Tag: contemporary fiction

Book Review – How to be Brave by Louise Beech

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About the Book

Book cover of How to be Brave by Louise Beech

All the stories died that morning … until we found the one we’d always known.

When nine-year-old Rose is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, Natalie must use her imagination to keep her daughter alive. They begin dreaming about and seeing a man in a brown suit who feels hauntingly familiar, a man who has something for them.

Through the magic of storytelling, Natalie and Rose are transported to the Atlantic Ocean in 1943, to a lifeboat, where an ancestor survived for fifty days before being rescued.

Format: ebook (367 pages) Publisher: Orenda
Publication date: 30th July 2015 Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

When I tell you How to be Brave is the seventh novel I’ve read by Louise Beech, I think you’ll get the message that I’m rather a fan of her books. (I also have two more of her novels, The Mountain in my Shoe and The Lion Tamer Who Lostm in my TBR pile.) The six books I’ve read – Maria in the Moon, Call Me Star Girl, I Am Dust, This Is How We Are Human and Nothing Else – may differ in subject matter but what they have in common is that they take the reader on an emotional journey. Sometimes that’s combined with an element of suspense or sometimes, as in the case of How to be Brave, with a touch of the supernatural.

How to be Brave, Louise Beech’s debut novel, draws on her own experiences and her own family history. When Natalie’s daughter, Rose, is diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Natalie feels metaphorically lost at sea. With her husband away on active service, she has to face the challenge of managing her daughter’s chronic condition alone. Always protective of Rose, Natalie now finds herself having to do the last thing any parent would want to do, inflict pain on their child. We see Rose’s struggle too; the daily injections of insulin, the restrictions on what she can eat and the sense of being different from her schoolmates. No wonder Rose’s initial reaction is one of rebellion. With Natalie at her wit’s end, she falls back on Rose’s love of books as a way to distract her and to re-establish the bond they’ve always had.

Here’s where the magic starts because intertwined with the contemporary storyline is another set in the Second World War involving Natalie’s grandfather. In the author’s hands, the boundary between past and present is gossamer thin, with love and encouragement passing between the generations just when it’s needed most.

Like Rose, I was enthralled by the story of the struggle for survival of Natalie’s grandfather and his comrades. (If I’m honest, for me, this was the more powerful element of the book.) It’s harrowing at times but it’s also a story of courage, determination, sacrifice and comradeship that makes you marvel at the resilience of the human spirit. We know Natalie’s grandfather survives the ordeal but the fate of the others aboard the tiny vessel is never certain. I’ll admit some scenes moved me to tears. But, as Rose points out, it’s OK to be sad because that’s part of being brave.

In three words: Moving, emotional, magical
Try something similar: The Last Lifeboat by Hazel Gaynor

About the Author

Author Louise Beech

Louise’s debut novel, How to be Brave, was a Guardian Readers’ pick in 2015 and a top ten bestseller on Amazon. The Mountain in my Shoe was longlisted for the Guardian’s Not The Booker Prize 2016. The Sunday Mirror called Maria in the Moon ‘quirky, darkly comic, original and heartfelt’. It was also a Must Read in the Sunday Express and a Book of the Year at LoveReadingUK. The Lion Tamer Who Lost was described as ‘engrossing and captivating’ by the Daily Express. It also shortlisted for the RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year and longlisted for the Polari Prize 2019. Call Me Star Girl hit number one on Kobo. It also longlisted for the Not The Booker Prize and won the Best magazine Big Book Award 2019. I Am Dust was a Top Six pick in Crime Monthly and a LoveReadingUK Monthly Pick. This Is How We Are Human was a Clare Mackintosh August Book of the Month 2021. Louise’s memoir, Daffodils, came out in audiobook in 2022, as well as her novel, Nothing Else. (Photo/bio: Goodreads author page)

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Book Review – Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek, translated by Leri Price @WorldEdBooks

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About the Book

Book cover of Where the Wind Calls Home by Samar Yazbek

Ali, a nineteen-year-old soldier in the Syrian army, lies on the ground beneath a tree. He sees a body being lowered into a hole – is this his funeral? There was that sudden explosion, wasn’t there … While trying to understand the extent of the damage, Ali works his way closer to the tree. His ultimate desire is to fly up to one of its branches, to safety.

Through rich vignettes of Ali’s memories, we uncover the hardships of his traditional Syrian Alawite village, but also the richness and beauty of its cultural and religious heritage. 

Format: ebook (150 pages) Publisher: World Editions
Publication date: 6th February 2024 Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Translated Literature

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My Review

In my review of Planet of Clay, Samar Yazbek’s previous novel set in war-torn Damascus, I noted that the book’s narrator, a young girl called Rima, has a very different view of the world from those around her. She senses things in colours, expressing the things she experiences through drawings rather than in words. Ali, the protagonist of Where the Wind Calls Home, also sees the world differently having formed from early in his life an intense relationship with nature, particularly trees. ‘Trees were simple, unlike people.’

As a boy, one particular oak tree became his sanctuary, a place from which he observed the clouds, and the mountains that surrounded his village. As he lingers between life and death, injured – probably fatally – by a bomb dropped in error on its own soldiers, his sole objective becomes to reach a nearby tree in search of that familiar sanctuary. He sees the tree’s presence as a sign that it will take care of him, that it is no coincidence he finds himself close to it.

Hallucinating because of his injuries, he relives moments from his life: the death of his brother, an arduous trek to a shrine with his mother Nahla, a visit to the palace of a local chief whose lavish lifestyle demonstrates how power and wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a few. These episodes give an insight into life in a rural village whose peaceful, albeit harsh, existence has been transformed by war: its menfolk killed leaving grieving families without fathers, sons, brothers.

Although any loss of life in war is devastating, it seems particularly tragic that a gentle soul like Ali, who harboured ambitions to follow a religious life, should be caught up in a violent conflict – ‘one of the many wars that humans are so busy inventing’. In fact, as we learn, his involvement results from an act of sacrifice. Ali recalls his mother’s anguish at not being able to view the body of Ali’s brother, so devastating were his injuries, and is determined she not should not suffer in the same way again. ‘Ali reflected that even if he didn’t survive, at the very least, he had to keep this promise to himself: to make sure his body stayed whole, so Nahla could see it and say goodbye to him…’

Where the Winds Calls Home has a dreamlike quality as Ali’s thoughts move, often imperceptibly, between past and present. There is striking imagery, particularly the presence of a mysterious ‘Other’ whose movements seem to mirror Ali’s own struggles to achieve his objective. It’s a heartbreaking story of the destructive impact of war and a reminder that seemingly intractable conflicts persist in many parts of the world.

My thanks to Christine at World Editions for my digital review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Lyrical, moving, powerful
Try something similar: Held by Anne Michaels

About the Author

Samar Yazbek is a Syrian writer, novelist, and journalist. She was born in Jableh in 1970 and studied literature before beginning her career as a journalist and a scriptwriter for Syrian television and film. Her novel Planet of Clay, also published by World Editions, was a finalist for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Warwick Women in Translation Prize. Her accounts of the Syrian conflict include A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria. Yazbek’s work has been translated into multiple languages and has been recognized with numerous awards – notably, the French Best Foreign Book Award and the PEN-Oxfam Novib, PEN Tucholsky, and PEN Pinter awards. She was recently selected to be part of the International Writers Program with the Royal Society of Literature.

About the Translator

Leri Price is an award-winning literary translator of contemporary Arabic fiction. She has twice been a Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, in 2021 for her translations of Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay, and in 2019 for Khaled Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work. Her translation of Khalifa’s Death is Hard Work also won the 2020 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation.