The Woman in the Window - A.J. Finn

The Woman in the Window - A.J. Finn

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published:2018

Pages: 427

The Woman in the Window is a not entirely revolutionary, but quite gripping thriller in the vein of
The Girl on a Train, which as we all know is just a rip off of Rear Window. Anna, the narrator of
The Woman in the Window, is an agoraphobic addict, who spends most of her time watching old
movies, playing online chess and watching the neighbours through the windows of her New York
townhouse. Like Rachel in The Girl on the Train, Anna’s substance abuse issues render her an
unreliable narrator. Anna mixes her medication with copious amounts of Merlot, leading her (and
us) to be unsure if what she experiences is real or dreamed up by her imagination. I think I would
have gotten a lot more out of this device if I hadn’t already read The Girl on the Train, but
unfortunately because I had, it just felt a bit overdone. 

My favourite aspect of the book is the atmosphere created by A.J. Finn in Anna’s house. Anna is
an old movie buff, and constantly plays old black and white films throughout the course of the
novel. That coupled with Anna’s spooky, empty house creates a very mysterious atmosphere,
perfect for a thriller in which the narrator feels she is losing her mind.

I’m not a huge thriller fan, and I’m not very good at seeing twists in advance, so bear that in mind
when I say that I didn’t see most of the twists coming. Though the first half of the book was a bit
slow, it sets up a lot of important background, essential for the action packed second half, so stick
with it.

All in all The Woman in the Window is a pretty solid thriller, suffering from the misfortune of
resembling The Girl on the Train  a little too much. 

Three and a half stars

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful - Sarah Wilson

Publisher: Bantam Press

Published: 2018

Pages: 307

Firstly, while I loved this book, I’ll acknowledge it is not for everyone. If you don’t like it 50 pages in, you’ll probably never like it. The book is a combination of a memoir and tips and tricks for dealing with anxiety. It’s clear that Wilson has done a huge amount of research for the book (or for her life with anxiety in general), a lot of which includes cold-emailing people she’s read or heard about to pick their brains. It’s not structured linearly, Wilson dips into the different times in her life that helped illustrate the concept she’s talking about. There’s not a huge amount of structure at all really, the book is like a long conversation with a friend who says “listen…. this is everything I know”.

The main difference between how Wilson treats her anxiety and the way it’s viewed
by the medical community is that Wilson sees it as a personality trait to be embraced
and managed, rather than an illness to be treated. The book low-key felt like lists of
tips and tricks for forgetful people. Wilson doesn’t view anxiety as a thing to get rid of,
it’s just a personality trait that you have and can manage.

While I didn’t identify with everything Wilson has experiences, (and under no circumstances am
I even considering giving up sugar), there was plenty I did connect with. Basically what I took
away from this book is that we all need to start meditating.

This book isn’t for everyone, but I got a lot out of it.

Four Stars

Conversations with Friends - Sally Rooney

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2017

Number of Pages: 321

Review:

I put of reading Conversations with Friends,  because I felt it may hit too close to the bone while I was
studying in Dublin. And I’m glad that I left it because it definitely triggered me a tiny bit.

Firstly Sally Rooney’s writing is excellent. It’s sparse yet effective, even if her method of writing
dialogue takes getting used to. The characters themselves are wonderfully written. They are not
very likable, but they are very real. Frances, the protagonist, and Bobbi her ex-girlfriend/best friend
and probably the most so, but so are most of the cast. I personally don’t much care if the characters
are likeable or not, more importantly Frances, Bobbi and the rest of their cohort are realistic. They
make very poor yet realistic choices, they fuck eachother over and help eachother out, and effectively
illustrate the intricacies of modern relationships. I didn’t really care if they were unlikeable, they were
memorable and told a great story. Bobbi and Frances may also only be considered so unlikable
because they are women, I thought Nick was just as annoying but in a different way.

