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Posted:
Mar 19, 2013
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Oryx & Crake

oryx-and-crakeAuthor: Margaret Atwood
First Published: May 2003
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Series: MaddAdam #1
416 pages (mass market paperback)

Simply amazing!

Two years ago, I read The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood and thought it was a great book, even though the ending half threw me off a bit. Later, I realized the ending half of The Year of the Flood was actually the point of the story that picked up from the ending of another book, Oryx & Crake. That’s when I realized that I actually read the second book in a series!  No wonder I was a bit lost near the end. Anyway, I did like The Year of the Flood quite a bit regardless and told myself I’ll read Oryx & Crake ASAP so that everything makes sense. ASAP apparently means two years later to me, haha.

So yes, here I am, having finally finished the first book of this wonderful series. Oryx & Crake is told by Jimmy, or Snowman, as he likes to be called in the post-apocalyptic world. After a disastrous biological virus of some sort wipes out humanity, Snowman believes he is the last human alive. Everyday he struggles to survive in a world where the animals have been genetically modified to either be more docile than they usually are, or more vicious. He has considered just killing himself off and being done with everything, but he continues to live because he promised his close friends, Crake and Oryx, that he will watch over the Crakers.

The Crakers are genetically modified “humans” that are vastly different from Snowman. They were created by his genius friend Crake, back when the world was still whole. The story alternates between the present, and flashbacks of the past, when Snowman was Jimmy. Jimmy and Crake were best of friends, but Crake was always the more genius of the two. Even when they separated and went to different schools, they remained in touch. One day, Crake invites Jimmy to work at his company, and it is there that Jimmy begins to fully comprehend the genetic projects Crake has been up to. He is assisted by Oryx, a girl that Jimmy and Crake have actually seen in kiddie porn. Both boys fall in love with Oryx.

Like with The Year of the Flood, this is a book with a powerful vision of the future, one that is depressingly bleak. I really love this book, and enjoyed it even more than I did with The Year of the Flood. Unlike its sequel, Oryx & Crake wasn’t just all about the apocalyptic present; there was also the time when the world was seemingly perfect. To them, it was a utopic point of civilization; to the reader, it appears utterly dystopic. The world is ruled by corporations and companies, which really, if you keep up with the news, appears to be the eerily similar path we are heading down. People want to be healthier, fitter, smarter, more beautiful, for as little world as possible, and the corporations in this novel fully take advantage of that. It might sound crazy, but I love books like this that speculate on the future, no matter how awful it may be. I love picking out what is plausible and what isn’t. A lot of things in this book sound like it could possibly happen in the far future.

I liked this novel because there is almost a philosophical component to it, as well. For example, the Crakers bring up an interesting idea. Crake takes the idea of humans becoming better extreme when he creates the Crakers — why not just completely reinvent the human species? Crake gets rid of a lot of what he calls unnecessary human behaviours and creates a “human” that I would argue is not a human anymore, even if they physically resemble one. This book is also full of ideas for conspiracy theories — some people may already believe them! As an example, in the book, Crake says that humans have already pretty much invented the cure for everything, but they keep coming up with new viruses in order to sell more medicine. It is creepily possible … Incidentally, this is what leads to the entire human population dying, when a super virus goes haywire.

And, of course, the writing is fabulous. It was actually quite easy to read and I was hooked onto the story not too many chapters in. I had a hard time putting it down. I loved the characters, they were so memorable. I haven’t fully figured out what was going on between the three characters, specifically Crake and Oryx. They are both such mysterious characters. Crake, especially. You can never fully figure out what’s going on in Crake’s head, which I think is the point. When it comes to Crake, there are so many ways to speculate about why he is behaving the way he is.

I definitely recommend this book to everyone!

My Rating:

Posted:
Mar 7, 2013
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The Colour Of Tea

thecolourofteaAuthor: Hannah Tunnicliffe
First Published: June 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada
320 pages (paperback)

I bought this book as a part of a 3 books for $10 deal at Chapters not too long ago. I had picked out 2 books I wanted to read, but didn’t know what to get as the third book. After some browsing through the selection available for this deal, I settled on this one, The Colour Of Tea, for no good reason except that I like tea and enjoying afternoon tea sessions (I saw the macarons on the cover!) I was kind of disappointed by the novel, sadly, and it didn’t really help that the novel was in present tense, which I am not a big fan of … but as it cost only $3-ish, I can’t complain too much, I suppose.

