Kill Your Darlings: Written for teenagers, censored by adults: an interview with Dianne Touchell

New Column up at Kill Your Darlings - 

'Written for teenagers, censored by adults: an interview with Dianne Touchell'

Because I was shocked when I heard that one of my favourite books to come out of 2012 met with some gatekeeping ridiculousness. 

Movies I Wish Were Young Adult Books

Normally the plea from readers of YA fiction is for their favourite books to be adapted to film. And lately, there have been some really great books-to-movie adaptations. The Spectacular Now and Hunger Games spring to mind, and as the filming edges ever closer I’m increasingly excited for ‘On the Jellicoe Road’. 

But I’m going to look at this from the other direction. Movies that I absolutely love, and after watching I scurried onto IMDB.com with crossed-fingers to see if maybe, hopefully the film was based on a book and I could continue my obsession. Sadly, none of these films sprung from YA fiction – but, dammit, I wish they did!

 

Elvis and Anabelle (2007) – Anabelle (Blake Lively) is a small-town beauty queen destined for great things, until she drops dead on stage. Elvis (Max Minghella) is the son of the local funeral director who is caring for his ailing dad and quietly running the business. Anabelle winds up on Elvis’s embalming table . . . and is miraculously resurrected. Now she’s the beauty queen back from the dead, Oprah wants to talk to her! But her death experience has Anabelle looking at the world differently, and only Elvis seems to understand. 

I love this movie. I was not a fan of ‘Gossip Girl’ or Blake Lively for a long time, until this movie. It’s not actually as wacky as it sounds, it’s just really beautiful film that, if it had been based on a book, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that A.S. King or Libba Bray wrote it for the blend of magical realism and gritty coming-of-age. 

 

Brick (2005) – Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the voluntary outcast at his high school. He’s happy on the sidelines, observing and often provoking fellow classmates. But when his ex-girlfriend Emily (Emilie de Ravin) turns up dead, he puts his watching and prying to good use by immersing himself in the school’s crime underbelly that got Emily killed. 

You guys. YOU GUYS. This is the film that was my ‘aha!’ moment about Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Before this I was like “Oh, yeah, the guy who wasn’t Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You. And wasn’t he in 3rd Rock from the Sun?” Now, of course, everyone knows how amazing he is and he can wear the heck out of a three-piece suit. 

After watching ‘Brick’ I also spoke in gum-shoe, Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler slang for a few days because Rian Johnson evoked old-school noir in a contemporary California high school setting and it’s sheer feakin’ genius! I don’t know which young adult authors would be a good counterpart to ‘Brick’ – perhaps Daniel Handler (Lemony Snickett) because ‘All The Wrong Questions: Who Could That Be at This Hour?’ has that young noir feel to it, but not nearly as gritty.  

 

Moonlight Mile (2002) – Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal) was engaged to a young woman and they returned to her home town before the wedding. Then she was killed. Wrong place, wrong time, caught up in a domestic dispute she had nothing to do with. Now Joe is caught in a strange in-between with his would-be bride’s parents Ben (Dustin Hoffman) and Jojo (Susan Sarandon). Living in their house after the funeral as they proceed with a court case against her killer, Ben still expects Joe to join the family practice, and Jojo is on a constant knife-edge between anger, sadness, and acceptance. Then Joe meets the local postal clerk and bar-owner Bertie (Ellen Pompeo) and his living in limbo after his fiancée’s death gets even more complicated.

‘Moonlight Mile’ is one of my all-time favourite movies that I totally just stumbled across. The title comes from a fantastic Rolling Stones song, and the story behind writer/director Brad Silberling’s inspiration for the film is an extremely sad one. Silberling was dating actress Rebecca Schaeffer before she was shot to death by a crazed fan at the age of 21, and this film is inspired by his own experiences of being the boyfriend and weirdly immersed in her family life and court drama after her death. 

