Locke & Key

Locke & Key - Audio Recording
Based on the graphic novels by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez
Released October, 2015

I may have mentioned before that I am a recent (and arguable somewhat fanatical) convert to audiobooks. Audiobooks make my daily commute tolerable. They make me far more enthusiastic about walking my dogs. I am far more likely to do things like wash dishes and fold washing nowadays than I ever was in the dark times before I discovered audiobooks.
Having said that, audiobooks work better for some books than others. Anything with lots of dialogue feels a little weird if there's only one narrator. Books with plenty of action tend to work better than slower, more literary works. First-person narrative generally works better than third-person. Books with a large amount of journal- or report-style content work particularly well (World War Z and Sleeping Giants are both absolutely fantastic on audio). And if anyone had asked me a week ago, I would have assumed that you can't make an audiobook from a graphic novel. As it turns out, this isn't true - the audio recording of Locke & Key is better than you could possibly imagine.

Something of a modern classic, the Locke & Key graphic novels were written by Joe Hill and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez. They follow the Locke family (teenagers Tyler and Kinsey, with little brother Bode and their mother) who move back to the old family home in Lovecraft, Massachusetts, following the violent murder of their father. Somewhat appropriately named "Lockhouse", the huge old house is packed full of mysterious doors, locks and keys with all sorts of magical powers. There's horror, humour and graphic violence aplenty, which is all fabulous for a graphic novel but presumably a little tricky to translate into an audio format.

Clearly, you need to read the printed version too, otherwise you miss out on some fairly stunning artwork like this...

The Audible version of Locke & Key is less like an audiobook and more like a full-scale audio production, complete with full cast, sound effects and music. It's like listening to an old-school radio play, except that there's a whole lot of screaming and you're moderately terrified throughout. It works so well, partly because the actors are so good at what they do - the cast includes the fabulous Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black), Kate Mulgrew (Orange is the New Black) and Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) but every performance on this recording is absolutely spot-on : despite all the screaming and panic and general weirdness, there's not a single moment that feels awkward or doesn't ring true.
The music is atmospheric and lends this general atmosphere of creepiness to the entire recording, while helping to amp up the tension at appropriate moments.
The sound effects, voiceover and dialogue all work together so that the listener understands exactly what's happening throughout, even in the absence of an pictures (usually a fairly integral part of any comic experience).  

Seriously, look at how cool this is.

At 13 and a half hours, Locke and Key does require something of a time commitment, but it's such a captivating, immersive experience that it doesn't feel long enough. The story is unique, complex and hugely imaginative and this production brings it to life in a completely new way. It's an extremely high-quality dramatic production of some very high-quality source material and quite honestly, it's the coolest thing I've listened to all year.

Mischling

Mischling
by Affinity Konar
Published September, 2016

It's probably not news at this point, to hear that Nazi Germany was a nasty place, run by some very nasty people. We know about the Nazis. We know about Kristallnacht and the Final Solution and Dachau and Auschwitz. This is not new information. And yet, every now and then a book (or movie, or play) comes along to shed a completely new light on events and make the horror of Nazi Germany feel awfully, viscerally real. Mischling is one of those books.

Infamous physician and war criminal Dr Josef Mengele used the population of Auschwitz as his own personal pool of experimental subjects, picking out prisoners to add to his "zoo", where they were subjected to some priveleges and countless horrors, the subjects of grotesque experiments. Mengele broke their bones; poisoned them; blinded or deafened them; he even injected chemicals into their eyes in an attempt to change eye colour. Of particular interest to Mengele were children and twins; it is estimated that around 1,500 pairs of twins became subjects of Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz. Of those 1,500, fewer than 200 were still alive at the end of the war.

Survivors of Mengele's "zoo" at the liberation of Auschwitz.

Twin sisters Stasha and Pearl Zagorski, twelve years old when they arrive at Auschwitz, are promptly sent to Mengele's "zoo". As the chapters alternate between Stasha's and Pearl's points of view, Mischling tells the story of personalities adapting under horrific conditions and two halves of a whole growing apart as the twins are each damaged in different ways by Mengele's monstrous experiments.

Mischling was inspired by twins Eva & Miriam Mozes, survivors of Mengele's "zoo"

Clearly, Mischling is based on real, historical events so upsetting that a reader can't help but be affected. The story of the fictional Zagorski twins is based on the true stories of countless children subjected to Mengele's "research" at Auschwitz. But part of the success of Mischling rests on the fantastic characterisation of these fictional girls. Somehow, Stasha and Pearl are incredibly close and very similar, yet each has her own voice - there are very subtle differences between the two and its a testament to author Affinity Konar's talent as a writer that both twins feel like utterly real, complex and unique individuals.
The fantastic writing doesn't end there. Affinity Konar uses language in a way that elevates her sentences to absolute poetry. Mischling includes some of the most horrifying passages I've ever read, but also some of the most beautiful: about her beloved grandfather, Stasha says "With him, we once saw a rainbow that ran only red, saw it straddle a mountain and a sea, and he toasted the memory of it often. To unbearable beauty! he'd cry, eyes abrim". In the midst of pain and illness, Pearl says "Night - it had forgotten that it shouldn't be beautiful in Auschwitz. There was no stopping its velvet sway at the messenger's back"
It is this depiction of beauty amongst horror that elevates Mischling to something truly special.
Following an injection with god-knows-what by Mengele, Stasha explains "The needle made me a mischling, but the word took on a meaning different then the term the Nazis imposed upon us, all those cold and gruesome equations of blood and worship and heritage... One part was loss and despair. Such darkness should make life impossible, I know. But my other part? It was wild hope. And no one could extract or cut or drain it from me. No one could burn it from my flesh or puncture it with a needle". This is exactly what makes Mischling unique. It is just as affecting and upsetting and grim as you would expect, but it is also full of beauty and love and (perhaps unexpectedly) hope. It is a beautiful, hopeful story based around an utterly grim and seemingly hopeless historical event.

Meticulously researched, undeniably moving and fantastically well-written, Mischling is an absolute work of art.

Darktown

Darktown
by Thomas Mullen
Published September, 2016.

