The Passage Readalong: Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

The Passage Readalong

Week 4 – Chapters 19 – 22

And once again, it’s time for The Passage readalong! This week is Viv’s week to host, and you can find that main post here If you’re trying to catch up or wondering what exactly we’re up to, please see our guide to reading along with us, found here.

Elle’s a bit swamped with uni right now (and Kate will soon be taking that position, but more about that coming soon!), so we’ll be sticking with Kate’s thoughts this week. Elle has promised a massive thought-dump when she’s a little less bogged down, so worry not; you’ll be getting her counter-point soon enough!

Kate’s thoughts…

And abruptly, The Passage is a whole different book.

I’m not overstating the experience. Starting Part IV felt like starting an entirely different book. At first, I was frustrated, annoyed, and just – disengaged with the entire thing. It took me probably an hour, all-told, to read the first 10 or so pages; I started it several times and always opted to do other things (including homework!) rather than climb in. I’ve come to distrust Justin Cronin – said in present tense because I still don’t trust him, not after I’ve been jerked here and there into caring about characters that are only stolen from me a half-dozen pages later – and couldn’t get back into the book when it had such a hugely different tone. I had no Wolgast to pull me in, and from the looks of it, no Amy. I simply could not bring myself to care.

Until I started getting into it.

It’s hard to explain how the experience and mood of the settlement struck me. It’s a bit like if Lois Lowry’s The Giver grew up and proceeded to have a love child with George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. There’s this gritty, post-apocalyptic bleakness that is somehow combined with this larger-than-life fantastical element that I really actually came to enjoy by the end of this week’s reading. And for all of my grousing that he jerks around my emotions, Cronin is an excellent character writer. Within the first chapter I adored Alicia, Peter, and Theo, thought Michael was interesting and found Elton delightfully curious while still being strange. I connected in a way I hadn’t since Wolgast took Amy to the carnival, because I believed in these characters. I wanted them to be real people, I had aspirations for them (and theories on romantic attraction – hey, who doesn’t read a book and think about that?!) and I cared about what they were going through. The scene in the station, with Peter and Alicia on the roof and then the attack, put my heart in my throat. The library made my stomach churn and actually horrified me. The mall scene was haunting, mysterious, and brilliantly done. All told, I have to say that I –

I almost don’t have any complaints about Part IV this far.

It’s cautious optimism, though, which bring me to my overall criticism of the book as a whole. My first point, which I’ve said before and I’ll say again, is that I feel jerked around. I want to be invested in these characters and fully involved but it’s so hard when Cronin basically set up the first 250 pages of the book to ensure that every time I got attached to a character, he or she died a gruesome death! I understand, of course, that not every character can ride off into the sunset on an armored white horse, but I just feel that Cronin works too hard to keep his readers off-balance and shock them for the sake of shock. Plus, once again, there are no minor characters; everyone is so fleshed out that I kind of want to beat my head into a wall. I don’t need to know that dying Gabe (who is mentioned about once) has a mentally disabled son, that some random character has four children (complete with their names), or that Arlo and Hollis are identical except for the beard (but Sara can see the difference even if they both have beards). It’s simply too much information. And in a lot of ways, it was why Part IV was hard to get into; it was so laden with description and character information right off the bat that I didn’t have a chance to hit the “flow” of the chapters until something like 15 or 20 pages in.

My second criticism is that I’m sort of wondering what the first part of the book was for. Every composition teacher I’ve ever had, be it for fiction writing or creative non-fiction, has given me the exact same piece of advice: start in the middle. There has to be backstory, has to be exposition, and has to be something that happened before the meat of the plot. Here, it really feels like the first three parts was exposition that, instead of leaving somewhere on his computer labeled “first draft,” Cronin decided to incorporate into the actual novel. As much as I am in love with Wolgast, I have to wonder if the whole wouldn’t have been more coherent and more interesting to read if it’d started with Peter on the Watch than with Amy’s mother trying to cope. I hope that the beginning ends up synching up with the rest of the book more than it has thus far, but more than that? I hope this doesn’t sow the seeds that in Part VII, we’ll be moving on to some other era of human existence, a few thousand miles and a hundred years away from this one, and forced to learn a whole new set of characters in a whole new setting with a whole new primary conflict.

I want to believe that maybe the book has gotten marginally better, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

So what do you think? Part IV: Better or worse than Parts I through III? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong: Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

The Passage Readalong

Week 3 – Chapters 12 – 18

Welcome to our third installment of The Passage readalong! As we’ve finished Part III, we’re back with new thoughts on the latest chapters! If you’re looking to catch up or wondering what this is all about, please see our guide to the readalong, which you can find here.

