In My Mailbox 28

In My Mailbox is hosted by Kristi over at The Story Siren.
Downside (or upside) of the central library in town being on my way to college: I go past the library at least four times a week, and normally I can't resist going inside and borrowing more books than I can realistically read before I have to return them.  This week, I suppose, was no different.  However, most of them are books that I've wanted to read for aeons and never quite gotten round to, so I'm pretty excited about reading them (and more determined to make an effort with them).

FOR REVIEW

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

FROM THE LIBRARY

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson

The Woman Destroyed by Simone de Beauvoir

How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

The Monk by Matthew Lewis (also includes The Bravo of Venice)

BUtterfield 8 by John O'Hara

BOUGHT

The Beautiful and Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

So, there you are.  What was in your mailbox this week?   

Cover Love #1: The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin

Dear blog,
So I thought that today, with a lack of a Foreign Language Friday post, I would participate in this new Friday feature hosted by Melissa over at i swim for oceans.  Because I love cover art in all shapes and forms, and the idea of sharing some of my favourites with the rest of cyberspace makes me happy.

Title: The Amazing Mind of Alice Makin

Author: Alan Shea

Publisher: Chicken House Ltd.

Release date: March 2008

Genre: Middle-grade, historical fiction

Fun Fact: I, um, don't have one. Sorry.  If there's something really cool behind the general design or creation of this cover I don't know, do tell me.

Why I Have Cover Lust: I read the book when it was first released, and although it wasn't like "Oh my squash this book is amaaazing" so much as, "Eh, it's all right", it still remains one of my favourite book covers.

I suppose the main reason I like it is how vibrant it looks with the fireworks, while at the bottom of the cover you can see silhouettes of a ruined London.  It's set after the Second World War, in a world where Alice's imagination is the only thing that brightens up her drab world of bomb sites and greyness.

So, there you go.  Do you like it, or not? What are your favourite covers?  If you've read it, what did you think of the book?

Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Dear blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

Review: Before I read this, it had been the longest time since I'd read some actual proper young adult historical fiction.  Things like  A Dead Man's Memoir and Le Bal and such don't really count because they were written in that era.  So Between Shades of Gray was a refreshing change from the stuff I've been reading at the moment.  It is also what can only be described as an epic literary win because it's set in the Baltic states and Russia.  The deportation of thousands of Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Finns is probably something that I only know about because I've been an utter history geek since I was like five.  But it's such an important part of eastern European history, it totally shouldn't go unread about. 

It's heart-wrenching from the first chapter, jumping straight into the story. The last sentence of the first chapter is some intense foreshadowing; "We were about to become cigarettes"... I just...when I read that, I wanted to burst into tears, put the book down and seek out some fluffy shojo manga as fast as I could.  But then on the other hand, once you've seen Lina's terrible journey begin, you have to follow it through to see if she's strong enough to emerge at the other end.   Lina's experiences are in turn humiliating, disturbing, terrifying and harrowing, and Ruta Sepetys shields the reader from nothing.

The characters.  Every one was valuable, as if each of them was meant to be there, and served a purpose, even if it was ultimately do die.  I quite liked the way that some characters were never given names; like the man who wound his watch, for instance.  I wondered at first if this would become quite annoying if Lina kept referring to people by their distinguishing features as opposed to their real names, but in a way it seemed very real, and such characters still had real personality and depth to them. 

I liked Lina, of course I did.  How could I not? She was an entirely ordinary teenage girl, her reactions to the nightmare that she was thrown into were so...natural, complete with actual fear that radiated off the page and everything.  If I said that the whole way through that she was strong and brave and willing to do whatever she could to keep her family together, that would be lying, because she wasn't always like that; there were points where she was scared, where she'd done things that she had regretted.  But that made her all the more human, to my mind.

Lina's mother Elena was also pretty awesome, for lack of a better word. I totally admire how she managed to keep her chin up for her children all the way through like that. And her brother Jonas was so sweet.  He was an interesting character to observe throughout the story, because at the start he seemed very much like a boy and then by the end, a young man.

I also liked the writing style. It was very spare, but in an entirely flowing way.  I haven't read many books recently that have been such an ideal balance of simplicity and poetry; at some points it seemed very relevant to the harsh Russian landscapes, and not a word is wasted.   Throughout the book, at the end of some of the chapters, there were little flashbacks to Lina's past life in Lithuania that were somehow relevant to the present plot.  In turn it was kind of a relief to detract from the present events, but on the other it just seemed to make the contrast between her past and present life all the more saddening.  Some of the flashbacks were kind of foreshadowing to their deportation.

