The Puppet Boy Of Warsaw by Eva Weaver

I really don't like to read books that involve the Holocaust and the second world war, mostly because of their depressing nature, but also because I always think just how many more ways are there looking at it? Are there any other ways that highlight the devastation that was caused? With everything that is happening in Gaza at the moment as well, where the Israeli military and government are continuing to bomb Gaza and Hamas, war is slowly coming to the forefront of every news channel and newspaper.

So for taking all this into consideration, I think this is what attracted me to read this book. To remind myself of the devastation that the Jewish population suffered in WW2, and to try and see if the novel made me look at the war at yet another angle. The book is split into two different time periods where the protagonist is Mika, a Jewish boy in the war in the 1940s and a grandfather telling his story to his now grandson in 2009. If you are educated in all of the facts of the war, then you always feel that impending sense of terror that is beckoning on the Jewish population of Warsaw. And it is not long until Weaver throws us straight into the terror of the Warsaw ghettos, when the Jews were all placed into one area of Warsaw, a space that was far too cramped for the amount of people forced to live there. Weaver cleverly purveys this sense of cramped conditions by letting a lot of the action spill out onto the streets, where all the evil is happening, where all the killing is occurring and where everyone is slowly starving.

Mika soon inherits his grandfathers coat that has a complex pattern of inner pockets allowing him to hide things inside them. This includes his grandfathers puppets and Mika soon becomes enthralled by them, making his own puppets and then slowly his own shows. More people are forced to move into his and his mothers flat, meaning he now rarely has time to himself. We follow Mika putting on shows for chilrdens hopsitals, orphanages as well as birthday parties. Soon his shows attract Nazi attention and he is made to put on shows, forced to down pints of beer and become part of the rough and manly culture. He soon befriends a soldier called Max, but there is such an air of tension between the two that Weaver subtly writes into it that is makes you always feel a sense of danger for Mika, a sense that Max is always just doing what he is told by his Nazi superiors.

The rest of Mika's journey during the war is much as would expect, full of death, full of loss and full of a fight that you never really think they will win. But of course, eventually the allies do win, he is given the chance for freedom, we already know at the start of the book he has made it to the USA. He is one of the lucky ones. There are some truly heart wrenching moments in the book with Mika, especially for me when the Nazis are making a film about life in the ghetto and they make Mika perform one of his shows. To pretend that life is all dandy in the ghettos, when really all the weak ones are being killed off before all the strong ones are shipped off to concentration camps. I got so mad reading it, why did no one help the Jewish people at the time? And then reading the current news straight after, how can a mainly Jewish population in Israel not understand what they are currently doing? I just don't get it.

Images from the Warsaw ghetto

One side of the book that really worked for me was when the book looks at life after the war for Max, the German soldier. Sent off to a prison in Siberia, we follow his complex journey and inner thought processes. Why are the German soldiers taking all the punishments when they were just following orders from people who have gotten away with it? It is an extremely debatable and hard to determine subject that it is almost too hard to call. Should the soldiers have been so severely punished for merely carrying out orders? When you read everything Mika saw and heard, it is hard to reason with Max and his comrades. But his journey for me was all the more fascinating as I have never really thought about what German soldiers went through after the war. All the lies they were fed for no reason, for no purpose. Truly devastating on any sole.

Just some of the three million German POWs in USSR

I apologise for the somber tone to this review. It's just the subject matter at hand. And the topical nature of war at the moment across the world doesn't help. I realise that WW2 and the Gaza/Israeli bombings are two totally different situations, but can people not learn from past situations? From situations that didn't even happen that long ago? From situations that people who are alive today were alive back then? The sheer ignorance of those in power will sometimes never cease to amaze me.

The Puppet Boy Of Warsaw by Eva Waver is published by Phoenix, an imprint of Orion books, in the UK. 

