#bookramblingsbyoiivia

[bookramblings]

Exciting Times

Author: Naoise Dolan

Published by: Weidenfield & Nicolson

Pages: 279

Format: Hardback

My Rating ★★★

When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents’ money, it’s called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she’s not sure what to call it, but it involves:

. a badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children;

. Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room;

. Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks;

. money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections.

Exciting times ensue.

My thoughts:

Ava moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding cranky roommates in her cramped apartment. When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her small salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better judgements, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands. Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theatre and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants to be with her. Ava has been carefully pretending that Julian is nothing more than an absentee roommate, so when Julian announces that he’s returning to Hong Kong, she faces a tough decision. Should she return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?

With so many professional reviewers hailing Exciting Times as one of the best debut novels of 2020, praising Naoise Dolan for her wit and her razor-sharp social commentary, or describing her book as being “droll, shrewd and unafraid”, this promised to be an intelligent and compelling read. Sadly, as with a lot of hyped new releases, Exciting Times wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

At 22 Ava decides to leave Dublin behind and move to Hong Kong where she ends up teaching English grammar. Because she didn’t like herself in Ireland, she believes that a change of scenery will either improve her personality or the way she sees herself. In Hong Kong Ava makes few attempts at socialising with her colleagues or her roommates, and it is only when she meets Julian, a banker, that she begins to be interested in someone other than herself. The two form a bond of sorts, which sees them occasionally sparring about the fraught history between Britain and Ireland, while for the most part they seem content with being cynical together. Soon enough Ava moves into Julian's guest bedroom. While he’s back in England Ava meets and ‘falls’ for Edith who, unlike Julian, openly reciprocates her feelings.

The plot as such sees Ava obsessing about either Julian or Edith, checking their Instagram accounts, over-analysing their texts, and attributing a special meaning to everything they say or do.  For the most part Exciting Times is about Ava’s detachment from others. There is little or no character growth with Ava, and the ending felt vague in terms of whether or not she had learned from her mistakes.

I was also disappointed that the Hong Kong setting felt overlooked.  Ava’s narration really fails to create a vivid setting of China; it’s as if the entire story takes place in front of a blank backdrop. There is very little writing dedicated to Chinese culture and traditions. This seemed a missed opportunity.

The novel is so focused on being clever that it ends up not having anything substantial to offer. Ava’s supposed ‘aloofness’ seemed more of an excuse for her character not to have a personality. Instead of really showing her emotions, Ava simply tells us that she ‘loves/hates’ someone...and I just didn’t feel it. If anything, she was infatuated with the idea of love.

Julian and Edith also weren’t particularly likeable, but they certainly felt more like well-rounded people. I couldn’t see why they were both interested in Ava given how self-involved she was.

It took me far too long to read this relatively short book because my attention was easily distracted by other things. All in all, it’s well written and I found it fairly interesting. I may simply be the wrong audience, but I just didn’t connect with the book almost at all. If you enjoy pretentious literary fiction, you'll love this one. But sadly, it wasn’t for me.

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[bookramblings]

Little Fires Everywhere

Author: Celeste Ng

Published by: Abacus

Pages: 388

Format: Paperback

My Rating ★★★★

In the placid, progressive suburb of Shaker Heights everything is meticulously planned, from the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson.

Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother, arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluri8ng mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a disregard for the rules that threaten to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons’ friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs Richardson on opposing sides. Mrs Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family – and Mia’s.

My thoughts

Little Fires Everywhere is the second novel from Celeste Ng. It is my first read by the author, but I’m pretty certain it won’t be my last. I could easily have read this book in just one or two sittings, but lately life got in the way. That’s why it’s taken me quite a while to post my review so apologies for the delay.

Everything in Shaker Heights is planned and there are strict rules that residents must follow. When Mia Warren and her fifteen-year-old daughter, Pearl rent a home from the Richardsons, a prominent and influential Shaker Heights family – their lives will become intertwined in ways they never could have imagined. As Mia and Pearl settle into their new home, they quickly become aware of the rules. Houses must only be painted certain colours (to maintain aesthetic harmony), rubbish should never be left out in front of the house, lawns must always be cut promptly and so on. The city motto really says it all: “Most communities just happen; the best are planned”

This book is filled with many scenarios with many questions and no perfect answers. Every situation feels tense and mysterious like various little piles of kindling that could easily ignite the fire at any moment. After a while, with the various situations between characters, it really feels like the flames are building and building. Eventually we are left with a series of fires ready to burn everything to the ground.

Little Fires Everywhere tells the story of two opposing families – the all-American dream versus a more bohemian and unconventional lifestyle. The book reads as a slow-moving character portrait filled with secrets, complex family dynamics and small-town politics. I loved the development of the characters which was fantastic. With so many characters and fewer than four hundred pages, it takes a great deal of skill to bring them all to life effectively. There were several different subplots within the story and the characters all felt very real. The pacing was perfect, and I enjoyed seeing the multiple threads of the story intertwine until each and every character was implicated in the novel’s conclusion. My one and only tiny grumble would be that I felt the plot could have gone even darker.

This is a compelling novel and total page-turner. A pleasure to read, Little Fires Everywhere gripped and entertained me from start to finish.

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[bookramblings]

Writers & Lovers

Author: Lily King

Published by: Picador

Pages: 324

Format: Hardback

My Rating ★★★★

Casey has ended up back in Massachusetts after a devastating love affair. Her mother has just died, and she is knocked sideways by grief and loneliness, moving between the restaurant where she waitresses for the Harvard elite and the rented shed she calls home. Her one constant is the novel she has been writing for six years, but at thirty-one she is in debt and directionless, and feels too old to be that way – it’s strange, not being the youngest kind of adult anymore.

And then, one evening, she meets Silas. He is kind, handsome, interested. But only a few weeks later, Oscar walks into her restaurant, his two boys in tow. He is older, grieving the loss of his wife, and wrapped up in his own creativity. Suddenly Casey finds herself at the point of a love triangle, torn between two very different relationships that promise two very different futures.

My thoughts:

Blindsided by her mother's sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan.

Her post consists of wedding invitations and final notices from debt collectors. A former child golf prodigy, she now waits tables in Harvard Square and rents a tiny, moldy room at the side of a garage where she works on the novel she's been writing for six years.

At thirty-one, Casey is still clutching onto something nearly all her old friends have let go of: the determination to live a creative life. Casey is a quiet and elusive figure, getting soaked by the rain as she cycles home through lonely streets or shrinking from a bully at work.

The author makes her struggles feel monumental, immensely bleak. Yet somehow, you can’t help but feel hopeful for Casey. It’s funny, too. King seamlessly lightens Casey’s misery with a wry and fearless humour throughout.

Writers & Lovers follows Casey in the last days of a long youth, a time when everything – her family, her work, her relationships – comes to a crisis. When she falls for two very different men at the same time, her world fractures even more. Casey's fight to fulfill her creative ambitions and balance the conflicting demands of art and life is challenged in ways that push her to the brink.

The prose, the voice, the characterisation makes this book the kind that becomes a comfortable old friend that’ll stay with you forever. Hugely moving and very funny, it is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.

Writers & Lovers is a puzzling and beautiful novel about writing and love. From romance to debt, the struggles of an aspiring writer are observed with humour and emotion. I was also pleased to see how all the conflicts come together at the end in a very satisfying conclusion. Casey is undoubtedly a heroine you’ll cherish.

It is a novel about love and creativity, and ultimately it captures the moment when a woman truly becomes an artist. I loved this introspective, intimate story and highly recommend giving it a go yourself.

Overall reaction: