Concentr8 - William Sutcliffe

12:46 Unknown 0 Comments

You want to know how I got famous? This is how. 

Weren’t proper famous. Didn’t last more than a few days. Weren’t popular famous neither. I mean most famous is we-love-you famous or you-done-something-good famous- this was the opposite. For a few days me and Blaze was the official scumbags of the universe. But what I’m saying is - we ain’t. We ain’t and we weren’t. 

Taking a guy off the street and tying him to a radiator and keeping him sounds psycho but if you know me - if you knew my whole life what happened up to that day - you’d get it. I mean you probably still wouldn’t like me - so what that don’t mean nothing anyway - but you’d know I ain’t a nutter or evil or any of that other stuff what they said about me. 



I stand by the fact that I am incredibly lucky to have this blog. This novel is the yet to be released novel from Carnagie nominated author William Sutcliffe, and I’ve had an opportunity to read it. And let me just start off by telling you that this book is stunningly beautiful; but it’s beautiful in a way that you don’t expect it to be. I mean, in what way can five teens kidnapping a man and chaining him to a radiator be beautiful, I hear you ask. Well… let me tell you. 

The story of Concentr8 follows a lot of points of view, over the course of five days. It all however stems from the ever more present disorder known as ADHD. In this version of London that Sutcliffe has developed for the reader, Concentr8 was used to subdue a majority of the populous. However when we join the novel we are mid rioting and hysteria after the government decision to stop supplying this medication. This is where I feel the beauty of this story begins. We have this really cinematic moment of the five teens stood in a shopping centre watching a crowd of people looting, and it’s that moment where you can imagine a camera panning across faces, all slightly different. It has one of those very rare qualities where I found myself wanting it to be a BBC mini series, just so I could watch what was happening. 

Before we delve any deeper into this story, it only feels right to talk about our characters. There feels to be a very distinct hierarchy between the teens in the novel, although they all maintain they’re not a gang. Blaze feels very much like the leader of the group. He’s the instigator for the abduction essentially. He decides that they need to do something big, get peoples attention. And this is what he thinks will work. He comes across as very indifferent to a lot of things, always appearing very blank faced with no real expression and no real care as to what he’s doing. This changes toward the end as he realises the effect of his actions, but in the early stages of the novel it is very difficult to pinpoint exactly why he does what he does. There are also only a couple of chapters from his point of view, perhaps highlighting that we’re not really meant to understand Blaze as a character, which makes him feel rather like a real teenaged boy. 

After Blaze we have Troy. Troy is the one who opens and closes the novel. He’s Blaze’s ‘best friend’/right hand man and the only character who sticks by Blaze through it all. He is very much more open about he feels and definitely is one who looks at both sides of the argument, even being the one who communicates the most with the hostage. He appears to be aware of how the others all feel in the novel but is able to see beyond that to the greater good of what they are doing, despite knowing where they will all end up. 

Karen comes next in my mind. She’s the only girl of the group and is Blaze’s girlfriend. I feel like she’s used as a bit of a relief for Blaze. He’s so stressed and what not that they head up to the office frequently. They seem very close at the beginning of the novel, to the point of her egging him on to ‘get him’ (the hostage), but as the story progresses we see that she drifts further and further from him. She becomes more than happy to simply let him take what’s coming for him and try and get herself out of any major trouble that might come her way. She’s very loyal, until she’s likely to lose something from it. She’s also an object of Troy’s desires, although nothing comes of it. I would have liked to have seen the two of them together perhaps, maybe if she had thought Blaze to be worse for her earlier, if only to see a different side of Troy. 

Then at the bottom of this group are Lee and Femi, my personal favourite character. Lee is very much the sheep. He follows the group because he can’t think of anything better that he could be doing, getting himself into trouble and is often referred to as the thick one of the lot. He definitely does do some very stupid things which nearly hurt a lot of people, but then it’s easy to think that it’s stupid. I don’t personally suffer from ADHD so I don’t know how his mind works with regard to needing to release energy etc. 
Femi however is the character I relate to the most, hence why he’s my favourite. Femi is the only one who really comes to terms with what taking a hostage really means for their prospects. He knows that he’s wrong for being involved in the group and spends quite a lot of the novel trying to get out of the warehouse where they end up. There’s something about Femi’s gritty realistic attitude and how he talks about how upset his parents would be that really struck a chord with me and made me really feel for him. 

There are more characters than these that have points of view as well. There’s the mayor who bears a very funny resemblance to Boris Johnson in description, and has a very warped sense of what’s happening. There is a journalist trying to get the scoop for the newspaper about what is happening from inside of the warehouse, as well as uncovering some juicy gossip about Concentr8. In addition to both of these there is also comic relief in the unlikeliest of places; the negotiator, who seems very unhappy when people come to tell him how to do his job. 

