The Look by Lee Coates

 

270 pages

Rating... 3⭐

You can buy The Look...Here

You can find out more about Lee Coates...Here

• The Blurb...

Jim is a self-employed web developer living in Cardiff. Successful professionally, the future also looks rosy for his personal life, having recently proposed to his girlfriend, Ffion. However, when the couple decide to celebrate their engagement with his much-loved dad, Callum, Jim’s world is tilted on its axis.

Jim is convinced he spotted his dad staring at him – just for a split second – with a look of pure hatred. Did he imagine it? However, when a series of bizarre and catastrophic events strike Jim’s life in quick succession, he starts to wonder if the look he received from his father could mean something.

Eventually, Callum makes a confession that will lead to the total collapse of Jim’s life as he knows it…

• Our Review...

I read this novel as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. For more info click here. This weeks prompt was a novel whose blurb you hadn't read prior to reading. 

The Look is an intriguing and attention holding first novel by Lee Coates, which augers well for future projects. The story is a cross between The Wicker Man and The Omen but set in the very middle class and pretentious Cardiff Bay.  It leaves you with an itch you want to scratch.. Partly because of the ending and partly due to the structure. 

The first half of the book is Jim and Callum's back story. However the main driver for the plot isn't introduced until 70% of the way into the book.. This leaves little time then for the second and third acts. The narrative felt a little front end heavy. A few potential plot strands are laid down but not followed. e.g. the mysterious potential employers, the missing mother, even The Look of the title.  If they are false trails they should still be followed and answered in the climax of the book. As I was hungrily devouring the final chapters I distinctly recall thinking There's only a few pages left, he has got a lot of strands to pull together to get a satisfactory end. 

This is a dark horror/supernatural story that somehow doesn't feel too dark despite some really horrific scenes. I've been wracking my brains as to why it feels 99% but not quite 100%, because as I've said the scenes which are intended to be horrific are indeed very horrific (gonna cancel my opticians appointment! 😟). So not the scenes then. I sort of came gradually to the idea (and this is difficult to articulate for me.) that it feels to me (with the usual caveat, that my opinion is irrelevant) that the authors writing style is slightly out of sync with what he is trying to achieve. I wrote in my notes. " Authors style is light and bouncy, with a use of vocabulary that is varied. It is engaging and just on the right side of the entertaining/verbose border."(see first selected quote for an example.) When reading the narrative it felt sort of...perky. Unlike when I read Cormac McCarthy which makes me feel dread and despair. However I don't know if this perky/bouncy fits with theme of the book.. Like using a precision scalpel, when the job needs a lump hammer.

By the by, one thing that did make the hairs on the back of my old swede jump up. The neighbour in the book is called Steven Staite. Very unusual name. However it was also the name of my neighbour for the first 22years of my life! arrggghhh!!!

There is a lot to admire in this debut novel.

One point which I did think worked out well was that it was written in the !st person from Jim's point of view. Given the (possible) revealing ending, this was a well placed strategy. In addition the author does have a well developed turn of phrase and some of his descriptive lines are very juicy indeed, see selected quotes. With just a few well turned words he can make pictures in your mind.

All in all, I found the novel entertaining and an excellent first step on what will hopefully be a long writing career. It's a good start. He has all the ducks, in this first attempt, next one to line em all up, and knock em dead.

• Selected Quotes...

I can't imagine there was any grisly facet of the atrocities that wasn't overseen by an impromptu documentarian. Anyone with a ghoulish curiosity could easily find out what was happening at any point in the continuum and at most locations within the marquee.

The bruised and pendulous clouds above had descended further,

...the sky was a watercolour artist's paradise, pregnant with varicose-veined purples.

I struggled to comprehend how every single car on display had at least one occupant with their own life and innumerable worries. Some concerns would be major. Others less so. But each and every individual was expected to cope with the constant state of flux inflicted on them from an exponential number of outside influences. Billions of particles inexorably linked by gossamer thin threads. The world was such a complex place. Chaotic.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

The Omen by David Seltzer

Audrey Rose by Frank D Fellita

• About The Author..

After having two kids, Lee Coates had almost given up on ever fulfilling his dream of writing a novel, spare time being so precious. However, a light-bulb moment occurred during one of his sons’ extracurricular activities. These interminable minutes needn’t be dead time. Lee can be regularly found writing at the side of football pitches, swimming pools and tennis courts in his hometown of Cardiff.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Rating... 4⭐

You Can Buy "Never Let Me Go"...Here

• The Blurb...

