Annabel PitcherRecensioni

It may be written for middle grade but this is a really beautiful exploration of what grief does to a family.

Mi hermana vive sobre la repisa de la chimenea
Annabel Pitcher
Publicado: 2011 | 176 páginas
Novela Drama

Un matrimonio acaba de perder a una hija en el atentado terrorista del nueve de septiembre en Londres y este hecho desencadena una crisis familiar. La madre se va a vivir con su amante, el padre, desesperado, idolatra la urna de las cenizas de la fallecida y se dedica a beber, despreocupándose de sus otros dos hijos. La narración corre a cargo del pequeño —Jamie— que tiene diez años y va relatando desde su óptica lo que sucede: sus juegos y aventuras escolares, la complicidad con su hermana, el desinterés y falta de cariño de su madre, así como la amistad con una niña musulmana, algo que enfurece a su padre que se ha convertido en enemigo acérrimo de los musulmanes. El libro está notablemente bien escrito para tratarse de una primera novela contada a través de la voz en primera persona de una mirada infantil que contempla el mundo con una ingenuidad que va convirtiéndose poco a poco en desengaño aunque las páginas rebosan de gestos de humor y ternura. La narración es lineal con un lenguaje sencillo que adopta un formato como de soliloquio incluyendo los brevísimos diálogos que aparecen en la novela como frases entrecomilladas dentro del párrafo, logrando un magnifica semblanza del protagonista y demostrando una profunda observación de la realidad vista con la mentalidad de un niño que, habitualmente, está cargada de sentido común. Están certeramente reflejados ciertos conflictos como los prejuicios raciales, la problemática de la adolescencia, algunas incoherencias de los adultos, las consecuencias del desarraigo familiar, etc. El tono general es respetuoso y trata con delicadeza ciertos temas difíciles. Aunque el argumento deja un regusto de tristeza se equilibra bien con los múltiples detalles de chispeante humor y la simpatía del protagonista.

Jamie’s sister Rose lives on the mantelpiece, in an urn that houses her ashes. She was killed by one of the bombs on 7/7 in London, and her family has not been the same since. I read the audiobook narrated by David Tennant, who is a very good narrator. However, I found the book itself to move a bit slowly, to the point where I borrowed an ebook from the library to finish it off.

Han pasado cinco años desde que Rose murió en un atentado terrorista islámico en el centro de Londres. Su hermano, Jamie, de diez años, no ha podido llorar todavía, aunque sabe que debería hacerlo porque toda su familia lo hizo. Las cosas no van nada bien desde entonces: su padre bebe cada vez más, su madre los ha abandonado, Jasmine, la gemela de Rose, ha dejado de comer y Jamie tiene muchas preguntas que nadie le responde. Pero, un día, un anuncio de televisión le hace soñar con que todo vuelva a ser como antes...

Every now and again I read a book that even when I don't relate fully with the main character, I end up completely immersed in the story and unable to think of anything else. THIS is one of those books. I had previously read (and loved) [b:Ketchup Clouds|11088150|Ketchup Clouds|Annabel Pitcher|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345828415s/11088150.jpg|16009906], so I was super excited to read more from Annabel Pitcher. And now that I have, I will probably be reading everything she writes, forever ever.

The best thing about her books are that they are so full of emotion. She could be writing about something I really wouldn't even find sad normally, but her words somehow make my heart ache while reading about it. That's talent my friends.

So Tess..... she's not talking. And it's not because she can't. I thought this was going to be a book about a girl that could not speak, not that she would not speak. I guess it could be the same thing-- experiencing a traumatic event that leaves you feeling like you can't speak. Tess knows she can speak though, she just won't. I'm not sure exactly if I was down with all the specifics of that, but I was able to overlook it because the story and characters were so strong.

Tess's silence costs her her best (and only) friend. Their separation is what really hurt my heart the most. I loved reading about Tess and Isabel in their better times because they were truly soulmate-type friends-- Tess always says they were symbiotic creatures. It made me wish I had an Isabel of my own :( All the characters around Tess were truly developed. They were real people with good points and flaws.... even the villain of this book had vulnerability. I can't say enough about the range of the people in this book.

