Book Review: Sorry by Zoran Drvenkar

"This is all about memory. It's about details. Details are important to you. You prize details." Pg 7.







Kris, Tamara, Wolf and Frauke. Four young friends with too much time on their hands and one big idea: an agency called Sorry. Unfair dismissals, the wrongly accused, jilted lovers: everyone has a price and the Sorry team will find out what that is. It's as simple as that. The idea catches on like wildfire and the quartet are soon raking in the cash, doing the emotional dirty work for fat cats, businessmen, and the romantically challenged.

But what they didn't count on is that their latest client would be a killer...

This is going to be another of those rare books that I review in which I must say from the beginning: If you are squeamish at all - Do not read this book. If you are under 16 - Do not read this book. No, seriously, I'm not kidding.

This is a crime novel, yes, but it also a brilliantly written journey into the psychotic mind. And I do love those. And so rarely do you find one not only so fantastically written - but one that can also hold up three different perspectives. Most notably - YOU are the killer. You know how he thinks and what he will do next.

Then you have the four 'heroes' of the story - brothers Kris and Wolf, and long-time friends Tamara and Frauke - who have unwillingly been thrown into this nightmare and each have different opinions and ways of dealing with it - some more fatal than others...

Interspersed are chapters with someone unknown. You know this person is watching both the friends and You, but who is this person and what is the connection? Only reading till the end will everything make sense.
Never have I encountered a novel crafted so masterfully. Set across an icy Berlin backdrop, this tale will seriously chill you to the bone.

Published: March 2012 by Harper Collins (First published in German 2009)

Book Review: Forbidden - Tabitha Suzuma

"We can't do this... If we start, how will we ever stop?"






Sixteen-year-old Maya and seventeen-year-old Lachan have never had the chance to be 'normal' teenagers. Having pulled together for years to take care of their younger siblings while their wayward, drunken mother leaves them to fend alone, they have become much more than brother and sister. And now, they have fallen in love. But this is a love that can never be allowed, a love that will have devastating consequences... How can something so wrong feel so right?

Some people find it tough to talk or read about difficult subjects - rape, disease, incest - but I suppose it is something of a fascination with me. I like to explore how other people see the subject, and how they approach them in fiction. If there is a list of 'forbidden' or 'taboo' subjects - incest would be at the number one position, without a doubt. This also reflects the lack of fiction around it... Then in comes Tabitha Suzuma. I know from her reputation that she normally writes about the hard-hitting issues of teens, but only after reading Forbidden do I now have a desire to read her previous titles.

Told from both Lochan and Maya's point of view, Tabitha gives the reader a real and raw insight into each characters reasoning's and thus connecting you in a very personal and intense way. And although the novel is laden down with darkness and despair - the passion Lochie and Maya have for each other shines so brightly it hurts, but it's a hurt you want to endure right till the very end.

When people ask me why I love this book so much I can only tell them to read it, because while the subject matter is still one of taboo, it's stories like these that really make you appreciate literature in it's every form.

Published by Random House Children's Books 'Definitions' - May 2010

Book Review: The End of Alice - A.M. Homes

"Just because something scares you, just because you say this is awful and repulsive, it doesn't mean that it is insignificant." - A.M. Homes




The End of Alice sneaks us in the back doors of our upright suburban neighborhoods to reveal the impulses that even in our frank, outspoken times we don't talk about.
This is a tale told by a paedophile in his twenty-third year in a maximum security prison. He is intelligent; he is witty; he is profoundly dangerous. Beyond the reality of his stark cell and the violent perversion of the other inmates lies his imagination, which he turns to his past, to an "accident" with a little girl named Alice, and now to the erotic life of a nineteen-year-old suburban co-ed who draws him into a flirtatious epistolary exchange.

At home on summer break from college, she writes to the prisoner about her taste for young boys, her lust for one twelve-year-old in particular. She is inspired by the convict's crimes; he is excited by her peculiar obsession. Into the veneer of middle-class convention—the tennis lessons, baby-sitting, and family dinners—she casts her line for the boy. He bites. As her reports of their strange affair progress, the prisoner's memory unravels, revealing the appalling circumstances of his captivity, his deadly and lingering infatuation with Alice.

The intertwined fixations of these unlikely correspondents give The End of Alice its haunting, unsettling power.

A rather dark and sadistic first review for my brand-spanking new blog and though my reading is generally focused towards children's fiction, I sometimes veer off into somewhat darker places. And this is certainly no exception.

I came across The End of Alice a few years ago while I was working in a bookshop in Melbourne. A friend of a friend of mine asked if I could order in a book for her university course. Naturally when she told me about it, I was intrigued.
There's incest, homosexual rape, sex with minors - and that's just the base ingredients of the cake. If Homes has succeeded in anything; it is her ability to shock even the most toughest of readers. I imagine it would make the average reader feel sick to the stomach.

So why read it?

...

That is a good question. Unless you're a university psychology student, what would the average joe gain from this peverse horror? I couldn't answer honestly. But I think, every once in a while, we like to explore the very depths of the human psyche. And this is one such tale that is not likely to be forgotten easily.