Review of 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen

This is the third Jane Austen novel that I've attempted in my life, and the second that I've completed. Before reading Persuasion I really did hate her works. Pride and Prejudice is one of only a handful of books that I've started reading and not completed because I simple couldn't stand it, and Mansfield Park didn't win the author any favours with me either. But I think we've finally had a little breakthrough: Persuasion was tolerable, in fact it was even enjoyable. I'm kinda starting to see what the Austen hype is all about.

Anne Elliot, the novel's heroine is someone I can relate to. She's an Austen heroine who doesn't accept the first man that toodles along, and acts with a reasonable level of maturity. Anne's family are sinking financially, and her father needs to take some rapid action to save them from plunging into debt. Since the death of her mother, Anne has been a little isolated from the heart of the family - her sister Elizabeth and her father are eternally in cahoots, and they look down on her. But, she knows that a friend of the family, Lady Russell, holds sway with the pair, and between them they persuade the rest of the Eliots to downsize their home.

This isn't the biggest change for Anne however, as she soon goes to visit her sister whilst the remainder of her family move to Bath (a place she doesn't particularly enjoy). There she learns that a man she once loved as a young girl has returned from overseas. She listened to the advice from her family and Lady Russell, went against her heart's desire, and broke off her engagement from him. He was deemed to be beneath marrying an Elliot. Now, seven years on, he's made his way up in life, and Anne is more mortified than ever at her past actions.

Will she see if they can repair a seven year rift? Or will she succumb to other men's persuasions?

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Ceremony' by Leslie Marmon Silko

This was the most eye-opening and thought-inspiring book that I've read in a long time. It's also the first adult book that I've ever read that discusses the life of a Native American. This is honestly a novel which I think we should all read. It discusses good and evil, life and death, war and peace and all the grey areas in between in a variety of different forms. As well as narrative we have poems, which are more like oral ceremonies of tradition. These intertwine with the main plot of the novel as it draws towards a close. 

Ceremony's main character is Tayo, a young man suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after returning fighting in World War II. He is consumed by guilt after the deaths of his cousin Rocky and uncle Josiah. After the war, Tayo spends a few years in a mental institution, trying to recover from the hallucinations and physical symptoms of his PTSD. He gets a little better, and returns to his home with his auntie, but is by no means anywhere near recovered.

Tayo has been an outsider his whole life. His mother abandoned him when he was young, and his father was one of a possible myriad of white men, making him mixed race. Although he lives with his auntie and Grandma, he knows he is not respected by the community they live in as being a 'true' member of the family. 

He turns to alcohol to deal with the trauma of being a war veteran, as do his closest friends. The story of Tayo's recovery from being on the battlefront is interspersed with memories from the war, and his childhood and stories from folklore. The novel in itself becomes a sort of 'ceremony' of recovery. Tayo uses old Pueblo methods of healing to help move forward, and the modern story of the war is bound up in these.

I would definitely recommend reading this! Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Lying About Last Summer' by Sue Wallman

I've really been digging YA fiction at the moment. So much so that next time I write up a book haul for y'all it's going to be pretty YA heavy. I've been interspersing them with a lot of dense classics, so it makes for a nice, easy reading break between all the kind of books that you're 'supposed to read'.

Lying About Last Summer is the second book from 2016's Zoella book club that I've read so far, and I loved it almost as much as the first one. It's a bit of a thriller, and we all know how much I fell in love with those last year, so I was naturally a big fan.

Lying About Last Summer is all about Skye's ability to deal with her sister's tragic death. One year previous to the novel, Luisa, her sister, was killed. And Skye was present. But, heeding her sister's advice and paralysed by fear, she did nothing until it was too late. 

Skye's life used to revolve around her swim team and badgering her older sister to spend time with her. But Luisa drowned, and Skye can't step foot into a pool without a panic attack. Her parents can no longer cope with living in the house that they lost a child in, so the family move and Skye becomes more isolated than ever.

