Review: Postcards from No Man's Land

Dear Blog,

I bring with me a review of Postcards from No Man's Land by Aidan Chambers, which I read last week and was too busy doing holiday-type things to review at the time. 

Summary (from Goodreads): Jacob Todd is abroad on his own, visiting his grandfather’s grave at the commemoration of the Battle of Arnhem in Amsterdam. There, he meets elderly Geertrui, who tells an extraordinary story of love and betrayal, which completely overturns Jacob’s view of himself and his country, and leads him to question his place in the world. Jacob’s story is paralleled in time by the events of the dramatic day in World War II when retreating troops were sheltered by Geertrui’s family.


Review: I've been meaning to read the Dance sequence for a few months, since I saw the epicly huge This is All in a library and didn't have enough space in my bag to take it out.  I haven't been back to that particular library since, and since it's not in my area (though, being the weirdo I am, I have about 3 different library cards to supply me with books from all around southern England), I can't order a copy.  Anyway, I've been so busy buying and borrowing other books I'd sort of not gotten round to it.  Eventually I ordered a copy of Postcards off Amazon (seeing as I don't have room for This is All on my bookcase).  How glad I am that I did.
Although Postcards is the fifth book, I think you can read them in any order.  I have.  

First things first: this is a very complex book.  In my failed attempt to explain it, this will no doubt be a very confusing, all-over-the-place review that makes little sense.  The story is split into two halves and tells two stories; that of Jacob, a 17-year-old in Amsterdam, circa 1995, and Geetrui, who is a terminally ill woman whose side of the story is written as a letter to Jacob about her life towards the end of the second world war.   

I wasn't sure what to make of Jacob at first.  At the beginning of the book he reminded me a little bit of  Simon from Exchange by Paul Magrs; timid, shy and slightly boring, but as the book went on and he changed as a person, I liked him more and more.  Though on the whole he still wasn't particularly amazing (Now, male protagonists must be as likeable as Sammy from Struts and Frets and Miles from Looking for Alaska in order for me to really, really like them)
However.  To my mind, Geetrui and her 1944 companions really steal the show.  This is for many reasons: she's a more likeable character, her relationship (with Jacob's grand-father) was true love- Although Jacob learns a lot from his exploration of life and love in Amsterdam, there's no proper passion, no undying love.  Which, now and again, is absolutely awesome.  Little flings over the course of a few days interest me not.   Also, it was set in the past.  If you read my blog often then you'll know that Historical Fiction is one of my favourite genres.  So it makes me happy that Postcards had an element of that.

In the afterword of my copy, Aidan Chambers says that people tend to watch Jacob but live with Geetrui, therefore making her side of the story more compelling.  This was, to my mind, true.  It was heartbreaking and hopeful and exciting and romantic.    
The way the author wove Geetrui and Jacob's lives together was very clever and well thought-up. I love stories where multiple lives intertwine in a clever and awesome sort of way. 

Postcards is a very serious book.  Not serious as in, depressing, but serious as in full of philosophical, intellectual-type quotes that make you want to go through the book with a highlighter to mark out all the important passages.  If I liked to vandalise my books that way, I may well do that, but I don't like to hurt books that way.  Indeed, if they wanted certain pages to be hot pink/neon yellow/other highlighter colour, surely they would have printed them like that? 

Summary:  Not as amazing as I was hoping it would be,  but I'm definitely going to read the rest of the books in the Dance Sequence.  Expect more Aidan Chambers reviews to come.  Rating : 3.75

Foreign Language Friday: The Book of Everything (and Book blogger hop)

Dear Blog,
Before I start with Foreign Language Friday, let me say welcome to all the people visiting by way of the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Jen at Crazy for Books.  Hello, and nice to meet you. Welcome to my humble weblog.

Now on to Foreign Language Friday.  Today I'll be talking about Guus Kuijer's excellent The Book of Everything.

Name: The Book of Everything (originally called Het boek van alle dingen)
First Published In: Dutch
Translated By: John Nieuwenhuizen
Summary (from Goodreads): Thomas can see things no one else can see. Tropical fish swimming in the canals. The magic of Mrs. Van Amersfoort, the Beethoven-loving witch next door. The fierce beauty of Eliza with her artificial leg. And the Lord Jesus, who tells him, "Just call me Jesus." Thomas records these visions in his "Book of Everything." They comfort him when his father beats him, when the angels weep for his mother's black eyes. And they give him the strength to finally confront his father and become what he wants to be when he grows up: "Happy."

Review: Because the picture quality is so rubbish, you can't read all the words swirling around the outside of this editions' cover.  It's all praise from newspapers and websites, and this extraordinary book really deserves every word that spins around the bright yellow cover.  However, despite all the critical acclaim, nobody I know seems to have read or even heard of it.  Which is a shame because it's great.

This is, as the title suggests, a book about everything.  Mostly, it's about emotions,and people, and religion, and where it all fits into the world.  It's true in this case that less is more: The Book of Everything has more meaning than a 1000 paged tome about the history of the world, or even Sophie's World, because The Book of Everything is on ground level with people.

  My favourite characters were Mrs van Amersfoort, the quirky "witch" from next door, and Margot, Thomas' older sister.  Margot was particularly awesome, even though she was portrayed as a giggly suck-up to their father, she snaps out of it about 3/4 of the way through the book when she's had enough of their obsessively religious and abusive father.  Go Margot!

Thomas was heartbreaking.  Mostly because of his innocence.  I'm not sure if his naïveté is actually realistic for a 9-year-old, but it his extraordinary way of looking at the world and the strange things he sees is still slightly heart-wrenching, but on the other hand he's utterly charming and sweet.  For example, the letter he writes to Eliza, a sixteen-year-old with a leather leg who lives down the street.  I wish he was my little brother (I would happily swap him for the 4-year-old  Star Wars obsessed jedi-in-training who is currently my brother).   He's so honest and funny.  I loved the lines, "she was religious, but not too badly", and "Thomas went to a Christian boys' school, so naturally he swore all the time with his friends, but he had never heard an adult swear" (or something like that, but I don't have the book with me at the moment so I can't quote it directly). 
So  much like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, his innocence makes the tragic things (his father beating him and his mother, etc) seem even  more horrifying, even though they're not too graphically described.  So it's hard to tell if this really is, as a quote inside the book says, a book for both old and young.  

There's a lot in this book about religion, including the fact that Jesus appears now and again to Thomas, and both he and God are portrayed as pretty useless and unable to intervene with anything.  Jesus seems like a nice enough character in this book, even though I don't believe in God, Jesus, the afterlife, etc.  At one point Thomas realises God can't help him, and believes that God died because He (I'll put He with a capital H) was so sad at what was happening. 

Apparently Guus Kuijer is a very popular author in the Netherlands, but this is his first book to be published in English.  I'm not sure if any more of his work has been translated into English since then, but if so I'll definitely read them. Speaking of which, the translation is excellent.  Though I guess I wouldn't know since I haven't read the original, even though I can read Dutch pretty fluently (even though I can speak barely a word).  This is because I speak English, German and some Norwegian and by putting them together, you get Dutch.  It's like a northern European pidgin.  Anyway, if it weren't for the various indications that it was first published abroad, you wouldn't know.

Summary: quirky and serious, funny and tragic, weird and wonderful, original and yet full of post-war everyday life, though you can read it in one sitting, The Book of Everything deserves to be read by teenagers, pensioners, schoolchildren, parents, basically everyone.  Rating:3.5