'Us' by David Nicholls

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

David Nicholls brings to bear all the wit and intelligence that graced ONE DAY in this brilliant, bittersweet novel about love and family, husbands and wives, parents and children.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2014.

'I was looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together.'

'Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?'

Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together. So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again. The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed. What could possibly go wrong?

‘Us’ is the much-anticipated new novel from David Nicholls, coming five years after his successful ‘One Day’, which sold 5 million copies and was made into a movie starring Anne Hathaway.

After ‘OneDay’ came out, Nicholls was heralded as something of a lad-lit novelist, with Richard Curtis rom-com undertones … and perhaps for that novels’ enormous commercial success, he was marked as something of a lightweight. As Mark Lawson summarised for The Guardian recently: “assumed to be a sentimental populist by those who have read about his success rather than reading his books.” So it came as somewhat of a surprise when before ‘Us’ even hit bookshelves, it was longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. The longlisting has probably left some to wonder if there’s more to Nicholls than they first thought (undoubtedly), or if the Man Booker should go down in their esteem – but I quite liked Nicholls’ summary of the accolade: “I'm trying to give an answer that isn't too insipid, but I was extremely flattered by it, and in the same way I was a bit surprised, I'm sure lots of other commentators were surprised."

I, personally, loved ‘One Day’ – and his novel before that ‘Starter For Ten’ is also a favourite of mine. And while he hasn’t released a book in five years, I’ve also enjoyed following his television-writing career – his most recent TV movie ‘The 7.39’ was particularly wonderful. So I was just excited to read something new from Nicholls, accolades or no, because I find his books to be both comforting and mildly confronting as he explores rather ho-hum aspects of middle-class existence with cutting humour and uncomfortable introspection. I loved ‘Us’, and will mark it as a favourite of 2014.

‘Us’ is about the Petersen family Grand Tour of Europe – London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Venice, Florence, Siena, Madrid and Barcelona – with Connie, Douglas and their 18-year-old son Albie who is about to go off to college and study photography. But the Grand Tour is a more weighted affair for Douglas, who a few weeks previously was told by his wife that she intends to leave him:

‘Is it really so … horrific to you, Connie, the thought of you and I being alone together? Because I thought we had a good marriage …’ 

‘We did, we do. I’ve been very happy with you, Douglas, very, but the future–’ 

‘Then why would you want to throw that away?’ 

'I just feel that as a unit, as a husband and wife, we did it. We did our best, we can move on, our work is done.’ 

‘It was never work for me.’ 

‘Well, sometimes it was for me. Sometimes it felt like work. Now that Albie’s leaving, I want to feel this is the beginning of something new, not the beginning of the end.’ 

The beginning of the end. Was she still talking about me? She made me sound like some kind of apocalypse. 

As a man of science, biochemist Douglas believes that with forethought and planning he can use the Grand Tour as a last-ditch effort to save his marriage. But of course it all goes horribly, horribly wrong amidst the Botticellis and Uccellos of Paris and the Rembrandts and Vermeers of Amsterdam.

Douglas is our narrator, and for reasons of openness and thoroughness (and just plain common sense) he would probably be the first to admit that he’ll be an unreliable one at that. The book is told in ‘real-time’ as the Grand Tour gets underway, while Douglas also recounts his and Conie’s decades-plus marriage in flashback chapters that run concurrently to his detailing their family’s holiday from hell.

I would hesitate to call ‘Us’ a romance – because by the time we meet them on their Grand Tour, I think it is unmistakable that Douglas and Connie are at a rather perilous point in their marriage. This is further evidenced by their opposites-attracting courtship that Douglas recounts. Connie is the artistic, bohemian in their marriage, while Douglas is the Type-A personality who, try as he might, never quite grasped the spontaneity and laissez-faire attitude Connie has been trying to instil in him since they met.  But, at the same time, I would call ‘Us’ a romance of sorts, as the book is very much about the relationship between Douglas and his son, Albie.