The story is a heartbreaking one, but the movie has so many surprisingly funny and tender moments and extraordinary performances from Gyllenhaal, Hoffman, Sarandon and Pompeo. There are also many little touches in the film that just kill me – like Jojo wearing all of her daughter’s old watches. I always cry buckets in this film, but I laugh just as much too. And the Bertie/Joe romance sounds like it should be crass and not work at all – but it’s a little bit brilliant. Holly Hunter also stars as the family’s lawyer, and I love everything about Holly Hunter.

Because the story is so immersed in Brad Silberling’s own personal history, I can’t really think of a YA-equivalent author. But ‘Moonlight Mile’ feels very New Adult, so maybe it’s a little Trish Doller-esque? 

  

Now and Then (1995) – A woman (Demi Moore) returns to her old hometown for the birth of her best friend’s baby. But being home brings up old memories, like summer of 1970 when she and her three friends were 12-years-old and everything changed.

An oldie, but a goodie. This film has everyone in it – Demi Moore, Christina Ricci, Janeane Garofalo, Gaby Hoffman, Thora Birch, Melanie Griffith, Rosie O’Donnell whatever-happened-to-Devon-Sawa and Rita Wilson. This movie introduced me to Converse shoes and pedal-pushers, and I desperately wanted Coke bottles to come out in glass after watching the movie. I just loved it. I'd seen Stephen King’s Stand By Me and afterwards I'd always think that ‘Now and Then’ was sort of the girl-equivalent to that all-boy story. 

The 70’s setting is really what makes this film – everything is happening, from Vietnam to the sexual revolution and it’s all on the periphery of these girl’s lives as they live in a well-to-do gated community, the happenings of the outside world are beautifully backgrounded. I’m reading Gary D. Schmidt’s ‘Okay For Now’ right now, and it’s set in 1968 and he brilliantly weaves that era into the narrative – from a brother in Vietnam, to the impending moon landing. It’s all on the periphery, but eventually starts creeping in and shaping this young man’s life and I just love how Schmidt leaves things out and chooses to include big historic events.

All I Wanna Do (1998) – also known as ‘Strike!’ and ‘The Hairy Bird’, this movie is set in the 60’s and follows Odette (Gabby Hoffman) as she’s shipped to an all-girls boarding school after being caught attempting sex with her boyfriend. Once there, she tries every conceivable way to run back to her beau and finish the deed, but when Miss Godard's Preparatory School for Girls makes the decision to go co-ed, she gets caught up in her roommate’s rivalries as they’re split between the girls who welcome St. Ambrose boys' academy and those who see it as a misogynistic slap in the face.

I LOVE this movie. I went to an all-girl high school, and in about Year 10 our ‘brother’ school went co-ed and didn’t need us anymore. So it was very on-the-pulse for me. But more than that I loved the 1960’s setting and the glass-ceiling hot-button topicality of it. The film also stars Kirsten Dunst and Rachael Leigh Cook, both of whom I've always adored, and Gabby Hoffman (from aforementioned ‘Now and Then’ fame – who I pretty much wanted to be besties with). It also includes the single best line in cinematic history: “Up your ziggy with a wa-wa brush!”

Now, this movie passes the Bechdel test with flying colours (weeeeell – apart from many discussions about boys). It’s inspiring and chest-thumpingly feminist and I cheered all the way through it. And for that very reason, it’s gotta be ‘The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks’ by E. Lockhart as a YA-equivalent. That book is all about notorious Frankie Landau-Banks getting one-over on her male classmates when she infiltrates their secret all-boy society and becomes their puppet master. 

 

Saved (2004) – Mary (Jena Malone) happily attends her Christian High School, but is shocked when her Christian boyfriend tells her he’s gay. A sign from God tells her to lose her virginity to him, and try to set him on the right path . . . .but he still gets sent to a reform camp, and Mary ends up pregnant. 

Love, love, love this movie. Probably my favourite ever Macaulay Culkin film, he plays the wheelchair-bound sarcastic brother to the school’s über-Christian princess, Hilary (Mandy Moore) who just wants to try and save her old best friend from hell and damnation. 