So, this is an entirely essential read for anyone, whether history is in general something they're interested by or not.  I look forward to seeing what Ruta Sepetys writes next.

In three words: heartbreaking, enlightening, haunting.
Recommended for: Everyone with a box of tissues to hand.
Rating: 5

In My Mailbox 22

Dear Blog,
IMM is hosted as ever by Kristi of The Story Siren.

This was another week in which my taste in books led me further afield than the local library.  I went to the Great Big Library in the centre of town, which is full of Exciting Shiny Novels I couldn't dream of finding in the library closer to home. 
Also, I've been reading a lot more recently.  Of late I'd kind of been in something of a reading slump; that doesn't seem to be so much of the case any more.  Maybe it's because I'm finding more books that I truly want to read, or my tastes have changed slightly.
Excuse the random bottle of water in the picture.  My desk is a mess at the moment, but left long enough it will clean itself.

BOUGHT

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

LIBRARY

We by Yegevny Zamyatin [currently reading]
Le Bal by Irène Némirovsky [read; next week's Foreign Language Friday post] 

The Plague by Albert Camus

Junk by Melvin Burgess

So that was my bookish week.  What about yours?

In My Mailbox 21 or Some More Classics

Dear blog,
hosted as  ever by Kristi of The Story Siren fame.

This week was another in which I found myself in the classics section of my local library, which has been happening increasingly of late (probably because I've read almost all the YA books I want to read there.  Oh the joys of having a pitifully tiny village library).

BOUGHT

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

FROM THE LIBRARY

A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [currently reading]

Cathedral by Raymond Carver

A Dead Man's Memoir by Mikhail Bulgakov

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

So, there you go. That was my bookish week.  What was yours like? 

Foreign Language Friday: Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

Dear Blog,

Be warned: this is a very, very long review. I don't actually expect anyone to get to the end of it.

Name: Notre-Dame de Paris (or The Hunchback of Notre Dame) 

Written by: Victor Hugo
First published in: French
Translated by: John Sturrock
Summary (from Goodreads):  In the vaulted Gothic towers of Notre-Dame lives Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bellringer. Mocked and shunned for his appearance, he is pitied only by Esmeralda, a beautiful gypsy dancer to whom he becomes completely devoted. Esmeralda, however, has also attracted the attention of the sinister archdeacon Claude Frollo, and when she rejects his lecherous approaches, Frollo hatches a plot to destroy her that only Quasimodo can prevent. Victor Hugo's sensational, evocative novel brings life to the medieval Paris he loved, and mourns its passing in one of the greatest historical romances of the nineteenth century.

Review: It's a tricky business being a bookworm and/or book blogger. Because you read a lot.  Well duh, I can hear you say, what else would you be blogging about if you were a book blogger?  but let me finish.  It's hard because you read a lot; and you want to talk about the books that you read, but talking about them cuts into your reading time. And seeing as you read so much, your chances of coming across awesome books are pretty high.  But then there are so many good books, you set the bar higher for books that when you've finished them make you go whoooooah holy snood* that was awesome.
Anyway.  I can safely say that Notre-Dame de Paris (or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), is one of those Holy-Snood-This-Is-Awesome novels.

Victor Hugo is my hero for many reasons, but one being; he wrote the book in four months.  Yes, around 200,000 words in four months.  That's like doing NaNoWriMo four times over. So I look up to him for being able to pull off such a feat, and he's probably the first person I'd say if someone asked me the question, "If you could invite any authors to a dinner party, dead or living, who would you invite?" he would be on the VIP list.
In the midst of my novel-writing frenzy that was November, this was one of the few books that I actually stopped hammering away at my laptop for in order to read.  What's not to like, and what does it miss?  Nothing.

