Tag Archives: Harper Collins

Review | We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

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Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin is far from the celebratory type of book that I suppose would be more appropriate a way to ring in the New Year, but it’s definitely a must read. I first read it a few years ago, when it was getting a lot of buzz. I didn’t remember a lot of the details, but I do remember thinking it was a very emotionally powerful book.

Confession: I re-read it because of the movie. My sister and I saw the trailer, and my sister was so intrigued by it that we immediately bought a copy of the book. That night, she asked me if she could read it before sleeping: “It’s not too creepy, is it? Because the trailer looked very creepy.” I assured her that I remember it being very emotional, but not quite as horror-movie as the movie trailer suggested. Much later that night, she woke me up: “I thought you said it wasn’t creepy?!” Oops. She devoured it overnight, and the next day was still so disturbed that she wanted to talk about it. I finally had to admit that it’s been years since I’d read it, so I was fuzzy on some of the details. Still, her enthusiasm so intrigued me that I decided to read it again.

My last book of 2011, and my first of 2012, We Need to Talk About Kevin is even more powerful than I remembered. Fair warning: it is creepy. It’s chilling and disturbing, and you won’t want to put the book down. Kevin is about the family of a teenager who kills his classmates and a teacher. But unlike many of the school shooters in the news, many of whom seem to have led tragic lives as social outcasts, Kevin appears more like a psychopath than a troubled victim. From the moment he is born and rejects his mother’s breasts, his mother Eva senses there’s something wrong. Kevin grows up a very creepy boy, scaring away his playgroup and a series of baby sitters. While Eva is increasingly disturbed by what she sees as a power struggle between her and her son, her husband Franklin is wilfully blind to Kevin’s faults, and is determined to maintain a Happy Days family image.

Movie tie-in edition

Kevin, as real-life school shootings do, raises the question of nature vs nurture. Could Eva and Franklin, as Kevin’s parents, have prevented his act? Also, as in real-life, Kevin provides no easy answers. Certainly, Eva admits she is far from blameless — she finds herself unable to form an attachment to her son, even though the mother-son bond is supposed to come naturally. Shriver is a very talented writer, and I love the scenes where she blurs the lines between mother and child, good and evil. For example, Eva once tells Kevin about her distaste for much of the American way of life, particularly how arrogant and materialistic she finds Americans. Kevin, quite rightly, points out that she is just as arrogant and materialistic as other Americans, particularly in the way she thinks herself superior to them. On one hand, it’s a distressing moment — Eva had thought that by being honest with her son, they were finally bonding, only to have her hopes shot down by Kevin. On the other hand, Kevin has a point in saying that the only thing that differentiates Eva from her image of Americans is that she isn’t overweight, and that perhaps he’d rather a mother who was a “cow” and yet not as condescending.

In another, particularly touching scene, Eva watches static on TV and wonders if this is how life is for Kevin. Does he feel as bored in his everyday existence as she does zoned out in front of a defective TV? It’s difficult to feel sympathy for a teenager who cold-bloodedly plans the execution of his classmates, but with that single image of a static-filled TV, I actually did feel for him. The last scene between mother and son in the novel is without a trace of sentimentality, yet I had to pause for a moment just to absorb all it contained.

I love how Shriver uses such subdued, matter of fact writing to deal with such emotional content. The no-nonsense nature of Eva’s narration heightens all the horror and pain and, possibly, even a hint of love, in the story. The title comes from Eva’s plea to Franklin throughout most of the book that they deal with the reality of their son’s issues. However, the title will also definitely apply to the reader. Kevin is an amazing, powerful, chilling book that just blew me away.

I think it also helped that, reading it a second time, I was imagining Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller as Eva and Kevin. I don’t remember how I imagined the characters to look when I first read it, but bravo to the casting director. Ezra Miller is even more chilling than I think I would’ve imagined Kevin to be, and I can’t wait for the movie. Amazing book, amazing trailer!

Review | Perfect People, Peter James

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What if you had the chance to free your unborn child from all genetic imperfections? Sure, you may say all you really want is for your child to be healthy, and it doesn’t matter if he’s the smartest or most good-looking boy in the world. But what if all those options were also available to you, at no additional cost? Would you be able to turn down this chance, and risk having your child grow up unpopular, or unable to realize his dream of becoming a doctor, and know you had your chance to change that? Even if you do decide to keep him as healthy and normal as possible, where do you stop — with the rare genetic disease your first child died of, or remove even the genes for diabetes and cancer and, hey why not, asthma?

There are no easy answers, and Peter James’ Perfect People bombards us with all these difficult questions. This book just blew me away. Wow. I was reading this book at a mall, and I kept gasping or shaking my head every few pages. I started tweeting my reactions, then had to stop myself because I realized that if I kept going, I’d flood my Twitter feed with comments like, “OMG. This chapter made me gasp out loud.” “Oh no! This chapter made me gasp even louder!” “Now what?” “Hmmm… No idea what I’d do…” Exciting reading experience for me, monotonous for my followers.

