"The Tiny Wife" by Andrew Kaufman

"The Tiny Wife" is more of a short story than a novel as it is only about 80 pages long, so it only took me about one hour to read it. From the opening paragraph I knew it would be an interesting and unique story:

"The robbery was not without consequences. The consequences were the point of the robbery. It was never about money. The thief didn't even ask for any."  

Basically a mysterious thief demands items of emotional and personal significance from each of the people he is holding up, rather than something of financial value. These items appear to function as their souls, and the rest of the book involves the different characters dealing with strange consequences relating to the loss of their significant item/soul and attempts to repair their lives. Some survive and some don't, and it's quite a bizarre story in many ways. I'm sure there's meant to be a hidden meaning or moral, as the story does read like a fable...perhaps it's just reminding us to cherish and be grateful for what we have in life and not take things for granted in case they are taken away or destroyed. or maybe I'm reading too much into it and it's just a crazy fairytale :-)

The book is written in an almost dream-like/nightmare-like fashion where the most crazy unexpected things can happen and somehow appear normal and be described in a matter-of-fact way at the same time. This dream-like style of fairytale writing reminded me a bit of "The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her own Making"  by Catherynne M. Valente that I read a couple of years ago.

It's a very short book, and although quite strange, I found it interesting reading just to experience the uniqueness of it. 

Started reading on my kindle: 1st January 2015
Finished the same day.
My score: 6.5/10 

"The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman

Reading this book is not part of the Aussie Author Challenge, Neil Gaiman is an author from the UK. This is the first book I have read by this author, although I'm aware he has written quite a few, and across different genres. I love the cover art of this book, even though I actually read it in kindle format which didn't have images. To me, this book is a mix of fantasy, fairytale, darkness. It's told from a child's perspective, and is childlike and simple in many ways, but it's not a book for young children. It is dark and magical and disturbing. Some aspects are very simple "bad vs good", others are more complex. It reminds me of the film "The Dark Crystal"...not in the storyline, but in the emotions I felt when I read it, or like a dark version of Enid Blyton's Far Away Tree. It's not a long book and I'm not going to go  into the details of it, I'm sure there's plenty of synopsis reviews available online. I can't say the book was totally enjoyable, but it did keep me turning the pages, and I didn't know what to expect, it felt like watching a dream sequence, I was aware on more than one occasion of experiencing that feeling you get when you wake up suddenly in the middle of a dream and struggle to figure out whether something that occurred was real or part of a dream/nightmare. 

Started reading on my kindle: 23rd March 2014
Finished: 1st April 2014
My score: 7/10