The Boy With the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

Author:  Mathias Malzieu, translated from the French by Sarah Ardizzone     

Publication date: 2009

Category: Fairytale love story, with a little bit of steampunk.

Who'll want to read it? The broken hearted. Also anyone who loved The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick.

Point of no return:  The first page: "In which Little Jack is born on the coldest day on earth and miraculously resuscitated......The old river usually so serious, is disguised as an icing sugar lake that stretches all the way to the sea. The din of the surf rings out like the sound of windows smashing. Miraculously, the hoarfrost stitches sequins on to cats' bodies. The trees stretch their arms, like fat fairies in white nightshirts yawning at the moon...."

Classic line:  "Firstly: don't touch the hands of your cuckoo-clock heart. Secondly: master your anger. Thirdly: never, ever fall in love. For if you do, the hour hand will poke through your skin, your bones will shatter, and your heart will break once more." pg 24.


What's it all about? Set in late 19th Century Edinburgh and Spain, it's a bittersweet little book in which every line about love and hearts has a double meaning. It is so beautifully written that your eyes and your mind (or your own heart) experience the different meanings separately. Travel with Jack as he learns about life and love, despite his guardian's efforts to protect him from pain. I particularly enjoyed the appearance of Georges Meilies and his efforts to assist Jack in his search for Miss Acacia, the love of his life.

Publisher: Chatto & Windus

Something interesting: The author is lead singer of the French pop group Dionysos. You can watch the book trailer here with Dionysos performing. Apparently there is a whole album based on this novel and a film on the way courtesy of Luc Besson.

The Rabbit Problem

Author: Emily Gravett (and a lot of rabbits)

Publication Date: 2009

Category: Eccentric children's picture book about rabbits (not maths).

Who'll want to read it? Children learning to read and count, rabbit lovers, grownups.

Point of no return: The curious rabbit on the front cover.

Classic line: The whole book is a classic and I really must buy myself a copy.

What's it all about? It's a year in the life of "Fibonacci's Field" in which rabbits multiply each month. The book is set out like a calendar with a new problem each month such as "The lonely rabbit problem" in January, "The cold rabbit problem" in February, with suggestions to keep warm which lead right to "The baby rabbit problem" in March. There are lots of little books within this book including "Bunny's first month" and "The Carrot Cookery Book : Creative ways with carrots". I could probably spend an hour or two reading this book and it's booklets and still find new bits. I absolutely adore this book and just know parents and children will enjoy reading it together.

Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books

Wonders of a Godless World

Author: Andrew McGahan

Publication Date: 2009

Category: Fiction

Point of no return: This book was a recommendation, but the first two sentences really drew me in: "The orphan knew something was up that night, even before the foreigner arrived at the hospital. It was a warm evening, early in the storm season, and she had been feeling strangely restless all day."

Classic line: Page 2-3: "He thought she was one of the inmates - a short, stumpy girl with a shaved head and a hairy upper lip and a hospital dress stretched tight over big floppy breasts.
    Ha! She was ugly and a madwoman and he was scared of her."

What's it all about? An orphan lives and works in an aging hospital, prefering to spend her time in the back wards, with the dying and the insane. She knows that she herself has madness in her, but it has remained undiagnosed due to her mental disabilities. She has to concentrate to understand even simple speech, cannot decipher pictures, television, or sounds on the radio, and cannot hold onto or understand names. But she can read the weather, and tell you if it will rain or not.

One night the foreigner arrives, in a catatonic state, and disrupts the balance of the hospital. He ends up in the old crematorium with the Duke, the Witch, the Archangel, and the Virgin, with none of the nursing staff wanting to go near him.

After the nearby volcano erupts, the orphan hears the foreigner's voice inside her head, clear and wonderful. He recognises her special abilities, and helps her to explore and expand them.  He claims to be immortal, and takes her on journeys into his mind and his past, and the minds and memories of the Duke, the Witch, the Archangel, and the Virgin.