Named for a seedy neighbourhood of Atlanta, Darktown opens with the attempted arrest of a local big-wig for traffic offenses. Drunk, arrogant and entitled, the driver resists arrest. So far, it's all pretty standard police-procedural fare, right? Except that the driver is white, the police officers are black and it's 1948. As Atlanta's very first African-American police, officers Boggs and Smith aren't actually allowed to arrest a white man, so their errant driver is free to go and quick to let them know in no uncertain terms just how little he thinks of their positions of "authority".

Never judge a book by its cover and all that, but how good is this one? Suitably sinister.

This is the conflict at the core of Darktown - dedicated, educated and highly capable new recruits (many of whom are recently-decorated veterans of WW2) sign up to the force in the hopes of helping their communities, only to be treated like a bad joke. Boggs, Smith and their fellow officers aren't permitted inside Police HQ - instead, they work from the basement of a run-down YMCA. They must patrol by foot, as the police vehicles are for the use of white officers only. They cannot arrest white suspects. They are forbidden from wearing their uniforms when entering or leaving the courthouse to testify, forcing them to change in a closet. The city's attitude towards the new officers ranges from bemusement to casual racism through to outright hostility and threats of violence.
When a young black woman is found dead, discarded amongst trash in a Darktown alleyway, Boggs and Smith suspect foul play. Forbidden in no uncertain terms from asking questions, the officers begin their own undercover investigation, putting their jobs - and quite possibly their lives - at serious risk.

Darktown combines a fantastically atmospheric crime noir vibe with a confronting look at race relations, violence and injustice in a fairly horrifying (and disturbingly recent) period of world history. It's a well-written, tightly-plotted detective story and this would be enough on its own for an entertaining read. The introduction of fantastic characters in the form of Boggs and Smith adds another level to the story - admirable, sympathetic, idealistic but imperfect, Boggs and Smith provide the ideal viewpoint from which to view 1940s Georgia. These are men who risked their lives to serve their country, men willing to risk their lives again to serve their community; deserving of respect and admiration they're instead belittled, harrassed and abused. It's heartbreaking.
What really sets Darktown apart though, is the setting. Author Thomas Mullen brings to the page a living, breathing,vibrant representation of 1948 Atlanta that feels so real, it's like the city itself is another character. It's grimy and dark, hopeful and violent, energised and delapidated all at once. The racial tension and social upheaval is apparent on every page, but there's also something indefinable about the Atlanta of Darktown that helps you understand why people like Boggs and Smith might give everything they have to try and save their city.

Officers Dixon, Hooks, Jones, Lyons, McKibbens, Sanders, Strickland & Elkins in April, 1948. 

Darktown is prefaced with a dedication to the memory of the eight men on whom the fictional officers are based - Claude Dixon, Willie T. Elkins, Henry Hooks, Johnnie P. Jones, Ernest Lyons, Robert McKibbens, John Sanders and Willard Strickland. These are historical figures I had never heard of before, but they're people who played an essential role in American history and they are people we should never forget. While it's ultimately a fictional detective story, Darktown does something hugely important in telling part of these men's story and reminding a modern readership of just how much they sacrificed in the hopes of making their city a better place.
This is a great read, but it's also an important story and a timely reminder of how poorly we often treat the people who least deserve it.

Sleeping Giants

Sleeping Giants
by Sylvain Neuvel
Published April, 2016

A few months back, I started listening to audiobooks based on a friend's recommendation that this might provide a good distraction on my morning commute. Suffice to say, she has created a monster. Audiobooks are amazing. With audiobooks, you can "read" while driving. You can "read" while you're cooking, or doing the dishes, or having a shower. And, while this should not be interpreted as any kind of personal confession, you could even "read" all day long at the office, when you're supposed to be working.

Some books translate particularly well to audio (Neil Gaiman reading any of his own books; Ernest Cline's Ready Player One as read by Wil Wheaton; all of Bill Bryson's books), while others don't work quite so well (books with lots of emotion and little action don't hold my attention as well as they would on the page). Then there are the audiobooks that are so fantastically good, I would even go so far as to recommend audio as a better option than reading. Marlon James' A Short History of Seven Killings is read by several different narrators with fantastic Jamaican accents - it's like listening to a really good movie, minus the visuals. Max Brooks' World War Z is written as a series of interviews with a huge number of different characters from all over the world. The audiobook's extensive cast of voice actors is absolutely perfect for this - it really does feel like the zombie war is happening all around you in full colour, right now.
Another fantastic audiobook to add to your must-listen list is Sylvain Neuvel's new novel Sleeping Giants. Written in the form of a series of reports and interviews and read by a number of difference voice actors, Sleeping Giants is absolutely ideal for the audiobook treatment.

Sleeping Giants opens with eleven-year-old Rose Franklin sneaking out at dusk to ride her new bike. Calamity strikes; Rose takes a tumble into a huge hole in the ground and finds herself - rather unexpectedly - resting in the palm of an enormous metal hand. Eventually the hand becomes part of a University of Chicago research project, headed up by the very same Rose Franklin (now a talented physicist). The hand is somewhat of a mystery - decorated with complex but mysterious symbols; weighing in at only one-tenth of what it should considering its composition; seemingly tens of thousands of years old. As Dr Franklin and her team start to uncover the secrets of the object, international tensions grow and Sleeping Giants takes its reader on a fantastic ride.

Rose Franklin and friend. No, not really.

Part sci-fi, part futuristic thriller, part political commentary, Sleeping Giants weaves together narration from a number of key characters - there's the earnest and dedicated Dr Franklin; hot-shot helicopter pilot Kara Resnik; socially awkward Quebecois linguist Vincent Couture; Resnik's squeaky-clean co-pilot Ryan Mitchell and a mysterious, unnamed man who conducts all of the interviews that make up the narrative of the novel.

It's worth mentioning that Sleeping Giants is composed entirely of log entries, interviews and mission reports. There is no action in the book whatsoever - it's all just interviews or reports from each of the characters, one at a time, slowly building a picture of events. Quite honestly, I usually hate these kinds of books. Anything in diary form or letter form or interview form - ugh. It often feels like a gimmick and personally, I struggle to become properly absorbed in anything with this kind of format.
It's a testament to Sylvain Neuvel's talent as an author that this book is compelling from the first page, with a feeling of fast-paced suspense that doesn't let up until the last page.
It's no doubt a reflection of the author's background in linguistics that Sleeping Giants is so very compelling and that each individual character takes own their own unique voice and persona very quickly, simply through the things that they say. There's no description of the characters' appearances, personalities or backgrounds - we only have their words and somehow, that's enough to form these fully fleshed-out characters. The added benefit of the audio version is that each of these characters is also voiced by a different actor, adding even more dimension and personality to the narrative.