Please note: a lot happened in this section of the book, and there was absolutely no way to avoid some pretty major spoilers. If you’re not caught up, or you’re thinking about reading the book, please proceed with caution. There was literally no way to describe this section of the book or comment thoughtfully on it without some spoilers. Nature of the beast, I’m afraid!

Synopsis – Chapters 12 – 18

Chapter Twelve begins with a sickly, exhausted Sikes arriving at Wolgast’s cell within the compound with a purpose: Amy is in the compound as well, and they suspect she’s dying. Wolgast finds Amy in isolation, in a coma, and is told that he can only see her if he wears a special suit that will prevent him from contracting the virus. He goes in unprotected, itself. Meanwhile, Grey has started to lose hours, unable to recount them, and spends most of his time feeling ill and off-center. He begins to notice changes in the people he works with, both in their physiques and their demeanors. Another change has come in the form of Anthony Carter, who is now not really Anthony at all, and who manages to kill one of the men who cares for him, drinking his blood. Richards, who in his own right is as haunted as Grey and the others, suspects Anthony is the meanest of the lot. Richards also gets the disturbing news that a young black woman has arrived looking for Wolgast.

The black woman is in fact Sister Lacey, whose trip to the compound is recounted in Chapter Thirteen. Following the voice of God in her head, she walked, hitchhiked, and stowed-away to Colorado, eventually making it into the facility by hiding in the back of an Army-issue supply truck. Richards, who isn’t sure how to deal with her, goes to release Doyle from his cell, only to find that Doyle somehow knew she was coming. Before Doyle and Lacey are reunited, however, Grey – guided once again by the voice of Zero in the back of his mind – walks into Zero’s chamber and allows Zero to kill him and also, to escape.

The security breach picks up steam in Chapter Fourteen, when Richards discovers that all of the subjects have escaped and the soldiers throughout the facility are panicking rather than following protocol. One destroys the elevator and then power is lost, trapping Wolgast and a barely-conscious Amy in her isolation room. Dr. Lear comes in to rescue them, helping them to maneuver past the dead and dying and into an air vent, but ultimately stays behind to ensure Amy’s safety. Wolgast manages to get Amy through the ducts, up a ladder, and into the main area of the facility. He’s reunited both with Doyle and Lacey, where Doyle provides him keys to a get-away car. Despite the fact they exit together, both Doyle and Lacey stay in order to distract the subjects.

Chapter Fifteen begins Part III and chronicles Wolgast and Amy’s escape from Colorado to Oregon. They make their way to a camp Wolgast spent summers at as a boy, and as they settle in, Wolgast remembers meeting and falling in love with his ex-wife, Lila. He thinks of her often as they settle in at the camp, as well as detailing the changes in Amy: she no longer can tolerate the feel of the sun on her skin or in her eyes, she sleeps during the day but stays up at night, and she seems to know things she otherwise shouldn’t. But they can’t stay at the camp without supplies, forcing Wolgast to go down to a small store. There, he discovers that the virus and its carriers has spread from the incident at the compound to cover a large portion of the Midwest, putting the country into panic. The man at the store wars Wolgast that the virus is even worse than mentioned in the newspaper.

Wolgast and Amy continue to stay at the camp throughout Chapter Sixteen, as well, though the situation continually becomes more dire. Forest fires ravage the area and nearly destroy the camp; Chicago falls to those with the virus and California secedes from the union; the man who runs the general store is found dead. As they settle in for the winter in Chapter Seventeen, though, it appears that they may be safe from the woes of the rest of the world. A man arrives from nearby Washington after having been attacked by someone with the virus, confirming Wolgast’s fears that they weren’t as safe as they thought. Though he shoots the man to protect them, the damage has been done; soon, a nearby city is “cleansed” by a nuclear blast (as rumors’d said was happening to other infected areas) and blows out the window in the front of the lodge where Amy and Wolgast are staying. Though Amy is unharmed, Wolgast’s leg is pierced by a large piece of glass. Despite his very best efforts, Wolgast is unable to mend the wound properly and it gets infected. Amy takes care of him as best she can, but when he wakes up one night with the realization that he’s dying, he discovers that the trees are full of those with the virus – and Amy is gone.

