The Year of the Rat by Clare Furniss

I've had trouble writing this review. I kept coming back to it over the past week because I wasn't able to figure out what to say. It's a complex book with a not so happy topic, and I didn't want to write anything to make you think it's overly depressing and put you off reading it. In fact, I'll put the recommendation here first: read this book.

The Year of the Rat focuses on the first year after Pearl's mother dies in childbirth, but the baby (which Pearl henceforth calls the Rat) survives. Pearl and her step-father, who is the biological father of the Rat, are then left to deal with the situation: both grieving and taking care of a new baby.

While really it's no one's fault, it is a situation where one could easily place blame or feel guilt. Pearl, struggling with the loss of her mother, retreats into herself. Her best friend can't possibly understand, her step-father seems more concerned about his new child, and all Pearl can do is blame the Rat for causing the whole horrible mess. She seems to emotionally flit between different stages of grief depending on her situation: Pearl is clearly depressed, but she is also angry with her new sister to the point of such hatred that you begin to wonder if she'll ever warm to the baby.

What I loved most about this book is that while it was very much focused on an unhappy topic, it manages to maintain some humour. Despite her depression, Pearl can be funny in her own way. It really comes out during the exchanges she has/remembers with her mother. I think her mother's character is what makes this story, even though the story is clearly based around her absence, everyone else is focused on various traits of Pearl's mother as they begin to cope with her death.

As already mentioned, I highly recommend The Year of the Rat. This is a strong debut from a very talented author, looking at how people cope with grief and depression while life continues around them. It's an emotional but worthwhile journey complimented by superb writing.

The Year of the Rat publishes on 24th April by Simon & Schuster.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

If you haven't heard of Matthew Quick, you will have heard of Silver Linings Playbook, the film based on his book of the same name. His recently-published Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock has some similar elements in that it focuses on a character that is suffering from psychological trauma. The real difference, though, is how Leonard Peacock chooses to deal with it.

While the story is mostly linear, present-day Leonard is continually focussing on the past as a way to explain his behaviour. It is his 18th birthday, and he has decided to kill himself, but not until after he's given the four people who mean something to him a small goodbye gift. Then he's going to kill Asher Beal before turning the gun on himself. As he acts through his plan, he looks back on how each of those four people has come to be what he considers a friend, with his thoughts interspersed by letters he has written to himself from the future.

At the onset, it's all rather disturbing, particularly if you are aware of just how often shootings happen in America, or just how easy it can be for teens to get access to guns. Leonard never expresses the desire to kill anyone other than Asher and himself, but you never know. Yet during the whole book you get the sense that Leonard doesn't really want to go through with it. He thinks he is really giving everyone the signs to show something is not right with him; he wants someone to notice. He wants people to pay attention to him. The problem is that no one is ever there to notice, as his mother spends most of her time away from home leaving Leonard essentially living by himself.

Despite his obvious faults, Leonard is a likable character. He's funny, thoughtful and even charming at times. This may seem out of sync with the dark things going on in his head, but it does go to show how complex we are as humans, and how most people only get to see a small side of any individual. Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock is a great example of a teenager who feels ostracized by everyone around him, and how he has attempted to rationalise extreme behaviour in reaction to feeling so alone, but can't quite let go as easily as he would like to.