Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

One of the concluding comments, a very simple but poignant one is spoken by Skeeter's mother who is dying of cancer. When she became an important political figure she betrayed Constantine, the help  who had brought Skeeter up to be strong and independent. She dismissed her and her daughter Rachel from her home to show white superiority  in front of her political and influential friends. She lacked the courage to openly admit that coloured people were valued and an important part of her white family, guilt she had to live with for the remainder of her short  life. Skeeter is a journalist and learns the whole truth when she attempts to write the torturous accounts of the abuse and humiliation the coloured women had to suffer at the hands of the middle class, racist whites. The story is about the courage to tell the truth even though there were painful consequences. Skeeter became ostracized by the white hypocrites and Aibileen Clark, one of the main coloured characters i...

William Wordsworth was one of the Romantic poets. He was born in 1770 and died in 1850. In 1843 he became the Poet Laureate. These three poems adopt a simple ballad technique. We can assume that Lucy was an unknown pauper. It may seem unusual for a well-known poet to write about a girl who lived an insignificant existence and died without anyone knowing or caring-other than the poet. Wordsworth lived in France for a year and he made a series of tours into Europe and he refers to his foreign travels here.  He was a poet of man and  nature who gained an "unfailing source of joy and purest passion" from writing about this. What is interesting is that he remained a "champion" of the poor and humble hence his choice of characters and here we mean Lucy. Charles Dickens did the same thing just like many other writers. In Auden's poem The Unknown Citizen  you have the same idea. In Lucy 1  the persona is most likely the poet. In line 2 he refers to a place outside ...

This is a remarkable debut novel from a young and talented writer and is on my highly recommended list. Picture the scene: Trafalgar Square, togetherness as a family, the epitome of happiness. Jamie, 5 feeding the pigeons and his twin sisters, 10 twirling around amongst the pigeons and an abundance of laughter. When Jasmine stopped, Rose continued much to her mother's delight. A different scene. A deafening explosion, dad screaming Rose, Rose, Rose and then a family torn apart by anger, grief and guilt. "Police found ten bits of her body." A terrorist bomb exploded, destroyed an innocent 10 year old and violated the remainder of her family beyond recognition. The world turned black, the future was bleak but in spite of this, Jamie narrates the story from an innocent, naive 10 year old's point of view. He simply cannot remember much about Rose and cannot grieve over her unlike the rest of his family. "I don't remember anything about the day except a b...

Remember the Ripley books that we all enjoyed or Hitchcock's adaptation of Strangers on a Train? Highsmith took a job as a salesgirl in Manhattan just like the main character Theresa. A blondish woman like Carol drifted into the store wearing an elegant mink coat. Like Theresa she was affected by the experience and then returned home to write out the plot for The Price of Salt.  Harper & Bros. rejected it before it was published in 1952 under a pseudonym. The paperback edition sold nearly a million copies. At nineteen, Theresa was a set designer who had to take on any menial jobs just to survive. Her insecurities and unhappy past surface from the beginning. Her rejection of her mother and the loss of her father have shaped her life and we see more of her pessimism than optimism. She has a boyfriend, Richard who dotes on her but she does not reciprocate the love and passion he desires and he gets very badly hurt. Theresa's transformation and growth as a character comes wi...

                         When Will There Be Good News? A tkinson is good on the dramatic openings. Just as you get started reading the first few pages then terror strikes. She doesn't give you time to grab your breath before you are plunged into hell then the story moves on in time but the tragic and violent past always resurfaces when you least expect it. Ghoulish and gory, full of gritty realism, the kind of things you read about in the papers every day. The attraction is in the perversity of the action. In spite of the horror throughout and there are some moments of respite, but only a few, it is exhilarating. The tension never seems to subside and the nightmare lives on. Reggie ( Regina) Chase represents the bravest and most resilient of them all. Her mother drowns, her brother is a criminal who would even sacrifice his sister's life. She saves the life of J...

Jean Dujardin, playing the famous Hollywood movie star, George Valentin is the artist, an egotistical, silent movie star with the charisma and plenty of the good lucks to attract the interest of the ladies. It's not surprising that his accolades include best actor awards for the Golden Globes, BAFTAs and Academy Awards. I loved his arrogance and his acting which typifies melodrama at its best. Melodrama is one of the features that interested the French director, Michel Hazanavicius in recreating silent movies during the 1920s. The Artist highlights the superficiality of Tinsel town, the glitter and glitz of fame while it lasts. And does it last? Of course not!! The silent movies were becoming tedious and dated, the directors wanted something to excite their public and of course, the public yearned for something modern and exciting. This seems to mean the end of a flourishing career for Valentin whose stubbornness and pride lead him to reject any advancement in cinematography. H...

How would you feel if you had been seduced by an aristocrat when you were sixteen and sent away to have an abortion, reminded of your shame and disgrace by a working class father? It happened, didn't it? Second scenario. Many years later you are haunted by the baby you aborted as a foetus. Now how would you feel if this "baby" merges with an actual baby such as your grandchild and taunts you with " YOU MURDERED ME !" Intriguing or just freaky? Carrie had to live with the shame and guilt all of her life but fortunately she married and had a legitimate daughter who is about to give birth at the beginning of the story. The pram, a simple purchase of an old-fashioned, over-sized, bulky but regal looking Victorian pram was meant as a special gift for a long-awaited grandchild. It doesn't take the reader long before we realise there is something sinister about the pram and the appearance of a baby sleeping soundly in it before the arrival of the gran...

Alone On A Wide Wide Sea. Michael Morpurgo. Morpurgo has surprisingly written over 100 books. He was awarded an O.B.E. on the Queen's 80th birthday and an M.B.E. for his work in founding the charity: Farms for City Children. Aimed at teenagers, this book is compelling reading for adults also. The author shared Breslin's concern in Kezzie about juvenile emigration or child deportation. Some background is useful in appreciating Arthur and Allie's attempts to establish  their identities and discover their families. Between 1947-67 it was estimated that 7,000-11,000 British children were sent to Australia alone. Others were sent to Canada and New Zealand. Some of the children got lucky but many-too many were left with broken hearts and broken lives just like Arthur. Cruelty, abuse and exploitation summed up their futures. Records show the average age of these banished children was 8 years and 9 months. These children were stripped of their parents, brothers, sisters and ...

Tearle touches upon a number of themes in this sexually explicit and adult short story selection dominated by sex, rape, abuse and murder with the ever-present underworld representing the shadows of darkness of a young, female protagonist striving for happiness and success. Unfortunately this does not happen. The female "voice" is fairly constant throughout each of the stories although sometimes she is a single woman still reliant on the security of her parents. At other times she is a married woman abused by her husband or partner, fighting for her survival, trying to make sense of a disturbing world. The style is modern and reminiscent of the mock Gothic style such as Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey  or Sleepy Hollow  where you might recollect Johnny Depp and the headless horseman. Imaginative, far-fetched but entertaining. Added to this you have elements of black humour. dark and almost disturbing. Tearle seems to have been experimenting with horror, certainly she en...