Year of The Rat
Written by Clare Furniss
Published in Australia May 2014
320 Pages
Thank you to Simon and Schuster Australia
Grappling with grief is hard enough without repeat visits from the deceased. Pearl deals with death, life, and family in this haunting, humorous, and poignant debut. The world can tip at any moment… A fact that fifteen year old Pearl is all too aware of when her mom dies after giving birth to her baby sister, Rose.
Rose, who looks exactly like a baby rat, all pink, wrinkled, and writhing. This little Rat has destroyed everything, even ruined the wonderful relationship that Pearl had with her stepfather, the Rat’s biological father.
Mom, though… Mom’s dead but she can’t seem to leave. She keeps visiting Pearl. Smoking, cursing, guiding.
Told across the year following her mother’s death, Pearl’s story is full of bittersweet humor and heartbreaking honesty about how you deal with grief that cuts you to the bone, as she tries not only to come to terms with losing her mother, but also the fact that her sister, The Rat, is a constant reminder of why her mom is no longer around.
We book bloggers are a strange bunch, we come in all sorts and flavours. We all have an incline towards a genre, an author, or at times just a pretty cover may be all it takes to pique our interest. I tend to enjoy books that no one else has and I've never met a dystopian I haven't enjoyed on some level. But for all our differences, I had always thought I was part of a community that is supportive of it's bloggers and willing to lend a much needed hand to the new and confused. The short answer? Yes, we're mostly all awesome. The long and complicated answer? No, we're certainly not.
Alexander Altmann A10567
Written by Suzy Zail
Published May 1st 2014
352 Pages
Thank you to Walker Books Australia
★★★★
Fourteen year old Alexander Altmann doesn't need to look at the number tattooed on his arm. A10567: he knows it by heart. He also knows that to survive Auschwitz, he has to toughen up. When he is given the job of breaking in the commander's new horse, their survival becomes intertwined. Alexander knows the animal is scared and damaged, but he must win its trust. If he fails, they will both be killed.
In Birkenau, you're simply a number. It's been weeks since Alexander Altmann has seen his mother and sister, separated by prison camps where the Jewish family is now at the mercy of the German soldiers. Each day, Alexander sees men whipped, shot and abused and then prays that he isn't next. There's no bathing within the camp and being sent to the showers means something entirely different. They are left to sleep on wooden pallets, with only the clothes on their backs. A meal is a stale piece of bread and prisoners are left to fight over the peel of a piece of fruit, often to the death. If the prison camp has taught Alexander one thing, it's to keep his head down, his mouth shut and pray to a god that he no longer believes in.
When Alexander is chosen to work the stables at Auschwitz, along with several other men, he will be made to care for the horses the Nazi officers ride. The rules are simple, keep your assigned horse well fed, healthy and in peak physical condition or you'll become another lifeless body being carried out and replaced. But when Alexander is given the Commander's horse to care for, he's acutely aware the fine line he treads between life and death should he step out of line. With the memory of his horse back home, he befriends Serafin, the stunning Arabic horse and Isidor, a fellow stable hand. Before long, Alexander is assigned the role to tame the new wild stallion brought to the barracks, affectionately named Midnight. Midnight is frightened and doesn't trust Alexander, which makes the three weeks he has to train the horse that much more difficult.
While he struggles to tame the horse, Alexander finds himself caring for the animal even though becoming soft may just end his life. Midnight represents freedom and an unbridled hope that he may just survive the camp after all. But as the war burns closer, Alexander's dream of freedom and preservation may just burn with it.
Kelly's Thoughts
Alexander Altmann wasn't what I had expected. I assumed from the synopsis that the storyline was about being imprisoned by the Germans and concentrated on the appalling and cruel conditions. But I was pleasantly surprised. Alexander Altmann represents hope even in the darkest of conditions and the fight for life. Alexander's story was nothing short of heartbreaking, at only fourteen, he is taken into the adult male camp and kept in inhumane conditions. Men dying is a part of everyday life, and I use the term life loosely, as the prisoners are only barely existing. Alexander has been through more in his short life, than any of us would in a lifetime, he has no idea where his family is, but knows if he has any chance of surviving, he needs to remain hardened. He won't allow himself to make friends, with men dying all around him, he figures there's no point. I can't even begin to imagine being only fourteen and thrown into a terrifying world that no child or adult should experience. It was horrific.
