Look Who's Back ~ Timur Vermes

Pages: 352

Read: January 2016

This isn’t my normal genre of novel, but then again I’m struggling to put it in a genre.  Amazon has (at the time of writing this) gone with ‘Contemporary Fiction’ and I’ll go along with the vagueness of that.  This book made me laugh, it made me cringe and it made me think.  I picked this up after I saw it hauled in a YouTube video (yes, I am a marketers dream) Emma summarised the plot during that Waterstones haul and once I’d looked at it on Amazon for about the tenth time I accepted that I was going to need to buy it to satisfy my curiosity.

Trying to avoid any spoilers, the premise is that Adolf Hitler wakes up in modern day Germany and is mistaken for a scarily accurate impersonator who refuses to break character and quickly grabs the attention of a television producer.  With no proof to his identity Hitler tries to adjust to modern day life; from discovering the internet, social media and cash machines to Germany being run by a woman and he’s getting the attention of more and more people everytime he speaks.

Despite the time travel in the opening pages this isn’t a fantasy book, the hows and whys of those first few pages aren’t actually ever explained.  At first I found that quite irritating, I wanted to know! How has one of history’s most notorious characters just re-appeared, and why now and why only him?  The more I read the more I seemed to forget about my initial gripe and enjoyed the actual point of the book.  A fictional exploration of a human reaction, every character the book is unaware of the spontaneous and very selective time travel thing that’s suddenly possible and knows that Adolf Hitler died in 1945 so when the masses laugh at his speeches on the telly and share his Youtube videos all over social media they’re doing so believing it’s all being done in a humorous, satirical manner but ultimately, intentionally or not Hitler’s message is getting shared again and that made this not only an interesting read but a thought provoking one.

The film adaptation "Er ist wieder da?" (the original German title) was a massive success in Germany in October 2015 so here's hoping there's a DVD release with English subtitles at somepoint.

It took me a while to read this, at around 360 pages it’s not massively long at all but it became a bit of a secondary book for me. It didn’t hook me in a way that made me resent putting it down but I was enjoying it enough to keep picking it back up. I’ve mentioned it to so many people over the few months it took me to read it; the plot premise has been met with many a quizzical look and started several unusual conversation so if you’re after something a little bit different I’d defiantly recommend adding this one to the ‘to be read’ list.

How To Build A Girl ~ Caitlin Moran

Oh Caitlin Moran, where to start? Your wit? Your humour? Your eyeliner?  All are consistently awesome. Though maybe I should stop before this gets a bit like a certain Dolly Wilde article (#spoilers) and just say I’m a bit of a fan.

This is my second delve into one of Moran’s novels, How To Be a Woman was *que slightly ashamed head tilt* the first real book or even article on feminism I’d ever read; it remains to this day one of my favourite books, massively thought provoking while being ridiculously funny but I digress; the point is I finally got round to reading the latest offering and was not disappointed!

So, how to summarise without ruining everything for you, Johanna Morrigan is a 14 year old who simply wants a little bit more than her current lot in life; sound familiar? I’d be surprised if most people didn’t relate to her even a little bit; but personally it almost creepy.  Johanna wants her life to be like a film; she wants to make something of herself but (let’s be honest) unlike most of us she decides to do something about it.  She becomes the character which inside her head she believes she needs to be and starts to live, professionally at least as Dolly Wilde.  Through Dolly and a shit-tonne of eyeliner she finds the confidence to start pursuing her dreams of writing and finds herself thrown into the new, exciting world she thinks she’s always wanted to be a part of.

More than the actual plot of midlands teenager becomes London journalist, this supposedly semi-autobiographically novel is about a girl growing up, about personal discovery and what I love the most about Moran’s writing is that she doesn’t fluff things up or round off corners.  The situations Johanna finds herself in throughout How to Build a Girl could be real and they’re written honestly, sometimes shockingly honestly.  As someone who was once a teenage girl and has subsequently become an adult woman there are so many things I look back on and wish I could have done differently; there were so many points through reading this I wanted to shout aloud at the book “Don’t. Just don’t.” and continued to read through cringey giggles.

Being fairly local to Wolverhampton the constant local references made me smile, but I imagine they’d be just as amusing and relatable to anyone outside of the midlands. 

I found it addictive from the off; if you’ve not read it I highly recommend heading down to your local book retailer and reading the first two pages.  I actually tried this with my boyfriend who’s summary of the start of the book was that it contained the best metaphor for the Berlin wall he’d ever heard – and no I won’t explain, just go find out.

The Fault In Our Stars

Obligatory disclaimer – these are my thoughts, opinions and general ramblings on both the book and the film of The Fault In Our Stars; I haven’t given away anything major but I have referred to some minor plot points so if you’re trying to keep either version a surprise; firstly why are you researching it online and secondly, you may want to click away now.

Heart-wrenching novel gets turned into tear-jerking film, I think we’ve all seen this one before but this is aimed at a younger audience with a quite non-typical main theme.  On a serious note each time I’ve read or seen this it’s provoked genuinely emotion.

To give you an idea of the target audience - at 22 I think I was probably the second to oldest person in the cinema so points to the lovely mother who’d taken her daughter and double-bonus boyfriend points to the only male in the room.  I volunteer as a young leader at a guide unit (they’re 10 – 14) and a lot of this story has a lot of them fangirling just as much as the words ‘One Direction’.

