The Fourth Hand - John Irving (and a bit about secondhand books)

As if I don't already have enough to feel guilty about, I feel guilty about buying books second hand. If I'm honest, most of my books are second hand for one simple reason -  I can't afford full price books. I don't live a vastly luxurious lifestyle and spend little on myself but I just can't justify £6.99 on a paperback and god knows how much on a hardback.

I don't doubt that books are worth that much but it always feels overpriced to me. I do buy some books new but this is rare. Morally, I feel a bit bad about this. A second hand book means that the author isn't getting any money and that the publisher doesn't get any money to pay for taking a chance on new writers. Most writers, I believe aren't wealthy and don't rely on book sales for their main income. Unless you're a multiple bestseller then writing probably isn't your only job. 

Charity shops are one place I buy my books, which in a way is great as a charity gets a bit of cash to help those in need but I can't help but thinking I should be aiming for buying fewer books brand new to support the industry. This would mean I'd be unable to be always reading unless I reread old books, and I'm not much of a re-reader. I don't have a massive TBR pile but can't imagine not having something new to read. 

I don't think John Irving particularly needs my money and I don't think it's going to come after me with a pitchfork for his royalty fee, although he does look like if need be, he would be handy with a pitchfork. 'The Fourth Hand' isn't the best Irving I've read, but it was a little bit of a departure in style for him. Although it has a fairly epic scope like most of his novels, it's more on the humorous side. It's not a comic novel by any means but definitely some aspects are played for laughs rather than emotional depth, like his other novels.

Patrick Wallingford, the main character, begins the novel by having his hand bitten off by a lion. In fact this is what sold this novel to me as something I wanted to read. He is offered a pioneering hand transplant. I won't tell you what happens after that as things take a rather bizarre and unexpected turn. It is a little far fetched, but as it involves human beings, anything is possible.

It was very readable and I managed to read over 70 pages whilst having a bath, it's descriptive and intelligently written but not impenetrable. If you don't read literary fiction, this is a good place to start. As with most Irving protagonists Wallingford is slightly discombobulated by the world, particularly women. I found the female characters in this book a little bit unbelievable - all simply interested in having a baby. There are women like this, but maybe I was missing the point he was trying to make by having all the characters want this. 

I also think I missed a bit of depth in the book by not understanding baseball. There's a lot of baseball in this book and probably a fair few baseball related metaphors that I didn't quite catch. (Catch, hah, see what I did there!)

This isn't a book I'd recommend if you're reading Irving for the first time. A Widow for One Year is my favourite so far, but it's a fairly short book for him. Some readers have found it disappointing as it is more on the comical side, but I can't blame a prolific author for wanting a bit of light relief from his more heavily themed works. 

I won't blame if he comes after me with a pitchfork either.

In Real Life - Chris Killen

This book has Babybel style cheeses on the front cover. Either I was looking for a fun, ironic novel when I got this out of the library, or I was hungry. And as libraries tend to be filled with books rather than cheese (oh my word a cheese library would be awesome, but you'd have to give it back which is a bit, eww and erm, less awesome) then a book it had to be. 

This is a likeable book and as much as I want to like a likeable book, I'm just not that kind of woman. Essentially, this is a comical book about relationships, particularly a love triangle. If it was a man it would be one you met at work in your early 20's who wore mildly amusing ties and offered tentative, almost unrecognisable chat up lines. The one who'd never ask you out and at 30 finds himself having to actually be upfront and bloody ask women out.

In other words, it doesn't quite deliver. It's okay. It's likeable.  I enjoyed the 1990's setting and the pop culture references, I'm a similar age to the characters and was at University at the same time as them. I didn't enjoy the parts set in 2014 quite as much although it still resonated with my experiences, in particular I sniggered my way through the chapters all about Ian's work in a call centre. I've worked in a few and a 'call centre' is very much the standard in novels if you want to say the character has a soulless, meaningless job. 

