The Hazel Wood

This book was so beautiful! Loved it!

Brilliant. Thats all that is coming to me right now thinking back to the book. I mean it is sort of Alice in wonderland and has all that craziness but at the same time it is much more than that. I do not know how to exactly explain this book but “crazy” is one word that comes to my mind. This is in all meaning a roller coaster book. The journey, and mind it there is an actual journey involved in the book, and it is exhilarating, crazy and absolutely page-turner. Hazel wood is a crazy roller coaster but a complete must readI had seen this book doing its round in all the book clubs, blogs and vlogs. So naturally i had a curiosity as to what the book was all about and had badly wanted to read it. Then of course the pretty cover didn’t hurt much too. I mean look at that cover. They are gorgeous. Both hardcover and paperback have different versions and both are equally eye catching.My advice to you apart from the obvious one to read it like right now, is to actually go for the book without reading its synopsis. Because what the book has to offer can’t be truly explained in bunch of lines because once you start reading the book, it totally takes on a different form.For me the book is divided into two phases. One before the ride to Hazelwood and the other before it where things are comparitively happening in the real world and still sane. But both the phases are absolutely amazing and the book just keeps getting better and better with each chapters. The second half is almost like an alice in wonderland experience. Totally insane. Totally weird but at the same time addictive.Funny that the book talks about a fairy tale when it itself felt nothing less to a mesmerising fairy tale story capable to pull one into its charm. The book is everything everyone is talking about and it is a must read. I think you are missing out on a gorgeous and a fantastic read if you are not reading this one.

Alice's grandmother Althea is a famous writer. Alice has never met her grandmother and also hasn't read any of her stories. Ella wants Alice to stay away from her grandmother. She doesn't allow any contact. Bad luck is following Ella and Alice and Althea's estate, Hazel Wood, is the last place they should be. Ella and Alice are constantly on the run and they have moved many times, they leave as soon as what's following them is catching up. Alice is curious about Althea and her dark fairytales, but Ella isn't giving her any information. What is her mother keeping from her?When Alice and Ella finally have some stability in their lives Ella disappears, she's taken by faul smelling people and there's a link between the abduction and Althea's stories. If Alice wants to find her mother she has to become part of her grandmother's dangerous world. However, Alice doesn't know anything about it. Fortunately one of her classmates is a big fan. Finch has read Althea's stories numerous times and he knows a lot about Alice's grandmother. Will he be able to help Alice with her search? Alice's mother warned her not to go to Hazel Wood, but that's exactly where they're headed. Will Alice finally discover her own story and will she be able to locate Ella? Alice is about to deal with dangerous magic, will she survive?The Hazel Wood is a terrific gripping story. I was immediately intrigued by Alice. She has a fascinating multilayered personality. There are plenty of hidden depths in her character and Alice doesn't completely know herself. I loved the secrets that evolve around her, she has dreams, but she's ignorant about most of them and that made me really curious. Althea is a mystery and the worlds she writes about are dark, dangerous and intriguing. I couldn't wait to find out the connection between Alice's bad luck and her grandmother's stories. Alice's adventures kept me on the edge of my seat. While looking for her mother she finds herself in one bizarre situation after another and I was mesmerized by her journey from beginning to end.Melissa Albert skillfully mixes worlds, realities, fairytales and dreams. I loved the way she describes Alice's personality, her family history and the tumultuous road she has to travel. Every part of it is exciting and filled with sparkling energy. I was impressed by the way Melissa Albert tells her story, it's controlled chaos, mixed with surreal twists and turns, devious enchantments and strange and complicated surprises. I greatly admired the creativity of the story, it's truly magical and absolutely spellbinding. I highly recommend this fantastic book.

