Tendril itibaren San Juan, Nikaragua
OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is the best book yet!!! One of the Gallagher girls falls in love and from there a REAL love story is on full-play!
Peter is just a soft city boy at the beginning, being sent to the ranch by his father to toughen up and develop manly character. Then the engine in the small plane cuts out and they plummet into a canyon far off course from their intended flight route in the wilderness. Peter survives the crash, but the pilot does not. This book was written in 1972. The ideas are a little old-fashioned, (such as "toughening up" his son- reminds me of Joe the lumberjack) and I was constantly distracted, thinking, "are they allowed to do that?!" Such as the old man who has lived alone in the canyon for 50 years- he drinks the water straight out of the stream, fishes, hunts, and gathers firewood without a license. It was an ok book. I would have eaten it up any summer between the ages of 10-17. It's also one that boys would probably like to read, that could get reluctant readers like my brother with an interest in the outdoors to stay still long enough to read something. Warning- Some cussing, depiction of a plane crash, death and burial of the pilot (nothing too gruesome described) and talk of murder.
Not the best book in the world. Here is my short summary. Kids with missing dad stuble upon 3 witches. Witches take kids to find dad through tessering. Kids find dad. Kids go home.
If nobody speaks of remarkable things by Jon McGregor The narrator of the story remembers her last day living in student accommodation in a town in northern England. Events that unfolded that day terminated in something which haunts her still. She also deals with things happening in her current life in a different town, and her relationships with family and friends. Someone connected to her past turns up and she realises how little she really knew her former neighbours. For me this book is very clearly on two different levels. There is the captivating, evocative and mesmerising story of the people who live in the flats on the northern street as we follow their lives during one day; snapshots of lives unfolding. We get to know some of them better than others, learn something about their lives, loves, futures or their pasts. Others are passing glimpses, caught in a moment in time. They go about the day, sometimes interacting, sometimes set apart and paint a totally realistic, occasionally tedious, picture of people’s complicated lives. The other side of the book is the narrator’s current life and how it gets tied to that day. We know from the beginning that something terrible has happened. It’s not unusual for a book to imply something of the sort and to build up to it. However in this book it all seems very contrived and we are aware that we are being kept from the final revelation. The final scenes leading up to it are milked for all they are worth. I thought at first the narrator was a man, and perhaps this is due to the author being male. I found the final scenes did not sit well with me at all. There was an uncomfortable feel to things that happen and it left me not so much haunted as with a rather nasty taste in my mouth. For the beautiful narrative vision of contemporary life I would give this book much praise but for me the rather cruel underlying tale let it down.