For me, the most charming and successful parts of this novel were the email exchanges during the 1990's. I have a memory of email being a new and exciting way to communicate, unlike a letter, no need to wait for the postman, a chance of an almost instant response. I think I would have a liked the whole novel to be in email form.

Towards the end of the book, I considered skipping to the last pages just to see the outcome of the love triangle. I did care about some of the characters and what happened to them, it was just taking a bit too much time to get there. At times, the multiple points of view and multiple time periods got a bit confusing which I think is the reason I wanted to skip.  I also found the storyline involving Paul in 2014 a bit obvious. It's been done before in a better way. 

It's a nice light read, reminded me of books I read a while back by Mike Gayle. I did appreciate it was a novel with a lot of romance elements written by a man and there's a lot of male feelings and perspectives on relationships in this book.  Don't get me wrong, this isn't Mills and Boon romance we're talking about, it's more realistic than that but so often the feelings of men are overlooked when it comes to relationships in fiction and I think this is worth drawing attention to.

I wasn't a big fan of an ending but could you have a romantic novel with 30-something protagonists without there being a wedding somewhere along the lines. If this novel was a man, I wouldn't marry it and I certainly wouldn't bloody marry Paul in this novel but the book deserved the nice date we had when I got it from the library. I'm married anyway and my husband is one of the few things in life better than books.

How to Disappear Completely - Kelsey Osgood

My first non-fiction review. Go me. This is a memoir, kind of anyway,  and when it comes to memoirs I hate to be critical. This is someone's story and as such, needs to be treated with a certain degree of sensitivity. These are real things that happened and in this case, it's about Anorexia Nervosa. What attracted me to this book was the different stance the author was taking about writing of this disease. 

Osgood's intention in this is well realised. She had noticed that other memoirs of eating disorders were often fixated on numbers, weight, and graphic descriptions of extreme thinness. She set out to write a book about Anorexia where this wasn't the case. This is in my opinion, highly commendable. I've never suffered from this disease but have a personal and professional interest in mental health. It's a fantastic thing to do for two reasons. I think she mentions herself in the book that the obsession with numbers can encourage other sufferers of Anorexia to become more unwell and fixate on losing weight. I also found it interesting as it made the memoir less clinical, not so focussed on the physical weight loss and more interested in the thought processes of the Osgood herself. 

The first half of the book has you desperately wishing the author recovers, and feeling for her when recovery is not going quite so well. However, as I moved through the book I started to feel we were just getting 'more of the same'. This probably reflects the fact that constant hospitalisation of different kinds and similar regimes designed to encourage weight gain were monotonous and a little boring. 

I also was unsure of what kind of book it wanted to be. Occasionally the writer would slip into what seemed like long chapters of polemic about how to treat sufferers and how other books have got the portrayal wrong in the past. There seemed to be a general non-fiction book in there somewhere as well as a memoir.  I found the parts of the book about how technology, particularly the internet influences those with eating disorders particularly interesting and would have liked a whole book about that perhaps. I'm of the opinion our online lives are often ignored by those in the mental health profession and not enough has been written about this effect.

I think I would have liked this better as two separate books, but it's Osgood's own thoughts and feelings and I can't criticise those. As I'm not exactly an expert, it's hard to say the best audience for the book and I have liked other similar memoirs better but perhaps this is because it skimps on the 'details' that it's human to want to hear whether you suffer from this illness or not. It's a very dignified and intelligent account, but if you read it, be prepared that you may not get what you perhaps you are very reluctant to admit you want - gory details.

Girls on Fire - Robin Wasserman

So, teenagers again. Becoming a bit of a theme isn't it? The teenagers in this book couldn't be more different to the ones in the last book I read, 'Extraordinary Means' if they tried. And there is one key difference. This is a book about teenagers written for adults. Robin Wasserman has written YA in the past and she seems to know teenagers inside out. Nothing in this book is sanitised or watered down. Teenagers can be cruel, particularly teenage girls and this is a book that focuses on a friendship between two teenage girls and where this takes them. 

