Katrina's Review: Fun Home by Alison Brecdel

I spotted this in the library, a graphic novel-cum-memoir (two challenges in one!).
Alison's father can be abusive, he struggles to restore their home to Victorian perfection, and he is a closet homosexual (a fact she doesn't learn to she comes out herself). Her mother reveals her fathers secret affairs, including those with young boys and the babysitters in a revealing letter in an attempt to acount for Alison's sexuality.
From this perspective Alison looks back at her childhood and her own developing sexuality, along with her relationship with her father before his death/suicide.

The Gathering - Katrina's Review

Lots of reviews of this book say it is too depressing, too miserable. This is a book about a suicide, its hardly likely to be full of happiness and joy.
The book is narrated by a middle aged, middle class woman, with a seemingly perfect life - she's at home looking after the kids, whilst her husbands business is going so well she can buy anything she wants. But she isn't happy.
When her brother commits suicide she starts mulling over events in the past, her past and her families past, as well as the present, her lifeless, loveless marriage. Veronica is from a large family, one where the kids all drag up each other. The mother has too many kids to care about each child individually, and she also has some type of problem, so the family is constantly trying to protect her from the live going on around her. Veronica seems to hate, and yet love her mother, and also blames her father for having to grow up in this overly large family.
After her brother's suicide, Veronica explores a past she would have never known, the meeting of her grandparents, and how that meeting led to the event that she says it the root cause of her brother's death.
This novel is firmly based in the thoughts of the narrator, no great event happens, and you guess early on what childhood event will be revealed. I felt I never knew whether to trust this narrator, at some points she even told you that she couldn't clearly remember events. I also didn't really like her, or any of her family, they all seemed fairly self absorbed, no one really seemed to love anyone else, they all just existed side-by-side.
Saying that I thought it was well written, and a good read.

Mr Pip - Katrina's Review

I have been meaning to read this book since it came out and I had it down for a few different challenges, so I was very happy when it arrived as part of a bookring, a great book and free too! The novel is focused on a small island in Papa New Guinea, the islands men have travelled to Australia to work in the mines leaving the women and children on the island till they can find a way to join the men. Then war strikes, daily routines are hit and dreams of seeing fathers and husbands again are put on hold. The only white man on the island decides to start up the school again, many of the lessons are dedicated to Great Expectations, the children are gripped. Matilda the main character uses the novel as a means of escape from the war and also a way to understand the world around her. I thought that this was one of the best reads of this year so far. The language was fantastic, the characters well rounded and the shock well placed. Definately a novel I'll be recommending to others.

Katrina's Review of The Space Between Us by Thirty Umrigar

The Space Between Us is a novel about the relationship between a servant and her employer in Bombay. One lives in the slums, the other in a nice apartment, one has to work long hours everyday the other complains if she has to make breakfast. Despite this their is a bond between the two women, they would not class themselves as friends for the social divide between them is just to great a step to bridge, but they rely on each other for support. And despite the social divide their lives frequently parallel each others. Until an event occurs which puts this bond to the test.
This book falls into that area of books about Eastern communities which we seem to be swamped with at the moment. Communities which have huge social and gender divides and which seem a million miles away from the concerns of the Western world. I certainly wouldn't say this is one of the best examples but it is a good read, some thing perhaps that fits in as an easy read between harder/heavier books. The relationships are well constructed, believable but I could see the conclusion coming from miles away, there were no surprises with this novel. I also felt that I would like to have spent more time seeing what life was like in the slums of Bombay. As seems to be a regular thing with these books, they were centred around the women giving us their views on the absent men in their lives.
I read this for the Notable Book Challenge Book 2 of 8
Other Bloggers thoughts:
Musings, Wendy's thoughts

Katrina's Review of A Pure Swift Cry, Siobhan Dowd

I have meant to read this book for a few years now, but never quite got around to it (like many other books) so when I saw it on the Notable Books challenge I added it to my list of challenge books, and I'm really glad I did.
This book is categorised as young adult fiction but is definately part of the cross over genre.
The book is set in Ireland, in a small rural village. The Talent family are busy coming to terms with their mother's recent death and the relative abandonment of their father. Shell may be only 15 but she is the one left responsibe for running the house, feeding her father and acting like a mother to her younger brother and sister. The occupants in the village mey feel sorry foe Shell and her family but they offer little to help, usually just sympathetic glances. When Father Rose arrives in the village Shell thinks she has found a friend and Jesus, but this relationship is not to last long. Shell then retreats into finding comfort with the local choir boy, Declan Ronan, a child who doesn't quite follow with the rules of Catholicism. A scandal occurs with Shell lft smack bang in the middle of it.
As an adult reading this your able to look on and see the mistake she is making, and see the reality of situation that she is too naive to be able to read herself. A great story about growing up and dealing with what life throws at you.
5/5