If I Stay - Gayle Forman

Gayle Forman tells the story of seventeen-year old Cello prodigy Mia, who survives a car crash in which the rest of her family is killed. The premise of the book is that, sometimes when we are hovering between life and death, we can chose whether we stay or go. 

I did enjoy this book and it made me cry, but that’s really not unusual. At the best of times, I can be overly emotionally susceptible to films and books, so pregnancy hormones are probably making me twice as bad. I thought the writing was good, well paced and the flashback scenes tied in well with Mia’s current situation of finding herself in limbo, watching over her battered body and grieving relatives and friends and deciding whether or not she can bear to live without her immediate family.

However, a few things irked me about Mia’s relationships. Her parents seemed just that bit too cool and perfect. Mia is a teenager and yet not one flashback recalls a tense moment between her and her parents. Whilst I understand that the purpose of the flashbacks is to highlight how much she has lost, it sometimes felt unrealistic to me. There was no teenage angst, no rebellion, no mention of her finding her parents embarrassing at any time (even though her dad dresses exclusively in 50s suits and bowties and her mum is extremely opinionated and hot headed). She gets on perfectly with her much younger brother and, to be perfectly honest, I found their interactions cloyingly sweet at times.

Crucially, I never quite brought into Adam and Mia as a couple. Their ‘tough times’ are what any teenage couple might go through – one going to this university, the other going to another. What happens when we go our separate ways? Will our love transcend distance and the novelty of uni? Nothing new here. Interestingly, Adam was the one that seemed most affected by this thought, not Mia. Whilst I do think teenagers are often underestimated in their capacity for treating love with respect and wisdom, Mia and Adam just didn’t gel for me.

In fact, Mia was sometimes quite detached from what was happening in her life. I would have liked to have read more about her grief at losing her family – I didn’t feel like Forman emphasised this enough. Mia never wonders about whether she will still even be able to play the cello should she decide to stay. I kept expecting her to overhear one of the doctors speculating over whether this would be a possibility for her, or even for one of her visitors to bring this issue up. As music seemed to be such an integral part of her life, and indeed the book, I felt this was quite a large omission from the story. It certainly would have made her decision that much more difficult to make if it transpired that she may not be able to play the cello ever again.

I also felt that perhaps not enough of her personality came through. She is supposed to have a dry sense of humour but that was only shown a couple of times. As people often deal with extreme situations with humour, I thought perhaps Forman missed an opportunity for the reader to engage with Mia a little more. Humour could have been used to bring Kim to life too – she is supposed to be the best friend, but seemed much more of a minor character. I barely remember much about her except that she has untameable hair and is Jewish.

So, I realise that, at the beginning of this review, I did mention that I enjoyed this book and yet I seem to have spent four paragraphs eviscerating it. I really liked the theme of music that ran through the book. The idea that music bonds people and has the ability to bring people together really resonates with me. Forman could have been overly dramatic and emotionally manipulative but I thought her writing was clean and unfettered. The flashbacks of Mia’s life were well constructed and flowed pretty seamlessly with the current time line. Adam’s speech at the end of the book was pitched just right – my tears were shed here – it was an emotional moment, not unexpected but not at all overdone.

I loved Gramps – he was the character that really stood out for me. Probably quite a stereotypical Grandfather but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, right? I thought he was really well developed, a very likeable character who showed a tremendous amount of empathy and strength.

So, would I recommend this book? Yes, I think I would. I would class it as a light read, despite the subject matter. It’s not a long book, but it does pose an interesting question and some of the scenes are really quite powerful. Given that it’s marketed as YA, I would give it a 7/10 rating.

Next up? Not sure – hope to get another book through from Transworld soon…

like reading... or writing. But definitely not staring at my stomach waiting for the baby to move.

How exciting - my first book for this challenge arrived today, If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Having read the blurb and the cover reviews, I am really looking forward to reading it. Yesterday, I watched The Lovely Bones and this is supposed to be very much in the vein of that book. I really hope I'm not disappointed. I have found that, lately, I have picked up books and anticipated a really good read only to finish them feeling a little cheated. The blurb and the cover promised an exciting, thought-provoking, interesting read but the reality was much different.

One book that definitely did not leave me feeling this way was The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Fantastic. I read it in a day - eating my breakfast, delaying my lunch. I was completely captivated by the world she had created, the characters and their lives, the concept of a government controlling it's people by holding annual games whose end result was a child victor who had, in all likelihood, killed other children in a primal quest for survival. I cannot wait to read the next book in this trilogy - at the end of this book, I actually said out loud, 'No. No, no, it can't end there.' Such disappointment - but in a very good way.

Anyway, I digress from the Summer Reading Challenge - the other three books on my list are:

After You - Julie Buxbaum
Lockdown - Sean Black
Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld

I will aim to get If I Stay read and reviewed by the end of next weekend, however I do have quite a reading/writing list to be getting on with. Critiquing a friend's book, reading my book group book in time for meeting two weeks today, redrafting my own book (again), reading library book due back on Friday (I should probably start reading it. Or renew it at least).

Oh, and a recommendation  - the Into the Wild soundtrack is amazing. I can't believe it's taken me such a long time to get round to buying it. I love it. And I think the baby rather likes it too. Eddie Vedder is genius - if you like the slower, more acoustic Pearl Jam stuff, you should give this a go. Incidentally, the film is rather good too and I bet the book is outstanding. But I really don't have time to add this to my reading list too. Do I?

How many things can I not do?

Well, it's my fourth day of unemployment and I had expected to be much more productive than I have been. I had a bunch of craft/sewing projects that I had intended on starting and finishing this week, but I haven't got round to any of them. By the way, I am not some domestic goddess, whipping up curtains and dresses every afternoon - these are easy-to-do, made-necessary-by-lack-of-job, time filling projects like making cushion covers (without zips, I hasten to add - way too labour-intensive and skill-requiring) and covering kitchen chairs.

Really, I should be redrafting my novel (for what feels like the 8,975,546th time but is only the 3rd). I do have a deadline of the end of August but, in reality, I would like to get this third draft done by the end of July so that I can redraft again if necessary (who am I kidding? It WILL be necessary) before submitting it to the RNA New Writers' Scheme before the very end of August.

Of course, this situation I find myself in was not what I had intended when I joined the NWS in January (although, honestly? Not entirely unexpected). Then, I had grand visions of getting it polished enough to submit by June, smug that I had one finished manuscript being critiqued and could get on with number two. Number two?!? Well, I have an idea for a second book, but I wonder if I should really be starting a second novel when I'm not even happy with the first.

I am hoping my volunteer, pretend potential agents/editors (big thanks to you all) will help me out with making it better, telling me what's good, what's dire, what makes absolutely no sense. It's a lot to ask of people really. Complete honesty but delivered kindly, in such a way so as not to completely devastate but to help, to encourage, to make it good. Good enough to get published - now there's a tall order.

Another tall order is trying to get a maternity bra that fits properly but isn't completely unattractive and ridiculously expensive - this is probably harder to achieve than getting published... but that's another blog entirely.