Review: No Baggage by Clara Bensen

Overview:

 

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike—it’s at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright modern take on the age-old questions: how do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? And can you love someone without the need for commitment, or any expectations for the future?

When Clara Bensen arranged to meet Jeff Wilson on the steps of the Texas State Capitol, after just a few email exchanges on OKCupid, it felt like something big was going to happen. Clara, a sensitive and reclusive personality, is immediately drawn to Jeff’s freewheeling, push-the-envelope nature. Within a few days of knowing one another, they embark on a 21-day travel adventure—from Istanbul to London, with zero luggage, zero reservations, and zero plans. They want to test a simple question: what happens when you welcome the unknown instead of attempting to control it?

Donning a single green dress and a small purse with her toothbrush and credit card, Clara travels through eight countries in three weeks. Along the way, Clara ruminates on the challenges of traveling unencumbered, while realizing when it comes to falling in love, you can never really leave your baggage behind.

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Review:

 

The book chronicles a three-week vacation- where Bensen and maybe-boyfriend Jeff bring nothing but the clothes on their backs. Interspersed are memories of Bensen's nervous-breakdown and how she met Jeff.

 

I found the book to be disjointed. The trip really took backseat to relationship worries that painted Jeff as almost entirely unlikable, and Bensen slightly unbalanced. There was also quite a bit of time spent exploring Bensen's "existential crisis,' which read more like a self-indulgent fissy fit. Rather than garnering sympathy, it all felt very forced and melodramatic. I would have like to learn more about Bensen's travel experiences, and how her grand no baggage experiment played out.

However, all that criticism aside, Bensen is clearly an intelligent and skilled writer. Her research into the scientific and mathematical implications of coincidence or Greek philosophers is stellar. Her thoughts on the nature of being are quite interesting as well.

 

I understand that Bensen and Jeff continue to travel sans baggage. I'll be interested to see how future writing manifests itself.

 

*I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami

Overview:

The debut short novels--nearly thirty years out of print-- by the internationally acclaimed writer, newly retranslated and in one English-language volume for the first time, with a new introduction by the author.

These first major works of fiction by Haruki Murakami center on two young men--an unnamed narrator and his friend and former roommate, the Rat. Powerful, at times surreal, stories of loneliness, obsession, and eroticism, these novellas bear all the hallmarks of Murakami's later books, giving us a fascinating insight into a great writer's beginnings, and are remarkable works of fiction in their own right. Here too is an exclusive essay by Murakami in which he explores and explains his decision to become a writer. Prequels to the much-beloved classics A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance, these early works are essential reading for Murakami completists and contemporary fiction lovers alike.

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Review:

Haruki Murakami is one of my all-time favorite authors, and his first works Wind/Pinball do not disappoint. It was so interesting to read these early novels knowing the evolution of Murakami's work. With other authors, you can sense when they have hit their stride or passed their peak. Murakami's writing is consistently excellent. His turns of phrase exceptional from his very first novels.

If you've read other Murakami novels- which obviously I recommend- Wind/Pinball will give you a sense of nostalgia. Having just finished these novels, I'd love to re-read Murakami's full collection. I love how much life and atmosphere goes into each novel. Murakami creates such a sense of time and place; it's so tangible. When he describes a 'very good coffee,' my mind immediately conjures the smell and taste of the best coffee I've ever had. If he mentions a record, I recall my introduction to those songs. Even when the limits of reality begin to stretch, I can visualize and relate to the scene. There is a subtlety in Murakami's writing that allows every possibility to exist as reality. 

Review: The Children's Home by Charles Lambert

Overview:

 

For fans of Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl, and Edward Gorey, a beguiling and disarming debut novel from an award-winning British author about a mysterious group of children who appear to a disfigured recluse and his country doctor—and the startling revelations their behavior evokes.

In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up.

Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgan’s lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgan’s library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgan’s past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgan’s mind.

The Children’s Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks. Lambert writes from the perspective of the visited, weaving elements of psychological suspense, Jamesian stream of consciousness, and neo-gothic horror, to reveal the inescapable effects of abandonment, isolation, and the grotesque—as well as the glimmers of goodness—buried deep within the soul.

 

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Review:

 

Charles Lambert has written a fascinating and engaging  novel. The Children's Home is mystery, history and magical realism rolled into one.  I enjoyed this book a great deal- a fast read. I am still working out all the philosophical and psychological implications in this book. Told through the scope of magical realism, The Children's Home dark underbelly reveals the less flattering side of human nature. I would highly recommend this book for fans of John Connolly and Neil Gaiman.

 

*I received an advanced reader copier in exchange for an honest review.

Review: It Always Rains on Sundays by Roger Johnson

Overview:

Cyn. Cyn, where have you bin?

I’ve been trying to call you all day.

Expect you’re in bed with Kevin the Red,

Where the skies are not cloudy all day.

 

Life is happy for 40-year-old poetry buff and senior librarian Colin Quirke, happily married to Cynthia for thirteen years with two great kids. Not so for Cynthia. Cyn is bored.

 

This all changes when a new, younger couple moves in next door. Eddie and ditsy blonde Avril’s motto is ‘Life is for living!’. Wild parties with loud music are soon followed by girls’ nights out, and life will never be the same on the De Lacey Street cul-de-sac.

 

In the meantime, Eddie is killed in a tragic micro-light plane accident. Cyn consoles Avril by taking her to Miami. Next thing you know, she’s met up with some red-haired American guy called Kevin Ranker (aka 'the home-wrecker').

 

Is divorce on the cards for Cyn and Colin? Consolations, at least. Still, there’s always the lovely Alison at the Poetry Society. Or the new assistant librarian at work, she could be interesting…

 

It Always Rains on Sundays is a laugh-out-loud new novel from BBC prize-winner Roger Johnson. Full of intelligent humour, it is an entertaining read for fans of funny and original fiction.

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Review:

I don't really know what to make of the description I read, the publisher's quotes, and what I actually read. Somehow I cannot reconcile all the information. Narrator Colin Quirke is an utterly unlikeable, out-of-the-loop loser. He lacked emotional depth and apparently any sense of reality. If the novel was meant to be funny, I've certainly missed the humor. The description also paints the picture of a more multi-dimensional story. I wasn't picking up on any of that either. The story just seemed to plod along with no action, climax, or resolution. I had high hopes for It Always Rains on Sundays, so I'm disappointed.

*I received an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.