MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Sophie Hannah We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 THE ORPHAN CHOIR by Sophie Hannah /2014/the-orphan-choir-by-sophie-hannah/ /2014/the-orphan-choir-by-sophie-hannah/#comments Thu, 13 Feb 2014 13:58:30 +0000 /?p=25695 Book Quote:

“It’s quarter to midnight. I’m standing in the rain outside my next-door neighbor’s house, gripping his rusted railings with cold, wet hands, staring down through them at the misshapen and perilously narrow stone steps leading to his converted basement, from which noise is blaring. It’s my least favorite song in the world: Queen’s ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (FEB 13, 2014)

In Sophie Hannah’s The Orphan Choir, forty-one year old Louise Beeston may be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Her creepy next-door neighbor, Justin Clay, plays loud music late at night, usually every other weekend. Although Louise has repeatedly implored him to stop, Clay is indifferent to her pleas. (Louise’s husband, Stuart, is oblivious to the cacophony. Even if a freight train were to pass through their bedroom, Stuart would remain asleep.) Unfortunately, Louise has little hope that Clay, a pot-smoking party animal who enjoys living it up with his loud-mouthed friends, will change his ways.

Adding to her distress is Stuart’s plan to sandblast the exterior of their sooty Cambridge home. The workman her husband hired plans to cover and seal their windows, leaving them without natural light for at least three weeks. In addition, the sandblasting will kick up a great deal of dust. All this would be bearable if Louise’s only child, seven-year-old son, Joseph, were living with them. Instead, he is a junior probationer boarding at Saviour College School, an elite educational institution that trains promising youngsters to sing religious choral music. Although Louise and Stuart see their son regularly, Joseph spends most of his time away from home. Louise hates this arrangement; she misses Joseph terribly. Stuart, on the other hand, argues that their child is happy and thriving, and should remain where he is.

As Louise narrates her tale of woe, we gradually start to wonder if she is completely sane. She admits that she is sleep-deprived, irritable, and resentful. Louise and her husband quarrel frequently and she soon becomes too distraught to go to work. Moreover, she is having troubling visions: She sees and hears a choir of children similar to her son’s, except that this group includes girls. Is Louise hallucinating? Or does this “visitation” have a deeper meaning?

The Orphan Choir is relatively brief, yet extremely vivid and powerful. The author is clever but not self-consciously so, and she uses foreshadowing skillfully to hint that everything is not as it seems. Hannah’s hard-hitting dialogue, adept use of setting, and wonderful feel for language add to the novel’s potency. We sympathize with the exhausted, frustrated, and high-strung heroine, and hope that she will somehow find the peace of mind she craves. Leave it to the talented and creative Sophie Hannah to spring some big surprises at the conclusion of this engrossing and eerie psychological thriller; the riveting finale will knock your socks off.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 16 readers
PUBLISHER: Picador (January 28, 2014)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sophie Hannah
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries:

Note: Sophie Hannah is also an accomplished poet, see her website for more information on her poetry books.

]]> /2014/the-orphan-choir-by-sophie-hannah/feed/ 0 THE DEAD LIE DOWN by Sophie Hannah /2010/the-dead-lie-down-by-sophie-hannah/ /2010/the-dead-lie-down-by-sophie-hannah/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 23:46:51 +0000 /?p=9909 Book Quote:

“I saw a therapist for years. I stopped when I realized there was no fixing the broken bits…. When your world falls apart and everything’s ruined, you lose part of yourself. Not all, inconveniently. One half, the best half, dies. The other half lives.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (JUN 4, 2010)

Sophie Hannah’s The Dead Lie Down is a multi-faceted psychological thriller about guilt, revenge, self-destruction, and redemption. All of the major characters have something to hide and they reveal their secrets reluctantly. Aiden Seed, who frames pictures for a living, has decided that he and the woman he loves, Ruth Bussey, should be open with one another before they become intimate. Ruth hesitantly admits that she did something shameful and was punished excessively for her actions. Aiden is sympathetic, saying, “The worst things stow away in the hold, follow you wherever you go.” It is then his turn to confess: “Years ago, I killed someone.” “Her name was Mary. Mary Trelease.”

When Aiden makes his startling admission, Ruth is appalled. She cannot say to Aiden that it doesn’t matter. Instead, she confides in someone she admires, Sergeant Charlotte Zailer, who is part of the community policing team for the town of Spilling. The catch is that the woman Aiden claims to have killed is not dead. Mary Trelease lives at 15 Megson Crescent on the Winstanley Estate, a rough neighborhood whose residents are steeped in squalor and hopelessness. Trelease is a painter who jealously guards her work from prying eyes. Aiden shows no obvious signs of mental illness, so why is he confessing to a murder that he did not commit?

Sophie Hannah goes back and forth in time, and shifts point of view frequently. In addition, the author teases us with bits of information that, by themselves, mean very little. Eventually, the puzzle pieces come together to form a ghastly and unutterably depressing whole.

Sophie Hannah is a fine descriptive writer with a strong eye for detail. Her depiction of a party during which Charlie and her fiancé, DC Simon Waterhouse, celebrate their engagement at “a dingy room in a pub,” along with family and friends, is excruciating, embarrassing, funny, yet also unutterably sad. Simon and Charlie are a wounded pair and people say cruel things about them behind their backs. What should have been a festive occasion turns into a cringe-worthy fiasco. Simon’s boss, DI Proust, known as the Snowman, is creepy, cold-blooded, sarcastic, and completely unreasonable. He and Simon loathe one another, and their interactions are painful to observe.

The problem with this book is not the characterizations, which are heartbreakingly authentic, but the plot, which is byzantine and as far over the top as one can get. If an author requires more than one or two pages of exposition to explain everything that has gone before, this is a clue that something may be amiss. The Dead Lie Down concludes with such a lengthy explanation, intended to clarify the muddy narrative, that a scorecard would have been welcome to keep track of who did what to whom. How much more satisfying this novel would have been had the story been less dense and more grounded in reality.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 39 readers
PUBLISHER: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 2010)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sophie Hannah
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Other unusual mysteries:

Bibliography:

Zailer & Waterhouse Mysteries:

Note: Sophie Hannah is also an accomplished poet, see her website for more information on her poetry books.

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