Tag Archives: Random House Canada

Author Encounter and Review | The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins

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I was fortunate enough to have been invited to brunch with novelist Paula Todd at Le Select Bistro last February. Her debut novel The Girl on the Train has been a runaway hit since the holidays, and it’s easy to see why. It’s tight, taut and thrilling, with an unreliable narrator all too aware of her unreliability, and a plot so twisty that Miss Marple herself would have a field day trying to parse it all out.

The Brunch

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Author Paula Hawkins speaking at the brunch

It was my first time at Le Select Bistro and I found the brunch an absolute treat. The main course offered a selection of eggs, steak, salmon, or French toast stuffed with apples and cranberries (my pick, and it’s about as decadent as it sounds), which were served with a selection of freshly baked croissants, fresh fruits, mimosas and a really rich chocolate cake for dessert. Someone else at my table commented that the berries were fresh, not canned, which is a pleasant surprise in the dead of winter. All that to say: if you haven’t had a chance to eat at Le Select Bistro yet, definitely give it a shot.

The brunch highlight of course was author Paula Hawkins herself, who was in Toronto for only a day or two before having to fly out for the rest of her book tour. As I mentioned, her book is a major hit. It has been compared to Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, a comparison I think is a disservice to Girl on the Train, which I actually find a much more potent, captivating read. I spoke to the author only briefly, but found her to be sweet and unassuming, far from the woman I imagined could come up with such a dark and twisty tale. She spoke a bit about how readers have responded to her book, and credits the book’s success to the voyeur in all of us. Whether we admit it or not, there’s something about other people’s secrets that fascinate us, and the book’s protagonist finds herself deeply enmeshed in one.

The Book

22557272Have you ever read 4:50 to Paddington? It’s one of my all-time favourite Agatha Christie mysteries. An elderly woman witnesses a murder from a moving train, but when the police come, there is no evidence of a crime at all. Miss Marple happens to be a friend of the woman, so she steps in to investigate.

The Girl on the Train has a similar plot, except without a Miss Marple to come to the witness’ rescue. The protagonist, Rachel, commutes to the city every day. Her train takes her past a house with a seemingly happy couple she nicknames “Jess and Jason,” and she watches their lives through the window as the train whizzes by. Until one day, she sees Jess kissing another man, and when she finds out that Jess has gone MIA, she goes to the police with her fears about Jess’s safety. The problem is, Rachel’s also an alcoholic, who has a complete blank in her memory for the evening that Jess (real name: Megan) disappeared. Worse, Megan lives only a few doors away from Rachel’s old house, where her ex-husband and his new wife now live, and Rachel has had a history of showing up uninvited at their doorstep — again, incidents that because of her alcoholic blackouts, she can barely remember herself.

Hawkins’s writing reminds me of Elizabeth Haynes, one of my favourite contemporary thriller writers whose Into the Darkest Corner is still, bar none, one of the most powerful thrillers I’ve ever read. Like Haynes, Hawkins keeps us trapped within her protagonist’s mind, and when Rachel herself doesn’t fully understand what she knows, then neither do we. We not only empathize with Rachel’s confusion and terror over what had happened that weekend, we feel it ourselves, and like Rachel, we sometimes wonder if anything even happened at all, or if alcohol had caused Rachel to imagine everything.

I couldn’t put this book down. I was completely caught up in Rachel’s story, as well as in the stories of Megan and Anna (Rachel’s ex-husband’s new wife), both of whom also interject bits of their own story into the narrative. I love how all the plot threads came together, and above all, I love how much I was sucked into their perspectives. This is a potent psychological thriller — you end up caring about the characters, and whether you figure it out before the end or not, you’ll keep turning the page anyway.

The effects of addiction and of a relationship gone sour are presented with stark frankness by Hawkins, and Rachel feels utterly real as a person, which again makes her struggles real. Kudos as well to Hawkins for not prettifying her character. I’ve read books where the female protagonist feels overweight or frumpy, but others really see her as beautiful, but Rachel really is overweight and frumpy, and I love that the author shows how this affects the way others treat her and her credibility. If this is made into a movie, I’d love for Hollywood to take a similar approach and not present the standard beauty with a few extra pounds.

This is an amazing book, and it was actually a surprise to learn that such masterful plotting was in a debut novel. I look forward to seeing more of Paula Hawkins’ books in the future, and in the meantime, highly recommend this one for a weekend treat.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for the invitation to the brunch, and for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Summer Sisters, Judy Blume

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Judy Blume will always remind me of my childhood. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret was one of my favourite books growing up, and while a recent re-read didn’t quite affect me as I’d hoped, I still remember getting caught up in Margaret’s concerns about filling out a bra and getting her period and all sorts of rites of passage young girls go through. Fellow Blume fans, say it with me: “I must, I must, I must increase my bust!”

