{"id":161,"date":"2017-01-16T12:36:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T12:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/?page_id=161"},"modified":"2017-01-16T12:36:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T12:36:46","slug":"that-birds-would-sing-joanna-franklin-bell","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/?page_id=161","title":{"rendered":"That Birds Would Sing – Joanna Franklin Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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That Birds Would Sing – Joanna Franklin Bell, Createspace, 2015<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a few days since I finished this book, but it needed a while to stew before I got my thoughts down. It\u2019s not the type of book you close and say \u201cwell that was good\u201d and get straight on with the next \u2013 in fact I\u2019ve only just picked up my next book, because the ideas and characters from \u201cThat Birds Would Sing\u201d just wouldn\u2019t leave me alone.<\/p>\n

And even after that, I can\u2019t tell you what sort of book it is. It\u2019s a coming-of-age novel, sure, but it\u2019s so much more than that, in the depth with which it explores its characters, the realism and deftness of touch with which it communicates their thoughts and actions, the surprises that shouldn\u2019t have been surprises because they were there all along, hidden in half a thought or an unobtrusive word. It\u2019s a serious work of literature, certainly, but it flows so smoothly, catches you up in its plot and its protagonists so tightly, that reading it can feel no more challenging than watching a short burst of daytime TV \u2013 until you put it down for a moment, and think about it, and realise that whilst you\u2019re desperate to know (as you should in every great novel) the simple \u201cwhat happens next?\u201d, you\u2019re just as invested in the more complex questions of how and why and what this means for the characters and their friends, their city, their world, your world. It\u2019s stylishly told, of course, an apparently effortless, wonderfully idiomatic prose hurtling to its inevitable conclusion. It\u2019s a high school drama, undeniably, with all that entails, the apparent stereotypes who turn out to be nothing of the sort, the social tightrope, the pain and the tension, but it\u2019s a high school drama told so intelligently and by such an engaging, self-aware narrator that not for a moment does any of it seem silly or trivial or anything but what it is.<\/p>\n

And what it is, in short, is a triumph. A brilliant and spellbinding, serious and entertaining novel. Read it. You won’t regret it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That Birds Would Sing – Joanna Franklin Bell, Createspace, 2015 It\u2019s been a few days since I finished this book, but it needed a while to stew before I got my thoughts down. It\u2019s not the type of book you close and say \u201cwell that was good\u201d and get straight\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-161","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6jnN2-2B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/161\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joelhamesauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}