I had better warn you; it's a painfully difficult book to get in to. Practically nothing really gets going until 170 pages in or so; a lot of it being banter between various minor characters and the escapades of Gringoire, a bumbling philosopher who's nice enough at first until his comings and goings seem to get slightly irrelevant, and then you're like, "okay, thanks Gringoire, but you really should get going now."  A similar character is Jehan Frollo, brother of the infamous Dom Claude (who I'll get to later).  But Jehan was highly amusing, and his arrogance and foolishness was actually what amused me so much.  As the plot progressed he became a welcome distraction from all the darkness was occurring, until his demise.  Which was actually to me a bigger loss than any of the other characters in the multitude of those who died, because despite his flaws and however annoyed he made everyone else, he was like a sudden pause of rain in a thunderstorm.

Another, and probably the main, thing that stands in the way of actually getting to what's otherwise known as the good part are some of the descriptions.  They go on for chapters, I kid you not.  The descriptions are utterly beautiful, it's true, but after 20 pages describing the cathedral your mind starts to wonder.  Some whole chapters could easily be skipped, unless if like me you get consumed by guilt for skipping things out, especially if you're one of those people who endeavours to finish books, because that's hugely hypocritical (strangely I have no problem with giving books up if I don't enjoy them- I just dislike skipping passages out).  Perhaps I should have taken the fact that I was contemplating skipping out a few passages as a sign that I should have given up, but I didn't want to.  Especially seeing as the rest of it was so compelling. 

And about the plot, the relevant parts themselves- well,  it was well worth it. I would say that the plot was fast-paced, but that would be lying, so I won't.  Instead I'll say; persevere.  Get past those unneeded dialogues, those descriptions that go on for pages, and in short you have a story that's so dark, and so fascinating, and so incredible, when you've finished you're asking yourself why you had ever contemplated giving it up. It's romantic in a twisted sort of way, and both disturbed and disturbing.
Mostly because of the characters. 

Who should I start with?  Well, Quasimodo I suppose, seeing as he seems to be made out to be the protagonist.  He wasn't as central to the story as I had expected; but he was still a good character.  The only word I could really use to describe him would be...interesting.  I had a lot of misconceptions about him; so he was largely a complete surprise.  I wasn't sure what to make of him, even by the end; did I root for him (yes)? Did I pity his devotion to Esmeralda, or admire it (not sure)?  And speaking of Esmeralda, she was another surprise.  Only sixteen, so she wasn't all that different from any other teenage girl in the fact that after a while what was supposedly heartbreaking naïveté just actually seemed to be a pathetic yet inescapable form of lovesickness.  My general attitude towards her was; "Yeah, I hate that you should be the object of Frollo's desire, and I really want you to escape his lecherous clutches, but honestly?  Please get over Phoebus, and then I'd like you a lot more." 
Oh, how I hated Phoebus.  What did she see in him? In this respect Notre-Dame is no different from some contemporary teen novel.  It's like The Truth About Forever and Living Dead Girl and a baby (You're probably all, "The Truth About Forever, what the heck?"  But seriously:  Phoebus=Wes). Also that would be some messed up pregnancy, with Notre-Dame being almost 200 years older; but this is all hypothetical. 

I said I would get back to Dom Claude Frollo earlier and now I will, because I'm saving my favourite character for last.  And why is such a character my favourite? I have a thing for misunderstood, tormented villains for one.  But also, and mostly, because he has so many different dimensions.  He's the most three-dimensional, well-developed character that I've come across in months. He doesn't come into the book, properly, for over a hundred pages.  And when he does it's two chapters that basically describe his childhood and such.  He's a fascinating character from the start, and it's interesting to watch him change; how his first attraction towards Esmeralda gets bent out of shape into a terrifying obsession .  He's weak, but you fear him.  He's sinister, but you pity him.  He's tormented, but you understand him. 
Yet his demise was hugely satisfying.

So I wonder if I must seem slightly geeky for writing such a hysterically enthusiastic review about a classic that often gets overlooked because it's commonly associated with an animated film.  But, really?  I hope I've done it justice.  And Kudos if you got the end of this review.   

In three words: fascinating, incredible, loooong.
Recommended for: everyone who doesn't mind a challenge.
Rating: 5.  OF COURSE.

*Yes, I have been watching a little too much Vlogbrothers lately.

Review: Three Rivers Rising

Dear Blog,

2010 Debut Author Challenge novel #3.  I had better get reading if I want to complete the challenge, which I do. 
Another short review- Is there such a thing as reviewers block?  If so, I think I might have it. But I'm reviewing Three Rivers Rising because it's a wonderful book, anyway, and I need to say why.
 

