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The Colours of Madeleine #1
A Corner of White
Madeleine Tully lives in Cambridge, England, the World – a city of spires, Isaac Newton and Auntie’s Tea Shop.
Elliot Baranski lives in Bonfire, the Farms, the Kingdom of Cello – where seasons roam, the Butterfly Child sleeps in a glass jar, and bells warn of attacks from dangerous Colours.
They are worlds apart – until a crack opens up between them; a corner of white – the slim seam of a letter.
A mesmerising story of two worlds; the cracks between them, the science that binds them and the colours that infuse them.
‘Perfectly strange, and absolutely comical and heartfelt ... Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the most original writers we have.’ – Markus Zusak
Elliot Baranski lives in Bonfire, the Farms, the Kingdom of Cello – where seasons roam, the Butterfly Child sleeps in a glass jar, and bells warn of attacks from dangerous Colours.
They are worlds apart – until a crack opens up between them; a corner of white – the slim seam of a letter.
A mesmerising story of two worlds; the cracks between them, the science that binds them and the colours that infuse them.
‘Perfectly strange, and absolutely comical and heartfelt ... Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the most original writers we have.’ – Markus Zusak
400 pages, Paperback
First published September 18, 2012
About the author
Jaclyn Moriarty
30 books1,467 followersJaclyn Moriarty is an Australian writer of young adult literature.
She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD.
She is the younger sister of Liane Moriarty. She was previously married to Canadian writer Colin McAdam, and has a son, Charlie. She currently lives in Sydney.
She studied English at the University of Sydney, and law at Yale University and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD.
She is the younger sister of Liane Moriarty. She was previously married to Canadian writer Colin McAdam, and has a son, Charlie. She currently lives in Sydney.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,037 reviews
April 21, 2013
Rating: 4.5 Stars
It always pains me to have to write a review for a book that I know very few others will truly come to love. I don't deny that there are those who will pick up A Corner of White and persevere on through its slow start to eventually like this book, but the amount of readers who will possibly enjoy that slow beginning, the way I did? Few and far between. Nevertheless, A Corner of White is a splash of color in a genre suffering from cliches; a genre where originality has become a thing of legend. As such, although it is not a book everyone will love, it is a book I firmly believe everyone should read. Or at least try to.
A Corner of White is the tale of two teenagers, both who have lost their fathers in different ways, but both who feel lost in their own worlds in the same way. In Cambridge, England, we are introduced to Madeleine, a girl who used to run away often until, one day, her mother ran away with her; away from their rich father and into the cramped flat they now reside in. For much of the novel, Madeline remains an enigma. In fact, what we do learn about her, we learn from best friends Jack and Belle. Jack, who has a massive crush on Madeleine, sees her as a spirit who won't be tied down, as someone who adds color to the world. Belle, slightly more cynical, is quick to call into question the opulent past lifestyle that Madeleine used to lead, along with her strange-named friends who seem unreal. Yet, all Madeleine really aches for is the familiarity of her father and she detests being tied down both to England and her mother who seems to be half-crazed at times. Although she is an avid fact-collector, the fact that her mother attempts to be the same - unsuccessfully - in the hopes of winning a game show competition, frustrates her. As things in Madeleine's life slowly begin spiraling out of control, it is the letters she writes to a boy named Elliot who lives in Cello, a world she firmly believes in fake, that keep her from cracking.
In Cello, a parallel world, Elliot has just returned from another fruitless search for his father. In Elliot's world, Colors are dangerous creatures that can either attack or cause the inhabitants of the towns they pass to feel a multitude of emotions. Only a few years ago, Elliot's uncle was found dead, torn apart by a Purple, next to their truck and Elliot's father and the high school physics teacher found missing. Although many townspeople believe that Elliot's father ran off with the teacher, Elliot refuses to let go of the belief that his father is being help captive by a Purple. Now, back in his town, Elliot finds that his father's shop has been rented out to the Twinklehams, that the famed Butterfly Child is due to arrive in a jar any time in Cello, and that the Princesses are on a grand tour. In the midst of this, though, Elliot finds a letter in a small crack in the sculpture his friend made and thus begins a correspondence between himself and Madeleine. Although neither of them take their initial letters too seriously, with time, their bond of friendship and trust deepens until, surprisingly, they become the solution to each others problems.
A Corner of White has so much going for it that I hardly know where to begin. Each chapter of this novel alternates between Our World and Cello with the third person narration of Jack and Madeleine or Elliot and the Sheriff of Cello. Additionally, within the sections concerning Cello, Moriarty uses excerpts from Tourist Guides to explain her world and magazine clippings written by the Princesses on their tour to give us full insight into the political system present in her fantasy realm. Surprisingly, this method worked very successfully, mostly because it was used sparingly. Nevertheless, through it and the letters Elliot sent Madeleine, Moriarty was able to paint a thorough image of Cello in our minds, astonishing me with the depth of her world-building.
Yet, what makes A Corner of White such a special novel are the characters themselves. Madeleine, as I've said before, is a protagonist we are rather unsure of at first. As we slowly glean more glimpses into her life, however, our hearts go out to her. A Corner of White, it will surprise you to know, is a classic find-your-way-in-the-world novel, only in an entirely different way. What I love is that Madeleine has been running away all her life, unable to realize who she is or discern the harsh realities of her past. Only now, through strong friendships, bonds with the mother she never truly knew, and a grounding home is she able to look into herself and see the blessings she's been bestowed in life. Madeleine, in particular, enjoys metaphors and when she is assigned a project to become Isaac Newton, she begins to see him in every aspect of her life. Although I am never one for enjoying extended school assignments, especially in novels, the facts dispersed throughout this novel about Newton only served a greater purpose and the clever allusions and larger metaphors all came back to pleasantly blow my mind.
Along with Madeleine, though, Elliot too is lost in his world. Despite being the "star child" of his town, Elliot doesn't know who he is without his father or without the purpose of finding him. Yet, though Elliot is revered in his town, we can see that he has a bitter side to him as well. Using his wit, Elliot manages to sabotage any business the Twinklehams attempt to begin in his father's mechanic shop. Very cleverly, Elliot and his tight group of five other friends offer to fix broken items themselves or take them, free of charge, to the stores of other mechanics. As such, we can see that Elliot is not as perfect as he seems to the world. Moriarty shows us the dual sides, the depth, to her characters in such subtle ways that we continue to love them, but in the back of our minds, these alternate personalities still linger.
If you thought that was clever, though, just wait till you get to the last page of this novel. Although A Corner of White is a slow story, with Elliot and Madeleine simply living their lives and dealing with the problems that life throws at them, all while writing to each other, it does have a greater plot thread that emerges towards the end. And, trust me when I say that the wait is worth it. A Corner of White reads suspiciously like a set-up novel to a great series - and it is one - but as a stand-alone too, I find myself to be utterly in love. It is, very honestly, a strange novel, but it is one that is so easy to understand and resonate with, without even trying, that you cannot help but utter only one word when you're all finished with it. Beautiful.
You can read this review and more on my blog, Ivy Book Bindings.
It always pains me to have to write a review for a book that I know very few others will truly come to love. I don't deny that there are those who will pick up A Corner of White and persevere on through its slow start to eventually like this book, but the amount of readers who will possibly enjoy that slow beginning, the way I did? Few and far between. Nevertheless, A Corner of White is a splash of color in a genre suffering from cliches; a genre where originality has become a thing of legend. As such, although it is not a book everyone will love, it is a book I firmly believe everyone should read. Or at least try to.
A Corner of White is the tale of two teenagers, both who have lost their fathers in different ways, but both who feel lost in their own worlds in the same way. In Cambridge, England, we are introduced to Madeleine, a girl who used to run away often until, one day, her mother ran away with her; away from their rich father and into the cramped flat they now reside in. For much of the novel, Madeline remains an enigma. In fact, what we do learn about her, we learn from best friends Jack and Belle. Jack, who has a massive crush on Madeleine, sees her as a spirit who won't be tied down, as someone who adds color to the world. Belle, slightly more cynical, is quick to call into question the opulent past lifestyle that Madeleine used to lead, along with her strange-named friends who seem unreal. Yet, all Madeleine really aches for is the familiarity of her father and she detests being tied down both to England and her mother who seems to be half-crazed at times. Although she is an avid fact-collector, the fact that her mother attempts to be the same - unsuccessfully - in the hopes of winning a game show competition, frustrates her. As things in Madeleine's life slowly begin spiraling out of control, it is the letters she writes to a boy named Elliot who lives in Cello, a world she firmly believes in fake, that keep her from cracking.
In Cello, a parallel world, Elliot has just returned from another fruitless search for his father. In Elliot's world, Colors are dangerous creatures that can either attack or cause the inhabitants of the towns they pass to feel a multitude of emotions. Only a few years ago, Elliot's uncle was found dead, torn apart by a Purple, next to their truck and Elliot's father and the high school physics teacher found missing. Although many townspeople believe that Elliot's father ran off with the teacher, Elliot refuses to let go of the belief that his father is being help captive by a Purple. Now, back in his town, Elliot finds that his father's shop has been rented out to the Twinklehams, that the famed Butterfly Child is due to arrive in a jar any time in Cello, and that the Princesses are on a grand tour. In the midst of this, though, Elliot finds a letter in a small crack in the sculpture his friend made and thus begins a correspondence between himself and Madeleine. Although neither of them take their initial letters too seriously, with time, their bond of friendship and trust deepens until, surprisingly, they become the solution to each others problems.
A Corner of White has so much going for it that I hardly know where to begin. Each chapter of this novel alternates between Our World and Cello with the third person narration of Jack and Madeleine or Elliot and the Sheriff of Cello. Additionally, within the sections concerning Cello, Moriarty uses excerpts from Tourist Guides to explain her world and magazine clippings written by the Princesses on their tour to give us full insight into the political system present in her fantasy realm. Surprisingly, this method worked very successfully, mostly because it was used sparingly. Nevertheless, through it and the letters Elliot sent Madeleine, Moriarty was able to paint a thorough image of Cello in our minds, astonishing me with the depth of her world-building.
Yet, what makes A Corner of White such a special novel are the characters themselves. Madeleine, as I've said before, is a protagonist we are rather unsure of at first. As we slowly glean more glimpses into her life, however, our hearts go out to her. A Corner of White, it will surprise you to know, is a classic find-your-way-in-the-world novel, only in an entirely different way. What I love is that Madeleine has been running away all her life, unable to realize who she is or discern the harsh realities of her past. Only now, through strong friendships, bonds with the mother she never truly knew, and a grounding home is she able to look into herself and see the blessings she's been bestowed in life. Madeleine, in particular, enjoys metaphors and when she is assigned a project to become Isaac Newton, she begins to see him in every aspect of her life. Although I am never one for enjoying extended school assignments, especially in novels, the facts dispersed throughout this novel about Newton only served a greater purpose and the clever allusions and larger metaphors all came back to pleasantly blow my mind.
Along with Madeleine, though, Elliot too is lost in his world. Despite being the "star child" of his town, Elliot doesn't know who he is without his father or without the purpose of finding him. Yet, though Elliot is revered in his town, we can see that he has a bitter side to him as well. Using his wit, Elliot manages to sabotage any business the Twinklehams attempt to begin in his father's mechanic shop. Very cleverly, Elliot and his tight group of five other friends offer to fix broken items themselves or take them, free of charge, to the stores of other mechanics. As such, we can see that Elliot is not as perfect as he seems to the world. Moriarty shows us the dual sides, the depth, to her characters in such subtle ways that we continue to love them, but in the back of our minds, these alternate personalities still linger.
If you thought that was clever, though, just wait till you get to the last page of this novel. Although A Corner of White is a slow story, with Elliot and Madeleine simply living their lives and dealing with the problems that life throws at them, all while writing to each other, it does have a greater plot thread that emerges towards the end. And, trust me when I say that the wait is worth it. A Corner of White reads suspiciously like a set-up novel to a great series - and it is one - but as a stand-alone too, I find myself to be utterly in love. It is, very honestly, a strange novel, but it is one that is so easy to understand and resonate with, without even trying, that you cannot help but utter only one word when you're all finished with it. Beautiful.
You can read this review and more on my blog, Ivy Book Bindings.
June 24, 2013
When I was a little kid, I used to love Alice in Wonderland. I mean, it had a talking cat, a singing mouse and daily tea parties - what more could one possibly ask for? But what I saw strangely seemed to make less and less sense to me as I got older. The more I returned to that old story, the more the whimsical brilliance seemed to dim and be replaced with a random series of bizarre occurrences without any sense to them whatsoever. There is no real plot, the closest to anything of that kind being in the numerous mini-plots running throughout that seem entirely disconnected. I don't hate that book, it holds a certain magic that books we love as young kids never seem to lose. But I no longer consider it a favourite and I no longer feel the need to return to it. Alice in Wonderland remains to this day a source of complete bafflement for me. It is either the most pretentious piece of madness ever written or a bizarre mask covering the face of some hidden genius that goes beyond anything I could ever hope to understand.
Reading A Corner of White was somewhat like falling down the rabbit hole. Quirky and eccentric characters all being quirky and eccentric in a quirky and eccentric setting with absolutely no plot. This is a character-driven, bizarre world-driven, plotless novel. The goodreads description gives the appearance at first glance of a wildly imaginative plot that is going to sweep you off your feet. But look a little closer. "A mesmerising story of two worlds; the cracks between them, the science that binds them and the colours that infuse them." When reading that description again after tackling this book, I see that it tells the complete truth. This is a story about two worlds - our own world and the Kingdom of Cello - it tells us all about those worlds, we get a very vivid picture... and I was practically jumping up and down with excitement at the awesome story which must surely follow. And never did. I've read a few painful books like this (that, it must be said, many others loved) like Feed and The Book of Blood and Shadow, that are very well-written and paint a fantastic picture of the setting. And I wait for the plot to get going... and I wait. And wait. And wait.
Having an interesting world and interesting characters isn't enough for me. They can't just stand around trying to look interesting while nothing else is happening. Perhaps if you like unusual books that focus on elements like world-building and pointless, if occasionally funny, dialogue, then you will really enjoy this. For others, it's going to seem like hard work. Because what Moriarty has done here was always going to be a hard sell. She has written a quiet, slow-moving contemporary novel about two characters' coming-of-age stories and set it in a bizarre fantasy world. Personally, I don't think it works. I felt let down that the weird and wonderful Kingdom of Cello didn't achieve it's full potential and the characters weren't doing anything interesting enough to make me care about them. Except being quirky, of course. And, on that subject, they all seemed a little too similar in their quirkiness. They reminded me of John Green characters in some ways. I'm aware that the comparisons I've made in this review have all been with very popular books and authors, so perhaps I will find myself in the minority again on this one.