Based on a true story, it is said that Suzy Zail was visiting the Holocaust Centre in Melbourne when Alexander Altmann begun to materialise. She was listening to a guest speaker in which an elderly man participated from the audience, uzy sought the man out after lecture and heard his story. Fred Steiner is Alexander Altmann with a fictional blend. He survived, migrated to Australia where he married and had children of his own, in a country that prides itself on freedom for all and continues to speak at the Holocaust Centre in Melbourne. Through the pen of Suzy Zail, I'm incredibly humbled and grateful to have read his story.
The Treatment
The Program: Book Two
The Program: Book Two
Written by Suzanne Young
Published April 29th 2014
352 Pages
Thank you to Simon and Schuster Australia
How do you stop an epidemic?
Sloane and James are on the run after barely surviving the suicide epidemic and The Program. But they’re not out of danger. Huge pieces of their memories are still missing, and although Sloane and James have found their way back to each other, The Program isn’t ready to let them go.
Escaping with a group of troubled rebels, Sloane and James will have to figure out who they can trust, and how to take down The Program. But for as far as they’ve come, there’s still a lot Sloane and James can’t remember. The key to unlocking their past lies with the Treatment, a pill that can bring back forgotten memories, but at a high cost. And there’s only one dose.
Ultimately when the stakes are at their highest, can Sloane and James survive the many lies and secrets surrounding them, or will The Program claim them in the end?
Welcome to The Book Blogger Test. With thanks to Gina from Behind The Pages for tagging me.
The rules are simple: Answer the questions truthfully and then tag five other bloggers.
The Winner's Curse
The Winner's Curse: Book One
The Winner's Curse: Book One
Written by Marie Rutkoski
Fantasy, Dystopian
Fantasy, Dystopian
Published March 4th 2014
368 Pages
Thank you to Bloomsbury Australia via Netgalley
Winning what you want may cost you everything you love.
As a general’s daughter in a vast empire that revels in war and enslaves those it conquers, seventeen-year-old Kestrel has two choices: She can join the military or get married. But Kestrel has other intentions.
One day, she is startled to find a kindred spirit in a young slave up for auction. Arin’s eyes seem to defy everything and everyone. Following her instinct, Kestrel buys him, with unexpected consequences. It’s not long before she has to hide her growing love for Arin. But he, too, has a secret, and Kestrel quickly learns that the price she paid for a fellow human is much higher than she ever could have imagined.
Set in a richly imagined new world, The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski is a story of deadly games where everything is at stake, and the gamble is whether you will keep your head or lose your heart.
Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online bookshops, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course eBooks. Hosted by Tyngas Reviews.
News
I want to start by apologising to everyone who's commented, read and emailed over the past fortnight, I haven't been online much and with good reason. After three years of failed garden attempts, we've finally landscaped something that resembles a backyard. Hooray! Now that the main bulk of our project is done, I'll be able to start visiting blogs again.
The Taking
Written by Kimberly Derting
Published April 29th 2014
320 Pages
Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper Teen
When sixteen year old Kyra Agnew wakes up behind a Dumpster at the Gas ’n’ Sip, she has no memory of how she got there. With a terrible headache and a major case of déjà vu, she heads home only to discover that five years have passed... Yet she hasn’t aged a day.
Everything else about Kyra’s old life is different. Her parents are divorced, her boyfriend, Austin, is in college and dating her best friend, and her dad has changed from an uptight neat-freak to a drunken conspiracy theorist who blames her five-year disappearance on little green men.
Confused and lost, Kyra isn’t sure how to move forward unless she uncovers the truth. With Austin gone, she turns to Tyler, Austin’s annoying kid brother, who is now seventeen and who she has a sudden undeniable attraction to. As Tyler and Kyra retrace her steps from the fateful night of her disappearance, they discover strange phenomena that no one can explain, and they begin to wonder if Kyra’s father is not as crazy as he seems. There are others like her who have been taken... And returned. Kyra races to find an explanation and reclaim the life she once had, but what if the life she wants back is not her own?
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