It’s a hilarious movie with a strong message about intolerance, love and acceptance. And I can’t get Gab William’s ‘The Reluctant Hallelujah’ out of my head as a kind of equivalent, for the way she examines modern faith. 

 

The Kings of Summer (2013) – in an act of brilliant teenage rebellion, friends Joe (Nick Robinson) and Patrick (Gabriel Basso) plus creepy hanger-on Biaggio (Moises Arias) decide to flee their nagging, narcissistic parents and build their own house in the Ohio woods.

This film stars Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) as Joe’s dad – which is reason in itself to watch. But apart from that, the movie totally freakin’ rocks! It’s shot beautifully and makes me want to visit Ohio, and even though it’s a “boy” movie (yeah, it fails the Bechdel test) this trio are actually really interesting and heartening. A lot is happening that sends these boys to the woods – the death of Joe’s mother and his father moving on, Patrick’s clingy parents and Biaggio is just the carefree uninhibited oddball tagging along to belong. I love that their motivation to break away from the pressures of life and family is to build a home of their own and I love how nature intersects with their coming-of-age. 

There’s something about Joe that reminded me of Sutter from Tim Tharp’s ‘The Spectacular Now’, though a lot less confident. But the story also feels like it could be Matthew Quick for some reason.

'Tempt the Stars' Cassandra Palmer #6 by Karen Chance

 Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Being a goddess is a lot less fun than you might think. Especially when you’re only a half goddess, and you only found out about it recently, and you still don’t know what you’re doing half the time. And when you’ve just used your not-so-reliable powers to burglarize the booby-trapped office of a vampire mob boss.

Yeah, that part sucks.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg for Cassandra Palmer, aka the Pythia, the freshly minted chief seer of the supernatural world. After all, Cassie still has to save a friend from a fate worse than death, deal with an increasingly possessive master vampire, and prevent a party of her own acolytes from unleashing a storm of fury upon the world. Totally just your average day at the office, right?

‘Tempt the Stars’ is the 6^th book in Karen Chance’s ‘Cassandra Palmer’ series.

It’s been two years since fans last caught up with their favourite Pythia, Cassandra Palmer. Fans should go into this book remembering that even though it’s been a long wait and this is now the 6^th instalment, the timeline in the ‘Cassandra Palmer’ universe is still only a few weeks after the events of first book, ‘Touch the Dark’. I know – yikes! But this is an important aspect of the series to remember when you feel like grumbling about the lagging process in Cassie’s romantic entanglements with dark mage, Pritkin, and vampire “husband” Mircea. It’s also something to keep in mind when you think that this is a series with lots of time-travel elements that means the timeline has snapped and stretched like an elastic band over six books.

So, ‘Tempt the Stars’ kicks off where ‘Hunt the Moon’ ended – an epic battle saw Cassie’s bodyguard mage Pritkin (aka ‘Merlin’) sacrifice himself and he’s currently toiling away in hell working for his father, Rosier. Considering the way things heated up between Pritkin and Cassie in the last book, you can imagine that she’s pretty eager to drag him out of there ASAP.

The book takes place over two days – but that’s two days of backwards-forwards time travel and leaps to other dimensions (did I mention this series has a tricky timeline?). A whole host of new characters are introduced to a series that’s had pretty much the same, steady cast for six books – and ‘Tempt the Stars’ is all the better for these new introductions. Readers will also be pleased to learn a lot more about Cassie’s past in this book and exactly how little Cassie knows about herself because her parents were taken from her when he was so young.

I’m sad to say that Team Pritkin win the battle in this sixth instalment, and will be very pleased with themselves. If the book loses any points from me it’s because I remain a staunch Team Mircea fan-girl and he does not make an appearance in this book (the first he hasn’t appeared in since the beginning of the series!). I know that Chance released a third Dorina Basarab book last year, called ‘Fury's Kiss’, which I have not read yet. I’m hoping that Mircea’s absence in the latest Cassie Palmer is because he had a role to play in his daughter’s spin-off series, and as such I have bumped ‘Fury's Kiss’ up in my TBR pile (I need some sort of Mircea-fix!).

