G’day and welcome to the Bookshow on radio scilly 107.9fm Guests today are Corinna Christopher and Ro Bennett. Books being reviewed are:
Testimony by Anita Shreve, The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham,
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry, The Lovers by John Connolly,
Plus talking about what Ro & Corinna's favourite book of the decade might be out of the 10 picked by 'Lovereading',.
Suggested authors who write like anita Shreve: Lionel Shriver & Jodi Picoult Actually I was thinking about these two authors when I was reading reviews of 'Testimony', they reminded my of Lionel Shriver because of the story content & Jodi Picoult because of story being retold from different viewpoints…)
Loved this reviewers comment about John Connolly's The Lovers: Horror for crime lovers (and crime for horror lovers).
Suggested similar auhtors Stephen King and Richard Laymon.
Ro's pick of the 'Lovereading' books of the decade was: The Book Thief
Corinnas pick was: We Need to Talk About Kevin
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Lionel Shriver. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Lionel Shriver. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Lionel Shriver - We Need to Talk About Kevin
reviewed by showhost oct 09
The story is based around letters sent from Eva to her husband Franklin. The letters talk about their early life & love and their decision to have a child. Then how their life changed when their son Kevin was born. How Eva never bonded with Kevin from the start, how they didn't know how to deal with him, he was diffeent from other peoples kids - he was still wearing and dirtying nappies at 6 years old. Franklin always made excuses for Kevins behaviour, Eva always saw the bad in him. When their daughter, Celia, was born 10 years later it was almost to prove to herself that she, Eva, could have a normal child.
The culmination was how on thursday 8th April 1999, Kevin Khatchadourian, just before his 16th birthday, killed 7 of his fellow high school students in a cold, calculating, methodical way.
Eva's letters to her estranged husband are also trying to work out where the blame lies as she visits her son in the detention centre on a weekly basis.
Lionel Shriver waxes lyrical & often boring throughout this book and at times I felt I needed a degree in english language and a dictionary by my side to get through it. I didn't think I would finish this book, I wondered if I would give up part way through but it was like a roller coaster ride; it would pick you up and absorb you in the story, then the long, detailed, boring description of little things, would drop me back down and I would skip a paragraph or two. I had to keep reading it, I couldn't stop and I was glad I didn't.
I was puzzled as to why she would use all the intricate,unnecessary, descriptive prose when she was writing her letters to a husband who was your average, warm blooded, beer swilling, fast food junkie,American as I couldn't see him being able to understand it. In the end I do understand. What a shock the ending was, I never expected it.
Was Kevin born bad or was it the consequences of an unaffectionate mother and an overbearing father? Kevin was still calling Eva mumsey when he was 15 yers old!
'Americans don't take responsibility for their own accountability, they always want to blame somebody else' quote Eva & Kevin, like mother like son?
It is hard to get through the book but all I can say is stick with it, skip a bit if it helps, it's worth it. The novel stays with you, in your head, after you have finished it and the points raised in the back of the book for reading book discussion are very thought provoking.
The story is based around letters sent from Eva to her husband Franklin. The letters talk about their early life & love and their decision to have a child. Then how their life changed when their son Kevin was born. How Eva never bonded with Kevin from the start, how they didn't know how to deal with him, he was diffeent from other peoples kids - he was still wearing and dirtying nappies at 6 years old. Franklin always made excuses for Kevins behaviour, Eva always saw the bad in him. When their daughter, Celia, was born 10 years later it was almost to prove to herself that she, Eva, could have a normal child.
The culmination was how on thursday 8th April 1999, Kevin Khatchadourian, just before his 16th birthday, killed 7 of his fellow high school students in a cold, calculating, methodical way.
Eva's letters to her estranged husband are also trying to work out where the blame lies as she visits her son in the detention centre on a weekly basis.
Lionel Shriver waxes lyrical & often boring throughout this book and at times I felt I needed a degree in english language and a dictionary by my side to get through it. I didn't think I would finish this book, I wondered if I would give up part way through but it was like a roller coaster ride; it would pick you up and absorb you in the story, then the long, detailed, boring description of little things, would drop me back down and I would skip a paragraph or two. I had to keep reading it, I couldn't stop and I was glad I didn't.
I was puzzled as to why she would use all the intricate,unnecessary, descriptive prose when she was writing her letters to a husband who was your average, warm blooded, beer swilling, fast food junkie,American as I couldn't see him being able to understand it. In the end I do understand. What a shock the ending was, I never expected it.
Was Kevin born bad or was it the consequences of an unaffectionate mother and an overbearing father? Kevin was still calling Eva mumsey when he was 15 yers old!
'Americans don't take responsibility for their own accountability, they always want to blame somebody else' quote Eva & Kevin, like mother like son?
It is hard to get through the book but all I can say is stick with it, skip a bit if it helps, it's worth it. The novel stays with you, in your head, after you have finished it and the points raised in the back of the book for reading book discussion are very thought provoking.
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Susan Hill - The Beacon
Review by showhost 8th Oct 2009
I just didn’t get it! Even the ending I didn’t get!
So, its about a family who live in a desolate, North Country, farmhouse, called The Beacon, which had belonged to their grandparents and probably those before them, generations of family having lived and reared their children there.
The story is mainly about May Prime. At the beginning of the story May is living with her ailing mother at the farmhouse. Her father had died years previously, her brother Colin had moved on and got married, her sister Berenice had also moved on and got married, the youngest child, her brother Frank had married and lived in London but they don’t talk about him.
