Review: Pieces of Sky by Trinity Doyle

What: Pieces of Sky by Trinity Doyle

Who: Allen and Unwin

When: June 1st 2015

How: A copy of this novel was provided by Allen and Unwin for review.

Lucy’s life was going as smoothly as any teenager’s could. She was in the local swimming club, and loved it; she lived with her parents and her brother, Cam, in the small coastal town she’d known all her life. She had friends, she had goals – she had a life. Now Cam is dead, her parents might as well be – and Lucy can’t bear to get back in the pool. All she has to look forward to now is a big pile of going-nowhere.

Drawn to Steffi, her wild ex-best-friend who reminds Lucy of her mysterious, unpredictable brother, and music-obsessed Evan, the new boy in town, Lucy starts asking questions. Why did Cam die? Was it an accident or suicide? But as Lucy hunts for answers she discovers much more than she expects. About Cam. About her family. About herself.

I thought I wouldn’t end up liking Pieces of Sky, so I am glad that I did actually end up liking it.

I liked the Australian-isms, which is something I always find myself drawn to when I read Australian fiction. I don’t really realise how isolated I feel when I read US-based books until I read a book set in a place I’ve been to, and that mentions things I know about, and have grown up with. So that is one aspect I really loved.

I also liked the simplicity and flow of Doyle’s writing. It was very easy to read, and it moved the story along effortlessly.

The overall storyline was heartbreaking, and I liked it (that makes me sound a little morbid and sadistic, but ah well). Lucy (that’s the main character’s name – you’d think it’d be Sky, but nope) is coping (sort of) with the recent death of her brother, and I really liked how the author portrayed her dealing with this massive loss. I thought it was quite realistic, and very sensitive.

There were a few things that weren’t realistic though. The first is the ending. It’s a happy ending, with everything tied up in a neat little bow. After such a realistic portrayal of the shit a family would go through after the death of a brother and a son, I was really disappointed that everyone was just recovered by the end of the book. And in such a short time. The story occurs in about a month, so yeah, I wasn’t a fan of the fact that everyone is doing so much better after only two counselling sessions. Life, unfortunately, isn’t that easy, and our feelings and emotions aren’t that pliable. It’d be great if they were, but they aren’t.

This is a little thing, but it affected me because I take in every detail about a book. Lucy mentions listening to music on her phone and swiping the screen (like an iPhone), and then later on she says that her mum and dad bought both her and her brother the same crappy phone. A few pages later she mentions an email app and a home screen button. I’m sorry but no. “Crappy phones” do not have screens that can be swiped, or email apps, or home screen buttons. That’s an iPhone. So it really annoyed me that it was supposed to be a crappy phone. It would have been easy to say “mum and dad bought us the same phone”, without the crappy part, because they were obviously not crappy phones.

(There was also mention of financial struggles and the dad has a Lexus which, again, is really incongruent because people with financial struggles don’t have cars that cost that much money.)

The fact that Lucy became friends again with her childhood best friend and found a gorgeous boyfriend who accepted her and understood her and forgave her her misdemeanours was also very fairytale-esque.

There was also a bit of dead people idolisation going on, because Lucy never thought one negative thing about her brother the entire book. I found this to be a little annoying and not very true to life. Sure, we think positive of those who have passed, but nobody’s an angel. I guess that’s a pet peeve of mine, but it was an aspect of this book that annoyed me quite a bit. It seemed like Cam was this amazingly perfect brother who had only done, like, one thing that wasn’t perfect in his entire life.

Even though it seems like a lot of things annoyed me about Pieces of Sky, I did end up enjoying it overall.

© 2015, Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity. All rights reserved.