Review: All Her Fault (2022) by Andrea Mara

If I had to sum up All Her Fault in a single word, it would be: laborious.

I don't mind a twisty thriller or being led down the wrong path. But this one never really worked for me.

The novel opens with an interesting premise. Marissa arrives at a house to collect her young son, Milo, from a playdate, only to discover that the address she has been given belongs to a complete stranger. There is no playdate, and Milo has been kidnapped. It's the sort of opening that should get you excited but instead, I found myself struggling to engage.

The story is told from two perspectives: Marissa, the mother of the missing child, and Jenny, another school parent whose son was unknowingly used to lure Milo away. I suspect Andrea Mara intended these dual perspectives to build tension and perhaps explore some of the complexities of modern parenting and family life. Sadly, neither of those things really landed for me.

The characters felt disappointingly two-dimensional. We have the cliquey, unpleasant school mums and the career mother weighed down by guilt about balancing work and family. They all felt like familiar television archetypes rather than fully realised people. In fact, much of the novel felt as though it had been written with a television adaptation in mind rather than as a novel in its own right.

Despite being packed with twists and red herrings, the story somehow managed to feel both obvious and overly dramatic at the same time. By the final few reveals, I felt as though I was being asked to perform increasingly elaborate mental gymnastics just to make everything fit together. I appreciate that thrillers often require a degree of suspended disbelief. But this one asked for far too much of it from me.

All Her Fault is interested in blame: who was responsible for Milo's kidnapping, and how responsibility can be shared and imposed upon others. Had the novel leaned more into those themes and been written as more of a literary exploration of guilt and responsibility, I suspect it might have worked better for me. As a thriller, though, it all felt too surface level to have much emotional impact.

It's probably clear by now that I didn't particularly enjoy this one. The premise is undeniably compelling, but the execution simply didn't deliver for me, and unfortunately it's not a novel I would recommend.

1/5: Hard  slog and not for me. 

Review: Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her family and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and travelled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But these two estranged women come together at their father's deathbed standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, to hear the one last promise he extracts from the women in his life. 

 It begins with a story like no other. A captivating, mysterious love story that spans sixty-five years and moves from war torn Leningrad in the 1940's to modern-day Alaska. The three women are brought together by a story so unexpected and extraordinary that when Meredith and Nina finally learn the secret of their mother's past and uncover a truth so terrible, it will shake the very foundation of the family and who they think they are. 

Following the death of their father, sisters Meredith and Nina must come together and care for their elderly mother, Anya, a woman who is cold, distant and never offered them the warmth of a mother's love. This has had a major impact on their family dynamics. Meredith and Nina have bonded deeply with their father but their ability to love in their own personal relationships has been stymied by the lack of complete love they have experienced as children. Winter Garden traces their journey coming to understand their mother as she fulfils her husband's dying wish to share her life story with her daughters. 

The narrative shifts between past and present as Anya slowly shares the story of her experiences caring for her family during the Siege of Leningrad. What unfolds are her traumatic experiences of love, loss, starvation, deprivation, the brutality of war and the horrific toll it took on her family. Meredith and Nina unexpectedly come to support their mother as she gradually comes to terms with her trauma, and through the sharing of her life story the family gradually begin to forge new bonds. 

I read The Women by Hannah last year, another exploration of the impact of war through the eyes of the women who experience it and Winter Garden didn't disappoint. In fact, when presented with a twist in the final pages of the book I was caught by surprise when it brought me to tears. I say it caught me by surprise because in truth there were times when I was reading the novel that I felt like something was missing. Hannah's exploration of the sisters' emotional development didn't always feel as deep as it could have and the behaviour didn't always feel true to character. I also couldn't help but be reminded of Paulina Simmons's exploration of the Siege of Leningrad in The Bronze Horseman and in comparison, Winter Garden left me a little wanting. I accept that's probably an unfair comparison given The Bronze Horseman is an historical novel set during the siege and Winter Garden is a far more contemporary novel that explores the Whitson family dynamics. That's why I was caught surprise when I was brought to tears by the end of the novel. 

 Winter Garden explores how our own personalities and lives are shaped by our parents, family dynamics, childhood experiences and in this case intergenerational trauma caused by war and displacement. 

What I am coming to really appreciate about Hannah's writing is how capable she is of immediately creating a connection between the reader and the characters. I fall straight into her stories so naturally and look forward to reading more by her.

3.5 / 5 stars: I was caught by surprised at this novel's impact on me and I recommend it. 

Literary Wives Book Club (Sept 2025): Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Literary Wives is an on-line book group that examines the meaning and role of wife in different books. Every other month, we post and discuss a book with this question in mind: What does this book say about wives or about the experience of being a wife? 

Don’t forget to check out the other members of Literary Wives to see what they have to say about the book!

Other participants:

• Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest
• Naomi of Consumed by Ink
• Rebecca of Bookish Beck
• Kay of What Me Read

Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

Last book club we reviewed The Constant Wife by W Somerset Maugham (read my review here). When I finished The Constant Wife I appreciated its take on marriage and the power dynamics within. In contrast, Novel About My Wife fell a little flat for me. 

The central wife in Novel About My Wife is Ann. But in truth, the story is told entirely from Tom’s point of view (her husband) and feels like it speaks more about him than her. The title promises a novel about a wife, but what we really get is a husband narrating a sotry about his wife to the reader, ostensibly to keep her memory her alive but he may have other motives. Tom tells us that Ann is an Australia he met while she was living in London. He doesn't know much about her past or even why she is living in London. But he falls in love and marries her. They buy a house and when the story begins they are expecting their first child. 

At the beginning of the narrative, Ann is caught in an underground train derailment which undoutedly impacts her mental health. She descends into anxiety, believing that she is being followed by a stalker and sometimes obsessively cleaning their home. It eventually seems likely that her issues began before the train accident, but it is never certain. We see her only through Tom’s eyes and his interpretation of her behaviour. Can we even be certain that he is being honest with us?  ,  The novel never gives her a voice and we can only speculate and infer from what Tim recounts. There is a traumatic event hinted at in her past, that potentially is a defining even in her life that may or may not being related to the decline in her mental health. Is the stalker a delusion created by her mental health struggles or are the mental health struggles the delusion and the stalker real and somehow connected to her past? We know that Ann passes away (not a spoiler) and it's implied, butonly implied, that she died by suicide. The traumatic event that defines her is never explained. 