“I can get others to do what you do. They won’t be as good, but  .  .  . okay. It could work. But it doesn’t matter because no matter how good they are, they can’t replace you. They can’t because I don’t need you only for what you can do. I need you  .  .  . for you.” 

I always recommend the Cassie Palmer series to urban fantasy newcomers, and ‘Tempt the Stars’ just goes to show why. From ‘Touch the Dark’ to now, these characters and their relationships have come so far and gone through so many transformations together and now we’re into the sixth book and those relationships are starting to come to a calamitous, fascinating head. I can’t wait for more Cassie, and just hope it wont be two years until we meet again!

4/5  

‘A Rogue by Any Other Name’ The Rules of Scoundrels #1 by Sarah MacLean

 From the BLURB:

What a scoundrel wants, a scoundrel gets...

A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London’s most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury.

A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to such unexplored pleasures.

Bourne may be a prince of London’s underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them... even her heart.

Lady Penelope Marbury is still whispered about at ton parties. She was the perfect debutante seven years ago, and quickly snatched up by a Duke and set on a path for great things . . . until she was forced to end her engagement and that same Duke went on to marry his true love. Now Penelope is an aging spinster, whose wrecked engagement and consequent refusals led two of her sisters into mundane marriages, and could possibly tarnish the future engagements of her two younger sisters. Not to mention there will come a time when being a spinster will be a hindrance on her parents, and possibly leave her destitute . . . 

When Penelope’s childhood friend, Tommy Alles, offers her a last-ditch “Why not?” proposal Penelope is tempted, but refuses. And when she discovers Tommy’s ulterior motive for proposing, she’s glad of her decision. Because her father has unknowing attached lands to her dowry, lands that are adjacent to Tommy’s inheritance and were once owned by their oldest friend . . . until he lost it all in a game of chance.

Michael, the Marquess of Bourne was a grieving twenty-one-year-old when he lost his entire fortune and inheritance to Tommy’s father in a rigged game of chance. Since then he has done everything in his power to get titles and money back; mostly thanks to his partnership in London’s most legendary gaming hell, The Fallen Angel. The only thing missing in Bourne’s life is his father’s estate of Falconwell, and revenge on Tommy’s father. So when Bourne hears word that his oldest, forgotten childhood friend now has Falconwell tied up in her dowry, he decides to stop at nothing to get her and his home back. 

‘A Rogue by Any Other Name’ is the first boo in Sarah MacLean’s historical romance series, ‘The Rules of Scoundrels’. 

This book was a birthday present from Persnickety Snark (thank you, Adele!) who was gobsmacked that I'd never read a MacLean his-rom before. Well, I thought, is she really as good as Lisa Kleypas, Elizabeth Hoyt and Jennifer Ashley? My go-to authors in this genre? 
Answer: Ummmmmm – YES!

Interspersed throughout this story are childhood letters exchanged between Penelope and her best friend, Michael. While he was away at Eton and she was learning to be a polite young lady, but they always stayed in contact . . . until the day his parents died in a terrible carriage accident, and then she started writing letters with no hope of reply. 

Meanwhile the story unfolds of how these old friends are reacquainted under the most dubious of circumstances;  

Indeed, as much as Penelope searches this new, hard face, she could not seem to find the boy she’d once known. If not for the eyes, she would not have believed it was him at all. 

“How sad,” she whispered to herself. 

He heard it. “What?” 

She shook her head, meeting his gaze, the only thing familiar about him. “He’s gone.” 

“Who?” 

“My friend.” 

When Michael discovers that this forgotten friend has his old lands attached to her dowry, he kidnaps her in the middle of the night and they come to an arrangement, of sorts. She’ll agree to marry him, he’ll get his lands back, but in exchange he will help her put-upon sisters make a good match. To do this, Bourne must enter back into society and he and Penelope must appear to have made a love-match and not the scandalous marriage of reality. 