Smarter and more patient readers than myself may be able to dig through the madness and see a pattern to it, find sense amidst the chaos. Just like some people claim that Alice in Wonderland contains symbolism alluding to the philosophy of logic and mathematics. For example, the concept of limits, different base notations of numbers, semantic values of sentences when inversed ( "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"), and the concept of numbers existing separately from the noun (can the number 2 exist alone, without dependence on a real world object? can you define "2" without using the word or holding up an example?). But I never did care for those things.
Quirkiness is all good and well, but this book was 400 pages of it and nothing else that appealed to me. It wasn't fun, it was a real struggle to finish. I'll stick to reading the author's Ashbury High series in the future.
September 30, 2013
My pants have been thoroughly charmed right off of me. I'm pantsless now, Jaclyn Moriarty.
August 11, 2015
So, I am entirely blown away by this book. While reading, I had this little mantra chanting though my head, every other page: my gosh, Jaclyn is brilliant.
Truth: I have read A Corner of White twice in the space of one month. I also dreamt about it once <3
I believe: Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the most original, greatest Australian writers out there (past and present)
Oh, so you have NO IDEA what this book is about? The blurb is surreal and utterly intriguing. I was captured from the beginning, gorgeous prose and 'what's going on here' vibe sucked me in. The characters are the best kind of teen characters: likeable and silly and fresh. Dreamers and admirable and absolutely the kind of kids you want to either be, crush on or hang out with.
This story follows two worlds: Earth, specifically, Cambridge, England and the Kingdom of Cello, specifically, Bonfire, the Farms. In each world, our main characters are teenagers, one who has lost his dad, the other has ran away from her dad. I loved the mirrored coincidences between their problems. During the book, these two teens find a crack in their world in which they can communicate ~ [through the art of the letter ;)]
Moriarty writes the best epistolary stuff.
There's lots of mystery and tons of deliciously breath-taking world building.
This book is so gorgeously different to the Ashbury/Brookfield books. It features that same whimsical, delightful prose. The same vibrancy of characters and the nuances of their relationships. The same silly grin will appear on your face while reading it. But this book went even deeper. Amongst the craziness and surreal moments, there was a sense of truth and longing and justice and life and sorrow.
Me, getting all rave-y and emotional: The thing is, this book is not just brilliant, creative, gorgeously surreal, yet real, all at once. It really resonated with me. Something about it stirred me up. This book is such a testament to creativity and life and it contains complete magic for teens and adults (and mature children). I was truly transported and delighted while reading A Corner of White. Spellbound, mesmerised and in awe of Moriarty's imagination and gift for pulling these gorgeous, creative and crazy threads together into an something nothing short of brilliant.
If just the creativity and imagination in this book weren't enough, I was genuinely moved by these characters. Even, surprisingly, to the point of tears (These came, I am sure, from pure pleasure of being a a part of the characters lives and a true sense of empathy). A Corner of White defies genres. Not only is it a vivid experience, it's also emotionally resonant. The story, while deliciously crazy, somehow had a ring of truth to it. Utterly heartfelt and moving.
Oh, do I ever recommend this: absolute highlight of my year (not just in terms of reading, but as an experience. Good times were had)
I so hope this book falls into many many hands. I think it's a game-changer, guys. Defintley worth the wait (oh, a million times over).
Truth: I have read A Corner of White twice in the space of one month. I also dreamt about it once <3
I believe: Jaclyn Moriarty is one of the most original, greatest Australian writers out there (past and present)
Oh, so you have NO IDEA what this book is about? The blurb is surreal and utterly intriguing. I was captured from the beginning, gorgeous prose and 'what's going on here' vibe sucked me in. The characters are the best kind of teen characters: likeable and silly and fresh. Dreamers and admirable and absolutely the kind of kids you want to either be, crush on or hang out with.
This story follows two worlds: Earth, specifically, Cambridge, England and the Kingdom of Cello, specifically, Bonfire, the Farms. In each world, our main characters are teenagers, one who has lost his dad, the other has ran away from her dad. I loved the mirrored coincidences between their problems. During the book, these two teens find a crack in their world in which they can communicate ~ [through the art of the letter ;)]
Moriarty writes the best epistolary stuff.
There's lots of mystery and tons of deliciously breath-taking world building.
This book is so gorgeously different to the Ashbury/Brookfield books. It features that same whimsical, delightful prose. The same vibrancy of characters and the nuances of their relationships. The same silly grin will appear on your face while reading it. But this book went even deeper. Amongst the craziness and surreal moments, there was a sense of truth and longing and justice and life and sorrow.
Me, getting all rave-y and emotional: The thing is, this book is not just brilliant, creative, gorgeously surreal, yet real, all at once. It really resonated with me. Something about it stirred me up. This book is such a testament to creativity and life and it contains complete magic for teens and adults (and mature children). I was truly transported and delighted while reading A Corner of White. Spellbound, mesmerised and in awe of Moriarty's imagination and gift for pulling these gorgeous, creative and crazy threads together into an something nothing short of brilliant.
If just the creativity and imagination in this book weren't enough, I was genuinely moved by these characters. Even, surprisingly, to the point of tears (These came, I am sure, from pure pleasure of being a a part of the characters lives and a true sense of empathy). A Corner of White defies genres. Not only is it a vivid experience, it's also emotionally resonant. The story, while deliciously crazy, somehow had a ring of truth to it. Utterly heartfelt and moving.
Oh, do I ever recommend this: absolute highlight of my year (not just in terms of reading, but as an experience. Good times were had)
I so hope this book falls into many many hands. I think it's a game-changer, guys. Defintley worth the wait (oh, a million times over).
September 9, 2015
This is a new to me author and I am very impressed. The book is absolutely charming, quirky, fun and most importantly very nicely written. I loved the idea of the crack between two worlds - not a unique idea I know, but handled here in a very clever way. I very much enjoyed Jaclyn Moriarty's skill at writing descriptive passages and her light touch with whimsy and magic. I am really looking forward to the next book to find out what happens!
May 5, 2013
So, let’s talk about why this book didn’t work.
There’s actually a lot of reasons why, most of them small and rather ignorable. Having a cast of identically ‘quirky’ characters is rather bland, but to a reader who likes their quirk, it’s enjoyable and ultimately harmless. And if a few concepts here and there aren’t explained well enough to actually understand them, well, sometimes that’s okay, too.
No, the problem with A Corner of White is the plot.
The absolute, utter, total, complete lack of a plot.
This book was nearly 400 pages of people just existing. Quirkily.
Normally, I judge what the plot is (or should be) by the summary given on the book jacket. Sometimes I’ll be pleasantly surprised by a different plot, or a plot that goes off in a different direction, but when a book like A Corner of White comes around, the summary works as a guide to what the book wanted to be.
The book wanted to be about two people having two different stories: Madeline having her coming-of-age story, and Elliot looking for his long lost father (and coming-of-age in the process). Along the way, the two exchange letters.
Frankly, the letters thing bothered me. They were the only thing connecting the two stories, and I mean the only thing. Madeline and Elliot wrote to each other, and then had absolutely no influence on each other until the last couple of pages. The stories did not cross or affect each other. This was a book of two completely different stories, just occasionally one character would think about the other for a few pages.
But you know what? I could even deal with that if I had to. Clearly the two will cross more in future books, so as a set up, it’s annoying but it’s fine.
The problem is that Madeline’s coming of age story flopped like a frat boy at a pool party, and Elliot never bothered to get off his ass and look for his father.
And that’s it. That’s all that happens. Almost-plots, potential, and quirkiness. There is no substance to this book. If other first-in-a-series books are the opening arc to a shorter, tighter book, then A Corner of White is the prologue that should have been cut.
When I went through the reviews of this book, people kept telling me to push through, that it had a slow start, that the ending makes it all worth it. There was some action at the end, I guess. It was unconnected to everything else that had been going on; it was just random action flung at us for the sake of a climax. And there’s set-up for some very interesting things to happen in later books. But again, that’s for later books, it didn’t happen in this book.
Because this book is a fucking prologue stretched out to 372 pages.
I will say this in the book’s favor, though: it was original. It had some good ideas. It had a lot of potential to be something great. And it didn’t fall into the normal clichés and traps that so much of YA is prone to. It was wholly inoffensive. If you don’t mind reading about people just existing in their quirky and fresh ways, if you want to read something that’s off the beaten path and don’t care that it goes in circles, then sure. Read this. It won’t hurt you.
There’s actually a lot of reasons why, most of them small and rather ignorable. Having a cast of identically ‘quirky’ characters is rather bland, but to a reader who likes their quirk, it’s enjoyable and ultimately harmless. And if a few concepts here and there aren’t explained well enough to actually understand them, well, sometimes that’s okay, too.
No, the problem with A Corner of White is the plot.
The absolute, utter, total, complete lack of a plot.
This book was nearly 400 pages of people just existing. Quirkily.
Normally, I judge what the plot is (or should be) by the summary given on the book jacket. Sometimes I’ll be pleasantly surprised by a different plot, or a plot that goes off in a different direction, but when a book like A Corner of White comes around, the summary works as a guide to what the book wanted to be.
The book wanted to be about two people having two different stories: Madeline having her coming-of-age story, and Elliot looking for his long lost father (and coming-of-age in the process). Along the way, the two exchange letters.
Frankly, the letters thing bothered me. They were the only thing connecting the two stories, and I mean the only thing. Madeline and Elliot wrote to each other, and then had absolutely no influence on each other until the last couple of pages. The stories did not cross or affect each other. This was a book of two completely different stories, just occasionally one character would think about the other for a few pages.
But you know what? I could even deal with that if I had to. Clearly the two will cross more in future books, so as a set up, it’s annoying but it’s fine.
The problem is that Madeline’s coming of age story flopped like a frat boy at a pool party, and Elliot never bothered to get off his ass and look for his father.
And that’s it. That’s all that happens. Almost-plots, potential, and quirkiness. There is no substance to this book. If other first-in-a-series books are the opening arc to a shorter, tighter book, then A Corner of White is the prologue that should have been cut.
When I went through the reviews of this book, people kept telling me to push through, that it had a slow start, that the ending makes it all worth it. There was some action at the end, I guess. It was unconnected to everything else that had been going on; it was just random action flung at us for the sake of a climax. And there’s set-up for some very interesting things to happen in later books. But again, that’s for later books, it didn’t happen in this book.
Because this book is a fucking prologue stretched out to 372 pages.
I will say this in the book’s favor, though: it was original. It had some good ideas. It had a lot of potential to be something great. And it didn’t fall into the normal clichés and traps that so much of YA is prone to. It was wholly inoffensive. If you don’t mind reading about people just existing in their quirky and fresh ways, if you want to read something that’s off the beaten path and don’t care that it goes in circles, then sure. Read this. It won’t hurt you.
February 21, 2014
As I do so love to create these comparisons, I shall proudly state that I found Jaclyn Moriarty’s A Corner of White to be the book baby that would result from John Green and Neil Gaiman coming together to write a novel. And trust me, this is a compliment indeed!
VIDEO REVIEW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waBJMV...
VIDEO REVIEW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waBJMV...
June 11, 2016
That was incredible! I read this all in one sitting because I was so intrigued by the Kingdom of Cello and it's quirky characters affected by Colours who invade them.
While I found it a bit info dumpy at the start, I couldn't put it down when Elliott and Madeleine started writing letters to each other from modern day England to the fantasy world of Cello. They really formed a connection with each other based on their curiosity with the world and wanting to connect to a like-minded soul.
I adored the depth of the characters and what they were going through - Elliott with his missing father who is possibly in an alleged affair, and Madeleine with her move to a new place and an absent father with substance abuse. The parallels to their characters was explored really well, although I didn't like how Madeleine quickly forgot about Jack who she was dating, once she had Elliott.
Madeleine had a scientific mind that constantly thought about Isaac Newton and colours, and her know it all attitude grated on me at times. I really liked Elliott and his good heart, and how he looks after a magical Butterfly Child. I shipped them so much, you can really feel their connection with one another along with their curiosity and developing feelings.
Madeleine's friends are as quirky as she is, with Jack and his obsession with horoscopes and his best friend Belle who can see auras.
There were so many whimsical elements to the world that was just a joy to discover and read about. On that cliffhanger, I'll be picking up the next one ASAP!
While I found it a bit info dumpy at the start, I couldn't put it down when Elliott and Madeleine started writing letters to each other from modern day England to the fantasy world of Cello. They really formed a connection with each other based on their curiosity with the world and wanting to connect to a like-minded soul.
I adored the depth of the characters and what they were going through - Elliott with his missing father who is possibly in an alleged affair, and Madeleine with her move to a new place and an absent father with substance abuse. The parallels to their characters was explored really well, although I didn't like how Madeleine quickly forgot about Jack who she was dating, once she had Elliott.
Madeleine had a scientific mind that constantly thought about Isaac Newton and colours, and her know it all attitude grated on me at times. I really liked Elliott and his good heart, and how he looks after a magical Butterfly Child. I shipped them so much, you can really feel their connection with one another along with their curiosity and developing feelings.
Madeleine's friends are as quirky as she is, with Jack and his obsession with horoscopes and his best friend Belle who can see auras.
There were so many whimsical elements to the world that was just a joy to discover and read about. On that cliffhanger, I'll be picking up the next one ASAP!
January 14, 2013
I often tweet about a book while I’m reading it.
My tweets about ‘A Corner of White’ include ‘extraordinary, beautiful, startling’; ‘one of the most original and unusual books I’ve read in a long time’; and ‘I’m in awe’.
It is certainly unlike any other book I’ve ever read.
‘A Corner of White’ is basically a story about parallel words – our own familiar world - and another far different and yet strangely familiar place, the Kingdom of Cello.
A crack opens up between these two worlds, and a letter slips through. Madeleine, a teenage girl living in Cambridge, finds the letter and writes back … thinking her correspondent is just a boy with a vivid imagination. She does not realise that Elliot’s letters describe a real place …
Both Madeleine and Elliot are suffering loss and confusion and the pangs of first love.
Both Madeleine and Elliott feel very alone.
