Book talk: Moonfleet by J.M. Falkner

J.M. Falkner (1858-1932)

Book details

Title: Moonfleet

Author: John Meade Falkner (English novelist and poet)

Published: 1898

Find it at: Amazon

This book is about: a silent countryside, smugglers and contrabandiers, adventure, love and loss, human relationships, pursuit of lost treasure

Some cool facts around this book
1. The village of Moonfleet is inspired from East Fleet in Dorset in England.
2. The author, J.M. Falkner had an affinity for weapons and interest in the supernatural.
3. J.M. Falkner had other interests, but is known for his three novels, the most popular of which is Moonfleet. He wrote a fourth novel but it was lost when he left the only copy on a train and never saw it again (*sigh*)

How I came to this book

(I really like listing down such things as how I came across particular books. Some books are loved even more because of the way they came to your life, is it not?)

I had an old, yellow-paged copy of Moonfleet among my first ever book collection, which makes it date back to 2003 (approx.). I forget who gave it to me, with the most probable person being the aunt who has often gifted books in my early years (note to self: be such an aunt to someone!). I think I remember dad telling me how it was my aunt's and how she had enjoyed reading it and thought that I would like it too. 

Honestly, I was intrigued by the book (look at the cover! Plus, it was a battered copy, which is even more alluring) but it has taken me twelve years to get down to read it. I have tried picking it up quite a few times, but either found my way across to another book, or found it difficult to get through more than two pages. A few days back, finally, I picked it up and decided to start reading it during my long metro-train travel to work. I think it was one of those books that you wait to read at the right moment, as I don't think I could have enjoyed it more had I read it somehow on my earlier attempts. It was a delight to read Moonfleet, and I am grateful to whoever made me have this wonderful copy. (Still, I do not forgive the brat who has doodled on some pages. The nerve of some kids!)

What is Moonfleet about?

There is a fifteen-year-old boy called John Trenchard living in the Moonfleet village in Dorset (south of England) with his aunt. John's aunt is strict, though caring, so that John doesn't learn to love her much, though he was affectionate. Until one day, she deserts him for getting into mischief--when John was only following his curiosity and instinct--and leaves John fending for himself. 

Elzevir Block is a man most respected by some village folk, while some kept well away from him, including young John. He knows that Block's son, David, was shot by a Customs Officer, namely Maskew, after which Block had turned even more formidable. Yet it is Block who shelters John and cares for him as if he were his own David. Mr Glennie is the village priest and admin. head while Master Ratsey is the sexton, involved with the smugglers. 

Then there's the whole mystery of the Mohune vault, where Blackbeard, the last of the Mohunes (who had created Moonfleet) also rested and had cast a curse. Like most villagers, John believes in the story of Blackbeard's spirit digging the cemetery grounds looking for his lost treasure, until the time he discovers the secret, and finds a clue that, at first, leads him nowhere close to the cursed treasure. The story, however, is more about the paths John's life takes as he starts living a life among smugglers (of liquor) and his quest to find the lost treasure.

Why do I like Moonfleet so much? 

Writing style: This book is a classic story for children, teenagers and young adults, written in first person with John being the narrator. There's something of a mystery driven in each sentence, purely because of the sentence structures! Here and there, where something of importance would arrive at a later place in the story, the author stresses on the points by tagging those as things John would be discovering later. The language is beautiful, the characters' distinct voices made for by their tones and individual characteristics, and the descriptions detailed and wonderful. 

The story: I like how the author somehow makes it not just an adventure story, but a mix of adventure, mystery, thrills of the sea, and human complexity. I love how he uses the perspective of smugglers to describe all the events that take place, which makes you think quite kindly of people in the smuggling business (just because no one wanted to pay excise for good liquor! You can't be too strict about that, specially in 1750s, when the story is set). It makes a lawful person, who might think of those who follow lawlessness as inhuman, look at the other perspective. A hardened man much respected among the contrabandiers because of never being accused of felony taking immense pain to shelter a boy he barely knew anything about. The story is about John's increasing love and respect for 'Master Block', who had saved his life on more than one occasion. It is about greed, love that is incredibly patient, fatherly love, repentance, friendship, luck and perspective on life. All these themes are beautifully integrated in this story of a small village, sailors, prisoners and shipwrecks. 

