Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children
by Ransom RiggsA mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs.It
Read ReviewAugust
Genre:
15
4
Opening with the graphic description of a car accident, the main characters, Tristian and Grace are injured, trapped and facing death. They share their complex stories and interwoven lives.
Tristian has grown up in the City, a brilliant student whose studies has centered on philosophy and free will. Grace has grown up outside of the City, a life of hardship and often desperation. Yet their lives have touched and retouched each other. Is it fate? Is it love?
For readers who take pleasure in a philopshical read.
(4 votes)
Reviews
Jun 23,2012
This book is crazy. A brilliant type of crazy that has your mind spinning round and round and round and round and round and round.
Philosophy is a central theme in this book, and the way that situations are nutted out and debated over really leave you starting to think in the same manner. It is a very good book.
Jun 02,2011
A most unusual and challenging story. It is told from the location of a car which has turned upside down after a crash. Two young people, who appear to be strangers, are trapped and possibly seriously injured. As they converse while hanging from their seatbelts in the upturned car, they retell events in their lives that have led to the accident. All is not as it seems, nor is this a random event.
This is a novel about choices and free will. If you enjoy philosophical puzzles this is a book for you.
Mar 21,2011
Told mostly in flashbacks as Grace and Tristan (pictured in their current predicament on the cover) talk their way through the long night after the ‘accident’ that has left them (and us) hanging.
As they tell their life story culminating in their current state the reader is happily enjoying the narrative when one is forced to back track and re read the philosophical tract on free will. I have avoided the arguments around free will since my university days as it does my head in.
Here, Beckett springs it gently from the story, interweaving it in such a way that you have no choice but to think it through. Unfortunately, there are still no clear answers but the books gives a great mental workout without leaving the characters hanging at the end.
Mar 11,2011
Tristan's tale is one of hardship, discipline and learning. Growing up somewhat sheltered his determination and capacity for learning drove him from his home and towards the church, there thought, prayer and higher learning were open to him. His life was all planed out ahead of him, a life full of promise and God. Then one night something happened that made him question all that he believed. One night he met Grace and his life was changed forever.
Grace's tale is a story of misunderstandings, mistreatment and loss. Her childhood was strict and rigorous but also sheltered. As a naive girl Grace was easily led by her heart and an eagerness to please others, and as fate and circumstance conspired against her she was cast out from the protection of her childhood home and left to her own devices. As her life spiralled away from her control she at least could hold on to one thing, her angel.
August is largely a philosophical debate on the soul, what it means to have freewill and what it is to be free. A deeply thoughtful look at the way religion, society and circumstance shape who we are and how at our very essence we are beings of instinct as shown through our actions. Theology, love and life clash in this thrilling tale of chance, destiny and the chaos that is the human mind.
