Review: Swimming Home

Swimming Home by Deborah Levy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, but felt that it lacked depth and in some parts I felt that the story didn't really make sense.

I would have liked the story to either have been even shorter to make it punchier or to be longer with more detail to ensure that the story was punchier. For me, I don't feel that it really works as it is. It seems that the book is trying to be something in particular and put a message across and unfortunately it doesn't quite cut it.

The story revolves around 9 main characters, although I felt that two of them were not entirely necessary to the story, particularly given it's length. All the way through the book, themes relating to mental health and depression are alluded to, although the illness that Kitty suffers from is clearly something more than depression. I feel like the book is sold to the reader on the fact that it is about mental health, but I don't think that it is particularly well dealt with in the book.

However, I did enjoy the story and it was a quick read and I liked the format and structure of the book. I'm not sure I would read anything else by the author, but am glad that I have read this book.

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Book Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I know that a lot of people LOVE this book, but it just didn’t do it for me. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy it, as I did. I just didn’t enjoy it as much as similar coming of age/young adult type of books that I have read recently.

I read this book after seeing a lot of recommendations for it and managed to get hold of a Kindle copy to sate my curiosity. The book is written in a diary format using letters to an unknown person. I liked this style of writing as I have read a number of other books written in a similar way and if used well, it can be very effective.

The book follows a number of characters, but is written from the point of view of a 15 year old boy named Charlie. Charlie is a bit of an outsider who starts hanging around with some older kids and we follow a year of his life through his letters.

The book itself touches on a number of subjects such as drug use, mental ill health, sexuality and death and I think deals with them quite well. I do think that mental ill health could have been expanded a bit more as Charlie’s psychiatrist plays such a big part in his life, but there may be reasons for it being written the way it is.

I have given this book three stars as although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t unputdownable and I didn’t feel as though I connected with Charlie as well as I have with the main characters of similar books. I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read it when I was younger as I experienced similar feelings of being an outsider when I was a teenager. Overall, a good read, but if you enjoy this, there are some better young adult books dealing with similar themes out there.


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