Giveaway now closed.
A Song for Issy Bradley is the story of a family’s grief following the death of their youngest member. The family consists of mum Claire, dad Ian, teenagers Zippy and Alma, seven-year-old Jacob and four-year-old Issy.
It’s Jacob’s birthday. As Claire makes him pancakes, the ‘phone rings and Ian is summoned to help Sister Anderson, a request that he feels unable to refuse being bishop of the local Mormon church. This leaves Claire to deal with organising Jacob’s birthday party, a party she’d said could only take place if Ian helped. She calls upon Zippy to get Issy ready while she shops and then Alma to check on her while the party takes place. However it is clear from the first time we met Issy that she is very unwell:
Issy wakes up with achy arms. When she opens her eyes, they are full of lightning icicles. She tries to get out of bed and discovers that there isn’t much breath in her tummy. She wonders if part of her has popped in the night, like a balloon.
By the time Claire realises just how ill Issy is (she has meningitis), she knows she’s going to die.
Each member of the family reacts differently to Issy’s death. Claire’s feelings are introduced before the key event of the book takes place with the prologue ‘Footprints in the Sand’. In it, Claire dreams about walking on the beach with the Lord:
They walk until He stops and presses a gentle hand to her arm.
‘Please come back. I love you.’
Immediately we are aware that Claire is questioning her faith – the title of the prologue refers to the well known poem about there being one set of footprints in the sand because the Lord carried the believer when times were most trying – she does not feel that she has been supported when she needed it most.
The Lord here could be a metaphor for Claire’s husband, Ian. Ian was born into a Mormon family; Claire, however, converted when her relationship with Ian became serious and it’s clear that she sometimes struggles with the teachings of the church, both in terms of the way Ian deals with Issy’s death and with regards to their eldest daughter, Zippy. It is Al, though, that sums Ian up perfectly (if a little harshly):
He’s one of the only people Al knows who is the same in real life as he is at church. It’s as if Dad lives in the overlapping bit of one of those Venn diagrams, straddling both worlds. Other people adapt, they step from circle A to circle B, they act normal in real life and accessorise their Sunday clothes with holy words and best manners, but Dad is unchanging. He exists in a perfect egg of divine assurance.
Zippy’s character serves to illustrate one of the problems with this – the way woman are expected to behave in the eyes of the church. Zippy is of the age where she is being instructed on becoming a wife and mother. She’s expected to wear clothes that don’t show any unnecessary flesh in order for her never to be what Sister Campbell calls:
…walking pornography. I’m sure none of you want to be responsible for putting bad thoughts into men’s heads. Please think about the men.
Zippy’s thinking about the men, alright. At home she often has her head in a Jane Austen novel and at church and school, her eyes are on Adam Carmichael, son of President Carmichael. This allows Bray to highlight the differences in the expectations placed on the boys without loudly signposting her intentions and taking the reader away from the story. (Although in one wonderful scene, Claire demonstrates the hypocrisy of their teachings with a piece of chewing gum. It’s worth buying the book for those few pages alone.)
The other children are also given their own storylines and distinctive personalities. Alma constantly questions his father’s teachings in that typical cheeky teenage boy fashion. He’s angry at Ian for stopping him playing football once he began to consider it as a career option. Jacob just wants his sister back and, following the teachings about miracles, attempts to bring about one of his own.
Bray gives each character their own voice within a third person subjective narrative. It is clear from the vocabulary and sentence structures whose point of view we’re seeing things from and it’s Bray’s choices here that really bring these people to life. The children, in particular, are so well rendered; Zippy and Alma could be children I’ve taught and Jacob’s so adorable I spent the entire novel wanting to pick him up and hug him.
The book’s cleverly structured to move – seemingly effortlessly – between the characters; the decision to place Issy’s short paragraphs at the end of each of the first few chapters is a brilliant way to show us that she’s an afterthought, literally hanging on for dear life. It’s testament to Bray’s talent that I found myself sobbing when Issy died, although she’s only present in the narrative for such short periods of time.
But my favourite thing about the book is how Bray uses humour in a way that lifts what could’ve been such a bleak book without trivialising Issy’s death. There’s a fantastic scene – both heartbreaking and hilarious – that involves a bird, which I shall leave you to discover yourself but I’ll give you a taste with this from Issy’s funeral:
[Jacob] wanted to say he was fine, he wanted to tell her to go away, but his bottom lip began to wobble and it wouldn’t stop, even when he bit it quite hard. Sister Anderson helped him to his feet. She folded her arms around him and pulled him into her squashy tummy. Her dress was dark and velvety. His tears soaked into its softness as she patted his head gently and said, ‘It’s such a shame.’
When he had finished crying he stepped away from her and a rope of snot stretched from his nose to the front of her dress, like a bridge.
