The Madman's Daughter - Megan Shepherd

I mentioned a while back that I was interested in reading this book because it is a sort of sequel to H.G. Wells' The Island Of Dr Moreau, which I was reading at the time (see review here). Anyway, turns out this book is pretty tricky to track down for us Brits if we don't want to pay a huge shipping fee, so I downloaded the eBook and an app for my phone to read it on. I wasn't too keen on the idea, I'm one of those "paper books over kindle" types, but surprisingly I only put two bookmarks in this file and finished it in as many sittings, so I guess it was pretty easy to read. I'll try not to reveal anything major about either books should you choose to read them; Wells' should always be heard first hand.

I really enjoyed Wells' original tale of scientific horror and intrigue and I hoped this would be just as good but... I was kind of disappointed. The story centres around Dr. Moreau's daughter who believes him dead. Cast out from society after her fathers public shame surrounding his scientific experiments on animals, the daughter; Juliet, now works in a medical college as a cleaner until one night a professors unwelcome advances are met by a swift injury, causing Juliet to be out of a job.

Fate connects her with old family servant Montgomery, an original from the Wells' tale, though sexed up to fit the new audience. Montgomery admits that Juliet's father is still alive and that he is returning to him presently, a journey Juliet begs to accompany him on to find out the truth about her father. This is where the story kind of looses focus. While on the ship carrying Juliet, Montgomery, his strangely deformed servant and a slew of exotic animals to Moreau's island, the crew come across a dinghy in the ocean. Like the original story, Montgomery gets the man aboard and agrees he must come to the island, seeing as the crew are likely to throw him overboard and there are no other ships. Once on the island Juliet then must confront her feelings which are scattered between the two men.

This is what I didn't like; this story did have potential but I feel the author just flipped it into a love triangle as soon as she could to make it an easier, lower (age) rated book. The horror from the original is all but stripped away and what's left is a teenage love story where the "heroine" is too wrapped up in men to see any danger around her. Even when the "big reveal" comes out at the end, she still lacks depth or any real connectivity with the audience. It just felt like Shepherd was more keen on trying to put her spin on the teen-supernatural-romance craze than creating good characters and well written story. I thought the main relationship in the book would be between Juliet and Moreau but that takes a major back-seat so that romance can be explored. I did like the sense of poetic justice in the end but it didn't really salvage the story for me.

Overall I think I'm feeling like one of those people that sigh at Hunger Games lovers and tell them to look at Battle Royal instead. Just read the original; there isn't any romance, but it's a damn good story which is more than I can say for this.

*sorry it's been so long, but I'm finished with Uni now and should be posting regularly again now that I'm not too stressed out to actually pick up a book.

The Host - Stephenie Meyer

When Twilight (the movie) was released back in 2008, I was a girl of 17, the same age as the lead character; Bella Swan. Needless to say I, like millions of other teenage girls, fell immediately in love with the story and rushed out to buy all of the books in the series. At the time, I would argue for the story's integrity to anyone who would listen because, hello, Bella & Edward were in love didn't you know? ... But I'm not 17 any more  I'm 22 and I don't... can't, look at the story the way I used to; it took me a while but I finally did see the heavily implied, thinly veiled messages in Twilight. Firstly, the whole series is an advertisement on abstinence and Mormonism (the religion of the writer) and this bugged me ... a lot. I know it's a really old trick to stamp religious propaganda all over stories and fables, but wow, did this one do the trick. Millions of teenage girls suddenly convinced waiting for marriage is the right thing without even realising they've been persuaded into thinking that way from a YA novel, this sits really uneasily with me. The second thing that now bothers me about the story is that actions I perceived as a young girl as loving and caring, are actually barbaric and downright demeaning. Think about it, if a boyfriend told you that you were no longer allowed to go certain places, see certain people, drive your car etc, you'd go mad. Their relationship is basically one of domineering control and a really bad example to set up for young girls.

Because of all this, I was a little reluctant to read Meyer's other novel The Host, but I found it on eBay for £1 and I thought it might help out with some dystopian research I was doing so I bought it, ad I'm so glad I did!

Basically, this book is nothing like Twilight. There is no real sense of danger where you expect it, and the protagonist; Wanderer, makes the right choices for her life, not the choices men want her to make, which makes her a much stronger heroine than Bella Swan.

The story is set in the future, where an alien race has invaded earth and taken over human bodies to live in. The majority of the population are now these "aliens". There is a small human resistance, of which one member is a young girl in her 20's; Melanie. Melanie leaves her lover and young brother to enter a city at night looking for a cousin she believes to still be human. When Melanie is caught by the "seekers" (aliens who search for the human resistance) she runs and attempts suicide so the aliens may not have her body. However, they have extensive medical advances and are able to save Melanie's body, putting alien Wanderer inside.