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.

• Our Review...

I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. For more info click here. The prompt for this book was "Academic Thriller."

Well, it's mainly set in or related to a boarding school so thats the Academia part covered, but I don't really think I could call it a thriller, it's more of slow burn.

There is a gradual reveal of a twist throughout the book, which is only confirmed in the last third. So in an attempt not to give away too much to start with, the first part of this review will be spoiler free. However because the twist is the book I feel that I will have to mention it. Before this point of no return  occurs there will be a spoiler warning, at which juncture you can, if you feel the need, swerve the rest of the review. 

The book is written in the first person. It is through the eyes of 31 year old Kathy, who reminisces about her boarding school days with her two best friends Ruth and Tommy. Later after leaving the school she crosses paths with them again. It is set in the 1990s. However it slowly becomes apparent that this not your bog standard boarding school. Nobody has a last name, just an initial. No parents visit ever, and the only time the students leave is when they graduate. The students don't really know where the school is and are discouraged from entering the nearby woods. Creative arts are heavily promoted through out the school and a visiting dignitary often takes away the best examples of art and poetry. The students have a vague idea that something is a bit "squiffy" but it generally isn't talked about. The narrative focuses on the three main players. There is huge meaning behind every social inter-action, every conversation is heavily nuanced and has consequences. Much like teenagers the world over then. This slow moving, repressed, exchange is the author's strong suit. He really does it well.. 

SPOILER ALERT

It is gradually insinuated and hinted out through out the book, each chapter adding a little more evidence piece by piece, that Hailsham School was in fact a school for clones. These clones are to be brought to maturity and used to harvest organs for humans. They are like battery farmed chickens. Our protagonists don't know they are clones. They gradually come to suspect it but the surprising thing is they act as if they are resigned to death (or completing as they call it) to be used as spare parts. There is no terror or gnashing of teeth, no armed rebellion, no going on the run. They are stoical lemmings and this is the most disturbing part because in the real world that is us also, We just accept the journey to death without too many questions..

The narrative is very clever in that when we begin to read, the protagonists are normal kids, with the usual emotions, fears, hopes and loves. As the truth slowly dawns, it's too late for us to emotionally back out, we are invested. How can they not be human if they have emotions, fears,, hopes and most of all love. Are we the monsters for using their organs and killing them? Why don't they rebel or run? has a lust for life been genetically modified out of them or like the rest of us. Do they sort of just accept that's their road in life. I can see parallels in the real world here. I sometimes think if I were to be conscripted to fight a war, obviously not going to happen at my age but go with me here, would I have the courage to refuse or just blindly accept my fate to be used as cannon fodder.

The author is very cunning also in using the word students throughout the narrative. That is right up until two of our love triangle confront the now aged headmistress and the word clone is used once and once only., as if in final horrific confirmation of worst fears. It turns out Hailsham school was just a experiment in humane animal husbandry. Give them a nice childhood with a good education before we cut them open and retrieve the bits like a scrapped car.  Although why bother? Battery hen or free range they still end up on the same plate. Battery/free range, clones/students it's just semantics really isn't it? 

I have read a few books that have an all consuming air of outright despair for the human race (most notably Cormac McCarthy books) but NLMG has a creeping, insidious air of sadness in every sentence. So despite it's almost glacial pace, it is two things. heart breaking and thought provoking.

• Selected Quotes...

“We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.”

All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma.”

“The problem, as I see it, is that you've been told and not told. You've been told, but none of you really understand, and I dare say, some people are quite happy to leave it that way.”

you realise that you really are different to them; that there are people out there, like Madame, who don't hate you or wish you any harm, but who nevertheless shudder at the very thought of you – of how you were brought into this world and why – and who dread the idea of your hand brushing against theirs.

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood 

Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang 

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 

• About The Author...

KAZUO ISHIGURO was born in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1954 and moved to Britain at the age of five. His eight previous works of fiction have earned him many honors around the world, including the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, and The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, both made into acclaimed films, have each sold more than 2 million copies. He was given a knighthood in 2018 for Services to Literature. He also holds the decorations of Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star from Japan.

God's Spy by Juan Gomez Jurado

 

Rating...4⭐

386 pages

You can buy "God's Spy"...here

You can find out more about Juan Gomez Jurado...here

• The Blurb...

In the days following the death of Pope John Paul II, 115 cardinals are called to the Vatican in order to take part in the conclave and elect the new Pope. With Rome under siege to foreign press and thousands of mourners, the last thing it needs is a serial killer on the loose...

