Tag Archives: Book Review

Gone Girl Book Review

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Gone Girl, Gone Girl book, gone girl book review, how gone girl film compares to bookGone Girl has been the literary sensation of the past few years. It was published in June 2012 and it soon made the New York Times Best Seller list and has sold over two million copies. It has sparked a Hollywood film and a vast amount of copy cats. I came late to the Gone Girl party. The film was out in the cinemas and I did not know whether or not to go and see it or read the book first. In the end I went to the cinema first. Our excellent film writer Owun’s review of Gone Girl is here. The film is brilliant, with great performances from Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

Seeing the film first did not ruin the experience of reading the book. The book is deeper, less Hollywood and, obviously, has more information. The author, Gillian Flynn, also wrote the screenplay. She did a good job but there are differences between the film and the book. Not bad differences, I think she did an amazing job.

A lot of people told me not to read the book or watch the film as I am recently married. However, although the book has great observations on marriage and relationships, I really don’t think anyone in a good marriage could possible relate to the book or the film. So, read it and enjoy: it won’t destroy your marriage.

The book is engrossing and I have tried very hard to not give any spoilers. Although I am sure everyone knows, from the title alone, that this is a book about a man who’s wife goes missing. Did he kill her or not? But this book became a literary sensation not only because it is well written, but also because it is original with great twists. It is an intense thriller and hard to put down. Join the Gone Girl fan club, I know I have. Gone Girl is available to buy here.

 

Yes Please By Amy Poehler Book Review

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Yes Please Amy Poehler Book ReviewYes Please is Amy Poehler‘s first book, and what a corker it is. I loved this book. I mean, really loved it. Yes, I know this review is starting to look like a gushing fan letter and not a proper review but a woman like Amy Poehler can do that to you. I loved her on Saturday Night Live and Parks And Recreations. The book starts off with Poehler talking about how hard writing a book is:

“Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was…No one tells the truth about writing a book…the truth is, writing a book is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not. Even I have lied about writing. I have told people that writing this book has been like brushing away dirt from a fossil. What a load of shit. It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver.” 

She goes on to talk about how she wrote the book on set, when her children were sleep, at airports and even on the notes section on her iPhone. It is a corking start and everyone who has ever written a book will relate to it. Poehler goes on to talk about improvisation, sexism, marriage, divorce, pregnancy and motherhood. She is a hard-working, talented woman who has gone for what she wants and knows that she is worth it. Amy Poehler leaned in. Amy Poehler is the coolest woman in the world. Well, she may have to share her crown with best friend Tina Fey but you get the point.

The book is split into three parts: Say Whatever You Want, Do Whatever You Like and Be Whoever You Are. A lot of the book is advice like ‘treat your career like a bad boyfriend’ but all of the book is well-written and funny. I rushed through the book and nothing else mattered while I was reading it. Hence why I did not go to sleep that night until 4am. This book is a must read for both men and women. There is definitely a reason it is on the Amazon Bestseller List: it rocks.

After reading this book I felt inspired, happy and thoroughly entertained. This is the non-fiction book of the year. I love, love, love it. I am pretty sure you will to. You can buy it here.

 

 

Not That Kind of Girl By Lena Dunham Book Review

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9780008101268Where to start? I guess with the fact that this book is not what I thought it would be. It’s not bad, it’s just not what I expected. Let’s get the controversy out of the way: I don’t believe Lena molested her sister. The passage about ‘spreading open her vagina’ makes for very uncomfortable reading but, in my opinion, is very different from sexual abuse. Same gender curiosity in young children is different from sexual abuse, many have said that if this book was written by a male things would be different, but not if the male did what Lena did to his brother. Young children don’t even know what sex is. So, end of.

The thing is, I don’t relate to Lena Dunham. Or at least I thought I did until I read this book. I don’t get the drug use, I am very anti-drugs and always have been. I don’t even care if I come across as boring but mentioning casual drug use as if it is not a thing to me is irresponsible. Many people think drug use is ‘cool’ and ‘artistic’ but it’s not. Drugs ruin lives and society. Now go ahead and judge me for my controversial view: I don’t care. The book is full of sex: masturbation and sexual encounters. This also makes for uncomfortable reading. Not bad reading, just uncomfortable. Dunham seems to want to punish herself with jerks and bad sexual encounters. It’s a version of self-loathing and it made me want to pick her up and hug her. Then of course there is the fact that Dunham was raped. Rape is never fun to read about, but Dunham’s courage in telling her story is commendable. The book is full of brutal honesty.

