Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Remember how you fell in love with the writing of Sally Rooney in 2018? Yes? – now I promise you that you will fall in love with Kiley Reid and ‘Such A Fun Age'. 

The characters are lovable, annoying, delusional, strong, an so much more, and you really want them their way in life. Just like the characters in ‘Normal People’.

Emira is African American, 25 and lost in her life. Her friends are all well on their way with jobs and health insurance, while Emira is painfully aware of her dependence on her parents’ insurance. Emira babysits for Alix Camberlain two-three days a week to pay the bills and Briar, the young boy, is actually very cute and they have fun. 

Alix Chamberlain is white, and runs ‘Let her Speak’ a business all about image (imagine a version of Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’), and Alix is very much about ‘keeping herself relevant’. 

The book opens with a scene at Market Depot, a fancy grocery store in the white neighborhood of the Chamberlain household. It is 11pm and Emira has been asked to take Briar to the store. Emira is blocked by a security guard, who suspects that Emira has kidnapped Briar, and the scene becomes a question of black/white issues and the biases that society has of a black babysitter and white child. 

The incident at Market Depot is filmed by a (white) customer, Kelley Copeland, who gets deeper and deeper involved as the story progresses, which is absolutely brilliant as Kelley has his own ‘issues’ with skin color as he seriously tries to identify with black people by having only black friends, black girlfriends, listening to black rappers. Kelley also happens to have a history with Alix Chamberlain - a history that takes the story to another level which adds other perspectives and issues than the racial.

Kiley Reid has called the book a “comedy of good intentions”,  and that it certainly is. ‘Such a Fun Age’ is a modern novel with a nuanced view of race, age, education, wealth, and relationships. Reid has a sharp eye for the dynamics of how a relationship moves in highs and lows. I can’t wait to read more from her. 

Pick it up if you liked…Normal People by Sally Rooney or Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Happy reading!

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

Hatchet is a moderately short novel which I greatly enjoyed, the marvellous style of the author, with some flashbacks and a great idea for the book.

Brian is flying towards his father in a desolated part of Canada, besides the pilot he is the only passenger whatsoever. All is going well until disaster strikes; the pilot has a heart attack and dies instantly, so Brian has to fly the plain himself the problem is he has no knowledge of flying planes, only the shows he has seen on TV. However, he must try to save himself and fly to safety.

After hours of travelling without a destination, the plane starts to descend to the ground, Brian tries desperately to land in a lake, but the chances are not high. When the plain finally crashes, luck is on Brians side so the plane splashes into a lake. When Brian finally emerges he is alone in the Canadian wilderness, with no food, no shelter and no heat.  Brian must try to survive using his skills, intelligence and cunning to stay alive, and who knows maybe he will…

At first, I thought it was going to be a normal, basic book for kids, so my expectations were quite low. However, while reading it I realized that it was well written and had a good storyline, with one protagonist; Brian. Gary Paulsen used this to sew together a wonderful story from it. My favourite character is without doubt Brian because he is one of the only characters in the story, but also because of his wit and courage in surviving in the wild.

Gary Paulsen has written a couple of sequels to Hatchet, one of those Brians Winter which is also said to be a good book. Hatchet is a great novel to read for fans of adventure novels and short novels.

Reviewed by Lahiri Paolella (Aged 12)

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Hatchet by Gary Paulsen  

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

The book starts in 1973 and stretches over four decades. We meet Peter and Kate, born 4 months apart with dads, Brian and Francis, both policemen and colleagues. The “twin families” start off being connected through the dads, but soon the two main narrators take over. 

Peter and Kate grow in sleepy Gillam next door to each other and are forever bound together by a tragedy of profound consequences - impossible to forget, and hard to forgive. 

The tragedy happens early on in the book setting the tone and underlying layer of the story. However – there are layers upon layers in this book, and to some readers it might seem slow, but to most (also based on this book’s popularity) it defines the characters, describes some really tough subjects like mental illness, alcoholism, violence and marital problems. The novel takes the time (and pages) to get under the skin of the families and their issues. Nothing is perfect. 

Peter grows up affected by his mother’s mental illness, which also makes him resilient and determined. But you still feel sorry for him as he struggles to find his own way in life and watch most of the adults abandoning. Kate grows up wondering where her place in the story is and why she is so affected by things that have happened to others. She is extremely mature and expresses some very interesting thinking in the book. I felt challenged by her. 

And at the end of the book, you must ask yourself what choice you would make in the same situation and where you would find the strength to move past a tragedy.  

It is an amazingly well written drama with a story and characters and I find it among the best books published in 2019. Enjoy this mature and solid book, and I promise that it will end exactly where it is supposed to end. 

Also, pick it up if you liked ‘On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous’ by Ocean Vuong or ‘The Dutch House’ by Ann Patchett.

Happy reading!

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis

Édouard Louis does not mess around. He is angry. Angry at society for not respecting or caring about and for its working class; for denigrating its workers and looking the other way when they cry for help or just long to be seen. 

Louis is angry, and his is an anger felt in his bones, born of his own life experiences and researched at an academic sociological level. A combination which has resulted in an intense eighty-one  page Molotov cocktail of a book.

Who Killed my Father is many experiences, emotions and outbursts, all rolled up tightly into a beautiful, moving, empathetic memoir. It is a short, sharp attack on French society and the politicians who are so far removed from the people that they don’t see them and are surprised when they lash out.

“What’s strange is that they’re the ones who engage in politics, though it has almost no effect on their lives. For the ruling class, in general, politics is a question of aesthetics: a way of seeing themselves, of seeing the world, of constructing a personality. For us it was life or death.”

The book is also - and equally - a love letter to Louis’ father who worked his entire (albeit brief) working life trying to support his family, longing to be a better father than his own had been, all the while ignoring his own dreams and aspirations, realising early on that that was not what life was going be for him and that he would be better off resigning and setting aside any foolish notions of true happiness or fulfillment. 

“…and I think you pretend to hate happiness in order to make yourself believe that, if your life seems an unhappy one, at least you’re the one who chose it. As if you wanted to pretend you had some control over your own unhappiness.”

Édouard Louis, a well known writer and activist in his native France, grew up in a poor working class home, where violence, hardness, silence, and anger were part of everyday life. 

“….nothing was unexpected anymore because you no longer had any expectations, nothing was violent because violence wasn’t what you called it, you called it life, you didn’t call it, it was there, it was”. 

Louis longed to be seen and understood by his father, and while there are moments of connectedness, it is a father/son relationship fraught with denial, misunderstanding and a tragic inability to show affection. In Louis’ mind much of this is due to circumstances beyond their control and the result of a societal framework that does nothing to lift up the ones who really need it.

“One night, in the village cafe, you said in front of everyone that you wished you’d had another son instead of me. For weeks I wanted to die.” 

It isn’t until much later in life after many conversations and brutally honest exchanges that father and son learn to approach each other with understanding and appreciation. 

This is not, however, a story with a happy ending. It is in its own way a call to arms. Louis wants to hold up a mirror to French society, one that will show politicians the entire population and not just the parts they want to see.

The first few lines of Who Killed my Father sum it up well:

“When asked what the word racism means to her, the American Scholar Ruth Gilmore has said that racism is the exposure of certain populations to premature death. The same definition holds with regard to male privilege, to hatred of homosexuality or trans people, to domination by class - to social and political oppression of all kinds.”

Now, there’s something to think about.

RESERVE YOUR COPY OF Who Killed My Father by Édouard Louis