But despite having to search through all of these characters for clues and information that might be useful, whilst trying to think about feelings and how they’re going to resolve this situation, there is a steady running theme throughout. These children have all been labelled with ADHD. All of them have been put into the system with medication which has been pulled away from them and they have been let down by the governmental system. It’s very microcosmic of our society and how we treat children with ADHD currently. So much so that at the end of each chapter there are snippets from educational essays and other resources into the effects of medication for ADHD and how ADHD affects children. It feels very well researched which makes this novel feel so realistic and so worrying. It is scary to think that eventually this may be a think we may have to face. 

Overall I loved this novel. Greatly. I’ll definitely be buying myself a physical copy because the cover is beautiful and I think it’ll be one that I recommend to lots of people. You can pick up your copy of Concentr8 on the 27th August (THIS THURSDAY!) and I definitely recommend that you do. 

Total pages - 324
Total read time - 4 hours 15 
Rating /10 - 8.5

Recommend - Yes. Definitely. 

0 comments :

Book Buying Ban is going well...

06:21 Unknown 0 Comments

When I first started by blog I bought 3 books from my list and thought they’ll keep me going. And slowly I’ve accumulated more and more to the point where I have a pretty nice looking TBR pile on my desk. But when one’s on holiday, one accumulates books. I thought I was pretty good on this holiday in particular as I actually only paid for two of these myself. I have a friend who I was staying with a the time and she was having a clear out of all her old books. Three of which I just happened to want to read. So those jumped into my suitcase but then we went shopping when she stayed with me and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity of buying new books. These are what I picked up on my holiday. 

1. Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell 

Cath and Wren are identical twins and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they’re off to university and Wren’s decided she doesn’t want to be one half of a pair anymore. She wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It’s not so easy for Cath. She would rather bury herself in the fan fiction she writes where there’s romance far more intense than anything she’s experienced in real life. 
Now Cath has to decide whether she’s ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she’s realising that there’s more to learn about love than she ever thought possible. 

I’ve loved the premise of this book since it was released. There was just a lot of hype around it and I was worried that it wouldn’t live up to the expectation that you bought into. So when my friend said she had this book I jumped at the chance to read it. I know that Rowell’s work is well loved and I hope that I can add her to my list of favoured authors and continue to buy more of her books. I also really like the fact that the twins names when stitched together make Catherine. Just a little thing that made me smile when I saw it. 

Good reads readers have given this book a 4.2 out of 5 stars.

2. Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green and David Levithan

One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two strangers cross paths. Two teens with the same name, running in two very different circles, suddenly find their lived going in new and unexpected directions, culminating in heroic turns-of-heart and the most epic musical ever to grace the high school stage. 

Now I love a good John Green book. I loved both Looking for Alaska and The Fault in our Stars but I’ve heard mixed things about this book. Really, I think my nervousness to read this comes from the fact that it’s written by two authors. Now I’ve never read any of David Levithan’s work, although I want to, and it seems like a strange way to go about writing a book, with two different people. I suppose however that it must work as neither of the characters are alike, supposedly. However for now it joins the pile to be read at some point in the future. 

Good reads readers gave this book a 3.9 out of 5 stars.

3. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell

For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl: 
     they’ll shoot me I don’t care they’ll shoot me in the back of the neck I don’t care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck I don’t care down with big brother. 
He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the first of two books that are on my reading list that I bought. It’s one of those that people read for English class in sixth form and do coursework on, or they study it for exams sometimes. I’ve just always been intrigued by it’s story and I’ve always been a huge lover of dystopian fiction. The fact that it is also written before 1984, about what would be in place by 1984 is something quite interesting to read. This is what Orwell deemed the world would be like, but in fact we are getting closer to that kind of world now. I just feel like although this is literature, and fantasy, that it must have some element of underlying truth. 

Good reads readers gave this book a 4.1 out of 5 stars.

4. One Night, Markovitch - Aylet Gundar-Goshen

Two men - Yaacov Markovitch, perennially unlucky in love, and Zeev Feinberg, virile owner of a lustrous moustache - are crossing the sea to marry women they have never met. They will rescue them from a Europe on the brink of catastrophe, bring them to the Jewish homeland and go their separate ways. 
But when Markovitch is paired with the beautiful Bella he vows to make her love him at any cost, setting in motion events that will change their lives in the most unexpected and heartbreaking of ways. 

I came across this book not so long ago on the Waterstone’s website. It seems to be pretty hands down my kind of book. It has all sorts of romance but also a sense of intrigue and danger. It also sounds like both of these lead characters will be funny and/or at the very least likeable. I can’t wait to get started reading this, because other than the blurb, I’ve not heard much more about this novel. 