I loved this book. Penelope (love that name!) is one of the best historical romance heroines. Throughout the book we’re told that she’s plain (pretty, perhaps, in her youth) and the spinster-label haunts her. But Penelope is fiery and funny, and as the book progresses Bourne thinks others fools for not recognizing her as beautiful. Michael Bourne, meanwhile, lived up to Adele’s promise of a darn good rake. He’s full of vengeance and violence, but there’s hope there because he knows from the first that Penelope is too good for him. A lot of the book is about him thinking he’s not good enough for his best friend, and that everything he touches he ruins. 

I did love this book, and I’m so excited to get stuck into the second, ‘One Good Earl Deserves a Lover’ which is about Penelope’s sister, Phillipa, who already has me intrigued because she wears spectacles, loves science (and once dissected an animal in her bedroom) and needs saving from a marriage to a complete twit.

Yes, I confess, I was missing something by not reading Sarah MacLean. Now I’m so glad I have her backlist to trawl through for the next few months.

5/5  

'Where the Stars Still Shine' by Trish Doller

From the BLURB: 

Stolen as a child from her large and loving family, and on the run with her mom for more than ten years, Callie has only the barest idea of what normal life might be like. She's never had a home, never gone to school, and has gotten most of her meals from laundromat vending machines. Her dreams are haunted by memories she’d like to forget completely. But when Callie’s mom is finally arrested for kidnapping her, and Callie’s real dad whisks her back to what would have been her life, in a small town in Florida, Callie must find a way to leave the past behind. She must learn to be part of a family. And she must believe that love--even with someone who seems an improbable choice--is more than just a possibility.

For Callie there’s the road and her mum and not much else. They bounce from place to place, sometimes they rent apartments, once they slept in a vacant model home and the occasional backseat of a stolen car has not been unheard of. For the last ten years, Callie’s life has been directed by her mother’s paranoid whims. When Veronica gets an itch or starts to think people are following them, she packs them up and moves them on. Some things remain the same; like the dive-bars and bad men her mother attracts, like moth to a flame. 

It didn’t always used to be this way, but 17-year-old Callie has the barest memories of a life before, and an evil-eye bead she hides from her mother. Though evil still found Callie while they were staying in Oregon, so it didn’t do her much good.

When Veronica gets the itch to move on again, it’s just more of the same for Callie . . . and then a trooper pulls her mum over, for stolen plates of all things. But once at the police station kidnapping charges from ten years ago trumps the stolen plates, and Veronica faces a lengthy jail sentence. 

Something very different is ahead for Callie though, when her father flies to Chicago to take his baby girl home to Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Greg is Callie’s father (really Callista Catherine Tzorvas) he and Veronica had Callie when they were just teenagers, and once Veronica got wind of the plans Greg’s parents had to obtain full custody of Callie while he was away at college, Veronica took her and ran. And has been running until now, ten years later.

Callie suddenly finds herself inserted into a big Greek family, and Greg’s new one – complete with a wife called Phoebe and two little boys called Joe and Tucker who are Callie’s half-brothers. There’s also yiayoúla Georgia, a grandma who has desperately missed her girl. Not to mention Callie’s cousin, Kat, who declares herself her long-lost best friend.

It’s all so overwhelming for Callie, and despite learning the extent of her mother’s betrayal, she still misses her even in the face of this new life and old family she’s gained.

It’s not until Callie meets Alex at the sponge docks, a devastatingly handsome diver, that she finds some semblance of calm in the storm of her new life. Alex is a safe harbor for her, when it feels like her life is spinning madly out of control.

‘Where the Stars Still Shine’ is the new contemporary young adult novel from a hot new talent in the readership, Trish Doller.

I fell for Trish Doller and her gritty teen stories with debut novel ‘Something Like Normal’, which absolutely bowled me over. Since then I've been desperately awaiting the release of her next book; a wait that was made harder by Doller’s phenomenal Tumblr and Pinterest pages where she amasses photographic inspiration (and teasers!) for her upcoming works. So even before ‘Stars’ came out, I had a fairly good inkling that it would be something special from the picture-trail alone . . . and I was not disappointed (the other giveaway? A blurb quote from Melina Marchetta). 