Chapter Eighteen is entirely an excerpt from the diaries of a woman named Ida Jaxon, called “Auntie,” recounting her experiences during the evacuation of Philidelphia during some point we can only assume was contemporaneous to Wolgast’s last stand. In it, Ida recalls the restrictive lives of her family as the city was placed under martial law during the run-up to the “jumps” arriving, as well as her father’s decision to place her on a FEMA train that was leaving the city for safer places. She is eventually delivered to the newly-seceded California, where she is reunited with her cousin Terrence and proceeds to settle into a FEMA facility. She mentions things we’ve not heard of before, such as First Families, Watchers, the Chous, and the Time Before, but doesn’t elaborate. The end of the chapter marks the end of Part III.

Kate’s thoughts…

I can officially say, with meaning, that this book has turned into a disappointment.

I mentioned this to Elle on the phone this morning, and I think it bears repeating: Cronin’s habit of killing people off arbitrarily and without any real warning is now a full-out gimmick. I cannot even describe to you in words how frustrating it is that he builds up literally dozens of characters with all these meaningful details only to tear them down pages or chapters later with absolutely no remorse. Deaths in literature should mean something. They should make your heart climb into your throat, should make you want to weep, should stand on your belly and choke you, but in The Passage, they just feel – empty. Throughout the compound being destroyed and dozens of established characters all dying, I had absolutely no emotional connection to the experience. I didn’t care if they got out alive or not, because I knew some would and some wouldn’t and that the decision of who fit in which category was completely arbitrary. Because there’s absolutely no way to tell which characters matter, you either are forced to become emotionally connected to all of them – or none. And sadly, I think or none is much more likely.

I think that’s my biggest beef with this book, all things considered: there’s no emotional connection.  I don’t really care about any of the characters, or what happens to them; there’s no impetuous for me to keep reading. I tend to forget the book even exists until Sunday or Monday, where I read my five chapters, put it down, and then forget about it again. There’s not enough there to compel me to keep going, to light a fire where I am desperate to follow Amy to the next step of her adventure, and honestly? Killing Wolgast has stripped me of the only character I actually liked, which is just going to make it harder for me to feel anything about this book. Instead of connecting with it like a novel, I connect with it like I do my casebook for class, reading what I have to and then being finished when I turn the last page of the assignment.

The camping chapters in this section, though, were probably my favorite, I think in part because of Wolgast and part simply because it was a break from the disjointed, sharply segmented point-of-view jumping which’d taken place up until then. For the first time, it felt like a discreet narrative, and it made me really want to just take that part of the story and turn it into a novella. Man rescues little girl, protects her from the crazy world outside his control, man dies. Instead, those chapters were over too quickly, and we were back to another disjointed segment, one I’m not even sure belonged there. And I am back to not caring, because now the only emotional tie I had to the book is gone.

It’s funny, because the American edition starts with no fewer than four pages of quotes that just sing absolute praises of The Passage. I think nearly every newspaper on the planet is quoted somewhere at the beginning – and I can’t figure out why. I can’t figure out what in this book is so amazing that the world’s newspapers are writing odes to it. I’m a third of the way into it. You’d think I’d have some idea by now.

Instead, I’m just continually let down and disappointed, and frankly, very tired of it. I’m glad it’s a fast read, but mostly, I just want it to be done. And that is just sad.

Elle’s thoughts…

Elle is feeling a bit under the weather right now, but I’m authorized to tell you her thoughts will be coming very soon!

So what do you think? Did you enjoy the first few chapters? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong: Week 2 – Chapters 6 – 11

The Passage Readalong

Week 2 – Chapters 6 – 11

Welcome to our second dealing of The Passage thoughts. We’re late getting our thoughts up on this one (in fact, we only have Kate’s!) but don’t worry, next week we’ll be right back on the ball.

For the main post this week, please go here. For all posts so far, please go here.

Kate’s thoughts…

This past week was a very busy one for me, such that I worried I wouldn’t be able to get to The Passage at all. Of course, part of this is that I judge how much I’m enjoying a book on my urgency about it (if I’m loving it, I will find the half-hour to read; if I’m feeling torn, I will spend that half-hour playing SimCity or watching television), and so, as Sunday night arrived and I’d read very little, I took it as confirmation of the flaws I talked about last week. The disjointed nature of the book, and the way it jumped around, was starting to grate on me; the dozens of unanswered questions and microscopic red herrings were forcing me away from The Passage and onto other activities.

Then, Sunday night, I sat down to read.