Wanderer, like the rest of the aliens, is a gentle soul. They do not believe in, nor are capable of violence or anger. They all work, but money is not used in their world, they simply take what they need and pay for it by putting work into the community. Wanderer works as a teacher, but finds her concentration more and more distant as she begins to hear a voice in her head. Melanie's voice.

The rest of the story is about the struggle and friendship of these two souls locked inside one body and the prejudice's they face against each others races. I really liked this story, and better, I liked the characters. It was really interesting to read something dystopian about invasion but not to have any real outside fear to pace the story. There is no government or "big brother" watching Wanderer, and the pace comes from her character development alone which works really well.

The adaptation is released in cinema's either this or next week I think and it will be interesting to see if they have made it a true adaptation of the books... or just created a blockbuster love story touted on Meyer's name. We'll see.

Top Ten Five Books I HAD To Buy...But Are Still Sitting On My Shelf Unread

I got pretty good at reading my accumulated book pile last year so I don't actually think I have 10!

1) The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe. This book sounded like something I'd love, it was my favourite era/setting etc, but ... I read I am Charlotte Simmons first and realised what a terrible author Wolfe was, so this is still unread.

2) Underworld - Don Delillo. This was an author I'd wanted to get into for a long time, and when I finally got Underworld cheaply on eBay I was really excited to read it ... but it's still unread!

3) Invisible Monsters Remix - Chuck Palahniuk. The reason I've not yet started this one is because I want to re-read the original again first, and I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

These next two are kind of cheats because they actually just came today but:

4) The Host - Stephanie Meyer. Research for my dystopia project.

5) The Handmaid's tale - Margaret Atwood. Research also.

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides has been a long contemplated book for me. I saw the film years ago, when I was in my early teens and I never really got it. I mean, I understand the premise and all, I know it's a mystery and a detective novel and a coming of age all in one, but I never really joined in on the big cult "wow-ness" of this book. I think it's because at first it seemed (the story, as I hadn't read the book) like something second rate, made to shock people. 5 Sisters kill them selves for no reason better than "You've never been a teenage girl", well, how very "I don't like Mondays" of you...

However, for the past few years I have found myself adding the book to various online shopping baskets...and then not buying it, but there's no rule so important with adaptations than "It's probably not as good as the book!" So I took the plunge, and figured I was going to close the final page with a huge eye roll or a great sense of contemplation, but I'm still not so sure. I don't think I've ever had such a mixed reaction to a book before, usually because I tend to buy books I've read reviews of, or from authors I've read before, but with this one I feel so (excuse the lack of a better word here) ...meh. I don't feel particularly enlightened or thoughtful like I usually do upon finishing a novel, I do feel contemplative, thought over my thoughts rather than the story.

The book centres around the 5 Lisbon sisters, who we know from the start all end up killing themselves. We read from a group of unnamed men, who knew the girls when they were their age and have never been able to forget them, or figure out the mystery surrounding their deaths. The writing is like that of a court transcription, with the boys presenting exhibits, and interviews they have conducted over the years in trying to put together the mystery of the suicides.

“It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. ” 

I don't think it's the author I have an issues with here - he keeps the story very well placed in it's detective-coming of age genre, and I do completely adore the setting -  I love the seventies, and the writing makes the time feel really authentic; rather it's the story. I have this little tick that has always irritated me; people trying to make themselves "relevant" by writing/creating these little esoteric pieces of work that they think are incredibly arty but in reality are just cheap rip-off's of once great work, for example, how many books have you read that claim to be the "modern" Catcher In The Rye? And focus on a boy who is alone and thinks a lot and reads Albert Camus and is therefore different and intelligent and oh so worthwhile? They seem to believe that this character, the placement of a Joy Division record, or a reference to Clockwork Orange (because gosh, you must be a big misunderstood smartie-pants if you empathise with droog's) means that they have written something great, but it takes so much more than that!

“What lingered after them was not life, which always overcomes natural death, but the most trivial list of mundane facts: a clock ticking on a wall, a room dim at noon, and the outrageousness of a human being thinking only of herself.”

And we come to the crux of this review, here's my final thought; The Virgin Suicides is lacking, lacking in something that could have made it great? I'm not sure, but definitely in something that could have made it something thought provoking, rather than what I take it as; an easy read on a difficult subject with absolutely no depth. In this case the film was definitely better, and that's only because of Sofia Coppola's directing, and the wicked soundtrack. Sorry Lux lovers, I'm calling it.