This novel is about a 30-something year old woman named Grace who is experiencing something of a mid-life crisis. She is a “trailing spouse”, meaning she moves with her husband wherever his job takes him around the world. They are currently in Macau, though she is originally from London and her husband, from Australia. Grace is lamenting the fact that she has never had a stable job of her own, usually picking up a waitressing job wherever they happen to be living. Compounding this situation is her infertility. She and her husband have spent much money on fertility treatments in hopes of starting a family, but when her premature menopause hits, Grace feels as if she has lost a purpose in life, and feels incredible guilt. And as a last part of her midlife crises situation, she finds herself becoming ridiculously attracted to a friend of her’s, a French chef named Leon.

Spontaneously one day, Grace decides to use all the money they have been saving for fertility treatments and open up a little cafe in Macau. Her husband does not seem too excited about this idea but Grace plows ahead with the plan anyway. The cafe is named Lillian’s, and specializes in macarons, a sweet confectionery that is popular for eating during afternoon tea. As Lillian’s grows and becomes successful, Grace finds herself slowly finding new friends and figuring out a new purpose for her life.

This book is this author’s debut novel, and I think for a first book, it is alright, but I did not find out it was a first novel until after I finished the book. The story is actually quite okay — it wasn’t particularly exciting, but it was a feel-good story and was great for when I wanted to unwind and just read something light. Sometimes I wasn’t sure where the heck the plot was heading to, but I just kept reading and let it do its own thing and eventually I reached the last page. I was never fully absorbed into the story but I never got too bored with the story either.

My biggest problem was characterization, which I felt was quite poor in this book. I could write a little something about many of the characters (most of them were kind of one dimensional to me), but the character that I felt was the weakest was the main character, Grace. Grace’s character had too many bottled up feelings: she was depressed by her infertility, her lack of friends in Macau, and she had a strained history with her mother, a character who seems to loom in her thoughts quite often and frequently bring up feelings of bitterness and regret. That’s a LOT of feelings, and she was, understandably, sad.

What I didn’t understand was why she would complain about nobody ever communicating with her when she worked so hard to avoid people. She rarely ever made an effort to communicate her many feelings, yet complained that nobody understood her. Really, she seemed quite socially awkward. That was quite frustrating because I know people like that in real life and it drives me bonkers.

One more thing about Grace that I had a bit of a difficult time wrapping my head around is how she went from having no business knowledge (at least, none that was stated) to owning an ridiculously successful cafe that she created from scratch, in less than a year. I mean, that’s possible, but it takes a bit of a leap of faith on my part. Granted, I don’t know anything about small businesses myself, but I feel like it should not have been as easy as Grace’s own experience.

Sadly, I don’t think I will recommend this book. If you are interested, by all means go ahead, don’t let me stop you! But if you are unsure, I don’t think you are missing much if you skip this book over. And FYI, the title is not misspelled! Colour is the British/Canadian spelling :)

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Posted:
Dec 9, 2012
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Tigers In Red Weather

Author: Liza Klaussman
First Published: July 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
269 pages (eBook)

I’m not really sure what caused me to pick up this novel to read. I first saw it at the bookstore, and quite liked the cover. Reminded me a bit of The Great Gatsby. The title was also quite intriguing — tigers in red weather? What could that mean?  Anyway, I eventually got the novel and read it. While at first I was kind of “meh” about it, the story really grew on me and I ended up really liking it. I have been ruminating on the story ever since I finished it — so much betrayal, guilt, love and lust. Everyone’s hiding something, from someone else or from themselves. It starts off rather light hearted but snowballs into an intense drama.