The farmhouse wasn’t a working farm anymore as when her father passed away there was no-one to oversee the running of it so eventually, the animals went and the labour force moved on.
May, herself, had moved once – she was a clever girl. She had passed her school/college exams with ease then went to study at a university in London. But May wasn’t a very sociable person, she was alone a lot, she didn’t like the ‘halls of residence’. Then the terrors began, she began to see things to imagine a stream of traffic as a ‘thunderous army menacing her and the people walking past as hostile enemies with staring eyes…’ Or ‘woke in the middle of the night convinced that large ants were crawling over her body and eating the skin away’. On the day of the end of year exams May got up and walked out of the hall and walked back home to The Beacon. Her mother, Bertha, had been right all along, May was not fit to be away. From that day on, until he died, she would spend most of her days with her father working on the farm. The terrors never followed her back home.
Out of the blue, years later and after their fathers death, Frank devastated the family when he wrote a supposedly, biographical book ‘The Cupboard Under the Stairs’. The book claimed that Frank was beaten, abused and locked in a cupboard and blamed all his family for having inflicted these atrocities on him. Overnight Frank found fame and fortune, the rest of the family were shunned by society.
May, Colin & Berenice didn't contact Frank or challenge him about the book, they thought it would run its course and people would forget. They knew it wasn’t true that it was all fabricated and they assumed that people would realize that, especially the people who knew them, but they didn’t.
On the death of their mother, Frank turns up at the farmhouse for the funeral. Although the mother was still alive when the book came out the other siblings didn’t tell her about it. Who inherits the farmhouse, will they all fight then make up, will May move on, will they speak to Frank, was it all true in the book, who knows....?
‘Subtle & profoundly moving’ ‘beautiful & evocative’ ‘authentically chilling’ ‘magnificently eerie’. These were some of the quotes on the back of the book, I am afraid to say I didn’t feel any of these emotions.
Funny how I had thought the Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)book really hard going at times but this I thought, maybe in comparison, maybe because I read it straight after ‘Kevin..’ was too easy, there was nothing really going on. Not my style of book at all.
I just didn’t get it! Even the ending I didn’t get!
So, its about a family who live in a desolate, North Country, farmhouse, called The Beacon, which had belonged to their grandparents and probably those before them, generations of family having lived and reared their children there.
The story is mainly about May Prime. At the beginning of the story May is living with her ailing mother at the farmhouse. Her father had died years previously, her brother Colin had moved on and got married, her sister Berenice had also moved on and got married, the youngest child, her brother Frank had married and lived in London but they don’t talk about him.
The farmhouse wasn’t a working farm anymore as when her father passed away there was no-one to oversee the running of it so eventually, the animals went and the labour force moved on.
May, herself, had moved once – she was a clever girl. She had passed her school/college exams with ease then went to study at a university in London. But May wasn’t a very sociable person, she was alone a lot, she didn’t like the ‘halls of residence’. Then the terrors began, she began to see things to imagine a stream of traffic as a ‘thunderous army menacing her and the people walking past as hostile enemies with staring eyes…’ Or ‘woke in the middle of the night convinced that large ants were crawling over her body and eating the skin away’. On the day of the end of year exams May got up and walked out of the hall and walked back home to The Beacon. Her mother, Bertha, had been right all along, May was not fit to be away. From that day on, until he died, she would spend most of her days with her father working on the farm. The terrors never followed her back home.
Out of the blue, years later and after their fathers death, Frank devastated the family when he wrote a supposedly, biographical book ‘The Cupboard Under the Stairs’. The book claimed that Frank was beaten, abused and locked in a cupboard and blamed all his family for having inflicted these atrocities on him. Overnight Frank found fame and fortune, the rest of the family were shunned by society.
May, Colin & Berenice didn't contact Frank or challenge him about the book, they thought it would run its course and people would forget. They knew it wasn’t true that it was all fabricated and they assumed that people would realize that, especially the people who knew them, but they didn’t.
On the death of their mother, Frank turns up at the farmhouse for the funeral. Although the mother was still alive when the book came out the other siblings didn’t tell her about it. Who inherits the farmhouse, will they all fight then make up, will May move on, will they speak to Frank, was it all true in the book, who knows....?
‘Subtle & profoundly moving’ ‘beautiful & evocative’ ‘authentically chilling’ ‘magnificently eerie’. These were some of the quotes on the back of the book, I am afraid to say I didn’t feel any of these emotions.
Funny how I had thought the Lionel Shriver (We Need to Talk About Kevin)book really hard going at times but this I thought, maybe in comparison, maybe because I read it straight after ‘Kevin..’ was too easy, there was nothing really going on. Not my style of book at all.
show 8th Oct 2009
on show this week are Corinna Christopher & Lesley Jones. Books being reviewed are books which we have read through the local library’s bookgroup. These are:
Journey by Jae Watson, Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zavin, The Beacon by Susan Hill, Gilded Seal by James Twining and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
If anybody would like to add their reviews on any of these books they could email the studio: chris@radioscilly.com & he could pass them on to me.
Journey by Jae Watson, Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zavin, The Beacon by Susan Hill, Gilded Seal by James Twining and We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
If anybody would like to add their reviews on any of these books they could email the studio: chris@radioscilly.com & he could pass them on to me.
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