Seriously, all just reports and interviews. Like this one. 

Not only is Sleeping Giants a fabulously constructed page-turner, it also features wonderfully three-dimensional, complex female characters. Rose Franklin is a dedicated, brilliant scientist. She didn't just luck into her job working with the giant hand; she earned it through hard work, talent and arguably a little bit of an obsession with the object she unearthed in childhood. Kara Resnik is a strong-willed, confident and skillful pilot with an distinguished record of service in the armed forces. These are not shrinking violets. They are not one-dimensional characters written only as decoration for the central male characters. They aren't there to be rescued by men. While the novel can't really pass the Bechdel test because the characters don't really talk to each other at all (remember, weird log/interview/report format?) but you can bet that Dr Franklin and Chief Warrant Officer Resnik have had plenty of conversations about all sorts of important science things, so I feel like this counts.

Sleeping Giants is Sylvain Neuvel's debut novel and was originally self-published due to a lack of interest from publishers. Now making waves internationally, with the movie rights already snapped up, it's fair to say that the book is doing very,very well (and thank god Neuvel didn't give up after a few rejection letters). The second book in the series is scheduled for release in April 2017 with a third book to follow - I'm not at all hesitant to say that I can't wait and that I'll be going the audiobook route next time, too.  

Underground Airlines

Underground Airlines
by Ben Winters
Published July, 2016

Underground Airlines is  set in a modern-day America that feels very familiar - everyone has smartphones, social media is everywhere, there's a Starbucks on every corner - but with a difference. In this version of the present day, the Civil War never happened. In this ever-so-slightly different alternative history, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before he could take office. In this version of 21st century USA, slavery remains legal in four southern states - the "hard four".

Narrator and mystery man Victor (definitely not his real name) is an escaped slave turned soul-catcher, securing his own freedom by tracking down and returning fellow escapees to their masters. Haunted, conflicted and generally pretty messed up, Victor is hot on the trail of a runaway slave known as "Jackdaw". It's far from Victor's first such case, but there's something different about this one and the plot quickly thickens as Victor comes to realise that Jackdaw is much more than just another runaway.

Victor is a fantastic character. Deeply complex, with a long and complicated back-story, Victor tells himself that he's a good person who does bad things, but he's deeply disturbed by his own choices and the lies he tells. "I do it even now, you see? I play false, I dance and dance. I murmur the stories in shadow of half-shadow, I pretend to myself like I don't remember the names - the details - when in fact I do - I did and I do - I remember all of their names". His complexities keep the story moving (what side is he really on?) and make for a genuinely believable, flawed protagonist.

As Victor uncovers secrets, Underground Airlines weaves a gripping, suspenseful and action-packed tale, equal parts fascinating and horrifying. The world of Underground Airlines is deeply disturbing not so much for the imagine-if aspect (imagine if slavery was still legal!) but because it's so awfully close to the America we see on the news every day.
In Underground Airlines, anyone with dark skin needs to be very careful. Even if you're free, you'd better make sure you don't do anything suspicious. You'd better not be seen in the wrong place at the wrong time. You'd better not be seen in the wrong company. You'd better not be caught with a gun, even if you're legally entitled to carry it. Sound familiar?
It's a different perspective on racism in the USA that makes you wonder how far we've actually come.

It should go without saying, right?

Underground Airlines is deeply affecting because it really feels like things might have happened this way. It's easy to discount the idea that slavery would ever be accepted by an enlightened, western society but Ben Winters weaves in just enough 21st-century corporate detail to make this chillingly believable. In this world, you don't own a "slave", but a "person bound to labor". People are classified by skin colour in a pantone-style Pigmentation Taxonomy - "moderate charcoal, brass highlights #41" or "late-summer honey, warm tone, #76". Officially, cruelty and mistreatment of slaves is not premitted. The largest-scale slave-owners are huge southern companies, the world of slavery becoming so bound up with corporate double-speak that it's easy to imagine the whole thing being somewhat overlooked by the masses.
It's so creepy because it seems like it really could've happened that way - what if there'd been compromise instead of war?

Underground Airlines is fast-paced, compelling and affecting. It's clever, confrontational and very well-written. I absolutely could not put this book down and I could not recommend it more highly - it's truly exceptional.

The Humans

The Humans
by Matt Haig
Published July, 2013

"I know that some of you reading this are convinced that humans are a myth, but I am here to state that they do actually exist. For those that don't know, a human is a real bipedal life form of midrange intelligence, living a largely deluded existence on a small waterlogged planet in a very lonely corner of the universe". So begins Matt Haig's The Humans, a fabulous study of humankind as seen through the eyes of an (initially underwhelmed) extraterrestrial visitor.

One night, Cambridge mathematics professor Andrew Martin solves the Riemann hypothesis (this is apparently an actual mathematical thing), thus discovering the secret behind prime numbers, a very large step towards understanding all of the secrets of the universe. Concerned that humans are far too primitive and violent to be trusted with such knowledge, the advanced extraterrestrial Vonnadorian civilisation sends an agent to Earth. The Vonnadorian agent's mission: to murder the unfortunate Professor Martin, take possession of his body and assassinate anyone who might happen to know about his mathematical breakthrough.

I think this is a mathematician joke. The book is significantly funnier than this.

Despite the Vonnadorians' highly advanced understanding of technology, something goes a wee bit wrong along the way and the would-be assassin arrives on Earth not in the secluded university office he'd expected, but rather in the middle of a busy motorway, stark naked. Disoriented, uncomfortable and extremely confused, the new "Andrew Martin" promptly gets himself arrested and then sent to a psych ward (but not before he discovers some important truths about human life, like "running without clothes is not entirely compatible with external testicles"). A public indecency arrest is just the start as the narrator settles in to life as Andrew Martin, eventually finding himself quite at home amongst humans.

