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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.

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.

Blood from a stone is a book from the crime and mystery novel series of Commissario Guido Brunnetti written by Donna Leon and published by Random House. I chose this book because I enjoy crime and mystery novels.

As other books of the Commissario Guido series, the action takes place nowadays in Venice. The fiction story begins on a cold night shortly before Christmas, when an illegal immigrant is killed. A group of American tourists are the closest witnesses of the scene, but they have only seen how the vendor of fake designer handbags has been shot by two men who disappeared among the crowd.

Commissario Brunnetti will have to find the answer to many questions. He wonders why a street vendor has been murdered by professionals . In addition, Brunnetti bumps into racism and absolute ignorance in relation to the African community which the dead man was a member of. He also wonders, why he has to face so many obstacles from his own superior during the crime investigation. But Commissario Brunnetti counts on some loyal workmates and old friends in order to try to solve this case, which doesn´t seem  easy at all.

I had never read a novel of the saga, but it was not a problem. The characters and their relationships are very well described. Nevertheless, and despite the map of Venice in the book and the detailed description of the city by the author, I had some problems with locations at first.

As I said, I like detective stories, and I was not disappointed with this one.

TITLE:            In My Sister´s Shoes

AUTHOR:      Sinéad Moriarty

GENRE:          General fiction novel

PUBLISHER: Penguin

LEVEL:           Advanced

Kate O´Brien is thirty and after a hard period in London away from her family and friends, working with the aim of raising her professional success as  a television presenter, she comes back to Dublin to celebrate her twin nephews´ birthday. She lives an exciting and independent life until then but now she will have to face up to a dilemma that will change her life.

As a result of the breast cancer that is diagnosed to her sister, Fiona, Kate is forced to abandon her cool life, to give up her exciting job in the London media, and to move back to Dublin. Besides, her brother-in-law Mark spends his time only achieving his own success, her younger brother only thinks in his shocking music, and her widowed dad needs to rebuild his own life. What is more, after the death of her mother due to another breast cancer when they were children, Fiona looked after Kate as if she was her second mother.

That is the reason why Mark blackmails Kate to take care of his twin sons, telling her that she owes Fiona.

Kate´s life starts to turn around the stressful routine of the twins by doing unbelievable tasks , but also having a go at her irresistible ex-boyfriend or investigating her hidden family past.

Gradually we will be hooked in a story that surprises us with unexpected details of the characters.

Heart-warming, gripping, and hilarious, what Sinead Moriarty wants us to do is to see ourselves in each one of the troubles and solutions of her urban heroine. Cleverly, the writer creates a mixture of feelings and daily life challenges that will make us  vibrate, and  laugh at ourselves.

To sum up, this is a highly entertaining book that you can´t miss.

TITLE:  THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT- TIME.

AUTOR: Mark Haddon.

GENRE: Fiction.

PUBLISHER: The Random House Children’s Books.

LEVEL: Advanced.

MAIN CHARACTERS:

Christopher Boone: He is a 15 year old boy who suffers from autism. He is the narrator and the main character.  He lives with his father, Ed. He loves mathematics and science. He also likes pets. He has a rat named Toby as a pet. He attends a special school. Christopher´s illness makes it difficult for him to have a relationship with other people.  He doesn’t like to be hugged, not even being touched. He screams and reacts violently when people touch him. The boy does not like crowds or new places because his head forces him to look at everything that is new to him, and that overwhelms him.

Ed (Christopher’s father) : He takes care of Christopher. He strives to give his son an easy life. He overprotects Christopher.

Siobha : She is Christopher’s teacher. She helps him and his class mates with the difficulties of everyday life. She tries to make life easier. Christopher trusts her. He always asks her everything he does not understand.

BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE PLOT

Christopher Boone is a fifteen year old boy who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. He lives in Swindon, a big city in the south west of England, with his father.

He goes to a special school. His daily routine consists of going to school and then staying at home with his father studying maths, and science, his favourite entertainments.

One night Christopher discovers one of his best friends, Wellington (the poodle dog of his neighbour, Mrs Shears) dead in his neighbour’s garden. The dog had a pitchfork through its body. The boy feels really sad and decides to find out who killed him.

Christopher likes Sherlock Holmes novels a lot, so he decides to write a book about the murder. The book is titled “The Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time”.

During the investigation he interviews all his neighbours, which is stressful for him, because he has never talked to them before, although they live in the same street.

One day his father discovers the book, and his son´s investigations as well. His father thinks that talking to unknown people is dangerous for his son. So he decides to hide the book, and tells Christopher to abandon the investigation.

While his father is working Christopher starts looking for the book all around their house. He finds it in his father´s room, in the wardrobe. He also discovers, by chance  a lot of letters that his mother had written to him, dated after his father told him that she had died in hospital of a heart attack. Christopher comes to the conclusion that his mother is still alive, and also that his father has lied to him.

He is completely shocked by the discovery to the point that he is unable to move. He stays in bed screaming, shaking and vomiting for hours.

When Ed arrives home from work he notices that Christopher has found the letters that his mother has been writing to him for ages. Ed cleans everything and confesses that his mother is still alive and also that his is responsible for Wellington´s death.

Christopher is afraid of his father, he doesn’t feel sure with him anymore, so he decides to travel to London to look for his mother.

He will go to London by train, so he will face many difficult situations such as going alone to the railway station, buying the ticket to London, catching the correct train and being in the train with a lot of unknown people.

In this novel two different settings can be distinguished: the first one is the detective novel related to Wellington´s murder and also to the important mysteries of Christopher’s family. The second one is related to Christopher´s emotions, his ideas, wishes and fears.

PERSONAL OPINION

Mark Haddon has written a gripping book I could hardly put down.

Before reading the book I knew slightly what autism is. It is one of those diseases that we hear about but we really don’t know how the patients´ daily life is.

The author has created a lovely character who faces living in a hostile world with courage. A hostile world made for “normal” people and not for the marginal people.

What I like most about this book is that the author makes the reader know how the protagonist feels all the time: when he is sad, when happy, when overwhelmed, when he is afraid.

I highly recommend this book.

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.”