Rate this book

The Year Of The Rat (2014)

by Clare Furniss(Favorite Author)

4.02 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1471120279 (ISBN13: 9781471120275)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: Nothing and no one can ever be completely safe as fifteen-year-old Pearl learns to her horror when her mother dies while giving birth to Rose. Because she is born prematurely, Rose resembles a wrinkled baby rat more than anything, and she must stay in the hospital before coming home. Devastated at the loss of her mother and the fact that there were no warning signs of this life-changing event, Pearl withdraws from her best friend Molly, from her step-father, and from Rose. Even as she stumbles through her days, her mother's spirit keeps visiting her, offering advice and providing wry observations about what's going on. The book is broken into sections based on months of the year after the death of Pearl's mother, starting in March and ending in February. The emotions descr... moreibed here are honest, and readers will hope that Pearl can find a way to start living again even while realizing that she has allowed parts of herself to die now that her mother is gone. I liked the fact that the family dynamics are complicated, and Finn, Pearl's potential love interest, has his own concerns about his grandmother, Pearl's neighbor, to keep him preoccupied. Pearl's life has become a train wreck, and it seems as though nothing can keep her from crashing off the track. In some ways this book reminds me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking for its meditative qualities about loss and especially death, those it leaves behind, and how they cope. I was touched by almost every page of this book, originally published in Great Britain.
review 2: This book is incredible. Clare Furniss somehow managed to make me fall completely in love with Stella, even though she was already dead by the start of the book. Pearl is one of the most realistic protagonists I've ever come across. Her thoughts and feelings, despite not being the expected reaction at times, were incredibly natural. There wasn't a single character in the story that I didn't find incredibly human and fascinating to read about. I loved this story from start to finish. less

Download links for: The Year of the Rat

Advertising