Good reads readers gave this book a 3.9 out of 5 stars

5. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler

Rosemary doesn’t talk very much, and about certain things she’s silent. She had a sister, Fern, her whirlwind other half, who vanished from her life in circumstances she wishes she could forget. And it’s been ten years since she last saw her beloved older brother Lowell. 
Now at college, Rosemary starts to see that she can’t go forward without going back, back to the time when, aged five, she was sent away from home to her grandparents and returned to find Fern gone. 

This is the second book from my book list that I picked up on my holiday. I wasn’t looking to buy a book when I was in Trafalgar Square, meaning to just look around the gallery’s and enjoy the feeling of being back in busy and bustling London. However there was actually a festival on so we decided to try and find somewhere a little bit quieter until we got our bearings. Waterstones was a good plan for us. It was in here my friend pointed out a particular youtube personality who I watch frequently, and so then it was very obvious that I had to buy a book just so I could talk to them. Following this encounter I was very giddy for the rest of the day which made up for the appalling opera we attended. 

But yes, this contemporary novel won the Pen/Falkner award for fiction in 2014 and I’ve heard many a good thing about it. Apparently it’s got a good twist half way through and it’s not actually all that long; about 370 ish pages. So I’m planning to speed through this one. 

Good reads readers gave this book a 3.8 out of 5 stars


So it’s safe to say that on top of this I’ve got a lot of reading to get done before the 21st of September when I start my university degree. 

0 comments :

What Milo Saw - Virginia Macgregor

08:45 Unknown 0 Comments

Milo didn’t know why he missed the sound of the saucepan drawer that day. He must’ve been sleepy or maybe Gran was extra quiet, but by the time he felt the flutter in his chest which told him that Gran needed him, and by the time Hamlet was squealing his head off in the garage because he’d swallowed too much smoke, it was too late, the kitchen was on fire. 
“It’s not your responsibility to check on your gran,” said Mum.
She leant in and kissed Milo’s hair. She was always doing that: telling him off and then kissing him. She smelt of burnt things and sticky perfume and sleep. 

And yes... Hamlet is a pig

In honour of the release of the paperback version of What Milo Saw being available on August 13th, I was able to get a copy from NetGalley for review. And I am so lucky I got this opportunity. This novel follows 4 points of view, but mostly that of Milo, a nine year old boy with retinis pigmentosa, an incurable medical condition, causing near or complete blindness. For Milo, he can see through a pinhole which means that he has to focus really hard on things, and often notices different things to others. This becomes important when his great gran is taken into Forget Me Not, a nursing home which seems too good to be true. 

Other than Milo, we read from the perspective of his mother Sandy who is running a failing beauticians from the shed in their back garden. They’re starting to struggle with money, and Sandy is also struggling with her own weight, using diet pills frequently. Most of Sandy’s story focuses on the family breakdown after Milo’s dad left them for a new life in Abu Dhabi with his “tart”. 

We also hear from his great grandmother Lou, a ninety-two year old woman struggling with dementia. She is the one to set fire to the kitchen and is taken to Forget Me Not. There’s a very sweet relationship between her and Milo as she’s mute. She writes a lot of things down on her pad of paper and Milo talks to her. It’s a very interesting view to read from as often it’s things that Lou sees that help us to understand what Milo’s seeing. 

Finally we read from someone other than a member of Milo’s family. Tripi is the cook at Forget Me Not, which is how he befriend’s Milo. He’s a Syrian refugee seeking asylum so that he can earn money and pay for someone to find his sister whom he lost in Syria. His story is so heartfelt, and Milo’s urge to help him throughout this novel really is beautiful and it showsa very childlike ignorance to what’s happening in Syria. However that’s what really makes me love when Milo and Tripi are featured together because for Milo there’s no reason that a person should suffer and he makes it his job to help. 

All of the characters in this novel are beautifully well rounded. At times it can be said that Milo and Lou both feel like unreliable narrators as their ability to see things clearly and remember them are impaired. But despite that this novel is still a beautiful depiction of family getting through things together. It deals with things like unusual pets and funny things like that, but also juxtaposed are things like loss of a loved one and being young and being old and how the two sometimes feel like one in the same. 

This novel is beautiful. I can’t say it enough. I sat on the train home and cried whilst I finished it, and it’s worth reading all the way through if only for the stunning craftsmanship of the last line which ties together the whole story beautifully. It’s very much like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, by Mark Haddon or The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion in the style of the writing and the impaired lead character. The innocence of Milo is very similar to the characters represented with Asperger’s Syndrome in these two novels, both of which I would highly recommend.

Total pages - 400
Total read time - 3 hours (roughly)
Rating /10 - 8.5
Recommend - Yes 100%


Pick up a paperback copy of What Milo Saw on August 13th 

0 comments :

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )