Category: Blog

Hello!

This week I have chosen All Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James, from the YA Book Prize Shortlist 2020. This is a dystopian fiction set in the future that explores not only the existential crisis of humanity, but the very nature of what it means to be human.

Inspired by Carlo Rovelli’s Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, who states that ‘I believe that our species will not last long’. All Quiet at the End of the World runs with Rovelli’s thread that ‘we belong to a short-lived genus of species’ and that ‘the brutal climate and environmental changes which we have triggered are unlikely to spare us’.

These themes could make for heavy reading combined with the premise of a virus that stops fertility in humans. However, the narrative, set in London, is firmly about Lowrie (16 years old) and Shen (17 years old), their relationship with each other, their parents and their responsibility to world as the youngest remaining humans. Born from frozen eggs seventy years after the virus, in the time of sterility, they are waiting for scientists to find a cure. Themes of environmental action, a previously unknown virus, quarantine, waiting for a cure are never more pressing than in the current Covid-19 environment for not only a YA, but for an adult audience.

The narrative takes the form of a dual storyline and opens in the past when the virus first emerged with a call log for Maya Waverley to the emergency services. The narrative skips eighty-five years and is written in the first person from Lowrie’s point of view, as she and Shen explore the London underground with her Dad (a horticulturist). Lowrie finds Maya’s purse in an abandoned tube ‘the purse flops open, revealing rows of plastic cards’ and thus the scene is set for the link between the two narratives.

Lowrie and Shen are teenage explorers, detectives and scientists who try to unravel what has happened over the decades since the virus. Shen (from China, deaf in one ear and afraid of rats) is presented as being ‘the best at intellectual things’ but for Lowrie, ‘fixing stuff is my speciality’. Through their mudlarking they find and document pieces that are buried in the Thames and anywhere they can explore and is shown in a log at the beginning of each chapter. Their parents work together to teach them all they will need to know to survive in this new world.

Their futuristic world is defined with reference to bots who ‘keep things safe’ specifically ‘Mitch’ who befriends Lowrie and Shen and is describes as having ‘spindly metal legs’ that ‘have sprouted out of the robots rusted spherical body’.

Maya’s story is told through Lowrie’s research from what is left of Maya’s social media feeds where Maya revealing her feelings: ‘So much for feeling calmer! Today I can’t stop showering and showering, trying to get the virus off me’ and identifying a post virus world: ‘that was my first day of our new normal’ as well as her fears ‘I’m still having nightmares about the virus’. Maya attaches new items in her feed: ‘NEWSBREAKING.com: Doctors report Drop in Women Conceiving’, providing an external eye on the changing situation due to the virus.

The conflicting feelings of being a teenager are explored as Lowrie questions her sexuality, ‘I might be maybe probably definitely bisexual’ as well as and her attraction to Shen, ‘I find myself eyeing his forearms again’. The need to get away from her parents and experience independence also raises conflicting feelings, ‘now that we’re finally independent, I just miss him terribly’.

All Quiet at the End of the World questions evolution and what it means to be human. The extinction of humanity, climate change, the restoration of eco systems, prejudice and the ethics of assisted suicide are all seen through the love story of Lowrie and Shen. It is told in simple language, ‘I fill my utility belt with the essentials – a penknife, screwdriver, chisel and spanner’ that affirm Lowrie’s voice and power.

Themes: love, death, climate change, pandemic, nature of humans, existence, existential crisis, independence, parent-child relationships, bullying, prejudice, sacrifice.

All pictures and writing are my own unless otherwise credited. Permission must be obtained before any image reproduction and credit must be issued in any image reproduction or quotations. 

Hello!

How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang, from the Booker Prize Longlist 2020, is my book choice this week. It is a story of two orphaned native-born Chinese sisters, Lucy (12) and Sam (11), set in the wake of the California gold rush and their journey to bury their deceased father and search for home.

The narrative is written in the present tense immersing the reader into the action and creating a sense that we are living it along with Lucy and Sam. Using simple prose, it is divided into four parts. Parts One and Two are written in the third person and opens when ‘Ba dies in the night, prompting them to seek two silver dollars.’ And a few pages later we learn they are alone as ‘And long gone, Ma.’ The death of Ba sets the sisters on a journey to bury him.

The backdrop of the wild west in the 1800’s subverts expectations of white cowboy protagonists. The writing feels YA initially: with both parents removed from the narrative through death in the first few pages of the story, the sisters are propelled on their adventure. However, knitted in the simple prose and initial YA feel, is the image of the two children trailing the corpse of their dead father in a crate through the desert. This morbid image contrasts a sense of black humour, where bits of the corpse fall off as it decays in the heat of arid plains, described by Lucy who realises that ‘the hand has not one but two missing fingers.’ This is furthered when she decides to preserve the body in salt, like a piece of meat, to rid it of maggots and flies: ‘Sprinkled over Ba’s body, the salt looks like ash.’