Tigers In Red Weather is a story set in the mid 40′s to late 50′s time period. It spans two decades, give or take, and follows five main characters. The novel is split into five parts, one for each of them. Nick (who is a woman — that threw me off in the beginning, when I didn’t realize she was a woman) and Helena are cousins and best friends. They enjoy spending their summers at Tiger House, a family-owned estate. Their life seems perfect, what with the ending of World War II approaching: Nick’s husband, Hughes, is coming back from war and Helena is soon to marry her own husband and move to glamorous Hollywood.

However, life is not as wonderful and perfect as it seems. Hughes has come back a changed man and Helena’s husband, Avery, is a sly and untrustworthy figure. A decade later, the cousins reunite at Tiger House, now each with their own child: Daisy (Nick’s) and Ed (Helena’s). They throw a party, not knowing that that night, everything in their lives was going to change. A murder happens, the victim being the maid of a neighbour’s, and everyone’s secrets and guilts begin to leak out, spanning another decade.

The story does not move forward in time in a straightforward manner. It generally moves in one direction, but also hops backwards into the past and then back into the present, and occasionally into the future. This created a very suspenseful atmosphere in the book, although at first I didn’t realize there was a ‘mystery’ involved so I didn’t understand why we were jumping around time so much. Besides suspense, there is also an element of horror although I would not go so far to classify it as horror. More of a “something is not quite right” element, really. It’s not evident at first. It kind of creeps up on you. At first you don’t think anything is off, just a little odd. Then you have a sense something is not quite right, which slowly but surely makes you feel kind of chilled, until at last the truth comes out. Perhaps sharper readers would have caught on earlier to the truth/secret, but I did not see it coming and when it was all revealed, I was quite surprised because when I first started the book, I had no idea it would head in such a dramatic direction!

I liked this book because I felt it struck a good balance between character development and plot, not too much or too little of either. The characters in particular were lovely. Each one was flawed in their own unique way, fighting their own demons. It’s definitely a grim story despite the summery-looking book cover. The characters are all miserable but hiding behind lies they’ve told themselves (or things they have convinced themselves of being the truth).  It’s just all very well done in my opinion, the characters all captured my interest one hundred percent. In particular, Ed was fascinating and what compelled me to keep reading because he seemed to be the biggest mystery of all. He was the last perspective introduced in the story so you don’t get to find out his thoughts and feelings until the end, so for the longest time, I was just guessing as to why Ed was the way he was, and what really happened that midsummer night with the maid’s murder.

Tigers In Red Weather is a fascinating read and if the plot synopsis sounds interesting to you, I’d definitely recommend you check it out.

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Posted:
Nov 26, 2012
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The Casual Vacancy

Author: J. K. Rowling
First Published: September 27, 2012
Publisher: Little Brown Book Group
426 pages (eBook)

The most anticipated book of 2012! At first I wanted to read it because I am a fan of Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling.  I know, I know, everyone said not to read it if you’re doing it just because it’s by J. K. Rowling, but let’s face it — there’s no other real reason to read it except for that one reason. If that cover said someone else’s name on it, I doubt many people would even glance at it. Then, I changed my mind and I didn’t want to read it because I found out the plot synopsis and it didn’t sound interesting to me at all. I mean, even the cover is pretty boring. I think, eventually I would have succumbed and gave the book a try, but anyway, the real reason I read this book is because it is the November book of my book club.

The Casual Vacancy is a grim story about a little, tiny town called Pagford. Barry Fairbrother, a member of the parish council suddenly dies of a stroke in his very early forties, leaving a ‘casual vacancy’ on the council. Quickly, various members of the town begin to run for the empty spot in the upcoming election. On the surface, it seems like the casual vacancy is the only issue at hand, but Barry’s death reveals the many, many problems and unhappiness that various townspeople have with their own families, with their neighbours, with their own children, with their parents. The Casual Vacancy is a dark and realistic portrait of human unhappiness, frustration and loneliness.

I have mixed feelings towards this book. When I first started this book, maybe for the first half or so, I was really bored. There’s just no other way to put it, sorry — I was bored. I know character-centered stories aren’t normally my cup of tea, but I’ve enjoyed a good handful of them before so it’s not that I don’t enjoy them, I’m just picky with them. This character-centered novel was simply not capturing my attention though. There were so many characters introduced at once that I couldn’t keep track of them. I got Samantha and Shirley mixed up a lot, even up to the end of the novel. Several characters have nicknames so it threw me off a bit to remember two names for one character when I already have so many to keep track of. I did like how there were many perspectives, from adults to children, but the story flits from character to character so often that it isn’t until two-thirds of the way through that I feel I really start to get to know the characters and how they tick — the ones I could remember and tell apart from the others anyway.