James takes us right into the lives of John and Naomi Klaesson, who do get that opportunity to design their baby. Their four year old son had died of a rare genetic disorder, so they pool their life savings and go to geneticist Dr Leo Dettore, who can design their next baby’s genetic makeup. I love how James depicts the difficulty of John and Naomi’s dilemma. Naomi insists she just wants as normal a child as possible — if their son is genetically enhanced to have vastly superior intelligence or athletic prowess, will other kids still want to play with him, or will they shun him as a freak? John, a scientist, is afraid that if they turn down genetic enhancements and if designer babies become the norm, then their future son will lose a valuable competitive advantage. I love the combination of parental ambition and desire to nurture. The scenes at the clinic could’ve been very science fiction, but James’ focus on Naomi and John’s fears kept the story feeling very real and immediate.

Naomi and John go home, excited about the soon-to-be-born son they’d requested. Then they go to get an ultrasound and realize Dr Dettore may have made one, very basic mistake with their child. If he got such a simple detail wrong, what else could he have gotten wrong? Worse, even if they do find out other details had been messed up, what will they do about it? Again, James offers no easy answers. The pro-life/pro-choice debate gets even more complicated when this is a baby you’d planned to the very last detail, and now you don’t even know what exactly is growing inside you. A normal, healthy baby, a super child, or an evil baby Frankenstein’s monster? I like that James didn’t have either John or Naomi firmly on one side of the debate. They’re both confused and scared, and end up making mistakes. They’re all too flawed and relatable, and I was completely immersed in their story because even I couldn’t see an easy way out.

Minor spoiler (this is one that James’ own website provides, but if like me, you want zero spoilers, skip to the next paragraph): Naomi ends up giving birth to twins. Super intelligent twins, who at three prefer to surf the Internet than watch a clown, and who might in fact already be more intelligent than their parents. I remember watching I Am Sam, and feeling bad for Dakota Fanning’s character, who seemed more like the parent than the child, and for Sean Penn’s character, who tried as hard as he could but just could not keep up with his daughter. I felt the same way for the Klaesson family in Perfect People, but worse, because while Dakota Fanning and Sean Penn’s characters could look to other adults for guidance, the Klaesson family really had no one to turn to. As parents, how could Naomi and John best provide for such children? Again, never any easy answers, and the story kept me completely engrossed.

To complicate matters even further, Naomi and John are pursued by the Disciples of the Third Millenium, a fanatical religious group that believes designer babies are spawns of the devil. In true Peter James fashion, the author even takes us into the mind of one of the Disciples, who needs to kill the Klaesson family before he can marry the woman he loves. To be honest, this subplot just felt flat to me. Despite the background information on the Disciple’s life and his romantic subplot, a lot of his thoughts and actions read like standard thriller fare, a generic religious fanatic. To be fair, it may have been an accurate portrayal, with the Disciple’s single-mindedness about his group’s mission. Also, it’s certainly realistic that fanatical religious groups would want to destroy designer baby families. Still, with John and Naomi’s story already so mind-blowing, and already raising so many fascinating dilemmas, I almost wish the Disciples of the Third Millenium hadn’t been included at all. Or at the very least, wish they’d been included only as backdrop bad guys, providing external conflict without getting chapters of their own.

Perfect People is such an amazing book. The psychological thrills are almost non-stop, the emotional ups and downs unrelenting, and the ending almost made me cry. I received this ARC from Harper Collins at the fish and chips party to celebrate Peter James’ ITV3 People’s Bestseller Dagger Award (thanks HCC!), so I don’t know if this is available in the final book, but I wish there was an author note with a glimpse of James’ research into real world designer babies. Fascinating topic, definitely, and in Perfect People, James gives this scientific innovation very human faces.

Virtual Advent Tour 2011 | Twelve Books of Christmas, Part 2

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I love giving and receiving books for Christmas! I’ve discovered quite a few new favourite writers from gifts (mostly from my sister, who gives awesome book recommendations!), and I love the thrill of receiving a book I may not necessarily have chosen for myself.

Part 1 of this list, posted this morning, is here.

Books featured in Part 1 are as follows:
(Note: Feel free to click on the thumbnail to be taken directly to that book.)

Scroll down or click on the cover image to go to that specific write up.


7. Look I Made a Hat, Stephen Sondheim


The sequel to the equally fantastic Finishing the Hat, Look I Made a Hat features lyrics from Stephen Sondheim’s musicals from 1981 – 2011. We also get materials from his TV and film career and (probably coolest for any Sondheim fan) never before seen material from unproduced projects.

As with Finishing, I love the intimate nature of this book, with anecdotes and commentary by Sondheim, production photos and copies of his hand-written notes and drafts. We get both a celebration of his public work and a peek into his private, creative process. Fantastic gift for Sondheim fans, and heck, musical theatre fans in general.

