Stay Where You Are & then Leave comes close but misses the mark
I am a steadfast fan of author John Boyne (best known for his novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas). He has a knack for capturing the unique voice of young boys who usually serve as his protagonists in his historical novels that are teaming with social issues of the day. Stay Where You Are & then Leave is the story of Alfie who is a mere five years old in 1914 when his father goes off to serve in the Great War....the war everyone said would be over by Christmas. As Alfie later notes, no one said which Christmas. Four years later, Alfie is still waiting for his father to come home.
Boyne does a fine job recreating the various hardships created by the war and weaving them into a readable tale for Middle Readers and Young Adults. Not only does he depict the deprivations of civilian life in London, but he also focuses on the war's conscientious objectors, the questionable results of unwavering patriotism, and the rampant discrimination and violence perpetuated on anyone of Continental European descent. But at the heart of the story is Alfie's father and the medical phenomenon that was so rampant and misunderstood throughout this horrible war: shell shock.
As the medical community tried to grapple with this mental condition they knew little about and even less how to treat, they collided with politicians and a general public who refused to acknowledge a condition that had no physical manifestation. The results were disastrous and heartbreaking. Boyne does his best to present this without whitewash but still through the eyes of a ten year old boy - a difficult task at best.
Ultimately, he does a good job, although the novel feels like he is continually holding back. Alfie is a well-rounded character, but he is the only one who is. His parents -especially his father - feel a bit two-dimensional. If his father were a bit more fleshed-out, there might have been more of a connection there, creating a more emotional bond for the reader. As a result the book is a good book versus a great book. Still in all, it is a good read, like all of his books, and I always recommend them.
While Beauty Slept
Ahhhh, fairy tale twists. I’m an admitted fan. Why do we love these re-imaginings of standard childhood literary fare so much? Is it because it gives us permission to return to the comfort of the nursery while still maintaining the illusion of reading an “adult” book? Perhaps. But I prefer a simpler explanation: we all love intelligent escapism. And that is exactly what Blackwell has provided in While Beauty Slept, her third novel.
Blackwell wisely chose a seemingly insignificant, yet ever-present royal servant and companion to tell the ‘true’ story of Sleeping Beauty. Elise Darliss, young and destitute and with only her mother’s mysterious long-ago royal servitude to recommend her, arrives at the castle desperate for employment. Hard work, the rare ability to keep her mouth closed, and a dash of good luck (or is it a bit of dark magic?) ensures Elise’s quick rise through the ranks until she finds herself serving the Queen herself and privy to all the castle intrigues.
Elise’s voice is both sympathetic and compelling. Told in the past tense, she continually drops tantalizing hints of the tragedy that is about to befell them all while creating a world that would someday produce the legend of Sleeping Beauty. Royal dynastic battles for the crown play out in the background while Elise herself grows to adulthood, experiencing heartbreak and discovering truth about her own parentage along the way.
Blackwell’s previous writing experience in the romance genre serves her very well here as she creates several restrained love affairs. Most notable, perhaps, is Elise’s marriage of convenience (necessity?) to an erstwhile rogue of a knight who eventually proves himself to be something quite unexpected. Despite the romance, don’t expect Elise to sit around waiting for a knight in shining armor to save her. No helpless princesses will be found in this book, thanks in large part to Blackwell’s own daughter. (See her interview here.) Attention to secondary characters and plot lines is impressive throughout the entire novel and several themes are constantly being woven at once.
The novel’s most striking feature is that for all it’s twist on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, Rose - affectionately nicknamed Beauty - plays a very small role in the story. In case you’re wondering, this is a good thing. It gives the story a depth and sense of realism that comes from deeper knowledge legends have only a grain of truth to them. We expect the ‘true story’ to have only seeds of the familiar - and that is precisely what Blackwell has delivered.
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Title: While Beauty Slept
Author: Elizabeth Blackwell
Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books
Pages: 432
Source: Library
Shhhhh....I'll tell you a secret
This is where I share one of my deepest, darkest literary secrets. No, it's not that I've been fibbing about reading War and Peace all these years. I truly did read War and Peace cover to cover and the story of how that came about is quite pathetic and deserving of its own blog entry someday.
No, my deep dark literary secret actually puts me in physical danger. *Whispering* I cannot stand Diana Gabaldon's Outlander Series.
It's true.
It's actually a bit more complicated than that. Like millions of others readers, I fell in love with the original novel, oh those twenty plus years ago. Jamie and Claire lit my imagination on fire and when the announcement came that Gabaldon would be writing a sequel......dear god in heaven! My literary life seemed complete. (Oh the 1980s and 90s were such a time of innocence....)
Until the sequel and all the subsequent novels in the series actually arrived. It didn't seem possible, but they just got worse and worse with each passing book. Not only were Jamie and Claire turned into geriatric sex fiends, but Gabaldon herself turned into a writer who refused to let a metaphor pass by without sticking it into an Outlander novel. By the time I reached An Echo in the Bone where an elderly Claire - engaged in a mutual outdoor masturbation scene in the middle of the American Revolution - notes that her nipples became as hard as musket balls, I was ready to shoot Gabaldon with a musket ball myself.
The natural question here is: why, oh why did I keep on reading the novels? The answer to that lies somewhere in between sheer tenacity (will it ever end?) and the delight of Gabaldon's secondary characters. Over the years I came to thoroughly enjoy many of the characters rambling through the background of her novels as much as I despised main characters such as Bree and Roger. And of course, I loved Lord John Grey more than any other.
It is therefore a given that I should enjoy Gabaldon's off-shoot series that features Lord John. This series is a combination of novellas and novels both and if read in order you can certainly see Gabaldon begin to take this character quite seriously over the course of time. The books and novellas are a sheer pleasure and I highly recommend them....whether you loved Jamie and Claire or not.
The Lord John Grey Series
- 1. Lord John and the Hellfire Club (Novella)*
- 2. Lord John and the Private Matter (Novel)
- 3. Lord John and the Succubus (Novella)*
- 4. Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade (Novel)
- 5. Lord John and the Haunted Soldier (Novella)*
- 6. The Custom of the Army (Ebook)
- 7. The Scottish Prisoner (Novel)
8. Lord John and the Plague of the Zombies (Ebook)
*Novellas included in the Hand of Devils Collection