Fast forward to the next summer, and Skye's parents have sent her to a camp for bereaved teens in an attempt to help her recover from Luisa's death. All is going well (or at least as well as it can do), until she opens up the old app, Message Hound, that her and Luisa used to chat on. They're the only ones with the passcode for their messages, so they used to use it for things they didn't want their mum to see. When Skye messages her sister, the last thing she expects is a reply ...

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'The Subjection of Women' by John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill is a name that has been bouncing around my ears for years. First he was a big figure on my A-Level Ethics course, and then he popped up again on my first-wave feminism studies module at uni. The Subjection of Women was first published back in 1869, and I imagined it would be so dry (read: Mary Wollstonecraft-esque) that I just skipped over reading it, but now that I've come back to it I can see how powerful it really is. 

The best (or worst?) thing about it, is that it lays out feminist goals in simple terms, and shows how little we've completely achieved. Mill calls for the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. And that's what we're still fighting for. He asks that marriage be determined on equal grounds: women should retain their own property and have the ability to be heirs in their own rights. 

The greatest focus of the essay is upon marriage, and as such he goes into great lengths about the equality of partners within marriage in the eyes of the law. He suggests that women ought to have the right to divorce a husband on the grounds of abuse, and that they ought to have hold over their own money.

This long essay went against much of European conventions at the time. Reading it from a modern perspective makes you notice how forward-thinking Mill was. Still we often have inequality within marriage: women are required by tradition to take a man's name, and often expected to bend to a man's will, like the quotation above suggests. 

Mill also defended the intelligence of women, making the logical claim that there would be more successful female scientists and mathematicians if as many women as men studied the subject. He disputed the argument that women have smaller brains and smaller intellects because of the size of their heads also. 

If you want to get to know more about first wave feminism I would definitely recommend not doing what I did and skipping over this, but going for it as it truly was very eye-opening.

Have you read this? What did you think?

Review of 'Robinson Crusoe' by Daniel Defoe

This book has been sat around on my shelves since I was about nine or ten. For real. That's well over a decade. It's remained unread the entire time, but it had a pretty cover so I kept it. Priorities and all that. Anyhow, for the longest time, I thought Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island were the same book, and that kind of shows how much interest I paid to the novel as it sat gathering dust.

I finally decided to put my curiosity at ease as to why this was a classic and get underway with the novel, and despite being fairly slow-going in some places, in others it was actually quite interesting. Robinson Crusoe is largely renowned for being the first English novel.

Robinson Crusoe is a young man who, like many others, doesn't really know what to do with his life. He needs to join a profession, and his father is keen to get him set up in one, but Crusoe decides he wants to sail for a bit before settling down. He heads off on a short voyage from one part of the UK mainland to another, and is shocked at the violence of a storm that his ship is swept up in. 

Robinson is not put off however; he's caught the sailing bug and wants to do it again. This time it's a longer voyage. All is going well until the ship is caught up in an even bigger storm, and ends up wildly missing its destination. Instead, the group of shipmates end up being captured by an African lord, and kept as hostages. Once Crusoe finds a way out, he cannot return to England: he is in but a tiny boat, and keeps close to mainland Africa. Finally, he ends up in Brazil and sets up a plantation there.

Robinson is at last making some good profits, but his neighbour suggests that they go on a voyage to capture slaves from America to work on the plantations they own, and Robinson cannot resist the temptation of being on the sea once more. The ship they travel on shipwrecks off of the coast of a small island, and Robinson is the only survivor. He must adapt to life alone on this island, and the majority of the novel tracks his progress as he does this.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'Ruth Hall; A Domestic Tale of the Present Time' by Fanny Fern

Although I love reading older novels, it can sometimes be really hard to relate to them. We no longer live in a world where we need chaperones to wander around, or where you can only travel by foot, horse or train, or where you have to send letters to contact people. But the issues involved in this book are things that I still come into contact with all the time. It was startling, but nice to finally be able to properly connect with a female protagonist of the 1800s.