And within less than 24 hours, I’d finished the 80-odd pages to bring me through Chapter 11 – and then read a good portion of Chapter 12, too, because I couldn’t stop.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still of two minds about The Passage. I feel like the book is a bit schizophrenic in its approach in that every paragraph on every page is stuffed with meaning. Every character, even the minor ones, burst with personality, which was charming at first but now is just frustrating; I don’t need to know every detail about the girl Doyle is flirting with or the woman at the zoo with the baby, thank you. I think I know why Cronin is doing it, attempting to make the reader care about every individual in the book on his or her merits so, when something happens, it’s all the more shocking!, but it over-fills the pages. The book would feel like a much tighter read if some of that detailing were removed. Instead, it feels like Charles Dickens and Dan Brown had a supernatural love child and named him Justin Cronin.

In the same way, the plot is starting to irk on me. The atmosphere is still perfect – the facility is incredibly creepy, the “subjects” have honestly made my stomach twist and my heart pound a few different times, and seeing the slow changes through some of the characters feels like watching a really well-executed movie – but there are just too many holes. Everything goes unexplained while hundreds of little hints are dropped here, there, and everywhere, and it feels incredibly disjointed to me. I feel like I’m supposed to feel a bit like Wolgast – just someone doing his job, dragged into this insane situation without any idea what it actually is, and slowly coming to the realization that something very wrong is happening – but Cronin fails to execute that point of view properly. It feels like a flawed The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in that I, the reader, am meant to be just as confused and clueless as the characters in the book, but there isn’t enough there for me to feel fully included, either. The best comparison I can draw is walking into a room where a friend is watching a movie and trying to figure out what is going on. Actually, it’s more like walking into a room where a friend is watching the second movie in a trilogy and trying to figure out what was going on.

That said, there are elements I absolutely love. Amy is interesting and the more we see of her, the more I want to know. The scene with her at the zoo made my belly twist (but was then promptly forgotten; I wish the threads were better followed through); her relationship with Wolgast is absolutely perfect. I love the theme of lying/hiding the truth that is running throughout and the ease with which people deceive each other. Wolgast is possibly my favorite character and the scene with he and Amy at the fun fair really pulled at my heartstrings. The scenes Subject Zero and his moments with Grey made me grateful I was reading in the well-lit library. I want to know what the actual virus is and what really is happening in the facility. I definitely want to know more.

I just wish the knowing would happen more quickly. Instead, I’m starting to get the feeling that The Passage is about 200 pages longer than it needs to be – a bit, again, like Dickens.

The Passage Readalong: Week 1 – Chapters 1 – 5

The Passage Readalong

Week 1 – Chapters 1 – 5

Welcome to the The Passage Readalong! Thanks for stopping by and joining in with us, we’re hoping for lots of interesting discussions in the coming weeks. If you’re looking for the schedule for each week or for a catch-up of past posts and discussions, you can bookmark our The Passage Readalong page and find everything linked up.

Before we kick off this week, we’d like to announce the winners of the two copies of the novel which were advertised for our giveaway over at Vivienne’s blog! Our international winner is Carlyle and our UK winner is Jules. Congratulations, gals, your copies will be winging their way to you soon!

One last quick note: there will be spoilers for The Passage in the following synopsis. I’ve tried to keep them light, particularly on chapter five, but as we progress along they will be a necessary evil. Beware those who have not kept up!

And now on with the show…

Synopsis – Chapters 1 – 5

As The Passage begins, we are introduced to Jeanette, a woman who works in a small diner in Iowa. Jeanette finds herself pregnant by a married man whom she never identifies to her father and goes through with the pregnancy, giving birth to her beloved child Amy. Unfortunately, Bill Reynolds refuses to stay out of Jeanette’s life and inexplicably reappears, forcing himself upon her and Amy and moving into Jeanette’s house. Bill is violent to Jeanette in front of toddler Amy and she eventually throws him out but she finds herself unable to make rent and has no choice but to sleep in her car with Amy until she’s made enough money sleeping with men to keep a regular hotel room. Jeanette finds herself on the wrong end of a hire one night and shoots the young man, fleeing with Amy to a nunnery before leaving her there and vanishing without a trace.

We are then introduced to Jonas Lear, PHD, a molecular scientist who sends a series of letters to his friend and fellow professor, Paul. The emails detail a mission which is being undertaken deep into the jungle in conjunction with the army – something which not everyone is pleased about – but unfortunately the party is attacked by swarms of bats and is left scattered, injured and dead. The professor calls for an evacuation, although some of the scientists are slowly healing despite the disease killing others.

