Tag: Reviews

#BlogTour #BookReview Young Women by Jessica Moor @RandomTTours

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Young Women BT PosterWelcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Young Women by Jessica Moor. My thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to take part in the tour and to Zaffre for my digital review copy via NetGalley.  Do check out the post by my tour buddy for today, Amanda at The Butler Did It.

YM Graphic 3About the Book

Everyone’s got that history, I guess. Everyone’s got a story.

When Emily meets the enigmatic and dazzling actress Tamsin, her life changes. Drawn into Tamsin’s world of Soho living, boozy dinners, and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars, Emily’s life shifts from black and white to technicolour and the two women become inseparable.

Tamsin is the friend Emily has always longed for; beautiful, fun, intelligent and mysterious and soon Emily is neglecting her previous life – her work assisting vulnerable women, her old friend Lucy – to bask in her glow.  But when a bombshell news article about a decades-old sexual assault case breaks, Emily realises that Tamsin has been hiding a secret about her own past. Something that threatens to unravel everything…

Format: Hardback (320 pages)      Publisher: Manilla Press
Publication date: 26th May 2022  Genre: Contemporary Fiction

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My Review

For the first portion of Young Women I thought I knew exactly where the book was going. Tamsin is the manipulative young woman who wheedles her way into Emily’s life, adjusting her behaviour to be exactly what she thinks Emily needs; a life that’s much more exciting and daring than the one Emily is currently living – a diet of meal deals and a flatmate she hardly ever speaks to. And Tamsin’s an actress so she’ll have no problem putting on a performance and pulling the wool over Emily’s eyes until her true motives are revealed. Except it’s not as simple as that.

Everything changes in the second part of the book when the story becomes much more nuanced, as do the characters.  Gradually we learn that Tamsin and Emily, and Emily’s friend Lucy, have experiences in common none of which have resulted in action being taken against the perpetrators. (It may be a concidence but in each case where they’ve reported what they’ve suffered it was to a woman yet no action was taken.)  A neat counterpoint to this is Renee, Emily’s boss at the Women’s Advocacy Group, who is relentless in her support of women who have suffered sexual violence.

In a turnaround, it’s Emily who sees herself taking the dominant role in her relationship with Tamsin. Here’s her chance to demonstrate her activism by supporting Tamsin in calling out the actions of a powerful and influential figure in the film industry. Emily pictures the two of them being seen as a ‘force to be reckoned with’ taking part in joint interviews as the story reaches the press. She even fantasises about quitting her job to make time for it all. (Ironically, Emily’s has been careless in her handling of an actual case she’s been assigned at work.)  Emily is sure she knows exactly how Tamsin will respond, congratulating herself on ‘getting good at writing her’ so she’s disappointed at Tamsin’s reaction. She’s even more shocked at Tamsin’s subsequent actions, although her own are not exactly laudable. What happens next explores issues of consent and the extent to which there is a responsibility to speak out. Does failing to do so somehow make you complicit?

Although I had some reservations about Emily’s risk-taking behaviour towards the end of the book, Young Women raises some interesting moral questions, bringing to mind cases that have made the headlines in recent years.

In three words: Thought-provoking, intimate, intense

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Jessica Moor Author PicAbout the Author

Jessica Moor studied English at Cambridge before completing a Creative Writing MA at Manchester University. Her debut novel Keeper was published in 2020 to rave reviews and critical acclaim. Jessica Moor was selected as one of the Observer‘s debut novelists of 2020, and Keeper was chosen by the Sunday Times, Independent and Cosmopolitan as one of their top debuts of the year. Keeper was nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize and an Edgar Award. Young Women is her second novel.

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#BookReview Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

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Death and the PenguinAbout the Book

Viktor is an aspiring writer with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when he opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. He and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape

Format: Hardback (240 pages )     Publisher: Vintage
Publication date: 28th April 2022 Genre: Contemporay Fiction, Literature in Translation

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My Review

Death and the Penguin was the May selection for the book club run by Waterstones in Reading. Although the book is available in paperback, most of us chose to purchase Waterstones’ special edition containing a new introduction by the author and with £10 from each copy sold being donated to Oxfam’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

First published in 1996, Death and the Penguin has been described as ‘a chilling black comedy’ and there are definitely moments of surreal humour; Misha the penguin’s funeral attendances spring to mind.  And anyway how often do you come across someone who has a penguin for a pet, especially when that person lives in an apartment? However it does show that, although solitary by nature and with a history of keeping other people at arm’s length, Viktor can show affection. Touchingly when Misha falls ill, Viktor seeks out a penguinologist (who knew there was such a thing) to advise him on what to do and, as a result, enters into an agreement that will have quite incendiary results.

Through a series of chance events and quite without knowing how it happened, Viktor acquires what he regards as the requisites of a ‘normal’ life: wife, child, pet penguin. Set largely in the city which we now know to call Kyiv, there are occasional glimpses of Ukranian lifestyle such as when Viktor travels to a friend’s dacha for New Year celebrations.

Though he doesn’t comprehend it for a long time, Viktor has become entangled in what turns out to be a web of corruption run by some very shady individuals. When he finally puts two and two together, he realises he knows too much. ‘This isn’t a film, it’s for real.’  But has that realisation come too late?

Although all the book club members enjoyed the whimsical nature of the book, we were left with the feeling that we’d missed something and that perhaps you had to be Ukrainian to really appreciate the satirical element of the book.

In three words: Quirky, playful, charming

Try something similar: Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

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Andrey KurkovAbout the Author

Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kyiv Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin which was first published in 1996.

Kurkov has long been a respected commentator on Ukraine for the world’s media, notably in the UK, France, Germany and the United States.