Friendships between girls can be by turns cruel and intense and this covers both aspects of friendships in this way. One criticism I've heard of this book is that the 'bad girl turns good girl bad' thing has been done before. I don't see this book in this sort of way. It's the interplay between the characters that's the thing in this book. It feels at times that every bad girl needs a good girl to urge her on, to be the one who inadvertently encourages her to do the things she does. I also don't think that the characters in this book, Dex and Lacey, can be slotted into a simple good girl/bad girl archetype. Especially towards the end you're left thinking of who the real ringleader is. 

It's written mainly from the perspectives of the two main characters, they have unique voices that are brutal and real. There are ocassional vignettes focussing on the adult characters in the book, their brevity only emphasises the lack of importance of adults in these young people's lives as they are slowly pushed to the margins.  

The setting during the 1990s allows the interpersonal contact between characters to not be dominated by the online world. Their secretive world isn't by private message, but driving around in cars and hanging around at the lake. As it's an adult novel, many of the readers will recognise this as their world as a teenager.

The front cover, a bobby pin with a sole strand of hair attached speaks to me of a world of beauty and cruelty combined. (How many times have I pushed one into my hair and stabbed myself in the head) but also looks like spent matches. Although there is no 'fire' in this book, there is an urge to destroy and watch things burn. The characters are frightening in their intensity, cruelty but particularly in their normality. This could have been any of us. 

P.S. After going on about the bloody cover, I can't find a picture of the UK one. Ho-hum. You can use your imagination can't you...

Extraordinary Means - Robyn Schneider

Yet again Nic attempts to comment upon a genre that she doesn't normally read, thus, writes and less than fantastic and informed review. I guess I've read more Young Adult books than I have Graphic Novels (see my last review), if only because I once was a Young Adult. Except when I was a 'Young Adult' it was called being a teenager. Teenage literature has changed, or maybe as a teenager I wasn't reading the right stuff. This book certainly proves that the writing has got better. I was a series reader. Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High were two that I couldn't resist, along with anything by Judy Blume. I still couldn't possibly meet a man called Ralph without laughing (actually, as I think a whole generation of girls read 'Forever', this generation will not be naming babies this, which might explain why you never meet a man under the age of 40 with this name). Anyway, I digress.

Extraordinary Means is compelling and well written but perhaps not exactly what I was hoping to get out of the story. It's set in a world where there is a strain of TB that is not curable by antibiotics, so young people are sent to a hybrid of a summer camp, hospital and school to recuperate and keep them away from the non-infected. One thing that hasn't change regarding young adult literature is the setting without parents.  So many books put young people in situations where they are away from most adults and  therefore have to cope alone.  Lane, a teenager with TB is new to the hospital but soon meets someone from his past.

It's an interesting idea and I could have seen the story developing along more suspenseful lines and I wish that it had. I had it in my head there was some kind of conspiracy but actually, this wasn't the case at all and it developed into a more conventional romance. I have no doubt this will be highly appealing to teenagers, the main audience for this book. The sneaking out and sneaking into rooms as well as the 'group of outsiders' idea will hook into a teenagers sense of (danger - but not too much).  Most teenagers also love a bit of tragedy so they ever present spectre of dying from TB will keep them reading. 

I found the ending a bit disappointing and predictable. I find that you either like a predictable ending that you're expecting (very satisfying) or you don't, and I don't. Then again, I'm an adult. This isn't a YA book that I think many adults would enjoy reading massively, although we all have an inner teenager. It lacks a little depth plot wise, but perhaps this doesn't reflect this book particularly but this genre. As I say, I haven't read YA for a while. 

What impressed me was that now, as some books started to when I was a teenager, writers don't patronise young adults. There is some swearing in this book and suggestions of sex, reflecting that not all teenagers live chaste lives where they talk nicely.  I think what I need to do now is get some of my old teenage books again and revisit them. I don't think the themes and writing were any worse or better, but I do think that Young Adult literature has 'grown up' since then.