Their letters build a bridge between them and their world, and, in strange and unexpected ways, help each other make sense of the mysteries of their lives.
Jaclyn Moriarty has always had a quirky, wryly humorous style, but in ‘A Corner of White’ she reaches new heights of lyricism. There were some lines which sung with such truth and beauty that I wanted to learn them by heart.
Here’s just one:
'She felt the stars were folding into her chest; those sharp, shining, agitated pieces of excitement were stars'.
Such a perfect sentence, saying so much with so little.
I do have to say that ‘A Corner of White’ is a difficult book to categorise.
Although the secondary world makes it a fantasy novel, the book is without most of the trappings that we usually associate with fantasy. There are no quests, or magical beasts, or battles between good and evil. The secondary world is remarkably humdrum – despite waves of colours that sweep over the land and cause havoc with people’s emotions, and despite such extraordinary magical touches as the Butterfly Child, who brings luck to anyone who catches her.
Similarly, our own world is infused with strangeness and magic. There are troubling absences, inexplicable coincidences, and odd disruptions to what we would consider normal.
Because the book is truly concerned with the inner lives of its two protagonists, I’d call it ‘magic realism’ rather than fantasy – yet it is so fantastical, so filled with a sense of the strange and the impossible, that it really blurs the boundaries of magic realism as well.
I think Jaclyn may have invented a whole new genre. Fantastical magic realism, perhaps?
Or maybe magic unrealism?
Either way, ‘A Corner of White’ is quite simply one of the most astonishingly original books I’ve ever read. I loved it!
My tweets about ‘A Corner of White’ include ‘extraordinary, beautiful, startling’; ‘one of the most original and unusual books I’ve read in a long time’; and ‘I’m in awe’.
It is certainly unlike any other book I’ve ever read.
‘A Corner of White’ is basically a story about parallel words – our own familiar world - and another far different and yet strangely familiar place, the Kingdom of Cello.
A crack opens up between these two worlds, and a letter slips through. Madeleine, a teenage girl living in Cambridge, finds the letter and writes back … thinking her correspondent is just a boy with a vivid imagination. She does not realise that Elliot’s letters describe a real place …
Both Madeleine and Elliot are suffering loss and confusion and the pangs of first love.
Both Madeleine and Elliott feel very alone.
Their letters build a bridge between them and their world, and, in strange and unexpected ways, help each other make sense of the mysteries of their lives.
Jaclyn Moriarty has always had a quirky, wryly humorous style, but in ‘A Corner of White’ she reaches new heights of lyricism. There were some lines which sung with such truth and beauty that I wanted to learn them by heart.
Here’s just one:
'She felt the stars were folding into her chest; those sharp, shining, agitated pieces of excitement were stars'.
Such a perfect sentence, saying so much with so little.
I do have to say that ‘A Corner of White’ is a difficult book to categorise.
Although the secondary world makes it a fantasy novel, the book is without most of the trappings that we usually associate with fantasy. There are no quests, or magical beasts, or battles between good and evil. The secondary world is remarkably humdrum – despite waves of colours that sweep over the land and cause havoc with people’s emotions, and despite such extraordinary magical touches as the Butterfly Child, who brings luck to anyone who catches her.
Similarly, our own world is infused with strangeness and magic. There are troubling absences, inexplicable coincidences, and odd disruptions to what we would consider normal.
Because the book is truly concerned with the inner lives of its two protagonists, I’d call it ‘magic realism’ rather than fantasy – yet it is so fantastical, so filled with a sense of the strange and the impossible, that it really blurs the boundaries of magic realism as well.
I think Jaclyn may have invented a whole new genre. Fantastical magic realism, perhaps?
Or maybe magic unrealism?
Either way, ‘A Corner of White’ is quite simply one of the most astonishingly original books I’ve ever read. I loved it!
May 31, 2017
In all likelihood this 'review' of mine will not turn out to be a helpful contribution for those who are still on the fence concerning their own possible future enjoyment of A Corner of White. I assume it will rather represent a futile attempt at explaining my wholly unexpected decision to let go of the story after only 145 pages without having unearthed particularly annoying or offending or even mediocre aspects that would lend a sufficient foundation to my reluctance to pick up the beautifully covered hardback after putting it down at lunchtime.
See, although Moriarty's Ashbury books scored only four-star-ratings from me, they all contain a smaller or larger amount of some secret, magic ingredient which I crave and adore in fiction. I seldom shed tears when I am in the company of books, yet I bawled my eyes out when I was reading The Murder Of Bindy Mackenzie. I simply loved that crazy mix of e-mails, court room materials, letters, diary entries, history book excerpts and refrigerator notes in the other volumes - especially because of the distinct voices, the occasional hilariousness, the dashes of mystery and the wonderfully normal characters.
I had already mistakingly expected another fully satisfactory, almost perfect book, when I bought a brand-new copy of The Spell Book of Listen Taylor, which also disappointed me in a major way. But in hindsight I explained my lack of enjoyment with the fact that that book had been written and published for an adult audience as I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes before it was dusted off and forcibly reshaped into something the Ashbury-reading crowd might spend money on - girly covers included. Moriarty's 'real' young-adult-centered output would continue to be on the brink of flawlessness, I assured myself.
And thus I put A Corner of White on my wish list at a time when the available information did not amount to much beside the 'Kingdom of Cello' as the location, and when the probability of the book being eventually born sounded as unreliable as Stephenie Meyer's long forgotten statement about the cannibalistic mermaid saga she planned to write as soon as her creative well restarted to sprout sellable sentences. I managed to make myself wait for the international edition instead of spending a fortune at the Fishpond and I never resorted to epilepsy-inducing .gifs or the internet equivalent of ecstatic shouting, but believe me, I wanted to read Madeleine's parallel world experience pretty badly.
Today I finally curled up with that coveted 500g of printed paper and started to read - confident of the extraordinary superb time lying in wait for me. Friends of mine had used promising words like weird and whimsical in their reviews, expressions that happily rolled around in my mind like dogs in a puddle.
Unsurprisingly I did like Madeleine, I rediscovered a flavor of Moriarty's signature wacky mothers in Holly and I took pleasure in finding out the parallels and the differences between ""The World"" (ours) and ""The Kingdom of Cello"" (a place equipped with electricity and other recognizable means of civilization, but also prone to partly dangerous 'Color attacks') , which severed all passable portals or cracks between them and us about 300 years ago. The boy from Cello, Elliot, who lost his beloved father to a vicious and violent Purple - or to a boost of marital infidelity as some neighbors are secretly assuming - was the kind of hero you cannot help rooting for, too. Plus there were Cambridge, UK, some pleasantly weird teachers and their teaching methods, a father-daughter-problem begging to be solved and two far-from-bland side-characters, Jack and Belle .
All these seemingly fine prerequisites, all the skillful writing and all the originality did not save me from gradually losing interest. My enthusiasm slowly tickled out of me until I did not care particularly for either Madeleine, Madeleine's game-show-addicted mom and her lack of trivial knowledge, Elliot, Elliot's missing dad, the Butterfly Child, the Color victims, Cello's anti-monarchy movement or the still to visit magical, dragon- and werewolf-infested north of the country.
I realized my loss of personal involvement only when it was much too late to do something about it. I feel inexplicably sad, because my expectations had been so high and so solidly founded. I feel cheated by my own mind, because I cannot and do not find fault. I know, I could ignore my boredom and resolve to go on reading, but unfortunately I did exactly that just yesterday, when I had to admit that Lips Touch: Three Times and I did not match in spite of my deep admiration for Daughter of Smoke & Bone. In short, I do not have enough determination to repeat the experience so soon.
So, is it just me or is it a mixture of misplaced expectations and unfortunate reading constellations? I do wonder.
The only cure for book-caused self-doubt I know, however, is reading the next book. And I'll do precisely that as soon as I can. Cross your fingers and wish me luck!
See, although Moriarty's Ashbury books scored only four-star-ratings from me, they all contain a smaller or larger amount of some secret, magic ingredient which I crave and adore in fiction. I seldom shed tears when I am in the company of books, yet I bawled my eyes out when I was reading The Murder Of Bindy Mackenzie. I simply loved that crazy mix of e-mails, court room materials, letters, diary entries, history book excerpts and refrigerator notes in the other volumes - especially because of the distinct voices, the occasional hilariousness, the dashes of mystery and the wonderfully normal characters.
I had already mistakingly expected another fully satisfactory, almost perfect book, when I bought a brand-new copy of The Spell Book of Listen Taylor, which also disappointed me in a major way. But in hindsight I explained my lack of enjoyment with the fact that that book had been written and published for an adult audience as I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes before it was dusted off and forcibly reshaped into something the Ashbury-reading crowd might spend money on - girly covers included. Moriarty's 'real' young-adult-centered output would continue to be on the brink of flawlessness, I assured myself.
And thus I put A Corner of White on my wish list at a time when the available information did not amount to much beside the 'Kingdom of Cello' as the location, and when the probability of the book being eventually born sounded as unreliable as Stephenie Meyer's long forgotten statement about the cannibalistic mermaid saga she planned to write as soon as her creative well restarted to sprout sellable sentences. I managed to make myself wait for the international edition instead of spending a fortune at the Fishpond and I never resorted to epilepsy-inducing .gifs or the internet equivalent of ecstatic shouting, but believe me, I wanted to read Madeleine's parallel world experience pretty badly.
Today I finally curled up with that coveted 500g of printed paper and started to read - confident of the extraordinary superb time lying in wait for me. Friends of mine had used promising words like weird and whimsical in their reviews, expressions that happily rolled around in my mind like dogs in a puddle.
Unsurprisingly I did like Madeleine, I rediscovered a flavor of Moriarty's signature wacky mothers in Holly and I took pleasure in finding out the parallels and the differences between ""The World"" (ours) and ""The Kingdom of Cello"" (a place equipped with electricity and other recognizable means of civilization, but also prone to partly dangerous 'Color attacks') , which severed all passable portals or cracks between them and us about 300 years ago. The boy from Cello, Elliot, who lost his beloved father to a vicious and violent Purple - or to a boost of marital infidelity as some neighbors are secretly assuming - was the kind of hero you cannot help rooting for, too. Plus there were Cambridge, UK, some pleasantly weird teachers and their teaching methods, a father-daughter-problem begging to be solved and two far-from-bland side-characters, Jack and Belle .
All these seemingly fine prerequisites, all the skillful writing and all the originality did not save me from gradually losing interest. My enthusiasm slowly tickled out of me until I did not care particularly for either Madeleine, Madeleine's game-show-addicted mom and her lack of trivial knowledge, Elliot, Elliot's missing dad, the Butterfly Child, the Color victims, Cello's anti-monarchy movement or the still to visit magical, dragon- and werewolf-infested north of the country.
I realized my loss of personal involvement only when it was much too late to do something about it. I feel inexplicably sad, because my expectations had been so high and so solidly founded. I feel cheated by my own mind, because I cannot and do not find fault. I know, I could ignore my boredom and resolve to go on reading, but unfortunately I did exactly that just yesterday, when I had to admit that Lips Touch: Three Times and I did not match in spite of my deep admiration for Daughter of Smoke & Bone. In short, I do not have enough determination to repeat the experience so soon.
So, is it just me or is it a mixture of misplaced expectations and unfortunate reading constellations? I do wonder.
The only cure for book-caused self-doubt I know, however, is reading the next book. And I'll do precisely that as soon as I can. Cross your fingers and wish me luck!
April 4, 2019
What a joy to read. This has been on my list for years and I really should have cracked it open long ago.
Told between alternating POVs of Madeline Tully in Cambridge, England, "The World" ; and Elliot Baranski in Bonfire, the Kingdom of Cello ; we learn about these characters and their family/friends as they learn about each other through letters shared in a crack between these worlds.
The Kingdom of Cello is fascinating with its"colour attacks", Butterfly Child and missing people while Madeline's world is full of Isaac Newton references, a missing father, and adjusting to a new life in England.
There is a lot of world building, but I didn't find it tiresome, and actually by the time the end comes along it is a fascinating side shift into what has the potential to be a cracker of a book two.
Highly recommended to YA fans and those who don't mind a little speculative fiction. Great audio narration, too.
Told between alternating POVs of Madeline Tully in Cambridge, England, "The World" ; and Elliot Baranski in Bonfire, the Kingdom of Cello ; we learn about these characters and their family/friends as they learn about each other through letters shared in a crack between these worlds.
The Kingdom of Cello is fascinating with its"colour attacks", Butterfly Child and missing people while Madeline's world is full of Isaac Newton references, a missing father, and adjusting to a new life in England.
There is a lot of world building, but I didn't find it tiresome, and actually by the time the end comes along it is a fascinating side shift into what has the potential to be a cracker of a book two.
Highly recommended to YA fans and those who don't mind a little speculative fiction. Great audio narration, too.
June 27, 2013
This ended up being less of a review and more of a love letter to Jaclyn Moriarty. Oops.
I have been a huge fan of Jaclyn Moriarty since I read Finding Cassie Crazy (released in the US as The Year of Secret Assignments) in high school. I immediately fell for her strong, quirky characters (especially Seb–probably my most longstanding YA crush), her talent for writing epistolary novels and the way she skilfully weaves plot threads to bring you to that ‘Wow I didn’t see that coming!’ moment. I didn’t think it would be possible to love A Corner of White as much as Finding Cassie Crazy, but I was wrong. This book is just so clever and charming, and I can’t wait to read the sequel.
Although I finished this book a few months ago, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. One of the reasons I was hesitant to write my review is I don’t know how to explain the two worlds without sounding ridiculous. So I’m just going to give you the simplest explanation: Madeleine lives in our world, in Cambridge, and Elliot lives in the Kingdom of Cello. They exchange letters through a gap between their worlds. Sounds kind of weird, right? Well, it is. But Jaclyn is such a talented writer that it never felt like a bogus concept. In this beautiful blend of contemporary and fantasy, Cello felt as real as our world. I would totally book a vacation to Cello if I could, colour storms and all.
At times the real world setting was just as quirky as Cello. I love the way Jaclyn Moriarty takes everyday stuff and puts her own unique spin on it. Here’s an example: “The teapot itself, also white, had a sort of attitude about it: tall and fancy, its handle like a hand on a hip, spout curving up and over like a wave, like it was dead keen to get into your cup.” (Quote may have changed as it was taken from the ARC). There’s something so classically Moriarty about that, something she brings to all her novels, and it worked particularly well in this one.
The way the plot unfolded completely blew me away. If I could have had a conversation with Jaclyn Moriarty while reading this, I think it would’ve went something like… Me: I see what you’re doing here. JM: No, you don’t. Me: Well, NOW I know what’s going to happen. JM: You really don’t. Me (at the end): HOLD THE PHONE. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? JM: *smiles smugly*. (Kidding. I’m sure Jaclyn is lovely, even to know-it-all readers like me.)
I became so invested in Madeleine and Elliot’s stories. Whatever they ached for, I ached for it just as much. When they were angry, I was angry. When they were happy…you get the picture. This made A Corner of White a reading experience that I will always remember fondly. I smiled, cried, laughed, yelled. And I look forward to doing it again when I reread this gem of a novel. All I can say is I hope you love it, too.
**
This review was first posted at Daisy Chain Book Reviews: http://bit.ly/11OwQCI
That was a reading experience and a half. Review to come.
I have been a huge fan of Jaclyn Moriarty since I read Finding Cassie Crazy (released in the US as The Year of Secret Assignments) in high school. I immediately fell for her strong, quirky characters (especially Seb–probably my most longstanding YA crush), her talent for writing epistolary novels and the way she skilfully weaves plot threads to bring you to that ‘Wow I didn’t see that coming!’ moment. I didn’t think it would be possible to love A Corner of White as much as Finding Cassie Crazy, but I was wrong. This book is just so clever and charming, and I can’t wait to read the sequel.
Although I finished this book a few months ago, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. One of the reasons I was hesitant to write my review is I don’t know how to explain the two worlds without sounding ridiculous. So I’m just going to give you the simplest explanation: Madeleine lives in our world, in Cambridge, and Elliot lives in the Kingdom of Cello. They exchange letters through a gap between their worlds. Sounds kind of weird, right? Well, it is. But Jaclyn is such a talented writer that it never felt like a bogus concept. In this beautiful blend of contemporary and fantasy, Cello felt as real as our world. I would totally book a vacation to Cello if I could, colour storms and all.
At times the real world setting was just as quirky as Cello. I love the way Jaclyn Moriarty takes everyday stuff and puts her own unique spin on it. Here’s an example: “The teapot itself, also white, had a sort of attitude about it: tall and fancy, its handle like a hand on a hip, spout curving up and over like a wave, like it was dead keen to get into your cup.” (Quote may have changed as it was taken from the ARC). There’s something so classically Moriarty about that, something she brings to all her novels, and it worked particularly well in this one.
The way the plot unfolded completely blew me away. If I could have had a conversation with Jaclyn Moriarty while reading this, I think it would’ve went something like… Me: I see what you’re doing here. JM: No, you don’t. Me: Well, NOW I know what’s going to happen. JM: You really don’t. Me (at the end): HOLD THE PHONE. WHAT JUST HAPPENED? JM: *smiles smugly*. (Kidding. I’m sure Jaclyn is lovely, even to know-it-all readers like me.)
I became so invested in Madeleine and Elliot’s stories. Whatever they ached for, I ached for it just as much. When they were angry, I was angry. When they were happy…you get the picture. This made A Corner of White a reading experience that I will always remember fondly. I smiled, cried, laughed, yelled. And I look forward to doing it again when I reread this gem of a novel. All I can say is I hope you love it, too.
**
This review was first posted at Daisy Chain Book Reviews: http://bit.ly/11OwQCI
That was a reading experience and a half. Review to come.
March 21, 2013
Jaclyn Moriarty and her epistolary novels were some of my favorites in my pre-blogging years. Did her latest offering live up to my now-admittedly-quite-jaded demands for quality fiction? A day after closing the book with a contented sigh, I am happy to say: yes, yes it did.
14-year-old Madeleine Tully and her mother are living in Cambridge, England after running away from her father and their former glamorous life. When Madeleine spies a piece of paper peeking out from a random parking meter and writes back, she thinks it’s crazy that Elliot Baranski, the person at the other end of the letters, claims to be from another world called the Kingdom of Cello…
…but Cello is real, and so is Elliot. For a year now, Elliot has been obsessed with the mystery of his father’s disappearance. As things unfold, however, the more it seems like there are more things wrong with Cello than he realized—and it turns out that Madeleine and Elliot could use each other’s help.
A CORNER OF WHITE possesses a sort of whimsy that is effortless and not overbearing. Reading this is not so much about understanding and relating to the main characters, or getting a complete picture of the world of Cello, but rather how Moriarty uses words that have existed elsewhere before and puts them together so that they look brand new. Her words are like color itself: surprising, vivid, and probably what we’ll remember most about the reading experience.
Many authors start their books off with attention-grabbing chapters and just sort of assume that readers will hang on through poor pacing and awkward plot twists. A CORNER OF WHITE has a fairly intriguing beginning, then doesn’t care whether or not you’re confused or ambivalent in the middle (you will be), then has a flawlessly put-together ending of Megan Whalen Turner proportions that will leave you gaping and swooning. Whether or not you understand or relate to Madeleine and Elliot, the way the story is laid out will ensnare you, so that even while you’re still exclaiming to whoever will listen that the story is confusing the heck out of you, you can’t stop turning the pages.
Not only was A CORNER OF WHITE a great reading experience for me, it also left me firmly invested in Madeleine and Elliot’s intertwined worlds and fates. The book ends satisfyingly, yet still opens up numerous possibilities to be explored in future books, which I will definitely be reading. Fans of Franny Billingsley, Catherynne Valente, Margo Lanagan, and Jasper Fforde’s writings will undoubtedly fall head over heels for this highly imaginative book.
14-year-old Madeleine Tully and her mother are living in Cambridge, England after running away from her father and their former glamorous life. When Madeleine spies a piece of paper peeking out from a random parking meter and writes back, she thinks it’s crazy that Elliot Baranski, the person at the other end of the letters, claims to be from another world called the Kingdom of Cello…
…but Cello is real, and so is Elliot. For a year now, Elliot has been obsessed with the mystery of his father’s disappearance. As things unfold, however, the more it seems like there are more things wrong with Cello than he realized—and it turns out that Madeleine and Elliot could use each other’s help.
A CORNER OF WHITE possesses a sort of whimsy that is effortless and not overbearing. Reading this is not so much about understanding and relating to the main characters, or getting a complete picture of the world of Cello, but rather how Moriarty uses words that have existed elsewhere before and puts them together so that they look brand new. Her words are like color itself: surprising, vivid, and probably what we’ll remember most about the reading experience.
Many authors start their books off with attention-grabbing chapters and just sort of assume that readers will hang on through poor pacing and awkward plot twists. A CORNER OF WHITE has a fairly intriguing beginning, then doesn’t care whether or not you’re confused or ambivalent in the middle (you will be), then has a flawlessly put-together ending of Megan Whalen Turner proportions that will leave you gaping and swooning. Whether or not you understand or relate to Madeleine and Elliot, the way the story is laid out will ensnare you, so that even while you’re still exclaiming to whoever will listen that the story is confusing the heck out of you, you can’t stop turning the pages.
Not only was A CORNER OF WHITE a great reading experience for me, it also left me firmly invested in Madeleine and Elliot’s intertwined worlds and fates. The book ends satisfyingly, yet still opens up numerous possibilities to be explored in future books, which I will definitely be reading. Fans of Franny Billingsley, Catherynne Valente, Margo Lanagan, and Jasper Fforde’s writings will undoubtedly fall head over heels for this highly imaginative book.
February 26, 2018
So, this was fascinating and very, very different. I heard about this book several years ago, saw it on a couple of Best Of lists, added it to my bookshelf, which is really full and etc. Last year I figured out that she was Liane Moriarty's sister, and that sparked my interest again, because their books look SO different.
Anyway, read this one, REALLY liked it. The world of Cello was truly inventive and the way Madeleine and Elliot communicated, and the similarities and differences in their lives was fascinating. I really liked how Madeleine didn't believe that Cello was real, because . . . HELLO, why would she? And I was definitely not expecting the ending.
I am, however, giving it four stars and not five because dear sweet heavens and all that lies beneath them: WHY WERE SO MANY ADULTS SO COMPLETELY MADCAP? Or quirky? Or whatever you want to call it. There are people in Cello who talk in a strange, roundabout and archaic way. Okay, makes sense. And then there's nearly every damn other adult in the book, but particularly in Cambridge, the Real World, with their silly sayings and manias and flapping hands and dancing about like muppets. Nobody talks like that. Nobody acts like that. Please stop.
Anyway, read this one, REALLY liked it. The world of Cello was truly inventive and the way Madeleine and Elliot communicated, and the similarities and differences in their lives was fascinating. I really liked how Madeleine didn't believe that Cello was real, because . . . HELLO, why would she? And I was definitely not expecting the ending.
I am, however, giving it four stars and not five because dear sweet heavens and all that lies beneath them: WHY WERE SO MANY ADULTS SO COMPLETELY MADCAP? Or quirky? Or whatever you want to call it. There are people in Cello who talk in a strange, roundabout and archaic way. Okay, makes sense. And then there's nearly every damn other adult in the book, but particularly in Cambridge, the Real World, with their silly sayings and manias and flapping hands and dancing about like muppets. Nobody talks like that. Nobody acts like that. Please stop.
April 10, 2013
Original review posted on The Book Smugglers
As usual, when it comes to a Jaclyn Moriarty book, I find myself not knowing if I have the right words to express the awesomeness.
BUT I WILL TRY, dear readers, just for you.
I just don’t know where exactly do I begin as there is so much to unpack in terms of characterisation, narrative, world-building, setting, themes.
Maybe literally with: “where”.
*
The World: our world, more specifically Cambridge, England. This is where Madeleine Tully lives with her mother, who seems to be losing her mind. They have run away from a rich, privileged life, away from Madeleine’s father and now are trying to make ends meet living in a dingy flat where they eat baked beans every day. Madeleine is homeschooled together with her two new friends Jack and Belle. Jack is kind of in love with Madeleine but Belle is suspicious of Madeleine’s stories. Madeleine wears all the colours of the world because she sees no colours in the world around her. She wants to go back home so maybe her father will come and rescue them if she apologies for running away.
The Kingdom of Cello: more specifically Bonfire, the Farms. A world where seasons change randomly, where crops are failing and everybody is waiting for the Butterfly Child to come and save them and where Colours are monsters. This is where Elliot Baranski lives with his mother after his father disappeared a few months before and after his uncle was killed in a Purple attack. Everybody thinks his father – a known womaniser – ran away with the school teacher who also disappeared that night, but Elliot knows different and is adamant a Purple has taken his father. He plans on rescuing him and proving everybody wrong.
Through time, The World has forgotten everything about the Kingdom of Cello but Cello’s citizens still study The World in their history lessons.
And now, there is a crack between these worlds and a mysterious random (at first) note slips through. Madeleine finds it and writes back…her letter is found by Elliot who knows Madeleine is in the World even though Madeleine doesn’t believe a world Elliot is saying about Cello. Nonetheless, the two strike up a correspondence and through these letters develop a strangely compelling relationship, helping each other along the way.
*
A Corner of White is an interesting hybrid of Fantasy and Contemporary YA. The latter comes through in the way that explores certain themes like self-identity, growing up, relating to others. Although those are obviously not exclusive themes to Contemporary YA, there are still typical of the subgenre and deftly explored here.
The Kingdom of Cello is a fantastical place with Fantasy elements that appear outlandish and random at first (colours as monsters! seasons that roam! a fantastical fairy-child that appears out of nowhere inside a glass jar!) but one which has a very specific set of rules. Although these rules have little to do with Science – which is what holds The World together.
Or so it seems. Science plays a huge role here because in The World Madeleine is studying Isaac Newton for her history class, and becomes more and more interested in the science of colours which she shares in her letters to Elliot. This appears random at first, like ramblings of a kid that doesn’t have a real footing in the world and who seeks reasons and roots through history and learning.
I don’t know physics enough to be able to tell if Newton’s concepts of Optics and colours have been used correctly but it seems to me that this is beyond the point: to see these kids engaging with these concepts is more interesting to me than anything else. Similarly, Madeleine’s friends Jack and Belle also become wholly interested in the two people they are studying, Byron and Ada Lovelace respectively. Random at first, these historical characters become intrinsically meshed into the narrative and into these three kids’ arcs in a way that is intriguing and thoughtful.
*
A Corner of White is also a hybrid in how it combines two narrative formats. Most of the novel is narrated by a kind of omniscient narrator who informs the story from different characters’ viewpoints. As such, Elliot and Madeleine might be the focus of the narrative but there are those parts from Jack and Belle’s point of view in the World and from Sheriff Hector’s in Cello. Hector’s narrative appears random at first as do Jack and Belle’s in the way these seems to be related to nothing at all of import.
But part of the book is also told in epistolary format and interspersed in the narrative are the letters between Elliot and Madeleine, newspapers clippings following the Royal Princesses travels around Cello in a journey that is random (at first) as well as bits from a travel book about Cello. If you know anything at all about Jaclyn Moriarty, you will probably know she is a genius when it comes to crafting epistolary narratives, specially the way that those relates to the plot and the characters. It’s no different here.
*
“Random at first”.
How many times have I used these words in this review so far? Just like the topics I addressed in this way, my choice of using these words is not random at all. Because in fact, in this book? Everything is important. Every single thing that at first appears random, is not.
A Corner of White is a book that expects a certain level of commitment and patience from its readers. And maybe not everybody might be invested in the type of story it tells or have the patience to see it unfold slowly. Slowly is the key word here because the stories, or rather the story it tells (because it’s just one, really, at the end of the day) is developed carefully and insidiously.
This is a book that is built on appearances and assumptions .
Nothing is like what it seems. The narrative is unreliable because everybody in this book is an unreliable narrator. Not because they mean to be but because nobody truly knows each other or in a way, themselves. Relationships are built based on misperceptions, a character appears silly and wacky when observed by another character but completely different when the viewpoint changes.
Above all, I absolutely loved how this was played into the story, which is full of moments of ambiguity. You might think you are reading about a random tea party in Grantchester but that can be interpreted as people developing roots and connections. That random sound that a character describes and it appears as an inconsequential piece of information, is not.
Similarly, the way characters perceive each other and the way external expectations are played here? Brilliant.
