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Review | The Oathbreaker’s Shadow, Amy McCulloch

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13643064In a market saturated with YA dystopians, Amy McCulloch’s The Oathbreaker’s Shadow stands out by turning to the past. Not necessarily a historical past, but rather a classical take on story telling. McCulloch’s style of world building is reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s in The Giver in a setting reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s in Dune, and while Oathbreaker’s Shadow is less allegorical than The Giver and so far less epic than Dune, it contains that vital sense of classicism that I hope will make this series endure for generations to come.

In this book, promises are represented by knots and bound by magic. When someone breaks a promise, their knot disappears and leaves behind a scar that marks them as an oathbreaker and leads to public shame and exile. For Raim, he has had a knot since the day he was born, which represents a promise he does not know and cannot possibly have made himself. So when he vows lifelong fealty to his best friend and his society’s future Khan, and this knot is broken, Raim sets off on a quest to discover what promise he had inadvertently broken, and more importantly, to reclaim his lost honour.

I cannot say enough good things about this book, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good tale. McCulloch weaves Eastern philosophy, magic, and social and political conflict into the classic quest narrative of the disgraced hero. It’s a tradition that stretches back to ancient literature, and Oathbreaker’s Shadow serves as a testament to the enduring appeal of the classics as well as rejuvenates the form with a contemporary feel. This is an exciting new take on fantasy, and a much needed breath of fresh air in a market too enamoured with trends. Oathbreaker’s Shadow is high adventure; friendships are strained, loyalties are betrayed, and hope arises in the most unlikely place. All this occurs in a world where magic is real, and literally burned into your skin, or embodied in a shadowy form.

As with all good examples of fantasy literature, this book feels emotionally real. Oathbreakers are haunted by shadows of people they’ve betrayed; the more egregious the betrayal, the stronger one’s shadow is. It’s a compelling metaphor, and one can only imagine how it must feel to have a shadow of a loved one (literally, a shadow of them, a mere shade of their personality) as a constant reminder of your betrayal. When one character’s hunger for knowledge leads to a realization on how to use this magic to their advantage, the results are horrifying. A scene near the end revealing the extent of one character’s betrayal feels painfully real, and despite its personal nature, feels akin to epic tropes.

The Oathbreaker’s Shadow is a brilliant book, the first in a series of two. It deserves to become part of classic YA literature, and I highly recommend it to readers of all ages.

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

Review | Perfect, Rachel Joyce

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17883962In 1972, two seconds were added to time. Twelve year old Byron knows this because his friend James, the smartest boy at school, tells him so. When Byron notices time shifting, he causes his mother Diana to make a serious, tragic mistake. She seems unaware of the full consequences of the incident at the time, but a strict sense of honour compels Byron to tell his mother the whole story. Her guilt leads her to befriend someone outside her usual social circle, and this in turn sends her life into a horrible tailspin.

Parallel to this story is that of Jim, a middle aged man in the present day. Suffering from severe OCD, he leads a restrictive life. When he gets a chance at love, he must overcome his fears, and his crippling sense of self, in order to grab at it. This story is linked to that of Byron and Diana, and the author brings everything full circle at the end.

Perfect didn’t captivate me as much as Rachel Joyce’s earlier book The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry did. Despite the second storyline eventually tying everything together, its interjections detract from the emotional experience of reading the much more compelling 1972 plot thread. Despite the story being told from Byron’s perspective, its most compelling character is Diana. Sweet and innocent, she is bullied by her husband and taken advantage of by a friend. As readers, we see the warning signs way before she does, and want desperately to stop it from happening, yet, much like Byron, all we can do is watch.

The book’s title comes from a scheme concocted by James for him and Byron to save Diana. James is obsessed with Diana, and even though he’s a twelve year old boy, his attempts to insert himself into her life and “rescue” her creep me out. He’s a bit too intense, and Byron, like his mother, a bit too trusting. For example, when Byron reports to James something his mother’s friend said, James says he should have been there, ostensibly so he could give a different witness perspective, but really, because he wants to be the one to “save” Diana.

Even worse than James is Diana’s friend Beverley. I understand her motivations, but her actions are despicable, and particularly when done to someone as vulnerable as Diana.

In Perfect, Joyce explores the experience of the outcast. Beverley is too poor to fit in with Diana’s socialite friends, and the woman Jim falls in love with is too brash to fit in with his co-workers. Yet even the characters who seem to fit in don’t — Diana’s position within her social circle is easy to sever, and even when Jim’s co-workers rally around him, he is still clearly apart. The book isn’t just about what it means to connect with outcasts, nor just about how we are all outcasts in some way, but rather about relating in general, about the risks the come with connecting with other people and about why such risks may be worth taking. The theme of connection is one Joyce explores as well in Harold Fry, and while I applaud her versatility, I miss the heightened focus on only a handful of memorable characters that made Harold Fry so memorable. In Perfect, only Diana is as compelling, and the story suffers for it.

