The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

I listened to the audiobook of this, which I thought was extremely well done with some really good narrators.

The story centres around a family of three sisters, Althea, Violet and Lilian, and their extended family and how they cope when Althea and her husband are sent to jail for fraud, leaving their two daughters in limbo. Even worse, Althea and Proctor are hated by the community where they live.

The story is narrated first person by the sisters, and in letters from Proctor to Althea. The sisters, along with their brother who is not as prevalent in the story, have all been affected by their unhappy childhood after their mother died leaving them to be looked after by their stern father. Althea has married her childhood sweetheart Procter, and is kind of a pillar of the community until she gets caught, although she has a difficult relationship with her daughter Kim. Lilian lives in the house where she grew up, widowed and caring for her late husband's grandmother. Violet is separated from her wife and struggling with anorexia and bulimia. The brother Joe is the only person who seems to have got off without becoming miserable and he and his wife are pillars of the church. Kim is mixed up and feels like Althea hates her due to her mother's strict attitude to her, and Baby Vi shows signs that she is becoming anorexic as well. Althea refuses to see the girls and Kim feel like it is because she hates her.

Food and hunger is a major theme of the book, as is the imagery of a river that Althea keeps going back to in her mind. The sisters are all forced by circumstances to take responsibility for themselves and their own happiness. The characters are beautifully crafted and you really feel as if you know them and will miss them after the book is finished. Aside from the sisters, I thought the characters in the prison where Althea is incarcerated were great, and Ni Ni the Korea grandmother living in the family home was so fantastically narrated by the voice of Lilian, she really brought her to life. Althea's daughters Kim and Baby Vi also provide pivotal roles to the story.

This was a brilliant book that I really enjoyed listening to, full of beautiful little touches. It explores the history of the characters in detail and why they are the way that they are.

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

I think this is probably going to be one of my favourite books of the year. A beautifully written magic realist historical novel set in Malay during the 1930s. The story centres around Ren, a young boy who is given a mission by his British master (who has died) to return his missing finger to his grave, preventing the master from walking the earth in search of it, and Ji Lin, a young woman who works as a dance partner but wishes to become a nurse. Along with Ji Lin's stepbrother Shin, they are mysteriously connected by the Confucian virtues.

A great part of the story is taken up with Chinese traditions and mythology, which is fascinating. The main motif of the story is that there is a were-tiger killing and mauling people, this is part of the magic realist aspect as well as imagery the author uses to describe the reoccurring dreams where Ren and Ji Lin communicate.

The time period and the place are perfectly chosen as you get the amazing imagery of the tiger and the sense that things are changing as the expats live and work in Malay, mostly as doctors and missionaries. Another important character is William, who works as a doctor and is Ren's new master. There is a sense of the western world colliding with the eastern world, as well as old versus new and Ji Lin's role as a woman is changing. She longs for the freedom of escaping from her family by becoming a nurse, but at the same time she feels tied to her mother and to her stepbrother, whom she is in love with. The characters are also very well written and it's the kind of book that you could easily re-read to pick up more of the hints in the story. The characters are never quite what they seem, no-one is perfectly good or evil although Ren has such innocence and is masterfully written, something I image was difficult as he is so young. The unexpectedness of the characters make them even more human and is a big part of why I think this is such a magical book.

As readers have found on Quercus's brilliant #NightTigerTogether Twitter book club, it makes for some brilliant discussions and would make a perfect book club read. Yangsze Choo has participated in some of the discussions and has provided a brilliant insight into the writing process, she is currently in talks with Netflix about making her novel The Ghost Bride into a TV series. Can't wait to read it or see it as she provided some hints about it in the novel. She is also doing a Q&A on Twitter next week, so I will be looking forward to participating in this too.

