Tag Archives: Jess Kidd

#BookReview ‘The Night Ship’ by @JessKiddHerself #historical #Batavia

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The Night Ship by Jess Kidd is a strange compelling story about two orphaned children separated, but connected, by 361 years. Each thinks they see ghosts, learns legends and fights monsters. Both want to be scared, to seek out the unknown. Jess KiddIn 1628, nine-year old Mayken is aboard the magnificent Batavia, one of a fleet of ships heading from Holland to Batavia in Dutch East India (now Indonesia). She travels with her nursemaid Imke. Mayken’s mother has died of ‘the bloody flux’ and she travels to live with her father, a senior executive in the Dutch East India Company. Mayken has never met him but knows he grows red and white roses at his marble mansion, has chestnut stallions and dapple mares.
In 1989 after the death of his mother, nine-year old Gil goes to live with his grandfather who is a fisherman on the remote Beacon Island off the coast of Australia. It’s a stark place. Gil, who has only the vaguest childhood memories of both his grandfather Joss and of Beacon Island, has never known his father.
Both children explore their new surroundings, making adventures in their limited worlds. The warning ‘don’t go there’ or ‘don’t do that’ becomes an invitation to do exactly that. Both are explorers, brave in the face of the unknown, outsiders living in worlds limited in space bounded by the sea. When brutality strikes, how can they escape. Both are haunted by legend and scary stories, both make unlikely allies and enemies. Mayken discards her rich dress and wears breeches to venture below decks and, as ship’s boy Obbe, assumes a new identity. There she makes friends and enemies amongst the soldiers and sailors; these connections are vital later in the story. Gil knows he cannot leave the island without his grandfather’s permission. He finds a friend in his tortoise Enkidu and dresses up in clothes from Granny Ada’s wardrobe. When he finds a boat, inspired by stories about a shipwreck many years ago and the finds by an archaeological team digging on the island, he dreams of escape.
I loved the fond relationship between Mayken and Imke, particularly the recurring question about how Imke lost her fingertips as Mayken’s suggestions get more bizarre and gruesome. This is a welcome distraction from the bizarre and gruesome things that begin to happen aboard. Is someone making mischief, is it simply sailor’s superstitions or is there a monster aboard? Gil struggles to connect with his silent, brusque grandfather, and becomes the target of the island’s bullies. Each storyline is told only from the child’s viewpoint. Are Mayken and Gil to be trusted as reliable witnesses or has the real world become lost in their imaginations.
The Night Ship is based on the real seventeenth-century story of the voyage, shipwreck and mutiny aboard the treasure-laden ship Batavia. The fictional accounts of Mayken’s life aboard ship and then on the island they call Batavia’s Graveyard and Gil’s life on Beacon Island, the same place, explore community within and the social breakdown of small groups of people.
Slowly, slowly, this story grew on me. First, it seemed simply strange. But then the echoes in the lives of the two children begin to build and I wanted to know their endings. Beautifully-written and born from a wild imagination. This is the third book by Jess Kidd that I’ve read, each so different and impossible to predict. Sometimes a difficult read, this is also a hopeful, magical story with ultimately a positive message about the resilience of human love and kindness in the face of violence, evil and exploitation.
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Read my reviews of two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
HIMSELF
THE HOARDER

If you like this, try:-
‘Dangerous Women’ by Hope Adams
‘The Ship’ by Antonia Honeywell
‘Devotion’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE NIGHT SHIP by @JessKiddHerself https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-5Tw via @SandraDanby

COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:-Dinah Jefferies

#BookReview ‘The Hoarder’ by Jess Kidd #mystery #contemporary

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Part crime-mystery, part mystical ghost story, The Hoarder, the second novel by Jess Kidd, is difficult to define. Maud Drennan is an irreverent Irish carer who has been assigned the unholy task of bringing order to the life of Cathal Flood, a cantankerous old man who lives with his cats in a decrepit house surrounded by piles of rubbish. The previous carer who did Maud’s job, was run off the scene. Amongst the piles of junk, though, are ghosts of Cathal’s past, clues to the disappearance of one maybe two women, and traps for Maud to fall into. Jess KiddThis is at times a bewildering smorgasbord of imagery and description, there were times when I wanted to shout ‘give me a breather’ but the humour of Maud kept me reading. There are some giant character arcs to work through, both Maud and Cathal change and change again, not to mention Maud’s glorious cross-dressing neighbour Renata. To add to the merry-go-round of confusion, Maud is followed around in her daily life by a collection of ghosts, Irish saints that she learned about in a childhood book. Each saint passes comment on Maud’s actions adding a hilarious Greek Chorus effect to the story. Maud, egged on by the agoraphobic Renata, starts to look for ways of breaching the walls of rubbish which Cathal has built around himself and his private section of his old home, Bridlemere. When she does creep through, she encounters a dusty spooky world of collectibles, automata and gruesome collections which add to the feeling that secrets are hidden somewhere in the house.
The action steps up a gear when Maud’s predecessor Sam Hebden, the carer hounded off the property by Cathal, reappears. As well as flirting with Maud, he simultaneously encourages and discourages her from her detecting. Clues appear after dreams or apparitions, at times I was unclear, and Maud stumbles onwards unsure who to trust. Cathal may be old, but he is also cunning, clever and warm. When a man turns up claiming to be Gabriel Flood, Cathal’s son, the old man protests he is a villain. There is also a rather unpleasant case manager, Biba Morel. Quite a lot of the time, I didn’t know who to believe. The story is set in London but Maud’s strong Irish voice could lead you to think you are in Ireland.
So, this is a crime mystery that is not really about a crime, rather it is about Cathal and Maud and how their pasts cannot be ignored. Cathal, who tries to barricade himself in his house, away from modern life; and Maud, who is haunted by the childhood disappearance of her sister; are both characters adrift. I loved Kidd’s debut, Himself and enjoyed The Hoarder though I wish the frenetic storytelling could be toned down a notch or two.

And see my reviews of these two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
HIMSELF
THE NIGHT SHIP

If you like this, try:-
‘The Good People’ by Hannah Kent
‘Elizabeth is Missing’ by Emma Healey
‘The Ghost of Lily Painter’ by Caitlin Davies

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE HOARDER by Jess Kidd https://wp.me/p5gEM4-36p via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Himself’ by @JessKiddHerself #mystery #contemporary

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I loved Himself by Jess Kidd from the first page. It defies pigeonholing: at once a literary crime mystery, a fond comic tale of an Irish village, an investigation of long-buried secrets of murder and illegitimacy.Jess KiddJess Kidd is a refreshing new voice, I don’t remember enjoying a debut novel this much since Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites though the two books are completely different.
In 1976 Mahony walks into the village of Mulderrig, seeking the truth of his birth twenty-six years earlier. From the forest around the village, and the houses within it, the dead walk out to greet him. They are a silent cast throughout the book, do they hold the answer to the mystery?
Kidd has created a village which feels alive, filled by a cast of characters so clearly drawn, and which swirls between the horrific beating of a nurse, downright nastiness, belly laughs and hallucinogenic drugs. The cast includes a pinched, controlling priest; a wizened old actress who organizes the village play from her wheelchair; a bogeyman who reputedly lives in the forest; and a pub landlord who tries to court the Widow Farelly, a nurse who has the sourest disposition visible to everyone except him. Mahony grew up in a Dublin orphanage, knowing only that he was left there as a baby with a letter marked ‘For when the child is grown’. What he reads in this letter sends him to Mulderrig to find out what happened to his mother, Orla, in 1950.
Did she disappear, running away to a better life, as most of the villagers tell him; or was she murdered? And why was she so hated by her neighbours?
As Mahony, Bridget Doosey, Shauna Burke and the indefatigable Mrs Cauley investigate his origins, the true nastiness of the village emerges.

And see my reviews of these two other novels by Jess Kidd:-
THE HOARDER
THE NIGHT SHIP

If you like this, try:-
‘A History of Loneliness’ by John Boyne
‘Ghost Moth’ by Michele Forbes
‘After the End’ by Clare Mackintosh

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview HIMSELF by @JessKiddHerself via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23K