Personally, I found Rooney’s depiction of Dublin’s ‘Champagne Socialists’ extremely realistic. Both
Fances and Bobbi romanticise the idea of not working, and the idea of poverty itself. But when
Fances’ father stops sending her allowance, not only does she struggle to survive, but she’s ashamed
of having to work to support herself. She hides her newfound poverty from Bobbi, who has a wealthy
family supporting her, and her boyfriend Nick. When Nick, who has a fair bit of money himself, finds
out that Frances is struggling financially,he helps her out. But this only serves to create tension in their
relationship, as Frances hates that she depends on Nick, and becomes obsessed with paying back
everything she owes him. Bobbi also has an interesting and hypocritical relationship with the 1%.
She also ‘hates’ the rich, but is bankrolled by her rich father and fits in among the upper middle class
seamlessly due to her privileged upbringing. Unlike Frances, she may never actually have to work,
but only because she has her rich family propping her up. Establishment money also supports Melissa,
the ‘free spirit’ writer/photographer. She humours Valerie, her patron, despite Valerie’s bitchy
behaviour, and openly tells Frances she only puts up with her because she backs her financially.
Through Melissa’s relationship with Valerie, Rooney illustrates the unfortunate dependence of artists
on their benefactors, and how this relationship conflicts with their political principles.

I think Rooney does an excellent job addressing the disconnect between how the characters view
themselves and how they are seen by others. Bobbi and Frances both think that the other is more
interesting. Whenever Bobbi and Frances attend a social event together, Frances is very conscious of
the way Bobbi behaves, how she holds people’s attention and fits in easily. However, Bobbi tells
Frances that she is the more interesting one of them, and that their friends are more interested in
speaking with her and hearing what she has to say. Frances and Nick also misinterpret each other
frequently, both of them think they come on two strong and that the other is distant. Melissa believes
that Frances is disgusted by her middle class lifestyle, but Frances is really just jealous of her.

Conversations with Friends  is a quick and engaging read, if you’re not bothered by annoying
characters I would highly recommend it.

Four and a half stars.

Origin - Dan Brown

Publisher: Penguin


Published: 2017

Pages: 538

Review:

Here I am again, shamelessly reading another Dan Brown thriller. I think I’ve read all his books and while I wouldn’t call myself a fan his books never fail to entertain. Origin is another solid attempt by Dan Brown and it hits all the marks you would expect from a Robert Langdon Book. Religious sects, symbology classical art and literature, a life or death chase around a European city and also some sort of scientific leap that may or may not be real all are hallmarks of the adventures of Robert Langdon, symbologist/Indiana Jones.



Origin takes us to a new country, Spain, which I don’t think we’ve been to with Mr Langdon, as he mostly brings us to Italy. In Bilbao and Barcelona we see the confluence of art, god and meticulous human planning and balance, which it sort of metaphorical in this book if you can try and find metaphor in a Dan Brown novel. Brown explores the idea of artificial intelligence through Edmond Kirsch, a genius computer scientist and the linchpin of the novel as he announces a discovery that will change the world and destroy and hope that mankind may find in religion. The ideas in this book are based around some pretty loose computer science that Brown must have found hypothesised in some obscure article or journal and decided to use it to kill god. It’s an interesting thought experiment, given that this technology exists what would it be used to discover? But I wouldn’t cite Origin as a source for a research paper.



The plot, which is what I read this books for, was actually pretty good. On the whole it wasn’t surprising (shocker:the beautiful woman who accompanies Langdon on his quest accidentally falls in love with him) but there were a few plot points that surprised me and kept me on my toes.



The aspect that interested me the most was the idea of do we really need faith? Obviously I don’t need to explain that religion is so ingrained in our cultures and physches that it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. But what if a discovery happened that caused everyone to lose faith in their God, what would the world be like? This resonated with me particularly as I read it in the lead up of the Pope’s visit to Ireland. I concluded we’d be fine without God, but that’s just my opinion. An interesting twist Brown added to the book was the ‘Atheist Terrorist’, who commits acts of terror against the faithful. To the best of my knowledge this is not a thing, but as we all know there are extremists in every camp and I wouldn’t be surprised if it became one.



Origin received a fair bit of criticism from the Roman Catholic community, criticism that Brown is no stranger to. However, it would be unfair to say that Origin targets the Catholic church.Its villain is the Palmarians, a catholic illuminati style splinter group that the RC church does not under any circumstance associate with. I know this for a fact as when we covered cults in religion class in my catholic school, we were shown a documentary about the palmarians and were told they were very bad indeed. The Palmarians are a perfect Dan Brown villain, creepy, culty and mysterious but with historic ties to one of the most recognised, influential and oldest of the worlds organisations.