Why Should You Read This Book? It's about family stuff, but it's SO much more than that. The issue that starts the mutism isn't the biggest/toughest issue I've ever read about, but there are so many other stories involved besides this main issue. There's bullying and body issue stuff-- plus the girl talks to a plastic key chain for much of the book. Where else are you going to read something like that and it makes sense? I actually started viewing Mr. Goldfish as a real live character in this book. It was odd.

OVERALL: Another YES for Annabel Pitcher!! I loved this story about a girl going through a tough moment in her life. I know it's classified as YA, but I would totally put this in an in-between MG and YA category. It is definitely do-able for both age groups.

My Blog:

Zoe es una chica inglesa de quince años que oculta un terrible secreto. Llena de angustia, pero también con una buena dosis de humor, Zoe comenzará a escribir cartas a Stuart Harris, un asesino encerrado en el corredor de la muerte de una prisión de Texas. Piensa que sólo alguien así, marcado al igual que ella por el secreto, la mentira y el asesinato, va a poder comprenderla...
Bolígrafo en mano, Zoe respira profundamente y comienza su relato de amor y traición...

I felt a bit old for this book, I see lots of people tagging it as YA but the main character is ten and the narrating in many ways feels like it's aimed at younger people. But I might be wrong. My grandmother asked me to tell you she's sorry, for example, features a young protagonist but is not really for kids.

Anyway, no matter who it is aimed for I greatly enjoyed it and it deals with such heavy and dark themes (death, alcoholism, islamophobia, bullying ...) that I don't think I could've read it from like an adults POV. Or even Jasmine's POV.

While the story is charming and Jamie is a good protagonist, the star of the book is obviously Sunya. I loved her, the Hijabi-wearing Hero. Her fucking revenge schemes were BEYOND amazing and I loved how positive and cool she managed to be even when she was surrounded by all those douchebags of her class. And her banter with Jamie about how many people the two superheroes saved made me smile like an idiot.

So, yeah, I may have been too old for this, but it didn't stop me from enjoying it. Far from it.

UGGGH GOODREADS STOP DELETING MY REVIEWS JUST BECAUSE I ACCIDENTALLY CLICKED WRONG SOMEWHERE.

This book is about Zoe, a teenage girl with a secret so terrible she can only tell it to a death row inmate with no possibilty of returning her letters. The book is told throughout the letters she's sending him, confessing the horrible thing she did. It is clear from the beginning that someone died and that she had something to do with it, but it's not until the very end you know what happened or even who died. The book is very well-told in that regard, and never has to rely on annoying cliffhangers to keep you reading: it's just very suspenseful and impossible to put down.

I have this fascination with serial killers, and it is a fascination I very much dislike sharing with others, since there's a fine line between "I find the dark parts of humanity scary and interesting" and "I'm gonna send letters to a serial killer because I'm kinda fangirling this person", and I very much want to stay away from the second kind of person. People who write to murderers I've always considered as the second type of person, but this book sort of made me realize that that is probably not always the case. Even if Zoe does project a lot of feelings and opinions onto Stuart Harris, since - for all we know - he might not have read a single letter she writes him (though, to be fair, that was probably never the point of her letters).

Anyway, it was a good book. A nice YA story told in a creative way.

(8.5) This story is a well told account of what grief, over the sudden death of a child can do to a family. It is told through the eyes of the youngest member, Jamie. The book not only looks at the different way individuals handle grief but also at bullying and racism.
I have passed this on to my daughter and twelve year old granddaughter to read.

I'm so totally completely WRECKED by this book.
And left hopeful in the wake of disaster.

I've seen some people calling this book easy in their reviews, but I cannot fathom such a description. Makes me feel as if we've read different book.

It reads easy, but it's way far from an easy read.

I loved it.
(Not sure about it being a kid book. A teen or young adult maybe? I could be wrong)

fuck yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooou book club

An absolutely wonderful audiobook, read by David Tennant.

En sådan jävla bra bok. Den är otroligt vacker, och sorglig. Men definitivt värmande.

I just could not care about the characters. And the main character was just creepy and not in an interesting way.

I literally only picked this up because David Tennant reads the audiobook, and I quit on it only a couple chapters from the end. It was just more than I could bear. I could handle how the dead sister overshadowed everything else. And the living sister becoming more distant. And the school bully/teacher's pet. And the bigoted, drunken dad. And the completely absent mom. But the cat was the last straw. There's no coming back from that, and no amount of happy family reunion will make up for it. And what really gets to me is that I saw it coming from the first second, because authors can't seem to handle a character having a feline companion without using it as a tragic plot device.

