Worderella Writes

Book: Never Let Me Go

Kathy grew up in the sheltered, English countryside at the Hailsham boarding school, where the students were raised to believe they were special. Only in her teens does Hailsham reveal how special the students are. Kathy’s narrative slowly reveals from hindsight how a simple deception defines her life.

This story is intense, subtle, delicate. Its characters are flawed, obsessively so. The overlying plot is science fiction, but without the hopeful ending we expect from genre fiction. If you liked Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which I did, then you will definitely like this book.

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Book: Hurricane Moon

It is the late 21st Century. Catharin, an idealistic astronaut-physician, is part of the crew of Aeon, a starship sent out to find a new Earth. She wants to help society start anew, now that medicine has solved all major problems; molecular biologist Joe Devreze, however, just wants to run away from Earth, for reasons Catharin can’t figure out. Everything goes awry when Aeon reaches a double-planet system: one dubbed Planet Green is covered with vegetation, the other, Planet Blue, is consistently covered with hurricanes. As Catharin and Joe start to settle into Planet Green, Catharin discovers problems with their DNA… to the point where they might be the last humans in the universe. Can she trust Joe, and his shady motives, to save humanity? And just how much attention should Catharin pay to her subconscious warnings that Planet Blue is more than just a watery moon?

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Book: The Extra-Large Medium

Annie always thought chocolate brown was the new black, because everyone was wearing it. It didn’t take long for her to realize that no one else saw these people wearing all-brown outfits, and that these people happened to be dead. As a grown-up, Annie begins to treat her habit of finishing the ghostly “unfinished business” as a job; it is when her husband disappears and doesn’t return to her, wearing brown, telling her his unfinished business, that things become seriously wrong.

If you think perhaps this book has a theme similar to The Sixth Sense, that’s what I thought too. Except instead of being a thriller of sorts, this book is insightful and humorous, with a succinct tone that doesn’t forgive any character and yet makes you feel for them nonetheless. At its heart, this book is about a woman who loses her husband and waits, against her will, for the day she has to legally declare him dead.

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Book: The Wayward Muse

It is the beginning of the Victorian era, and Jane is a very ugly girl. On an outing with her sister, Jane is spotted by two artists that consider her the most beautiful woman in the world, thus changing her life forever.

Excellent writing, as you’ll find in the excerpts I’ve posted. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, despite Jane’s character, which makes me respect Hickey even more. Once I realized the plot, I almost put the book away, except Hickey’s writing and depiction of the characters stayed my hand. This book is one of the best fiction depictions of a real Victorian marriage that I have read yet; the main characters are real people, and while the story may not be entirely factual, the plot seems to follow the real time-line faithfully. The writing style is simple yet lush, the scenery vivid, the characters organic and sympathetic. Anyone working on making their characters flawed, especially the main character, should read this book as an example of how to maintain your reader’s interest.

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Book: Miss Wonderful

Mirabel Oldridge thought she had everything under control on her Regency property. Her eccentric, distracted father was happily studying his plants. She managed to keep her family home safe from opportunistic managers (at the expense of her one chance at love and marriage). But now, now there is a new problem; one she never thought she would have to face: Alistair Carsington. Carsington is a hero from Waterloo sent to convince Mirabel’s town, to convince Mirabel, that they need a canal that would ruin their picturesque countryside. It certainly doesn’t help that, despite her innate hatred of Carsington and all he threatens to change, Mirabel begins to find herself attracted to the oversensitive, immaculately-dressed, and maddening idiosyncrasies that define him.

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Book: The Thirteenth Tale

Margaret Lea has a secret about her birth; a secret that haunts her to this day, and affects every decision she makes. She is the daughter of an antique book dealer, and so is his helpmate in running the bookshop that maintains their lifestyle. One day, a letter arrives for Margaret, written in an awful hand, requesting that she journey to the home of the infamous writer, Vida Winter. Miss Winter is infamous because of her past, or lack of it, for with every interview there is a new rendition, and none of them are true. There is no record of Miss Winter’s birth, her childhood…nothing to say who she was before she appeared in the literary world. Miss Winter, it seems, wants to tell the truth of her past for the first time, ever, and she has chosen Margaret for the job. After thirty (or forty, perhaps?) years of public speculation about the past of Miss Vida Winter, and the plot of the missing thirteenth tale from her book Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation (only twelve were released), Vida Winter is ready to speak the truth.

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Book: Hood

Rhi Bran ap Brychan, heir to the Elfael throne, has never been much for responsibility. Not since his mother died when he was a young boy. Bran is headstrong, selfish, and egotistical; rebellious against his callous and and tyrannous father. But now his father is dead–killed by Norman invaders determined to take over the Welsh and their lands. The people of Elfael have been enslaved, made to pay taxes they have not the money for, forced to work lands that are not their own and thus making it impossible to tend to the year’s harvest: the people of Elfael are starving, and they need a leader. Unfortunatly for Bran, he is their last hope.

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Book: The Bronte Project

Sara, a graduate student working on a PhD thesis, is attempting the impossible: she is looking for the missing letters of Charlotte Brontë. Sound similar to a book I just read/reviewed? Or maybe this? It must be the fashion these days. However, this book stays firmly in the present, and follows Sara’s journey from being engaged to a wonderful man, to finding her place in the world once he decides he must follow his dream to live in the squalor of Paris, à la George Orwell.

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Book: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Eloise Kelly is a PhD student chasing after the elusive Pink Carnation, a British spy during the Napoleonic Wars. Trekking across the Atlantic in search of primary sources to discover the identity of the Pink Carnation, Eloise discovers the biggest scoop of all time, one that the “finest historians” have missed–the secret history of the Pink Carnation. While reading journals of those involved, she stumbles upon a heady romance that leaves her aching for a little of her own. As from the front flap, “How did the Pink Carnation save England? And will Eloise Kelly find a hero of her own?”

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Book: The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars

This is technically two separate stories about two cocky young men who use their wits to get what they want. The thing is, one is a Hungarian folktale about Csucskari, a young gypsy who puts the sun, the moon, and the stars back where they belong. The other story is a contemporary first-person narrative about Greg, a student painter who dropped out of his junior year of college three years ago to work in a studio with four of his artist friends. There aren’t really chapters, just a series of vignettes, and the vignettes switch between the contemporary narrative and the folktale.

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