I have read a few books based around pirates and ships, and though this one was not strictly only about that, I still will keep it in that category because of the sheer importance of the sea in this story. I hope I would read this book again sometime and enjoy it even more! Recommended for: teenagers, young adults, lovers of mystery, adventure, classics, ships and the sea.

Review: A Step from Heaven

Author: An Na 
Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc.
Pages: 154
My Rating: 4.5/5

Find it at: Amazon
'Winner of the 2002 Michael L. Printz Award' (and a lot of other awards too!)

With such a cute-looking little girl on the cover, who can possibly miss this book? I usually pick up books with interesting covers/names, so A Step from Heaven came right into my bag while I was browsing in the library. These days I'm being so lucky in getting my hands on great books! Seriously! A Step from Heaven is a beautiful story of transformation, adjusting to a new culture and a way of life, dealing with domestic problems, all told from the perspective of a child, Park Young Ju.

From the book's cover

When four year old Young Ju Park first hears the words Mi Gook- Korean for 'America'- she is sure that they mean "Heaven". But when her family moves to Southern California the following year, she finds the transition from life in Korea far from easy. The countless unexpected challenges facing the Parks- from learning English, to finding work, to attending school- start to splinter the family's fragile construction. Soon they are simply four people in one house who put on a front for outsiders. Still, as Young Ju grows from child to adolescent in her new home she finds a surprising new voice- neither purely Korean nor American, but uniquely her own- which allows her to speak the truth that no one else in her family dares to say.

My Thoughts

I usually love books with kids as protagonists, it's so interesting to see the world from their point of view, how they see limitless possibilities and the innocence with which they perceive things. When the story begins, Young Ju is four years old and lives in Korea with her family, her Uhmma (mother), Apa (father) and Halmoni (grandmother). She notices a certain excitement in her parents when they talk about 'Mi Gook', which Young Ju thinks must be heaven. What else could have so many possibilities and promises, that made her parents so happy? When she's told they'll be moving to Mi Gook, she thinks they're going to heaven. 

Mi Gook is the Korean word for 'America' and the story kicks off when this family of three arrives in the US, with Young Ju now having terrible curls to look American. She certainly doesn't like the place much and wonders why they haven't reached heaven yet. Now she has a new baby brother, Park Joon Ho. The way she thinks of everything that's happening and all that she couldn't understand, is very well written. How she feels sad when she sees her Apa loving and cooing to Joon so much (whom she refers to as 'worm'), while her Uhmma tells everyone how he never even picked up Young as a baby. How she feels when he makes great expectations from Joon, but nothing from Young? 

As years pass, the family faces a lot of problems, money crunch, the father turning alcoholic and abusing his wife and children at home, a Korean family's hard struggle to live a life in America, which is certainly not how they envisaged it would be. The first chapters are written with extremely small sentences to completely show it from a four year old's perspective. The sentences grow longer and opinions and facts clearer, as Young Ju grows up. Needless to say, I love the way it's been written. It's different, breaks the norms of 'descriptive' long sentences, but still is amazing! I mean, this is one book where the author succeeds in conveying a whole picture, describing everything, with limited words. Also, there is no use of quotation marks all through the book, but we still know what anyone said, it's written that way. :)

The issues addressed range from domestic problems, children's adjustment to a new place, poor family ties, teenage issues, but they all revolve around this family and all its aspects. Young's father is shown as a bad character, yet you understand what his problem is, he used to be a good man, someone who taught his daughter to rise on waves, who laughed and loved. However, in America, he has trouble understanding English and does odd jobs, and even with his wife's earnings they don't manage to make a house, which makes him the depressed and abusive man he became. During all this, readers see and 'feel' the transition of a family that used to be something else being turned into something that isn't very pleasant. When Young starts college, there's hope for the future (I won't reveal what happened!) and the book ends on that hopeful note.