The Humans is funny. It's genuinely, quietly amusing throughout and sprinkled with the odd laugh-out-loud-in-public moment; clever and witty and observational like Douglas Adams on a good day. Matt Haig uses the unusual perspective of his alien narrator fabulously well to show us some uncomfortably amusing truths about ourselves : "Magazines are very popular, despite no human ever feeling better for having read them. Indeed, their chief purpose is to generate a sense of inferiority in the reader that consequently leads to them needing to buy something, which they do, and then they feel even worse, and so need to buy another magazine to see what they can buy next. It is an eternal and unhappy spiral that goes by the name of capitalism and it is really quite popular."
It's amusing and it's entertaining and it's interesting enough to catch you up in the story very quickly, but then before you know it, The Humans has become something more than just a humorous take on human irrationality.
Quite honestly, I'm finding it hard to put into words just how much this book affected me. If it was just a well-written, funny book then that would be enough for me to happily recommend it. But it's not just funny; it's startling and confronting and absolutely beautiful. Much as it pains me to say this, it's inspirational.

Inspiring, like a kitten poster.

I do not enjoy self-help books. I don't think I will ever voluntarily read something from the "Inspirational" section of the bookstore. This book, though - this is self-help for people like me. Any time I'm feeling less than positive, I will re-read this book to remind myself that life is fantastic and humanity is a beautiful thing and (in the words of the narrator) "Failure is a trick of the light".
At one point in the book, the narrator writes a letter, made up of 97 points of advice for humans; any one of these could well go onto a kitten poster, but somehow the context of this list means that this comes across not as trite or sentimental but instead as honest and heartfelt.

I loved this book. I cannot stop thinking about this book. It's a celebration of everything that's wonderful about being a human; it may just be exactly what you need to feel a little more positive about the current state of the world and the future of humans. After all, "Technology won't save humankind. Humans will.". It's a nice thought.

The Passage

The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Published June, 2010

As a reader, one of my absolute favourite things is a "genre" book so spectacularly written that it elevates the whole thing beyond its genre to something truly unique.
Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series is like this (Case Histories; One Good Turn; When Will There Be Good News and Started Early, Took My Dog); detective novels so beautifully written and peopled with such believable characters and such richly detailed settings that they feel utterly real.
Neil Gaiman does this too, writing fantasy novels that are somehow so much more than that; they're more like these layered, subtle meditations on love and time and mortality (even his children's books are like this, The Graveyard Book left me a sobbing, heartbroken mess).
The magnificent Jasper Fforde plays with genres like nobody's business - his award-winning The Big Over-Easy is a dark, noir-style crime novel that just happens to be peopled by a cast of Nursery Rhyme characters. In a crime novel. For adults. It shouldn't really work but it does. Really, really well.

Ok, so this is completely unrelated to The Passage but honestly, SUCH A GOOD BOOK

The Passage is like this too. Ostensibly, it's a kind of blockbuster (film rights having been sold before the book was even released) sci fi/horror novel with vampires. All of which sounds interesting enough that I eventually got around to reading The Passage a good six years after it was published, with relatively low expectations and hopes of a lightweight-but-fun romp of sci fi silliness. Instead, The Passage completely blew my mind.

The story begins neither with soulless blood-suckers nor sparkly emo teenagers, but instead with the genuinely affecting story of young mum Jeannette and her much-loved daughter, Amy Harper (named for Harper Lee) Bellafonte. Mistreated by men and unlucky in life, Jeannette's life eventually implodes in such a way that Amy is abandoned at a convent, where she meets the wonderful Sister Lacey Kudoto. Lacey is originally from Sierra Leone, where she experienced childhood brutalities that she has now supressed to the point that she doesn't actually remember any more.

There aren't many vampire novels that also educate you on world history.

Meanwhile, Special Agent Brad Wolgast meets with a series of Death Row inmates, recruiting for a top-secret government project whereby death sentences are waived in return for participation in a very unpleasant medical experiment. Recently divorced, Wolgast is tormented by memories of the young daughter he lost to a heart condition. One of the inmates recruited by Wolgast is formerly-homeless Anthony Carter. Convicted of (but probably not guilty of) the murder of a woman he loved beyond all reason, Carter has clear learning disabilities and a heart of gold.

It's these richly developed characters that really set The Passage apart in the early chapters. Everyone has a back story. A detailed, complex back story that helps to explain their actions and means that their stories really ring true. It's unusual to find a vampire novel that actually makes you cry because you feel bad for a convicted murderer. I am willing to admit, hand on heart, Jeanette Bellafonte's, Lacey Kudoto's, Brad Wolgast's and Anthony Carter's stories all made me cry before I was even 10% of the way through this book. I was an absolute blubbering mess. It was completely ridiculous.

Eventually, we get to the Horror part of the book as government experiments (and when do those ever turn out well?) go horribly wrong, releasing a plague of many-toothed, lightning-fast, ultra violent and practically immortal predators onto an unsuspecting world. Obviously, this is not a new idea so it's hard to explain exactly why it's so incredibly captivating - Justin Cronin is an absolute master of building suspense and before you know it, it's 4am and you still haven't gone to sleep because you MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.

This is a very good question. And also the reason that you may never sleep again. 

At 766 pages, The Passage is clearly a very long book, but it doesn't really feel that way. The book is quite definitively split, with the second half taking place in a notably different time and place than the first half, with a group of entirely new characters. With a large cast of these wonderfully well-developed characters (along with millions of soulless immortal monsters) and an apparently endless series of horrifying events, The Passage managed to keep my attention throughout, for every single one of those 766 pages. In fact, I was so caught up in the whole  thing that I immediately went out and bought the next two books the same day... That's right, there's not just 766 pages; there's three whole books' worth of this fantastic story.

Three whole books! Thousands of pages of this stuff!

The Passage is a beautifully written epic of post-apocalyptic America (not dissimilar in a lot of ways to Cormac McCarthy's wonderful novel The Road), complete with detailed imaginings of the breakdown of society under an overwhelming threat to humanity. It's an absolutely engrossing read, an extremely well-written, perfectly-paced sci fi novel, but also a novel about human life and relationships, full of colour, action, complicated morality and even the odd bit of well-placed humour.
It's not a perfect book - the central character of Amy feels sadly underdeveloped as we don't often get to know what she's thinking; the characters in the second half of the book don't quite have that same depth and distinctiveness as those in the first half (there was much less sobbing on my part in the second half); some characters have this incredibly annoying habit of saying "Flyers!" when they really mean "Fuck!". If you're going to make up swear words, they should really be good ones. Like, "cockwomble" perhaps? These are all pretty minor complaints though - taken as a whole, this book is very, very good.

