It always makes me smile to find a MothBox Box on my doorstep and the July edition has arrived!! Look away now if you have ordered one and you don’t want to see what is in your box this month!! You can come back later!! 😉
Now, if you know nothing of Mothbox then please check out their website! They are a book subscription service with a difference! The 2 books that you receive in a box are from Independant Publishers! So you are more likely never to have heard of the books before, therefore introducing you to new authors, new stories and new publishers to explore!!
I’ve had every Fiction Moth Box that has been released since its’ launch and have discovered some wonderful reads this way and I love how it features books ‘off the beaten tracks’!
Once you rummage through the scrunched up paper in the box, you find 2 beautifully wrapped books, complete with a bookmark featuring a quote from the books chosen this month!
And this month, the books are as follows!
The Iron Age by Arja Kajermo
I went up to the teacher and held out my hand and told her my name. She took a step back and tilted her head and looked at me without offering her hand. I pulled my hand back and hid it behind my back. She smiled the way grown ups smile at someone else’s ugly baby and then she spoke. ‘That is a strange name, we are not called names like that in Sweden.’
Arja Kajermo’s debut The Iron Age is part coming-of-age novel, and part fairy-tale told from the perspective of a young girl growing up in the poverty of post-war Finland. On her family’s austere farm, the Girl learns stories and fables of the world around her – of Miina, their sleeping neighbour; that you should never turn a witch away at the door; how people get depressed if pine trees grow too close to the house; and why her father was unlucky not to have died in the war.
Then, when she is little more than six years only, the family crosses from Finland to Sweden, from a familiar language to a strange one, from one unfriendly home to another. The Girl, mute but watchful, weaves a picture of her volatile father, resilient mother and strangely resourceful brothers.
The Iron Age, which grew out of the story shortlisted for the 2014 Davy Byrne’s Award, is disarming in its unadorned simplicity and unsentimental account of hard times and hard people. In Kajermo’s darkly funny debut, with illustrations throughout, folk tales and traditional custom clash with economic reality, from rural Finland to urban Sweden.
‘This is a short tale, simply and richly told, which feels as though it’s the culmination
of a lifetime’s work. An instant classic.’ Jon McGregor
‘Deceptively simple yet with cutting insight and devastating humor, The Iron Age proves that the most surreal dwells in reality, and history is the darkest fairytale’ Yiyun Li
Tiger Island, Louisiana is home to Paul, a contented machinist with killer dance moves and Colette his ambitious, outspoken wife. Amidst the bar brawls and boiled crab of her economically troubled hometown, Colette is hungry for a life of opportunity and sophistication. Armed with only her wits and her “tongue like a fillet knife” she heads West to California, but Paul, Tiger Island, and its wise old-timer residents refuse to let Colette go easily. Packed with dramatic and emotional scenes and set in the distinctive watery landscape of Deep South bayou country, The Next Step in the Dance is a novel about hard work, the importance of home and two tenacious protagonists whose relationship is tested to its absolute limit
Already itching to start these, especially The Iron Age as the cover has creeped me out enough to intrigue me! Hoping to report back with good reviews soon!
Do you use book subscription services? Are they worth it? Would love to hear your thoughts!
HAPPY READING!!
Books and Me! 