Take Elliot, for example, who is the golden boy of Bonfire. People expect great things from him; he is the best at everything (is he?). His friends, his mother all conflate his appearance as well as his physical resemblance to his father with who he is and as such everybody tells him that he is going to break his girlfriend’s heart because he is bound to be a womaniser. This obviously plays into a historical narrative that often gives power to the man as though he is the only one with the power in the dynamics of his relationships. But the narrative here turns this into its head, as Elliot is someone who actually truly loves his girlfriend and the one who ends up with a broken heart after his girlfriend makes the decision to go to university far away. And even though he eventually walks into that role he is expected to play, it is not for the reasons people ascribe to him or results in the expected way.
Those external expectations and interpretations are also at play here when it comes to reading the book. Is that character truly superficial or you think they are because of the way said character plays with the stereotype of superficiality?
What strikes me the most about A Corner of White is how very human a story this is. Populated with characters that make mistakes, change their minds, who learn that it takes time to grow up, and who often don’t see people for who they are but for what they hope them to be.
*
It also helps that as the story progresses, it becomes evident that there is something much larger at play between the worlds and that the limits of monarchy as a government form, the principles of freedom fighting, the consequences of privilege, the reality of poverty are very much part of this story as well.
*
On the downside, I missed the wonderful ways that Moriarty has developed friendships and relationships between girlfriends in her previous books. Perhaps this will be further developed in the next book. I also wished that her worlds were more diverse and not so uniformly white.
*
If you like Hilary Mckay, Megan Whalen Turner, Jennifer Nielsen and the way their books play with narrative in clever ways? You must read this.
Colour me (sorry, inevitable pun) completely in love with this. A Corner of White is definitely a Notable Read of 2013 and don’t be surprised if it makes its way into my top 10.
As usual, when it comes to a Jaclyn Moriarty book, I find myself not knowing if I have the right words to express the awesomeness.
BUT I WILL TRY, dear readers, just for you.
I just don’t know where exactly do I begin as there is so much to unpack in terms of characterisation, narrative, world-building, setting, themes.
Maybe literally with: “where”.
*
The World: our world, more specifically Cambridge, England. This is where Madeleine Tully lives with her mother, who seems to be losing her mind. They have run away from a rich, privileged life, away from Madeleine’s father and now are trying to make ends meet living in a dingy flat where they eat baked beans every day. Madeleine is homeschooled together with her two new friends Jack and Belle. Jack is kind of in love with Madeleine but Belle is suspicious of Madeleine’s stories. Madeleine wears all the colours of the world because she sees no colours in the world around her. She wants to go back home so maybe her father will come and rescue them if she apologies for running away.
The Kingdom of Cello: more specifically Bonfire, the Farms. A world where seasons change randomly, where crops are failing and everybody is waiting for the Butterfly Child to come and save them and where Colours are monsters. This is where Elliot Baranski lives with his mother after his father disappeared a few months before and after his uncle was killed in a Purple attack. Everybody thinks his father – a known womaniser – ran away with the school teacher who also disappeared that night, but Elliot knows different and is adamant a Purple has taken his father. He plans on rescuing him and proving everybody wrong.
Through time, The World has forgotten everything about the Kingdom of Cello but Cello’s citizens still study The World in their history lessons.
And now, there is a crack between these worlds and a mysterious random (at first) note slips through. Madeleine finds it and writes back…her letter is found by Elliot who knows Madeleine is in the World even though Madeleine doesn’t believe a world Elliot is saying about Cello. Nonetheless, the two strike up a correspondence and through these letters develop a strangely compelling relationship, helping each other along the way.
*
A Corner of White is an interesting hybrid of Fantasy and Contemporary YA. The latter comes through in the way that explores certain themes like self-identity, growing up, relating to others. Although those are obviously not exclusive themes to Contemporary YA, there are still typical of the subgenre and deftly explored here.
The Kingdom of Cello is a fantastical place with Fantasy elements that appear outlandish and random at first (colours as monsters! seasons that roam! a fantastical fairy-child that appears out of nowhere inside a glass jar!) but one which has a very specific set of rules. Although these rules have little to do with Science – which is what holds The World together.
Or so it seems. Science plays a huge role here because in The World Madeleine is studying Isaac Newton for her history class, and becomes more and more interested in the science of colours which she shares in her letters to Elliot. This appears random at first, like ramblings of a kid that doesn’t have a real footing in the world and who seeks reasons and roots through history and learning.
I don’t know physics enough to be able to tell if Newton’s concepts of Optics and colours have been used correctly but it seems to me that this is beyond the point: to see these kids engaging with these concepts is more interesting to me than anything else. Similarly, Madeleine’s friends Jack and Belle also become wholly interested in the two people they are studying, Byron and Ada Lovelace respectively. Random at first, these historical characters become intrinsically meshed into the narrative and into these three kids’ arcs in a way that is intriguing and thoughtful.
*
A Corner of White is also a hybrid in how it combines two narrative formats. Most of the novel is narrated by a kind of omniscient narrator who informs the story from different characters’ viewpoints. As such, Elliot and Madeleine might be the focus of the narrative but there are those parts from Jack and Belle’s point of view in the World and from Sheriff Hector’s in Cello. Hector’s narrative appears random at first as do Jack and Belle’s in the way these seems to be related to nothing at all of import.
But part of the book is also told in epistolary format and interspersed in the narrative are the letters between Elliot and Madeleine, newspapers clippings following the Royal Princesses travels around Cello in a journey that is random (at first) as well as bits from a travel book about Cello. If you know anything at all about Jaclyn Moriarty, you will probably know she is a genius when it comes to crafting epistolary narratives, specially the way that those relates to the plot and the characters. It’s no different here.
*
“Random at first”.
How many times have I used these words in this review so far? Just like the topics I addressed in this way, my choice of using these words is not random at all. Because in fact, in this book? Everything is important. Every single thing that at first appears random, is not.
A Corner of White is a book that expects a certain level of commitment and patience from its readers. And maybe not everybody might be invested in the type of story it tells or have the patience to see it unfold slowly. Slowly is the key word here because the stories, or rather the story it tells (because it’s just one, really, at the end of the day) is developed carefully and insidiously.
This is a book that is built on appearances and assumptions .
Nothing is like what it seems. The narrative is unreliable because everybody in this book is an unreliable narrator. Not because they mean to be but because nobody truly knows each other or in a way, themselves. Relationships are built based on misperceptions, a character appears silly and wacky when observed by another character but completely different when the viewpoint changes.
Above all, I absolutely loved how this was played into the story, which is full of moments of ambiguity. You might think you are reading about a random tea party in Grantchester but that can be interpreted as people developing roots and connections. That random sound that a character describes and it appears as an inconsequential piece of information, is not.
Similarly, the way characters perceive each other and the way external expectations are played here? Brilliant.
Take Elliot, for example, who is the golden boy of Bonfire. People expect great things from him; he is the best at everything (is he?). His friends, his mother all conflate his appearance as well as his physical resemblance to his father with who he is and as such everybody tells him that he is going to break his girlfriend’s heart because he is bound to be a womaniser. This obviously plays into a historical narrative that often gives power to the man as though he is the only one with the power in the dynamics of his relationships. But the narrative here turns this into its head, as Elliot is someone who actually truly loves his girlfriend and the one who ends up with a broken heart after his girlfriend makes the decision to go to university far away. And even though he eventually walks into that role he is expected to play, it is not for the reasons people ascribe to him or results in the expected way.
Those external expectations and interpretations are also at play here when it comes to reading the book. Is that character truly superficial or you think they are because of the way said character plays with the stereotype of superficiality?
What strikes me the most about A Corner of White is how very human a story this is. Populated with characters that make mistakes, change their minds, who learn that it takes time to grow up, and who often don’t see people for who they are but for what they hope them to be.
*
It also helps that as the story progresses, it becomes evident that there is something much larger at play between the worlds and that the limits of monarchy as a government form, the principles of freedom fighting, the consequences of privilege, the reality of poverty are very much part of this story as well.
*
On the downside, I missed the wonderful ways that Moriarty has developed friendships and relationships between girlfriends in her previous books. Perhaps this will be further developed in the next book. I also wished that her worlds were more diverse and not so uniformly white.
*
If you like Hilary Mckay, Megan Whalen Turner, Jennifer Nielsen and the way their books play with narrative in clever ways? You must read this.
Colour me (sorry, inevitable pun) completely in love with this. A Corner of White is definitely a Notable Read of 2013 and don’t be surprised if it makes its way into my top 10.
April 28, 2020
**Edit: Third time re-read
*Edit: Second time re-read
"We must think outside of overselves, Madeleine. Live for others, not just yourself. If you do not learn this thing, people will give up on you. You only get so many chances."
Madeleine and Elliot are two teenagers who have both have problems that they need to solve. Madeleine has recently moved to Cambridge with her mother and she desperately yearns for the life they left behind. Elliot's father has been missing for quite some time and he is desperate to know if he has just run off, like the townspeople are saying, or if something terrible happened to him. They both find a way to help themselves get resolution through each other but the catch? They live in separate worlds. Literally. While Madeleine lives in THIS world, the one we are all familiar with, Elliot lives in a world away, in a kingdom named Cello. Despite this, through serendipity, they have both come in contact with each other through letters passed through a crack between the worlds. And they fins that while some problems may seem overwhelming on their own, together, they might be able to find the answers they're looking for.
This book. *shakes head* I certainly was not expecting it to blow me away like it did. I wasn't expecting it to make me laugh and cry at various parts like it did. And I definitely didn't expect I would be happily putting it on my favorites shelf...BUT I AM!
I fell head over heels in love with this book. Each and every aspect of this book makes me want to praise it forever and ever! Let's start with the characters. The main two protagonists, Elliot and Madeleine are extremely likable but also extremely flawed. This is a book about growth and discovery. Both Elliot and Madeleine learn what it is about themselves that is holding them back and they overcome it. Simple, but beautiful. I truly loved watching these two come into their own. The two supporting characters from Madeleine's world, Jack and Belle, were hilarious and sweet to read about. (If you imagine Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series, you've pretty much summed up Belle :3 ) The story was full of depth, especially since it spanned two different worlds, but it never really felt like a 'fantasy' or 'science fiction' book. It felt like just a beautiful coming of age story.
And don't even get me started on the dialogue! It was hilarious! Poignant! Emotional! It didn't feel like reading dialogue, it felt like I was right there in the conversation with the characters! Take, for example, this passage between Jack and Belle:
"Belle, I sometimes think you haven't got a clue what you are talking about."
"Nah, it's just that you can't follow the complicated pathways of my brain. It's like a labyrinth, my brain, and as beautiful as a brain can get. What I mean is, there's too much going on with Madeleine. It's like when you get every paint color and mix them up, you end up with not a proper color at all. Madeleine's lived in so many bloody places and she wears so many different bloody colors. You know what I mean? So she's not a proper person anymore, she's just a mess. Like, she doesn't exist."
Jack stopped talking altogether and turned to Belle.
"You are being racist beyond all my abilities for measuring racism", he said. "You don't say that someone who's mixed race is a mess, Belle. Do you actually want to know what race she is? She's part Iranian, part Somali, part Polish, part Irish, and a little bit of Tibetan. She's not a mess, she's beautiful."
"You can't be all those things," said Belle, flicking his words away. "See, that's my point. You can't. That's like five different people had to have sex to make her, which is not possible. Only two people can have sex."
"I'm not sure you've got the hang of genetics." Jack began to walk again. "Or of sex parties."
See? Damn, I love this book! It's full of...interesting/hilarious/exhilarating scenes like that. And the last thing I want to talk about is the writing style. It was so gorgeous. The words dripped like honey off the page, that's how sweet they were! #cornyreference :P It reminded me a lot of Tanith Lee and Patricia McKillip, two of my favorite fantasy authors who write in the same type of style.
She knew who she'd been, but it felt like a dream. She'd been a girl who ran so fast, even down a hallway to her bedroom, she'd had to skid on her heels to stop. She'd talked like the rainfall. She'd loved the smells of things-cinnamon, coconut, lime. She'd loved loud music, and dancing, and if she was that girl right now, she'd bee with her friends and they'd lose their minds, open the window, throw the sewing machine out into the rain. Just to watch it fall four floors to the ground. Where was she now, the girl with the thunderstorm heart?
In any case, I really can't do this book as much justice as it deserves. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone, no matter what type of genre you prefer! :)
You can also find this review at my blog!
http://ayanami023.wordpress.com
*Edit: Second time re-read
"We must think outside of overselves, Madeleine. Live for others, not just yourself. If you do not learn this thing, people will give up on you. You only get so many chances."
Madeleine and Elliot are two teenagers who have both have problems that they need to solve. Madeleine has recently moved to Cambridge with her mother and she desperately yearns for the life they left behind. Elliot's father has been missing for quite some time and he is desperate to know if he has just run off, like the townspeople are saying, or if something terrible happened to him. They both find a way to help themselves get resolution through each other but the catch? They live in separate worlds. Literally. While Madeleine lives in THIS world, the one we are all familiar with, Elliot lives in a world away, in a kingdom named Cello. Despite this, through serendipity, they have both come in contact with each other through letters passed through a crack between the worlds. And they fins that while some problems may seem overwhelming on their own, together, they might be able to find the answers they're looking for.
This book. *shakes head* I certainly was not expecting it to blow me away like it did. I wasn't expecting it to make me laugh and cry at various parts like it did. And I definitely didn't expect I would be happily putting it on my favorites shelf...BUT I AM!
I fell head over heels in love with this book. Each and every aspect of this book makes me want to praise it forever and ever! Let's start with the characters. The main two protagonists, Elliot and Madeleine are extremely likable but also extremely flawed. This is a book about growth and discovery. Both Elliot and Madeleine learn what it is about themselves that is holding them back and they overcome it. Simple, but beautiful. I truly loved watching these two come into their own. The two supporting characters from Madeleine's world, Jack and Belle, were hilarious and sweet to read about. (If you imagine Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series, you've pretty much summed up Belle :3 ) The story was full of depth, especially since it spanned two different worlds, but it never really felt like a 'fantasy' or 'science fiction' book. It felt like just a beautiful coming of age story.
And don't even get me started on the dialogue! It was hilarious! Poignant! Emotional! It didn't feel like reading dialogue, it felt like I was right there in the conversation with the characters! Take, for example, this passage between Jack and Belle:
"Belle, I sometimes think you haven't got a clue what you are talking about."