The story did get more interesting and picked up some more pace once the computer-hacking stuff begins (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you read it). And then from there, the story got more and more depressing and tragic, in an interesting way. I really was quite absorbed into the story in the last 100 pages or so, and I feel the last 100 pages really redeemed some of the boring-ness I felt for the first half of the novel. The ending made my heart clench up, it was quite sad, and if I was the type of person who easily cried when reading or watching movies, I think I would have. I think the best part of this novel are the teenager characters Rowling presents. She’s really quite good at writing about turbulent and angsty teens. It’s no surprise to me that all the best scenes in the novel involved the teenager characters, especially the ending. (And on that note, while I liked the ending because it got quite an emotional response from me, I’m not quite sure what I was supposed to take away from the ending. It felt like quite a hopeless and depressing ending).

As for complaints that Rowling “tried too hard” to be adult in this book, such as using swear words and having sex in the novels and stuff, I think that’s just silly. Thousands of other adult novels have swearing and sex in it, many of them to much worse degrees than what is presented in The Casual Vacancy. I think anyone complaining about the adult content in this book needs to stop thinking of Rowling as a children’s writer and comparing her older works to this one. The Casual Vacancy is meant to be a realistic and grim picture of human relationships and those things are a part of real life. For all it’s worth, I commend Rowling for trying to write something completely different from Harry Potter.

Overall, I still have some mixed feelings towards the book. I thought the beginning was sluggish and dull, but the ending half was actually quite interesting, in a rather morbid way. I don’t think I would ever re-read this book though. It’s nothing like Harry Potter at all, if that is your only reason for reading this book. If you are a person who enjoys books about character development and “life stories” kind of novels, this is a book for you. If not, I would be kind of wary about picking it up.

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Posted:
Sep 8, 2012
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Life Of Pi

Author: Yann Martel
First Published: September 2001
Publisher: Vintage Canada
356 pages (paperback)


My sister nagged me to get this book. “It’s soooo good,” she gushed. But I ignored her for the most part, since we tend to read different kinds of books, and also the title made it sound kind of religious-y or some sort of spiritual book, which I am really not that into. Then the movie trailer came out, and again, my sister started up with her you-should-read-this-it’s-so-good thing again. She never really provided a reason why she thought it was good, I just kind of went out on a limb here and decided, fine, I will read it.

Well. This turned out to be one of the most awesome books I’ve ever read.

Life Of Pi is about a boy named Pi. He lives in India, is the son of a zookeeper and believes and practices three religions at once (calling himself a Hindu, a Christian and a Muslim). One day, his father decides that they should sell the zoo and move to Winnipeg, Canada. They sell most of the animals to zoos in America and board a large cargo ship with their animals to North America.

Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, the ship sinks and animals are all let loose and running around in a panic. Pi luckily escapes the ship in a lifeboat, only to find that it is also refuge for an orangutan, a hyena, a zebra and a tiger. As the lone lifeboat drifts aimlessly in the Pacific Ocean, the inhabitants of the lifeboat dwindle down to just Pi and the tiger.

You might be thinking how can a story about a guy and a tiger drifting in the sea for 227 days can possibly be interesting but it was surprisingly hard to put down. I read this book originally as a commuting book — it has clear writing and is easy to read and understand, which is one of my ‘requirements’ for being a book worthy of commuting — but when I got to part two (the part where he is adrift at sea), I couldn’t wait till the next day to continue the story on the bus. I had to keep reading it now!

The ending is a twist. I’m not going to reveal it (though skip this paragraph if you wanted to know nothing about the ending at all), but I really liked the ending despite the feelings of conflict it created in me. I think the ending is supposed to make you think about God (or religions) and even as a non-religious person, it made me think a little bit about God and philosophy and all that kind of stuff. The moral, to me, seemed to be saying, “If you can believe this story, you can believe in God too, no?”