Albie takes after his mother in all things, and since wriggling out of his father’s grasp at age eight Albie has treated Douglas with a special kind of contempt, while also harbouring a deep-seated (not entirely inaccurate) belief that he is a great disappointment to him: 

In short, my son makes me feel like his step-father. 

I have had some experience of unrequited love in the past and that was no picnic, I can tell you. But the unrequited love of one’s only living offspring has its own particular slow acid burn.

Something that struck me while reading ‘Us’ was that there is a hint of ‘One Day’ in the book, and I do wonder if the kernel of an idea was planted back in Dexter Mayhew’s relationship with his father, Steven. Dexter’s father quite openly disapproved of his son’s lifestyle choices, and Dexter was much closer to his mother (the two of them often sharing private jokes at his father’s expense). There was also something quite lovely about that relationship by the end of the novel, when Dexter’s father (knowing from experience what his son was going through) helped get Dexter through a great depression and out of bed in the morning.

I know that lots of people read ‘One Day’ and couldn’t quite champion the romance aspect, because Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew were often prickly characters and not very easy to like. Those same people will probably struggle with ‘Us’ too; as Douglas, Connie and Albie are all hard to swallow at times. But that’s half the appeal of Nicholls, for me anyway – it’s not just that he writes flawed characters, but that he writes them with such uncomfortable aplomb. If you can’t see your own flaws in them, then they’ll at least remind you of what you so dislike about other people in your life … Though, having said that and for all his flaws, there’s something charming about Douglas. I was going to write ‘pathetically charming’ but it’s not even that – he is so downtrodden and beaten in this book, but that he champions his own marriage and family is kind of remarkable, even when faced with such devastating odds;

A great deal of stress is placed on the importance of humour in the modern relationship. Everything will be all right, we are led to believe, as long as you can make each other laugh, rendering a successful marriage as, in effect, fifty years of improv. 

While reading this I did also think that Douglas Petersen has something of the Don Tillman to him (the Asperger's hero of Graeme Simsion’s own publishing phenomenon ‘Rosie Project’ and this year’s ‘Rosie Effect’). Douglas and Don are the men of science in love with carefree wives Connie and Rosie, and I can imagine that if Rosie threw down a divorce gauntlet, Don would pick it up in much the methodical, calculated way that Douglas does … but at the same time, I think ‘Us’ has more in common with Rainbow Rowell’s 2014 novel ‘Landline’. Both are about marriage-in-crisis, and begin at a crossroads in the very real possibility of separation. Rowell and Nicholls also employ similar flashback techniques, though with varying success – for Douglas, recounting his and Connie’s life together is all part of gathering the facts and empirical evidence of happier times and also trying to pinpoint where it all started to go wrong. In ‘Landline’, protagonist Georgie discovers an old rotary phone that allows her to dial her husband (before he became her husband) in the past – reliving a happier time in their courtship. I wasn’t a huge fan of ‘Landline’, and found the recounting of a marriage in strife to be quite dull … Nicholls, for his telling this tale from the perspective of stick-in-the-mud husband whose battle changes to being more about connecting with his son, was far more interesting to me.

‘Us’ does read like a coming-of-age novel, even though Douglas is 54-years-old when he starts having these cataclysmic revelations about his wife and life. And the book is a bit like reading a car crash in slow motion, as readers reach the inevitable conclusion far quicker and easier than Douglas ever does. But for all that this is a sad subject to be exploring (and a somewhat pedestrian one – how many marriage end in divorce now, and late-in-life divorce is also on the rise) it didn’t feel like a sad book. I laughed so much while reading, and I admired Douglas as a quiet everyday-hero who is doing something so ordinarily admirable in his life. I loved that this is really more a father-son relationship book, and that it felt like the resounding BOOM! of echoes from Nicholl’s ‘One Day’, and even ‘Starter For Ten’ which explored the absence of a father in protagonist Brian Jackson’s life.

I love David Nicholls, I’ve missed him and am quietly thrilled that despite a five-year absence, I count his triumphant return to bookshelves as a favourite of 2014.