"Nah, it's just that you can't follow the complicated pathways of my brain. It's like a labyrinth, my brain, and as beautiful as a brain can get. What I mean is, there's too much going on with Madeleine. It's like when you get every paint color and mix them up, you end up with not a proper color at all. Madeleine's lived in so many bloody places and she wears so many different bloody colors. You know what I mean? So she's not a proper person anymore, she's just a mess. Like, she doesn't exist."
Jack stopped talking altogether and turned to Belle.
"You are being racist beyond all my abilities for measuring racism", he said. "You don't say that someone who's mixed race is a mess, Belle. Do you actually want to know what race she is? She's part Iranian, part Somali, part Polish, part Irish, and a little bit of Tibetan. She's not a mess, she's beautiful."
"You can't be all those things," said Belle, flicking his words away. "See, that's my point. You can't. That's like five different people had to have sex to make her, which is not possible. Only two people can have sex."
"I'm not sure you've got the hang of genetics." Jack began to walk again. "Or of sex parties."
See? Damn, I love this book! It's full of...interesting/hilarious/exhilarating scenes like that. And the last thing I want to talk about is the writing style. It was so gorgeous. The words dripped like honey off the page, that's how sweet they were! #cornyreference :P It reminded me a lot of Tanith Lee and Patricia McKillip, two of my favorite fantasy authors who write in the same type of style.
She knew who she'd been, but it felt like a dream. She'd been a girl who ran so fast, even down a hallway to her bedroom, she'd had to skid on her heels to stop. She'd talked like the rainfall. She'd loved the smells of things-cinnamon, coconut, lime. She'd loved loud music, and dancing, and if she was that girl right now, she'd bee with her friends and they'd lose their minds, open the window, throw the sewing machine out into the rain. Just to watch it fall four floors to the ground. Where was she now, the girl with the thunderstorm heart?
In any case, I really can't do this book as much justice as it deserves. I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone, no matter what type of genre you prefer! :)
You can also find this review at my blog!
http://ayanami023.wordpress.com
November 18, 2015
I love Jaclyn Moriarty’s writing. I may not always love her books but her writing is superb. She has this way of linking words, thoughts and pictures that is seamless, beautiful and sometimes heartrending. When I heard that Moriarty was writing a new book, I was happy. I did a happy dance to prove my happiness and it was okay, because no one could see me dancing. And that’s how I like it.
I picked up an ARC of this book at ALA but Scholastic Canada sent me a complimentary review copy, a finished copy, of the novel and if you haven’t seen the book in its physical form, you are missing out because the book is beautiful. Scholastic books are always so beautifully crafted. The cover is different from the Australian version and at first it perturbed me but then I read the book and now I reckon this cover fits the book better than the Australian one does.
On to the book itself. If you have read Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde, you will have some idea of the content inside. But more on that cryptic statement later. First, I have to admit that I spent a good portion of this book frustrated. I didn’t realize that Madeleine and Elliot would have separate stories and their only contact would be through the white pieces of paper on which they wrote letters to each other so I kept waiting for them to meet. To interact in person rather than textually (though to me it would be all textually, that kind of blows my mind, hee) and when that didn’t happen and doesn’t seem like it will happen, I got impatient.
However, once the story gets its groove on, and I’m not gonna lie, it takes a while to get its groove on, it is full blast fantastic, The Kingdom of Cello is well built, the politics, the seasons, the geography, heck, even the dialects of the various people living there. The stereotypes and the habits, it is all so well imagined and expressed. Elliot is an interesting character – Madeleine imagines him as some sort of bucktoothed, fantasy loving geek when it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Both protagonists have daddy issues but both have lucked out on their mothers. Between Madeleine and Elliot though, I liked Elliot better because I couldn’t get a handle on Madeleine. She’s a rather fey creature and though we get a lot of stuff from her, the interiority that I wanted, the glimpse of her that I wanted remained elusive. And I think this is rather intentional because Elliott seems more substantial because he has always had a strong foundation, a family, friends and a strong sense of self. Madeleine, on the other hand, is fragmented. She’s a mixture of people, places, colours and languages. We cannot grasp her wholly because she doesn’t know herself wholly. I don’t know if it is intentional but I like that we come upon her as she is being formed.
Of course, she has the signature craziness of all of Moriarty’s protagonists and I loved that. Her fascination with colours (the model on the cover is Madeleine in a scene) connects her to Elliot.
The Kingdom of Cello is beset by a problem of hostile colours. They attack in swarms and can kill or maim unsuspecting citizens. Elliot and Madeleine converse a lot about colours and it’s fascinating – this will be a perfect companion book for Fforde’s dystopian novel, I’m just saying. Anyway, I won’t go into too much detail about the colours because that is an experience best had without any expectations. The book is far stronger in the second half than in the first half and the ending is awesome. The ending is actually what pulled the rating up from 3 stars to 4. The ending sets up the next book perfectly and pulls together all the strings that you had no idea were waving about.
The book is not Moriarty’s best but it does contain some wry but absolutely on point observations about the world. It is a delightful foray into fantasy but Moriarty’s signature technique (?) remains: strong characters, fresh and funny writing. I’m not sure this book will be for everyone as it requires a lot of patience but if you want something that will leave you with a warm glow at the end, this is definitely it.
I picked up an ARC of this book at ALA but Scholastic Canada sent me a complimentary review copy, a finished copy, of the novel and if you haven’t seen the book in its physical form, you are missing out because the book is beautiful. Scholastic books are always so beautifully crafted. The cover is different from the Australian version and at first it perturbed me but then I read the book and now I reckon this cover fits the book better than the Australian one does.
On to the book itself. If you have read Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde, you will have some idea of the content inside. But more on that cryptic statement later. First, I have to admit that I spent a good portion of this book frustrated. I didn’t realize that Madeleine and Elliot would have separate stories and their only contact would be through the white pieces of paper on which they wrote letters to each other so I kept waiting for them to meet. To interact in person rather than textually (though to me it would be all textually, that kind of blows my mind, hee) and when that didn’t happen and doesn’t seem like it will happen, I got impatient.
However, once the story gets its groove on, and I’m not gonna lie, it takes a while to get its groove on, it is full blast fantastic, The Kingdom of Cello is well built, the politics, the seasons, the geography, heck, even the dialects of the various people living there. The stereotypes and the habits, it is all so well imagined and expressed. Elliot is an interesting character – Madeleine imagines him as some sort of bucktoothed, fantasy loving geek when it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Both protagonists have daddy issues but both have lucked out on their mothers. Between Madeleine and Elliot though, I liked Elliot better because I couldn’t get a handle on Madeleine. She’s a rather fey creature and though we get a lot of stuff from her, the interiority that I wanted, the glimpse of her that I wanted remained elusive. And I think this is rather intentional because Elliott seems more substantial because he has always had a strong foundation, a family, friends and a strong sense of self. Madeleine, on the other hand, is fragmented. She’s a mixture of people, places, colours and languages. We cannot grasp her wholly because she doesn’t know herself wholly. I don’t know if it is intentional but I like that we come upon her as she is being formed.
Of course, she has the signature craziness of all of Moriarty’s protagonists and I loved that. Her fascination with colours (the model on the cover is Madeleine in a scene) connects her to Elliot.
The Kingdom of Cello is beset by a problem of hostile colours. They attack in swarms and can kill or maim unsuspecting citizens. Elliot and Madeleine converse a lot about colours and it’s fascinating – this will be a perfect companion book for Fforde’s dystopian novel, I’m just saying. Anyway, I won’t go into too much detail about the colours because that is an experience best had without any expectations. The book is far stronger in the second half than in the first half and the ending is awesome. The ending is actually what pulled the rating up from 3 stars to 4. The ending sets up the next book perfectly and pulls together all the strings that you had no idea were waving about.
The book is not Moriarty’s best but it does contain some wry but absolutely on point observations about the world. It is a delightful foray into fantasy but Moriarty’s signature technique (?) remains: strong characters, fresh and funny writing. I’m not sure this book will be for everyone as it requires a lot of patience but if you want something that will leave you with a warm glow at the end, this is definitely it.
February 5, 2023
This book was amazing! I loved it so much! It was creative, and the magic system was fun! I can’t wait to dig into the second book!
November 5, 2012
Review originally posted in: http://forget8me8not.blogspot.com.au/...
Cover:
I think the cover reflects the story quite well. I love how the cover has the crack that represents the gap between the two different worlds and the colourful rainbows and background!
Story:
Would you live in The Kingdom of Cello......or The World?
Before A Corner of White, I have never read anything by Jaclyn Moriarty. I have seen her books around but at that time, I did not know that she is an Australian author and that her books are wonderful. After reading A Corner of White, I definitely plan to catch up with all her books because A Corner of White is fantastic.
Imagine that another world exists beyond our world and that this other world is merely a crack away from our world. Madeleine lives in the world, 'our' world but one day, she notices a crack and that there is a letter slipped in this crack. This letter is the beginning of a friendship, a girl from the world and the boy from The Kingdom of Cello.
It's been a while since I read a fantasy book and A Corner of White is one amazing fantasy book. I truly love the two worlds Moriarty has created in her story. What I particularly love is the letter exchanges between Madeleine and Elliot. Even though they never meet each other, the letters feel as though they are actually talking face-to-face. Madeleine and Elliot's story are very interesting and enjoyable to read. Moriarty's writing is a mixture of hilarious, fun, heart-warming and through her writing, I am transported into these two worlds she has created. The ending is great although new things seem to happen and I can't wait to read the sequel!
Characters:
Besides a fantastic story, Moriarty has created loveable characters and I completely adore each and every one of them. Madeleine is a creative, imaginative and funny character I really enjoyed reading about. She is also clever and the way she replies Elliot's letters are charming and hilarious. Elliot is also a great character who like Madeleine, is also creative, charming and sweet. Madeleine's friends, Jack and Belle are wonderful supporting characters and I enjoyed every moment they spend with Madeleine in the story. I love how Jaclyn writes both Madeleine and Elliot's story as we can actually understand what their lives are like and how different they are compared to each other.
Overall:
Can you imagine what it would be like if another world exists beyond our world and that this other world is merely a crack away from our world? A Corner of White is a fantastic and well-written book about a friendship which grows from letter exchanges and two people from two different worlds. With loveable characters and heart-warming story, Jaclyn Moriarty's newest novel is definitely not to be missed!
Thank you Pan Macmillan Australia for the review copy!
Cover:
I think the cover reflects the story quite well. I love how the cover has the crack that represents the gap between the two different worlds and the colourful rainbows and background!
Story:
Would you live in The Kingdom of Cello......or The World?
Before A Corner of White, I have never read anything by Jaclyn Moriarty. I have seen her books around but at that time, I did not know that she is an Australian author and that her books are wonderful. After reading A Corner of White, I definitely plan to catch up with all her books because A Corner of White is fantastic.
Imagine that another world exists beyond our world and that this other world is merely a crack away from our world. Madeleine lives in the world, 'our' world but one day, she notices a crack and that there is a letter slipped in this crack. This letter is the beginning of a friendship, a girl from the world and the boy from The Kingdom of Cello.
It's been a while since I read a fantasy book and A Corner of White is one amazing fantasy book. I truly love the two worlds Moriarty has created in her story. What I particularly love is the letter exchanges between Madeleine and Elliot. Even though they never meet each other, the letters feel as though they are actually talking face-to-face. Madeleine and Elliot's story are very interesting and enjoyable to read. Moriarty's writing is a mixture of hilarious, fun, heart-warming and through her writing, I am transported into these two worlds she has created. The ending is great although new things seem to happen and I can't wait to read the sequel!
Characters:
Besides a fantastic story, Moriarty has created loveable characters and I completely adore each and every one of them. Madeleine is a creative, imaginative and funny character I really enjoyed reading about. She is also clever and the way she replies Elliot's letters are charming and hilarious. Elliot is also a great character who like Madeleine, is also creative, charming and sweet. Madeleine's friends, Jack and Belle are wonderful supporting characters and I enjoyed every moment they spend with Madeleine in the story. I love how Jaclyn writes both Madeleine and Elliot's story as we can actually understand what their lives are like and how different they are compared to each other.
Overall:
Can you imagine what it would be like if another world exists beyond our world and that this other world is merely a crack away from our world? A Corner of White is a fantastic and well-written book about a friendship which grows from letter exchanges and two people from two different worlds. With loveable characters and heart-warming story, Jaclyn Moriarty's newest novel is definitely not to be missed!
Thank you Pan Macmillan Australia for the review copy!
April 14, 2013
A Corner of White certainly defies genre classification. The entire plot, such as it is, follows the letters between a boy from the fantasy Kingdom of Cello and a girl from real-life Cambridge.
Or does it? If a fantasy world exists, doesn't that make the entire book fantasy, including seemingly real-life Cambridge? What is fantasy, anyway? It can be characterized by a good vs. evil conflict, and I can't say anything like that exists in this novel. The troubles in the Kingdom of Cello are mostly generated by Colors, which are colored, malignant organisms with no apparent thought process. They don't seem to choose to hurt or kill, and calling them evil feels akin to calling a thunderstorm evil. The conflicts in Cambridge are Madeleine's real-life, relatable difficulties.
Fantasy can also be characterized by a quest, typically one with magical elements (which often overlaps with the good vs. evil conflict), and yet the one element of A Corner of White that involves a quest is pushed to the side in favor of a deftball game and then shown to be irrelevant as it was originally perceived by the plot that finally shows up at the end of the book.
What's most interesting about A Corner of White is the way it really has no plot until the very end, when a few disparate elements of the story combine to create something bigger than the characters themselves. At which point the book ends. Until that point, the novel is essentially a study of character development. It's an animation of a series of images. It's as if the entire book was inspired by the vividness of the colors it contains, and by the contrast of those vivid, fantastic colors and gray, rainy Cambridge, instead of by a story. The colorful way Madeleine dresses seems to ascribe an element of fey to her, to mark her as someone to whom fantastic things can happen. It's an unusual metaphor.
What's odd, too, is the way the two worlds bleed into each other. Cello's fantastic conflict is resolved by science, communicated through Madeleine's letter, and Madeleine's largest problem is solved by the pixie-like Butterfly Child's healing balls, communicated through Elliot's letter. To me, it felt as though the science weakened the fantasy world, and the fantasy weakened the scientific world, and that both settings became open to incredulity as a result. It may have been the author's intention, to transcend genre; unfortunately, since the book is so incomplete, it's impossible to assign any sort of motive or meaning to that.