Summary (from Goodreads): Sixteen-year-old Celestia is a wealthy member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, where she meets and falls in love with Peter, a hired hand who lives in the valley below, and by the time of the torrential rains that lead to the disastrous Johnstown flood of 1889, she has been disowned by her family and is staying with him in Johnstown. Includes an author’s note and historical timeline.

Review: Historical fiction, verse novels and dual narratives all make me very happy.  Put them together and you have the work of art that is Three Rivers Rising.  What more could I ask for?!  But for all my interest in American history, I'd never heard anything about the Johnstown Flood.  Maybe I've missed out on what's considered to be a huge tragedy over in the States, and I'm just ignorant.  Either way, now I've read about it, it was pretty fascinating.  And of course the idea for a story based around such a devastating event was fantastic. 

This book alternates between the points of view of Celestia, Peter, Maura, a girl not much older than Celestia but already married with three young children, Kate, a young window-turned-medical student, and, briefly, Celestia's father. At first when Maura and Kate came into the story I was slightly confused about what their place was in both the universe and the novel.  Their place in the universe still remains to me much of a mystery, but their place in the novel is to give it extra dimensions, points of view and adding extra dimensions and meaning.  I think Three Rivers Rising would have been more of a hopelessly romantic yet poetically tragic love story  if it hadn't had those other elements to it. It is a hopelessly romantic yet poetically tragic love story anyway, I suppose, but these extra voices give it more depth.  For instance, the brief glimpse into the mind of Whitcomb, Celestia's dad, makes him seem like much more of a complex character, and more of a person than a rich businessman.  He is, I suppose, the closest thing that the book has to a villain. 

For all these many voices, Jame Richards still manages to make each voice unique,  and give each person a story to tell.  They're all three-dimensional.
It's hard to say that Celestia was a likeable main character, mainly because all the other characters are so well-rounded and have you rooting for them, it's hard to call her a "main character" (even though she is really).  Anyway, she was brave and true to herself, even though admittedly she does suffer a little from Rebellious Princess Syndrome,  it's not in such an obvious sort of way  à la the girls of Spence Academy in the Gemma Doyle trilogy. 

I suppose the one thing I wasn't too keen on was how rushed the opening of the book was.  It's strange- the reader seemed slightly thrown in at the deep end in that Peter and Celestia were already having secret meetings and kissing by page seventeen.  However, on the other hand, the book opens the summer before the flood, allowing Peter and Celestia to get to know each other and such before the flood.

And the flood itself. Especially towards the end of the book, Three Rivers Rising was devastating and utterly heart-wrenching.  I thought it was particularly effective how the day of the flood, as well as stating the location and which character is narrating, the time of day, so the reader can observe the events unfolding from the failure of the dam to the destruction of Johnstown.
For all the novels-in-verse I devour, it's rare that I come across historical fiction written in verse format,  so this made me happy.  And it was particularly wonderful poetry, which seemed to flow, almost, like a river.

In Three Words: poetic, heart-wrenching, fascinating. 

reccomended for: everyone.  Especially those who've never heard of the Johnstown Flood.

Rating: 5. 

Review: The Fences Between Us

Dear Blog,

This will have to be a pretty short review,  seeing as my time is of the essence, but anyway-

Summary (from Goodreads): Thirteen-year-old Piper Davis records in her diary her experiences beginning in December 1941 when her brother joins the Navy, the United States goes to war, she attempts to document her life through photography, and her father--the pastor for a Japanese Baptist Church in Seattle--follows his congregants to an Idaho internment camp, taking her along with him. Includes historical notes.

Review: When I first heard about the relaunch I was like "ohymword ohmyword new Dear America books MUST PRE-ORDER NOW." Alas I couldn't pre-order it, and ended up spending a fortune on postage trying to get to it.

Piper, the protagonist, was pretty likeable. She seemed to sound very much like a thirteen-year-old; I think that sometimes when people write historical fiction, they can forget that the main character is a child, and how to write from their way at looking at the world. I guess (nay, know) that Kirby Larson isn't thirteen, but Piper's voice really seems clear and sort of shines through. Plus, she's funny and thoughtful and considerate in turn, kind, but with suitable elements of selfishness to give her flaws and stop her seeming overly perfect.