The story is fast and frenetic, with Doller throwing both Callie and readers into the deep-end and back to her family within the first two chapters. I loved this fast pace, because it means readers are as tumbled by the events as Callie herself. There’s a definite sense of overwhelming as we’re introduced to her big Greek family, her dad’s new family and even as she gets to know the father she can’t remember. But pretty soon memories assail her, and she learns just how much damage Veronica left behind when she took Callie away from this family;  

I pick up the owl. Some of the patches are worn so thin you can almost see through them to the stuffing inside. 

“You used to carry him everywhere,” he says. “You called him– ” 

“Toot.” It’s just a tiny flash of a memory, but I remember making sure he was with me every night before I went to sleep. “I thought that’s what owls said.” 

I can see the bitter blurred in the sweet of Greg’s smile. All these years I've had very few memories, while he– he’s had nothing but. 

Because the pace is so quick and Callie is inundated with so much, it also makes sense that the love interest enters the scene rather quickly too. Alex Kosta is a sponge diver who Callie meets on the docks one night when she runs away from the claustrophobic family atmosphere. Their attraction and heat is instantaneous, and while it throws Callie off-balance, Alex also becomes someone she can run to when everything else gets too much. 

It’s through Alex, and Callie’s intense feelings for him, that Doller explores the darker side of Callie’s stolen childhood. Veronica was not a stable parent, and she let men into Callie’s life and put her in danger (though not deliberately) . . .  one such man was Frank, from Oregon, who Callie still has nightmares about. Thoughts of him and what he did make her feel unclean and unworthy when her attraction to Alex explodes. Doller explores this with infinite care and patience that adds a vastly more fascinating aspect to Callie’s returning.

I will say that, for me, this story was all about the family. I loved that Callie was expected to just fall back into this life she should have been living for the last ten years – but her experiences and the history Veronica gave her mean she fights this family and new life all the way. I loved that; it was so brutal and frustrating, but utterly believable.  

And it’s probably because I saw the family as being the real heart of the story that I sometimes wished we’d had less of Alex (hottie diver he may be) and had Callie spending a smidge more time with Greg, her half-brothers and especially her yiayoúla (who was hoping to have full custody of Callie when she was a baby). Even Phoebe, I thought, had a little more story in her when it’s revealed her history with Greg – I wanted to know how she felt about Veronica and Callie coming back into their lives. Don’t get me wrong, Alex is a fantastic leading man (with troubles of his own) and he’s good for Callie . . . but a family can be a love story too. 

I also adored the setting. Tarpon Springs, Florida, is a real place and in the words of Liz Lemon; I want to go to there. Doller really bought this town to life for me, and with interesting dimensions – I loved seeing it through Callie’s eyes as she wonders how different she would have been, had her childhood played out in this idyllic little town. 

‘Where the Stars Still Shine’ is Trish Doller’s second book after her phenomenal debut. With it, she delivers another gritty and heart-soaring story that cements her place as one of the most popular new young adult authors. If there was ever any doubt this second book confirms that Doller is one author who should definitely be an automatic-buy from here on in.

4.5/5

'Fortunately, the Milk . . .' by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Chris Riddell

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

You know what it’s like when your mum goes away on a business trip and Dad’s in charge. She leaves a really, really long list of what he’s got to do. And the most important thing is DON’T FORGET TO GET THE MILK. Unfortunately, Dad forgets. So the next morning, before breakfast, he has to go to the corner shop, and this is the story of why it takes him a very, very long time to get back.

Featuring: Professor Steg (a time-travelling dinosaur), some green globby things, the Queen of the Pirates, the famed jewel that is the Eye of Splod, some wumpires, and a perfectly normal but very important carton of milk.