In short - I did not enjoy this book. 

To delve into this more deeply - I found the ambiguity frustrating. I wanted to understand what was going on with Ann. I wanted to know what had happened to her in the past that cast such a shadow. I wanted to know how she died and whether there might have been anything suspicious about it. 

Perhaps I could have exercised my little grey cells and drawn my own conclusions, but I never got that spark. The gaps felt empty and the book didn’t inspire me to search for answers, only frustrated that I didn't have any. Is the fact that the story is narrated by a husband about his wife's death and yet he has called it a "novel" some clue to my confusion? If anyone else who has read this has their own theories, please let me know. 

So what does this novel say about wives?

Honestly, for a novel called Novel About My Wife, I think tha tthis story says something more about Tom, the husband. If I had to say something, I was would say that the novel suggests that a wife can still be unknown to the person thought to love them more than most others. Ann is only defined by Tom's observations and projections. Tom himself admits to not knowing much about her past, but he also has little curiosity, even though the very fact of her being less than forth coming suggests something important and hidden. He takes her at face value, but is also dismissive of her. He might say that he loves her, but does he know her? Can you love someone that you don't know?

In the end, I'm not really sure what it says about the experience of being a wife and I have no love of the story. It felt more like an ambiguous retelling (potentially even a confession, but of what I'm not sure) of events from a husband who never really cared to understand his wife. Maybe there's something there - that people see you as a wife or partner, but rarely as yourself without that context. 

If your idea of a satisfying read involves clarity, emotion and a satisfying plot then this book is not for you. 

Review: 100 Years of Betty by Debra Oswald

100 Years of Betty isn’t high-brow literary fiction and it doesn’t need to be. It’s warm, engaging, and I really enjoyed it. From the first chapter I connected with Betty, not because I’ve lived her life or even experiences 1/3 of what she has, but because Debra Oswald writes her with such humanity that you feel you could bump into her at the shops and strike up a chat.

Betty’s life begins in wartime London, a childhood shaped by the chaos and fear of the Blitz and the slow disintegration of her family under the strain of war and poverty. As a young woman she migrates to Australia in search of something more and begins (bravely in my mind) begins to build a new life in an unfamiliar country. Across the decades we see her navigate love and loss through multiple marriages, raise her children, and weather the quiet triumphs and disappointments that come with time. Betty's life is one of resilience and reinvention. 

One of the things Oswald does beautifully is show the role of chance in our lives. I once heard (and I wish I could remember where) that life is essentially a set of experiences that we tell ourselves stories about, so we can understand and ourselves better. It's an idea that's always struck me and I keep in mind when I am experiencing something challenging or stressful. That idea threads through Betty’s life. She makes choices but she’s also shaped by accidents, encounters, and the circumstances she finds herself in. Looking back, she pieces these moments together into her own narrative, and we see her come to understand who she is.

Reading it felt a little like a time travel novel except we move through time in the right direction. We watch Betty live through decades of change, each new era bringing shifts in social expectations, opportunities, and challenges. I felt joy and heartbreak watching her grow into her true self across all those years, especially as the world around her changes. We particularly see this shift almost immediately after her children are grown and she travels for the first time, moving to another content, to form connections and create a new family for herself, for a time. This moment felt to me like the most jarring or abrupt development in her character. I understand the change is big and abrupt because of the point in her life where she is free, without the responsibility of caring for her children, to finally put herself and her interests first.

One of the storylines that particularly resonated with me was about forced adoption. In a previous role, I worked in a not-for-profit organisation that supported people separated through forced adoption, and the emotions in this part of the book rang true. Oswald captures the pain, the complexity, and the lifelong impact without turning it into melodrama.

At its heart, this is also a story about women’s liberation. It shows how women have seen ourselves over time, how society has seen us over time, and how we have come to expect more from our lives. Through Betty, we see those changes unfold in small, everyday ways. Her confidence shifts, she becomes self-reliant and she knows she deserves and then expects respect.

And who doesn't doesn't love an elderly lady willing to experiment with hallucinogens. 

100 Years of Betty comes highly recommended by me.

Review: Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

It was almost by chance I came to this. A colleague mentioned that she was reading it, and within a week I found it on sale and thought "why not"? It wasn't until a few weeks later that I realised I was going to see Madeleine Gray at the SWF and so it jumped up the priority list. 

I actually enjoyed this book far more than I expected it. I think we can call it contemporary romance, and I won't lie, one of the things that I was particularly drawn to is that it is set in my city and events occur near where I work. I could really visualise the characters in the actual places that are within my own experience. When Gray describes the workers entering their place of work - how they look, how it feels to be one of them - it connected with my own personal experience. Even just the way Gray describes how the office works - the siloing of colleague groups, the awkward interactions, the importance of finding some you can connect with and send those snarky messages to when required. Gray nailed it. 

The novel follows Hera, a 24-year-old Australian navigating the disillusionment of post-university life. She has finished her degrees, still lives with her father and despite feeling completely disconnected from herself and those around her, she concludes its time for her to do something to move her life forward. She begins working as an online comment moderator and finds herself drawn into an intense affair with Arthur, her older, married colleague. Despite identifying as a lesbian, Hera becomes infatuated with Arthur, finding in him a source of excitement and escape from her mundane routine. Their relationship, largely sustained through digital communication (hence the green dot connection - that good old green dot on Teams) begins to consume Hera's life.

Hera's voice was one of the key strengths of the novel for me. Her voice is bold and unique - she isn't afraid to engage with her own inner thoughts and self. She recognises that her actions aren't acceptable, that they do damage to her, to Arthur, to his family and to those that love and support her. But despite knowing it's wrong she isn't afraid to pursue her desires knowingly. She is chronically anxious about what people think about her but handles this by making every attempt to seem overly confident and extroverted. I think this is a fairly authentic depiction of how some people deal with their own anxiety. 

It also added a welcome element that the story was told from the perspective of Hera looking back on her affair with Arthur - we know where it all ends, but it doesn't impact the journey. I would say that even though Hera was the leading lady, as someone much closer in age and experience to the 'older man' I couldn't help but reflect on the experience of him and his family, something that isn't really touched on in the book. The duplicity that can sneak into marriage. The desire to be the centre of someone else's world and what people will do when that feeling fades in their own relationship. The heartbreak and betrayal his wife must have felt. This definitely wasn't the point of the story - just where perhaps my own age led my thoughts and reflections.  