Very wonderfully written from a 10-year-old point of view. Deals with death in a very real way, shows very real issues coming through the family members but through the innocent eyes of the boy. Deals with issues of racial tension; stereotyping Muslims as terrorists and Jamie finds proof that it is not true through a new friend, Sunya.

I hadn't realised that this was a young adult book when I got it, and so it wasn't what I expected. I was hooked in by the idea of the story though - a family dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist attack which killed one of the children, told through the eyes of a ten year old boy. I thought the issues in it were really brave too, given that it was dealing with child death, parental abandonment, alcoholism, racism and bullying. Sadly though, as it was a YA book, it was all a bit fluffy for me. But that's my problem, and actually a strength of the book because it makes those things accessible for younger readers. It was funny, compelling and having it narrated by David Tenant was perfect.

this book left me speechless and so so sad

For me, this was one of those books that sometimes worked for me and sometimes didn't. My problem was that Jamie is supposed to be 10 when the story opens and about a year passes during the events of the book, but often the Jamie presented acted both emotionally and physically beyond his years. If he'd been 13 I'd have had less problem accepting some of his thoughts and reactions. I enjoyed Jamie's personality and need to, in fact, willingness to break from his father's racist leanings and beliefs. I liked Sunya and Jas and appreciated that they protected Jamie where they could. I had nothing but disdain or outright disgust for the Jamie and Jas's parents. I felt great sympathy for Jas who lost her twin sister. No one seemed to focus on how bereft that must have made her feel, especially given how the parents instantly made a saint out of Rose. I wanted to give that kid a big hug and fulfill all her wishes for herself. A worthy read, but not one that worked as well for me as it did for others.

This book was on one of my shelves for awhile. I purchaseed it for the curious title. It is, once again, another example of YA writing that deserves worthy mention.

This is a story of a family split apart, told from the perspective of the younger brother of twin sisters, one of whom is killed in England by a terrorist action.

Jaime was too young to remember his sister. He is now forced to act older than his ten years of age. His mother leaves he, his sister and father and abandons them for another man. Spending his days drinking obsessively, Jamie's father has little desire to spend attention on his two remaining children.

Obsessed with grief regarding the killing of his daughter, Jaime's father keeps her ashes in a shrine-like atmosphere on the mantle. As Jamie and his sister are moved to a new school, forced to walk when their father cannot make it out of bed. In addition, Jamie is terribly bullied and cannot look to his remaining parent for any emotional support.

Jaime finds one friend, a young girl who happens to be of the Muslim faith. She is the lone person in school who tries to learn about him and who cares.

This is a good book, but not a great book. The author writes well, but she packed so much into the story. Each event that happened to Jamie was piled on one after another and another.

Jaime's sister is killed
His mother leaves
His father drinks his days and nights away
Jaime attends a new school where he is bullied
Jamie happens to find one friend who happens to be of the same faith as the terrorist that killed his sister
and then there is a situation with a pet.....

All of these events were too much to pack into one book.

Silence is Goldfish
by Annabel Pitcher
Language: English
London : Indigo , 2015.
384 p. ; 216 x 135mm
ISBN: 9781510100435 1510100431
Summary: What happens to a fifteen-year-old girl when she finds out for the first time that her own father feels revulsion toward her, finds her peculiar, and doesn't even consider her to be his daughter? That's what Tess discovers one night when, during an emergency, she had to go to the nearest computer in the house to find out how to put out a kitchen fire. Glancing at what her father had on the screen, she discovers a blog post he wrote for the Donor Conception Network, where he admits to not loving the "ugly red thing gnawing" at his wife's breast on his daughter's first day of life. This is how in fact Tess discovers that she was actually conceived via sperm donor, and that the only father she has ever known is not really her father. This truth completely unmoors her. At first Tess runs away from home, but decides against it after four hours on her own in the middle of the night, only to wonder how she is to live with this man and this new knowledge. She returns home but within 24 hours, Tess becomes mute as a protest against her parents for a lifetime of lies. The book is told in the first person and though mute, Tess has a lot to say, but all of the dialogue stays in her head as she communicates only with a plastic goldfish she bought when she ran away and that she now keeps in her pocket. Meanwhile, finding out the truth about her conception is just one of her problems. Tess is brutally bullied both online and at school for being fat and for her large frame, which she now knows she mustn't have gotten from her father, and she loses her best friend when she can no longer confide in her about what she found out on her father's computer that night. Tess also becomes fixated on the substitute math teacher who has the same blonde hair, brown eyes, and fat fingers that she has. Convinced they share the same DNA, she becomes obsessed with learning more about him, and what she does is so shocking that it finally leads her out of her mutism. This book explores what happens when parents keep the truth from their children in cases where they had to use donor sperm to conceive. It is not so much this fact that causes Tess's problems as much as it is the fact that the truth has been kept from her her entire life. Except for scenes of cruel bullying, there is no violence, sex, or foul language in this book. Recommended for ages 12 and up.

