Zero K - Don DeLillo

Rating: ★★★☆☆

GOODREADS

FIVE MOST IMPORTANT POINTS

1. Unlike any other read

2. Dystopian

3. Confusing

4. Short, easy language that carries a punch

5. Makes you think for day after

Let me introduce myself: my name is Emma and I'm the last person on this planet to hear about Don DeLillo. When the release of Zero K was announced, the press jumped on the book of this amazing 'best American author ever', and I was clueless who he was. And I hate that. So the first thing I did was pick up Zero K when I could and read through it so I finally also know who Don DeLillo is.

Jeffrey Lockhart is called to a compound in the middle of nowhere to witness his stepmother dying. But not just ordinarily dying - Artis is incurably ill and instead of waiting out her days, she wants to be frozen and preserved until medicine can save her. Jeffrey and his father Ross are there to support. Though Jeffrey understand and supports Artis decision, his father then tells him he wants to do the same, because he hates the world he has to live in. But how much can we humans decide about life and death?

Zero K is the perfect read for this day and age. We live in a world where every day we wake up to some horrible news story about murder, rape and unhappiness. It's not a big jump to be in Don DeLillo's world and to see Ross' point of view: this day and age can be tough at best. That's what I so loved reading this novel. Though I felt like it took place in a more future period of time, solely because of the writing, it could take place right now. We have technology, we have war, we have people looking for a way out. This book raises so many interesting questions about life and I bet not one reader will walk away not asking themselves if they agree with Ross.

However, this book is really a more mental game. Not a whole lot actually happens plot-wise. As a reader, it's a lot about putting your own experiences in there and really reading between the lines at what the meaning of this novel is. While I enjoyed the writing, it was really fast-paced and I finished it in a day, there just wasn't enough in there for me. I left this book feeling kinda 'so what?' about all the characters. Because of the minimalist style of Don DeLillo's writing, I didn't get to connect with anyone well enough to truly enjoy this story.

Overall, I would compare this book to a meal at a really fancy restaurant. You are awed by the beauty of the food and will think for days about what exactly was put on your plate and how it was achieved. However, you also won't really be full, because there was barely any food. The writing was great, the plot was original; there just wasn't enough in this story to drive me crazy about it. I can see why Don DeLillo is praised so much, but he might just not be the writer for me. 

The Good Guy - Susan Beale

Rating: ★★★★★

Goodreads

Five most important points

1. A heartbreaking tale about love and betrayal in 1960s America

2. Shows that "good guys" are really the worst men out there

3. Will make your feminist heart soar

4. Beautiful writing

5. Features the cutest kid I've ever read.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. This in no way influenced my opinion of the book. 

Today is another session of: Emma picked a book solely based on the cover and had no clue what she was getting herself into. Remarkably, for once, this actually worked out. Though I picked The Good Guy because the amazing retro cover, I fell in love more and more with each page and left it feeling amazed by Susan Beale's writing.

The Good Guy is the story of Ted, who lives in suburban Massachusetts with his wife Abigail and new-born child Mindy. He's a disappointment to his family and in-laws by not becoming a lawyer, but focusing on a career as salesman of tires. Though he makes good money, he constantly feels underappreciated - especially when Abi starts excelling at university. He looks for distraction in an innocent fling with Penny, but that soon becomes more than he bargained for.

Look, any book with the title The Good Guy gets major side-eye from me, and luckily Susan Beale does not try to convince the reader how Ted is amazing. He thinks he is a good guy, he honestly truly to God thinks he does everything right, while he is actually a massive idiot who puts the women in his life in the worst positions. Not just Ted thinks he's nice, his whole neighbourhood does too, and this book just shows that you never truly know a person. Even though Ted seems perfect, his whole life actually seems perfect, he is deeply unhappy and deeply insensitive to the needs of those around him. 

Though I loved to hate Ted while reading, which shows the strength of Susan Beale's ability to write a great unlikeable character, I fell deeply in love with both Abigail and Penny. Both are extremely different and both were such a joy to read. While Abigail is focused on her education and the struggles of combining motherhood, her own life, and the expectations of a 1960s housewife who has to do everything in the house, Penny works but dreams about settling down and finding her prince charming and child. Throughout the book, both women seem to want what the other one has, though the reader is shown the downsides of each of their lives (mainly the fact that Ted is in it, but that's my opinion).