5/5

‘YA-bashing’: sexism meets elitism

‘YA-bashing’: sexism meets elitism

*drops mic*

Beyond ableism and ignorance: disability and fiction

My new column for Kill Your Darlings is up:

Beyond ableism and ignorance: 

disability and fiction

I interview Kayla Whaley from the wonderful Disability in KidLit blog - and if you haven't already, please do visit.

They do amazing work, and are such an important part of the youth literature community! 

'The Infinite Sea' The Fifth Wave #2 by Rick Yancey

From the BLURB:

How do you rid the earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Cassie Sullivan and her companions lived through the Others' four waves of destruction. Now, with the human race nearly exterminated and the 5th Wave rolling across the landscape, they face a choice: brace for winter and hope for Evan Walker's return, or set out in search of other survivors before the enemy closes in. Because the next attack is more than possible – it's inevitable.

No one can anticipate the depths to which the Others will sink – nor the heights to which humanity will rise . . .

*** This review contains spoilers for first book ‘The Fifth Wave’ ***

When we last left Cassie Sullivan, she’d been reunited with her little brother after storming Vosch’s command centre and discovering her high-school crush, Ben Parish, among a band of human mercenaries who had been brain-washed into believing they were fighting the alien invasion … without realising it was the aliens who had been training them.

But in finding her brother and breaking into the alien command centre, Cassie also lost the one person who had become so important to her since the First Wave hit …Evan Walker. Alien in a human body – Evan was the Silencer sent to kill Cassie, but instead he fell in love with her. Now, for all Cassie knows, he’s dead. Just like her mother, her father – and so many others.

Now Cassie is hanging out with a band of brother soldiers – a severely wounded Ben Parish, her little brother Sam (sometimes called Nugget), Dumbo, Poundcake, Teacup and Ringer (‘Marika’) – a particularly hardened soldier who is sent out to locate a new safe house for her crew. But Cassie wants to stay and wait for Evan – convinced that he’ll keep his promise to her, and return.

‘The Infinite Sea’ is the second book in Rick Yancey’s sci-fi young adult series, ‘The Fifth Wave’.

Between ‘TheFifth Wave’ and ‘The Infinite Sea’, it was announced that Rick Yancey’s first book in this new series would be adapted into a movie. And is it really any wonder? ‘The Fifth Wave’ was always destined for the big screen, when Yancey wrote such an addictive, alien-hordes thriller that was a fairly universally praised crowd-pleaser.

So going into ‘The Infinite Sea’ it’s all but impossible to not start thinking of how this story will likewise translate to the big screen - Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, If I Stay) will play Cassie Sullivan amongst a cast of relative unknowns (though Nick Robinson playing Ben Parish was great in The Kings of Summer, and will be an action-hero star by the end of 2015, as he’s also appearing in Jurassic World). Yancey and Susannah Grant will be writing the screenplay (Grant wrote Erin Brockovich) and Columbia Pictures are producing. And as if fans don’t have enough to get excited about with a ‘Fifth Wave’ adaptation, they’ll also be thrilled with this follow-up, which creeps us closer to the trilogy’s finale.

‘The Infinite Sea’ begins on the flipside of ‘The Fifth Wave’ high-octane opener, which saw protagonist Cassie trapped beneath a car on a deserted highway by a Silencer – an alien marksman. In this sequel’s opener readers find themselves in the calm before the storm. Our band of merry humans are holed up in a rat-infested motel, trapped by Ben Parish’s mortal wounds and Cassie’s determined belief that Evan Walker survived the attack and will be coming for her, to meet in this agreed-upon location. Everyone is on-edge, feeling not unlike sitting ducks. And, sure enough, the calm doesn’t last long – as is becoming Yancey’s MO in this series, a moment of peace and quiet for these characters will eventually equal adrenalin-fuelled terror in the coming pages and chapters.

Interestingly though, Yancey keeps swerving and cutting into the drama to make for a few cliff-hanger chapters. And unlike the first book, which saw Ben and Cassie sharing the alternate narrative, ‘The Infinite Sea’ expands to include perspective from Evan, Ringer and even Poundcake.  This alternation heightened tension again and again, but also gave readers a chance to get inside the heads of these tricky characters in a way we wouldn’t be able to if only seeing them through Cassie and Ben’s eyes.