In short - this was a compulsive read, and I highly recommend it. 

Review: The Children Act by Ian McEwan

I’ll bet a lot of reviews about Ian McEwan novels start out like this but there is no getting away from it. Ian McEwan is polarising. 

Yes, there are readers who will either love his books or loathe them. 

A more common phenomenon, I think, is that there are readers out there who love some of his books and loathe others. I am certainly in that latter camp. Atonement took me many attempts and a long time to get into it but when I did I loved it. The same could be said for Enduring Love. Saturday and Solar, on the hand, I have never been able to finish, no matter how many times I have started them.

So, it was with great trepidation when I started reading Ian McEwan’s latest book, The Children Act. 

What it had going for it from my point of view was the subject matter. The protagonist of this short novel is Family Court Judge Fiona Maye. Fiona is a woman who has made many sacrifices to reach what is now the pinnacle of her career as a well-respected Family Court Judge. 

The reader is introduced to Fiona as she faces a crisis in both her professional and personal life. Professionally, she is facing one of the most personally challenging matters of her career. Adam Henry is a spirited and intelligent 17-year-old boy who suffers from Leukaemia. He is also of the Jehovah’s Witness faith. Without a blood transfusion Adam is sure to die and yet his parents are refusing to consent to the lifesaving treatment on the basis of their religion. Although Adam is not yet of an age at which he is considered at law to be mature enough to make such a decision, he supports that of his parents. The Hospital brings a case before the Family Court seeking authority to perform the blood transfusion and it falls on Fiona to decide what is in the best interests of young Adam.

In the meantime, Fiona’s marriage of 30 years is falling apart. The book opens with a personal scene in which Fiona’s academic husband is asking for her permission to conduct an extra-marital affair. He feels that there is widening rift between them that Fiona won’t accept or deal with and he thinks that the best way for them to deal with this rift and still maintain their marriage is for him to be honest about his desire for infidelity. Fiona, although willing to accept to a certain degree her culpability in this rift between them, is offended by his suggestion and her marriage seems on the brink of collapse.

I loved so many things about this book.

The story felt so real and authentic. I believe that this can largely be put down to the quality of the writing. Just thinking of the opening scene of the book I feel as though I can picture every inch of the room that they are sitting in. The chaise lounge, the piano, even the soft lushness of the carpet upon which they “pad”. McEwan crafts everything so beautifully with just words.

What also lends the story that air of authenticity and reality are the lengths that McEwan has obviously gone to research the family law, the family law courts and the roles of the various parties to the legal disputes that come before the courts. I am not a Judge by a long shot, but I am a solicitor and have worked in domestic family law and I am currently working as an international family lawyer.  

I have spent a lot of time in court rooms, sitting at the bar table in front of the Judge and making my own submissions and I could feel myself there again reading this book.

When I read Fiona going about her daily life I felt as though I was though I was having a glimpse of what goes on on the other side of the Bench. More specifically, I appreciated the way in which McEwan portrayed a Family Court Judge who finds herself in the shoes of those that she regularly passes judgement on. It is her professional role to be objective. She needs to be able to objectively view both sides of the family law dispute, apply the law and pass judgement, all the time keeping her personal views and opinions to herself.

Juxtaposed to this is her own failing marriage in which she is forgivably unable to be anything close to objective about. Fiona is able to recognise that professionally she would advise against and think poorly of certain actions that she herself takes in response to her husband’s request for fidelity.

Fiona is able to recognise that some of her husband’s criticisms or (if we are going to be kinder) observations of her recent behaviour may be true and that she may have some level of culpability in the rift that has formed in their marriage, she is still too angry to be able to really sit down and reflect on her marriage in any way that might be close to being considered objective.

In many ways, Fiona acts against her own self-interest and I think that in a way this is a theme of The Children Act.

Her husband too, acts against his own self-interest. He declares that he still loves Fiona and that he wants their relationship to work and in the same breath suggests that the only way forward is for him to conduct an affair with another woman, sanctioned by Fiona. He is able to justify this to himself of course but one can’t help but wonder at his naivety. On a slight side note, this one aspect of the story instigated some lively debate between my husband and I about fidelity inside marriages and whether or not he had the right approach in requesting permission to have an affair. Fiona and her husband hadn’t had sex for 7 weeks, which seems to be one of the driving forces behind her husband’s desire to commence a relationship with another woman.  7 weeks seemed a little too soon to me to be running off into the arms of another woman.

Even Adam, the young man who wishes to refuse the lifesaving blood transfusion has his own reasons for acting in a way that seems to totally against his self-interest. He doesn’t want to die but he think that it is the right to do according to God’s law. In this storyline, McEwan deals superbly with the moral, ethical and legal issues raised in this scenario. As a family lawyer I really found McEwan’s portrayal of legal intervention in these religious issues interesting. I also did my Honours Thesis on the rights of the child in relation to consent to medical treatment so from that point of view it was also really interesting to see how the fine line between personal autonomy and the law was dealt with in The Children Act.

Everything about this book seemed nuanced, from the characters to the various themes throughout the book and I can’t help but admire how deftly McEwan achieved all of this in such a short novel.  

6 / 8 stars

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

I would love to know what you though of this book? Was there a particular story line that caught your attention over the other one?

Originally posted 16 June 2016 Page Turners

Review: The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

Here I am after another long absence. In that long absence, amoungst changing nappies and giving baths, I have managed to do some reading.

A couple of months ago I read JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy. As a big Harry Potter fan, I was curious to see what else she could produce and whether it would live up to the expectations I held after her previous success.  

Sadly, for me, it didn't. Whilst I can intellectually see what Rowling was trying to achieve, the narrative pace was just too slow for me. I was reading the book because I had to read the book, and it felt like pulling teeth. Until the end, that is, when all of a sudden, I found that I had been hooked and couldn't put it down until I had finished it. Did that end make up for the first 3/4 of the book that was as dull as staring at a brick wall? Not for me.

The story is based around the small town of Pagford in rural England. When one of the members of the Parish Council, Barry Fairbrother, passes away local politics becomes nasty as a local election is called to see who will take the position. Factions form according to whether candidates are supporters of or detractors from the local housing estate "The Fields".