The supporting characters are all likeable in their various ways; Betty Sato was a particularly interesting, if only for the circumstances she was in, and Bud made suitable material for Piper's first boyfriend.
Piper talks a lot in her journal about her older brother Hank, serving in the navy and at Pearl Harbour at the time of the infamous Japanese bombing. Yet for a lot of the book he himself remains a mystery, only appearing once or twice to visit Piper and her father, and only for a few days. So it was quite hard to really relate to Piper and hope for his safe return if I didn't know him, or read about him anyway.

I can't help but think, though, that for all its interesting subject matter, The Fences Between Us would have been even more fascinating/effective if it had been written from the point of a Japanese-American incarceree in Minidoka. I mean, it's all very well that Piper goes to school there and such, but it's not the real insight into an internment camp that you might get from the point of view of an Issei or Nikkei. Two words: companion novel, from the point of view of Piper's Japanese-American friend Betty Sato, perhaps, à la Molly Flaherty from Where Have All the Flowers Gone?  and her brother Patrick  in the My Name is America series.  So although I guess it was pretty interesting to have an "outsider"'s point of view, it would be even more so to see things from the point of view of an internee.

So, well, it makes me very happy that Dear America  has been brought back for another generation of readers.  It was well worth the wait, and the read.

In Three Words: insightful, rewarding, enjoyable.
Reccomended for: Dear America fans old and new.

Rating: 4.

Review: The Year the Gypsies Came

Dear Blog,
I finished The Year the Gypsies Came yesterday, and I was going to review it this evening but have some time on my hands before my German lesson so I'll write it now-though it will be a brief and to-the-point review. 
Summary (from the blurb): Emily Iris looks forward to the times her parents welcome house guests to their family's unhappy home on the edge of Johannesburg.  For a while, as long as the visitors are there, her mother and father will put  their quarrels aside and be like a real family.
One spring, a family of wanderers-an Australian couple and their two boys-comes to stay.  But the arrival of these 'gypsies' starts a chain of events that will shatter Emily's hopes of a happy family and change them all forever.

Review:  It was nice to read a book set in South Africa during apartheid that doesn't have anyting vaguely resembling white-girl-falls-in-love-with-black-boy-or-vice-versa in it.  I mean, it has elements of racial tension, but, well, not all the people in South Africa in the late 1900s were white middle-class teenage girls who weren't afraid to break the rules and stand up to the police, à la Blue Sky Freedom or Ruby Red.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  They're both very good books.   It's hard to tell if The Year the Gypsies Came falls into the same sort of category.  Emily is white, her parents are wealthy, they live in the suburbs, and so on.  But it's different, too.  It's full of Zulu and Xhosa folk tales and the poetic descriptions are as beautiful as the front cover.

However.   If you're after a joyous and life-affirming read, I don't think this is for you.  There's death, prisons, abuse, shouting parents,  rape, and so on. Despite what the cover would have you believe, it's dark stuff. 1 dysfunctional family + 1 abusive family=2 dysfunctional families and a lot of heartbreak, especially when you least expect it.  However, if you're not to depressed to go on, you'll be rewarded.  It's similar to A Swift Pure Cry in that despite the overall sadness it's relatively uplifting.

Speaking of Emily.  I think it worked well that she was so innocent.  In some respects, I think it worked well that she was so small and unknowing of the big wide world's horrors.  One thing, though:  Was she really 12?  She seemed much younger, and I suppose her age made her seem almost ignorant where she was just supposed to be naïve. Perhaps if she was a couple of years younger it would have been slightly more believable.  Either way, innocence is innocence and despite her age it made her mother's affair and the knowledge of what Jock, the Australian wildlife photographer, does to his sons seems all the more frightening.  And in the end Emily speaks up. 

There wasn't  really any romance, save between Emily's mother and a man called Dennis who you only actually meet once or twice, and not for very long.  In that respect he was nought but a minor character, but on the other hand he was so important.    And what happens between Emily and Otis but, well, that's as far from romance as you can get.  I didn't mind the lack of romance, really.  Though it's nice, it's not really essential to the story (and Emily was only 12).  And, seeing as this is The Year the Gypsies Came, it would most likely end in tragedy anyway.  Alas, alack. 

One last thing: The descriptions are so clear and poetic.  It's beautifully written. *thumbs-up for nice scenery--setting*

Summary: Worth reading if you don't mind depressing books.  It's different from many apartheid-era books, which was pretty cool.  The cover is as beautiful as the prose, but don't  let these things mislead you.  Rating: 3.