It’s not a particularly long book, both times I’ve read this I’ve finished it in a couple of days however the film was over two hours and yet they left out quite a few characters and then switched around the sections they left in.  Characters were reciting conversations word for word but in completely different scenes which made me question how much attention I’d actually paid to the book – not that it changes the plot but if you’re a hard core fan I could see that being irritating.

One quite strange thing, why make them both a year older in the film? Did anyone else notice that? Was it to make the driving and/or the sex scenes more acceptable? Does it really make a difference if they’re 17 and 18 instead of 16 and 17?  At least if they’d of left the characters at their original ages they could of skipped around Amsterdam reciting songs from the Sound of Music.

I did feel that they played to the characters extremes in the film, in the film Augustus was perfection, even I fell a little bit in love with him watching that.  They also made Hazel out to be quite the whiner that did nothing but read before she met Gus. They seem to have left out all the middle ground.  Where was Augustus’ tale of his previous girlfriend, Bluie, Hazel’s shopping trips, the video games, selling the swing set; basically where were all the parts where they had fun and weren’t just talking about having cancer – I understand it’s a pretty big part of the story but for me it was those moments in the book that made the characters believable.

I realise this all sounds slightly anti-film so just to clarify I am by no means against the film but I thought the omitted details left it a bit empty.  To balance that the book is by no means ground breaking but it’s a lovely read – particularly if you’re looking for a sunbed/holiday read!

A Song of Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones. Book One v Season One

Firstly, no this is not a review of a Bond film you should have probably worked that one out by the title; imma be trying something new. Fret not, we’re currently halfway through the year and more than halfway through the Bonds, plenty of time until we reach what will probably be a Daniel Craig filled December – there are worse ways to spend December I suppose.

Secondly, this is not; like many of my Bond write-ups a review of the actual plot so there are NO SPOLIERS in the paragraphs below – I’m contemplating a second spoiler friendly review – you’ll just have to wait!

For those that don’t know “Game of Thrones” whilst the name of the amazingly popular HBO show is actually only the name of book one of the series of books “A Song of Ice and Fire” referring to one of the many stand-out quotes “When you play the Game of Thrones you either win or you die.”

I jumped on the Game of Thrones bandwagon when I the rest of the world was engrossed in season 2, by the time the world got to episode 10, so had I; then began the agonising wait for season 3. Fast forward a bit and game of thrones fans have once again found themselves in that purgatory phase between seasons; forced to wait for season 5 to get the answers we know we’re not going to like.  Ok, that may sound a tad extreme, but I know I’m not the only one missing the show. To try and fill the direwolf shaped hole in my life I decided to finally pick the books up, for space, cost and saving myself from wrist strain reasons I got the e-books on my kindle something which has no bearing on this write-up I’m just throwing it out there for kicks really.

At around 800 pages it’s a decent sized read; it’s slightly longer than HP5 if that helps anyone’s perspective.  Stupidly it was the size of this book that made me continue to put off starting it; que a day where I had to spend three hours on a train on my own and I was hooked to the point that I was looking forward to my train home not just to save my aching feet (a day of shopping in London does that to a girl) but so I could keep going - that being said it still took me around 6 weeks to get through it.

Structure wise I loved the way this was written because of the amount of subplots, characters and the fact that these books are spread across years and continents there is no way you could of written this from one point of view, also that technique creates a main character something I’d say that on the whole Game of Thrones cleverly avoids.  Each chapter is written from the standpoint of a main character, something they can’t really put across on screen meaning you get to know each character individually in turn enforcing the whole, no main/favourite thing.

What I would say about the first season and book is that they’re pretty much completely in-line with each other, there are a few extra little parts in the book but nothing that changes the plot, they just add a bit of character depth and generally make it a better read.  Also nothing major was missed out of the show – Hermione’s potion moment at the end of the Philosopher’s Stone I’m looking at you!

Now one of HBO’s biggest criticisms is that the show isn’t exactly family friendly, my view on this is that it’s not meant to be, end of.  However the book is no-where near as graphic as I assumed it  was going to be so if that aspect puts you off its simply not there; yes its implied but no its nothing to cause offence.  The main downside of having a kindle is I can’t pass books on to other people but if I could I would defiantly pass to my Aunt, who’s avoided the show based on what she’s heard about certain ‘adult’ scenes.

Something I think the books do better than the show is bring across both sides of each and every character; GoT is renound is robbing the audience of its favourite heroes going against the happily ever after grain and dispelling the fairytale myth, but after reading book one I’m starting to think that the point is there aren’t meant to be any out and out heroes and yes I’m going to be a massive cliché and mention how much that mirrors real-life, is anyone really a complete “good-guy”?

Now we come to the inevitable question of which I enjoyed more, the book or the television show.  My honest answer is – I don’t know.  The book wasn’t spoiled by knowing what was going to happen and I don’t now think the show is lacking and want to rage about the sections it missed.  I would happily re-visit both and will probably be planning a complete Game of Thrones re-watch come the start of 2015; if not sooner – I may be a bit addicted.

So if you hadn’t gathered from the above rant or if you’ve just skipped to the end for a bit of a summary I loved the first written instalment of a song of ice and fire, I can’t remember the last book that had me that gripped, especially over several weeks, we’re probably going back to the release of HP7.