Things I know, both about myself and about book blogging: I
should probably never say no to a book.
Which makes it sound like I said no to this book.
I didn’t.
When the email landed in my inbox very nicely asking if I was interested in
taking part in the blog tour for Antonia Hayes' novel Relativity, I absolutely said yes. That's kind of my (long and
convoluted) point: that I should always says yes to all the books even if I
know little about them because there's always a chance that doing just exactly
that will make me vair happy. This book made me happy. It made me laugh and it
made me a tiny bit teary sometimes and it made me angry and sympathetic and all
kinds of conflicted and pretty much just a whole spectrum of unexpected
emotions. I thing that’s A Good Thing though. I like books that do that to me:
feelings.
So. Relativity.
Lemme talk at you about it for a little minute.
S’about a boy called Ethan. I love Ethan. I want to put him
in my pocket and protect him from All The Bad Things Ever. He’s excellent and
he has this insane knowledge of anything to do with physics. He’s pretty
special and I defy anybody ever to read this book and not wind up loving his
intelligent, naive 12 year old self. What a little gem of a character he is.
Anyhow.
He lives with his Mum, because Dad just isn’t
around. He’s never been around, not since Ethan was v small and Ethan doesn’t
know much about him, really. It’s all perfectly fine, until of course it isn’t.
At first you kind of feel like Ethan’s dad is a bit of an asshat. Or, if you’re
me then you think that, but that’s the beauty of this book. It doesn’t let you
just make up your mind and stick to your guns like a guns sticking to person. It
lets you make up your mind and then throws a spanner in the works and says AH
YES BUT YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS DID YOU and then you feel like maybe you should
change your mind. Excellent skills there Hayes.
I approve.
It comes at you from the perspective of Ethan and both
of his parents and as none of them are
particularly reliable narrators, there’s a lot to question; a lot of seeds of
doubt that are planted and send you in one direction only to have you going in
another in the very next chapter. Which, well it’s pretty clever, the way one
minute you’re sympathetic towards one set of circumstances only to be pissed
off at the same thing a few pages later. All three characters have very
different, very strong voices, which I liked and they all come across really
well actually considering it’s written in third person. I was totally invested
in all three of them (so invested, you don’t even know): Ethan, Claire
and Mark and I was torn, between wanting them to fix things and feeling like they
never should.
The story is complicated enough to not be predictable, ever,
but still manages to not tie you up in what
is even happening here, which again: I liked a whole lot.
It’s a shining
example too I guess of there always being more than one side to a story, but it
gets that message across without becoming preachy. Nobody likes preachy. Do
they? Maybe they do and I am doing unfair generalising. The point is that I
don’t like preachy and this book isn’t preachy. At all. It lets you make up your own mind and haunts
you a little bit with the things it makes you feel that take you totally by
surprise. Explains but doesn’t excuse I suppose is the best way to describe it
and trust me when I tell you there are things here that are going to get the hell
under your skin. Right the way under.
It doesn’t shy away from its more difficult and more darker
side either – another plus - and it absolutely does not paint a picture of good
and evil even though it so very easily could.
It’s all about the shades of grey this book, and I mean that in the best
possible way – that is so definitely not an EL James reference. I promise (I
would never.)
It’s a book about actions and consequences and split second
decisions that impact on the rest of your forever and the sometimes painful
power of uncertainty. It’s beautifully
written and it’s raw and honest and heart-breaking but never ever too heavy,
you know? You don’t feel dragged down by it ever and you get totally caught up
in the lives of this fractured family and their struggles with blame and guilt
and forgiveness and even the science stuff didn’t make my brain hurt too much.
That’s a miracle I think because my brain and science? They do not go hand in
hand. At all.
In a nutshell, it’s very good this book. I am grateful that
I got the chance to read it and I wouldn’t hesitate for even a second in
recommending it to anybody. Except maybe my BFF (but only because I know it
would make her cry!)