I know that in many ways this review will seem like a bad review, it’s not. I still think Dunham is talented, amazing, brilliant: a trail blazer. We are similar in age and I also made a web series about young twenty-somethings struggling to find their way in life, though with less success than the juggernaut that is Girls. We are both writer/producers/actors/directors and I always thought that Dunham was so together. I think she is now and that is what is interesting about this book. After all of the self-loathing, punishing herself dating/having sex with men who treated her terribly and other self-destructive behaviour the book comes beautifully full circle: she no longer runs away from people and herself, she in many ways, becomes a grown up. She finally stops causing herself pain. While I related more to Amy Poehler and her awesome book, Yes Please, there is something here to learn. Dunham is unvarnished, naked, almost embarrassing in her honesty. Dunham has been called the voice of her generation many times. Truth is, she doesn’t speak for me or many people that I know. But the thing is: it doesn’t matter. She is still paving the way for women, still creating waves in the film and TV industry, still making progress in a brutal, sexist industry. It doesn’t matter that I don’t 100% relate to her: she is still awesome.  I may not write endlessly about my vagina the way Dunham does but then, maybe my vagina just isn’t that interesting. There is a lot of stories of bad sex in this book, and I hope that other women who read it don’t think this is par for the course. It shouldn’t be.

This book is certainly worth a read. It really made me think and feel. This is essentially a collection of autobiographical essays which Dunham was paid £2.3m for by Random House. It is not as good as it could have been, and Dunham could have done with more editing, but she is certainly a talented writer and I am sure there will be more to come. As Dunham says in the book: “There is nothing gutsier to me than a person announcing that their story is one that deserves to be told, especially if that person is a woman,”

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s Learned is available here.

 

 

 

 

A Time For Courage By Margaret Graham Book Review

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a-time-for-courage-cover-195x300I have been a fan of Margaret Graham for a while now and have read many of her books. It was with much excitement I got my hands on a copy of A Time For Courage. Margaret Graham has a special talent for writing about ballsy heroines who are worthy of making history. More than role models, these women tend to change history and pave the way for future generations, Hannah is no exception, she is the heroine of this story. Daughter to a tyrant, the sexism of the world starts at home but this is Victorian times and women are not even allowed to vote.

War is a running theme in this book and Graham has a rather special knack of writing about war well. Few writers can match her skill and knowledge of military historical fiction. You can tell that she knows her stuff. Her book draws you in and does not let go. At the start of the book is the Boer war and the aftermath, later is the first world war. That great destroyer of generations of men and broken women. Hannah is torn between one class and another, she is born into wealth and much is expected of her. If you consider embroidery and simply being a wife and mother a lot. But Hannah wants to be a teacher, she wants an education. University is denied to her by her tyrannical, misogynistic father but she finds a way with the help of her mother, even though her mother is weak, broken by her father and multiple pregnancies. In contrast Hannah has a cousin called Esther. The difference between Hannah and the selfish Esther is vast.

This is not just a story about Hannah, but also about her brother, Harry. The siblings have much in common: decency, morality, a love of family and an understanding of what is wrong and what is right. Unfortunately their decency and morality is ahead of its time. Harry  fights against racism and Hannah fights against sexism. They both face penalties and conflicts of loyalty for their values. Sometimes doing the right thing brings consequences.

This book is so well-researched it is impossible to not be impressed. This book is gritty and complex with a love story at its beating heart. Over 400 pages long and I raced through it and was sad when it finished. There is much in this book to applaud and I found myself learning a lot about history. Much is covered, including the Suffragists and Suffragette (not everyone will know the history behind the two different groups), diamond mining, human rights after war, social changes…this is more than a novel, it is also a social document. Her writing really works the imagination, creating a beautiful, wonderful and vivid story. I was sad to leave Hannah and her story behind after the last page. I feel the author probably did too.

Stunning: a must read.

A Time for Courage is available here.

 

 

Sarah Parish on Acting: It Can Turn You Into a Monster

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Sarah Parish has given a rather excellent interview to the Radio Times. Here are some of my favourite quotes from it.