All in all pretty good, a solid attempt by Dan Brown if very formulaic.



Three stars ***

Crazy Rich Asians -Kevin Kwan

Published: 2014

Publisher: Anchor


Pages: 527

Review:

I picked up Crazy Rich Asians after seeing the trailer and feeling intrigued. It struck me as kind of Singaporean Gossip Girl, and I loved GG so I was keen to dive right in.




I’ll get my pet peeves out of the way at the beginning because it’s all praise after this. Sometimes this book reads like Vogue, there are constant descriptions of what the characters wear and who it was designed by. And I just don’t care. I understand that Kwan was using it to illustrate how fashion is used to distinguish the elite and how their obsession with wealth manifests itself in their obsession with clothing, but he could have dialed it down and still got his point across. Also I felt like there might have been too many characters, introduced extremely briefly, all kind of similar to each other (there are about 500 aunts and I couldn’t keep them straight)




Other than that I really liked this novel. Kwan has done such a good job of creating some really realistic and surprisingly relatable characters. I don’t know anyone as rich as the characters in this book, but I know some fairly rich ones who are pretty intolerable so I can only imagine what people who are set to inherit a couple hundred mil are like. But not all of the Singaporean Chinese are terrible people, obviously, some of them handle their extreme wealth with grace and subtlety.




Kwan explores the way that wealth affects these people and their relationships. Nick, Eddie and Astrid are three cousins, almost as rich as either, who grew up together and turned out very differently. Nick is well adjusted, has a really healthy relationship with his girlfriend, our protagonist, Rachel (apart from lying by omission about his horrifically rich family). Astrid, a socialite and It girl, is married to the man she loves but her wealth but considerable strain on their relationship. Eddie is obsessed with his wealth, how much of it he has, how he can show it off and why his parents won’t, and ends up at odds with his relatively down to earth wife, Fiona.




Crazy Rich Asians is very interesting class study about how people with this extreme wealth behave and a fascinating insight into the strata of Asian society, something I knew nothing about. I found it intriguing that the families with the most wealth often go to great lengths to hide it, which seems extremely at odds with the behavior of their peers. (See:every rich person since the beginning of time). But much like the British landed gentry, a class system I’m much more familiar with, they are extremely snobby and condescending towards other social groups (especially the mainland Chinese and anyone with ‘new money’). Their social circle is rife with ‘inbreeding’, as it’s considered improper to marry outside of the Singaporean Chinese class. After all, the money must be kept in the family.




Crazy Rich Asians gives a unique perspective on Asian society that is never represented in the media and it’s characters defy most if not all of the stereotypes that Asian people are often saddled with in the media.




Four Stars ****

The Power - Naomi Alderman

Published 2016
Publisher Penguin Fiction

Blurb

What if the power to hurt were in women's hands?

Suddenly - tomorrow or the day after - teenage girls find that with a flick of their fingers, they can inflict agonizing pain and even death. With this single twist, the four lives at the heart of Naomi Alderman's 








Review

The question I kept asking myself as I read The Power was “Is this a feminist book?”. It was certainly sold to me as one, though as it unfolded, the narrative turned out to be a lot more complex than the female empowerment I expected.

If you wanted to read this as a misandrist handbook you probably could. Over the course of the novel as we see societal power shift from men to women, the women become even more ruthless and cruel than we expect from “the weaker sex”. This is the central point of the novel, there is nothing inherently evil about the group that holds the power, but power corrupts it’s holder. In this way this novel is more of a thought experiment than a story, what would happen if the power structures in society shifted to favour the women? Is there anything inherently peaceful about women, or is it there lack of power that allows them to take the compassionate, gentle role in society. Do women only behave this way as a foil for men, and is the submissive group always considered peaceful? The narrative illustrates that it’s quite easy to argue the “superiority” of one gender once that gender holds the power, of course they are better, because they wouldn’t have all the power if they weren’t? The “Power” eventually leads gendered violence against men. By exploring rape, Alderman examines the theory that rape is less about sexual desire, and more a display of power, dominance and a way of oppressing and controlling the weaker group.

Aldermen also explores who intersex individuals fit into this new power structure. The skein is considered a secondary sex characteristic and boys that are born with skeins and girls that are born without are shunned by society.

