STAFF PICK: The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Posted on May 15, 2018 by admin

Post by Pam Campbell

Title: The Death of Mrs. Westaway
Author: Ruth Ware
Narrator: Imogen Church

How am I so late to jumping on the Ruth Ware bandwagon? My lateness to discovering her work aside, I am so glad my introduction to Ruth Ware was with The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

We meet Hal Westaway – a struggling Brighton Pier tarot card reader – late one night at the end of a typical day. It’s clear she is struggling; struggling with paying her bills, struggling to keep the loan shark at bay, struggling to keep warm in her tiny flat and struggling with the recent death of her mother. But tonight won’t be a typical night for Hal. Because tonight she receives a letter notifying her of the death of a grandmother and that she’s been named a beneficiary in the will.

Hal immediately knows there’s been some mistake. She is not related to this woman. There’s no way she would be beneficiary of a large estate. Or is there? Can she use her skills of cold reading people to fool the family and lawyers into believing she is the correct descendent? Does she have any choice? She could really use the money.

Using the last few pounds in her bank account, she decides to board a train and travel to the funeral to make her claim on the inheritance. When she finally meets the family and the grand estate house, Hal finds herself questioning whether or not she can go through with her deception. But like all families and old grand houses, things are not as they seem.

With hints of gothic mystery, intrigues, secrets and distrust, The Death of Mrs. Westaway will have you hypnotised from the start. It is apparent with this book that Ruth Ware is a brilliant storyteller. She slowly and meticulously brings about the twists and turns that make this story so engrossing. Add to that, the brilliant narration of Imogen Church and the listener is left with a wonderfully eerie listening experience.

Since this was my first Ruth Ware book, I can’t compare it to her previous novels. But if you were a fan of The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield, you will thoroughly enjoy The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

STAFF PICK: Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Posted on May 15, 2018 by admin

Post by Miranda Winters-Sayle

Title: Tin Man
Author: Sarah Winman
Narrator: Sarah Winman

The first thing I noticed when I began Tin Man was the beautiful prose. The author, Sarah Winman, gives detailed descriptions of everything in her novel. By the time I finished the book, I could easily visualize every character, place, and object of importance in my mind’s eye. Every character felt real, as though I could easily have passed them in the street. This aspect is especially important for a novel like Tin Man, which introduces itself as a romance but turns out to be more of a character study of two men who found love.

Tin Man allows us to get inside the heads of Ellis and Michael who befriended one another in their teen years and quickly developed their relationship into something more. However, we discover at the beginning of the novel that Ellis married a woman named Annie, and Michael doesn’t seem to be in the picture. The rest of the novel is unravelling the threads to their story. What happened as they grew from young boys to men?

I wish I could say more, but this story greatly relies on mystery. When I began, I had nothing but questions.

Reading tin man was almost like putting together a puzzle — you slowly build towards answers, but nothing makes complete sense until you get to the heart of it.

Winman does a fantastic job of making sure to answer every question. Her reveals are surprising, and sometimes heartbreaking.

Tin Man relies on memory to tell the story. Time is not linear through the novel, as we begin in the present day and work our way backwards. Winman’s beautiful writing executes this perfectly: there is never any confusion over whether you are reading the past or present.

It was a real treat to have Sarah Winman narrating her own title. Having a female read a novel in which both protagonists are male can sometimes be jarring, but Sarah encapsulated the tones in which Ellis and Michael would speak. I think this is something special that only an author narrating their book can accomplish.

STAFF PICK: The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

Posted on December 10, 2016 by admin

This month, I chose John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, a Young Adult romance book about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love. That’s just the elevator pitch, though: it’s really about friendship, family, love and loss, all of which are already incredibly difficult and complicated things, but even more so for teenagers and for teenagers with terminal illness. I’d heard that the book was a real tear-jerker, but I generally have a higher tolerance for that kind of thing so I figured I’d judge it for myself.