If you have not already done so (and I'm kind of assuming you have, since I am way behind the times on this one), read this book immediately. But maybe on a weekend, I really wouldn't recommend that whole reading-til-4am-on-a-weeknight thing in retrospect.

Faithful

Faithful
by Alice Hoffman
Published November, 2016

The more I read, the less sure I am about what I actually like in a book. Faithful is the kind of book I would never have picked out for myself. Not in a million years. If I'd actually bothered to read the blurb properly beforehand, I would have given this a miss and I would've missed out on an absolute stunner of a novel.

Faithful is the story of Shelby Richmond, survivor of a car accident that destroyed her best friend Helene's life. Wracked with guilt, Shelby goes off the rails a bit and Faithful follows her over the following years as she moves to New York City and tries to get her life back together. To me, this does not sound like the premise for an interesting book. To me, this sounds trite, self-indulgent, sappy and uninspiring. Faithful is none of these things.

In Shelby, Alice Hoffman has created a truly memorable character. Somehow she's spiky and tough, but vulnerable and damaged at the same time. She makes terrible decisions, she pushes people away and she sabotages herself, but you just can't help but like her anyway. I've read very few books where I felt so strongly for a character that I just wanted everything to turn out well for them, even when they were making things difficult for themselves (not dissimilar to the fantastic character of Jude in Hanya Yanagahari's A Little Life). In essence, Faithful is Shelby's story and the reason it works so well is that Shelby is so very well written and completely believable.

Clearly, this Alice Hoffman is a very smart lady.

The relationships in Faithful are complex, nuanced and honest. There is a small but beautifully-written cast of supporting characters made  up of Shelby's friends and family, with every one of them feeling like a real person. Shelby's relationship with her mother is particularly affecting; sweet, sincere and heart-breaking at times. There's also these layers of complexity between characters - the story centres around Shelby, but the supporting characters all have these very believable relationships with each other outside of their relationships with Shelby. There are Shelby's parents, with their complicated, rocky marriage. Shelby's friend Maravelle has plenty of her own issues in raising her three children. Even Shelby's dogs have their own things going on. All in all, it creates this very credible group of people (and dogs) who just feel real.

Faithful is a story of trauma and healing and forgiveness, but never in a Hallmark-movie-of-the-week way. There's no easy fix where Shelby decides to just look on the bright side, and life goes back to how it was before the accident. Instead, Faithful tells a much more honest story about the ways in which we are affected for years afterwards by traumatic events; the strange, destructive and ridiculous ways in which we try to cope; and ultimately the importance of relationships in providing a foundation to rebuild a life. It's an absolutely beautiful story that will stay with you long after you've finished reading.



  

Patient H.M.

Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets
by Luke Dittrich
Published August, 2016

I should probably start by confessing that I love brains. Not like a zombie loves brains. More like an obsessive geek who will talk about neuroscience for hours to anyone. Even if that anyone is clearly not interested in the slightest. I spent eight years at university studying psychology and neuroscience, resulting in surprisingly few qualifications but leaving me with a life-long passion for brains.
So, as a history of one of neuroscience's most famous patients, Patient H.M. was always going to be a pretty easy sell for me.

"Patient H.M." was the pseudonym used for Henry Molaison by the researchers and doctors who spent more than sixty years studying him. Affected by severe epilepsy, Henry underwent surgery in the 1950s to remove part of his brain. Following the operation, Henry was left with a complete, debilitating and global amnesia - he was completely unable to form new memories. Henry became the most-studied patient in the history of neuroscience as researchers used his amnesia to better understand the processes of memory and the brain structures involved.

Henry's case is one that many, many people will be familiar with. It's one of the first things covered in any introductory psychology class, along with a few other memorable characters like Phineas Gage (impaled his head on a massive spike and somehow survived) and Walter Freeman (developed the highly inventive and rather disturbing transorbital lobotomy, performed with an icepick).
In some ways this may be pretty familiar ground for a lot of readers, however this book is much more than just another retelling of an interesting amnesia case.

Post-accident Phineas Gage posing with the rod that used to be inside his brain.

Author Luke Dittrich is the grandson of the brilliant (but arguably misguided) neurosurgeon who operated on Henry and caused his amnesia. As such, Dittrich brings a unique perspective to his story, using the H.M. case as a starting point around which to weave an absolutely fascinating history of neuroscience (from the very first references to brain surgery in Ancient Egypt through the lobotomy-obsessed 1930s to H.M's final days in the early 2000s) and relating this back in a very personal way to events within his own family.
This makes for a very, very readable story - I found this book absolutely impossible to put down and for someone who generally avoids non-fiction, that's saying a lot. It's a fantastic blend of biography, history and science writing, all blending into a captivating and cautionary tale of misguided surgeons ruining lives in their attempts to cure psychological problems with a scalpel (or an icepick).
As Dittrich writes,"Neurosurgery, whatever the era, always requires at least two frightening qualities in its practitioners: the will to make forcible entry into another human's brain, and the hubris to believe you can fix the problems inside"

The aforementioned Dr Freeman, lobotomising some poor lady with an icepick. He is thought to have performed this surgery on more than 3,000 patients. 

Fascinating, disturbing and memorable, this is the best non-fiction book I've read in years.

10/10

The Girls

The Girls
by Emma Cline
Published June, 2016

The Girls is probably not the best book I've read this year (which is not to say that it's not good, just that there's some pretty tough competition), but it has some of the best writing I've read in years. Emma Cline is an incredibly talented writer - she's like some kind of crazy talented word-magician with a real gift for bringing language to life.

Set largely in late-1960s California, The Girls follows naive fourteen-year-old Evie Boyd as she encounters a glamorously free-spirited group of older girls and is drawn into their lives in a seemingly peaceful sect, led by the charismatic (if slightly creepy) Russell. Evie starts to spend more time with the group and less time with her family and friends as events start to spiral towards ominously familiar consequences.  

I can't over-emphasise just how good the writing is in The Girls. I started out by highlighting the especially good passages but quite honestly, I'd given up on this by half-way through the book because there's just so much in there that's just beautifully written. The writing is particularly good and wonderfully insightful when it comes to the teenaged narrator's perspective. The Girls sums up so perfectly what it's like to be a teenaged girl - things that I'd forgotten I ever thought or wanted or believed - but reading this book brings it all back like it was yesterday (it wasn't yesterday. Scarily enough, it was a good 20 years ago).
"So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play".