The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling

Well I am just disgusted in myself and how long it has been since I have decided to sit down and write one of these things. Can I just defend myself before you hit that big red cross in the top right- hand corner? I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY. As well as being particularly busy with fascinating things including recovering from tonsilitus, spending some much needed time in the sun and getting a new phone. Riveting right? Now in the past 6 weeks, I don't want you to think that my self proclaimed title of official book worm has been lost. Oh no. Train journeys have still be filled with the written word. So brace yourself people. Reviews will be coming at you thick and fast from now on. Whilst I may try and do some catching up on ones I have finished, I may just start from now... I'm still fickle, I'll let you know.

SO in my own style of writing things late, why not give you a review for a book that has been out for quite sometime now? In it's own streak of luck however, J.K Rowling has recently been back in the spotlight, what with her new crime novel being published, as well as finding time to squeeze out a Harry Potter short story. I have not read this, sorry J.K but you must be JOKING if I am signing up to Pottermore just to read it. So this review will focus on her first, well lets say probably first published attempt at an adult novel, The Casual Vacancy.

Now if you are as ignorant as I am, you may think that this is a book about either casual sex or a empty hotel  room somewhere in the depths of England. However, you will soon learn, and I mean literally in the first ten or so pages, so this doesn't spoil it, that it for a seat on a local council that has become available after the death of Barry Fairbrother. The town of Pagford soon descends into a state of shock, and we are presented with a multitude of characters immediately, giving the book a soap opera sense of direction. And this does not relent. Rowling does exceed fantastically at chopping and changing scenes in the local town and its surrounding area. We all already knew she had a knack for telling a story, it was just the way she went about it that was sometimes troublesome and at times extremely immature. But this has greatly improved. Gone are the unnecessary adverbs and adjectives, and visible is a sense of a writer who feels much more in her stride.

Do you even need a picture? 

Now this isn't perfect. There are times where, to me, it felt like she was trying a little to hard to reach her mature audience. Some mentions of words like vulva and her sometimes graphic sexual thoughts were misplaced and misjudged. There are times also I feel stereotypes are coming into play slightly, whether it be the troubled teenager Krystal Weedon who is so clichéd it is cringe-worthy, or the pushy Asian parents who bully their children for underachieving, Rowling sometimes slips into boring and unimaginative territory.

But she manages to save it with the other characters. She mixes so well the lives of the people in the small town and displays brilliantly each of the characters internal and family catastrophes. They may all seem like small problems, but if someone thinks it is a problem, then that's all that should matter. Characters including the married cougar Samantha who prays on young schoolboys and boyband members and Maureen who runs a local deli and café with the head of the council Miles, who may or may not have had part of his anatomy somewhere it shouldn't have been, all kept my unrivaled interest, even when a good looking man was standing in front of me on the train. The best character for me was the troubled father and headteacher Colin Wall, who was petrified of even brushing up against his students for fear he would enjoy it too much (if you get me). The sheer panic Rowling has instilled into him almost drips off the page.

All of these domestic issues rotate around the election for the seat, as two sides battle it out to save the Fields, a council estate area that sits on the border. Some want it out of the borderline and some want to keep it. It even starts effecting the teenagers of the local area, as parents run for the seat and they become terrified of what could happen, even meddling with the council website to stop people getting in. What Rowling does so well is to explore each issue in a way that it effects not just one person but everyone around them, truly evident in the run up to the end of the novel where I could simply not put the book down. I wont ruin it for you, but it sure does put many things in perspective for Pagford's residents and Rowling ends it on an extremely bittersweet note.

Now I was extremely cautious about this book. I mean I enjoyed the Potter books as much as the next kid in my generation, but I wasn't the biggest fan. But Rowling surpassed my expectations. Whilst it wasn't perfect and there were a few try hard moments, she writes with an authenticity that has captured modern life in rural towns where urban life is starting to infiltrate, whether it is elder people using the internet, council estates on your doorstep or a multi- cultural community, you get the feeling that things are changing and life for the residents can simply not go on as it has done in the past. A TV series has already been commissioned for the book and I can't help but feel that simply because of the author who penned it, this is why it is going into production. I just don't see it working on screen, it will be far to soap opera-esque. It may prove me wrong, at the end of the day I'm just a poor boy from a poor... Oh wait that's wrong. But you know what I mean.

The Casual Vacancy by J.K Rowling is published by Little, Brown in the UK.