We see this drama unfold through the eyes of a host characters from a range of ages, backgrounds and political views. There is Krystal, a young girl being raised by a drug addict mother in The Fields, trying to keep her family together. Tessa, the school counsellor who has to act as a barrier between her teenage son and her husband, also the Principal of the local High School. Parminder Jawanda, a local doctor who sits on the Parish Council, supports The Fields and is in love with Barry Fairbrother.

That is only to name three of the many characters JK Rowling has filled her book with. I found that with so many characters, the bulk of the first half of the book was spent just introducing them and it became very difficult to remember who everyone was and how they were all related to each other. This distracted from what else might have been going on in the early parts of the story, although to be fair from I could detect it wasn't much.

I read The Casual Vacancy as part of an online book club that I participate in and everyone seemed to have a similar response to the book as I did.

Everyone found that they had to push their way through most of the book and most people found that their attention was finally hooked toward the end of the book when all the threads of the story came together for the final tragedy.

It wasn't until we all started discussing the book, however, that I really began to appreciate just how much JK Rowling had managed to cover in The Casual Vacancy. She dealt with so many social, economic and moral issues of relevance to everyone in a first world country that it made it even more of a shame that the book was so uninteresting. I say this because the more that we discussed the book, the more issues we discovered that the book had got us thinking about; issues such as social services, housing, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, parenting and relationships.

So, I propose to do something a little different for the review of The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling. I am going to post some of the discussions we had a book club, to give you some idea of how we collectively responded to the story. 

Where there are spoilers, it will of course be identified, and I will be changing some things to protect my friend's privacy. 

I understand that for a lot of people these discussions will not be relevant unless you have read The Casual Vacancy yourself and for that I apologise. I hope that this short review will suffice for now to indicate what my thoughts about the book are. 

 4 / 8

Alright, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Originally posted 1 March 2013 Page Turners 

Review: The Twelve by Justin Cronin

One of the things I was looking forward to most this year was the release of The Twelve by Justin Cronin. It was worth the wait. I couldn't put it down.

The Twelve felt very different to The Passage. It felt to me to be more of a thriller than a piece of paranormal speculative fiction (or whatever else you might classify it as).

Also, where The Passage seemed to deal more with the experience of the individuals in the aftermath of the virus, The Twelve dealt more with the state of the nation following the release of the virus. We see people spread across the country living in different outposts, attempting to establish themselves in a manner they can sustain in the face of the adversity they now face.

Where some of those new cities are facing their challenges with respect for the human race, there is another city being established and controlled by the 'red-eyes' where this is not the case. The Homeland, as it is called, is run by people who have infected themselves with the virus but have not flipped, and they see themselves controlling the world in conjunction with the virals. In this way, an interesting question is raised in The Twelve: how can the virals sustain themselves when they have almost eaten their entire food source? It's a question I am surprised I never really considered while I was reading The Passage. In The Twelve we see one solution imagined by humans who are willing to betray their own race.

The characters I came to know in The Passage had all gone in their separate directions, and yet I still felt attached to them all. I was invested in their lives and read with bated breath to see what had become of them now.

I do have to say I was rather frustrated that there was so much about The Twelve that I didn't understand.

*SPOILER ALERT* Why didn't the red-eyes flip? Why was Lucius Greer so attached to Amy, was he her familiar? What is this ship they were talking about? How was it that Amy came to be talking to Carter, as if in real life? How is it that Wolgast came back into the story as a viral? Why didn't Alicia flip and who is talking to her at the end of the story? My questions could go on and on. *END SPOILER*

I hope very much that these questions are answered in the third book. If not, I am going to need someone a lot smarter than me to explain it all to me. 

Ultimately, the pace was fast, and I couldn't stop reading. If I were to be honest with myself, I think that a big part of why I couldn't put it down was my commitment to The Passage rather than the contents of this book, but I still loved every minute of it.

7 / 8 

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Recommend that you buy it. 

So, who else has read The Twelve yet? I am dying to hear what you thought of it after all the anticipation. Were you as confused about a lot of what happened as I was?

Originally posted 30 November 2012

Review: 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King was going to be my first time reading a Stephen King novel and I was very excited about it. 

School teacher Jake is approached by a local cafe owner who has discovered a portal to the past. Jake's mission is simple, to go back in time and prevent the assassination of JFK. There will obviously be a butterfly effect from these actions, something that Jake is always aware of as he sets out to change history.

I liked that the writing was straightforward and created a real sense of place. I also liked the idea behind the story, how single events can shape the course of history. My only reservation was that King seemed slightly... corny at times.

Having said that, I only read half the book. This wasn't because I found the book boring or difficult. I enjoyed it. Sadly, it was just a little too long for me to read at the moment. I got to halfway through, and although I wanted to keep reading it, I could tell it would take me till Christmas time to get it finished with a 6-month-old baby to look after. So, I have left it to finish off another time when I give it the attention it deserves. 

Originally posted 17 September 2012 Page Turners

Review: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

*Does contain some spoilers, sorry, it was unavoidable given the nature of the story and in order to properly convey my thoughts*

I hope it's not too corny to say that I experienced a hurricane of emotions whilst reading Jesmyn Ward's novel Salvage the Bones. 

In Salvage the Bones Ward provides the reader with a snapshot of family life in a poverty-stricken area of New Orleans in the twelve days leading up to and including Hurricane Katrina.

The protagonist, a young teenage girl named Esch, and her three brothers are being raised by her alcoholic father in their run-down house. Her father doesn't work and sometimes is abusive towards her brothers. There's little money for necessities such as food. Instead, they live off the land as much as they can and hope that they can make money off the litter of pure-bred pit-bull terriers one of her older brothers is raising. Significantly to the story, at age fourteen, Esch finds herself pregnant. 

The picture Ward paints is a bleak one, and at times I found it to be quite an assault on the emotions.

At other times however, particularly in the middle of the book, I found that the story moved a little too slowly for my liking. The book is primarily an account of the daily activities of the family. So much of their time in the days leading up Hurrican Katrina was dedicated to raising the pit bull terrier pups they hoped to sell, and as someone not particularly interested in dog rearing my attention wandered. 