Throughout The Girls, Evie makes some pretty stupid decisions. The plot of the book hinges on her doing these really dumb things (like hanging out with a cult, for one) and this would not be credible at all, except that these are exactly the kinds of decisions a star-struck teenager would make. The Girls reminds you of just how desperate teenagers can be - desperate for company, desperate for experience, desperate to be understood and desperate to be noticed - and in this context, everything makes perfect sense.

The Manson girls going to trial in 1970 - Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel & Laslie van Houten.

There are obvious parallels to the real-life Manson murders and while The Girls is not exactly a retelling of real-life events, it provides some fascinating insight into how such horrific events might have come about; it goes a long way towards explaining the seemingly unexplainable, which is a pretty impressive achievement.

Emma Cline's writing is beautiful, subtle and incredibly insightful. The Girls is very readable, fast-paced and never boring, providing a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a teenager going a little off-the-rails at a very unique time in history.

8/10

Different Class

Different Class
by Joanne Harris
Published April, 2016

Let me start by saying that I think Joanne Harris is fabulous. Her earlier books (Five Quarters of the Orange, Blackberry Wine and of course, Chocolat) were some of my absolute favourites back in the early 2000s but I'm ashamed to say that since then, I'd kind of forgotten just how fabulous she is. Different Class serves as a timely reminder that I really need to find copies of everything else she's written, immediately.

How's that for creepy..?

Set in the fictional North Yorkshire town of Malbry (also featured in her novels Blueeyedboy and Gentlemen and Players), Different Class revisits St Oswald's Grammar School, where Latin master Roy Straitley is entering his thirtieth year of teaching. With the school in academic and financial decline, a new headmaster is brought in - complete with Powerpoint, computer literacy, management-speak and a Crisis Management Team. As if this wasn't bad enough for the decidedly old-school Mr Straitley, the new head is also rather familiar to him ("The arrogant, sullen little boy has been reborn as a smiling, smooth-voiced politician"), stirring memories of a twenty-year-old school scandal, when a St Oswald's boy did some very, very bad things.

As chapters alternate between Straitley's present-day narration, Straitley's twenty-years-ago narration and some very disturbing historical diary entries, the story of the scandal becomes clearer and suspense builds beautifully. The unique setting of St Oswald's is beautifully brought to life in all its dusty, scholarly glory, as the world of chalk-covered, gown-wearing Straitley collides disastrously with the dawning age of education-as-business. The characters are wonderfully memorable and Joanne Harris writes with incredible insight, from the perspective of everyone from elderly gentlemen, to tormented adolescents, to a complete psychopath, all of it completely convincing.    

Admittedly, this is completely unrelated but this is also one of the BEST ALBUMS EVER.

Different Class is dark, creepy and incredibly compelling - the characters and the story will draw you in so quickly that a relatively lengthy book becomes a single-sitting read.  It's shadowy and disturbing but it's also genuinely funny in parts, Joanne Harris bringing a wry tone of humour to a story that might otherwise take itself a little too seriously. This comes largely through the wonderfully sardonic tone of narrator Mr Straitley, who is just fabulous. For example: "Penny once went on a course entitled Kids in Counselling, which left her under the delusion that she is approachable and relates well to 'youth issues'", or "Bob Strange seems impressed by the fact that, under the new regime, all St Oswald's current problems will be transferred to a series of policy documents, and will therefore completely cease to exist in the real world", or (on the subject of Parent Teacher evenings) "I shook their hands and invited them in (much as folklore dictates we should invite a vampire before he can feed)".

With Gentlemen and Players (set before Different Class) and Blueeyedboy (set afterwards), Different Class completes a trilogy of novels set in and around Malbry. Many of the characters appear in all three books and there are common settings and themes across the three. While I have now read all three books, I must confess to having completely forgotten everything about Gentlemen and Players (except that it was set at St Oswald's school) and Blueeyedboy (except that the main character was decidedly creepy). This very minimal understanding of the background story did not impact on my enjoyment of Different Class in the slightest. Haven't read the other two books? No problem at all. Different Class works beautifully as a stand-alone book, with no previous reading required. Having said that though, I plan to go back and re-read the other two books ASAP, because I loved these characters so much that I really want to find out more about them.

Different Class is a subtle, masterfully written psychological thriller with a rich backstory and a darkly humorous tone. Like everything Joanne Harris does, it's a great read - give it a go and I guarantee you won't be able to put it down.

9/10

All the Missing Girls

All the Missing Girls
by Megan Miranda
Published June, 2016

Obviously, it can be difficult to find a truly unique book, but one of my pet peeves is the tendency of publishers to declare that each and every new suspense novel is "the next Gone Girl" or, more recently "the next Girl on the Train". According to the blurb, All the Missing Girls is "Like the spellbinding psychological suspense in The Girl on the Train and Luckiest Girl Alive, Megan Miranda's novel is a nail-biting, breathtaking story about the disappearances of two young women..."

Let's be clear here - All the Missing Girls is nothing at all like The Girl on the Train; it's set in rural Cooley Ridge in the southern US, rather than London. The stories are different. The characters are different. The timelines are different. There is one real similarity between the two though - they are both very, very good.

All the Missing Girls follows Nicolette Farrell as she returns to her childhood hometown, ten years after her best friend Corinne disappeared without a trace. In town temporarily to fix up her childhood home for sale, Nicolette is swept up into spookily familiar events as another local girl is reported missing. Through various twists and turns, Nicolette starts to shed light on events long forgotten as the truth comes out about the two disappearances, a decade apart.

Starting out in a fairly straightforward manner, the narrative of All the Missing Girls takes a sudden U-turn once Nicolette arrives in Cooley Ridge - we jump forward in time to fifteen days after the second disappearance and the rest of the novel is told in reverse, from Day 15 to Day 1.

This is an original take on a suspense novel and could go really badly wrong - and it almost does. This is not a novel that you can put down for a few days and come back to; you will be completely confused about where we're up to, what bits have already happened and what on earth in happening. It requires quite a bit of concentration to follow the story and it is frustrating at times, but ultimately Megan Miranda pulls it off nicely, turning a potential narrative gimmick into a unique way of building suspense.

