The Wish House review

"The Wish House" is your typical coming of age story that you see every where in teen fiction and so of course the author had to attempt to make it a bit different. Celia's writing style and her tendency to write in the past usually appeal to me very much. This book I found was different. It is about a 14 year-old boy who goes "caravan-ing" with his family every summer holiday to the same caravan site.
This year is different his childhood friend Dylan has grown up and left school to work on his families farm and he no longer has time to play with Richard. So Richard must make his own fun. He ends up going to visit the "Wish House" which is an old farm house that the boys believe to be abandoned. There he bumps into Lucia laying naked in the grass. Being the adolescent that he is, his reaction is predictable. He thinks she is beautiful and just stares. From here things just get more interesting, he meets Clio, Lucia's daughter and her painter father who takes an interest to him as soon as he sees him.
The story was well written, but a little boring in some parts. The characters that were living in the wish house were vaguely developed, this was as probably intentional by the author to create the idea that the boy is remembering all of this, but it just makes the characters seem far away and hard to understand at times. There are a few things that in the story that don't really add up, and make the plot seem unbelievable. The ending was good, but rather disappointing and didn't really make sense. Some of the plot ideas were meant to surprise you, like they did to Richard, but they really just didn't make any sense at all.
The story was confusing at times and even dull. Not to say that I didn't really enjoy some parts, there were parts of it that were beautifully written, like the scene in the woods when Richard finds Clio in his "secret" clearing and they become friends, then quickly afterwards, lovers. Another fact that bothered me about the story is the fact that Richard talked about his parents as if they were conservative, loving and concerned about his well fare, yet throughout the story they never seemed to catch on that he was running around with a bunch of hippies, it was always made clear that they thought that he was with Dylan. Maybe that is only because that is what Richard thought they believed, but it still isn't portrayed very well. You would also think that if they knew he was spending all his free time with a girl his own age and they were mostly alone that they would be concerned, but both parents seemed to be indifferent to this, despite what the main character believed about them.
The mentions of pagan ideas, witch craft and myths are very common themes in Celia Rees's novels, she enjoy creating strong female characters, and though Clio and Lucia were interesting and well written they still had a vagueness about them, that made them hard to get close to as if they were just a figment of his imagination. Even later when he sees Clio in the "present" she still seems unreal and distant, this is probably done to show how far away from him she always was, but I just find it hard to understand, it would have made more sense for the author to make Clio closer and more human at the end of the novel to show you that she was, in fact, real.
The whole book focus on painting and paintings. At the beginning of each chapter a different piece of the artists work is described in the style of a review or of a blur that one would see in a gallery. This adds interest, sure, but it was really left unexplained. It was probably just to remind you that the whole book is based on Richards memories of that summer, but it was done in such a way that it wasn't always clear on what the author was trying to say. The paintings that were described were the ones that Richard is presumably looking at at the gallery. The whole thing with the family being pagans and Jay's (the artist) paintings focusing on myths just distances the family further from Richard, which seems to be the idea of it all.
In all I enjoyed the story in this book, but the ending was sloppy and most the characters vaguely done to the point that they were almost uninteresting. If you think you would enjoy despite these facts, I would recommend it, but otherwise don't bother with it.

Its been to long...

I obviously suck. I have not posted anything on here in awhile and I most definitely haven't written any book reviews :S...
So instead of writing a long-winded and pointless review of Looking for Alaska I am going to write a quick and to the point review of The Wish House by Celia Rees.

Roasted Peeps!

Since watching Brotherhood 2.0 I have found myself wondering what sort of interesting things you could do with peeps...and this is what I came up with, roasted peeps! I know the editing is basically TERRIBLE, I am still learning so its bound to be bad at first I am going to work on it...Maybe do a better version, probably not. Anyway I hope you find it as amusing as it was to make :P

DFTBA

Joanna intro: pretty much the only thing you need to know about me is that I just ate 6 roast peeps an d 8 marshmallow in about 10 minutes (I know that doesnt sound great but my stomach is definitely revolting) and I NFTBA !

Introduction: Terri

Last night when I was watching other Nerdfighters vlogs I realized that my sister and I over looked one critical thing in making this blog. We completely forgot to introduce ourselves! Now I know that this is coming a little late and we should have done this to begin with, but its never to late for an introduction, now is it! This is mine:

I am Terri, the oldest of the two sisters and reading is pretty much my passion. I also love watching cooking shows and um *trying* to cook (sometimes I'm successful!). I have just finished my first year at university and basically have no idea what the hell I am doing there....:S I just enjoy it...sometimes...lets see what else do you need to know...OH! I'm a proud Nerdfighter, though my sister is, unfortunetaly, not :(, I've been working on her though. I like all kinds of cats and firefoxes! Ooooh and ducklings that jump out of trees (for any one that gets this, YAY! Those of you that don't, go out and rent Planet Earth, today!). Theres not much else I really want to say, other than I really want to write book reviews and my writing skills really aren't that great, not that they can't be improved or anything. Also I have been trying very hard not to start sentences with the word "so", because every time I go the write a sentence that is the first thing that I put down...its kind of a bad habit :S. Anyway this is my intro, I look forwards to reading Joanna's later today/tomorrow and I look forwards to getting some feed back on this blog! Please somebody READ IT!!! Thats all I've got to say for now, oh, and yes the book review will be coming soon! Promise! I just have to finish with my last exam first...and find the time to actually re-read parts of the book (it will be a simplified version for the first one, for the next we are going to talk about doing our own format, something a little different hopefully). Anyway I am really going now, I have way too much studying to do, so happy reading!
Terri

News!

Okay, so I know I said that there would be a book review in the near future and a layout change, you were probably expecting thme with our new post...Well it didn't happen because I forgot one important thing, I HAVE EXAMS THIS MONTH...like A MONTH! And I'm only a first year, so much fun...Not...I am literally falling asleep here so I'll just get to the point already, I assume that you have all read or heard about amazon banning certian books that they thought were adult content or mature content. This is what I have to say to amazon on this issue...

You are sick bastards and I can't believe you would even TRY something like this. Censorship is what keeps people oppressed and stupid. DO YOU THINK WE'RE STUPID? Because NEWS FLASH we're NOT!!! So you fuckers better get everything right and dandy ASAP or better yet, completely shutting down your website. I have never bought a book from you and now even after this, I NEVER plan too.

And that is all I am going to actually sleep now before I fall asleep on my computer and have a keyboard imprint on my face in the morning. :P Anyway night!

PS. I just realized that I forgot to link the forum where I got this information to this post! Silly me! So here is the link, enjoy:

http://nerdfighters.ning.com/forum/topics/fuck-amazon

Layout...ALL WRONG!

As you can all see the layout has changed for a third time and I personally, DO NOT LIKE IT!!! Hello, BLACK, are you SERIOUS? What are we advertising for a funeral parlor??? Come on, it looks so bland and doesn't even match my nice picture, not to mention the theme of the blog! I am going to start working on a much prettier and better looking layout, I have one I downloaded that is very nice looking and has rounded edges and other such awesomeness that I will alter cause the colours and over all theme are all wrong. Also this time I plan on consulting my sister on what she wants so that there is no longer any "creative differences" and it can stay the same for awhile...