fantastical from the realm of our dreams and into the light of our real world.

VISIT:  helpmusicians.org.uk 

Hardback published by GRAFFEG

£25

ISBN: 9781910862650

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE

'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

My blog
My website
My Facebook author page
My alter ego, Dr Sheila Glasbey 
Follow me on Twitter @Ros_Warren  






Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE

MEMORIES IN A HOUSE by Lucy Boston. Reviewed by Adèle Geras

Before you embark on this review, dear Reader, please follow the link below to a piece I wrote in June on the History Girls blog. This will fill you in a little on the background to what I have to say today and also show you something of the house which figures in the book I'm discussing.

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/manor-hemingford-grey-by-adele-geras.html

I bought a book called MEMORIES shortly after visiting the Manor. It's a handsome volume, published by Oldknow Books, an imprint set up by Lucy Boston's family and estate. This contains two memoirs: Perverse and Foolish which speaks of Boston's childhood and youth and Memories of a House which is about the Manor, and the life this most intelligent and interesting of writers lived in it. It speaks of how she restored it, how she made the garden, how the whole fabric of what we see today was put together over years.

The book has an excellent introduction by Jill Paton-Walsh, another highly intelligent and sensitive writer who was a friend of Lucy Boston's. It's good to have the personal view and it adds to what Boston herself has revealed to us. She is a somewhat guarded writer and clearly a modest and unassuming person. For instance, for me and for thousands of visitors to the house, the patchworks which Boston made over the decades are one of the main attractions. These and how she came to create them; how they fitted into the almost constant work of restoration of the house, to say nothing of the writing of the novels, are not mentioned. To anyone who didn't know about them, Lucy Boston's own words would not provide any hint of their beauty and originality.

What strikes a reader is the clear sound of Lucy Boston's shrewd and elegant words. It's quite spooky (and the Manor is the most haunted of houses) how clearly her voice comes through the text, almost as though she were speaking to you. It's like an audio book without the audio. She's fearless, sensible, practical and yet very aware of strange vibes in the atmosphere. Reading between the lines, the villagers of Hemingford Grey were not kind to her during the Second World War. Lucy Boston wore an Austrian dirndl skirt for comfort and ease and this was regarded as most suspicious. Perhaps she was a German spy!

It's hard to pick out favourite things from a book like this. There were many sentences I felt like underlining. For example: Very small cracks in our outer shell of reason let in very cold air. The most moving part of the book is the account Boston gives of many musical evenings she used to host in the Manor at which the young airmen from a nearby station would come and sit on cushions and listen to every sort of record on a huge machine which you can see in my post at the top of this review. I also loved her thoughts about the roses in her garden, because I am mad about roses and she speaks so wonderfully about them. Also, for any children's writers, her account of going to collect the 1961 Carnegie medal (for A Stranger at Green Knowe ) is quite hilarious and quite ferocious in its merciless skewering of those who in those days as often today, put children's books on an altogether lower plane of achievement.

You are not going to find this beautifully-produced book in Waterstone's or WHSmith's. You won't even find it in independent bookshops. You have to write to Diana Boston, Lucy's daughter-in-law, who now lives in the Manor and still shows visitors round herself. The house is well worth a visit but even if you have no intention of doing that, treat yourself to something that will be a joy forever. The ISBN is: 095232332X . It's not expensive. £17.00 won't buy you much that's as lasting and pleasurable as these words. Send a cheque to Diana Boston at The Manor, Hemingford Grey, Cambridgeshire, PE28 9BN. The telephone number is: 01480 - 463134. The website is: http://www.greenknowe.co.uk/

Return to REVIEWS HOMEPAGE