Wow! What a book!
I don't have much to say about it at present as I'm still digesting what I've read.
One of my faves this year.

Poco antes de cumplir diez años, el pequeño Jamie se va a vivir al norte de Londres con su padre separado, su hermana adolescente Jasmine y su gato Roger para empezar desde cero. Han pasado cinco años desde la muerte de Rose, la gemela de Jasmine, en un atentado terrorista islamico en Londres. Sus padres no han conseguido superar el dolor y parece que Jasmine tampoco: se ha teñido el pelo de rosa, se ha hecho piercings y ha optado por no comer. La familia se ha venido abajo. Pero en todo ese tiempo Jamie no ha derramado una sola lagrima. Para el Rose, cuyas cenizas reposan en la repisa de la chimenea, no es mas que un recuerdo lejano. Le interesan mucho mas su gato Roger, la camiseta de Spiderman que le han regalado por su cumpleaños o que su padre no se entere de que se ha hecho amigo de una niña musulmana paquistani. Un dia, al ver en la television un anuncio buscando jovenes talentos que sepan cantar, se convence de que eso puede hacer que las cosas cambien y que toda la familia pueda salir adelante.

This is one of my new favorite books. Admittedly, I found it on Audible while looking for narrators I liked (David Tennant, amazing as ever), because that sometimes leads me to great finds. This was one of those great finds. I'd never heard of this book before and took a chance.

I was enchanted from the beginning. Pitcher writes in a simple, elegant style. Her characters are delightful, and she captured the melancholy dynamics of a broken family in a way that was truly touching and lovely. The focus on childhood friendship and the bond between siblings was most enjoyable to me, as was the idea that "grownups don't always get it right." I laughed out loud at Jamie and his antics, and then cried despite my best efforts not to (because I was listening at work, and therefore sniffling in my cubicle), but this was one of the most heart-melting stories I've read in a long time.

And, dang, this ought to be read in every single school. Everywhere.

James Mathews,de diez años, es un chico muy especial.

Narrador principal de una singular y dramatica historia, en la que como hermano de dos gemelas, una de ellas Rose, fallece un nueve de septiembre, en Londres, a causa de un atentado terrorista,cuando James tiene cinco años, hace que sea incinerada (parte de su cuerpo) por parte de padre, y enterrada, por expreso deseo de la figura materna,(la cual mantiene un affair paralelo a la separacion de su marido alcoholico),ausente completamente en la ardua batalla de la vida con la que sus hijos tienen que lidiar tras este duro drama.

Su hermana Jasmine, y su gato Roger,van a mudarse con su padre, fuera de Londres,para intentar empezar de cero.

Se instalaran en una casa junto al Distrito de Los Lagos.

Su madre, es profesora de Bellas Artes, se queda en Londres, trabajando.

A lo largo de la novela, vemos el dia a dia en la vida de esta familia marcada por la tragedia, de los que destaca, especialmente el carisma de su personaje principal respecto de la vision de la muerte de su hermana, y como es la conviviencia con su padre y hermana, en un ambiente hogareño, en el que la falta de amor, la ausencia de Rose,y los temas raciales, dejaran profunda huella en el lector, ahondando en la pureza de vida de Jamie, y de como por encima de todo, junto a su hermana, Jasmine, no desean otra cosa que disfrutar de una familia feliz y unida, a pesar del drama personal por el que estan pasando.