About reading

TITLE:            In My Sister´s Shoes

AUTHOR:       Sinéad Moriarty

GENRE:          General fiction novel

PUBLISHER:   Penguin

LEVEL:           Advanced

I had never heard of Sinead Moriarty until I read this book and I have to admit that it has been one of the most uplifting books that I have read in a while.

In My Sister’s shoes is the story of two sisters, Kate and Fiona O’Brien. On the one hand, Kate is living her dream in London. She’s finally got her own show on a small channel and her own flat.  In other words, she has everything she has ever wanted and she has worked very hard to get it.

On the other hand, Fiona is Kate’s older sister. She never left Dublin like her sister and she is happy with her little family close by. But when Fiona gets cancer, the same cancer which killed her mother years before, Kate is forced to leave her job and come back to Dublin to help look after the twins, Bobby and Jack.

The story is extremely heart-warming, and shows the love and support of sisters and the closeness of family when you need them most. Basically, it shows the relationship between the two sisters with family secrets and changes. It teaches you that no matter what your family does, they will always be your family, and they’ll always love you, just as you’ll always love them, no matter what.

Sinead Moriarty has an extremely easy style to read and she has the ability to make you laugh one minute and to cry the next. The emotions that both sisters go through are portrayed so well…For instance, their fear and determination and the realization that Fiona is the same age as their mum when she died. There is also a younger brother called Derek who always presents a bit of light relief. He is an aspiring rapper and along with his ever optimistic friend Gizmo he is still waiting for his big break, making his father despair. Some of the things that they got through just had me laughing out loud!

The story is written in the first person and is told by Kate so you feel you really get inside the character’s head, and this one is done especially well. I really felt that I had been on an emotional rollercoaster by the time I finished.
It´s a beautiful story with the right amount of comedy and tragedy. The book is very easy to read without being “simple”. It’s definitely a book which is addictive and you feel you just want to keep on reading the story and find out more and more about the characters because once you start reading it you cannot  put it down.

In conclusion, In My Sister’s Shoes could have been a bit of a depressing read, especially with the descriptions of Fiona’s treatment. Nevertheless, it is not depressing at all, it is moving, funny and I definitely recommend that you add this to your collection!

     It was while reading The Complete Novels of Jane Austen that Alicia started thinking about differences between life in the past and the way we live now. She did some research and this is the result, don’t miss it, you’ll have a good time reading it.

Click on the picture below and visit the author’s website.

Boy is a 1984 book written by the famous English writer Roald Dahl. It is an entertaining book set between England and Norway. The story happens in the early twentieth century. This book is not an autobiography although it is about the author’s young days at school. The book begins when the author’s father travels from Norway to England. His father made a fortune fast in England and wanted all his children to be educated in an English school. ‘They are the best in the world’, he used to say. But what Roald discovered soon was how to survive from the huge authority in the well-known School for Boys: the incident with the mouse and the sweet-shop and the class with Captain Hardcastle are only a few examples. However not everything was sad. The incident about the tobacco is great fun.

The book is hilarious and easy to read. It comprises 25 chapters ranging from the writer’s childhood at school to his first job. Each story shows parts of the writer’s past and they are sometimes happy, sometimes sad but never boring. Readind this book you can imagine why he wrote tales as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.

If you want to discover one of the most important English tale writers, this is an opportunity not to be missed.

  ‘There is something I must tell you, my dear daughter, I can’t hide it any longer, and I need your help: my name is not Sally Gilmartin; my real name is Eva Delectorskaya and I’ve worked as a secret agent for the British Security Coordination during the Second World War’.            What would you think if your mother, in her sixites, revealed such a secret?

            Would your life, your world, be the same if the person who has brought you up, given you a place in the universe, turned out to be, out of the blue, a spy?

            Restless is a haunting narration of the complicated implications of the role played by the British Secret Services to involve the United States in the World War.

            A gripping spy story of loyalty and betrayal that makes you turn page after page wondering what will come next. And a romantic love story of a young, brave woman betrayed in most ways, making of her life a hell of fear and suspicion in which she will be restless forever, until she gets revenge.