The novel opens just before Ruth Ellet marries Harry Hall. She's lucky: they genuinely love each other, and the match is a good one. Her family have money, but are only too glad to get the only girl of the family off of their hands. The Halls are not as wealthy. After their marriage, Ruth and Harry make do with the little money they have and are happy. They have their first child, and she is a wonderful creature, but dies young. Ruth is devastated, and struggles to recover from her grief.

Behind the backdrop of this family unit, is a pair of overbreaing in-laws. Harry's mother criticises everything Ruth does; she insults her housekeeping, spies on her, critiques the way she brings up her children, and has no sympathy for the mother who has lost a child. 

Soon Ruth and Harry have another two girls, and the family is becoming more financially stable. Ruth is happy. Suddenly Harry is struck with an illness. His parents won't take it seriously, and by time the doctor is permitted to be called it is too late. Harry passes away and Ruth is left alone to look after their young girls. But what about the Halls who always wanted more involvement in the pairs' marriage? They don't think they ought to support the young widow - she's not their child after all. Despite being very well off, Ruth's father and brother considered her done with: they felt that as she had married into the Hall's family, she was not their concern anymore. The village that her and Harry lived in loved the little family so much that they raised money for the poor widow, but her brother took it, vowing he would give it to her himself, yet he never did.

Ruth is forced to live on a pittance that her father guilt trips her about endlessly. It's hard for a woman to find work and she goes into poverty stricken lodgings. Ruth tries a variety of forms of work, but she is too physically weak for manual labour: grief has hit her hard.

Soon, Ruth struggles to raise enough income to support both children, and reluctantly agrees to allow her eldest to live with the Halls. She is determined to improve her monetary situation and get her daughter back asap. Ruth finally turns to writing, and after a long and strenuous toil begins to achieve some success from it. Writing saves both her mind and body.

I loved this book so much. Overbearing in-laws are the bane of my life, and I felt like I knew exactly how frustrated Ruth felt. It was also fab to see a girl win her own place in the world, and prove everybody that tore her down wrong. If you want a feel-good classic that's not as long as a Dicensian novel, or as wordy as a Hardy, then I would 100% recommend giving this a go.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'I Was Here' by Gayle Forman

As soon as I found out that Zoella was doing a book club with WH Smith I knew I wanted to look into it more, I won't lie. I've now ended up with almost all of the range, and this is the first one I've read. It was the one I was most excited for, after looking a little into the plot of each of the eight novels in the book club. It feels like forever since I read a YA novel, and it was SO comforting to read one again.

I was completely obsessed with the plot of this book, and finished it in just over a day, which is something that never rarely happens anymore. It was a 'stop everything' kind of novel, that I just had to finish.

I Was Here is all about a girl named Cody, who's best friend Meg killed herself suddenly, and with no real explanation. Cody thought they told each other everything, but she didn't know that Meg was even struggling with life, let alone that she wanted it to end. 

Meg and Cody have been inseparable for years. Cody's mum works all hours to support the pair of them, and she's never met her dad, so Meg's family feels like her own. When Meg dies, Cody feels cut off from everything. She wants to go and see the Garcias, but it's not the same without her. When Meg's parents ask Cody to travel to Meg's university and pack up her things for them, Cody's only too glad to get out of the small town they live in. 

When Cody arrives at Meg's dorms, she realises that there's a LOT going on that she didn't know. Like the fact that Meg was harassing her ex-boyfriend. Or that she rescued two kittens. Soon Cody realises that her and Meg did fall out of touch in the few months before Meg took her life. Still though, Cody can't believe that Meg made the decision to die alone. What if she didn't? 

We follow Cody on a course to track down other people who may have had a hand in Meg's death, and it becomes a complete page-turner as we do.

Have you read it? What did you think?