On starting acting: “I had no confidence. I think because I started so low. I had quite low expectations. I felt one step behind, and it’s always been, ‘I can’t believe they actually chose me’. I went for small parts because I thought that was probably the only thing I would get. I never auditioned for leads. I just assumed I wouldn’t get them.” That is said with so much self-parody that I feel like I’m allowed to ask: “Do you think you missed out because of that?” Huge eyebrows: “Well… ya think? But you live the life you’ve lived, don’t you? I didn’t have that God-given confidence you get from going to a public school and going to Rada. I went to a comprehensive and felt lucky if I got a job in the chorus. But the upside is I was never disappointed.”

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If the industry has gotten better for women in the past 20 years: “I did hear something alarming the other day, I bumped into a friend at an audition, another girl my age. I asked if she was still doing this show – I can’t tell you what it is – and she said, ‘No, it was cancelled. The reason they gave was that they already had a female-driven programme.’ Wow. Because you can’t have two female-led dramas on telly. How awful would that be! So we’re still not there. I don’t know if we’ll ever be equal. We’ve still got an old-fashioned way of receiving female characters. They’ve got to be the wife, or they’ve got to be nuts.”

On the charity she and her husband, James Murray, set up; the Murray Parish Trust: “It’s in memory of Ella-Jayne, our first daughter.” [She died of congenital heart failure at eight months old] “It’s a terrifying and traumatic time [when your child is ill], you just want to be there all the time. They really, really need this hospital. The accommodation they’ve got for parents at the moment is so sad. £70 million it’s going to cost. Our charity is the little Jack Russell that goes down the hole and scoops everybody out. The big money willcome in afterwards.”

Second daughter Nell gets in the way of her career: “My agent will say, Darling, you’ve got to do a play’. I don’t want to do a play. Why do I have to do a play? You have to go off and do your time in a play to remind a certain genre of people that you’re still an actor. It’s a ball ache. I don’t want to have to leave my daughter and go to London every night.”

On pilot season: “If there was a little room you could go in beforehand where you checked in your dignity, your soul and your pride, that would be fine. But unfortunately you have to go into pilot season as a whole person. Every day you drive around with your clothes in the back of the car, you sit in rooms full of people as sad and as desperate as you are, with so much make-up on they could sink the Titanic, tiny little thin people. Sometimes casting directors might look at you, sometimes they might be on the phone, sometimes they’ll talk over you. And more often than not, you’ll hear nothing. I have got jobs out of it before, but it’s just not worth it. We tape all our [audition] stuff in our garden shed, now. Having a shed in our back garden has made us a lot of money, me and Jim.”

On the pressure on men: “You have to have a six pack, you have to have a pair of glutes, you have to wax your chest. You have to sign a contract saying you will show your bum. You see these poor guys right before a scene, doing press-ups, when they should be thinking about their character. That’s what we’ve come to expect from men on screen now. It’ll be from up there [she gestures to some nameless authority]. Hot, young people with perfect bodies. That’s what people want to see. And of course it actually isn’t what people want to see. I want to see interesting faces. I want to see different bodies. I want to see people I can relate to. There’s nothing attractive about knowing a man has been flexing in front of a mirror five minutes before a scene. When did that become sexy? And I don’t want to see a woman looking starved to death. When did that become sexy? These are first world problems, It’s very easy as an actor to live in a bubble and think that life is about acting, and of course it’s not. It can turn you into a bit of a monster.”

Isn’t she awesome? I think so.

If you are an actor then check out my book How To Be a Successful Actor: Becoming an Actorpreneur. It is available in print and in all eBook formats on both Smashwords and Amazon.

Sciku: The Wonder of Science – In Haiku! Book review

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Sciku: The Wonder of Science – In Haiku! By Students of The Camden School For Girls.
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Published 20 November 2014, this book was an instant hit at Frost because it is a science book written by girls. Women, and girls, are underrepresented in science and many a sexist thinks that us girls just aren’t smart enough to handle big subjects like maths and science. So, read this book and shove your thoughts!

Humourous and fun: the book fuses poetry with scientific knowledge. As entertaining as it is fun, I really loved this book. It is a great idea that is well-executed.