Just as I was really hoping for something more interesting to happen, Hurricane Katrina hit. From this point in the story the pace became fast, and the tension kept mounting and mounting as the water climbed and the storm raged on. I was reading so fast to match the pace of the events that sometimes I lost track of where I was on the page.

So, although some of the book I found to be quite slow, in the end I think that Ward effectively used the contrast in the pace of the book as a technique to really show the calm before the storm. Just as life for the real victims of Hurricane Katrina continued as usual in the days leading up to the hurricane, with all the mundaneness of daily life, so did the lives of Esch and her family, that is, until the hurricane hit and wiped everything out.

I didn't feel that Ward was too melodramatic about the damage caused by the hurricane. She presents it very calmly:

"We reach the end of the road. Here the hurricane has ripped even the road that rimmed the beach away in chunchs so there are red clay and oyster shell cliffs. The gas station, the yacht club, and all the white columned homes that faced the beach, that made us feel small and dirty and poorer than ever when we came here with daddy, piled in his truck, for gas or chips or bait on our swimming days, are gone. The hurricane as left a few steel beams, which stick up like stray hairs, from concrete foundations. There are rivers running down the highway that lines the beach. A man with white hair and an open button-down shirt is sitting on the arm of the sofa, and he is holding his head or he is rubbing his eyes or he is smoothing his hair or he is crying, and a dog, orange and large in the sun, is sniffing around him in circles, and then it is running and it is barking excitedly at what it has found. A closed black casket."

I think it's important to note that although the book does describe the devastation following the hurricane, it doesn't address any of the political fallout that occurred following the hurricane. For me, the only hint of dissatisfaction with the way in which the Government handled the crisis was in the way in which Ward portrays the automatic phone calls asking residents to evacuate, which were too little too late. 

Instead, Salvage the Bones, focuses on the characters. 

Ward creates a real sense of wildness and need around Esch and her family. She created this by slowly revealing little details that really demonstrated the level of poverty they lived in. Bit by bit we see the dirty sheets, the lack of food, the condemned house. Ward reveals how the children had to raise their younger brother when their mother dies in childbirth. Esch is fourteen years old and has been sexually active since she was twelve for the sake of, by her own admission, some loving affection from other people that she doesn't feel at home. For me, the most poignant moment in the book (which nearly bought me to tears) was when Esch's father apologised to her on discovering that she is going to be a mother.

Yet I rarely felt pity for them because they never felt pity for themselves. Each of them has hope. They accept their reality without letting it depress them and they make the best of their lives with what they can.

All of the characters are salvaging something. Skeetah, one of Esch's brothers, salvages anything he can for the sake of his dogs; wormer, food, planks of wood. In doing so Skeetah is really attempting to salvage his sense of purpose. They all salvage items from their property in order to prepare for the hurricane, just as everyone who was affected by the hurricane must salvage what they can of their lives. For Junior, one of Esch's brothers, it is memories of his mother that he attempts to salvage throughout the novel.

Motherhood is certainly a recurring theme in Salvage the Bones. Everyone is Esch's family remembers their mother with love. Esch's father is clearly a man devastated by the loss of his wife and the mother of his children. Esch, on the cusp of becoming a mother herself, reflects on the good that her mother did and the big shoes that she and her brothers had to fill when her mother passed away. Ward takes time to show Skeetah's dog China's attempts to be a mother to her new pups, and Skeetah's attempt to take on this roll when China and the pups need him to.

This is all occurring against the backdrop of mother nature, who is impartial to the lives of the people of New Orleans:

"I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut is to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes." 

Salvage the Bones is a poignant book about family, love and survival. I would recommend it to anyone.

6 / 8 stars

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

If you have read Salvage the Bones, I would like to know if your interest waned in the middle of the book, only to be reignited when the Hurricane hit? 

Also, I have read that Jesmyn Ward was criticised for not dealing sufficiently with the political aspects of Hurricane Katrina, that is (I believe), criticism of the Government's response to the disaster. Do you think that she should have given this issue a larger role in the book?

Originally posted 9 July 2012 Page Turners

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

In Mockingjay, the final instalment of the Hunger Games trilogy, Collins gives us full scale revolution of the Districts of Panem against the Capitol.

Katniss plays an integral role in the revolution, although at first she is not convinced that she wants or is even able to take on this role. She soon realises, however, that her needs are not as great as those of Panem and she takes to her role wholeheartedly. Although the love triangle between Katniss, Gale and Peeta is still explored in Mockingjay, it is the themes of oppression and revolution that play a primary role,

I found the plot in Mockingjay more... messy (for want of a better word) than the plots of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. It felt a little as though Collins was trying to fit so many parts of the story into the final book that it became a little chaotic.

Having said that, I so admired the way in which Collins portrayed the revolutionary forces and the Capitol that a little chaos in the plot was soon forgotten.

In Mockingjay, Collins doesn't give us a black and white world. The Capitol is not portrayed as always being in the wrong, just as the revolutionary forces are not portrayed as always being in the right. Both the Capitol and the revolutionary forces use the same media indoctrination techniques as each other to takes their messages to the masses. The revolutionary forces create short video clips, essentially advertisements for the revolution, which they broadcast throughout the country.  To do this, the revolutionary forces send camera crews into real battles, people are dressed in dramatic costumes for effect and great thought is given to setting up 'scenes' that best suit the video clips they are creating. These clips are often as manipulative as the Hunger Games themselves were. In fact, the leaders of the revolutionary forces are shown in the end to be just as power hungry as the leaders in the Capitol.

It is clear in Mockingjay that the desire for power can corrupt the best of people who have the best of intentions, regardless of which side of a conflict they are on, and in showing the extremes that the Capitol and the revolutionary forces are willing to go to in order to manipulate and even harm the populace in the name of their cause, Collins gives the conflict a sense of reality.

I did find that Mockingjay was a little slow to get started, and perhaps a little repetitive in the early stages while Katniss was deciding whether she was willing and able to play the part in the revolution that people wished her play. I also thought that Katniss's journey to the Capitol was a little far fetched but then I reminded myself that this was fiction, a YA novel set in a possible future, and so a little bit of implausability could be forgiven.

All the same, there is is something so raw and real about these books that I was unable to put them down. Mockingjay definitely doesn't disappoint as the final instalment in this thrilling trilogy. 

8 / 8

One of the most enjoyable books I have ever read.  Everyone should read it, it is amazing.

