Suzanne Leal

She's...

up and down.

She takes to her bed once a year.

She tells gruesome fairy tales with the wrong endings.

She doesn't sanitise anything.

And there's a secret for Thistle as well and you're not sure what it is and you're not sure just who this spinster aunt is.

Those two questions were the thread that kept me going through what is essentially a story about a family in damage control and a family who has survived difficult things

and somehow hobbles forward.

I think it's for adults.

My one hesitation with the book is that it starts off and it's Olive much older looking back on her childhood and then it cuts to Olive as the child.

And for the most part of the book, we're very firmly in a 12-year-old's head.

But sometimes, I don't know what you think, Kate,

she jumps out.

Sometimes her thoughts are too much for a 12-year-old.

Sometimes her words are too much for a 12-year-old.

But with that hesitation, I would say this is a book for people who appreciate good writing, but who are looking for a good story.

So you can read it to entertain, you can read it to inform, and you can read it to admire the writing.

I think it really is that middle level between literary and commercial.

I think when asked that question, I think of three books, two at either end of the spectrum and one in the middle.

So there's Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn, who wrote a non-fiction book about his search for his lost relatives in the Holocaust, and these are all Holocaust-based books.