 

Gravity:
An attractive force
Between all objects with mass
Just like you and me

Physics, Chemistry and Biology are things of magic and wonder. They reveal complex patterns – and often thrilling chaos – at the heart of nature; the strange alchemy of reactions between invisible atoms; the bewildering origins of our universe in the furthest reaches of time and the connections in our brains that create love, fear, joy – and poetry.

Sciku brings together more than 400 revealing, poignant, witty haiku on scientific subjects. Written by students at Camden School for Girls – with all royalties from the sale of this book donated to the campaign to modernize their school science laboratory – these poems show that science may have given us the atom bomb, the laptop and the artificial heart but that it remains elegiac, enigmatic and often mind-bogglingly beautiful.

Photosynthesis:
Carbon dioxide
And water combine to form
Glucose thanks to light

Camden School for Girls is a comprehensive secondary school for girls, with a co-educational sixth form, in the London Borough of Camden in North London. The girls who contributed to this book range from the ages of 11 to 18.

Sciku is edited by Karen Scott, a teacher of English at the school and Simon Flynn, a teacher of Science at the school. Simon is the author of the Science Magpie (‘a cornucopia of curious facts, anecdotes and quotations … sure to entertain and surprise’ New Scientist) and is a teacher of science at Camden School for Girls.

Sciku: The Wonder of Science – In Haiku! is available here.

 

 

Falling By Emma Kavanagh Book Review

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fallingemmakavanaghA plane falls out of the sky. A woman is murdered. Four people all have something to hide.

This debut psychological thriller from former police psychologist Emma Kavanagh is stunning indeed. An engaging and exciting novel. This novel is brilliantly executed, it is a confident debut written by an extremely talented writer. You can tell that Emma Kavanagh was once a police psychologist: her novel is believable. She knows what she is talking about. The characters are incredibly well written and the nuances of life, grief and marriage are all well observed by the eye of a very adept writer.

The story itself is thoroughly engaging, drawing you in and making the book unputdownable. I love how the characters are woven together, how they end up dipping in and out of each other’s lives. This is a crime thriller that belongs on the same shelf as Nicci French. It is high praise indeed, but well deserved.

 

Jim is a retired police officer and worried father. His beloved daughter has disappeared and he knows something is wrong.

Tom has woken up to the news that his wife was on the plane, and he must break the news to their only son.

Cecilia had packed up and left her family. Now she has survived a tragedy, and sees no way out.

Freya is struggling to cope with the loss of her father. But as she delves into his past, she may not like what she finds.

 

Falling is available here. Read our Day in the Life piece on Emma Kavanagh here.

 

 

The Life of a Banana PP Wong Book Review

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Novels that bring an insight into race and culture can be sorely lacking. PP Wong is the first British-born Chinese novelist to be published and I find that very sad indeed. It does not say much for diversity. We can’t necessarily blame publishers, they only buy what they think will sell, what the public want. So maybe it is time we opened our eyes more to other cultures and the absolute horror of racism.

After the heavy opening paragraph I hope you don’t get the wrong idea, The Life of a Banana is a (mostly) funny tale of a young Chinese girl growing up in London. It is written in her style, something that is very hard to do, and harder to do well.

Of course, not everyone is racist or a bully and racists and bullies just embarrass people who aren’t racist and bullies, but some of the things Xing Li goes through are truly horrible and shocking. This is an excellent book on identity and the end of childhood. I really enjoyed reading it and it is a triumphant first novel.

thelifeofabananabookreview

Xing Li is what the Chinese call a banana – yellow on the outside and white on the inside. Although born and raised in London, she never feels like she fits in. When her mother dies, she moves with her older brother to live with venomous Grandma, strange Uncle Ho and Hollywood actress Auntie Mei. Her only friend is Jay – a mixed raced Jamaican boy with a passion for classical music.

Then Xing Li’s life takes an even harsher turn: the school bullying escalates and her uncle requests she assist him in an unthinkable favour. Her happy childhood becomes a distant memory as her new life is infiltrated with the harsh reality that comes with adolescence.

Consumed by secrets, violence and confusing family relations, Xing Li tries to find hope wherever she can. She realises that in order to find her own identity, she must first discover what it means to be both Chinese and British.

The Life of a Banana is available here.