What did you think about the final instalment of The Hunger Games trilogy? Did you find it a satisfying end to the story or were you hoping for something different? How realistic did you find Collins portrayal of the social and political revolution that was taking place in Panem? 

Originally posted 1 July 2012 Page Turners

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games largely focused on Katniss, her relationship with Peeta and surviving the Hunger Games. All this of course while also dealing with themes such as individual freedom, oppressive governments, media influence, poverty and social inequality. Catching Fire expands on these latter themes.

The Capitol is not happy with Katniss and Peeta for their show of defiance at the end of the Hunger Games. Uprisings are beginning in some of the Districts, and the Capitol blames this on their act of defiance, which they fear is inspiring other acts of defiance from the Districts. To punish Katniss and warn the people of Panem that defiance will not be tolerated, Katniss and Peeta are again thrown into the Hunger Games, where all of the surviving winners of past games are pitted against one another.

Catching Fire, however, is about more than just the survival of Katniss and Peeta. 

Where Catching Fire really adds to The Hunger Games is the shift from this narrower focus to the broader themes raised by the political situation in Panem; fighting against oppressive governments and bringing hope to the people. In Catching Fire we see the subtle shift in the population – when people stop accepting and start questioning. The government is trying to maintain control of an angry population who have discovered that there’s hope for a better life, as represented by Katniss and her individual act of defiance.

Katniss herself is just as strong and independent a character as she was in The Hunger Games, something I think is hard to come by in YA novels, especially for female characters. The teen angst surrounding her love triangle is still present and is a little teenage for my tastes, but it is a YA novel after all. Nonetheless, Katniss has grown from her experiences in the past. She is more grown up, more cynical and more realistic about the world in which she lives and her role in it. She is strong female character, willing to fight for what she believes in and those that she loves.

Without knowing it, in her final act in the Hunger Games Katniss has come to represent to the people of Panem that spirit of rebelliousness they all feel inside them. In Catching Fire, Katniss becomes swept up in events bigger than herself and bigger even than the Hunger Games and in doing so she begins to question what she can do for the people of Panem.

 8 / 8

One of the best books I have ever read. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing. I am in love.

Did you think that Catching Fire added to The Hunger Games by building on the themes I mentioned, or do you prefer the love triangle plot between Katniss, Peeta and Gale? 

Originally posted 21 March 2012 Page Turners

Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games is an utterly compelling YA Dystopian novel from author Suzanne Collins.

The book is set in the future, when the world has been largely destroyed by an environmental disaster that has changed the face of the planet forever. More specifically, it is set in what used to be North America, now known as Panem, a country of 12 Districts all ruled by The Capitol. The Capitol is an oppressive government, forcing the people of the Districts in poverty while they consume the bulk of what the Districts produce. In punishment for past uprising by the Districts against The Capitol, The Capitol has given the people of Panem the Hunger Games. But what are these Hunger Games?

"The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins."

The Hunger Games is a first person narrative, written from the perspective of a teenage girl by the name of Katniss from District 12, the coal mining District. Katniss and her family live in poverty in the Seam, relying on Katniss’s hunting skills to supplement their meagre diet provided by the Capitol. When Katniss’s younger sister Prim is chosen as District 12’s tribute, Katniss steps up to take her place. She is soon joined by a young man by the name of Peeta, someone to whom she and her family owe their lives.

What follows is the story of Katniss and Peeta’s experiences leading up to, during and following the Hunger Games (that’s not a spoiler – this is the first of a trilogy after all!). A large part of the story that follows deals with the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale, Katniss’s best friend. Both young men are in love with Katniss and Katniss loves both of them in return, but is unable to determine which she has more genuine feelings for. It is this element of the story that is certainly the most teenage part of the book.

Having said that, although The Hunger Games might be marketed to a young adult audience, this is equally a book for adult readers of all types.

One of the things I was most impressed with was the way in which Collins brings to life her characters and emphasises those personal attributes that should be admired. For what is essentially a plot driven YA novel, she did this incredibly well. There were so many different layers to the various characters which meant as a reader I could connect with each of them in different ways. Collins explores loyalty, courage, morals, family, love and much much more.

But where Suzanne Collins really excelled, and what I think adult readers will appreciate the most, are the themes that run through the book. There are so many adult themes that run through this book that I couldn’t possibly hope to deal with them all. These themes include social inequality, poverty and political hype/power. A lot of these were explored through the contrast between the lives and lifestyles of those in the Capitol and the lives and lifestyles of those in the Districts. The decadence of the first and poverty and starvation in the second.

What resonated most for me was Collins exploration of the power of the media and more specifically, the prevalence of reality television, in today’s society. What are the Hunger Games? It is children killing other children, but more than this, it is entertainment for the masses. To win the Hunger Games Katniss has to kill the other children, but she also has to win over the audience as the producers in charge of the television event manipulate their environment, exercising ultimate control over what happens within the arena and to the contestants. They are not children, they are contestants. It isn’t life or death, it’s entertainment. It isn’t manipulation of viewers and contestants alike, it is ‘reality’. People are so desensitised to violence that they can watch these events without blinking and without questioning.

Clearly our current western society doesn’t stoop to such lows, but in reading The Hunger Games you can’t help but reflect on our own reality and the role that the media plays in our lives. To what extent are we manipulated in the way that the populace in The Hunger Games is manipulated? Why do we allow it? Where will it end for us?

All I can really say is that The Hunger Games is so much more than you might expect. I was completely carried away by this book; I couldn’t put it down during the day and I was dreaming about it at night. It’s a little like a young adult version of Orwell’s 1984. Not as well written, not as complex, but just as clever in its use of the future to explore today’s society.

8 / 8

One of the best books I have ever read. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing. I am in love.

I would love to know if other people enjoyed it as much as I did? Has anyone been avoiding the series because of the hype and do you think that you could possibly rethink your decision?

Originally posted 11 March 2012 Page Turners

Review: The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

ALIEN'S BORING, REPORT SHOWS

An official report confirms what most of us had already suspected; that the alien visitors who arrived unexpectedly on the planet four years ago are not particularly bright, nor interesting. The thirteen page government document describes our interstellar chums as being 'dull' and únable to plan long term'. The report, which has been compiled from citizenship application forms and interview transcripts, paints a picture of a race who are 'prone to put high importance on inconsequential minutiae' and are éasily distracted from important issues'. On an entirely separate note, the aliens were reported to be merging into human society far better than has been expected - the reason for this is unclear. 