Results of one month of Reading Harder

I'm currently drowning in books again, but I think it's been a successful month. The greatest thing being that I finished Mr Whicher, started The Moonstone and Orhan Pamuk. I don't think I've ever read a Turkish novel, but I've finished The Black Book and I'm in the middle of The New Life. Very different. very deep with an almost dream-like quality. I'm not sure if it's to do with cultural aspects or the way that Turkish is translated. I think I would like to go back to The Black Book as I think it's the kind of novel you could read multiple times and interpret differently.

Whicher was good, but I didn't find it brilliant. It has encouraged me to read a bit more history, however, and I am still in a bit of a French phase, particularly reading a history of the infamous diamond necklace and I've foolishly started reading the Dumas novel. No idea how I'm going to get through that and The Moonstone, I'm already suffering from the racist overtones and irritating comedy servant in Wilkie's novel. Not that you read Wilkie Collins for subtlety.

By Jebulon - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11383484

 

 A pretty hideous necklace. 

Otherwise, I am reading The Sunne in Splendour but not getting very far yet, still trying to read War and Peace and hankering after A Suitable Boy. There's something about the summer months that makes me want to read massive tomes about India but I can't do this particular novel without some sort of way to record the characters or else I get a bit lost. I'm in a bit of spate of starting lots of books then not really getting into them and I have a couple of series on the go that I know I've been neglecting (in particular the Matthew Shardlake series and I've got a bit demotivated with the old Poldark around book 5. There's 12 of them. I'm hoping I'll go back to them in time but I haven't really started Heartstone or The Four Swans so I'm giving myself a bit of a break. Sometimes I inevitable feel like I read a few too many serious books. It's great, I love it, but I could probably do with getting into something a bit more frivolous right now.

Read Harder Challenge

Checking my reading list lately it occurs to me how many books I read that are by European white men, especially of the dead variety. Although I own lots of books by women and people of different races, I think I've got a bit stuck in a rut of reading books from the same perspective and in particular nineteenth century classics and books set in that time period.

So this month I have decided to try and challenge myself to try and broaden my horizons. I am not going to ban myself from reading books I've already started, but I'm hoping that all the books I start will be by alternative authors.

So far I have continued the French theme I have been pursuing by reading The Lost King of France, a history book describing the downfall of the French royal family and attempts to trace Louis XVII through DNA testing. Although I enjoy reading history books I don't often read books with forensic analysis. This was very interesting and obviously well researched. Deborah Cadbury's description of the treatment of the Dauphin was heartbreaking but avoided becoming too melodramatic. 

Tigers in Red Weather, on the other hand, was wonderfully melodramatic. Full of lurid family secrets and deeply flawed characters. I liked how the story is teased out through the shift in narrative viewpoints so that the reader is not actually sure about the heart of the mystery until the end.

Finally, I finished A Little Life, something that had been on my reading list for a while. Not an easy book to get into due to the subject matter and it seemed like most readers either loved it or hated it. I was in the minority of appreciating it. I thought that the writing was really good, I could appreciate the uplifting moments (I cannot understand people giving books low ratings for being depressing, especially books that are about child abuse) and I was moved and horrified by the story but I also recognised the criticisms, that perhaps Yanagihara missed out on portraying homosexuals and homosexual relationships in a positive way and that the abuse depicted is so very extensive and revealed throughout the book in such a way that it starts to read a little like a hurt/comfort fan fic where the poor protagonist is heaped with such a litany of horrifying things happening to them that it kind of numbs the reader. Once I got into it, I raced through it but the second half got a little frustrating with Jude continually apologising and refusing to see a psychiatrist or do much else to help himself. Anyway, it got 4 stars and I didn't write a review on Goodreads. 

As a follow up I have started The Goldfinch. I haven't had a great history with Donna Tartt, I hated The Secret History to the point of blocking it from my mind and I can't even remember if I actually finished it. But so far I have been impressed with the writing and the plot. 

I am also considering continuing with the French theme by reading a book that's been on the old 'to read' list for a long time, A Place of Greater Safety. I've started it a few times but somehow never got into it. 

Otherwise, I am not sure where the read harder challenge will take me, although I think I'd like to read a little bit more history and also Villa America.