Book Review: The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

Jules Verne’s stories of science fiction adventure have acquired an almost legendary status.  I was aware of his reputation as an author with an uncanny knack for predicting the future, yet I’d never got round to reading a single one of his books until I tried The Mysterious Island.

Rather than being introduced to Verne through one of his best-loved works such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea or Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I must confess that I chose to download this one because it was a free ebook.  It also happened to tie in nicely with the escapism theme which I keep returning to recently: the idea of retreating to a peaceful spot in the middle of nowhere appealed to me.

In The Mysterious Island, the five main characters (and their dog) find themselves stranded on a small, undiscovered island in the South Pacific.  They are thousands of miles from civilisation and all other human contact, and they have no way of sending or going for help.  So the group set about making the best of what they have and embark on civilising the island.

Book review: Not So Stupid! by Malorie Blackman

“The Devil seethed with fury; to be summoned in this way was galling but he had no choice.  The Book of Old had been found and the invocation spell had been executed correctly.

‘Your wish?’ he roared.

Mrs Engell, who stood before him, did not flinch.  The sight and sound and smell of the Devil was nothing compared to what she had been through in the last twenty-three years of marriage …”

(From ‘Detail’)

As a child and then as a teenager I read a lot of books by Malorie Blackman and enjoyed them all.  Her stories are exciting, her characters are genuine, and I always felt that her writing voice was speaking to me as to another adult, rather than talking down to a child.

This collection of short stories is one which will never leave my book shelf.  I’ve re-read them many times and they never get dull.  The first story – ‘Skin Tones’ – begins as an imagining of life after death in a sort of hate-filled Purgatory, and the second –‘Dad, Can I Come Home?’ – is set at the end of a futuristic outer-space war, so you quickly become accustomed to expecting the unexpected and opening your mind to the increasingly inventive stories thrown your way.

The Doll: Short Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Ever since I read Rebecca I’ve been half in love with Daphne du Maurier.  I’ve read quite a lot of her work and she’s such a good story-teller!  Recently I was overjoyed to discover that a new collection of her early short stories had been published in May this year.

‘The Doll’ and the other stories included here were almost all written between 1926 and 1932, and were originally published individually in magazines and journals in the UK and America.  This is the first time they have been published as a collection, and some were only rediscovered very recently.