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They Both Die at the End

Teen/Young Adult

Tissues at the ready for this emotionally charged YA novel

Is it true? Do they really die at the end? Well, the Grim Reaper certainly stalks through this book, but it’s also very much concerned with big, bold, shining life. Teenagers Mateo and Rufus inhabit an alternative New York City, one in which an agency known as Death-Cast informs citizens when their demise is near. Death will occur within 24 hours, exact means and time unknown. When this dark fate befalls Mateo and Rufus, they embark on one last grand adventure, to live a lifetime in a single day.

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We Are Not Ourselves

A heart-wrenching novel about the devastation caused by early-onset Alzheimers

His debut novel took Matthew Thomas a decade to write. Was it worth the ten-year slog? In my opinion, yes. Thomas has simultaneously crafted an intimate story of an ordinary family and an epic of post-war America. Born in 1941, the product of a stormy Irish Catholic working-class upbringing in Queens, New York, Eileen Tumulty craves respectability. Coming of age in the early sixties, she meets and marries a young scientist named Edmund Leary. But while Eileen is deeply aspirational for her family, the quiet, unassuming Ed refuses to give up his teaching for a better-paid job. Eileen dreams of a different life: a better job, a bigger house, more respectability.

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Books for Christmas

Finding beautiful books to give as presents used to be tricky. Not any longer. The arrival of e-books seemed to have propelled publishers into spending more thought and money on striking book covers. So walking into a well-stocked bookstore these days is no longer only a treat for your mind but a feast for your eyes as well. The bookshops are brimming with temptations: colourful, intelligent, artistic even tactile book covers. Combine that with some clever content and you’re in gift heaven. If there ever was a place you could kill off that Christmas shopping list with one stab, it’s in a bookshop.

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The Snow Queen

8-11 years

The loveliest of Christmas gifts

First published in the 1840’s, The Snow Queen has come to be known as one of our best loved fairytales, and its author Hans Christian Anderson as a master of the genre. The story of young Kay and Gerda, their friendship torn asunder as Kay is kidnapped by Her Icy Highness, and Gerda’s subsequent long journey to rescue him, has spawned many versions and translations over the decades. This particular edition is one of the loveliest I’ve ever seen.

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Wonder

8-11 years

Savour this paean to kindness before its big screen release

The upcoming cinema release of Wonder, provides an ideal opportunity to consider the charms of its literary predecessor. We meet Auggie, who’s living with Mandibulofacial Dysostosis, a rare and severe cranio-facial abnormality. ‘I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse’. Previously home-educated, Auggie’s parents have decided it’s time he went to school. At the tender age of 10, he must learn to confront the prejudices of an often hostile world.
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The Lost Estate by Henri Alain-Fournier

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The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)

A poignant evocation of those feverish days of adolescence

Our narrator, François Seurel, is the bookish son of a schoolmaster, residing in a provincial French village in the 1890s. Passive and impressionable, he yearns for adventure, but will never be the architect of his own life. When the charismatic adventurer, Augustin Meaulnes, comes to board at his home, Seurel’s life is changed irrevocably. A French classic, often described as the greatest novel of adolescence in European literature, The Lost Estate deserves to be more widely read on this side of the Channel.

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Book series for kids

5-8 years 11-13 years Teen/Young Adult

Every parent loves a book series. Keep your kids busy with these Bookstoker recommendations.

With Autumn upon us, and the nights drawing in, surely now is the time to get your kids cosily curled up with a book. Or two. Or preferably, a whole series, to keep them busy until Spring. With this in mind, we’ve cherry-picked a few, for discerning young minds.

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The Life of a Song

Anecdotes about 50 of the world's best-loved songs

Did you know that Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Hallelujah’ took him two years, ‘ 50,000 cigarettes and several swimming pools of whiskey’ (to deepen his voice) to make? Or that ‘Amazing Grace’ was not actually written by a slave but  a repenting slave trader. Or that Ronald Reagan used Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ on his campaign trail, promising that he, just like the song, would make the electorate’s dreams come true, without realising that the song was actually about a Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, unable to find work? Neither did I, until I stumbled upon Cheal and Dalley’s compelling little book The Life of a Song, a compilation of the stories of 50 well-known songs written by music critics. A perfect present to your music loving friend, or even yourself.

The Life of a Song is published by Financial Times and Brewer’s, 208 pages.

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Home Fire

When the personal becomes political

Two Muslim families collide in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire; one from a wealthy, privileged, political family, the other from Wembley’s poor immigrant community. Eammon, son of British Pakistani Home Secretary, Karamat Lone and his glamorous American designer wife, Terry, falls head over heals in love with Aneeka, orphaned Pakistani girl with Jihadi father and brother. Interesting premise for a story and fertile ground for moral dilemmas and culture clashes. Shamsie keeps the suspense and gripping love story moving at an impressive pace. Shame, then, that the ending feels contrived. I blame it on Sophocles.

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Lincoln in the Bardo – Man Booker Prize Winner 2017

Party down at the cemetery

Well, here’s something utterly different. A book with a cacophony of 166 different voices portraying the Bardo (a temporary state in between death and re-birth in the Buddhist faith) of President Abraham Lincoln’s 11-year-old son Willie. It’s an unusually structured and challenging book, and a moving portrayal of death and grief (and you’ll never walk through a cemetery at night in quite the same way).

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