Enjoy For Free The Other Half Of Augusta Hope Conceived By Joanna Glen Available Through Multimedia Format

Other Half of Augusta Hope is about twins Augusta and Julia who lives in a little town in England, Augusta is the odd twin, She reminded me a bit of Eleanor Oliphant, She is an odd child and loves words, Her favourite book is the dictionary, She finds hard to fit in life, Her sister Julia is the normal child and is always there for her sister, The story continues telling us of the summers they spend travelling with their parents, They share everything together until she meets Diego and both girls drift apart and then tragedy strikes, And Augusta is never the same again
The story has an alternate one, The story of Parfait, who lives in the town called Burundi in Africa, He has hopes and dreams, to make a better life for himself and his family ad escape the Civil war, He decides to buy a boat with his brother Zion they sail away to Spain,
This is a beautifully emotionally written novel by Joanna Glen, It is one of them thought provoking books that will keep you thinking about long after you read it,.half from me. The author has created two stories from very different worlds running parallel very successfully and keeps the reader in suspense as to when they will finally merge together.
It is Augusta's family's dramatic change in everyday life and tragedy that sees her young adulthood grow into one of some wisdom and one that finally merges with that of Parfait's.


Augusta is a twin with Julia but they have different birthdays because Augusta has taken longer to emerge and was born past the stroke of midnight into not only a new day but a new month.
Chalk and cheese would best describe them Julia is pretty, compliant and with a calm demeanor while Augusta is the exact opposite, one of those kids where "why" in their vocabulary is ever constant.
Her father's exasperation with her is understandable, she questions and challenges everything, I loved Augusta, ever enquiring, prepared to speak her mind and dropping the odd slang word, Emerging into a teenager, the author has identified so clearly with this time of life and will have the reader splitting their sides with the teenage humour and in particular when "double entendre" is introduced.
Augusta and Julia live in a quiet part of England where apart from houses being pulled down for a shopping centre it is an uneventful place.
Augusta is a day dream traveller convinced that life has so much more to offer than spending it in the same village, Spain becoming her dream.


In another part of the world Parfait lives in Burundi, war torn Africa, Tutsi and Hutu, He is the eldest of seven children, This is such a sharp contrast to the safe life of the English family, Parfait, the eldest child has watched the death of his parents and slow destruction of his family from the repercussions of war.
Understandably he is desperate for a safe place to live and through the influence of a Spanish priest dreams of a life in Spain.
His young brother Zion is Parfait's shadow and shares the same dream, Two other surviving brothers, do not share this dream, the travel distance seems impossible and make their own decisions for a future life.
Tragedy strikes one more time for Parfait but the strength of his character and determination see him rise above it all,

My thanks to Netgalley and Publishers HarperCollins Australia for the opportunity to read and review this fabulous story,stars, A really strong debut novel by Joanna Glen which goes straight into my desert island books shortlist, In it she talks much of the Spanish word duende as being when several factors all combine at once to cause a perfect feeling and/or situation.
I really feel she creates duende for the reader here too, Its all too rare that a good plot coincides with beautiful, intelligent writing to give such an absorbing amp poignant read but following Augusta amp Parfaits emotional journeys to happiness is definitely that rarity.


. ”You spend the first part of life binding yourselves together and the second tearing yourselves apart, Its like theres something wrong with the system, ” “So where is all that time, Augusta he said, Perhaps well find it in heaven, I said, which was a surprising thing to say, and came out of my mouth without me thinking about it.
Or would it be hell said Mr Sánchez, If you found the past, all piled up by the side of the road, All the things youd ever said, All the things youd ever thought, All the things youd ever done, ”

The Other Half of Augusta Hope is the first novel by British author and teacher of Spanish, Joanna Glen, In the beginning, the other half of Augusta Hope is, of course, her by minutes older twin sister, Julia, For twin sisters, they are very different, in appearance and character, “Julia, fair, quiet and contained, happy inside herself, inside the house, humming and me, quite the opposite, straining to leave, dark, outspoken, walking in the wind, railing.
”

Still, they are each others home, much more than the house at Number One Willow Crescent, Hedley Green, “You feel her tears before they fall and you want to stop them, you so want to stop them, though you cant, thats the truth of it.
You hear her laugh before it comes, and hearing her laugh makes you laugh too, Her lovely bright laugh. In this way, your twin is your home, ”

But something in that lifelong connection breaks after a certain vacation morning in La Higuera, Spain, For a long time, Augusta just doesnt know why, To Augusta, La Higuera feels more like home than Hedley Green, but it's where the sparkle disappeared from Julias eyes,

Meanwhile, in Burundi, the neverending violence and bloodshed and political upheaval has Parfait Nduwimana deciding that he will seek peace in Spain.
His devoted younger brother, Zion does not hesitate to accompany him, Their plan is to walk to Tangiers, then borrow a boat to cross to what they are convinced will be paradise,

With these twin narratives, Glen tells a story of two people whose need to escape eventually sees their paths cross, if ever so fleetingly at first.
Glens characters are no stereotypes: they have depth and develop as they deal with lifes challenges, Young Augusta, precocious, fascinated with words and language, and given to unfiltered comments on life, is quirky and funny adult Augusta, sometimes a bit prickly and insensitive, is not instantly appealing, but by the conclusion, is likely to have grown on the reader.


Although the story progresses over some two decades from the nineties, with their attitudes and mindset, Stanley and Jilly Hope seem to be firmly stuck in the sixties.
But Augusta wonders “isnt it the job of mothers and fathers to love first, and to love equally, and to love better than their children Or was I supposed to help them love me by being what they wanted me to be” She realises for that she would need to be Julia.


Glens prose is often exquisite: “Burundi Burundi Burundi, I said it so many times it stopped meaning anything, It was like the sea lapping against my mind” and “the hatman with the ponytail moved to a stool over in the corner, and he closed his eyes, and he opened his mouth, and he started to sing, and his voice split up into strands, fraying, as if there was blood on his vocal cords, or in his heart.
The man in the vest picked up his guitar, which turned out, indeed, to be a living thing, and a woman appeared from behind the curtain of a doorway, with a black shawl around her shoulders, holding her skirt.
She started to dance” are examples,

She gives her characters words of wisdom: “the people we like, and might even love, will still disappoint us in the same way, I suppose, as we disappoint them” and insightful observations: “Our grieving was an exchange of cakes through the winter because sometimes the only things you can do in response to big things are small things”, also “Its weird the way we keep our brains in our pockets now, I said.
Do you think our brains will gradually evolve to hold less and less information And soon well be Neanderthals again but with

iPhones”

The plight of refugees, Spanish poetry, a hundredyearold gypsy caravan, painted tin daffodils, and evocative art feature in this tale.
Death and disability, resulting in copious grief and guilt and heartache, lends a rather dark and sad aspect to the middle of the story, but the uplifting ending is truly wonderful: hopeful and heartwarming.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley, Harper Collins Australia and The Borough Press, The erratic formatting in the kindle version of this review copy will doubtless have been corrected in the final version and does not really affect the reading experience.

.