But I will say that despite the clearly forthcoming sequel, A Corner of White is itself a gripping, thought-provoking read.
Or does it? If a fantasy world exists, doesn't that make the entire book fantasy, including seemingly real-life Cambridge? What is fantasy, anyway? It can be characterized by a good vs. evil conflict, and I can't say anything like that exists in this novel. The troubles in the Kingdom of Cello are mostly generated by Colors, which are colored, malignant organisms with no apparent thought process. They don't seem to choose to hurt or kill, and calling them evil feels akin to calling a thunderstorm evil. The conflicts in Cambridge are Madeleine's real-life, relatable difficulties.
Fantasy can also be characterized by a quest, typically one with magical elements (which often overlaps with the good vs. evil conflict), and yet the one element of A Corner of White that involves a quest is pushed to the side in favor of a deftball game and then shown to be irrelevant as it was originally perceived by the plot that finally shows up at the end of the book.
What's most interesting about A Corner of White is the way it really has no plot until the very end, when a few disparate elements of the story combine to create something bigger than the characters themselves. At which point the book ends. Until that point, the novel is essentially a study of character development. It's an animation of a series of images. It's as if the entire book was inspired by the vividness of the colors it contains, and by the contrast of those vivid, fantastic colors and gray, rainy Cambridge, instead of by a story. The colorful way Madeleine dresses seems to ascribe an element of fey to her, to mark her as someone to whom fantastic things can happen. It's an unusual metaphor.
What's odd, too, is the way the two worlds bleed into each other. Cello's fantastic conflict is resolved by science, communicated through Madeleine's letter, and Madeleine's largest problem is solved by the pixie-like Butterfly Child's healing balls, communicated through Elliot's letter. To me, it felt as though the science weakened the fantasy world, and the fantasy weakened the scientific world, and that both settings became open to incredulity as a result. It may have been the author's intention, to transcend genre; unfortunately, since the book is so incomplete, it's impossible to assign any sort of motive or meaning to that.
But I will say that despite the clearly forthcoming sequel, A Corner of White is itself a gripping, thought-provoking read.
Read
December 16, 2013I love the books that get such wildly different responses - when it's from friends or people followed, at any rate. This one got them from me, which is a bit less fun. I won't even attempt coherent review, especially as it's been so many months. A few general points instead. I thought the sections in Cello were far more enjoyable, as Madeleine's unreliable narrative and what seemed an overabundance of whimsy didn't quite work for me. I love what Beth says about the two kingdoms in her review, although I'm not sure that actually weakened either section of the book for me. Possibly this is because the "real world" (i.e. Cambridge) never seemed as if it was meant to be real, so I was quite happy with the crossover between real world and fantasy realm.
The part of the book that sent me wheeling into sheer crankiness is a serious spoiler, and it's a personal thing. Well, personal backed up by -- history! (See - still cranky!)
I do have The Cracks in the Kingdom on my to-read shelf, and perhaps it'll be all the better for the not-insubstantial downturn in my expectations caused by the ending.
The part of the book that sent me wheeling into sheer crankiness is a serious spoiler, and it's a personal thing. Well, personal backed up by -- history! (See - still cranky!)
I do have The Cracks in the Kingdom on my to-read shelf, and perhaps it'll be all the better for the not-insubstantial downturn in my expectations caused by the ending.
March 15, 2016
2/5 stars
Okay so I was going to rate this book higher but I just couldn't.
I skimmed a lot of this book, I didn't really care about the chapters about Jack and Belle. I warmed up to Madeline a little bit but I still felt like I knew nothing about her.
However, I did really like Elliot, he seemed so sweet and actually cared about other people.
I would have liked for the whole Colours thing to be explained a little bit more, most of the time I was a bit confused.
The only part I did like was reading the letter that Madeline and Elliot sent each other.
I mean I didn't hate this book but I didn't love it either. I might check out the sequel....maybe.
Okay so I was going to rate this book higher but I just couldn't.
I skimmed a lot of this book, I didn't really care about the chapters about Jack and Belle. I warmed up to Madeline a little bit but I still felt like I knew nothing about her.
However, I did really like Elliot, he seemed so sweet and actually cared about other people.
I would have liked for the whole Colours thing to be explained a little bit more, most of the time I was a bit confused.
The only part I did like was reading the letter that Madeline and Elliot sent each other.
I mean I didn't hate this book but I didn't love it either. I might check out the sequel....maybe.
May 31, 2015
A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
First in The Colors of Madeline trilogy
4 stars
Whimsical Writing Scale: 4.5
Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 4
Swoon Worthy Scale: 4.25
Villain Scale: 4.25
Character Scale: 4
Plotastic Scale: 4.75
Cover Thoughts: I dislike the American cover so much. It is so unappealing compared to the Australian. The Australian cover is beautiful and I think it fits the book. Yes, this cover fits the book, but it just looks so childish and the girl’s face bothers me.
First in The Colors of Madeline trilogy
4 stars
Madeline and her mother have run away from her life to Cambridge. Elliot is in search of his father in the Kingdom of Cello. Elliot’s story is much more complex than Madeline’s. His family is the talk of his little farming town called Bonfire. Elliot’s father may have killed his uncle and ran away with his Physics teacher and Elliot refuses to believe that. He searches high and low in the Kingdom of Cello hoping to find his father and one day Elliot and Madeline’s two very separate worlds come together in the form of a letter begging for help. This book has a lot going on in 373 pages that feel more like 600. There were times when reading A Corner of White felt more like a chore than reading, but this book is incredibly enjoyable once you get passed the few snags. This book took me over a month to read and I feel incredibly bad that it took so long. I also went way past my library overdue, but what’s a book-loving girl to do? I’m incredibly behind on reviews and am reviewing this quickly before I must return it. Moriarty is quite the lyrical writer. Her story flows and she has so many beautiful quotes; with most lyrical writers there are snags and a few boring bits. Another thing that annoyed me at first was the multiple POVs; there are at least ten different perspectives in A Corner of White. It bothered me at first, but it was mostly because I was only expecting Madeline and Elliot’s POVs. Once I got passed that I would be seeing two different worlds threw different eyes, I got used to the flow of the story and by the end I actually liked the alternating POVs.
Whimsical Writing Scale: 4.5
I have quite a few questions surrounding the Kingdom of Cello. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not quick to catching on with so many descriptions and different cultures to take in, but I don’t get these Colors at all. From what I’ve gathered, they attack villages and create havoc. There are different Colors and levels and I found that easy to understand, but then Elliot would explain something about manipulating Colors and I was lost and confused. Instead of going back and rereading it multiple times (which only makes me zone out even more) I decided to read on and hope it would be further explained or mentioned. It was mentioned again and I was still utterly confused. I do love the concept surrounding the Kingdom of Cello though and I love where this story ended and is taking off to for the sequel. Before I address any more problems let’s talk about the characters.
The main female character is Madeline. I like Madeline, but at the same time I don’t. She’s an interesting character and she reminds me a lot of someone that would be better suited for Wonderland than the real world.
But then I would remember that she’s only thirteen or fourteen years old and she’s still growing up. Granted I’m not much older than Madeline but her brain is all over the place. She is very bright and intelligent for her age though. She’s quite fascinated with Isaac Newton, which probably seems pointless in this review, but is crucial to the story. I found her little quirks to be amusing and she is a “mad” (by mad I mean slightly crazy) character.
Kick-Butt Heroine Scale: 4
The main male character is Elliot. I will forever remember his last name, which Baranski. I’ve never seen a character’s last name mentioned as much as his was. His name is literally in all the people in the town of Bonfire’s mouths. He is the town’s hero and everyone seems to look up to Elliot, even the adults. Elliot is easier to like than Madeline, but at the same time he’s also easier to hate. I wasn’t even planning on mentioning this, but he ends up dating his best friend, Kayla, and Aside from that, I’m quite fond of Elliot. He is a bit of a condescending player and he doesn’t seem to care a whole lot about other people’s feelings. I hope he gets more character growth in the sequel.
Swoon Worthy Scale: 4.25
The Villain- I honestly wasn’t expecting the story to take this turn at all. I have feeling there will be politics surrounding the Kingdom in the future and I’m not the biggest fan of that, but I’m a fan of this book and hopefully it’ll be an exception.
Villain Scale: 4.25
There are probably around 50 characters in this book. There are a lot of characters mentioned and all of them are essential to the story in some way, but I’ll talk about a few. From the “Real World” there’s: Jack, Belle, Madeline’s mother, and all of the teachers that home school Jack, Madeline, and Belle. Jack was really annoying at first, but I began to like him further into the book and I liked the small little romance between Jack and Madeline, but I honestly don’t see it going anywhere. Belle, who I think is better suited for Jack and that Madeline needs to open her eyes and see this as well. Madeline’s mother is a refreshing because she isn’t the usual trope of a mother that is never there. I was scared for her towards the end though because Madeline would’ve ended up alone. My favorite of Madeline’s teachers was the one who taught, probably illegally, at Cambridge and gave them an assignment that introduced Madeline to Isaac Newton. In Cello there’s: the Sherriff, Elliot’s mom, Elliot’s cousin, Derwin, the Twinklehams, the princesses, and Elliot’s friends. I really liked the Sherriff and the guy that he worked with. Those POVs were quite interesting and gave a lot of information to the working of Bonfire. I’m quite confused about what happened to the Sherriff at the beginning of the book though.
"By the time he got there, the fifth level Gray had torn bloody stripes into the Sheriff's bare hands and right across the flesh of his face, it had ripped through the cartilage in his knee."
I thought Color attacks were lethal and this sounds pretty serious, but he seemed to heal quickly. I liked Elliot’s mom and one of her talks with Elliot really made me feel for her and how she was dealing with Elliot’s father leaving. Elliot’s cousin (whose name I can’t remember) is very cute and I love how she built the Butterfly Child a house for her to live in before she even arrived in Bonfire, she also made friends with Derwin, a girl that didn’t talk and who I quite liked. The Twinklehams, who I had sympathy for when Elliot’s friends were wreaking havoc on them, the princesses whose columns were featured in the newspapers. I found the princesses to be slightly annoying and ditzy, but I totally wasn’t expecting that ending and I can’t wait to see where all this leads to with Princess Ko.
Character Scale: 4
One of my favorite things about A Corner of White is that this book seems very light and easy to read, but really it is a very dark story. I noticed towards the end of the book that Madeline was the person that did the leaving because she ran away and Elliot was the one who was left by his father. I noticed this before they even realized how they balanced each other out, so I win!
“If you were so happy in your life before, he said, how come you were always running away?”
I also realized thought how Elliot thought Madeline’s initials sounded like empty (M.T.) to be hilariously cute and it was little things like that that made me love the book. This book made me laugh and cry all at once. I had an extreme case of happy tears. 
There is also no romance between Elliot and Madeline and I’m hoping there will be because it will be amazing and it must happen. And I love this quote so here’s a quote:
”You held the fixed stars in place for me and you stopped them from falling.”
Plotastic Scale: 4.75
Cover Thoughts: I dislike the American cover so much. It is so unappealing compared to the Australian. The Australian cover is beautiful and I think it fits the book. Yes, this cover fits the book, but it just looks so childish and the girl’s face bothers me.
July 30, 2014
***Review posted on The Eater of Books! blog***
A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
Book One of The Colors of Madeleine series
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Rating: 2 stars
Source: ARCycling
Summary (from Goodreads):
The first in a rousing, funny, genre-busting trilogy from bestseller Jaclyn Moriarty!
This is a tale of missing persons. Madeleine and her mother have run away from their former life, under mysterious circumstances, and settled in a rainy corner of Cambridge (in our world).
Elliot, on the other hand, is in search of his father, who disappeared on the night his uncle was found dead. The talk in the town of Bonfire (in the Kingdom of Cello) is that Elliot's dad may have killed his brother and run away with the Physics teacher. But Elliot refuses to believe it. And he is determined to find both his dad and the truth.
As Madeleine and Elliot move closer to unraveling their mysteries, they begin to exchange messages across worlds -- through an accidental gap that hasn't appeared in centuries. But even greater mysteries are unfolding on both sides of the gap: dangerous weather phenomena called "color storms;" a strange fascination with Isaac Newton; the myth of the "Butterfly Child," whose appearance could end the droughts of Cello; and some unexpected kisses...
What I Liked:
The characters were likable. Elliot is interesting, as he is desperate to find his father, while trying to get his father's shop back, and capture a Butterfly Child. Madeleine is... weird. It seems like she is supposed to have some depth to her, but I found her a dry and boring protagonist. I really like Jack, because he is super sweet and empathetic. I was never a huge fan of Belle, but she contributed nicely to the story.
The contrast between the Kingdom of Cello and the real World is nicely written. I liked reading about Cello (even though I was very confused most of the time), because it was not what I expected. It's definitely not your typical kingdom. The Princess columns were... weird, but interesting.
What I Did Not Like:
I am going to be very honest: I was so confused throughout this entire book. I ALMOST did not finish this book, which is rare for me - once I start a book, no matter what, I finish it. I really did not understand what was what most of the time. I understand the difference between the two worlds, and that Madeleine and Elliot were communicating through a crack between the worlds. I understood that Madeleine is basically a nomad - she cannot stay in one place for very long. Or she is always running away, for attention? See, even that I do not understand. Why is she always running away? This is not really expounded upon in the novel. She has daddy issues? Her parents are never really invested in her, even though they are filthy rich? I feel like I can infer that, but I wish the author could have more subtly sneaked an explanation in there.
I really do not understand the "Colors" bit of Cello. So, they are monsters? Or are they colors that have an adverse affect on people? Are the people of Cello afraid of colors? What exactly are Colors?! Is it not clear, and therefore, every time there was a Color attack, I was extremely confused. What exactly do the Colors do? One type physically hurts people, another mentally hurts people. So, how does the whole Color thing work? I wish I knew.
I still don't understand the obsession with Newton, Byron, Lovelace, or whoever. So, do Jack and Belle believe in reincarnation? Or is that supposed to be some sort of character reference that just didn't make sense? A good portion of the book is spent harping on those historical figures, and I really do not understand the significance of them.
The ending kind of just flew in my face. There were so many elements of the book that needed to be wrapped up really quickly. This book really dragged on, and then the ending was like BOOM! So many things needed to be resolved in like, a couple of chapters.. It did not work for me. Elliot's father situation, Madeleine's mother, Madeleine's resolution with her father (which, by the way, I feel like we never really got), The Butterfly Child deal... it felt so rushed.