Only Neil Gaiman could delight two polar-opposite readerships by releasing one of the most buzzed-about adult books of the year (‘The Ocean at the End of the Lane’ – so good I still can’t bring myself to write a review because THERE ARE NO WORDS!) and then a few months later a lavishly wonderful children’s book. It’s not surprising, really, because Neil Gaiman wrote both ‘American Gods’ and ‘Coraline’ – cementing himself as a fine storyteller for all ages.

 

‘Fortunately, the Milk. . . ’ being Gaiman’s children’s foray, his Bloomsbury publishers know they can be a bit more blunt and honest with their younger readers. Hence this very apt author billing;

The book is about a father left in charge of his two children when their mum goes off to a conference. But the first disaster strikes at breakfast-time, when they run out of milk. So it’s up to dad to trot down to the corner store for a refill . . . but he takes ages and ages, and it’s only upon his return that the children discover what took him so long. 

The whole book is a bit tongue-in-cheek, and there’s something here for the intended 8-12 readership, as well as the parents for whom this will be bedtime reading. For the kids there are; Dwarves, wumpires, a stegosaurus, aliens, pirates, ponies, a volcano god . . . then for the adult readers there are some references to The Usual Suspects, a little Doctor Who-esque time travel conundrum and some making fun of Twilight. 

It’s all a bit brilliant really. Even more so because Chris Riddell’s illustrations have made the dad look like Neil Gaiman himself – which makes me think back on an old blog post Gaiman wrote about where he gets his ideas from. 

Interestingly, there are two versions of Gaiman’s latest children’s book (for reasons not even he can explain). There’s the US and Canada book illustrated by Skottie Young – this version does not include a Neil-Father lookalike, and is perhaps the slightly more conventional children’s book. Chris Riddell’s illustrated book for Australia and UK includes the ellipsis in the title ‘. . . ’ and the shiniest cover you ever did see. There’s also some symmetry in Riddell lending his drawings to ‘Fortunately’, because Riddell also illustrated the anniversary edition of ‘Coraline’.  

Either way, Gaiman’s extravagant story is a lot of fun with moments of quiet brilliance. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I read the blurb for ‘Fortunately, the Milk. . . ’ about a father who takes a jolly good time to get home to his children with their promised milk, I instantly thought of the old cliché prevalent in many stories; that a father went to buy a packet of cigarettes one morning and never came home. The basis being that father’s don’t really hold up so well in many stories; so I love that Gaiman took that old cliché and made a minor hero of this father and detailed his grand adventures to get home to his kids. 
Oh! And never forget, “where there is milk, there is hope.” 

5/5 

AUDIOBOOK: 'The Piper's Son' by Melina Marchetta. Read by Michael Finney.

From the BLURB:

Two years after his favorite uncle was blown to bits in a London Tube station, Tom has hit rock bottom. He’s quit school and turned his back on his music and everyone that once mattered to him, including the girl he can’t forget. Living with his single, pregnant aunt, working at the Union pub with his former friends, and reckoning with his grieving, alcoholic father, Tom’s in no shape to mend what’s broken. But what if no one else is, either?

For a review of The Piper’s Son book, looky here – this is more a review of the audiobook

I've never listened to an audiobook before. In the past I've flirted with the idea, and I even downloaded Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’ when it was on sale in iTunes for something like $1.99. But I'd never actually committed to listening . . . that being said, I held out a long time before caving and buying an eReader, so I suspect my hesitation came from an allegiance to flesh-and-blood books more than anything else.

But then I decided to approach audiobooks as I originally did graphic novels – start with what I know. Once upon a time I was a little hesitant and unsure of graphic novels (or ‘comics’ as I called them then). So I started with a prequel to one of my favourite urban fantasy series, Patricia Briggs’s ‘Homecoming’ set in the Mercy Thompson world. Once I got my toes wet, I went in to my ankles and tried another prequel to my favourite book series of all time, Diana Gabaldon’s ‘Outlander’ with ‘The Exile’. I loved both of those, and now I am a complete graphic novel enthusiast. From ‘Saga’ to Raina Telgemeier, I love them. 

