Crooked Heart: ‘My book of the year’ Jojo Moyes

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Only one thing puzzles me: Dunmore uses the phrase “it’s not Nova Scotia” twice in the book. As in:

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Well, Noel leaves them one day to be an evacuee. All the other children in his group are fostered. And at last Vee, a dim-witted woman, takes him just for the money. But she soon realizes that this wise child with a limp could work to her advantage in the game of getting by in London circa WWII. They are sort of a Pinky and the Brain duo. I appreciate the theme of this book. Who benefits from war and can benefiting from war be moral? Most people would first think about major war profiteers; for instance, large companies that make and supply arms, tanks, planes, anything used for fighting. Not Evans. She writes about the minor war profiteers, the small time swindlers trying to make a bit of extra cash. This is an interesting idea but the execution of it in this book just didn't work for me. The characters were well-drawn but they were all a bit too silly. This reminds me of watching British comedy shows from Monte Python to Absolutely Fabulous. Everyone in the room with me is laughing except for me. Same with this book. I didn't laugh when I knew I was supposed to laugh, I wasn't charmed when I was supposed to be charmed. Perhaps the cold Colorado winter has frozen my heart.John Freeman will present the Family issue of Freeman’s Journal with Garnette Cadogan and Naomi Williams tonight at Sacramento’s Time Tested Books. Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later. A major reason for the dullness of the book was the attention given to descriptions of inanimate things, such as rooms, furniture, gardens, flowers, views, etc.

Crooked Heart - Penguin Books UK

Her image looks at her angrily, as if it blames her for what it has become. We used to like each other, you and me. Look at what you've done to us". There are lots of recently published books that are set during World War II, it would be easy to say that the subject has been done to death, and then, just when you don't expect it, you come across a story like Crooked Heart. This is a story that will pull the heartstrings with it's central character of Noel and his temporary mother Vera. Two characters who are original, and quirky and completely fabulous creations. Their story is like no other, it's charming and witty and will make you smile. Noel is a ten-year-old boy who has lived with his Godmother Mattie for most of his life. We don't know why he lived with her and not his parents, but she has moulded him into a tiny shadow of herself. Mattie was a suffragette, she didn't agree with school, or with war and Noel has had a most unusual childhood. The story begins with Mattie's demise into senile dementia, and Noel does his best to cover up for her, but it's clear that he can't carry on for much longer. I'm so glad I read this novel Thanksgiving week, as it's been quite a while since I was emotionally invested in a book's characters enough to feel a profound gratefulness to the power of love. So many books on World War II and London's Blitz are sentimental and tired, but Lissa Evans's is beautifully moving because the war is second to the desperate characters. Parts of the book are funny, while other parts provoke anxiety on behalf of a little boy named Noel who is preternaturally intelligent and sadly abandoned.

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When Mattie is no more, Noel finds himself evacuated to St Albans. He is billeted with Vera Sedge, her elderly mute mother and her lazy, fat son Donald. Once again, Noel finds himself living in a strange household, with very strange people. This family is so far away from anything that he knows, yet in Vera, he finds an unlikely friend. Both wily-minded, they work together to beat the system, and despite the troubles they encounter along the way, their unorthodox means of making a living bring them together and they become a family. GC: I’m romantic that way also. I think that in times of despondency that art has a way of speaking to us with a certain resonant frequency—many times we’re in so much pain that we’ve stuffed our fingers in our ears. Art has a way of arresting our attention and bringing us to a place of contemplation and reflection. Our art is a way of saying “you’re not alone,” or “me too.” Art is a way of mourning with those who mourn. But I also think in times of peace and normalcy that art is crucial as a continual reminder of our humanity, of our dignity—a way of bringing us closer to our joys and speaking of our sorrows, and so art is always absolutely crucial and essential and necessary. It’s easy to take it for granted when the world isn’t crumbling around us. But art—good art, anyway­— always calls us to be our better selves. Regardless, I still remain a devoted fan to Helen Dunmore. My favorite book written by her is Talking to the Dead (1996). Her more recent titles include Counting the Stars (2008) and The Betrayal (2010).

Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans review – scams on the home front

The problem for me lies in the characters. Noel initially refuses to talk, Vee's mother can't talk, and her son is never around to talk. The characters carry on in their own orbits, sometimes not even circling the same planet. Other books that employ multiple perspectives and parallel narratives draw you in with well-developed characters, each with his/her own internal struggles and moral dilemmas. Not so in this case. We know so little about Vee's mother and son that we can neither empathize with nor understand their erratic behavior. They show no concern others, and I really felt no concern for them. They each had their own story arc, but honestly, the book would have been just as good (or bad) without them. Garnette Cadogan: We haven’t all agreed on what is pre-political. Some of us think that there are things that are beyond the pale to even discuss. To raise certain questions about what is right and not—questions about basic human rights—is, for some, beyond the bounds of basic human decency. But,tough as it might be, conversation will always be necessary, even with issues we think are pre-political, because of the diverse… not merely opinions, but also frameworks out of which we operate from. For some people, religious commitments—whether Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Hindu—anchor them and the way they see the world,and it influences their ways of seeing the world and shapes their questions and issues: anything from sexuality to the sanctity of a child to when they see life beginning. These huge issues which we’ve been debating for quite some time, I think we’ll continue to debate. So, I think if we decided that some questions are pre-political, they would need to be at least laid out in conversation. A debate doesn’t always have to happen but a conversation, I think, always should. People always have to say, “Here’s where I draw the line about rights or issues that are within the realm of the debatable for me. This is so established for me that it is not something that I’m going to debate. We will have to figure out a way, given how I see the world, how we can co-exist. There is no changing my mind on this, and I don’t think I will change your mind on this—so where do we go from here?”At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.