Even better, Knopf is coming out with the Hat Box this December! Both Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat in a pretty gold box. I wish the boxed set offered a bit more extra features than just the box (say, a bonus CD of Sondheim’s personally selected favourites?), just to give us more of an incentive to buy the box set instead of the individual books.

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8. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Alan Bradley

All I want for Christmas is Flavia! I Am Half-Sick of Shadows is the fourth book is Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series, and my personal favourite so far. It combines Christmas, Flavia and film — three of my favourite things! Bradley even adds a dash of Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet is far from my favourite Shakespeare, but the story behind the de Luce copy of the play is heartwarming. I also love the sly nods to Agatha Christie — the country home cozy mystery plot, the inspector’s dry remark “Just like an Agatha Christie,” and the book’s title, from Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shallot,” surely a nod to the Miss Marple mystery The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, which also owes its title to that poem.

Shadows is a light hearted, enjoyable mystery with a fascinating cast of characters. Even Flavia’s usually mean, sometimes cruel, sisters feel the holiday glow, and we see a bit more of the de Luce as a family here than in previous books. Bradley has created a world, idyllic yet sinister, and you just want to lose yourself in it.

My full, gushing review is here.

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9. Up Up Up, Julie Booker

Back in the spring, I gushed about how much I love Julie Booker’s short story collection Up Up Up. The stories are funny because they’re true, and tragic because they’re so true all you can do is laugh. Each one packs a little punch, and if you’ve ever spoken to Julie Booker on Twitter, you probably already have an idea of her quick, razor sharp punchlines.

Her stories talk about speed dating (it has “lots in common” with a mall food court: “quick turnover, a story at every table…and some who always leave a trail of garbage”), female friendship (“two fat ladies in a kayak! In skintight wetsuits. Eek!”), and careers (e.g. a woman from “Bumfuck-Nowhere, Ontario” insisting on teaching only in French). I recognized myself in her stories, and chances are, so will lots of other women.

Great choice to stimulate feminine bonding. For more details, my full review here.

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10. Before I Go to Sleep, S.J. Watson

Before I Go to Sleep literally kept me up all night. Imagine losing your memory every time you went to sleep. That’s what Christine has to face every morning. Unable to trust even herself, she can only trust her husband, whom she recognizes only because of Post-it notes on the bathroom mirror saying “this is your husband.” Then she receives a phone call from a doctor she can’t remember, who tells her to meet him and not let her husband know.

Christine’s life is my idea of a nightmare, and S.J. Watson crafts his tale masterfully. Each new revelation makes you want to keep turning the page. No matter how spooked you are by what you find out, you can only imagine how terrified Christine must feel — she’s finding things out right along with you, and while you can close the book (a near impossible feat, once you begin, but it must be possible, right?), this is her life you’re reading about.

Fiction, but certainly feels like it could be real. Before I Go to Sleep won a CWA Dagger for “new blood,” and I can definitely see why.

Harper Collins Canada blog Savvy Reader was kind enough to post my review of this book, if you want to read more.

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11. Stroll, Shawn Micallef

Whenever I travel, I love setting aside at least a few hours just to wander. Package tours and tourist destinations are great, but there’s a charm as well in exploring the city like a local, just absorbing the place. Shawn Micallef offers us this experience in Stroll, and invites us to discover Toronto with him, at the pace of a stroll.

Micallef is a flaneur, which, as I’ve actually just discovered from this book, is, “someone who wanders the city with the sole purpose of paying attention to it.” More than just a guidebook or a history book, Stroll is a walking tour of Toronto, in a small, easy to carry volume. Micallef’s descriptions are detailed, coupled with convenient map illustrations by Marlena Zuber, and each section begins with handy tips, like “day trip,” or “off spring friendly,” or my personal favourite, “dress to impress.”

Great book to give someone who’s just moved to Toronto or who is or will be visiting Toronto. Also great for longtime residents who, like me, still have so many areas left to explore.

In his Flaneur Manifesto, Micallef writes:

Over and over, we’re told that Toronto is not Paris, New York, London or Tokyo. We’ve been trained to be underwhelmed.

[…] Any Toronto flaneur knows that exploring this city makes the burden of civic self-depracation disappear. And anybody can be a Toronto flaneur.

Sounds like fun.

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12. Vanity Fair: The Portraits, Graydon Carter

I love the portraits in Vanity Fair magazines. Vanity Fair: The Portraits collects 300 of its iconic portraits in a beautiful coffee table book. Photographers include such talented names as Cecil Beaton, Annie Leibovitz and Edward Steichen. Subjects include such 20th century legends as Pablo Picasso, Katharine Hepburn and Amelia Earhart.

It’s a beautiful book, and it showcases some of the most influential figures in the past century.

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Lots of fantastic books out there! What book are you giving this holiday season? What book do you have on your wish list?

Happy holidays!