This is one of those books that can be deeply meaningful and thought provoking. Definitely highly recommend!

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Posted:
Sep 3, 2012
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Imaginary Girls

Author: Nova Ren Suma
First Published: June 2011
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
348 pages (hardcover)

Imaginary Girls is a kind of story you don’t really encounter too often in YA books. Most people label it as a paranormal or supernatural book, but I think it’s closer to surrealism. Surrealism isn’t something YA authors write about very often so if you exclusively read YA, chances are you haven’t come across this type of story, but I really enjoy surreal stories so it was a pleasant surprise to run into it here. Be warned; surrealism isn’t for everyone. If you’ve never read surrealism, you’ll probably think such stories are just “weird” or “doesn’t make sense.” Some people seem to hate it, some seem to love it. Really depends on your cup of tea.

Imaginary Girls is mainly about two sisters named Ruby and Chloe. Chloe is the younger one, by five years, and the narrator of this story. These two sisters are incredibly close and will literally do anything for one another, though the relationship balance is not equal — Ruby thinks she knows what’s best for Chloe and dictates everything, whereas Chloe is in awe of her sister and will listen to everything Ruby says. The girls live in a small town by a reservoir that is out of bounds, but parties are frequently held there anyway by the teenagers of the town.

The story opens up with one such party, where Ruby brags that her little sister is such a great swimmer, she can swim across the reservoir. Chloe, being obedient, attempts the swim but runs into a floating rowboat with the dead body of a girl named London, a girl she knows from her class. Flash forward, Chloe is living with her dad (the girls have different fathers) away from town, but Ruby forces Chloe to come back and live with her, acting like London never died. When Chloe returns to the small town with Ruby, she finds everything very peculiar. London is, indeed, alive, and what’s more, Ruby has some strange way of making everyone in town do exactly as she says.

I quite enjoyed this book. The writing is really great and the dialogue felt real and not cheesy. As I said, I do like surrealism so I had no problem slipping into the story. Like Chloe, I was tossed into a dream-like world where I wasn’t sure if what was happening was REALLY happening or not. I felt a bit haunted while reading this book. You know something is not quite right, it’s almost like there’s an element of creepiness. I wasn’t sure if there really was some super powers happening here, or ghosts or what, but it was about halfway through the book that I decided that this was a surrealistic story. I guess you can say “magical realism” too, which would be another label if you like labels.

Then there’s Chloe and Ruby’s relationship, which is the big focus in this novel. Ruby is someone the entire town practically worships. She gets her way with everything and all the boys want to date her. Chloe, too, looks up to her sister, obsessed with her as much as Ruby is obsessed with herself, but with her return to town, she senses that it’s strange how everyone just does whatever Ruby says. Ruby’s not exactly a kind person. She’s self-centered to the extreme and acts like the entire world was created for her and her sister. Chloe is the only person Ruby cares about. It’s an interesting relationship where Chloe is the only person who has potential to “control” Ruby, but she doesn’t. Ruby has everyone under her spell. Ironically, because  I’m a third party looking into the story from the outside, I didn’t really like Ruby. Brilliantly written characters with great dialogue, but if I met Ruby in real life, I wouldn’t like her one bit, haha. Chloe is a bit of a doormat and doesn’t seem to have much of a personality, which sounds like a bad thing, but works great in this book because she’s always in Ruby’s shadow so it makes perfect sense.

This is a character-driven book so there isn’t a whole lot of plot per se, so some readers may find the book slow moving. But the relationship of Chloe and Ruby, or even just Ruby, is so fascinating to read the pages do seem to fly by. Slowly, you realize Ruby is just a messed up person and super manipulative. Slowly, you realize your narrator isn’t really any better than Ruby, she’s just a less intense version of her. Sometimes I doubted whether Chloe was a reliable narrator or not and it made me question a lot of the events in the book. There are so many times where I thought, “Is this really happening? Or is someone going to wake up and say it was all a dream?”

This is without a doubt a brilliantly written book and if you enjoy surreal fiction, you definitely want to check out Imaginary Girls.

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