Dear America? Dear World?

Dear Blog,
I write you today on the subject that is the relaunch of the Dear America series.  I have been rummaging around in the blogosphere a little more and I came across an idea that is pure awesomeness:  Why just Dear America?  Why not Dear World?

I found two blog entries on this subject: Here  and  here.  But my blog entry about this subject may not work because, well, I live in the UK, which has it's own equivalent of Dear America, which is My Story (which I talked about in my entry Why I Dislike the My Story relaunch).  And the two blog entries talk about My Story , Dear Canada, and My Australian Story being more available to readers of Dear America (The equivalent to these in New Zealand is called My Story as well).  And the two links are about making them more available to Americans.  No matter.

I've been reading My Story and Dear America for years, and I've just started reading Dear Canada as well.  Yes, as you may have guessed I love historical fiction in diary form muchly.  

I think the whole idea: Dear World I mean, would be quite interesting. Yes, yes.  Historical journals from every corner of the Earth.  YES! YES! YES!  But I don't think that Dear World is such a good title.  Dear Canada  is translated into French as Cher Journal (Dear Diary).   That has more of a ring to it.

Anyway.  It would be a good idea, since D.A spin-offs are written in Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France and Mexico as well.  It'd be various books from all such series' rolled into one, perhaps.  I know I'd buy it.

It'd be something for Scholastic to think about.
I better go.  My sister wants to use the computer *sigh*. Oh well.

Review-Footsteps in the Snow

Dear Blog,
today's review is for Footsteps in the Snow, by Carol Matas (and part of the Dear Canada series). I got it for my birthday and, well, I thought it deserves a mention. Also as I'm still working my way through The Sweet Far Thing (about 300 pages to go), which I stayed up until 1:30 last night reading.
Anyway. On with the matter at hand.

Summary: It's 1815. As the book begins, 12-year-old Isobel Scott is on the voyage from Scotland to Canada with her father and two brothers, following the death of her mother, who died on the voyage. Isobel finds her old journal and, seeing as there's only a page or so written in, she starts recording her thoughts and feelings. They're on their way with some other Selkirk settles to Rupert's Land, but various complications ensue as they have too few supplies to last a winter, struggle to claim their land, and are caught in the conflict between the Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Bay Company.

Review: I have a thing for historical fiction in diary form. I started reading the My Story series when I was eight, and since then I've also started working through the Dear America series and Dear Canada, as well. But Footsteps in the Snow is only the second book in the Dear Canada series I've read because they're so hard to get in England. But my general outlook on such fiction is: you can never have enough.
Anyway.
My favourite thing about this book had to be Isobel herself. She was such a believable character and I really found myself rooting for her. Maybe this was because she was unlike the uncountable numbers of female protagonists in such historical fiction, i.e being awful at sewing, wanting to run around climbing trees, getting their hair tangled and all in all looking for adventure, Isobel was the exact opposite. Nay: She spoke English as well as Scottish Gaelic and could read and write better than many other children in that era (i.e 1815). shewanted to be a lady, and believed that in Canada she could be just that. She wanted to live a life of luxury and happiness, "living in a grand house in the New World, with servants to wait on me and young men coming to call." This is what made her seem even more out of her depths traversing the Canadian wilderness at minus thirty degrees. This quote particularly struck me:

I cannot believe how far from my dreams we have sunk. We were supposed to begin a life where I would be a lady. Instead I am nothing more than a servant to the savages. I always try to bear myself with dignity, however, so as not to let them see that my pride is injured.
As I read it I was thinking, "YES! YES! YES! That's exactly how somebody in her situation would feel!" Carol Matas captured her character perfectly. Her frustrations, her joys, her initial resentment at her father marrying White Loon (a local Cree woman)...Everything was there. Eventually Isobel overcomes many hardships in the end and emerges as a strong young woman.

However. Despite this the book was quite slow moving at times, and I felt it needed a little push to get going again. Though it was a pleasure to read, when you sort of stand back and think, "so what happened?" The answer is, well, not as much as you think as you're reading this. But then, I suppose, it was told in diary form and you can't expect such a beginning-middle-end type plot as such.
Oh well. That aside, it's well worth a read for all fans of such historical fiction.
Rating: 4/5