Evan’s chapters are particularly fascinating, as he’s an alien with the memories of his human-half. In this book he reflects on the moment when, as a teenager, he became aware of an ‘other’ occupying his mind;

His body had been augmented in preparation for his awakening. That was the truth the dream of the owl disguised. The secret that the screen memory kept him from seeing and therefore from remembering: While he and Grace and tens of thousands of children like them had slept, gifts had been delivered in the night. Gifts they would need in the years to come. Gifts that would turn their bodies into finely tuned weapons, for the designers of the invasion had understood a simple, though counterintuitive, truth: Where the body went, the mind followed.

A recurring symbol in this novel is ‘rats’ – the young army crew, youngest girl Teacup in particular, are haunted by the rats who scurry in the walls of the motel they’re holed up in. And a few alien characters allude to thinking of humans on this earth as rats – vermin, to be exterminated. It’s a disturbing, and bleak symbol to keep touching on, but an apt one for our humans to be preoccupied with. Even more interesting is that Yancey often parallels the rat discussions against more theological talk around what these humans are surviving for – hope, dissent, love? What hope do these humans have surviving against a far superior race, especially if they are the last humans on Earth? Ben Parish has a particularly poignant soliloquy on his longing for the tardy bell:

“Most ordinary sound in the world. And when all of this is done, there’ll be tardy bells again.” He presses the point. Maybe he’s worried I don’t get it. “Think about it! When a tardy bell rings again, normal is back. Kids rushing to class, sitting around bored, waiting for the final bell, and thinking about what they’ll do that night, that weekend, that next fifty years. They’ll be learning like we did about natural disasters and disease and world wars. You know: ‘When the aliens came, seven billion people died,’ and then the bell will ring and everybody will go to lunch and complain about the soggy Tater Tots. Like, ‘Whoa, seven billion people, that’s a lot. That’s sad. Are you going to eat all those Tots?’ That’s normal. That’s what matters.”

I love that: a teenage boy’s reason for combating an alien-horde is the hope that soggy Tater Tots will again be served. On the one hand it’s flippant and funny – but on the other, Ben Parish totally nails it.

A big drawcard of the first book was Cassie and Evan’s completely wonderful and complicated romance – alien boy falls in love with the human he was sent to eliminate. I think some readers will be somewhat less thrilled with the romance in this book, but as this is the second outing it’s not surprising that Yancey went for deeper explorations into Evan and Cassie’s complexity, rather than skimming over with kisses and puppy-dog eyes (something Cassie makes fun of).

I loved ‘The Infinite Sea’ – and I’m excited that 2015 will gift readers both a ‘Fifth Wave’ movie adaptation and the finale book in Rick Yancey’s addictive, adrenaline-fuelled trilogy. Bring on the alien-hordes, but pray for the tardy bell!

5/5

'Afterworlds' by Scott Westerfeld

Received from the Publisher

From the BLURB:

Scott Westerfeld is renowned in the YA fiction market, this is a perfect blend of contemporary love story and fantastical thriller.

Darcy has secured a publishing deal for her three paranormal books. Now she must find the wherewithall to write the second one whilst she has a reprieve from going to college, thanks to her savvy sister. She has enough funds for 3 years in NY... if she eats only noodles every day.

In the story Darcy has written, the character Lizzie survives a traumatic shooting event only to discover that she has become a phsychopomp; a spirit guide to the dead. But she's not dead.. or is she? With one foot in each world, Lizzie's challenges are somewhat unique. Then there's her hot spirit guide... and all those ghosts that keep appearing... and the 'living' friend she usually tells everything to...

More than all I'd seen and heard. It was coming back to life that made me believe in the afterworld.

‘Afterworlds’ is the new contemporary/paranormal stand-alone novel from YA-genius Scott Westerfeld.

