For All Our Tomorrows - Freda Lightfoot

I picked up this book in a charity shop in my home town of South Shields. With a blank cover, no blurb and nothing other than the title to give any sort of insight, would you believe me if I said something just drew me to it? Well it did. I read the first sentence and somehow decided that I'd probably like it. As it turns out, I seem to know myself quite well. I don't think it would be an understatement to say that I've never been more attached to a book. I mean, literally. For the length of about three days, it never left my side.
Set in Fowey, a Cornish village, in the 1940s, this book revolves around a couple of sisters and the upheaval of their lives as a group of US Marines arrive in the town. The story focuses on the two perspectives of the sisters, and how the war, and US arrival, affects them.
Sara, the quiet, sensible sister lives with her husband, Hugh, who makes you want to scream at the book. Possessive, controlling and adulterating, his abusive ways soon turn Sara's attention elsewhere, onto US Mariner, Charles. Their story throughout the book is almost painfully slow-moving, yet touching. At the other end of the spectrum, Sara's flirtatious and mischievous sister Bette falls in love with an American much sooner, but her cosy Cornish life is turned upside down as the story unfolds.
This book revolves completely around its main characters, somehow making you feel personally involved in their well-being. Lightfoot's writing isn't mind-blowing, it isn't amazingly poignant or intensely colourful. Yet, it tells a story, and it tells it extremely well.
The best feature of this book is the believability of the characters, the ebbs and flows of the two sisters' lives, intertwined with the reality of war. One friendly invasion that changes the lives of a few people - which may sound rather insignificant on a grand scale, but once you read this book it will feel like the lives of those closest to you.

The Lollipop Shoes - Joanne Harris

You know that lovely, nostalgic feeling that you get when you hear a song that you associate with something in your past? Well, I get the same feeling with this book. In Summer this year, when I was having a difficult time applying for jobs, I went to the Yorkshire Dales for a few days to cheer up, and found this book in a cute little charity shop.


As I was buying it, a woman said to me "Oh that's a great book, even better than the first one". I took what she said with a pinch of salt - she seemed a bit crazy, but also I didn't want to believe that this exciting little find was following on from another book. I didn't realise until long after I finished it that it is actually the sequel to the book, and film, Chocolat. However, I understood the whole story, the book stood on its own and didn't seem like anything had been untold, or any prior knowledge assumed. Actually, Harris says that it isn't technically a sequel, but a continuation: "based on the fact that people change, that children grow up, and that happy-ever-after is a phrase that lazy people use when they just don’t know what happened next."

The book, which WILL make you want to go to Paris and eat chocolate, is beautifully written. Each sentence reads as if it has been individually thought through and contemplated for hours, it offers a brand new potential of the English language.  Structured equally with three different narrators, the story outlines the lives of Vianne Rocher and her daughters Annouk and Rossette, who live above a rented chocolaterie in Montmartre, Paris. Vianne attempts to fit into the community, as well as give the chocolate shop a re-vamp. All of this is assisted by an unexpected stranger, Zozie de l’Alba, who works her way into the lives Vianne and Annouk. Underneath this storyline, is an undertone of the abnormal, with subtle mentions of magic,"accidents", and of the winds changing. However, this side to the plot is rather ambiguous, with Vianne and Annouk living under pseudonymous,  what did they leave behind? What are they running from? Is Vianne a witch? 


The plot itself is very simple, almost juvenile. But the depth at which you get to know the individual characters and the extent to which you're seduced by Harris' writing makes this book far from juvenile. The curious stranger, Zozie, is malevolent and vindictive, yet due to the multiple narration, there are times where the reader can almost empathise with her. The book is centered around the chocolate shop, and how it flourishes alongside Vianne's independence. Vianne, who goes by the name Yanne Charbonneau, considers marriage to her landlord, Thierry, who is quite obviously the safe option. It becomes clear towards the end of the novel that there is someone from her past who she is reluctant to forget about, Roux.   