Alderman also uses some unusual ways to drive home the huge cultural shift that occurs before and after the cataclysm. The correspondence between “Naomi” and “Neil” ,book ending the narrative, about the book he’s writing is jarring. We are not used to hearing women talk to men in this way, the condescending language that Naomi uses when critiquing his work is usually reserved for women in the workplace. The novel is also dotted with drawings of found artifacts, thought to be used by women and girls training their power.

As interesting and thought provoking as the book is, it does require the reader to suspend their disbelief for a few key points. The skein made absolutely no scientific sense to me. How does it work? Where does it comes from? Why did women lose this power and why did it come back? The voice in Allie’s head also really frustrated me. What was it her mom, the Mother, mental illness? If this was cleared up in the book, I must have missed it.

“The Power” is unlike any other book I’ve read. By taking societal norms and flipping them it creates an unnerving and disconcerting narrative exploring gender violence and dominance. It’s no “The Handmaid’s Tale” but is a worthy member of the modern feminist canon.

Four Stars ****

One - Sarah Crossan

Published: 2015

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 430

Blurb:

Grace and Tippi. Tippi and Grace. Two sisters. Two hearts. Two dreams. Two lives. But one body.

Grace and Tippi are conjoined twins, joined at the waist, defying the odds of survival for sixteen years. They share everything, and they are everything to each other. They would never imagine being apart. For them, that would be the real tragedy.
But something is happening to them. Something they hoped would never happen. And Grace doesn’t want to admit it. Not even to Tippi.
How long can they hide from the truth—how long before they must face the most impossible choice of their lives?

Review:

One by Sarah Crossan follows the story of conjoined twins Tippi and Grace as they attend school for the first time and take their first steps in the “real” world.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know One is written in free verse. As someone who is deeply suspicious of poetry, especially something as “pretentious” as free verse, I had my misgivings about this book. But never fear, this book is beautifully written and the free verse doesn’t take away from the story at all, it even adds to it. However, it makes the book look at lot longer than it actually is, and you will find yourself flying through it much faster than you thought you would. It turns out that I was really wrong about free verse, and I wouldn't hesitate to pick another book by Crossan or in a similar style.

My favourite thing about One was Grace and Tippi’s relationship. I’ve read books about twins before, but there is something different about the relationship of conjoined twins. Grace and Tippi have spent literally every second of their lives together, and it shows through the unique bond they have. They have a relationship that is completely unimaginable to the rest of us, and Crossan does very good job of explaining the bond in a thoroughly touching way.

Family is a huge theme in this book, and Crossan deals very well witht he effect the twins condition has on the rest of the family, and how their own problems and experiences are eclipsed by Grace and Tippi’s. The girls’ mother works tremendously hard to support the girls and the rest of the family, while their father’s drinking begins to tear his marriage and their family apart. Crossan also addresses the effect the girls have on Dragon, their little sister, her health issues and eating disorder. The girls’ condition has a huge affect on the family over time, and though it’snot their fault, they begin to resent themselves for it.

In a similar vein to The Fault in Our Stars , Grace and Tippi have to deal with the prospect of death from an early age. Their whole lives they have been told that they won’t survive much longer, and like Hazel, Augustus and Isaac in TFiOS they approach it with a dark sense of humour that most of the other characters don’t seem to understand, even going so far as to plan their funerals.

I found the way the television crew and the reporter, Caroline, dealt with the girls and their situation very interesting. We've all seen documentaries that brutally exploit people like Tippi and Grace for entertainment value, but Caroline and her co-workers were extremely respectful in their dealings with the twins. It was a huge contrast to the way the general public and people around the girls reacted to them, which was mostly with fear and disgust.

However, this book left me with a lot more questions than answers. Grace and Tippi have very different personalities, how is this possible when they have exactly the same DNA and and environmental upbringing. Biologically speaking, they are the same person, coming from a single embryo that didn't separate fully, but at what point does one person become two? And how did they end up with such different personalities.

I would highly recommend One to practically everyone. It is a quick, yet heart wrenching read, and a wonderful introduction to free verse writing. One is a YA book about love, without being about romance. It will break your heart, and stay with you long after you've put it down.