With a thematic feel of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men’s the American Dream, where George describes ‘a little house and a couple of acres’ and Lennie’s desire to ‘live off the fatta the lan’, Lucy and Sam are fully aware of Ba’s dream: ‘I’ve got my eye on a piece of land eight miles toward the ocean. Between two hills, forty acres.’

Layered within the narrative, Chinese tradition appears throughout, where the sisters search for two silver dollars to place over their father’s eyes ‘sending the soul to its final good sleep’. A sense of family and responsibility drives the sisters on their journey as Ba says, ‘Family comes first.’ Animal and insect imagery add texture to the layers with reference to: snakes, buffalos, horses, tigers, flies and maggots. The buffalo descriptions are particularly striking: ‘the skeleton rises from the earth. Like a great white island…they’ve seen buffalo bone in pieces along the wagon trail, but never whole.’

The narrative also explores a search for identity and home. Sam, androgynous, becomes the boy Ba never had and is ‘prized by a father who wanted a son’. As Lucy searches for ‘What makes a home a home?’ she also seeks an understanding of identity through appearance, location and language with realisations such as: ‘For the first time Lucy understands that the language Ma shared with them in bits and pieces, was only a child’s game’.

The narrative cleverly shifts to the first person in Part Three where Ba’s perspective reveals an adult version of past events and then switches back to the third person in Part Four, fast forwarding five years. The relationship between gold, salt, earth and the elements interplay and are linked with plums, blood and skull imagery. The Parts are identified with dates (XX62, XX59, XX42/XX62, XX67) indicating the actual year (1862, 1869, 1842/1862, 1867) but also potentially representing any year creating a sense of timelessness to the narrative.

This coming of age story of Lucy and Sam takes the reader on a meandering journey through savage events, vast sorrow and parched deserts but it also through personal sacrifice, belonging, family and hope. How Much of These Hills is Gold sets out a new vision of the immigrant experience in forming the history of the American West.

Themes: coming of age, American Dream, heritage, tradition, death, loneliness, family, parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, gender, identity, sacrifice, loss, hope

All pictures and writing are my own unless otherwise credited. Permission must be obtained before any image reproduction and credit must be issued in any image reproduction or quotations. 

Hello!

The YA Book Prize 2020 Shortlist and The 2020 Booker Prize Longlist have been announced and it’s that time of year to get reading. My bedside table and Kindle are stacked up and ready to go!

My first read, Meat Market by Juno Dawson, is from the YA Book Prize 2020 Short List about the fashion industry, its attraction and iniquitous underbelly.

Meat Market follows the journey of sixteen-year-old Jana Novak (an average teenager from an estate in London) through the treacherous world of modelling. Scouted at Thorpe Park for her androgynous looks and height, Jana is propelled into a whirlwind of fashion shoots, travelling and worldwide fashion weeks. Forced to choose between the lure of money through modelling and sixth form college, Jana opts for the former and embarks on a journey that takes her further and further away from her family, friends and herself. Her friends Sabah, Laurel and boyfriend Ferdy (Kai Ferdinand) oscillate in and out of Jana’s life initially keeping her grounded in reality, but as the novel progresses the distance between them grows as does Jana’s dependence on anti-anxiety medication and sleeping tablets.

Dawson systematically cuts away the glamour of the fashion industry and life of the models exposing raw truths: long hours, grotty accommodation, jet lag, eating disorders, drug abuse, sexual abuse and the dehumanising effect of the industry.

You would expect the novel to follow an arc of doom and gloom with our protagonist, Jana, self-destructing. However, the journey Dawson takes us on is one of hope, with Jana finding courage, strength, friendship and most importantly, herself, as well as exposing the fashion industry’s darkest secrets.

Written from the first-person point of view, we have an intimate knowledge of Jana’s life, her loneliness and confusion. This is enhanced by alternating the first-person narrative of past events with short interviews in the present. The opening interview of the book:

‘ – What am I supposed to say?’

‘ – Well, why did you want to make this film?’

‘ – It’s time, I think.’

sets the scene for the first-person narrative to catch up to this moment. The narration is interspersed with texts, newspaper articles and a celebrity review providing the reader a momentary opportunity to observe events from an outside perspective creating a concrete link to the real world. Our world. This makes the events feel not only tangible but frighteningly realistic. Reference to specific magazines, locations in London and around the world anchor the story in reality. Jana’s voice is clear, distinct and entirely relatable with Dawson capturing the essence of a London teenager through both dialogue and internal monologue. Jana’s opening thought, ‘Why are men such trash?’ is simple and brutal establishing the foundation on which Dawson builds her story.

Dawson’s gaze on the modelling industry in Meat Market is a call for greater regulation to safeguard the health and safety of models around the world.

Meat Market is a great read to kick start the nominations. The rest of the YA Book Prize Shortlist 2020 has a lot to live up to – very much looking forward to reading another from the list!

Key themes: identity, mental health, abuse, power, ethics, drugs, money, vulnerability, glamour, loneliness, courage, friendship and love.

All pictures and writing are my own unless otherwise credited. Permission must be obtained before any image reproduction and credit must be issued in any image reproduction or quotations.