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Posts Tagged ‘epistolary novel’

‘The Three’ by Sarah Lotz

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on March 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

When four aeroplanes on four different continents all crash on the same day, the world is stunned. The only survivors are a woman who survives just long enough to record a message which has far reaching consequences, and three young children. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these children (collectively known as The Three) become the subject of intense media scrutiny and all sorts of theories about how or why they lived and who or what they really are. Some religious fanatics claim that there are three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse and a sure sign that the Rapture is soon to come. They manipulate this to their own ends, with their machinations affecting the highest powers in the United States. Others claim that the children are aliens or worse.

After opening with a vivid description of one of the aeroplane crashes, the story is then told as a series of Skype interviews with relevant parties, tweets, blogs, newsclips, online chats etc. This means that the reader is given snippets of information at a time, with differing points of view and opinions, helping to fit all the pieces together. It’s an interesting format and one I liked.

As for the story itself, the premise had me hooked from the start, and I thought the book opened really well. However, I don’t think it kept up its momentum throughout; there were some parts that I REALLY enjoyed and others which, although I didn’t actually dislike them, seemed unnecessary and dragged the story down somewhat. I think a bit of extra editing would have made a big and positive difference.

My favourite parts, without giving away any spoilers, were Paul Craddock’s sections – he was the uncle of one of the survivors and events had a huge impact on him; and the way the religious fanatics twisted events to suit their own agenda. These parts actually felt scarily realistic.

I do think the ending let the book down slightly – I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t overseen on what happened. Nonetheless I still enjoyed the book overall and definitely look forward to reading more of Sarah Lotz’s work.

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‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ by Lionel Shriver

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on November 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Three days before his sixteenth birthday, Kevin Katchadourian goes into his high school, where he shoots and murders seven fellow pupils, a teacher and a cafeteria worker. In a series of letters to her former husband, Kevin’s mother Eva recalls his upbringing and their lives together.

I’ll be honest – for the first 100 pages of this book (my edition was exactly 400 pages) I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy it. That said, it’s not necessarily a book that you can enjoy as such, given that it is about a school shooter. It is set in 2000, two years after the horrific incident, and while Kevin and his specific crime is fictional, it references several real life school shooters. It is a sobering subject, but despite this I have become absorbed in other books on the same subject (for example, the brilliant Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult).

Eva is frankly, not an easily likeable person – although I sense that she was written that way deliberately. Her ambivalence towards her son since before he was even born, was apparent, and she wrote about him as if he was evil from the moment he arrived in the world. The question at the heart of the book is whether someone can be born evil or if – in this case – Kevin turned out the way he did as a result of his mother’s attitude towards him.

From about 100 pages in however, the book captured and held my attention. I still did not really warm to Eva, although I did feel so desperately sorry for her. I wondered if she was a reliable narrator, and if all the horrible things that Kevin did prior to the school shooting were actually as she described them, but of course events bore out the fact that he was a cruel and reckless young man.

Eva is very verbose and rarely uses one word if she can manage to use twenty. She is also clearly very intellectual and has a superiority complex to others. But she is not without compassion, even if she is very selfish. I did not like her husband Franklin either, although admittedly we only ever get to know him through Eva’s own filter. But his blind defence of his son made me want to shake him for his naivety. (Again though, I wonder how the same events would have played out written from Franklin’s point of view.)

Anyway – it’s relentlessly bleak, but you kind of have to expect that going in. It’s a book I’ve been meaning to read for a number of years, and I’m glad I finally did. On the whole, I would recommend it although I don’t think I would rush to read any more books by this author.

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‘Evidence of the Affair’ by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , on November 8, 2019| Leave a Comment »

I listened to this audiobook while out on a longish run. It’s a shortish audiobook at about an hour and a half, so perfect for my purposes.

Told entirely through letters, this is the story of a growing friendship between Carrie and David, who each discover that their spouses are having an affair with each other. What initially starts as Carrie’s attempt to find out her husband’s motivations for sleeping with someone else becomes a real friendship, as the two support each other, and help each other through the tough time.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this audiobook. The narrators were Julia Whelan, George Newburn, James Daniels and Dara Rosenberg, although we only hear from the cheating spouses Ken and Janet through Carrie and David reading the letters which they have sent to each other. All the narrators were excellent and I really liked both David and Carrie, even though it was only a short story. It was interesting seeing their different reactions to the affair and their contrasting hopes for the future.

I would definitely read/listen to more by this author and recommend this book highly.

 

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‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga

Posted in Book Reviews, tagged , , , , , , on December 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

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This is an epistolary novel, told by the main character Balram (who calls himself the White Tiger) to the prime minister of China, who is coming to India for a visit. Balram was born in an extremely poor part of India and was destined to live a life of labour or servitude, but as we find out at the beginning of the story he is a successful business. We also find out right at the beginning that he also murdered his killed his former master Ashok. The book tells Balram’s story and explains why he did what he did.

I am still not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I definitely enjoyed it, in that it was written well and I liked it’s very descriptive chronicle of life in India. (Note: this book does not romanticise India in ANY way, shape or form). It was often witty, and the writing flowed well. I found it an undemanding read that kept me interested – but for all that, I never felt fully engaged with the characters and always felt a slight detachment from Balram.

Nonetheless if this is a genre you like, I would recommend this book and if it is different kind of novel to what you would normally choose, you might like this change of scene.

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