~extract from The Owl, 4 June 2001.

Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy is the first in his Jack Spratt detective series; a pastiche of nursery rhymes, fairytales and the 'real world' that is hilarious from beginning to end. 

Detective Inspector Jack Spratt is head of the Nursery Crime Division, based at Reading Central Police Station. His job is to investigate all crimes involving nursery rhyme characters, with his new partner.... Mary Mary. Their Easter takes a complicated turn when Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III is found dead beneath his wall, and they find themselves with one complicated murder to solve.

Not only does DI Jack Spratt have to solve the murder, but he also has to gain a place in the Guild of Detectives, keep his division from closing and hold his arch enemy DI Friedland Chymes at bay as he tried to muscle in on Spratt's investigation. 

Everything is funny about this book; the nursery rhyme characters who don't know that they are nursery rhyme characters, the nursery rhyme and fairy tale jokes and the appearances of the Gingerbread Man, Mrs Hubbard, Rapunzel and Willy Winkie, just to name a few. Mary Mary, well what can I say? She's quite contrary. And Jack Spratt seems to be blend of Jack Spratt and Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk. And that's right, you can expect an appearance from that magic beanstalk.

Fforde is at his best in The Big Over Easy with his plays on words and the fun he has with language in general. Take this extract for example from page 82. It's a discussion between Mary Mary and Tibbit (another member of the Nursery Crime Division):

“…Father liked word games. He was fourteen times world Scrabble champion. When he died, we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score. He spent the greater part of his life campaigning to have respelt those words that look as though they are spelt wrongly but aren't.”

“Such as….?”

“Oh, skiing, vacuum, freest, eczema, gnu, diarrhoea, that sort of thing. He also thought that ‘abbreviation’ was too long for its meaning, that ‘monosyllable’ should have one syllable, ‘dyslexic’ should be renamed ‘O’ and ‘unspeakable’ should be respelt ‘unsfzpxkable.’”

Fforde's cleverness and ingenuity never cease to amaze me. I was a big fan of the Thursday Next series, but I found The Big Over Easy to be a more fun and easier read. Some familiarity with nursery rhymes and fairy tales is essential to really appreciate this book, and thankfully I had enough familiarity with them to really appreciate the jokes. I couldn't stop laughing the whole way through this book.

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde is a funny and satirical piece of detective fiction, and one I recommend to everyone who likes to have a bit of fun with their reading every now and again.

7 / 8

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Recommend that you buy it.

Have you read this; did you enjoy it as much as the Thursday Next series? Do you have a weakness (like me) for modern day parody's of nursery rhymes and fairy tales? If you do, I recommend The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke. If you like Jasper Fforde, you are likely to enjoy it.

Originally posted 5 January 2012 Page Turners

Review: The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff is a fascinating exploration of the role of polygamy in the Church of Latter-Day Saints (LDS).

The19th Wife explores polygamy in its historical context and in its modern context in modern day break-away LDS sects. Ebershoff achieves this with two distinct story lines.

The first is the historical story line of Anne Eliza Young, one of the wives (the 19th in fact) of the Prophet Brigham Young. It is set in the late 19th century and although it is a fictional story, it is based on the real Anne Eliza Young, who was actually married to the Prophet and who became famous when she broke from the LDS and began a campaign to end polygamy.

There are parallels between this historical storyline and the modern-day story of Jordan Scott, a man who grew up in a breakaway group of the LDS which still practised polygamy. Although polygamy is now illegal, the story is also based on real break away groups of the LDS that are based somewhere in America (sorry, I'm an Aussie, can't remember where, maybe Utah?) and who still practice polygamy. Jordan becomes involved with the community again when his mother, the 19th wife of his father, is accused of his father's murder.

Through the eyes of Anne Eliza, we see how polygamy affected the women and children at the time when the LDS was in its early days, and through Jordan's eyes we see the impact it has had for current practitioners of this religion (both the breakaway groups and the main body of the Church).

Although fictional, The 19th Wife is clearly well researched, and it is this sense of authenticity that really piqued my interest.

Ebershoff tells Anne Eliza's story through her own words, but also through a series of fictional documents, including memoirs of her family members, letters and newspaper articles. Whilst this was a novel approach to presenting the story of Anne Eliza, at times it meant that her story wasn't as cohesive as it could have been, both as a standalone story, and how it sat in the context of the entire book. The book was at times frustrating because it moved frequently between the two protagonists, as well as the additional mediums used to tell Anne Eliza's story. This meant that just as you were settling into one story, you were quickly moved onto the next.

The storyline involving Jordan Scott also had the additional element of being somewhat like a murder mystery. When his mother is accused of murdering his father, he sets out to investigate what really happened. Jordan is also a gay man, which played a significant role in his character development. At times, Ebershoff handling if his character's homosexuality was a bit cheesy and added more complication to the story than was really needed. My other complaint with this story was the resolution to the murder mystery – it wasn't as satisfying as it perhaps could have been.

Although the two narratives do not always work well together, by using the two narratives Ebershoff is able to cover many aspects of polygamy: it's rise, its effect on those that practice it (now and in the past), arguments for and against it as a religious practice and its eventual formal demise from the Church of LDS.

Some of the parts I found most interesting were where the characters in the modern-day storyline discussed the reasoning behind the LDS formally renouncing the practice of polygamy when in fact their original Prophet declared it to be the will of God. There is an interesting exchange on an internet chat board where someone questions how seriously you can take the entire Church when it is willing to renounce the word of their God for the sake of the laws of man.

Overall, Ebershoff's straightforward prose and well researched stories meant The 19th Wife was an easy and fulfilling read.

6 / 8

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

Have you read this book? I would love to know what you thought about it if you had. I am not normally into books that have an agenda to push, but Ebershoff does a good job of considering all sides of the debate around polygamy (I thought).

Originally posted Page Turners 7 November 2011

Review: One Day by David Nicholls

One Day by David Nicholls explores the heart of friendship and what it means to really love someone. It is one of the most compelling reads I have had in many months.