Paola Dicanti is a profiler who works with the Italian police. She has been put in charge of profiling serial killers in a department of one - i.e. herself - but so far all her experience of serial killers is theoretical. This is until she is called to the church of Santa Maria in the Vatican state. A cardinal has been found murdered, his eyes destroyed, his hands cut off. It seems that this is not the first victim - another cardinal was found in similar circumstances but the authorities didn't want a scandal.

Recovering from a bitter affair with her boss, Paola begins to build her profile using information from the scene of the crime, from the autopsy, and from forensic evidence. She is helped in this by Anthony Fowler, a priest from the States. But it turns out that Fowler is no ordinary priest - he clearly has links to the CIA, and knows a lot about the serial killer than Dicanti could ever have guessed...

• Our Review...

I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. For more info on this click here. This weeks prompt was a book set in a land locked country. In this case The Vatican, the smallest country in the world.

This is an enjoyable, fast paced thriller. The author knows how to keep his reader interested and has a nice quirky touch with his similies and metaphors. (see selected quotes), this sits nicely alongside his feel for the dramatic. I mean a serial (or maybe spree?) killer let loose among a once in a lifetime papal conclave. That's a pretty dramatic setting isn't it. However, as we progress through the story it becomes clear that the time and place is of vital importance. 

I later learned that this author has a Netflix show called Red Queen. Again it has similar themes of a strong female lead tracking down a serial killer but this time set in Spain. I am now watching this and can also recommend this show,

The characters are well fleshed out and the relationships between the various agencies is intriguing. For example, there is priest who also works directly for the Vatican and the CIA. Now, there's two orgainistions that can both be viewed as moral and immoral simultaneously, and often their objectives are at odds with each other. 

Someone once told me that the struggle for power makes great books, as can be seen in a myriad of diverse stories e.g. The Godfather, Animal Farm, Dune, I Claudius et al. At it's heart this is of that ilk.. The interesting nugget that I drew from this novel is that agencies alter outcomes, but clever people can manipulate agencies. This is how sociopaths can remain anonoymous yet powerful within our society.

The identity of the killer is found out early on but the focus then turns to tracking him down and finding out what led him to become a twisted killer in the first place. 

Sometimes I read to enhance my depth of literaray knowledge. However, this is not one of those occasions. This is not a hefty tome of great import, but it was very entertaining. I'm sure we have all read books like this before, however this is well done and enjoyable. Not as dark as Thomas Harris but not too lightweight either. It was just in the sweet spot. 

• Selected Quotes...

The liquid swirled down her throat and for Paola, who almost never drank, it was like swallowing nails soaked in ammonia.

‘And it’s as worthless as a voting booth in Florida.

She’d learned to recognise the vacant look behind the predator’s eyes. These were men to whom killing came as naturally as eating a meal. There is only one thing in nature remotely similar to that look: the eyes of the white shark. They look without seeing. It is unique, and terrifying.

And here she was, at her desk, not exactly enjoying the dawn, but paying respect to her friend in her own fashion. In fact, from where she sat, the dawn was indeed beautiful: the sun sliding over the Roman hills at a leisurely pace, the rays of sunlight lingering on each building and cornice, saluting the art and beauty of the Eternal City. Each of the day’s shapes and colours made its appearance with such delicacy they seemed to be knocking at the door to ask permission to come in.

‘Maybe talking about it would help.’ ‘Take my word for it: it won’t. It’s never helped in the past. There are some problems that can’t be resolved by talking.’ ‘That’s a curious thing for a priest to say. Unbelievable for a psychologist.

if you stop asking me tricky questions, I can stop telling you plausible lies.’

• If You Liked This Then You May Like...

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.

Conclave by Robert Harris.

Incognito by Khaled Talib.

• About The Author...

Juan Gómez-Jurado (Madrid, 1977) is a journalist and author of several highly successful novels, translated into forty languages. The works about the universe of Antonia Scott ( The Patient , Cicatriz , Reina Roja , Loba Negra and Rey Blanco , all of them published in Ediciones B) have become the biggest sales phenomenon in Spanish thrillers and have established their author as one of the greatest exponents of the genre internationally. Amazon Prime is adapting the Red Queen series , in one of the most anticipated audiovisual projects internationally. In 2022 he once again conquered readers with Todo Arde.

He currently collaborates with various media and is co-creator of the podcasts Almighty and Here there are dragons .