The following chapter introduces us to Brad Wolgast, a divorcee FBI agent who is part of Project NOAH. This military project, we discover, is a means to finding human test subjects for an antiviral drug which can cure any disease and prolong human life indefinitely. Wolgast is uncomfortable and uneasy about his assignment as we watch him recruit Death Row inmate Anthony Carter. In the end, Wolgast is given an assignment to travel to pick up the abandoned Amy in the nunnery.

Finally, we are introduced to Grey, an attendant who minds Patient Zero, a man who perhaps floats, hangs or levitates (no one is sure which) and glows in the glow from heatlights. Grey works for Project Noah as a condition of his release as one of the many attendees of the various ‘Subjects’ kept within the compound. And let’s not forget the mysterious Richards, who knows bad jobs when he sees them and wants to know what anyone would want with a little girl named Amy…

Elle’s thoughts…

I was terrified when I first started The Passage. Not, you must understand, because I was worried about its subject matter but because of the first chapter. I had, as Kate below notes, extreme problems with the first chapter. I dislike the decayed, dismal atmosphere of the tiny dust town with no way out. I disagree that you have to be a mid-westerner to understand the feeling that such a setting carries – Cronin’s first chapter creates the kind of setting that I would expect to find in some Australian fiction, John Steinbeck’s bleaker works and some particularly bleak and endless films like Halle Berry’s 2001 Monster’s Ball.

If I’m honest, I had problems with Jeanette’s inevitability, with her seeming unwillingness to fight and the way she invited a man she didn’t want into her home and did nothing about it. I have problems with the concept that she was on a spiral that she couldn’t stop and that no matter what happened, she was going to be the victim of men. I see the potential for this theme to continue with Amy and I’m interested – and a little worried, still – for where Justin Cronin takes the rest of his female characters.

The following chapters, however, sold the book to me. Unlike Kate, I loved the choppy nature of the first few chapters, which just seemed to work for me until the threads came together, and I have to be completely honest in that I’ll keep reading to see what happens to Brad Wolgast who I love. There were some stunning lines in Brad’s chapter such as:

Wolgast looked down at himself to discover he’d slept the night in his clothes. This was becoming something of a habit; ever since he’d gotten the email from Lila, he’d spent most nights on the sofa of his apartment, watching television until he fell asleep, as if going to bed like a normal person was something he was no longer qualified to do.

Brad kills me and I feel like there’s more to his decision to accept the job for Project NOAH than meets the eye.

I loved the epistolary style of the emails – I love emails in fiction the same way I love letters and telegrams in nineteenth-century fiction – and I loved feeling the way that the tension mounted in the emails from Jonas. I thought the blank one was particularly clever. They reminded me of the importance of letters rather like some scenes from Wilkie Collins and sensationalist fiction. The atmosphere also reminded me of some of the early scenes of Heart of Darkness.

So, I’m hooked. Gimme more.

Kate’s thoughts…

There is good and there’s bad about The Passage, and I’m not going to pretend that, if the book ended right now, I would give it a perfect 10.

On the one hand, and arguably the best hand, the book is incredibly atmospheric. It gripped me from the first and dragged me down into its dark depths. And “dark” is the right word, because from the first page, there is something haunting about Cronin’s tone. As early as the first few pages, I kept expecting something scary to happen because of the bleak desolation I felt while I read. I gazed upon the run-down, empty Iowa town with not much more there than a restaurant and a gas station; I sweated through the oppressive heat and humidity of the South American jungle. Every detail feels calculated to make you keep your lights on and look behind you, even if you know nothing’s there. I especially (unlike Elle) liked the first chapter’s bleak helplessness and the inevitable feeling of Jeanette’s fate. Granted, I think you have to be a Midwesterner to fully appreciate it, or spend some time in another depressed, rural area that most people leave only when they die (and sometimes, not even then), but it really gripped me. I could’ve read a whole story about Jeanette and her downtrodden Midwestern life and never complained, but I am a bit of a sucker for Americana in that respect. The atmosphere has yet to let me down.

