Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Stunning, lyrical, haunting. Characters that will tangle into your thoughts and mingle with your mind for days. Sing, Unburied, Sing is a searingly honest and devastating road novel, that centres around an African American family living in rural Mississippi. This story is guaranteed to make your heart speed way over the limit, and run a few redlights too while you're at it, because honestly I could not bring myself to pull the brakes and put this book down.

In this powerful tale of family, love, poverty, grief, and race, Wards chilling writing trembles with pain for the characters we wish to save and pull right off the pages straight into our arms. Jojo, a thirteen year old, learning what it means to be a man from his grandfather, and parenting his three year old sister Kayla, because if not him then who? Surely not his mother Leonie, absent and selfish and unable to put her children above her own needs. Not his father Michael, locked up in prison, and whose family are disgusted by his black girlfriend and biracial kids. The only two people Jojo can fully rely on his being his loving grandparents, Mam and Pop, everyone else, ghosts to him, sometimes there, sometimes not, always haunting.

When Leonie packs the two kids and a friend into the car, and sets off on a journey to retrieve the one thing that hasn't entirely slipped out from her hands; Michael, Jojo begins to understand the racism and hatred of the south, and comes to terms with everything his mother is, isn't and never  will be.

Profound, poetic, and an important reminder that the shadows and skeletons of slavery are still very much alive and present in twenty-first-century America.

Reviewed by Vindhya Kathuria

Happy reading! 

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Disoriental by Négar Djavadi

Stories of lives in exile - voluntary or not - are many and varied and Negar Djavadi’s Disoriental is a worthy, interesting and enjoyable addition to those written primarily by Iranian women many of whom fled their home country as young children in the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution and who have now reached an age and maturity that allows for reflective consideration.

Kimia Sadr has fled Iran with her mother and sisters to join their father, an intellectual who opposed the western backed regime of the Shah, welcomed (cautiously) the promise of the new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini only to find his dreams of freedom, equality and prosperity crushed by the heavy handed despotic rule of the mullahs.

Disoriental moves back and forth between Kimia’s life as a young gay woman in France and her family’s history in Iran. The main (and most compelling part) of the book takes place in the northern Iran of her grandparents and the Tehran of her politically active parents. The book not only describes the unravelling of a country with a strong heritage, an ancient culture and a proud people. It also describes the pain of leaving a country you fought for and the challenges of fitting into a new life.

“That’s the tragedy of exile. Things, as well as people, still exist, but you have to pretend to think of them as dead.”

Highly readable, by turns heartbreaking and humorous, the book weaves and layers the history of a country with the struggles of a young woman trying to find her own identity without the aid of the scaffolding afforded by her own culture, heritage and childhood. It’s the story of a young Iranian in Europe with a loving, acute, precise and at times funny sense of the cultural differences.

“Here’s what I learned about the Dutch: each person is free to be who they are, to want what they want, to live how they choose, on the condition that it doesn’t harm the well-being of anyone else, or the general equilibrium. It’s a philosophy of life that’s the exact opposite of Persian culture, where erecting barriers, getting involved in other people’s lives, and breaking the law is as natural as breathing. But it’s also unlike the Judeo-Christian rigidity of French culture, where actions are endlessly hindered by words.”

Disoriental is perceptive and personal, a book about freedom to live, to choose and to love.

Happy reading!

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The Doldrums by Nicholas Gannon

The Doldrums is a widly immaginative tale greatly packed with adventourous quests, polar bears, stuffed animals (and glass eyes). Archer Helmsleys life was somewhat of a straight line wich rarely vibrated. Everything went as planned at least according  to his Archers mother who rarely let him out of the the Helmsleys enourmous mansion full of peculiar objects retrieved from his grandparents travels around the world. Archers grandparents are world renowned explorers who travel around world 24\7, Archer never laid his eyes on them in his whole life, due to his mother's unnecessary overprotectiveness. But his straight-line life was completely turned around when his grandparents float away in an iceberg in the north pole. Two years pass from the incident and his grandparents still haven't returned from the iceberg and now are presumed surely dead. But Archer still has hope and with the necessary help of his intrepid and courageous friends, Oliver and Adelaide Archer is determined to finally prove all the rumors of his grandparents death wrong, and  once and for all rescue his beloved grandparents. So with that Archer, Oliver and Adelaide set off on an intrepid, courageous and deadly quest to rescue Archers grandparents…

My favourite character in this gripping novel is and will always be Archer Helmsley, I can compare many attributes and skills to him, for example love for reading, animals and most of all family. My opinion on this novel is that it is a very gripping novel, full of highly imagined content, greatly caring characters, and most of all a wonderfully thought out storyline. I recommend this book to fans of adventure, fiction and kid power novels. Mostly to fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society trilogy by Trenton Lee Stewart. The adventure continues with The Doldrums And The Helmsley Curse, the second book in The Doldrums trilogy, so stay tuned for The Doldrums And The Helmsley Curse book review, COMING SOON!  

Reviewed by Lahiri Paolella (Aged 11)

Happy reading! 

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City Of Saints & Thieves by Natalie C. Anderson

City Of Saints & Thieves is a fast paced roller coaster ride where young adult twists and turns into a thriller. This harrowing murder mystery will keep you breathless on the edge of your seat, tearing through the pages and wolfing down every word, a ravenous appetite of curiosity and suspense grumbling and aching deep within your stomach.

I was hooked and intrigued right from the very first sentence, “If you're going to be a thief, the first thing you need to know is that you don't exist.” These are the words of teenage refugee Tina, who together with her mother escaped Congo and fled to Kenya. Her mother is fortunate enough to become a maid, serving one of the wealthiest families in the city; the Greyhills. A family built of power and money and blood. A family fortune glistening with corruption and fraud and who knows what else? So when Tina discovers her mother shot dead in Mr Greyhill’s private study, she knows without a doubt that he did it.

In this gripping tale of revenge and justice, Tina will stop at nothing to execute her three part plan: Dirt.Money.Blood. Spiralling down a dangerous path of secrets and tracking down her congolese past, uncovering more than she ever wanted to. Everything she thought she knew about her mother, everything she thought she knew about herself, everything built on lies.

City Of Saints & Thieves is the type of book that will force you to put it down for just a moment, so that you can collect your thoughts and catch your breath.

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