Carrying Albert Home

Book Title: Carrying Albert Home

Author: Homer Hickam

Date Started: September 4th 2015

Date Completed: September 12th 2015

Genres: Historical, Memoir, Adventure, Romance
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

◆ Thank you HarperCollins for providing me with this proof copy to review ◆

Carrying Albert Home started with an intriguing premise: a married couple, with a few problems to say the least, travelling across America during a time of economic failure - with an alligator. It sounded interesting and I was willing to try something new. Unfortunately, this book was okay but ultimately repeated the same sort of quirky stories a dozen or so times and then drew to a close.

The writing was quite suited to the book: pretty straightforward and at times quite quirky with its syntax. In the early parts of the book I really liked this, because it kind of replicated how simple the things Homer wanted were; but as we went on it didn't change at all, and things like action became very hard to follow in such basic terms. I half expected Hickam to become more thoughtful and complex with his prose as we learnt more about the characters but eventually the undemanding style became tedious.

I keep calling this book quirky - and I hope that comes across positively, because I genuinely think some people will enjoy its unusual outlook. But I have to admit, it does feel slightly optimistic to me. It's a very strange atmosphere for around the era of the Great Depression (to be honest I'm not entirely sure of the time period because quite a lot went over my head when I was trying to engage myself); putting the references to Disney and Steinbeck aside, we get quite a humorous and fun portrayal of America's dark days. Having studied various forms of history around the Wall Street Crash and it's consequences this was just bizarre and it made it very hard to concentrate on the actual action - the further detail that Carrying Albert Home is supposed to be somewhat of a memoir exaggerated just how wrong it felt for Homer and Elsie to be having such an adventure during such a crisis.

The structure of the story was very off for me too: having an episodic plot for a road trip is all well and good but when each part follows the same pattern it becomes so dull. Every time, the couple would stop off somewhere, a stranger would say something about the alligator, Elsie would wildly go and get herself into trouble so that Homer could go and get her out of it and they would have a moment where we're supposed to think 'oh maybe now they'll reconcile their marriage' - but of course they wouldn't. This was even more infuriating because of the potential there was: they had an alligator with them, surely it would've caused a few problems for them crossing borders or finding somewhere to stay; there were genuine pieces of action but so widely spread and with so little consequence it was like they never happened; they met up with multiple famous authors (something I really, really didn't like) and yet made nothing of it!

And because of this lack of meaningful or even really relevant happenings throughout the book, the ending feels unbelievable. It's pushed so hard that Elsie and Homer aren't happy together but apparently that can change in a second on the last page to resolve the story. Fair enough if this is based on a true story - and I do think based is the right word - but I don't think the progression of their marriage was portrayed in a way that really made sense of their journey or even helped me emphasise with two people I didn't like particularly at the beginning.

None of the characters felt particularly realistic to me - again for the quirkiness of the story this would have been alright had the book not claimed to be a biographical recount of Homer's (or let's be honest, it's really Elsie's) adventures. And on top of that, when I look back it's actually quite depressing how unkind the people were: Homer spends his time pining for a girl who obviously doesn't have an interest in him and keeps pushing and pushing when it isn't fair, but Elsie ignores every attempt and makes it very clear she still wants a man she hasn't seen in years. 

Homer I really wasn't a fan of: I understand he loves Elsie and wants her to be happy, but at the end of the day she does not want nor need his help and my reaction at numerous points in this book was that he needed to leave her alone.

Elsie would have been quite an interesting character is she hadn't been written so emotionlessly. She won't let herself be pushed around by men in a time when women were at a disadvantage, but at the same time when you look back everything she does it ultimately caused by the actions of the men around her. But she's so... placid? Robotic? Her dialogue especially just feels like paper rather than anything three dimensional and real.

Pacing in road trip stories has always been an issue for me; I just don't like plot lines that don't flow throughout the whole thing. It makes them really hard to get into and sometimes feels lazy and stalls consistency in character development. When that's then combined with a historical era and characters I can't relate to it just drags things out even further.

If you like road trips and 1930/40s America (like I said I wasn't paying too much attention to the time period) you might enjoy this quirky little twist on a story, but for me it just became dull. Nothing overtly wrong with it, but just not enough to really amount to anything. I personally wouldn't market this as a memoir because quite frankly it's very hard to take anything seriously if we're supposed to believe it's all true - the back of my copy even admits everything's true "except the bits that are made up."