I don't feel I can do justice to the story, and hope that you feel intrigued enough from this very paltry description to read it yourself. I felt like I travelled with the orphan on her amazing journeys, experienced her wonder and joy. I also felt the foreigner was taking advantage of her naivity, and moulding her for his own selfish reasons. Her reactions to his manipulations were surprising to me at first, but Andrew McGahan really made you understand how isolated she felt before the foreigner arrived.

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

The Outlander

Author: Gil Adamson Publication Date: 2007 Category: Startling transformation of the classsic western narrative. Who'll want to read it? Readers who enjoy a haunting tale about passionate crime and retribution, precarious survival, redemption and love. A story of one young woman's deliberate journey deep into the icy wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Along her journey she encounters a handful of odd and eccentric individuals who like her are outcasts surviving against the odds in the harsh frontiers of America but who also offer her kindness, which gives her hope.

'A remarkable first novel, full of verve, beautifully written, and with all the panache of a great adventure' MICHAEL ONDAATJE

Point of no return: "Nineteen years old and already a widow. Mary Boulton. Widowed by her own hand.".pg 4

" The girl stood in a ditch under a hard , small moon. Pale foam rose from where her shoes sank into the mud. No more voices inside her head, no noise but these dogs. She saw her own course along the ground as a trail of bright light, now doused in the ditchwater. She clamboured up the bank and onto the road, her stiff funeral skirt made of breadspread and curtain, her hair wild and falling in dark robes about her face. The widow gathered up her shawl and fled witchlike down the empty road." p 4

Classic Opening Verse:

Now goes the sun under the wood,

I pity, Mary, thy fair face.

Now goes the sun under the tree,

I pity, Mary, thy son and thee.

-ANON, THIRTEENTH CENTURY

What's it all about? A young woman referred to as the widow who we later find out is called Mary is being pursued in the night by two vengeful brothers and a pack of dogs. The brothers are tracking her like prey in retaliation for killing their kin. The widow is also suffering the recent loss of her son which fuels her delirium which runs in the recesses of her mind. Glimpses into her past reveal her unhappy marriage, absent and sick parents and her repression by an over bearing grandmother. The widows wintery and intense journey is aided by rogues who help her with food, shelter and safe passage.

This story speaks to the resilence of the female spirit in the early part of the last century. The wild womyn who need to find a way out and seek their own liberation, no matter what it takes.

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Mystery Man

Author: Bateman... Colin Bateman Publication Date: 2009 Category: Mystery, humour etc etc etc Who'll want to read it? People who need a good laugh Point of no return: Having read the follow-up (The Day of the Jack Russell) a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't wait to go back and read this. I tried to wait a couple of months to have some distance, but reading Colin Bateman is like eating chocolate - if there is one around, you can't resist it. Which is how I ended up reading the follow-up first. Classic line: "It was serial killer week in No Alibis, and thus far the Chianti was proving way more popular than the fava beans." pg 23 "I have made a lifelong study of crime fiction. I have read all of the great works, and most of the middling ones, and many of the minor ones, and a lot of trash besides. There is virtually nothing about the solving of fictional crimes that I do not know, and what are fictional crimes but factual crimes with hats on?" pg 376 What's it all about? "Mystery Man" runs a crime fiction bookshop in Belfast called No Alibis. He is a massive hypochondriac with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or possibly, an obsessive-compulsive with massive hypochondria. Yet he somehow manages to attract the attentions of the very pretty young lady working in the jewellery shop across the road. He inadvertently becomes a Private Eye which leads on to all sorts of dangerous, yet frequently hilarious consequences for himself and his new side-kick Alison. I really loved this book and would have to say it is my new favourite Bateman book. It seems to be part tribute to crime fiction and part spoof. Everyone should enjoy the Agatha Christie style denouement towards the end. All in all it was a fabulous read and one I really couldn't put down no matter how tired I was - it landed on my face as I fell asleep many times. Publisher: Headline Publishing Group