The tagline for ‘Afterworlds’ reads: Darcy writes the words. Lizzie lives them. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. Westerfeld has essentially written a two-in-one novel. First we meet eighteen-year-old Darcy Patel, who has just signed a six-figure, three-book deal with Paradox Publishers for her debut YA trilogy ‘Afterworlds’ … then in alternating chapters we read ‘Afterworlds’, which is about perfectly normal teenager Lizzie who survives a terrorist attack that leaves her with the ability to see a hidden world beneath our own – the world of the dead.

Sound tricky? It’s surprisingly not – the ‘Afterworlds’ chapters are differentiated from Darcy’s with sold black lines at the top and bottom of the page, not to mention Darcy’s chapters are decidedly contemporary, while Lizzie’s story is very much paranormal romance. Both are told in third-person, but are so different in tone and what they’re exploring that you never, ever get confused as to which world you’re in with each new chapter …

In Darcy’s world, we are bearing witness to a rising new talent in the YA literary world. Darcy is being touted as the new “it” girl of publishing (think Samantha Shannon, Veronica Roth or Sarah J. Maas – all very young first-time novelists who nabbed huge multi-book deals for their debut works) Darcy is so invested in becoming a full-time novelist, that she even defers College for a year to move to New York, home of her publishing house and a city with enough life that she feels sure her creative juices will flow more easily there. Darcy’s first novel ‘Afterworlds’ is to be released in 428-days (her younger sister keeps a countdown) and she has to get through rewrites and edits, and start thinking about plotting the second instalment in the series … but she is the hot new novelist in town, and soon finds herself suckered into the YA writer’s club of NYC. She gets invited to drinks and parties to mingle with the authors she’s grown up admiring – sharing canapés and discussing each other’s new books like it’s no big thing (when she’s squealing inside!). Then she meets fellow debut author, Imogen Gray and soon finds herself swept up in her first ever romance that’s fuelled by creativity and lust in a heady combination that could see Darcy lose sight of why she came to New York in the first place….

Much is being made of the fact that art is imitating life in Westerfeld’s ‘Afterworlds’. He is, of course, at the centre of the infamous YA writers club that Darcy is so awed by. First published in 1997, Westerfeld is the author of successful YA series including ‘Uglies’, ‘Peeps’ and ‘Leviathan’. He’s also married to fellow bestselling YA author Justine Larbalestier … and if you need further proof of his impressive standing in the YA-community, just look at the shout-outs in his acknowledgements: Maureen Johnson, E. Lockhart, Robin Wasserman … not to mention the likes of Holly Black, John Green and Gayle Forman have appeared in spoof ‘attack ads’ promoting ‘Afterworlds’ (and yes, the novel does include a John Green-esque character who’s likewise a YA juggernaut). Westerfeld and Larbalestier have many, many friends in the YA community and are part of many authors’ origin stories – like Melina Marchetta, who has said that the couple offered her their New York apartment as a writing retreat, and it was while staying there that she had the idea for ‘The Lumatere Chronicles’ series (interestingly, there’s an Australian character called Kiralee in ‘Afterworlds’, who I don’t think is Marchetta, but more represents the recent Aussie YA stronghold of the YA writing scene). All of this is very, very fascinating … particularly when Westerfeld gets tongue-in-cheek and somewhat snarky. For instance: Darcy is a little intimidated and annoyed by the ‘debutante’ authors (debut author for that publishing year) who are full of painfully terrible doomsday-advice (like, if your surname isn’t at the beginning of the alphabet for best shelf-placement you may as well be dead!). There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that those of us on the fringe of the YA community will get excited over:

 “The Printz Award’s that big a deal?” 

“Of course! It’s basically a YA knighthood.”

But, fun as all the inner-workings of the YA community are in this book (and real YA- aficionados will totally gobble up this behind-the-curtains peek Westerfeld is offering into our favourite author’s lives) he’s actually doing many great things in ‘Afterworlds’ that deserve praise – both in Darcy’s as well as Lizzie’s worlds.

