Wow! If ever a book review made me want to go out and purchase a book, it’s this one by The Book Smugglers — Frances Hardinge’s The Lie Tree, from Macmillan Children’s Books, May 7 2015.
Back in the trophy room the gentleman would be taking the leash off their conversation. Likewise, here in the drawing room, each lady quietly relaxed and became more real, expanding into the space left by the men. Without visibly changing, they unfolded, life flowers or knives.
Yeah, that’s the best three consecutive sentences I’ve read in a while.
And as if that weren’t enough to encourage me to pick this novel up and read read read, there is this in Ana’s review (also beautifully written–who can refrain from reading reviews when they’re this beautifully written?!?):
I wondered if I was looking at it wrong. Because if we look at the realest aspects of story which describe events that really did happen, thoughts that people did believe, it is easy to be struck by how surreal they read. Because in truth, the further removed we are in time, the more history sounds fantastical to us. In a way, everything about The Lie Tree could be seen as fantastical, especially with regards to gender. But then again: no. Better not to reduce what was very real and very painful to flights of fancy.
and this:
The Lie Tree is the story of a young girl – Faith – who is at that moment in time where she is no longer a child but not yet a woman. Faith lives a conflicting life, torn between what she is told about what it means to be a woman and the things that she is not supposed to do, feel and know and the feelings she has, the knowledge she knows and the thoughts she thinks. Constantly at war within herself, Faith strives to be good – but also to be accepted and loved. What she has learned over the years is how to hide, to conceal. In sum, how to become just as invisible as the world expects her to be. But she is ever so angry about it. And watching that anger unleashed was one of the best reading experiences of my life.
These are themes and topics that have shaped my life, that run deep in the currents of my mind. That division, the struggling of various needs (social vs personal vs emotional) that contradict one another and can therefore not peacefully co-exist within one person, which render that person torn and invisible (and a part of me wants to say powerful, for what is anger but energy or power that is tainted and stopped up so that it poisons the one who holds it?).
Rest assured, I will add my two cents worth once I have read this novel. Because I will. How could I not?
Happy reading!