The premise of the book is fairly simple. It is about Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, two university graduates, whom we meet on the night of their graduation. Emma is a down-to-earth lefty girl from northern England who is keen to change the world. Dexter on the other hand is from a posh, rich family and is only interested in girls, and later, fame. Despite their differences, on the night of their graduation they form a strong and lasting friendship, bordering on a romance.

Every July 15 the reader is given an update on what is occurring in the lives of the two main protagonists over the next twenty years. We see them grow up, grow together and grow apart. It is clear, however, that no matter what is happening in each of their lives, their love for each other draws them to each other over and over again.

Although you only see a glimpse of their lives on one day of each year, it doesn't feel as though you are missing out. Nicholls is able to weave their past year into that one day so effectively you barely notice that it's happening. The only place where I feel this wasn't done so effectively was in the last few chapters of the book, following a cataclysmic event that irrevocably changes the lives of both Emma and Dexter. In these final chapters, I wanted more than I got.

I do think that Nicholls took a risk in One Day in that both of the protagonists felt incredibly stereotypical. Emma Morley was the stereotypical middle-class university educated lefty who is determined to change the world, even if she only changes the part around her. Dexter Mayhew on the other hand is the stereotypical upper-class male. Apolitical and out for a good time, his greatest priorities are fame, girls and drugs.

The risk in having two such stereotypical characters is that the reader has trouble believing in their authenticity. In my experience, people rarely fall so easily into stereotypes like these.

Despite this though, Emma and Dexter both felt acutely real to me, as did their friendship. You could identify with their lives and their feelings, even as they each changed. Even if you have never felt what they have, you have seen it in other people and so it makes more real in these fictional characters.

Also, their story was endearing. No matter where their lives took them, they were there for one another. There was no one else in the world that they wanted to share things with as much as each other. They enjoyed flirting. They enjoyed the comfort they found in one another. They enjoyed each other.

What more can you want from friendship?

Yes, One Day book is chick-lit, but it also provides so much more than what you might expect from a book of this genre. The writing is witty, and Nicholls explores the heart of friendship and what it means to really love someone.

7.5 / 8

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing.

Have you read this or have you let the hype turn you off it? I would love to know whether you loved it as much as I did if you read it - I would especially like to know if you think it's an accurate representation of what friendship between a man and a woman can be like.

Originally posted 29 September 2011 Page Turners

Document Z by Andrew Croome

I have never imagined Australia having much of a political underbelly. I know from my own professional experience that there is often more going on underground in society than we imagine, but political espionage and spying isn't something that I immediately associate with Australia. Who could possibly be that interested in a country like ours.

Andrew Croome's Vogel Prize winning (2008) novel, Document Z, certainly gave me some insight into this question. It is centred around the Petrov Affair, an incident in Australian history that took place in 1953, deep into the Cold War era. Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov were Russian diplomats, who came to work at the Russian Embassy in Canberra in 1951 and both of whom were functioning as spies for their motherland, albeit in different capacities. When Stalin passes away in 1953, Vladimir defects from Russia to Australia without his wife's knowledge – leaving her to make an almost impossible decision about what step she should take in response to her husband's actions.

My knowledge of the Petrov Affair was shamefully limited. Non-existent in fact. Although Document Z was a fictionalised account of their story, I learnt a lot about a rather dramatic and important incident in Australia's political history.

I saw Andrew Croome speak about this book at a Sydney Writers Festival event a year of two ago and at the time I greatly admired his enthusiasm for his subject and the lengths that he had gone to research the Petrovs, including listening to secret recordings made of the couple which are still available to be listened to in the National Library (from memory). His enthusiasm was infectious at the time and so I was very much looking forward to reading the book.

Document Z attempts to create detailed portraits of the players in the Petrov Affair. We learn a lot about Vladimir (or 'Volodya' as he is referred to throughout most of the book) and Evdokia and about their relationship. There is Michael Biogulski, a Polish emigrant doctor who spies for both sides of the political fence according to whatever suits him best, and to whom Vladimir eventually shares his intention to defect. We see ASIO's spy network in action through Michael Howley, who assists in the defection.

Whilst I appreciated what Croome was trying to achieve in writing this book, and whilst I feel as though I learnt a lot in a short period of time about a point in Australia's political history I previously knew nothing about, I never really connected with this book.

The plot was rather too slow for my taste. In my view, it was the death of Stalin that really instigated the political events that ultimately lead to Vladimir Petrov seeking political asylum in Australia, and until this event occurs in the book, little else happened. Although Croome spends a long time really trying to get inside the various players in the Petrov Affair, I didn't identify with any of the characters. Their experience was so far from my own that, whilst I could appreciate what life must have been like for them on an intellectual level, my emotions were left unaffected. This, combined with the lack of action until towards the end of the book, meant that although I enjoyed reading the book, it never really drew me in.

Image from Wikipedia

For me, the book didn't have sufficient drama for a political thriller. Croome produced a well written book, but also a book that didn't go out on any limbs. I think that it would have been a better book if Croome had taken more risks somehow or been a bit edgier.

The one aspect of this entire Petrov Affair that I was fascinated by was the experience of Evdokia Petrov. You will see that in the body of this post I have inserted an image of Evdokia Petrov being escorted to a plane by armed Soviet Guards following the defection of her husband. Evdokia Petrov was being forcibly removed from Australia, to return to Russia to face punishment for her husband's actions – an event which sparked anti-Communist demonstrations throughout Australia I believe, and certainly at the airport from which she was leaving. In her final moments in Australia, she was then forcibly removed from the Soviet Guards by ASIO and made the agonising decision to defect alongside her husband.

It is her story that I find the most fascinating element of the entire Petrov Affair, purely on a personal, rather than political, level. What was she thinking? How did she feel? What thoughts were going through her mind? In the image you can see how close to collapse she seems – with her hand on her heart, one shoe missing and an agonised expression on her face. If Document Z had been solely from her perspective I think I may have had a stronger emotional response to the story, but then it would have been a completely different story altogether.

5.5 / 8 Enjoyable and well written. Worth reading if you have the opportunity but there's no need to prioritise it unless you have a particular interest in learning about an important incident in Australian political history.  

I would love to know what you thought of this book if you have read it. Were you able to identify with any of the characters? How much do you rely on the truth of the history contained in books that fictionalise true historial events like this one?

Originally posted 7 June 2011 Page Turners