Book Reviews in Brief: Part One

Let it not be said that my little Kobo Touch doesn't get a good workout.  In fact, it's been used so constantly that I sometimes fear the little device is near the end of its life. . . sometimes he rebuffs my advances to turn him on.  Repeatedly.

Girls hate to be ignored.  

So eventually the Kobo flickers up, grudgingly.  I suspect he knows that if he doesn't put out, he can get out.  I would move on and find another reader.  Sadly, sometimes it has to fall by the wayside because life just insists on being dealt with.  But, with winter thundering down in the form of storms and nights that hover haltingly above zero, it's come back as part of my evening and weekend routine.  It keeps me warm and curled up in a comfy place.  Or would be, were it not for my chosen reading material.

I've recently finished The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey and have moved on to Bird Box by Josh Malerman.  I know, right?  Not exactly idea stuff to read right before going to sleep.  Particularly Josh Malerman's book. . . But each of the books are teaching me by example.  And I really do like that.

M.R. Carey's descriptions strike me as more poetic in some places.  They evoke strong imagery for me.  It means that when he uses science in his book to back up what goes on, it catches me by surprise and makes me more appreciative.  You see, my original degree is a biology degree.  So when someone brings me literature that uses something that is at least plausible at a stretch, I become excited.  Someone has done some homework!  Just how much homework?  You'd have to read it to know for sure.  Me?  I'm more than a little tempted to do a bit of digging for myself and see how well he covered himself in science (I'd admittedly a bit rusty and the fun part about science is that we continuously edit it).

Personally, I find M.R. Carey's approach to be one of the more challenging (and also one of the most increasingly popular).  It gives great flexibility but there's not much space for being lazy there.  He pulls this off because each of the characters has, to me, a unique voice.  I never really forget whose eyes I'm seeing through.

Josh Malerman's novel, on the other hand, is more sparse.  But the sparseness, to me, serves a function.  I could attribute it to any number of things, from the narrator's viewpoint to it simply being how Mr. Malerman writes.  However, Josh Malerman's book has its strength in what is not shown and that is quite different to The Girl With All the Gifts, which in my opinion has strength in measured reveal, using more than one viewpoint to widen the reader's understanding of the world and what goes on.

Two different books, two different subject matters, two different approaches.  One's strength is in well-paced reveal.  The other is extremely talented on not giving you anything and letting what I think of as instinctive imagination do the work (Instinctive imagination: The part of you that probably worked fabulously well when humans were still struggling tribes, huddled around the fire and scared of anything that moved in the dark).  And between them?  A lot of space to learn and experiment.  If you want to learn a little more about what to do to creep people out, I think I can suggest Josh Malerman's Bird Box.  I'm about halfway through and seriously had to not stop just anywhere before going to bed.

I am a grown-ass woman.  And I couldn't go to bed because this book was at a point where I was sufficiently creeped out that I had to continue the trip until I found a spot that wasn't the sort of thing that could trigger nightmares.  It's like the literary opposite of "are we there yet?"  I've never had a book do that to me before. . . but to be fair, this is the first time I've read something that seems to be dedicated solely to the gift of sleepless nights.

. . . I'll let you know how that goes!


Edit:

Wanna peek at the books I'm babbling about?  I'll make it easier!

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

Bird Box by Josh Malerman