2011 Orange List

Wow. Unputdownable, despite the fact that not a whole lot happens. (But what does happen is pretty intense, so there's that.) The writing is spot-on. I'm docking it a star because I thought the ending was weak, and not wholly plausible. But still highly recommended. ( )

Wow. Unputdownable, despite the fact that not a whole lot happens. (But what does happen is pretty intense, so there's that.) The writing is spot-on. I'm docking it a star because I thought the ending was weak, and not wholly plausible. But still highly recommended. ( )

Susanna is a teenage girl who is obsessed with the father that she has never known. When she schemes up a way in which to meet him, rather than introduce herself as his daughter, she seduces him. Rather obviously, this is not a relationship that is going to end well for either party involved.

This is the kind of book that I knew I wanted to read the moment I read the synopsis. I am a girl with an absent father. I can relate to Susanna’s longing and desperation for a relationship with her father. I was able to look past the repulsive idea of a father/daughter sex affair, and read it for what it meant to Susie- daddy’s love at last. And she was deeply in love with him, in her own obsessive way. She states that she exists only for him, and she believes it to her very core. Without her father, she is nothing. Just try to imagine having this mindset, never wavering, no matter what happens... I find it utterly heartbreaking. There were so many points in this book where the emotion took over me, and I had to put the book down to get my thoughts in order. That, to me, is a good read.

This is a book that I highly recommend, if you are able to get past the subject matter. For being just short of 200 pages, it is an incredibly powerful and engaging story. It may be some disturbing subject matter, but it is very beautifully written. One of those stories that even a week after finishing it, you still find yourself thinking about it, trying to make up different endings, imagining what the characters could be doing now...(I’m not the only one who sometimes believes that characters live on after the story is finished, right?...er, no? well ok).

Also posted at Blogspot ( )

Anne Peile’s debut novel, Repeat It Today with Tears, opens in this way: “The first time I kissed my father on the mouth it was the the Easter holiday.”The reader is meant to be shocked. And, fair warning, the author has laid out the book’s subject matter in the opening line: Here there be dragons. If you venture further, you do so at your own risk.For surely it is risky, taking on such a subject for your first work of fiction: “..something that’s not allowed by law, something that’s frowned upon by the medical profession, by the Church, by society as a whole; it’s a taboo.”But what this debut novelist does with her story is truly remarkable. I have a lot more to say about it here. ( )