             I highly recommend reading this fast-moving novel that will not deceive anyone.

  The story is set at Manderley Mansion, an imaginary place in Ireland whose owner is Mr De Winter. It takes place in a period of time that spans from Rebecca’s engagement and marriage with Mr De Winter to her life with him after being married.In the book there are several main characters: Rebecca, Mr de Winter, his first wife, the maidwoman, his first wife’s friend and the police. All of them were in trouble since Mr de Winter’s first wife died and this problem won’t be solved until the end of the book.

The story starts when Rebecca was working for a rich woman and she met who would be her husband. After a short and difficult engagement she marries Mr de Winter and goes to Manderley but it is here that her problems begin because he remembers his first wife and because the maidwoman had a very good relationship with the dead woman.

            One day the maidwoman suggests that Rebecca should organise a fancy dress ball and she should wear a dress that was in a painting on a wall at Manderley.

Also there was a room Rebecca was not allowed to enter and which had been Mr de Winter’s first wife’s.

After having found the ship where Mr de Winter’s first wife was, the police and Mr de Winter’s friend try to find an explanation for her death ‘which is unexpected and different from their thoughts’.

Last year I had the opportunity of watching the film, directed by Alfred Hitchcok and which caused me the best impression, over all the photography. Before watching it I had read in the book cover that it had been the winner of two Oscars: best film and best photography.

For all the reasons mentioned above I recommend this book and the film, too.

You won’t be left indifferent.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an intriguing mystery and adventure novel written by Mark Haddon.

The story is set in the UK, in present time. The main character, Christopher, is an autistic teenager who lives with his father in Swindon. One night, he discovers the corpse of her neighbour’s dog, Wellington, bleeding on the road. As he really loves animals, he feels very sad about Wellington’s death and decides to investigate its murder.

While he carries out his investigation, he discovers a lot of things which he did not expect to find. As he wants to know more things, he has to do a great effort to overcome his fear to talk to people and to keep his detective activity hidden from his father, who is bound to disapprove it.

I consider this novel a really interesting reading, not only because of the intriguing plot, but also, and over all, because of the original point of view it offers us. It is Christopher who is “writing the book” and tells the story himself, which makes it more realistic. The author provides a valuable insight into the world of an autistic person. He presents the main character as a very clever student, with photographic memory and an incredible ability for Maths, but with a huge difficulty to socialize and understand other people’s minds and feelings.

Although the author of the book is quite tactful at treating the autism matter, the novel could hurt some people’s feelings, as it uses bad words and vulgar expressions. Also, I would not recommend it to children under fifteen or sixteen, because it requires a mature reader to be well-understood.

Anyway, it is a very pleasant and moving story, suitable for all occasions, which definitely won’t let anyone indifferent.

THE GIVER is a 1993 novel by American writer Lois Lowry. The story is set in an imaginary land and period.

The plot is about a young twelve-year-old boy who is named Jonas. He grows up in a land where there is a lot of government control. The government doesn’t really exist in this imaginary world, but the people who have the control are called “the Elders”.

Some aspects of their control are, for instance, that they eliminate the pleasures and the suffering of life. Nobody in the community understands colours, music, warfare or any kind of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community.

The main character is a young boy aged 12 and his name is Jonas.  Most people in the town don’t understand how the system of The Elders works.  All the rules were written many years ago.  Everybody accepts them and nobody asks questions.

When Jonas turns twelve he is elected to be the next main elder and he starts to receive special training from the current main elder. This person holds the memories of  true pain and pleasure of life and he is going to pass Jonas his memories by putting his hands on him. Because of this, Jonas calls him The Giver. From this point on it is time for Jonas to receive the truth and he starts to ask questions because he thinks another way of life is possible.

In the end Jonas escapes from his way of life and tries to find another way of life for the others in his town.  During his search he discovers extraordinary things like colours, music and the feeling of pain.  He believes that everyone should have the opportunity to know these things. The conclusion is not clear. It’s up to the reader to decide.

