Review: Warra Warra by John Scott

The residents of Warra Warra, a small regional town in country Australia, have their quiet lives turned upside down when a commercial passenger plane is the target of a terrorist attack. The plane crashes in the middle of town, killing all passengers on board and several townsfolk, leaving the community reeling. As the survivors attempt to piece their lives together without loved ones, strange things start to happen. The ghosts of those onboard the doomed flight have risen and, unable to return to their homes, seek to claim Warra Warra as their own. Slowly they begin to pick off the remaining residents one by one, in horrific and violent ways.

As somebody with an overactive imagination and prone to nightmares, I tend to avoid horror stories as much as possible. But I had to read Warra Warra for class and I’m so glad that I did because I was truly surprised at how much I enjoyed this story. It sufficiently gave me the creeps and Scott is excellent at using the skill of simple statements. Some authors become lost in the beauty of language and their story suffers for it. But Scott manages to create this vivid and compelling image without an abundance of superfluous words. His stark writing style emulates the bleak setting of the remote country outback perfectly. While I could easily see where this story was headed, I still thoroughly enjoyed devouring it and I can see this making an excellent horror film.

If you feel like something different to read then I definitely recommend you give this story a go. It’s great to see an Australian author using quintessential Australian style in a way that still captivates instead of bores. Though perhaps you might want to skip it if you’re about to catch a flight…

4/5 stars

Review: The Last Letter From Your Lover - Jojo Moyes

Ellie Haworth is in her early thirties, a features writer for London's The Nation and is in love with a married man. Her life has become consumed by trying to dissect brief text messages from her lover. Her work is suffering because of her obsession and she is in very real danger of losing her job. Her boss has given her one last task to redeem herself: sift through countless random documents found in the paper's archives from forty years ago and write a story comparing life in the sixties to now. Amongst the papers, Ellie finds a passionate love letter and finds herself caught up in a story bigger than she could imagine.

Jennifer Stirling is a preened and perfect 60s housewife of a wealthy businessman who has just survived a horrible car accident, which has left her with holes in her memory and strained feelings towards her husband. One day she discovers a letter that reveals she has a secret lover and becomes consumed with rediscovering his identity.

I was surprised how much I loved this book. Moyes has managed to perfect the balance between bittersweet moments and romance to leave me utterly satisfied. Each chapter begins with a break-up message from varying generations and the difference in language (and lack of tact) is amusing. Sometimes, it's unbelievably satisfying to read a nice love story. The only criticism I have is that the book is poorly edited - frequent obvious typos make it seem like the book was edited with spell check. I'm not normally a person who would critique a book purely on typos, but these were too frequent to ignore. However, as someone with an editing background, I know this might not necessarily mean a sloppy editor but constraints on time and budgets. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to enjoy some light reading with heart.

4/5

banana muffins

As I've gotten older, I've found myself falling more in love with baking. There is this awesome sense of accomplishment when I've baked or cooked something new and it has turned out perfect. It makes up for all of the flops, mistakes and downright disasters (which don't happen too often, thankfully).

Today, I baked my traditional banana muffins but instead of using caster sugar, I tried out Equal Baking. I was worried it wouldn't taste quite right, or the texture would be off, but they turned out perfectly.

They don't look the same as they do when I use sugar, but they taste fantastic and smell delicious. They have no odd aftertaste either. Because I want to spread the love, this is the recipe:

Ingredients
- 3 ripe bananas
- 3/4 cup Equal Baking
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups plain flour
- 1/3 cup melted butter (approx 85 grams)

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius and line muffin tin with cups. Mash bananas until almost completely smooth, then add Equal Baking and slightly beaten egg. Stir until combined. Combine the melted butter. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and stir until fully combined. Batter should be thick and almost sticky. Using a tablespoon, evenly divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups. Bake for 20min, or until springy when touched. Cool on wire rack. (I also like to coat the tops with melted butter and cinnamon sugar for extra flavour.)

The best part about Equal Baking is that it doesn't affect the consistency of things like sugar does, so if you like your treats to taste extra sweet you can add a little more!

freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

Somebody, please give me a job.

I'm passionate, have experience working at a bookstore, literary magazine, publishing house and team assistant, as well as other things. You will not regret it. I am awesome and I want this so, so badly.

I have so many plans and ambitions for this year that can't happen until I have a proper job again and it's killing me not knowing. Perpetual employment limbo. Earning barely enough to cover bills and travel one week, then a comfortable amount the following week is frustrating. I never know how much money I'm going to have so it's impossible to plan things.

I want to move out, I want to save, I want to travel.

I swear, if I don't get at least an interview out of one of these three jobs I am going to be baffled. What do other people have that I don't?

I'm trying to distract myself with things like learning to ride a bicycle and a manual car as well as entertaining the notion of getting my motorbike licence, but my thoughts keep slipping back to the fact that I'm stuck in career hell.

If I did get a motorbike though, I think I'd buy a Honda CBR125R. It's a nice little light bike, just what I need. Being 5ft2 tall and weighing a whopping 56kg, I don't pretend I'd be able to handle a monster.

cliffside

Still hanging in there, sort of.

The good thing is that almost every major publisher based in Sydney has advertised either entry level or semi-entry level positions in the past few weeks. The bad news is that still only equates to four jobs. I know I didn't get one, the closing dates for two more are this week and the fourth has only just been advertised. This also means that if I don't get any of these positions, I'm probably going to jump off a cliff because the steady stream of editorial positions becoming available is going to dry up pretty soon.

Review: 1. The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Set in London during the Second World War, The Night Watch is most certainly an intriguing novel. The main characters (Kay, Viv, Julia, Helen and Duncan) are all linked in some way and lead somewhat unorthodox lives. Julia and Helen are lovers and must hide their illicit relationship. Kay is a solitary woman who dressed like a man and is struggling to move on with her life after the war. Viv has devoted years of her life to a relationship with a married man and is starting to realise what this affair has cost her. Finally, Duncan is a boyish man who has been in prison and is now under the thumb of the creepy Mr Mundy.

The story itself is structured backwards - we begin with the characters in the "present" and see how their lives currently are. The story then jumps back a few years to show how the choices they made during the war have affected them in the future. We see Viv lost in the passion of her affair, Duncan's life in prison and the love triangle between Kay, Julia and Helen. The final chapters of the novel jump back further and show the "beginning" of the story - the incident that led to Duncan's time in prison, how Viv met her lover and how Kay first met Helen.

Personally, I think the backwards storytelling didn't really add much to the story, particularly the final scenes which I could mostly guess anyway. Besides from that, Waters is an excellent storyteller who uses such vivid language. I like how she chose to tell the story of more unconventional characters, especially Kay, Julia and Helen. Homosexuality was taboo during the 40s and the implications of this really hits home when set against the backdrop of war. Despite living together and loving one another, if a gay person died during the war, their partner would receive no war widow compensation. Their partner could not openly mourn their loss. Overall, while I enjoyed the book I can't unfortunately say that it has been a standout one that I will remember in great detail in the future.

3.5/5

terrified of management

One of the publishers here, T, terrifies me slightly. He is very calm and calculated but utterly British in that Hugh Grant sort of way. His constant apparent lack of emotion is very off-putting. Whenever I have to ask him something I instantly turn into a shy six-year-old girl. My voice becomes ridiculously high-pitched and my shoes suddenly become the only thing I can look at. I am pretty sure he doesn't have the same shameless morals as Mr. Grant, however.

Must work on my confidence around big wig colleagues.