I had the privilege of first reading A Song for Issy Bradley back in October. I tell you this not to sound like an arse but so I can justify my use of a reviewer’s cliché, the one about characters staying with you; right up until very recently I’ve been discussing this book with people, talking about events and even lines that I could recall, without effort, months after reading. Cary’s Bray is a very talented writer indeed and A Song for Issy Bradley deserves to be an enormous success.
I’ve been desperate to get my friends to read this book for months, now they can and one of you lucky people can too. The lovely publicity team at Hutchinson books sent me a hardback copy of A Song for Issy Bradley that you can win by leaving a comment below. As always, I’m happy to accept worldwide entries. Competition closes at 12pm UK time, Sunday 22nd June. The winner will be chosen at random and notified soon after the closing time.
Edit: Thanks for all your entries into the giveaway. As usual, I’ve allocated everyone a number in order of entry:
1 – outonthefringes
2 – Jacqui
3 – Rebecca Foster
4 – Sam
5 – My Book Strings
6 – Claire Fuller
7 – Claire Stokes
8 – Rhonda
9 – JJT
10 – Anne Coates
11 – Ann Bradley
12 – Cath Martin
13 – Ametista
14 – Peter Raynard
15 – Claire ‘Word by Word’
16 – Samantha Bates
17 – Debra Brown
18 – Julie Williams
19 – theabhishekkr
And the random generator says:
Congratulations Anne, there’s an email on its way to you. Hope you enjoy the book.
Thanks to everyone for entering.
Thanks to Hutchinson for the review and giveaway copies.
Another review which makes me add to my TBR list.
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I would apologise but this one’s so good.
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Great review, Naomi – there seems to be a well-deserved buzz about this book! It sounds as if Bray has taken great care in giving each of the children distinct and believable voices, which can be a challenging feat to pull off.
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Thanks, Jacqui. It is very well written, in a way that appears effortless. Definitely one of the hardest things for a writer to do.
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The plot reminds me a bit of Nathan Filer’s The Shock of the Fall – so it’s interesting to see that he gave a puff on the cover.
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Oh, interesting. There is the odd similarity but having read them both I think Filer’s is more shocking; I wonder if the first person voice in The Shock of the Fall makes it seem more brutal than Issy Bradley. I certainly felt unsure as to whether I could continue reading The Shock of the Fall at points, it was so upsetting.
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This does sound brilliant – happy to see that it’s also out in Australia today! (Often we need to wait a bit).
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That’s good to hear. It often works the other way too, v.frustrating.
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I’m always hesitant to read about that deals so closely with the death of a child, but this sounds like I can handle it. You picked some wonderful quotes, and I find the one with the “snot bridge” very endearing. 🙂 Here in the US, we have to wait until August for it to become available…
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I think Bray deals with the death very well, it’s overwhelmingly sad but the touches of humour help to prevent it from descending into utter misery.
Shame you have to wait a while longer 😦
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I too have been hearing a lot of buzz about this book, and from your review it sounds very justified. I’d love to read it.
Claire
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I really think it is. Hard to believe it’s a debut.
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I have heard so many good things about this book and no, you don’t ‘sound like an arse’ – it’s obviously stayed with you! I can’t wait to read it.
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Thanks, Claire!
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Sounds perfect for me.Glad it’s international.
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No problem.
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Thank you for the wonderful review.
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Thank you for reading.
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Please enter me for giveaway 🙂
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Done 🙂
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Curious about A Song for Issy Bradley…subject matter is something I have first hand experience of and would love an opportunity to see how it has been portrayed…love all your reviews Naomi 🙂
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Oh, Ann. I really hope you feel the book does it justice.
And thank you.
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Mmmm… I like this cover very much, looking forward to the words passing beyond my eyes!
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Gorgeous, isn’t it?
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How I love multiple-POV narratives! And you make this sound like a very accomplished novel. It goes straight to my TBR pile!
Absolutely fantastic review, Naomi!
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Thank you. And yes, it’s astonishingly accomplished for a debut.
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Nice review and makes me look forward more to hearing Carys read from Issy next Sat at Waterstones Picadilly.
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Thank you and hope you enjoy the event.
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It sounds like an emotionally tough read, but the humorous aspect also sounds appealing, it reminds me of reading Prayers for the Stolen which benefited from the same approach. Gorgeous cover and always intriguing to discover a new literary voice.
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I’ve got Prayers for the Stolen on my TBR which I assumed would be quite dark. Interested to see how it’s tackled now.
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I would love to win this, I have heard so many great things about it. But so far haven’t got myself a copy 😦
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Another fantastic debut. Sounds like a real must read. Cannot wait to do so. Will be sure to allocate uninterrupted time.
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Book sounds fantastic would love to read it as my summer holiday read.
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And here i am ,at this rate i might never finish my TBR list..
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I think that’s a fairly common theme round these parts!
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ya , but i am here across the seven seas(India). nonetheless the same story …
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I finally managed to read this last week and thought it was truly wonderful. I’m reviewing it for the March issue of Third Way magazine. Would love to see it win the Costa First Novel Award. Neat to see you in a photo on Carys’s blog!
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