Apart from striking an emotional chord and the uniquely wonderful way it's written, the book also explores the various facets of Korea and its culture. How boys are generally more loved, how kids are submissive and not supposed to question their parents, the way their names are formed and pronounced (they use surnames first and given names second) and many other things! I'm generally interested in different cultures these days, so I enjoyed reading this and knowing about Korea through such a heart-moving story. By the way, this book is partly based on the author's life as well. She was born in Korea and then migrated to California, US. Click on the author's name at the beginning of this post to know more about her.

Just a few lines towards the end of the book that talk about what Young's mother wished for when she saw a future in America. 

Uhmma said her hands were her life. But for us, she only wished to see our hands holding books. You must use this, she said and pointed to her mind. Uhmma's hands worked hard to make sure our hands would not resemble hers.

Recommended for: Teenagers, school readings, Young Adult readers, Adults. Well, basically, everyone! ;)

The Secret Life of Bees

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Pages: 302

Published in: 2002

Publisher: Penguin Group

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 5/5 or more, if I could say that!

I hadn’t heard of this book before Alyssa at Life is Good mentioned that it’s among her top five favourites! (See how awesome book blogging can be?) While searching the shelves in the library I found this title and got it home. I’m so glad I did! I’m buying my own copy because this is one book everyone should read at least once in their lives.

Summary from Goodreads

In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owens, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler 

My Thoughts

I wasn’t even halfway through when I was sure this book is fantabulously awesome and deserves a 5/5 rating! I was hooked to it and totally into the story from the very beginning, what Lily remembers about the “incident” when she was four and her Mother passed away, how bad, resentful and confused she feels over how T.Ray treats her and eventually the readers would move along with her as different events happen that change the course of her life. Lily is easy to like, but at some places you might think she should be more mature, but even then, you think back to what all she’s endured and considering all that, you might find her even well behaved sometimes. I like her nevertheless, what with all the wondrous things happening around her, like she says in the book, “I wake up to wonder each day.”

The story’s focused on a number of things. Childhood and how parents’ problems and misbehaviour affects the children. That was Lily’s case. How children feel the need to know the truth, no matter how harsh it is, how they sometimes have to live with facts that even adults find hard to bear. Then there’s racism, Rosaleen’s case. She gets in trouble just because she stood up for herself in front of the three most racist men in town, how she lands in jail and then in hospital. Even later when Lily’s living with four black women whom she adores, the policemen advise her to stay away from ‘bad influence’. The book definitely gives the message that color has absolutely no role in what a person is from the inside, which is just so true!

I loved the story when Lily and Rosaleen were in Tiburon with the ‘Calendar sisters’, especially August, who’s a really respectable character. I would love to have a relative like her! :P All the parts about bee keeping were also interesting. You just realize there’s so much you don’t know, like how we get the honey we spread on our breads; how those bees are reared, how they live and their habits. The book also covered Christianity, primarily the sisters’ belief in black Mary. All the stories about her and her powerful aura and spirituality were so overwhelming! Also the way Lily felt connected to her and respected and grew to love her was simply heart warming, since she was always remembering, rather, fantasizing about her mother and found a mother figure in Mary and all the women in the 'pink house' (The Calendar sisters' house).

Needless to say, the book is extremely well written! And it’s the author’s first book! Totally amazing! I wish for this kind of talent, one where the first book itself is mind blowing! It’s also been made into a movie, I discovered. I would love to see it sometime! There are a few lines from the book I saved, which I really want to share!

The world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. If you feel angry, whistle. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.

This is by far my absolute favourite! ‘Some things don’t matter that much, like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart- now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it.’

‘There’s a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.’ Aww... this one is so good too! 

Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is. Oh God. This is awesome too. I just love each word of this book. *Insanely brilliant*

And you know the best part? It comforted me the most when I needed something so bad! I almost had a mini anxiety attack a couple of days ago thinking over new college beginning the next day and new faces and finding out and making new friends. Then I picked The Secret Life of Bees and it showed me how tiny actually, the problem with me is, if I compare it with what people have to suffer from. When I read about how Lily was feeling sad, I could connect with her feelings so strongly and then all those pages talking about how she finally got over it, found happiness and a very happy ending to the story.

