Review of 'The Story of an African Farm' by Olive Schreiner

Whenever I read a novel from the first-wave feminism era, my reaction is generally split into two: I'm either shocked at how forward-thinking the novelist is, or appalled at how restricted their thinking is. The Story of an African Farm falls into the former category. 

As it's part of first wave feminism's literary movement, although the novel is set in Africa, we don't see any intersectional feminism. It's very much about a Dutch white family living in South Africa and how they approach feminist ideals.

At the beginning of the novel, the three protagonists Em, Lyndall and Waldo are children. Waldo is an overtly Christian boy, who believes in the teachings his father passed down to him, whilst Lyndall constantly expresses more modern ideas about the world she lives in. 

Lyndall leaves the farm to study at a boarding school, but comes home disheartened at the fact that they teach her 'women's duties' such as sewing. She wanted to learn about the world, become more adept in mathematics and scientific study. Back at the farm, Em has fallen for a man named Gregory, who loves her easy feminine acquiescence and mannerisms. He hates Lyndall when he first meets her: she is abrupt, outspoken and 'unwomanly'. But soon he sees a charm in her that he overlooked at first. Now Gregory falls for Lyndall.

Gregory asks for Lyndall's hand in marriage. She however, has other ideas. Lyndall does not plan to get married, ever. She's in love with a stranger, whom the others have never met, but tells Waldo that she intends to cohabit with this man. She does not wish to marry as she wants both herself and her lover to be free to move on if the relationship wears thin. This was obviously quite a revolutionary idea at the time, and it's interesting to see how Schreiner lets it play out.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'The Beautiful and the Damned' by F. Scott Fitzgerald

We all love The Great Gatsby, right?! It's practically a rite of passage in the UK if you do an English A-Level. I studied it for a second time whilst I was at university, and out of my 15-person seminar, only 1 person hadn't studied it before, and that was because they were an international student with a very different curriculum. 

I loved TGG. It was the simplest book to analyse - I mean, the colour symbolism is good enough to keep you writing for days. I knew that I'd want to read more works from Fitzgerald in the future. 

The Beautiful and the Damned strangely reminded me more of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath than TGG. It had the same soul-crushing destruction of the ideal of the American Dream. As you moved through the book, you began to realise just how hollow the protagonists Gloria and Anthony were; not hollow as characters, but hollow as people. They were empty shells of people, filled with airy dreams. As we move throughout the book, piece by piece their dreams start to crumble, and by the end, the pair have nothing inside them anymore. 

Anthony Patch is the grandson of an infamous New York philanthropist. As such, he feels it's a bit pointless to work: he's going to inherit a fortune one day, so why bother? Gloria is a beautiful young woman who has the attention of any and every man she could want. Yet, she just toys with them: none really appeal to her until she meets Anthony. His flippant cynicism awakens something in her, and she finally finds herself actually wanting a man.

After their marriage, things get a little rocky. Anthony's once proficient allowance from his grandfather is a lot less useful when stretched between two people. The amount of parties, having two homes and buying new clothes all the time hardly helps either. As he gets more stressed about their financial situation, Anthony beings to drink heavily. 

They're having the time of their lives, and the hangovers from partying the night before are worth it for the party itself. That is, until Anthony's grandfather (who advocates prohibition) walks in unexpectedly during one of their drunken flings. He struts out, disgusted by the pair, and dies a few weeks later. They're no longer in his will. Now begins a great legal battle to have Anthony re-instated as legal heir to at least part of the millions the old man had amassed. As the battle goes on, Anthony and Gloria become more and more disillusioned with the lives they lead, and it's not until Anthony trains for the war that they realise how pointless their existence had become

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Fangirl' by Rainbow Rowell

Do you ever come across books that you just completely connect with on a personal level? I felt this so much with Fangirl, to the extent that I had to put it down a few times to take some breathers, because well, fuck, the book was really impacting me. In some ways, I wish I had come across it when I was 18, but in others I think it would have hit far far too close to home, and been too intense for me to handle. Retrospectively, I can see how much it would have upset me to read it, but I can also see how similar my life was to a couple of the characters, in particular Wren. 

Cather and Wren's mum didn't know she was having twins when they were born, and she had only one name in mind: 'Catherine'. So, they became Cather and Wren. The girls have been inseparable since birth, especially as their mum didn't stick around for too long. They were left to pick up the mess that was their dad, and everything that happened just served to bring them closer. They even share their number one passion: Simon Snow books (and the movies of course). Think Harry Potter but with vampires too. 

Magicath and Wrenegade are their online alter egos, fangirls of the Simon Snow tribe. They've been writing fanfiction together for years, but Wren's starting to pull away. Soon it's just Magicath writing, and she gathers a following of over 35K readers. Cath's no longer just writing for herself: she can feel the weight of a whole community on her shoulders.

When the pair head to university, Cath is distraught because Wren decides that she wants a new roommate. She cuts her hair short, gets rid of her glasses, and Cath feels alone in a world that she's always been paired in. As Wren embraces university life with parties, drinking and new guys, Cath becomes more introverted, and struggles to even find her way to continue writing fan fiction.

Fangirl is all about how everything changes at the start of university, but also tells us that it's okay for everything to change, even if it's scary.