Overall, The Good Guy is an interesting look into the lives of women in the 1960s. In an era where women had to be married to start a family and where they were expected to give up everything for that husband, it is fascinating to see what happens when they behave out of the norm. Susan Beale writes beautifully and is able to guide the reader easily through the story while connecting to all the characters. While you might not love them all, you'll be invested in all of them. I've read this book in a day and felt sad when putting it down and leaving Abi and Penny's world. I can't wait to read more by Susan Beale.

New Hampshire Book Haul

It's book haul time again! Last week I was in New Hampshire to visit my boyfriend and of course, a trip to Barnes & Nobles was on top of my to do list! I bought seven books - and only stopped at that because I knew I wouldn't be able to bring them home in my suitcase if I got more! But Barnes & Nobles sure is tempting!

The haul is a bit of a mix of everything, so I'm just randomly going through the list and say why I picked these books!

• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: Okay, I know. I'm the last person in the world to read this book, but I'm SO excited to finally start it! When I saw it, I just couldn't leave it! (Goodreads)                   
• The Circle by Dave Eggers: This book is on my boyfriend's TBR list and because he didn't want to buy any more books (I know, he's crazy), I got it. For him, but I said it was for me. Reading the back, this book actually looks really interesting, so I'm excited to try it! (Goodreads)                                                     
• Ruby by Cynthia Bond: This will be my first book of the Bailey's Fiction shortlist. I want to read and review the whole list and figured I'd start with the book Oprah loves. Plus, it's small enough that it was easy to take on the plane with me!  (Goodreads)                                                                                      
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: Again, one of those books that everyone has read except for me. I've finally really become familiar with modernism, so I decided to push myself and try a postmodernist book. Not sure how this will go, but I figure you can expect a lot of confused Goodreads statuses while I read this! (Goodreads)                                                                                                                                       
• The Heiress by Sarah Shepard: Though surprisingly, I'm not a PLL fan, I loved the Lying Games books and was excited to pick up this Sarah Shepard book. Mostly because it also was a bargain and it looks pretty. The reviews on Goodreads are pretty brutal, but I'm hoping this will be a good, brainless and enjoyable read. (Goodreads)                                                                                                                        
• I'm Glad About You by Therese Rebeck: Never heard of this book before, but I loved the bright blue colour and the blurb featured fascinating characters, so this was an easy one to pick up. Hopefully I'll read this in the near future. (Goodreads)                                                                                                           
• Classic American Short Stories: You didn't think I would go to Barnes & Nobles and leave without one of their classics? I purely bought this book, because it looks good. And because I like short stories. But mostly, because IT'S GORGEOUS. (Goodreads)

Save Me the Waltz - Zelda Fitzgerald

Rating: ★★★★★

Publication Date: 1932 (First edition)
Publisher: Vintage (Random House)
Genre: Classics
Pages: 225 pages
Goodreads

Those of you that follow me on Tumblr will know that I have been obsessed with The Lost Generation authors. In the never ending search of a thesis topic, I have now decided to focus on them and first up is Zelda Fitzgerald - a woman I've read so much about, but never read what she wrote. And thankfully I decided to change that.

Save Me the Waltz is the mostly autobiographical story of Zelda, represented by the main character Alabama, from her childhood until her father passes away, and focuses mostly on her marriage with David Knight. David is a successful painter and when the couple moves to Paris, Alabama tries to find her own creativity in a world controlled by men. She starts ballet at 27, just like Zelda did, and describes beautifully the agony and release she finds in this.

While this book is often read as a companion novel to Fitzgerald's work, mostly Tender is the Night, this discredits the creativity that can be found in Save Me the Waltz. While it does focus on the relationship between Zelda and Scott, and there are some clear parallels in events that happened in the book and in their real lives, the book mainly focuses on Alabama's struggle to find herself in a male oriented world. While in New York, she has nothing to do and aimlessly, and unhappily, wanders after her husband. In Paris, she discovers ballet and throws herself into it, even though her body cannot really handle the work.