“If you think you have problems, read a book”

Recommended for: Everyone!

PS- I typed this review in over three days. What exactly my life with this hectic college schedule is going to be, I have no clue. And believe me, if I could, I would pick reading and blogging over college any day, but I can't really do that. :| Anyway, I would try my best to be as regular as I can!

Review: The Bright Forever by Lee Martin

The Bright Forever by Lee Martin

Author website: Click here 

Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Published in: 2005

Find it at: Amazon

Rating: 3.5/5

From the book cover

On an evening like any other, nine-year-old Katie Mackey, daughter of the most affluent family in a small town on the plains of Indiana, sets out on her bicycle to return some library books. This simple act is at the heart of The Bright Forever, a suspenseful, deeply affecting novel about the choices people make that change their lives forever. Keeping fact, speculation and contradiction playing off one another as the details unfold, the author creates a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. His beautiful, clear-eyed prose builds to an extremely nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss.

It is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth.

This is an awesome description as it sums up precisely what’s in the book!

My Thoughts

The Bright Forever is a tale of a small town in Indiana and its people. I got this book from the library and what really made me want to read it was its simplicity. The cover’s simple and from the description we would think it would be an effortless story. Well, the story was effortless, if you just focus on the events that happened, but the basis of the book became clear when I was halfway through. It’s basically about the way humans think and delves deep into the psychology of those who’re lonely, who have regrets and guilt, who’re scared to love. It primarily talks about things you don’t see in many books and for this, it was different and unlike many that I’ve read.

A man is a mathematics teacher and lives alone with no one to love except the children who’re his students. What goes on in his mind? How does he cope with such loneliness? How does he feel about loving a 9 year old girl as if she were his own daughter? What does the society think about it? This is Mr. Dees and the lively nine year old is Katie Mackey, daughter of an affluent family whom he teaches math over the summer. Katie is a lovely girl and Mr. Dees is immediately taken to her. But he’s worried about letting his feelings show in case her parents or other people might think he’s got a negative side to such behaviour. That’s the way we would think, wouldn’t we? As depressing as the character was, I think his portrayal was wonderful.

It’s not a happy story and the character’s lives are certainly not happy. The point of the book is to deliver the thoughts and feelings sad / lonely people might have and the way they feel when they’re shunned from the society or have no one to love. There’s Clare, Mr. Dees’s 60 year old neighbour who lost her husband Bill and then found Raymond after a while. Ray lives with her but the neighbours don’t like him and they cut off from Clare. This is another character who’s lonely, but she had someone to love and now there’s someone else. How does she juggle her feelings, how she’s innocent and wants Ray to be with her because she couldn’t think of staying alone.

Then there’s Ray, who was one character that kind of scared me. He seemed jolly and well, but when he started communicating with Mr. Dees and later tried blackmailing him and the readers don’t know what kind of a person he is, because we don’t have any background information. He was a drug addict and had a bad childhood. Ray’s character describes how hatred in childhood can distort the minds of the people, affecting the way they grow up to be. It’s not really their fault, they want to be good, but there’s always been so much of loathing they’ve seen that they can’t help their behaviour. They need help, not temptation.

The book’s written in a way that gives us the perspective from many different minds, like one chapter on Mr. Dees, how he’s thinking, what he feels happened, how he feels about Katie and her disappearance, then one chapter on Clare and things that happened, things she knows about, the next one on Raymond, next on Gilley, who’s Katie’s elder brother and has been shown as the family’s thinking-representative. This way of telling the story is different and refreshing since it gives the views from all sides, and there’s always some element of mystery, but it’s mild in the first half of the book. Once the events start rolling, it’s always there and not having a single perspective can be confusing. But overall, it was okay. If you’re looking for something that will help you understand human behaviour, this is one such book that you can go for.

Recommended for: The story isn’t a happy one and there are no happy endings. So, if you’re not interested in psychology related stuff and a story that can be a little bit depressing, you can skip this one. But if you think you’d like to understand in depth the behavioural aspects of guilt and regret ridden individuals and don’t mind a sad story, you should go for it.