The first half of the book is, for the most part, hopeful. It does an excellent job of humanizing “sick people”, moving them from other and unknowable to sympathetic and familiar. Hazel and Augustus are teenagers like any other, though their singular life experiences have given them an advanced maturity and perspective. There is color and quirky fun and while the characters are going through some tough stuff, the first half cannot hold a candle to the second half of the book, whichcontained some of the most heart-breaking hours of literature I’ve ever listened to.

YA frequently gets written off as fluff. I’d like to argue that while there are indeed lots of poorly written YA stories with weak characters and flimsy pretenses just cashing in on the success of other poorly written YA stories, that’s not something that’s unique to young adult lit. There are plenty of poorly written books in every genre. (#sorrynotsorry)

The Fault In Our Stars, on the other hand, is an example of YA writing at it’s finest: yes, it’s a book about two teenagers who fall in love and yes, it’s written with simple language and straight-forward structure and it reads quickly and easily, as is typical of the genre. But that very simplicity makes it an extra-effective medium to explore the brutal and heart-breaking reality of cancer in children. There are no thick paragraphs of prose to hide in; instead, his characters love and fear and cry upfront, with dialogue that is so sincere and forthcoming that, as a reader, it’s impossible to turn away. Green’s ability to competently discuss such a difficult topic in such a straightforward and easily digestible way points towards a greater mastery of writing, not a lesser one. Complex ideas, simple language.

The narrator, Kate Rudd, was incredible. While her voice for main character Hazel was perfectly executed, I’m more impressed with her voice for Augustus. She manages to imbue his slightly pretentious dialogue with a sense of good-humor, awareness and sincerity that make the character more likable than my own mental narrator ever could. It’s rare to find a narrator who can do same- and opposite-gender characters equally well, but Rudd is definitely one of them.

I highly, highly recommend this audio book. If you listen to it and love it, check out Esther Earl’s This Star Won’t Go Out who influenced Green’s writing.

Let me know what you think!

STAFF PICK: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth by Chris Hadfield

Posted on January 31, 2016 by admin

Our Head of Acquisitions told me about An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth when it was first released, and it went immediately onto my “To-Listen” list.

Right? Right. That can almost make me cry.

At times while listening to this book, I realized this was a risky choice: listening to Hadfield’s ridiculously jam-packed list of qualifications, successes, and admirable personality traits could have made me feel like an unremarkable schlub, if only they weren’t read with such humility. Regardless, I absolutely loved An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth. The book is a memoir of the journey he took to go from a nine-year old aspiring astronaut (with an astounding sense of responsibility and discipline, I might add) to a commander of the International Space Station, and offers a lot of insight into space travel, agencies, and the whole space program, with all the right minutiae picked out to let us in on some of the little details, but keep it interesting and novel. There are also plenty of the requisite descriptions of inky black infinity to bring on the epic fuzzy feelings that are really the whole point of reading a book about space travel in the first place.

Chris Hadfield is diligent, competent, smart, humble, and utterly, utterly quotable. *Ahem* “Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.” “Sweat the small stuff. Without letting anyone see you sweat.” “You can’t change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.” I finished the book feeling like I knew a lot more about how to succeed if I ever somehow ended up in space, but also that I knew a lot more about how to succeed in life in general. I also felt like I really wanted to give Hadfield a hug.

As a narrator, Hadfield is wonderful. I’m a firm proponent of authors reading their own work (as long as they have the chops to pull it off) because they know the spirit of it better than anyone else. Generally, Hadfield comes off as a really nice guy, so listening to his narration felt like we were carpooling together and he was telling me stories about space mixed with some fatherly advice about how to achieve my own goals. The one negative thing I have to say is in regards to the audio quality itself: there’s a strange sort of muffled echo that makes it sound like it was recorded in a bathroom. (Initially I thought the weird quality might have been because it was recorded IN SPACE, through the in-helmet microphone or something, which would be totally forgivable and actually kind of awesome. I looked it up; it wasn’t.) That’s unusual coming from top-tier publishers like Random House (Canadian rights) and Hachette (American rights), but it won’t stop you from fully enjoying the audiobook.

If you want to learn more about what it’s like to be in space (and what it takes to get there), pick this up. You will not be disappointed.

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