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

Review | The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

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13531083I had the privilege of meeting the author at a Toronto event last year, and from the passage she read, I knew The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was going to make me cry. A man receives a call that an old friend is dying, and sets off across England on foot, on a quest to see her before she dies. “As long as I walk, she must live,” Harold tells the nurse on the line. “Please tell her this time I won’t let her down.” [p.19] I remember Rachel Joyce reading that line to a roomful of book lovers last year, and I, still clutching my greasy cone of fish and chips, almost began crying right there.

The promotion around this book has inspired people to set off on their own pilgrimages. We all have regrets after all, and like Harold Fry, we all have the desire to believe that this time, we’ll do something different, and this time, things will turn out differently because of it.

Harold Fry’s journey is a profoundly moving one. His determination to reach Queenie in time is tinged with desperation, and as readers, we too are swept up in the race against time. Joyce has an amazing way with language — the book is filled with beautiful turns of phrase and surprising little snippets that tug at the heartstrings.

The book is about Harold’s journey to meet Queenie, but the story that most struck a chord in me is that of Harold and his wife Maureen. Married for almost fifty years, they have settled into a distant, mostly comfortable routine. Their longing to connect is kept deeply buried under snappish remarks and vague pleasantries. I was immediately captivated by Maureen — within the first few pages, Joyce establishes her as a very complex character, a woman masking some deep pain with snark. “That’s the marmalade, Harold,” she says as Harold tries to tell her about Queenie’s letter over breakfast. “Jam is red. If you look at things before you pick them up, you’ll find it helps.” [p. 5]

Yet, on the very next page, we get this very telling scene:

Upstairs Maureen shut the door of David’s room quietly and stood a moment, breathing him in. […] She kept the room clean because she was waiting for David to come back, and she never knew when that would be. A part of her was always waiting. Men had no idea what it was like to be a mother. The ache of loving a child, even when he had moved on. She thought of Harold downstairs, with his pink letter, and wished she could talk to their son. [p. 6]

Just a page earlier, Harold was the heroic figure, concerned about his friend Queenie, and Maureen seemed like an unfeeling shrew. Yet with just a few short lines, Joyce complicates the dynamic by reversing it. Here is Maureen dealing with some deep pain — and Joyce portrays this with masterfully subdued detail — and it is Harold who seems unfeeling, uninterested in what his wife is going through. There’s a hint of Maureen’s jealousy towards Queenie and her significance in Harold’s life, and Harold doesn’t seem to notice.

Joyce packs quite a bit into the first ten pages, and even though nothing much has happened yet, both Harold and Maureen have already emerged as three-dimensional, flesh and blood figures. To be honest, I didn’t much like Queenie at this point — I imagined her to be a beautiful woman who Harold may have loved in his youth and never gotten over. I imagined the story to be Harold reconnecting with a lost love in tragic circumstances and while I can imagine liking that story, I couldn’t help but feel for Maureen, who is unable to express to her husband how much she needs him.

Then we read about Queenie later on and, from Harold’s memories of her, I absolutely adore this character. She is trying to work at a brewery and build a career in finance at a time when women’s roles were very much constrained. She is an utterly fascinating figure, described thus:

Contrary to David’s predictions, Queenie Hennessy had not turned out to be a socialist, feminist, or lesbian. She was a stout, plain-looking woman with no waist and a handbag tucked over her forearm. […] Harold overheard a young chap saying, “You forget she’s a woman really.” [p. 65]

Well, Harold Fry hasn’t forgotten, and while their friendship is clearly platonic, he sees her in a way the other men at the brewery don’t, and that’s important.

“You’re a gentleman,” Queenie tells Harold when they worked together. As Joyce puts it, Queen “[spreads] the word into two halves so that for the first time he say it for what it meant: a gentle man.” [p. 119] And indeed Harold is. He is also a deeply sympathetic figure. When he and Maureen’s son David almost drowns as a child, Harold races to save him, only to stop at the water’s edge to untie his shoe laces. A lifeguard ends up saving the boy.

And Maureen had never said it, but Harold knew what she was thinking because he was thinking the same thing: Why had he stopped for his laces when his only son was in danger of drowning?

[…] He had been afraid; that was the truth. He had untied his laces because he was terrified that when there were no more excuses, he would not be up to saving his son. And what was more, they all knew it: Harold, Maureen, the lifeguard, even David. [p. 48]

His quest to reach Queenie in time therefore takes on additional significance. It’s a tremendous act of faith and courage on anyone’s part, and particularly so in the case of a man whose fear prevented him from saving his son.

I fell in love with this book. More to the point, I fell in love with its characters. Harold, Maureen and Queenie are extraordinarily ordinary people called upon to do extraordinarily ordinary things. Their love and courage are captivating and, above all, inspiring. If Harold Fry can walk across England to save an old friend, if Maureen Fry can overcome her own grief and open herself to love, if Queenie Hennessy can face both sexism and cancer — what can we achieve? I’m not touchy feely by nature, and I rarely, if ever, use the word “inspirational” in a book review. But really, we all have our own fears, we all have our own memories of stopping to untie our shoelaces, and reading about Harold, Maureen, Queenie and all the other characters in this book may just give us the courage to take that first step ourselves.

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