I loved this novel, and would definitely recommend it to any YA fiction fans! Have you read it?

Review of 'Frozen Charlotte' by Alex Bell

I haven't read a modern horror book in YEARS. So long in fact, that I'm pretty sure the last one I read would have been part of the Goosebumps series. FYI, I loved that, but somehow I fell out of love with all things creepy. I'm just not a horror sort of girl. Scary films overwhelm me and give me nightmares, and I'm more of a fan of a classic Gothic novel than anything written this century. It's far too close to home. But, Frozen Charlotte was part of 2016's Autumn Zoella book club and I couldn't resist giving it a try. Despite being totally petrified by the plot of the novel, I found the whole adrenaline rush of reading something that scary incredible. I definitely will be keeping an eye out for more Alex Bell books in the future.

Frozen Charlotte begins with a ouija board app. Two friends, Sophie and Jay decide to try and contact the dead from Jay's phone in their favourite cafe. They pick Sophie's dead cousin, Rebecca, who passed away in a tragic accident when she was seven. As they attempt to contact her, the lights in the cafe go out, and a waitress is badly burnt by hot cooking oil. Sophie thanks Jay for holding her hand when it all got a lil scary, but Jay denies touching her. His last question to the board was 'when will I die?'. The reply? 'Tonight'. 

Jay doesn't make it through the night, and Sophie needs answers. Was her cousin's spirit responsible for Jay's death? She heads to the Isle of Skye to visit her uncle and Rebecca's brother and sisters, Cameron, Lilias and Piper. From the offset nothing sits right. Cameron's no longer the sweet boy she remembers, and Lilias is constantly spooked. Within the first few nights, Sophie starts having extreme nightmares and feeling unsafe in the house. And the tiny porcelain 'frozen Charlotte' dolls in her dead cousin's room don't exactly help either ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Sophie's World' by Jostein Gaarder

Sophie's World has been sat on my bookshelves since I was about ten years old. I think it was actually a present for my sister when we were kids: her name's Sophie and the gift-giver thought it was funny. I imagine they overlooked the fact that it was a deep philosophical text that I struggled a little to get my head around over the past few weeks.

This novel is without a doubt completely mind-blowing. It totally turned on its head what I thought of the world and of novels about 17 times, and I was genuinely astounded by so many areas of progression in the text.

If you don't want any spoilers, then look away now! Sophie's World begins with a young girl called Sophie receiving letters about philosophy in her mailbox. They start all the way back at the Ancient Greek Philosophers, and with each new envelope comes a new development in the history of philosophy. Sophie is scared that her mother will find out about her secret correspondence with a philosopher, so she does all she can to meet him in person.

However, as Albert Knox, the philosopher, continues to teach her, stranger and stranger things happen. Sometimes he calls her Hilde, and she keeps getting postcards addressed to this girl sent to her. Soon strange things start popping up in her town and in her home; things that she's never seen before. As things start to get more and more surreal, we leave the story behind, and realise that actually, Sophie's world is in itself a story. A story created by Hilde's father for her 15th birthday. All of the postcards sent to Hilde c/o Sophie arrived at Hilde's home by being inserted into the novel. Am I making sense? The book gets seriously trippy here, and had me sat back thinking about how everything made sense and yet made no sense at the same time.

If you want to learn more about philosophy, and see the linear structure of a novel completely turned on its head at the same time, then I would highly recommend reading Sophie's World! 

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Villette' by Charlotte Bronte

I LOVE the Brontes. Wuthering Heights is my favourite book in the entire world, and Jane Eyre comes up pretty close too. I've even read the slightly less well known Anne Bronte. Having said all of that, I really didn't fall in love with Villette as much as I did with the other novels.

Villette felt kinda torturously long. I mean, I've read a billion and one long novels from the same period, but this really felt like it dragged. I just couldn't connect with the protagonist Lucy Snowe as much as I've done with similar heroines. Everything about her just felt a little 2D. We  whizzed through her childhood and then spent the majority of the novel bound up in just a couple of years of her trying to find her way in the world. It was a sort of 'coming of age story' but without the romance I felt.

I mean, there was actual romance in the novel, just no stylistic romance. Lucy fell in love with a close family friend, Dr Bretton, and he was kind to her, but threw her aside as soon as he found a younger, prettier, richer replacement. He was never really intending to go any farther than friends with Lucy, but she didn't quite see this.

I think the main reason why I didn't get on with the novel is because I didn't find Lucy's character admirable, or particularly intriguing. She works at a school for girls in France, and a teacher who works alongside her is utterly vile to her. He makes her cry, feel out of place and feel inferior at every possible opportunity. But later in the novel we learn that he's a great philanthropist, and this makes him some kind of hero deemed worthy of Lucy's love??? He's even made out to seem like some kind of martyr for loving Lucy even though she's a Protestant. And naturally his behaviour is explained away as 'just the way he is'. It's kind of like the whole 'boys will be boys thing' *rolls eyes*.

You get a slightly similar relationship in Jane Eyre, with Mr Rochester being quite unfriendly to the governess, Jane, but it's definitely not on anywhere near as large a scale. All in all, I'm glad that I saw another side to Bronte's writing, but I can definitely see why Jane Eyre has remained the more popular novel!

Have you read it? What did you think?