The Crimson Petal and the White

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

Canongate Books: paperback published 2010: 834 pages

Step into Victorian London and meet our heroine, Sugar – a young woman trying to drag herself up from the gutter any way she can – and the host of unforgettable characters that make up her world.

I had this sitting on my shelves for a while, and then Stacey from We Love this Book mentioned on Twitter (follow me!) she had read it and recommended that I do as well. Well… here we go then.

For starters, it’s a peculiar Point of View. This takes a little time to get used to before you can really settle in to the swing of things. The main issue I had with the book is I didn’t really have a character I could connect with – none of them were particularly endearing. Especially William Rackham, Sugar’s “bit of stuff”, who is, frankly, an idiot. Michele Faber is a fantastic writer in all aspects really – she has a beautiful way of pulling you in to the scene, creating palpable characters and situations that involve you in the story (which is why I think she used Second Person Present). Victorian England, in honesty, is not one my greatest interests… give me the Napoleonic Wars any day… but this is the one book that has brought the era alive for me. It made it something that is more than just a weird bit of history, but something that almost directly affects me. Now, I’m not sure if this is because the Victorians were obsessed with it or not, but there seemed to be a bit of a fixation on… uh… shall we say – bodily functions. I don’t know about you, but reading about that sort of stuff makes me a tad uncomfortable. I know it makes the characters more “real” (I suppose), but I really do not need to read about their poo in every chapter.

It took me a long time to read this book – not because it’s a long book or I wasn’t enjoying it – but because it simply seemed to take a long time to read. I knew bits of it, because I’d caught a few glimpses of the TV adaptation, so those I could read with some ease, however I found myself bogged down in all the wordiness and intricacy of the plot. This is no bad thing! There’s no risk of forgetting something that happened earlier in the book, simply because you read it with such care that it’s imprinted on your memory. But overall? I liked the story, but probably wouldn’t read it again, because frankly I’m glad to leave some of those characters behind.

Rating: 6/10

Next book: A quick ghost story before I take up Lunameth‘s recommendation – The Orphan’s Tales – so it’s 200-odd pages of Dark Matter by Michelle Paver (of children’s books Chronicles of Ancient Darkness fame) to scare me witless before I get on with some hardcore fantasy.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Scholastic: paperback published 2011: 454 pages

MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOUR

Winning will make you famous.
Losing means certain death.

In a darek vision of the near future, twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live TV show called the Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed.

When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her sister’s place in the games, she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

The Hunger Games came to my attention when I realised it was being turned into a film (as derogatory as I am about adaptations, they do wonders for the profile of the book). I also noticed that they were doing “grown up” covers instead of the garish Young Adult covers that are so off-putting when an adult wants to read them in public. So I gave it a go!

I can see why it’s been made in to a film. The novel itself is very visual and reads very much scene-by-scene. My issue came when I realised that I didn’t particularly like the main character –annoyingly, she’s good at everything, and also a bit selfish (which doesn’t make sense as she “sacrifices” herself for her little sister at the beginning). The premise of the story is this: there are twelve districts that every year have to donate a boy and a girl to something called the Hunger Games– where they battle to the death in front of TV cameras. Think Battle Royale crossed with Big Brother and throw in some Lord of the Flies for good measure and you pretty much get the idea. This is, in fact, a BRILLIANT idea for a book. I mean, check out the Peril, the Character Development, the Story Arc. Here’s where it goes wrong… you get a main character who technically you should like, but you simply can’t bring yourself to do it. There’s an awful lot of time discussing what animal she’s hunting or food she’s eating or how quiet she is, or how good with a bow and arrow she is, or how she’s rescuing people all the time. There’s very little emotion – and when there is, it feels very false.

I really enjoyed the book from the viewpoint that a Battle to the Death is the height of TV viewing. You could go in to the philosophical debate of how close we are to this in reality (but Charlie Brooker already did that with his Black Mirror series on the BBC). I didn’t enjoy it because actually, I didn’t really want Kat to win. I got to the end of the book, and even though I wanted to read the two sequels because the writing is good and the premise of the story is great and it could do so well, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about how wonderful Kat is – when really, she’s a bit of a cow.

Young Adult fiction is a guaranteed entertaining read (unless you go for an angst-and-drama Twilight rip-off). I still go back to Junk and other teen favourites. Philip Pullman’s trilogy was YA, and The Book Thief was produced as YA too. That’s why I always throw in a YA book to my reading list every now and then –the entertainment factor is often even better than adult fiction. As for The Hunger Games? I hope Kat is nicer in the film.

Rating: 5/10

Next book: I am getting told to read lots of books lately, and as I wait for The Orphan’s Tales to turn up (thanks Lunameth), I’m following the guidance of Stacey B. Stacey B works for We Love this Book, and tweeted about how much she enjoyed The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber the other day. As it was on my shelf, I’ve picked it up. The narrative is second-person present, which I’m not used to, so I’m having to quickly learn!