Similarly, I really like the characters. I thought Jeanette was sympathetic and I really like the complexities of Sister Lacey – and the nuns with whom she works. Amy interests me in a cautious way, like when you’re reading a mystery and know someone coming out of the bathroom is a clue but don’t yet know whether it’s a red herring or something you should care about. And I was most impressed by chapter three, watching as Wolgast and Doyle went from empty shells to actual characters (especially Wolgast) and wondering how Cronin’d managed to evolve them so seamlessly. I wouldn’t mind watching a television show that’s The Adventures of Wolgast and Doyle, I liked them so much! There’s clearly a complexity in every single character, this wonderful creation of very real people, with very real personalities and quirks. I like that.

But I do have one great big glaring gripe that is set apart from the rest of my praise, and that is this: the beginning of the book is so disjointed. I read the first chapter after dinner one night and then couldn’t start the second for a few days, and I was shocked at how dramatically different the two were. Not just in structure (I quite like the e-mails in the second chapter), but in content. The story of Jeanette and Amy was replaced by researchers in the wilds of South America, and I just – couldn’t see the connection. And they were followed up by Wolgast and Doyle, who again didn’t seem to fit into the scheme of the previous chapters. Each chapter was great, in isolation –pitch-perfect, really well-organized, atmospheric and addicting and worth reading more of – but that was exactly the problem: they felt like isolated chapters. Parts of a different whole and I couldn’t really thread them together. There was a reference to South America in the third chapter that tied in into the second, but it really wasn’t until well into the fourth chapter that I stopped feeling like The Passage was three books in one, and I didn’t like that feeling. I don’t want a disjointed jumble of characters and plots, I want a coherent thread running through everything. I didn’t feel like I had that, and it was incredibly jarring.

I obviously can’t rate a book at this point, so I’ll just say “so far, so good.” I’m enjoying it but it’s not my favorite, it’s picking up but I am not yet glued to my seat like all the quotes all over the U.S. edition promises I will be, and I think I will probably quite like it – once it gets moving the rest of the way. Until then, I will remain cautiously optimistic that it keeps improving the way the first few chapters did, and that it really will become a coherent whole.

So what do you think? Did you enjoy the first few chapters? We’d love to hear in the comments! If you posted on your blog about the Readalong, please leave us a link so we can pop it on the end of this post!

The Passage Readalong + Giveaway and Some News!

Good evening, fellow Memoirites! We have goodies and goodies and newsies and goodies for you today!

First of all, you have no doubt glimpsed our loverly new side banner. We are pleased to announce…

The Passage – The Readalong

Cohosted by Serendipity Reviews & The Book Memoirs

What is a Readalong? A Readalong of Justin Cronin’s The Passage. On Wednesday of every week hosted alternatively, Vivienne from Serendipity Reviews and Elle and Kate from The Book Memoirs will post a five chapter synopsis and their thoughts on each segment.

Why a Readalong? Can we join in? The Passage is a chunky tome and we think it would be better if we all read it together! We encourage participation and discussion in the comments and in posts on your own blog! If you’d like to join in, why not grab our banner and use it on your site? Note: header banner coming before the Readalong starts! You’ll find the schedule below – each week, Elle will link up the post on The Passage Readalong page on our blog so that you can reach our thoughts and discussions.

The Schedule

24/08/11 The Book Memoirs Ch 1 – 5 End on pg 119
31/08/11 Serendipity Reviews   Ch 6 – 11    End on pg 212
07/09/11 The Book Memoirs Ch 12 – 18 End on pg 331
14/09/11 Serendipity Reviews Ch 19 – 22 End on pg 418
21/09/11 The Book Memoirs   Ch 23 – 29 End on pg 517
28/09/11 Serendipity Reviews  Ch 30 – 41 End on pg 620
05/10/11 The Book Memoirs Ch 42 – 53 End on pg 728
12/10/11 Serendipity Reviews  Ch 54 – 60 End on pg 815
19/10/11 The Book Memoirs   Ch 61 – 69 End on pg 908
26/10/11 Serendipity Reviews  Ch 70 – END End on last page.

Giveaway – The Passage Readalong

To celebrate our Readalong, we’re giving away two copies of the book – one UK only and one INTERNATIONAL – and you can find the giveaway link here. If you can’t access the link, check our Viv’s information post here instead. Don’t miss out!

And some news…

Normally we wouldn’t post such messages here on the blog but since The Book Memoirs was founded, we’ve found a little group of lovely fellow bloggers who have been a source of inspiration and constant friendship to us and Daphne over at Loving Books is one of our constants! She’s holding an awesome Birthday Bash Extravaganza over at her blog from 15th – 21st to celebrate her birthday so do head on over and look!

And that’s all from us! We’ll see you soon!