According to Masterclass, ‘portal fiction centres around characters who move from their present reality to another world via a portal.’ Undeniably ALICE PROSERPINE the main protagonist of THE HAZEL WOOD by Melissa Albert enters – by way of a ‘portal’ - into a different world, but it’s not as if she’s travelling from the normal to the abnormal, she’s merely crossing from one condition of weirdness to another! Utah, Iowa, Madison, Tempe, Providence, Chicago; the list goes on and on. It isn’t just ELLA, Alice’s mother who has itchy feet. There’s the grandmother ALTHEA, writer of dark fairy tales and quite possibly the source of the ‘strange bad luck’ we are told about in the cover blurb. ‘After Althea died, we stopped moving.’ That’s what you think!Though this novel’s time line dips and dives like an angry fly, the reader first encounters Alice as a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl living with Ella in a Manhattan apartment owned not by her father - whose identity she doesn’t even know – but by Harold. That Alice has ever been to school at all seems a miracle in itself but there she is in a real school with real lockers which I suppose might just qualify for the ‘reality’ from which she is soon to depart. And it is standing by these lockers that she meets classmate Finch. By the way, don’t get too attached to Ellery Finch, but then the reader might well ask, how could you possibly get attached to a hole in the air? Somehow, Finch’s character just doesn’t seem to ever emerge. But then one might say, ‘neither does Alice’s’ – surprising, considering that for most of the novel the reader is trapped in an internal monologue with her. Finch’s only role it seems is as a bank for Alice because unsurprisingly as a dependent, not only does Alice have no life experience, she doesn’t have any money either, so when the two of them visit Alice’s – sorry, Harold’s – apartment during the day from school, discover that Ella has vanished, get a fleeting impression of a heavily tattooed human(?) accompanied by a burdensome stink, and are confronted by Harold pointing a gun at them, Alice decides it’s time to flee, which - as something she’s apparently spent most of her very short life doing - is probably where she feels most comfortable.If this scenario all seems a little wearisome, this is actually the boring bit, so reader take heart and press on! The most interesting section of the novel is when Alice actually ‘steps through the looking glass’ and arrives at Halfway Wood in her quest to find her missing mother – though more vital is the need for her to visit The Hazel Wood, the decayed estate of Althea, Alice’s legendary grandmother. These are not just places, they are part of HINTERLAND, more to the point Tales From The Hinterland which was the title of Althea’s collection of grim (or should it be grimm) short stories. Hinterland is a culture, its inhabitants speak in a ‘Hinterlandy’accent, they sometimes have violent traits. Hinterland has the power to defy time, it slows it down, it can kidnap and kill. Folk Alice encounters there are either ‘story,’ ’ex-story,’ or ‘refugee,’ and here is a spoiler; Alice is ‘story’, she’s ‘Alice-Three-Times’, the ice-inflicted ‘heroine’ of one of the tales of dread.So, as you can see the author is having real fun and games with the notion of ‘story,’ and in contradiction to Stephen King’s well-known maxim that ‘situation’ comes first, then ‘character’ and then ‘plot’ – perhaps the reverse of Dan Brown’s modus operandi, Albert is exploring the idea that all these are subordinate to the power of ‘the story.’I found this a fascinating, fun, and even creepy concept. I would say that this novel would have better effect at two thirds it’s length ie. around the 200pp mark – but of course that’s commercially a ‘no-go’. It’s absolutely choc full of literary references; Jane Eyre, Peter Pan, and perhaps rather predictably ‘Janet,’ the proto-feminist heroine of the ballad of Tam Lin who makes an appearance as ‘the spinner.’ And they go on and on. It reminds me of one of those over-stocked hardware stores you sometimes come across in uptown Manhattan, where you go in, ask for a thermos flask and instead of them showing you half a dozen as you might be shown in John Lewis London, the assistant waves at shelves which have 500 thermos flasks! Very American, would an English author approach this in a very different way? This is only my opinion whereas others may see it differently.My other criticism is it’s similarly overstocked with CGIs – computer-generated images, but that’s something which now dominates fantasy literature, almost as if the film existed long before the book. C.S. Lewis never had that problem! That again is only my view and others may fervently disagree.

Liked it a lot, strong heroine and a dark tale! One star less for the excessive use of abstract and subjective similes, and the condition of the book received.