The Great Unexpected, by Sharon Creech

The Great Unexpected is a strange and magical story in which I was never entirely sure what was real and what was imagined. Two apparently separate storylines run alongside each other, one surrounding two elderly ladies in Ireland plotting some sort of grand revenge for who-knows-what, and one surrounding two odd little girls in the dusty little American town of Blackbird Tree, a town with what must surely be an abnormally high number of orphans, peculiar residents and unusual happenings.

It all begins when a body falls out of a tree and lands at Naomi’s feet. Who is this strange boy, Finn? Where did he come from and what is he doing in Blackbird Tree muttering about gold, rooks, and orchards? Finn himself is obviously somewhat unexpected, and a good number of other unexpected things take place in the following pages, some of them good and pleasant surprises, some of them sad ones, as Naomi and Lizzie both go about their daily lives whilst getting gradually more caught up in the mystery of Finn.

As for the unexpected events, they are each and every one, for the most part, entirely normal happenings, and yet Sharon Creech makes each one special and strange and magical, and exactly how she manages to do so is as much a mystery as many of the little connections flowing throughout the story are. I think perhaps life is full is full of mysterious and wondrous things, certainly if you take each thing at face value without trying to interpret or place too much emphasis on them, and Creech captures this feeling, this innocence, in her characters, especially the young ones, Naomi, Lizzie and Finn. They are able to turn the littlest, everyday things into something magical and special – an especial achievement for children whose lives are far from easy – and pass this on to the reader. Much like books by Neil Gaiman, you feel as if anything could happen inside this book, that everything is connected...

“I thought about all the things that had to have spun into place in order for us to be alive and for us to be right there, right then. I thought about the few things we thought we knew and the billions of things we couldn’t know, all spinning, whirling out there somewhere.” (pg. 219)

Meanwhile, what is this wondrous plan that old Mrs Kavanagh is cooking up across the ocean? What is her connection to Blackbird Tree? And, if any, is Finn’s connection to Mrs Kavanagh? The Great Unexpected is a slow burner of a story with a fairytale ending, an apt title, and a mysteriouser and mysteriouser middle. Strange yet lovely, and beautifully packaged.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is such a wonderful book. It’s a book that makes you question worlds and question reality, and yet everything it makes you question feels innately true and real. It’s simple but intense, magical but scary, dark but hopeful. It’s perfect.

It’s been well publicized that the story of Ocean began to form in Neil Gaiman’s mind when he discovered that a lodger in his childhood home had, one night, stolen their car, driven it down the road, and committed suicide inside it. And, essentially, this is where Ocean begins too. When our narrator’s lodger commits this very same act, it opens up a rift, awakens an old sort of evil, and mistakes compounding mistakes brings it into our world. But is it truly evil? What does it want? Can our narrator avoid its clutches? Can they put the world back to rights? And what will be the price to do so?

“I remember my own childhood vividly… I knew terrible things. 

But I knew I mustn’t let adults know I knew. It would scare them” 

        – Maurice Sendak, 1993

This choice of introductory inscription to Ocean speaks volumes, somehow encompassing all that is to follow. Our young narrator is about to learn terrible things about the world. It has the same sort of creep factor that Gaiman created in his earlier book, Coraline – you know that something is terribly, terribly wrong with what is happening, but no-one else seems to notice. Only the Hempstock family, who live on the farm down the lane and on whose ground the ocean lies, can help. They are a family who are as equally unknowable as they make perfect sense. It seems entirely normal - and right - that the strange Hempstock family should exist.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is beautiful and terrifying and touching and utterly, totally, overwhelming good. Everything is up for question and yet it is hard to pinpoint exactly what I should be questioning. Gaiman writes about a world in which the abnormal, the magical, the mysterious, makes perfect sense. Knowing the origins of the story and the way in which the narrator remains unnamed leads us quietly to question how much of this story is based on reality. But it can’t be – can it? In any other circumstances such a thought would be preposterous, and yet Gaiman’s beautiful evocation of this tale makes it seem not only entirely valid but a completely reasonable possibility.

Fortunately, The Milk, by Neil Gaiman

There is no milk. Not only does this mean no breakfast for the children – unless they fancy pouring orange juice over their cereal – but no morning tea for dad. Mum’s gone away to a conference and although she did remind dad that he’d need to buy milk, he forgot. But when he pops around the corner to get some – morning tea is vital to the day, after all - he takes an awfully long time. An awfully, awfully long time. What were you doing? The children ask when he finally returns. Well, he says…

And so begins an awesome and almost unbelievable tale (almost unbelievable?) of what happened to dad on his way back from the corner shop. It’s an adventure and a half – and some – involving space aliens, dinosaur police, volcanoes, time travel, wumpires (yes, wumpires), pirates, and a rather special hot air balloon – sorry, I mean a Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier. Brilliantly illustrated by Chris Riddell, Neil Gaiman’s story goes in and out, around in a circle, back and forth through time, and back to the beginning – or should I say the end? Fortunately, the milk survives this incredible journey.

Gaiman’s prose is simple, his story funny, clever, incredibly tightly plotted and wonderfully tongue-in-cheek, while Riddell’s illustrations bring the amusements to life, including a dad who looks suspiciously like Gaiman. Is this story perhaps semi-autobiographical? And if it is a tale of milk and adventure that he told his own children, would you believe him?

Fortunately, The Milk will undoubtedly appeal to all generations, be read aloud at bedtime (or perhaps breakfast time), engage new readers, elicit sniggers and ‘ohs’ as all the dots begin to connect up. Check out the brilliant names of the lesser characters in the back of the book and, once you’ve read it, go back to the beginning and look again at the first illustration… (no cheating beforehand though). This man is a genius.

Welcome to The Stardust Reader

I am a bit of a bookworm. This may be an understatement. I love books, I love reading, and I love talking about the books I'm reading. I work for Waterstones - the main UK book chain - which means that all day, every day, I am surrounded by dreams, and dream of reading them all. It also means I get sent more free books from lovely publishers than I have the time to read. It's wonderful, but actually quite frustrating - so many books, so little time. If only I could read them all!

I also recently completed an MA in Professional Writing (ok, a year ago now). This means I often view books and read books differently to how I did before, which I find really interesting. Instead from turning reading into a negative experience, something I was afraid would happen, it has simply made me want to talk about books even more. To deconstruct them, see how they work, what makes them so enjoyable - or, as is occasionally the case, unenjoyable. I find myself thinking about it at quite odd times of the day. So I thought, why not write my thoughts down? If even nobody reads them, it'll help me spill out all these ideas that are buzzing around in my mind when I 'm supposed to be driving home, or going to sleep.

Why The Stardust Reader? Some people may think it a reference to Neil Gaiman, which I guess maybe it is, in part - what a great writer to aspire to, and what a simple yet perfect fairy story his Stardust is. But then I looked 'stardust' up in the dictionary: "an imaginary dust that blinds someone's eyes to reality and fills their thoughts with romantic illusions." Which I thought fit rather well.

Do books blind my reality, fill my thoughts with romantic illusions? Some certainly do! And sometimes that's the point, the fun, the enjoyability factor. The escapism. Although the really good books do a lot more, of course. And the really, really good books - whether fiction, non-fiction, thrillers, literary, fantasy, sci-fi - twist this whole concept around, making reality more real, shedding light on those big questions we all have about life. And that, dear reader, is why I love books.