The Land of Decoration , by Grace McCleen

Hardcover, 291 pages

Published March 1st 2012 by Chatto & Windus (first published January 1st 2012)

ISBN

070118681X (ISBN13: 9780701186814)

edition language

English

 

Blissfully inventive, brilliantly written, with a huge heart, and a tense, pulsing plot: The Land of Decoration introduces a young heroine who will change the way you see the world.

Judith and her father don't have much -- their house is full of dusty relics, reminders of the mother she's never known. But Judith sees the world with the clear Eyes of Faith, and where others might see rubbish, Judith sees possibility. Bullied at school, she finds solace in making a model of the Promised Land -- little people made from pipe cleaners, a sliver of moon, luminous stars and a mirror sea -- a world of wonder that Judith calls The Land of Decoration. Perhaps, she thinks, if she makes it snow indoors (using shaving foam and cotton wool and cellophane) there will be no school on Monday...

Sure enough, when Judith opens her curtains the next day, the world beyond her window has turned white. She has performed her first miracle. And that's when her troubles begin.

With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a heartbreaking story of good and evil, belief and doubt. Its author, Grace McCleen, is a blazing new talent in contemporary literature

 

My Review

This was a very confusing book but I liked and enjoyed the whole concept of it and what it had to offer to the reader. The book is basically all about a little guy who has her own little land within her own room, a land that she has created out of all the rubbish that she can find. It is obvious to see that this little land, though it only be within her room, is important to her and that its her way of controlling her life, which ordinarily is out of her hands. She comes from a religious background, her father being the sort of religious preacher that knocks at your door to tell you that your world is going to end. As a result she is the most unpopular girl in the school. She is the girl that is picked on because her dad is a weirdo and people don't like that. This is a very good emotional concept of the book because it instantly opens your eyes to the fact that she is in a world that is not her choice and that she is being controlled in the a way that means her life is ruined and that she has to deal with in so many ways.

 

However, when the concept of a voice comes into her head, a voice that claims to be God who is telling her that she can perform miracles, and that she is his musical instrument. from the moment that this voice comes into her head you just know that trouble is about to occur and that its the sort of trouble that is going to pull her apart and make her cause complications in her life. Instantly she believes that she really does have magical powers, but when she is able to use them against the people that are bullying her, she starts to realize that perhaps things are going a little to far and she is starting to hurt innocent people, people who may have harmed her in many emotional ways but dont deserve to be harmed physically themselves.

 

I think what the book represented for me is that sometimes we have to consider the consequences of all our actions, and that despite the fact that we may have a little nattering voice in our head, that is always telling us that if we do this or do that then we are safe and that its ok, and that we don't need to worry. It just seemed to state to me that perhaps sometimes we have to challenge those voices and really consider what it is that we want to do. The book really opened my eyes but I felt that the ending was rubbish because it didnt really seem to resolve the problem at all. It didnt seem to say to the reader that she got the emotional help that she needed, just that things seemed to resolve themselves a little bit. I felt that the ending perhaps could have been better developed considering the whole impact and deploy of the story. It was a good write but deffo needs a better ending

 

Therefore I shall reward this book a three star rating because of the fact that it had something thought provoking to it, something that seemed to make you look at all the angles of the world and the society that we live in. its powerful andd deep and it just pulled me in but the ending could and should have been much better than what it was.!

 

My rating