Annouk's storyline focuses on the growing resentment she has towards her mother, alongside a growing admiralty for Zozie.  Unfortunately, this is exactly what Zozie wants, as she worms her way into the family with ulterior motives that all come to a climax at Christmas. Harris says: "Chocolat was milk chocolate, then Lollipop Shoes is seventy percent. There’s still quite a lot of humour there, but it’s quite black humour". It's not just the humour that is black, the story itself is. But, coaxed by Harris' gentle way with words, nothing could be scary. This book will give you a craving for Paris, and for more of Harris' wonderful writing. 

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami

To look at, this book is seriously intimidating- it's massive. The author, Haruki Murakami, is a renowned writer and genius. 'Google'ing him  results in not only the predictable profiles and Amazon pages, but pages and pages of philosophical and witty quotes from the man. The best types of authors are those who are wide awake, and Murakami is definitely that.The Wind-up Chronicles, set in Tokyo, is one of Murakami's most famous novels, and it's no wonder why.

The story begins with protagonist Toru Okada searching down a blocked off alley for his and his wife's missing cat.  As with much of the novel, the introduction of anything new will eventually reveal its prominence in the story. It isnt long before the alley becomes a central part to the storyline, as well as a dried up well in an abandoned, haunted house that lies in the alley. Within the first chapter, the book already has the potential to fully immerse you into the mind of in the protagonist, Toru Okada, yet as the novel goes on, you realise you really dont know him at all. Reading this book will leave you with an unrelenting bewilderment due to his reactions and behavior.

The novel centres around  the effects of defilement, mainly by Toru's brohter in law, whose role in the story increases in prominence as the book progresses.Throughout the whole novel, Toru is fighting for his marriage, as his wife, Kumiko, leaves him only a few chapters in. The characters Toru meets on his quest to get back to his wife also suffer from defilement, and through the development of each relationship, Toru acts as an accidental saviour by sponging up the effects of defilement on the people surrounding him. He absorbs all that happens around him unquestonably, no matter how strange his world gets, as if he silently submitting to the hope that it could get him closer to his beloved wife.
The book is intertwined with several detailed, separate stories of different characters that make you lose sleep wondering how their can all possibly fit together. Toru meets 15 year old girl, May Kashara, who works for a wig company instead of going to school. He also meets psychic sisters Malta and Creta Kano, the odd but impeccably dressed Nutmeg Alaska and her mute son Cinnmon. The story is also enhanced by the addition of an old soldier named Lieutenant Mamiya.

 You find yourself anticipating the ending from about half way through the book. Dealing with isolation, imagination, first love and the mundane potential of human life, there are also some heart (and stomach) wrenching accounts of the Second World War, and the devastatingly honest account of the breakdown of a marriage. Yet, all of this is intertwined with surreal characters and subplots that just refuse to completely fall into place.

With such odd characters and events surrounding him, Toru's actions and thoughts remains placid throughout, aside from one or two moments. He comes across as piteous and likable, and would do so even if it weren't for the relentless bad luck that he encounters. Throughout the book, Toru is unemployed after leaving his job at a law firm, but even this he is calm and accepting of.

“Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? 

We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?” 

Despite such a complex and longwinded story-line, the beauty lies within Marakami's writing. He manages to subtly climb deeply into detailing some rather disturbing events, and lightly narrates the dark, twisted world that Toru finds himself in. The reader gets sucked into a rather malevolent universe, without fully realising it, courtesy o Murakami's subtle, gentle abilty to weave a story around your counsciousness.
The ambiguous ending, which is frustratingly inconclusive, lets the reader decide how to interpret how much of the book's events were real and which had deeper meanings, acting as a metaphor.
You may find it diffcult to establish what is real and what is not, but this book is written by such an inspiring author, and needs to be read.  The inventivness of this novel makes me supremely jealous, it's the work of an absolute genius.

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”  ― Haruki Murakami