So I thought I'd approach adiobooks the same way, and ease in with an old beloved.

‘The Piper’s Son’ is my favourite Melina Marchetta novel. I love all her books, don’t get me wrong, and when we talk ‘ranking’ there’s infinitesimal difference in my love. But Thomas Mackee holds a special place in my heart, and I still think Georgie and Sam’s relationship is the most heartbreaking and lovely contemporary romance I've ever read. And then there’s the fact that I see a lot of my family in the Finch-Mackee mob. So, it’s ‘The Piper’s Son’ for me, by a nose.

The run time is 9 hours, read by Michael Finney. 

I downloaded from iTunes, and listened to the book while out walking my dog and on the train – which meant I was constantly laughing/crying/hiccup-crying in public while listening to it. 

This audiobook is superb. Truly, it got to the point where I was excited to go for a walk or get back on the train just to get back to the Finch-Mackee’s and this story. I already know the book by heart, but I feel like it was opened up in new ways by this reading.

I may have developed a wee crush on Michael Finney . . . as evidenced by how much I talked and gushed about him and the audiobook to a friend;

But I cannot stress enough how much Michael Finney nails this book. He’s Australian, which I was so thankful for because I could not have fathomed Tom or Georgie’s voice in an American accent. ‘The Piper’s Son’ is told in third-person, but following Tom and his aunt Georgie’s stories – so the male narrator might have been a bit of a curveball, but having Tom’s voice in Finney’s is truly brilliant. It’s all those male voices which so dominate the book – Tom and Dominic, Ned, Will, Bill, Joe and Sam (ohhhhh, Sam!). But he also does the women’s voices brilliantly– he doesn’t turn on the heavy breathing or try high-pitched mimicry (thank god! I really wasn’t sure what to expect with audiobooks!). I have since started listening to Melina’s ‘Saving Francesca’ on audiobook, read by Rebecca Macauley, and I really don’t like it. She’s made Tara sound quite gruff, and Justine overtly mousy. After having Finney’s lilting baritone, I’m struggling to get into the Macauley audiobook. 

I really knew Finney was something special during the phonecalls between Tara and Tom – when he seems to lean in a little closer, lower his voice to a rumble and really communicate the intimacy of these moments. It was wonderful to listen to. And he gets the beats down brilliantly – those pregnant pauses between Tom and Tara, Sam and Georgie. And my favourite scene of the whole book is done to perfection;

‘Am I hard work?’ she asks quietly. 

‘Yes.’ 

Silence for a moment. 

‘You could have hesitated in answering that.’ 

‘Why? I've never lied to you before,’ he says. ‘You do that all the time, you know. You ask me questions when you know the answer will piss you off. Ask me a question where the answer could be yes? Ask me if you’re worth the hard work? Ask me if in the last seven years of my life I've woken up in a cold sweat knowing I lost the most important person in my life apart from this kid I’m holding? Ask me if getting you pregnant has felt like the best thing that’s happened to me since my son was born?’

And he also bought lightness to Joe’s character, which is so at odds with the sadness of the story. But as we know, Joe was so happy. I loved that Finney bought out that joviality when recounting the ‘How to Make Gravy’ serenade moment, or read out Joe’s emails and the conversation he had with Tom about kissing Tara Finke. 

I cannot rave about this audiobook enough. I loved it, and will be listening to it again and again. I’m only upset that Michael Finney apparently hasn’t narrated any other books, because I was all ready to download any and all of his readings (yes, I developed a wee crush from his voice alone). For now I’m sticking to the Marchetta audiobooks, but only because reading ‘The Piper’s Son’ made me crave more of her words . . .  but after that I’m going to venture into the great audio unknown. I need some suggestions of books I haven’t read, but should listen to on audio. I loved anticipating all my favourite bits (and preparing to cry during the sad ones) while listening to ‘Piper’s Son’, but now I'd love to try listening to a book cold, not having read it before.

5/5