I'm guessing that Cooley Ridge looks a bit like this

 Every character in All the Missing Girls is more than they seem, with both flaws and redeeming features coming out of the woodwork as more of the past emerges. Nicolette herself is a great character, equal parts strong and vulnerable with her desire to stay far away from Cooley Ridge conflicting with her affection for her hometown and family. Her high-school boyfriend Tyler is likeable and sweet, but the missing girl is his girlfriend and he doesn't seem at all concerned. Nic's brother Daniel is sensible and family-focused but has an apparent history of violence. Even Nic's dementia-affected father is three-dimensional, his years of alcoholism and history of poor parenting conflicting with a devotion to his children and a need to protect them. This cast of complicated characters adds a certain depth to what would otherwise be a fast-paced but not-particularly-meaningful story.

All the Missing Girls is original,gripping and complex. To follow the story properly, you really need to read it all in one sitting but that's really not asking much - the cracking pace and twists-and-turns narrative mean that this is a hard one to put down.

8/10

Before the Fall

Before the Fall
by Noah Hawley
Published May, 2016

Noah Hawley is a successful TV writer and producer - with Peabody, PEN, Emmy and Golden Globe wins to his name, Hawley is the creator of the fabulous Fargo TV series and now (just to show that he can apparently do everything) he's released a fantastic new novel.

Before the Fall begins with a tragedy. En route from Martha's Vineyard to New York, a private plane crashes into the sea. On board are ten members of New York's wealthy elite and one near-penniless artist, hitching a ride with his wealthy neighbours. There are only two survivors - one is artist Scott Burroughs and the other is the four-year-old son of the plane's billionaire media-mogul owner.

Chapter by chapter, Before the Fall skips back and forward in time, following the survivors and the victims' families in the weeks after the crash, then going back to uncover more of the lives of the plane's passengers and crew beforehand. The narrative focuses on one character at a time, painting a rich and detailed background for each of them and adding more layers to the mystery of what went wrong. The controversial newsman; the ex-cult-member pilot; the businessman being investigated for fraud; each chapter adds another piece to a fairly complicated puzzle, with the cause of the crash seeming less and less obvious with every page.

Apparently Martha's Vineyard looks like this. Not a bad spot, really...

At its heart, Before the Fall is a whodunnit (Why did the plane crash? What happened? Whose fault was it?) and it works well, building layers of backstory throughout and creating more questions than answers around the various characters and their potential involvement in the crash. But there's more to it than that - I found that I'd largely forgotten about the whole who-caused-the-crash question, because I was so caught up in the stories of each of these characters and so interested in what would happen next.
There is certainly an element of suspense, but Before the Fall is less of a thriller and more of a sophisticated mystery, full of complexities and well-developed characters. The movie rights to the book have already been snapped up, but I'm not sure how well it will translate to the big screen - the storyline of Before the Fall is really quite simple and it's the strength of the characters that really set the book apart. It will be interesting to see how this is handled on film, but I'm sure Noah Hawley is more than capable of figuring it out.

Before the Fall is sure to be popular. It's well-written, suspenseful and compulsively readable - I would be very surprised if it's not a best-seller. But there is more depth to Before the Fall than what you'd normally find in this kind of novel - there are questions posed about the intrusiveness of the media into the stories they report on and the sensationalisation of the news as the lines become more and more blurred between news reporting and entertainment television. Questions about what makes someone a "hero" nowadays and what we expect from the people put on these pedestals. Even questions about the relationships between people and the meaning of family. It might read with the pacing of a lightweight mystery novel but there's also some substance there to really sink your teeth into and the characters will stay with you long after you finish the book. Finding out what happened to the plane - well, it's almost beside the point.

This really was a great read - highly recommended.

9/10

The Blade Artist

The Blade Artist

by Irvine Welsh
Published April 2016.

I've been a quiet fan of Irvine Welsh for years - quiet in that I tend to forget about him completely for years, only to randomly stumble across one of his books and remember just how much I enjoy his writing. The Blade Artist is quite possibly his best one yet.

Irvine Welsh has an undoubtedly unique voice and a way of bringing Edinburgh's seedy underbelly to life in all its dark, gritty glory. The Scottish accent is thick throughout (every now and then you need to read a sentence out loud to figure out exactly what it says) and the atmosphere brilliantly expressed. It's like the Scottish equivalent of what Marlon James does so well in A Brief History of Seven Killings - both authors can take a time and place that I know absolutely nothing about, but somehow make it feel very real and even a little familiar.

 What's unique about The Blade Artist is the somewhat jarring juxtaposition of the rough neighbourhoods of Edinburgh against the much softer (and arguably less interesting) privileged lifestyle of main character Jim Francis, an acclaimed artist living a quiet family life near a Californian beach. Successful, comfortable and apparently quite content, Jim has turned his life around, leaving behind a jailbird past to become a redeemed character far from his home town of Edinburgh.
A sudden death in the family sees Jim back in his old neighbourhood and he is quickly pulled back into the same old social circles and the same patterns of drunken violence.

Like the best of Irvine Welsh's novel, The Blade Artist is funny and dirty and dark in parts. It's fast-moving, graphically violent and action-packed with never a dull moment. It's jam-packed with vivid, memorable characters, many of whom are making return visits from earlier novels - to enjoy The Blade Artist, you certainly don't need to have read Trainspotting, but there are some beautiful little gems in there for readers who loved the earlier book and wondered what became of the characters...

Where are they now..? Wouldn't you like to know...

The Blade Artist proposes that even the most irredeemably violent and horrid of characters can be saved. But then it turns this idea completely on its head - has Jim Francis really changed? Is a talent for art and an overseas move enough to change a person from bad to good, or has he just gotten better at hiding his real nature? In trying to prove that he's changed, is Jim only fooling himself? Considering that the story is largely told from Jim's point of view, Irvine Welsh does a beautiful job of keeping these questions up in the air throughout the book; Jim's character seems constantly in flux and this grey-area mentality is seen in many of the other characters too. Most of the people in The Blade Artist are neither good nor bad; they're people who've done terrible things but they're more than just the drugs they've taken or the fights they've started. These are fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional characters and they bring some real weight to what could otherwise be a fairly simple story of murder and revenge.

The Blade Artist starts with this quote from Camus - could not be more appropriate, really.