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A Stolen Childhood

Book Title: A Stolen Childhood

Author: Casey Watson

Date Started: June 12th 2015

Date Completed: June 14th 2015

Genres: Contemporary, Memoir
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

Thank you to Harper Collins for providing me with this copy to review.

Having never read a memoir before, A Stolen Childhood was a new experience for me - one I'm not entirely sure if I liked to not. To be honest, the real world within the pages of a book isn't for me, however I do feel like Watson's book has something to say: she addresses something many people are too scared to, and in as brutally honest a way as a memoir. (Though there were several times where I had to take a step back from absorbing everything at face value.)

Watson's writing felt halfway between a diary and a formal report; I couldn't tell if it's supposed to be funny or serious (or perhaps both at the same time). Due to the subject matter and the personality of the author herself I can understand why this is, but it does make it difficult to read and get emersed in the story - you're too busy trying to work out if you're supposedly to be reading a scene in a shocker manner or with amusement.

There was a lot of irrelevant information thrown in as well: we don't need to know who everyone's fake names are, because we don't know who they were in real life and they don't play as big a part in the story as they might have done in the author's life. This particularly made things quite hard to keep up with, and was more than anything just unnecessary.

The final issue I had with the writing was my pet peeve: telling not showing. But this time, it came with a twist. Watson has the strange knack of showing something very well, but then feeling obliged to tell us exactly what she just implied through her wirintg. It's not needed, and actually came across as quite patronising in my opinion. More often than not she effectively presented a character being distressed or having a little unnoticeable tic, but then had to address it directly and with quite watered-down explanations.

A Stolen Childhood sent me right back into school memories, and not necessarily in a good way. Perhaps the shell-shock of secondary school hasn't quite worn off on me yet, but being thrown back into that little world of turmoil and drama wasn't exactly what I was looking for when I picked this up - not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Watson was able to replicate some quite uncomfortable moments any child will remember from their time in education, and quite a few only children who spent a day or two in the so-called 'unit' will relate to. But despite this accuracy in setting, Watson also succeeded in infuriating me quite a bit when it came to teacher's gossiping and dealing with children in their care - don't get me wrong, they were generally good. But I couldn't help feeling quite patronised as a student who not that long ago was at the age of the younger characters. I did also feel that, at times, some issues could've been approached in a different way, but I do appreciate having a narrator who takes the time to consider various sides of an argument.

Something to praise Watson for is her range of kids in the story; A Stolen Childhood is definitely sold as Kiara's story, but there are actually a few others children that we follow along the way. The book really needed that, I think, to keep things moving smoothly, and to stop things from becoming too absorbed in what's actually quite a small story that takes place over a longer period of time.

Things draw to a close in quite a strange way; admittedly, as a memoir, we expect that these are how things really did play out (make your own judgements on that), and so this can't really be held so harshly. However, I wonder is perhaps more development into Casey's emotions at this time that contrasted that seen previously in the book would've enhanced the ending to make it feel slightly more climactic.

Something I was expecting from a memoir was a wider range of characters: since it's based off real life, you'd expect the diversity of the real world to be somehow reflected in the story. However, I found that most people, save four or five, merged into one another. Not only are there so many people it's hard to keep track of anyway, but the somewhat bland qualities they're described with definitely doesn't help to distinguish them from one another.

Casey, though at times questionable in her methods and reactions, was a good narrator (and yes, I do say this fully aware that the narrator and the author are the same person - not that I'd be any less harsh than usual). For me, it was particularly intersting to see the story unfold entirely from her perspective: in fiction books, even in a first person perspective, you know that the author has things all worked out behind the scenes, and so it's hard for them not to drop little things that the characters wouldn't otherwise know in. But this book offered a new way of looking at things, and you can definitely notice the difference in the protagonist's awareness, and how the story plays out because of it.

For such a short book, it takes a long time for things to happen. Understandably, there's an introduction to Casey's character and job before things start occurring, but it doesn't make the most engaging read if you aren't interested in the education system. This issue dominated quite a bit of the book for me; I completely understand that it's a memoir, but part of me can't help feeling that the creative license exists for a reason. I'm sure for the memoir audience, there are readers willing to take in the information dumping about real-life institutions, but for a reader used to fiction, it makes it quite hard to swallow.

Admittedly, memoirs have turned out not to be my thing - but the fact that I can say that quite confidently through the genre, rather than Watson's own work, sings at least a little bit of praise for the author. Readers who look for dark real-life stories may enjoy this much more than myself, and I feel like more research into the author's story would enhance the experience - it's easy to see the way Casey's story continues in her career.

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