This is a metaphor of modern governments who have too much control over their citizens, for instance the Chinese government. I understood the plot of the book to be a criticism of this kind of government. The book deals with the theme of the balance between security and freedom, which is an interesting theme nowadays so this is an interesting book.

I would highly recommend it to the most adventurous readers and to anyone interested in science fiction. It is definitely a thought-provoking book and it is also a haunting book. After reading the book, the characters will stay with the reader for a long time.

Book review written by Natalia Flaquer Panizo

If you want to read it online or download it visit our downloads section.

Even if you haven’t read the book try the crosswords below.

If you want to read it online or download it visit our downloads section.

Frankenstein, set in Europe in the 1790’s, begins with the letters of Captain Robert Walton to his sister. These letters form the framework for the story in which Walton tells his sister the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster as Frankenstein told it to him.

Walton set out to explore the North Pole. The ship got trapped in frozen water and the crew, watching around them, saw a giant man in the distance on a dogsled. Hours later they found Frankenstein and his dogsled near the ship, so they brought the sick man aboard. As he recovered, Frankenstein told Walton his story so that Walton would learn the price of pursuing glory at any cost.

Frankenstein grew up in a perfectly loving and gentle Swiss family with an especially close tie to his adopted cousin, Elizabeth, and his dear friend Henry Clerval. As a young boy, Frankenstein became obsessed with studying outdated theories about what gives humans their life spark. In college at Ingolstadt, he created his own “perfect” human from scavenged body parts, but once it lived, the creature was hideous. Frankenstein was disgusted by its ugliness, so he ran away from it.

Henry Clerval came to Ingolstadt to study with Frankenstein, but ended up nursing him after his exhausting and secret efforts to create a perfect human life. While Frankenstein recovered from his illness over many months and then studied languages with Clerval at the college, the monster wandered around looking for friendship. After several harsh encounters with humans, the monster became afraid of them and spent a long time living near a cottage and observing the family who lived there. Through these observations he became educated and realized that he was very different from the humans he watched. Out of loneliness, the monster sought the friendship of this family, but they were afraid of him, and this rejection made him seek vengeance against his creator. He went to Geneva and met a little boy in the woods. The monster hoped to kidnap him and keep him as a companion, but the boy was Frankenstein’s younger brother, so the monster killed him to get back at his creator. Then the monster planted the necklace he removed from the child’s body on a beautiful girl who was later executed for the crime.

When Frankenstein learned of his brother’s death, he went back to Geneva to be with his family. In the woods where his young brother was murdered, Frankenstein saw the monster and knew that he was William’s murderer. Frankenstein was ravaged by his grief and guilt for creating the monster who wreaked so much destruction, and he went into the mountains alone to find peace. Instead of peace, Frankenstein was approached by the monster who then demanded that he create a female monster to be the monster’s companion. Frankenstein, fearing for his family, agreed to and went to England to do his work. Clerval accompanied Frankenstein, but they separated in Scotland and Frankenstein began his work. When he was almost finished, he changed his mind because he didn’t want to be responsible for the carnage another monster could create, so he destroyed the project. The monster vowed revenge on Frankenstein’s upcoming wedding night. Before Frankenstein could return home, the monster murdered Clerval.

Once home, Frankenstein married his cousin Elizabeth right away and prepared for his death, but the monster killed Elizabeth instead and the grief of her death killed Frankenstein’s father. After that, Frankenstein vowed to pursue the monster and destroy him. That’s how Frankenstein ended up near the North Pole where Walton’s ship was trapped. A few days after Frankenstein finished his story, Walton and his crew decided to turn back and go home. Before they left, Frankenstein died and the monster appeared in his room, mourning the loss of his creator. The monster explained his reasons for vengeance to Walton, as well as his remorse. He then told Walton of his plans to head to the North Pole and burn himself to death, as death would be less painful than life. He leaped from the ship into an ice-raft and was “borne away by the waves.”