I knew nothing about this book before I read it, so I don't want to say too much and ruin the fun for anyone else. Don't worry about the plot of The Blade Artist or where you've seen these characters before - just get yourself a copy as soon as possible (it's available from the 7th of April) and read it. I promise you'll love it.

10/10

The Passenger

The Passenger
by Lisa Lutz
Published March, 2016

Sometimes, a good book can tear out your heart and leave you in tears. Sometimes it can make you think about social issues from a completely new perspective. Sometimes it will even leave you pondering the very meaning of life. And then there are the books that don't do any of these things, but are fabulous nonetheless because they are just such fun. A fast-paced ride from start to finish, The Passenger is one of these books.

In the opening pages of The Passenger, Tanya Dubois has been freshly widowed, husband Frank having taken an accidental tumble down the stairs. While apparently blameless in Frank's death: "In case you were wondering, I didn't do it. I didn't have anything to do with Frank's death. I don't have an alibi, so you're going to have to take my word for it", Tanya is not at all keen to stick around and instead, she flees the scene. Within forty-eight hours, she's assumed a new look, new name and new identity - but it's not so simple to get away and she's pursued across the country by mysterious figures from a mysterious past.

Presumably, Tanya's disguise was very convincing. Much like this. 

The Passenger starts with a bang and just keeps going from there at break-neck speed - it's perfectly paced so that just when you're about ready to put the book down for the night, something else happens and you just need to read a bit more. It's like the book version of a fantastic-if-slightly-trashy TV series that you can't stop binge-watching.
The book is certainly not perfect (the supporting characters are a little flat and there are a few plot holes that are never really explained), you don't really notice any of the flaws because you're so caught up in the story itself to concern yourself with minor details.

Narrated by Tanya, The Passenger carries a wry note of dark humour, right from the first sentence: "When I found my husband at the bottom of the stairs, I tried to resuscitate him before I ever considered disposing of his body. I pumped his barrel chest and blew into his purple lips. It was the first time in years that our lips had touched and I didn't recoil". While the other characters in The Passenger are arguably a  bit thinly drawn, Tanya herself is given a unique voice, her character well developed throughout the book as we learn more about her past and better understand her motivations. There are an awful lot of half-decent suspense novels out there with similar stories, but one of the things that sets The Passenger apart is this wonderful, humorous tone - it's a book that doesn't take itself too seriously, which just makes it even more fun. 

Entertaining, well-written and perfectly paced, The Passenger is a great ride.

8/10

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave
(21st April, 2016)

    

Having enjoyed a couple of Chris Cleave's books in the past, I was pretty damn excited to get a copy of Everyone Brave is Forgiven and expectations were fairly high. Suffice to say, I was not at all disappointed.

Both Incendiary and Little Bee (there's another one called Gold that I have yet to read but assume is equally good) were unique, absorbing and well-written; good, solid reads that I would highly recommend. Everyone Brave is Forgiven though - it's something else altogether. Where Chris Cleave's previous books were good, this one is an absolute masterpiece.

Starting on the first day of World War II, Everyone Brave is Forgiven follows the stories of three unique Londoners. Socialite Mary leaves Finishing School to sign up for the war effort: "War was declared at eleven-fifteen and Mary North signed up at noon". Young, spirited and opinionated, Mary is assigned to work as a schoolteacher to children rejected for relocation to the countryside because of physical disability, intellectual impairment or unsuitable skin colour. 

Education administrator Tom chooses not to enlist, but is distraught when his best friend Alistair signs up and leaves for war. 

All three (along with a sizable cast of distinctive supporting characters) are fabulously written, three-dimensional characters and seeing wartime events through their eyes puts a whole new spin on an already well-documented story.

Chris Cleave writes beautifully. There are so many perfectly crafted sentences in Everyone Brave is Forgiven that I've ended up highlighting half of the book. It feels as if every single sentence in this book has been carefully re-written until it's perfect - there's not a dud note to be found. There are these wonderfully novel similes, like: "She hated being eighteen. The insights and indignations burned through one's good sense like hot coals through oven gloves" or "He held his rifle slightly away from his body when they marched, the way one might carry a child that had wet itself" or "You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs".

The author also has this wonderful talent for creating beautiful little scenes, small moments in time that are so very vivid - "He scissored his skinny brown legs over the top of the gate, using the penultimate and the ultimate wrought-iron O's of LONDON ZOO as the hoops of a pommel horse, and was immediately lost to sight". The imagery throughout Everyone Brave is Forgiven is like nothing I've ever read before. It's absolutely stunning. 

Evacuee children leaving London for the countryside, World War II

It could be argued that we tend to look back on the Allies of World War II with slightly rose-tinted glasses - history is told by the victors, after all. It's easy to demonise the German forces and see the English as some kind of enlightened warriors for freedom and equality, but Everyone Brave is Forgiven provides a vivid reminder that all was not idyllic in British society at this time either - at least, not for everyone. One of the strongest supporting characters in the book is one of Mary's students. Presumably dyslexic and with a penchant for running away, Zachary is also "coloured". And that's the nicest word that's used about him. The casual racism demonstrated by almost every character in the book is all the more jarring because these are not awful people - this is just a time and place where black people are seen very, very differently to today and black-and-white minstrel shows are the height of hilarity. The way in which Zachary is treated because of his skin colour; well, it may not be quite like Nazi Germany, but it's heart-breaking nonetheless. Things aren't much better for the "cripples" of Mary's class: "They had wheeled him inn to the village hall where the evacuees were being chosen. He had waited all night. No one had wanted a polio boy, twelve years old and pimpled. They had not wanted him in the next village either, and finally his mother had gone out to bring him home".     

This unflinching honesty recurs throughout the book - the characters are imperfect but wonderfully believable. Their motivations are often admirable, but more often pragmatic or even self-serving. The repercussions of war are seen in all their gory detail; there's no shying away from unpleasantness or pulling punches. It all feels very real. 

I don't want to say too much about the storyline for fear of ruining any surprises, but Everyone Brave is Forgiven is moving, compelling and unique. Without a doubt, this is the best book I've read this year.

Apparently, Everyone Brave is Forgiven is loosely based on the stories of Chris Cleave's own grandparents. I cannot imagine a lovelier tribute than this absolutely beautiful book. 

10/10