Micro Review 48

 

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley (Bloomsbury Publishing)

A very dear friend recommended this book to me and I was more nervous than usual in starting it. While we are old friends and share lots in common our taste in books/plays doesn't always correspond. In general if I love a play she is ambivalent (or really didn't like it) and vice versa so a lot was riding on this read.

I'm pleased to say that I was drawn in from the start and begrudged all the time I had to spend at work and not reading it.

I'm at a loss to explain the book, it starts with a man getting off a train and losing all his memories, a lighthouse, alternative histories and even time travel...

The publisher's blurb also doesn't give too much away: 

Come home, if you remember. The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. On the front is a lighthouse - Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides. 

Joe has never left England, never even left London. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter. But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed - a world where English is spoken in England, and not French. And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well. 

Joe's journey to unravel the truth will take him from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish island, and back through time itself as he battles for his life - and for a very different future.

All of this vagueness works in the books favour, and the confusion I experienced while reading the book definitely mirrored Joe's which made for an unexpectedly immersive read. 

I was lucky enough to get another Natasha Pulley book as a 'Secret Santa' present and I am looking forward to diving into her back catalogue. There is some incredible violence in this book, and at times it is shocking but at no point did I want to stop reading. 

Kentishbookboy & Norfolkbookworm Read - Book 1, 2020

Clockwork or All Wound Up by Philip Pullman

I'm really pleased that Kentishbookboy wants to continue with our book group in to a new year, reading can be a solitary hobby but the joy of sharing books does turn it in to a social activity.

We've started the year with a new 'book bingo' sheet as well as new reading journals and as well as this our group has attracted a new member with Kentishbookboy's great aunt joining in too.

In a way I've got off to a slow start with sharing books with the family as I have been taking part in two book projects that had stricter reading deadlines that KBB imposes on me. Mind you as you read his review for this book you might think that I should give up the reviewing and turn the blog over to him alone!

Like last year Kentishbookboy's thoughts are in purple and mine in brown.

Clockwork or All Wound Up by Philip Pullman

Synopsis:

Karl's final task as a clockmaker's apprentice is to make a new figure for the great clock of Glokenheim (Germany). He has not made the figure, or got an idea of what it could be - and the unveiling is tomorrow. Fritz is also in the tavern; there to read aloud his new spooky story. Like Karl, he hasn't finished. Well he knows how it starts and he knows it's called Clockwork - so, with the snow swirling down, inside he sets his story going and just hopes that an ending will come to him as he tells it. Suddenly Fritz's story and real life merge in a completely sinister way - and just like clockwork it cannot be stopped...

In this modern fairy tale we join the villagers of Glokenheim in their inn on a cold and snowy night. The next day is one of the biggest in their calendar as it is the unveiling of the new figure on the impressive clock. However the man responsible for this, Karl, has not managed to create his work of art and he is worried that he'll fail his apprenticeship as well as become the laughing stock of the village. Star storyteller Fritz is also in the tavern on this evening and encouraged to tell a new tale. Like Karl he hasn't finished this either, then at a crucial part of the story appears to come true...

Dilemma:

Karl has not made a figure for the great clock yet, nor has Fritz finished his story, and they both have to finish by morning.

Karl and Fritz are very different, but yet still seem to face the same problem, in that they haven't finished their important work and people are dependent on them doing so. There is also the plot thread of how far people will go to get what they want - in this case an heir for a local prince.

Morals/Themes:

The moral and theme of this book is about the importance of hard work and doing things yourself, not just trying to find an easy way out.

Like all good fairy stories there are morals to be found in this tale, and as Kentishbookboy says a prominent one is all about not taking the easy way out. There is also the message that love will won out over ambition and finally I'd also add in that you should be careful what you wish for, and to always read the small print! 

Recommendation:

Personally, I quite enjoyed Clockwork. There were lots of strange parts as well, but I thought the end was a good way to finish the book. I rate it four and a half stars. I would recommend it to people who like mystery.

I've not read any of Pullman's younger fiction before and quite enjoyed this one, although I feel it has more in common with early, moralistic tales than more recent middle grade fiction. For some reason it made me think of Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale set in Russia - I think that this is because of the merging of narrative fiction and fantasy. The boxes of information that sprinkle the text were fun to read - far more noticeable than footnotes.
It may be very shallow but I particularly liked the clockwork image in the corner of the page which was flickbook!

No image of Kentishbookboy with the book this time, Nanny snaffled it so she could read along too - I'm not sure she enjoyed it as much as us - her first thoughts were that it was a little too moralistic.

Kentishbookboy has moved on to Lemony Snickett's Series of Unfortunate Events, now I read the first few of these when they first came out but I don't remember much about them so I'm looking forward to hearing what he thought of them.