For one thing, Westerfeld opens up discussion about appropriation in writing through Darcy’s chapters. Darcy is Hindu – or, her parents are – and in ‘Afterworlds’ she’s turned a Hindu death-god into a love interest for Lizzie.

“It’s just, I wanted to have an Indian guy as the love interest, a guy who looks like Muzammil Ibrahim.” They both gave her another questioning look, and Darcy felt embarrassed and young. “He’s a Bollywood actor, a model, really. He’s the hot guy who was never in the paranormals I read when I was little, you know? But I didn’t want it to be about me wanting him.” 

“You wanted every girl to want him.” Kiralee was smiling again. “So you chose a white girl from California.”

She didn’t do this with any sort of malice in mind, far from it, but she’s still reluctant to let her parents read the manuscript for fear of their response … and when fellow author Kiralee speaks about her own struggles with appropriating Indigenous culture in her bestselling book, Darcy becomes somewhat panicked by her sudden self-awareness. This is so fascinating on a number of levels – for one thing, I think Westerfeld is questioning if he is appropriating Hindu culture by writing an Indian protagonist in Darcy. He’s also, maybe, asking if he’s appropriating LGBTQI culture … because in Darcy’s chapters we read an unfolding romance between her and Imogen – Darcy’s first ever relationship. It’s really tricky, and I commend Westerfeld for putting the question out there, let alone writing both racially and sexually diverse characters in both his stories. I don’t know what the answer is to the question of appropriation that Darcy is grappling with – but I do enjoy her tussling with the question throughout the book.

I will say that Darcy’s chapters, overall, were stronger for me. That comes down to me really, really enjoying the tongue-in-cheek YA writers scenes, and thinking that Darcy and Imogen’s romance was really strong – I was probably more eager to get back to the contemporary chapters than Lizzie’s paranormal ones, and especially towards the end I got a little frustrated having to return to the fictional world of Darcy’s ‘Afterworlds’. But that’s not to say that Westerfeld leaves all of the theorising in the contemporary world – his paranormal story also throws out some interesting questions, particularly around action-hero/damsel-in-distress conventions: 

 I stared at her, my breakfast twisting in my stomach. “He’s not like that.” 

“I’m sure it doesn’t seem that way, Lizzie. Because in every action movie the girl hooks up with the guy who saves her, like that’s supposed to be normal. But in real life it’d be a pretty messed-up way to fall in love, because your emotions go all haywire when you’re getting shot at. Isn’t it called Stockholm syndrome or something?” 

“Um, I think that’s when you fall in love with the terrorist, not the good guy.”

I really can’t get over the phenomenal pacing of this novel. It really is like Westerfeld is conducting a symphony on the page – keeping track of so many players and plots, themes and deeper meanings – and he plays them all beautifully. This is a stand-alone novel (though Darcy has more to write…) and I think it works really well as a one-off. Mostly because I can see how hard Westerfeld must have worked with ‘Afterworlds’, and I can imagine it would have been a gruelling experience he wouldn’t be too quick to rush back into.

I really, really loved this book – a sure sign was that while reading I was getting excited by the prospect of *talking* about this book with other people. Yep, it’s that kinda book.

4.5/5

How Outlander is flipping typical TV dramas on their head

Soooooooooo I wrote about the latest episode of Outlander for DailyLife. 

'How Outlander is flipping typical TV dramas on their head'

... most importantly, I got to write a sentence on Sam Heughan's bottom. 

So. 

Check it out.

Ye ken? 

By teens, for teens: the Inky Awards

My new Kill Your Darlings column is all about the fabulous Inky Awards from Inside A Dog! 

By teens, for teens: the Inky Awards

Jacob (15) from Queensland, is also an Inkys judge this year. ‘Teens are clearly the right choice to judge young adult book awards because these books were written for them,’ he says. ‘Adults judge adult book awards, so it only seems fair and logical for young adults to judge young adult book awards.' 

Voting is now open for the 2014 Inky Awards until 5 October. 

Vote here: http://insideadog.com.au/vote  

The winners of the 2014 Inky Awards will be announced on 21 October.