Great news for all of us who grew up with Judy Blume: she has a new adult novel coming in June! In the Unlikely Event hits shelves June 2.

820100I was fortunate enough to have attended the Random House Canada Spring Bloggers Event, where they told us about the upcoming novel. There were no ARCs available, but they generously provided us with copies of Judy Blume’s previous adult novel Summer Sisters. If you’ve ever read Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye, Summer Sisters reminds me somewhat of that novel, being about the strong bonds formed in female friendship when young, and how these can last in some form or another all through adulthood. And like Cat’s Eye, Summer Sisters took me right back to my childhood.

The novel is about best friends Vix Leonard and Caitlin Somers, who go to Caitlin’s family house in Martha’s Vineyard every summer. Caitlin’s family becomes somewhat a surrogate family to Vix, and helps her out with scholarships to the best schools. Over the years, the girls grow apart — having grown up with money all her life, Caitlin can’t understand why Vix would choose to spend her summers working at a restaurant rather than travel with her to Europe; Vix on the other hand finds it difficult to explain why she feels uncomfortable accepting Caitlin’s parents’ offer to pay for her ticket to Europe. Vix sees a degree from Harvard as a necessity for a stable life; Caitlin thinks it’s settling for an ordinary one. And as the novel opens, Caitlin invites Vix to be maid of honour at her wedding to Vix’s ex-boyfriend, whom they both met during a summer at the Vineyard.

The novel dips into the girls’ stories once a year, at first during the summer season, and then later on, during Vix’s school year. Even though the novel begins with Caitlin’s wedding, the romantic angle is secondary to the story of their friendship, and the boyfriend is as secondary a character as the girls’ parents. I love this glimpse into the girls’ lives, and their adventures in the Vineyard remind me of the unbridled fun summers were as a teen, when they were breaks from the school year, and where even a menial job like cleaning houses could be fun because you were doing it with your best friend.

Blume tells the story mostly from Vix’s perspective, and while various characters are given a chapter or two to tell their side, Caitlin’s voice is notably absent. This adds to her mystique as a character — we see her only as others do, and while Vix may know her more than most, even Vix eventually realizes that there are many layers to Caitlin that she will never know. I actually wasn’t a big fan of hearing from the other characters — with the exception of Caitlin’s stepmom Abby, none of the other interludes really interested me, and I would have rather stayed with Vix the entire time.

I hesitate to call this novel simple, because there is a lot that happens, and so much more in terms of family dynamics that remains unsaid. But in a way, there’s a wonderful simplicity that marks this story, and a forthrightness in Blume’s narration that again takes me back to childhood, to a time where summer friendships meant something, and the potential of the future appears limitless. This is a lovely read, and I can’t wait for Blume’s new novel in June.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Prince Lestat, Anne Rice

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21412673The Vampire Chronicles have always been my favourite among Anne Rice’s books, so I was thrilled when she announced a return to it with Prince Lestat. To be honest, it’s been awhile since I’ve read a Vampire Chronicles book, and while I vaguely remember reading Queen of the Damned (referenced a lot in this book), I remember nothing of the story. So parts of this book did confuse me, but overall, there was just enough backstory provided that I could figure it out.

In Prince Lestat, Rice not only re-introduces us to the Brat Prince, she also takes us deep into the very mythology of her vampires. As such, the book feels much larger than the story of its titular character. The story travels through time and among various points of view, and we learn a lot about how vampires came to be and how fragile their existence as a species really is.

The story is about the vampire world in crisis — a mysterious Voice speaks to select vampires, commanding them to burn seemingly random groups of vampires around the world. It’s vampire genocide, and no one seems to know why it’s happening or how to stop it. The Voice also contacts Lestat, though appears more interested in conversing with him than in commanding him. Lestat himself is his usual dashing, seductive self, though with a lot more pathos now than usual. I love the scenes with Louie and Armand, mostly because I remember them from Interview with a Vampire, and it was sweet to see how much Lestat still cares for Louie.

There are a lot of characters and their flashbacks, and it’s impossible to keep track of all of them, or remember how or if I’d ever known them from a previous book. As a result, I didn’t really care about any individual character, except for Lestat, Louie and Armand. I did become fascinated by the mythology, and by the eventual explanation of what and who the Voice is. I’m not sure how much I liked the resolution, but it did feel right.

I remember reading Interview with a Vampire years ago, and being absolutely spellbound by the language and the story. Anne Rice, at her best, is a master of literary seduction. Prince Lestat falls somewhat short of that mark, but it’s a fascinating story nonetheless.

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Thank you to Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.