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The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
by Steam_Trixie
This is one of those books I just had to share with friends. Not just because it was captivating, but because it also had a style that I'd never read before.
I was told about it by a friend when I wasn't reading much. The odd book here and there. But once I started reading this I soon learnt that reading wasn't just something ... boring you do at school.
In the Wasp Factory you see the world from a young character that can be deemed as slightly twisted. But things aren't all that they seem and Ian Bainks bring to life a character that most people wouldn't even dream of.
The main character, Frank, lives with his father in a remote scottish village. His mother abandoned them and the older brother is in a psychiatric hospital. To release the stress of his life, Frank turns to weird past times, such as sticking animals heads on sticks, until he finds out that his brother escaped.
The story unveils Franks past and the more you read, the more you find out about how long his actions have been taking place. His brother escaping causes a series of events that change Frank, but is it for the better?
This isn't something you can read lightly, it's dark side will catch unaware and you'll find the gothic style more than scary a times. But where the book is dark and weird, you learn to love it, and almost worry yourself for doing so.
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The Vanishing Point - Val McDermid
by cha97mw
Described in the tagline as 'a genuine page-turner' and 'every parent's worst nightmare', something greatly appealed to me about this book. The cover I found after reading was a bit misleading, but it features a stormy view across a field, and you can see a man disappearing with a child into the far distance.
Stephanie Harker ... is travelling across America with her 5 year old child, Jimmy. They get stopped at airport security when a metal plate in her leg makes the metal detector go off. She has to leave Jimmy alone next to the security scanner for just a few minutes where she can still see him. Then to her horror, she watches a stranger in airport uniform take the child by the hand and lead him away through the busy airport. When she tries to follow, the staff try to stop her, and bewildered by her behaviour she is stunned with a taser. By the time she comes round enough to report what happened, the boy is long gone.
This book got going pretty much straight away. We join the story as the main characters are queueing to go through security, and within a matter of minutes the first chapter takes us through the dramatic moments I describe above. Immediately you feel very tense as a reader wondering just who could have the brass neck to abduct a child from such a busy airport in front of so many potential witnesses.
The story then takes the format of Stephanie being questionned by airport security staff and an FBI agent. We learn that Stephanie is a ghost writer - a woman whos very job is to tell a good tale. We hear the extraordinary story of how she came to be Jimmy's guardian - his parentage, in particular his mother (Scarlett) who is a reality TV star greatly reminded me of Jade Goody from their similar personality traits. Scarlett has had a very deprived upbringing, but the TV show helped her to drag herself away from a life of drug abuse and violence. Scarlett is not the brightest tool in the box, and she has a tendency to express points of view that are perhaps unethical or even racist. However, strangely, Stephanie and Scarlett become best friends, and the cirumstances mean that Scarlett cannot take care of her son, and she asks Stephanie to be his guardian - a job she promised to do to her best ability.
Very skillfully, we are taken through the past five years of history - we meet lots of characters from Stephanie's past, such as ex-boyfriend Pete who has stalked her in the past, Jimmy's parents, and other people who were around him as he grew up. The story is very involving, and this is the sort of book that kept me reading far too long into the night, and I even caught myself reading it while waiting for dinner to cook instead of watching in case it boiled over. The story really did play with my emotions and get me trying to predict where this missing boy could possibly be and if Stephanie would ever get him back.
I don't want to give too much plot away by talking more about it, so I just want to say that I could never have predicted the outcome of this, and I felt when we got to the conclusion of this story, I felt that it all ended very suddenly and I was left wanting even more from this story to see what happened next. I was really sad that I had come to the end of the 530 page novel.
McDermid is a very skillful author - there is really nothing to criticise within this story. I felt like I were living alongside the characters, and although it occasionally felt like the outcome was predictable, I ended up second guessing right till the end what was going to happen.
I find it very hard to classify this novel - McDermid to me is usually a crime fiction author, and though there is a big criminal case within this story, I felt that was almost secondary to a damn good character based novel. If you hate crime novels, you probably won't enjoy some of the bits in here that are a little more graphic, but someone who likes trying to solve a mystery may not find it that appealing either. One thing it certainly is for me is a dramatic and clever story with lots of tension that kept me reading right to the end. I've enjoyed a couple of other novels by McDermid, and I will be looking out for more very soon based upon my thorough enjoyment of this particular story. The best book I have read in a good few months.
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Enemies of The Heart - Rebecca Dean
by eilidhcatriona
As a long-time fan of Penny Vincenzi, when I was looking for an indulgent and absorbing read during the recent bank holiday weekend, I searched for authors like her - and one suggestion which came up was Enemies of the Heart by Rebecca Dean. Liking the description of it, I immediately downloaded the novel to my Kindle and got stuck ... in.
Enemies of the Heart opens in 1909, when cousins Zelda and Vicky are visiting Berlin. American Zelda has her eye on Josef Remer, heir to the immense House of Remer steelworks and fortune, while quieter Vicky falls for his shyer brother Berthold Remer. When war breaks out in 1914 though, the family is pulled apart and loyalties are tested. What follows is a family saga taking us past the end of the Second World War, and encompassing both Berlin and Yorkshire.
In the early sections of the story, the narrator is primarily Vicky, but as time passes and the children from both sides of the family begin to grow up, they also take their part in telling the story. This gives the reader multiple viewpoints, so while the characters might not know what has happened to their relatives during the two wars, we do. Yet some secrets are always withheld, and come as revelations to both characters and reader.
I always find this type of family saga utterly absorbing, with so many parts to the story to discover, and for this type of novel my favourite setting is the first half of the nineteenth century, covering one or both wars. I was almost nervous when I started reading Enemies of the Heart, worried it might not match up to Penny Vincenzi's wonderful novels set in this period, but I needn't have worried. While it doesn't better my absolute favourite of Vincenzi's novels, the Spoils of Time trilogy about the Lytton family, Enemies of the Heart is completely absorbing, wonderfully long, and packed with action and emotion.
What was new to me was the Berlin setting. Most of the novels in this genre that I have read have been set in Britain, with a focus on London, so to read about the German side was different. Additionally London does not feature in Enemies of the Heart, with the English side of the story being set in the idyllic Yorkshire countryside. While part of me missed reading about life in London during the wars, this difference in setting helped set Enemies of the Heart apart from Vincenzi's novels, perhaps meaning I wasn't comparing Rebecca Dean's writing too much with her.
Dean's writing is good, and well suited to the style of the novel. Her characters are portrayed well, ad it is easy to engage with them. I did occasionally get confused between the various characters and sometimes had to remind myself who were Zelda's children and who were Vicky's, and within that, which of them were German born and which English. This was a minor issue though, and perhaps more to do with my forgetfulness than anything else.
The strongest indicator of how much I recommend this novel lies in the fact that as soon as I finished it half an hour ago, I immediately visited Amazon and bought another of Dean's novels, and then sat down to write this review in order to spread the word. If you enjoy Penny Vincenzi's novels, family sagas, or are simply looking for an absorbing and indulgent read, then you really should try Enemies of the Heart. You won't regret it.
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