This is where Zelda's fiction truly shines. My edition of the book followed the original manuscript which was filled with grammatical errors and words put in places that don't make any sense. Though this might bother some readers, it gave me the feel of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and helped me relate to the main character.  We are thrown into a world we cannot fully grasp, no matter how often we read a sentence or even the whole book, just like Alabama is navigating a world she'll never grasp. The descriptions are beautiful though and it was so easy to feel the pain from all the ballet training. All the female characters, who are only properly introduced once Alabama enters the female world of dancing, are realistic and well-rounded and all struggle with finding their way in post war Paris.

Save Me the Waltz can be a confusing read and you might have to give yourself a few pages to get into, but it is also one of the most beautiful and gripping books I've ever read. It made me ache for Zelda Fitzgerald's talent; if she can produce a novel like this in just six weeks while admitted in a mental hospital, I wish we could have discovered the books she could have written earlier in her life. She might be the wife of one of the most famous authors, but she was a talented author in herself, who was able to describe the struggles of being a woman and the world of Parisian ballet in a way I've never encountered before. This book is one to read, just for the beauty of itself.

Me Before You - Jojo Moyes

Rating: ★★★★★

Me Before You is a bit of a phenomenon; the book was highly successful upon release and now that a movie is in the makes, featuring Emilia Clarke, everyone seems to know about this book. What better reason to pick it up too?

Plot

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.
What Lou doesn't know is she's about to lose her job or that knowing what's coming is what keeps her sane.
Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he's going to put a stop to that.
What Will doesn't know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they're going to change the other for all time.

Review

When I started reading this book, I thought I wouldn't like it. It starts off with a girl, Lou, in a small town, who is just a little bit different than everyone else but still conventionally attractive, who meets a guy, Will, who is in a dark place and doesn't want to connect to people. I know about ten books right away that could fit that summary and they all end in the same way: the guy loves the girl for her quirkiness, the girl brings out the good side of the guy and they ride off into the sunset.

Now I assume Jojo Moyes was aware of those books and deliberately decided to play with our hearts and turn it all around so that no one can predict what will happen in this story. While the start might read as a cliché, the plot soon takes so many twists and turns that you have to be convinced that this book is not a normal romance story. It's unlike anything I've ever read.

The thing I loved most about the book is that romance is used to offset personal changes in everyone. Love does not make everything okay. It does not make your whole life perfect and wonderful. Love is a beautiful addition and motivation to enhance a life. Lou never becomes the lovestruck girl that only focuses on a man. She constantly grows and matures and uses the love she feels for different people (Patrick, Will, her parents, her sister), to become the best version of herself she can be. 

Now I don't know anything about being bound to a wheelchair, but Will read so truthfully to me. A strong, independent man suddenly stuck for the rest of his life without the use of his legs or arms must go to a very dark place. The characterisation of Will is perfect; he doesn't get cheered up by a sunny or a particular painless day. He knows his life will never change and he is angry about that. Like anyone else would be.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON.

Of course, a big part of Will's story line is his desire to end his own life. He has tried to commit suicide and now he wants to go to Switzerland to end his life in a dignified way. This is never an easy topic to handle in a book and I must say that Jojo Moyes handles the topic in a respectful, but also realistic way. Will wants to end his life and pretty soon, the reader figures out that nothing can change his mind. Love can't change his mind. Just like with Lou, love makes him a better person, but it does not take away who he is. Or the fact that he can't walk or move. Or that he'll slowly waste away more and more. It's incredibly painful and heartbreaking to read how unhappy Will is and together with Lou, the reader realizes that nothing will ever make him truly happy again. But it's also beautifully realistic.

So even though this book started off slow, it became so amazing in the end. The characters are realistic, painfully so at times, and there is no way that anyone can read this and not want to help Lou convince Will to live. To stay. To try. And that's a beautiful journey to make with a book, so it's a five out of five stars in my opinion.