Romance: no love triangle - sort of. But, the romance was SO lacking in this book. From the last line of the synopsis, you'd think the romance would be dynamic and prominent, right? On Elliot's side AND Madeleine's side, not really. In fact, I don't really understand Elliot's romance, and there wasn't really a resolution to Madeleine's romance.
Finally (I could go on, but I won't), I was bored. A lot. It took me several attempts to continue reading, and to finish. The author's writing style is really dry, so I'm not really seeing how the publisher is saying that this book is "funny". Because I didn't really catch on to the humor. Which is sad.
Would I Recommend It:
Not really. I'm sorry, but this book is not for me. The protagonist is like, fourteen. Or fifteen. I think Elliot is fifteen, and Madeleine is fourteen. Or something like that. Either way, not mature enough for me.
Rating:
2 stars. Not the best "fantasy" meets contemporary book out there. Definitely meant for tweens. I really can't understand how the overall rating for this book is so high! But that's just me.
A Corner of White by Jaclyn Moriarty
Book One of The Colors of Madeleine series
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication Date: April 1, 2013
Rating: 2 stars
Source: ARCycling
Summary (from Goodreads):
The first in a rousing, funny, genre-busting trilogy from bestseller Jaclyn Moriarty!
This is a tale of missing persons. Madeleine and her mother have run away from their former life, under mysterious circumstances, and settled in a rainy corner of Cambridge (in our world).
Elliot, on the other hand, is in search of his father, who disappeared on the night his uncle was found dead. The talk in the town of Bonfire (in the Kingdom of Cello) is that Elliot's dad may have killed his brother and run away with the Physics teacher. But Elliot refuses to believe it. And he is determined to find both his dad and the truth.
As Madeleine and Elliot move closer to unraveling their mysteries, they begin to exchange messages across worlds -- through an accidental gap that hasn't appeared in centuries. But even greater mysteries are unfolding on both sides of the gap: dangerous weather phenomena called "color storms;" a strange fascination with Isaac Newton; the myth of the "Butterfly Child," whose appearance could end the droughts of Cello; and some unexpected kisses...
What I Liked:
The characters were likable. Elliot is interesting, as he is desperate to find his father, while trying to get his father's shop back, and capture a Butterfly Child. Madeleine is... weird. It seems like she is supposed to have some depth to her, but I found her a dry and boring protagonist. I really like Jack, because he is super sweet and empathetic. I was never a huge fan of Belle, but she contributed nicely to the story.
The contrast between the Kingdom of Cello and the real World is nicely written. I liked reading about Cello (even though I was very confused most of the time), because it was not what I expected. It's definitely not your typical kingdom. The Princess columns were... weird, but interesting.
What I Did Not Like:
I am going to be very honest: I was so confused throughout this entire book. I ALMOST did not finish this book, which is rare for me - once I start a book, no matter what, I finish it. I really did not understand what was what most of the time. I understand the difference between the two worlds, and that Madeleine and Elliot were communicating through a crack between the worlds. I understood that Madeleine is basically a nomad - she cannot stay in one place for very long. Or she is always running away, for attention? See, even that I do not understand. Why is she always running away? This is not really expounded upon in the novel. She has daddy issues? Her parents are never really invested in her, even though they are filthy rich? I feel like I can infer that, but I wish the author could have more subtly sneaked an explanation in there.
I really do not understand the "Colors" bit of Cello. So, they are monsters? Or are they colors that have an adverse affect on people? Are the people of Cello afraid of colors? What exactly are Colors?! Is it not clear, and therefore, every time there was a Color attack, I was extremely confused. What exactly do the Colors do? One type physically hurts people, another mentally hurts people. So, how does the whole Color thing work? I wish I knew.
I still don't understand the obsession with Newton, Byron, Lovelace, or whoever. So, do Jack and Belle believe in reincarnation? Or is that supposed to be some sort of character reference that just didn't make sense? A good portion of the book is spent harping on those historical figures, and I really do not understand the significance of them.
The ending kind of just flew in my face. There were so many elements of the book that needed to be wrapped up really quickly. This book really dragged on, and then the ending was like BOOM! So many things needed to be resolved in like, a couple of chapters.. It did not work for me. Elliot's father situation, Madeleine's mother, Madeleine's resolution with her father (which, by the way, I feel like we never really got), The Butterfly Child deal... it felt so rushed.
Romance: no love triangle - sort of. But, the romance was SO lacking in this book. From the last line of the synopsis, you'd think the romance would be dynamic and prominent, right? On Elliot's side AND Madeleine's side, not really. In fact, I don't really understand Elliot's romance, and there wasn't really a resolution to Madeleine's romance.
Finally (I could go on, but I won't), I was bored. A lot. It took me several attempts to continue reading, and to finish. The author's writing style is really dry, so I'm not really seeing how the publisher is saying that this book is "funny". Because I didn't really catch on to the humor. Which is sad.
Would I Recommend It:
Not really. I'm sorry, but this book is not for me. The protagonist is like, fourteen. Or fifteen. I think Elliot is fifteen, and Madeleine is fourteen. Or something like that. Either way, not mature enough for me.
Rating:
2 stars. Not the best "fantasy" meets contemporary book out there. Definitely meant for tweens. I really can't understand how the overall rating for this book is so high! But that's just me.
August 15, 2020
La verdad decidí leer este libro pensando que iba a ser rápido y fácil, pero no fue así. El principio fue difícil, porque la verdad no estaba entendiendo, me presentaban muchos personajes y ya no sabia quien era quien o que onda pasaba, me perdí mucho, pero ya pasando la mitad y llegando al final, le agarre gusto al libro y estoy pensando muy seriamente si leer el segundo, pero me hace falta conseguirlo jajaja.
June 11, 2013
This was an interestingly creative book about two people building a relationship across two separate worlds. Madeleine lives in our Cambridge, though at times it's hard to say if it's actually our world as such. Elliot lives in a place with some wild differences from our world—a place that seems to have broken off from our world some centuries back. So Elliot knows that there are different worlds and that his letters really can be read by someone not connected in any way to his own experiences.
That disparity in knowledge and understanding provides the first (and greatest) hurdle the two have to overcome in understanding each other. All Madeleine knows is that the notes she sends through the crack of a parking meter are being answered by someone who insists that colors can exist as independent entities, some of them deadly dangerous, and that he insists that he really can't change the name of his kingdom just because she thinks it sounds silly.
Over the course of the novel, we learn a lot about both characters as the perspective bounces between the two. And one of the first things we learn is that Madeleine isn't really all that clear about her own past and isn't entirely connected to reality, herself. Don't overread that to be more dire than it is—she isn't dangerously disconnected or delusional. It's just that through the course of the book, she comes to doubt her perceptions of her past in important ways that call into question her desires to return to the life of wealth she thinks she enjoyed when her parents were together.
While Madeleine and her mother were sometimes frustrating, Moriarty did a good job of getting me invested in their situation deeply enough that I didn't mind accompanying them on their journey of self-discovery. Adding a journey, for Madeleine at least, of discovering an alternate world she seems to have contacted turned out to work better than I'd have expected. Both Elliot and Madeleine have to work through losing their fathers (though in two very different ways) and coming to terms with their lives that are fundamentally altered from their expectations before everything changed. As they end up helping each other parse their changed circumstances, they also develop an fascinating relationship of their own—one without the possibility of ever meeting or sharing more than their singular cross-world messages.
So while this type of book isn't typically my thing, I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected. So for me, it's a solid three stars, but for anybody truly interested in a solid, dramatic teen story of emotional discovery, I expect they'd find it a four or even five star read.
That disparity in knowledge and understanding provides the first (and greatest) hurdle the two have to overcome in understanding each other. All Madeleine knows is that the notes she sends through the crack of a parking meter are being answered by someone who insists that colors can exist as independent entities, some of them deadly dangerous, and that he insists that he really can't change the name of his kingdom just because she thinks it sounds silly.
Over the course of the novel, we learn a lot about both characters as the perspective bounces between the two. And one of the first things we learn is that Madeleine isn't really all that clear about her own past and isn't entirely connected to reality, herself. Don't overread that to be more dire than it is—she isn't dangerously disconnected or delusional. It's just that through the course of the book, she comes to doubt her perceptions of her past in important ways that call into question her desires to return to the life of wealth she thinks she enjoyed when her parents were together.
While Madeleine and her mother were sometimes frustrating, Moriarty did a good job of getting me invested in their situation deeply enough that I didn't mind accompanying them on their journey of self-discovery. Adding a journey, for Madeleine at least, of discovering an alternate world she seems to have contacted turned out to work better than I'd have expected. Both Elliot and Madeleine have to work through losing their fathers (though in two very different ways) and coming to terms with their lives that are fundamentally altered from their expectations before everything changed. As they end up helping each other parse their changed circumstances, they also develop an fascinating relationship of their own—one without the possibility of ever meeting or sharing more than their singular cross-world messages.
So while this type of book isn't typically my thing, I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected. So for me, it's a solid three stars, but for anybody truly interested in a solid, dramatic teen story of emotional discovery, I expect they'd find it a four or even five star read.
October 14, 2016
This is a human drama and a (sort of) coming of age story of troubled teens. It could have worked if the author kept it at that, but we also have two different worlds connected by said teens through letter-writing, and this confuses the story no end.
As far as characters go, Madeleine is a secretly sciencey, mysterious girl. She was rich, but she and her mother ran away from her father and are now poor. Madeleine is kind of an obnoxious know-it-all in her preachy 'advice' to Elliot, while simultaneously being completely detached from her own problems - weird how she ignored her mother's health for so long.I suppose this could be denial, but I couldn't figure that out through the haze of genres this book was trying to have.
Elliot is the oh-so perfect boy from the Other World. Colours attack people in his world. His father is missing. Everything important happens to him. And that's about it.
There are also about five million side characters that I just wish had been cut - they are given way too much page time and only bog the story down - Pages are dedicated to news articles. And Home-schooling lessons! That seem terribly irresponsible of their parents because it comes off as soo shady! And Homework! And even Thumbelina makes an appearance!
And no.
(The one star is for the cover art of the version I had - Madeleine's clothes, including umbrella, are perfectly recreated. Okay they missed the headband, but as far as cover art goes, this was well done.)
As far as characters go, Madeleine is a secretly sciencey, mysterious girl. She was rich, but she and her mother ran away from her father and are now poor. Madeleine is kind of an obnoxious know-it-all in her preachy 'advice' to Elliot, while simultaneously being completely detached from her own problems - weird how she ignored her mother's health for so long.I suppose this could be denial, but I couldn't figure that out through the haze of genres this book was trying to have.
Elliot is the oh-so perfect boy from the Other World. Colours attack people in his world. His father is missing. Everything important happens to him. And that's about it.
There are also about five million side characters that I just wish had been cut - they are given way too much page time and only bog the story down - Pages are dedicated to news articles. And Home-schooling lessons! That seem terribly irresponsible of their parents because it comes off as soo shady! And Homework! And even Thumbelina makes an appearance!
And no.
(The one star is for the cover art of the version I had - Madeleine's clothes, including umbrella, are perfectly recreated. Okay they missed the headband, but as far as cover art goes, this was well done.)
January 17, 2016
4.5 stars!
March 22, 2015
La cuestión es, Elliot, que me diste un poco de magia.
Me ayudaste a sostener las estrellas en su sitio y evitaste que se cayeran.
Me ayudaste a sostener las estrellas en su sitio y evitaste que se cayeran.
April 17, 2017
A Corner of White a parallel world story (partly set in our world and partly in a fantastical other world -- think Alice in Wonderland or, well, a bunch of other books). But it's even more of a parallel world story than usual, in that the main characters, Madeline and Elliot, live very similar lives. Both live away from their fathers and are missing them. Both come to see what they believe are problematic elements of their fathers in their own personalities. Both of them are dissatisfied with their situation and want to leave it for one reason or another. Both are charming and loved by those around them.
But in some other ways, this book is quite baffling. I spent maybe the first third of it being dissatisfied and somewhat unengaged by Madeline's real-world antics and her life, which was so quirky that it seemed, well, unrealistic. By comparison, Elliot's life -- in the magical kingdom of Cello -- actually seemed more normal. Certainly he had more things going on than strange "homeschooling" classes and slightly deranged (albeit generally well-meaning) friends. His world and story were kept me guessing, whereas Madeline's, well, didn't.
If you'd asked me at 100 pages how I thought I'd be rating A Corner of White, it would have been three-star at best, despite the lovely prose and the unique world of Cello. Which made me sad, because I wanted to love it. Luckily for me, it turns out that once Moriarty got the bit in her teeth and got going, the story picked up and I raced through the rest of it. I didn't see the plot twists coming, and I loved the way that Moriarty wove them all together at the end. I loved how Madeline's introspective rambling about science and history drove Elliot nuts, but also taught him something valuable about his own world.
The way that the book ended, while not exactly cliff-hanger-y, definitely left me wanting more. Happily books two and three have already been released! Yay! (Now, hurry up, Mr Postman!)
Overall, this was a four-star read for me, based on simple maths: three for the start, five for the end. I feel like Madeline would approve of that approach.
But in some other ways, this book is quite baffling. I spent maybe the first third of it being dissatisfied and somewhat unengaged by Madeline's real-world antics and her life, which was so quirky that it seemed, well, unrealistic. By comparison, Elliot's life -- in the magical kingdom of Cello -- actually seemed more normal. Certainly he had more things going on than strange "homeschooling" classes and slightly deranged (albeit generally well-meaning) friends. His world and story were kept me guessing, whereas Madeline's, well, didn't.
If you'd asked me at 100 pages how I thought I'd be rating A Corner of White, it would have been three-star at best, despite the lovely prose and the unique world of Cello. Which made me sad, because I wanted to love it. Luckily for me, it turns out that once Moriarty got the bit in her teeth and got going, the story picked up and I raced through the rest of it. I didn't see the plot twists coming, and I loved the way that Moriarty wove them all together at the end. I loved how Madeline's introspective rambling about science and history drove Elliot nuts, but also taught him something valuable about his own world.
The way that the book ended, while not exactly cliff-hanger-y, definitely left me wanting more. Happily books two and three have already been released! Yay! (Now, hurry up, Mr Postman!)
Overall, this was a four-star read for me, based on simple maths: three for the start, five for the end. I feel like Madeline would approve of that approach.
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