All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill

Wednesday, March 26, 2014


What would you change?

Imprisoned in the heart of a secret military base, Em has nothing except the voice of the boy in the cell next door and the list of instructions she finds taped inside the drain.

Only Em can complete the final instruction. She’s tried everything to prevent the creation of a time machine that will tear the world apart. She holds the proof: a list she has never seen before, written in her own hand. Each failed attempt in the past has led her to the same terrible present—imprisoned and tortured by a sadistic man called the doctor while war rages outside. 

Marina has loved her best friend, James, since they were children. A gorgeous, introverted science prodigy from one of America’s most famous families, James finally seems to be seeing Marina in a new way, too. But on one disastrous night, James’s life crumbles, and with it, Marina’s hopes for their future. Marina will protect James, no matter what. Even if it means opening her eyes to a truth so terrible that she may not survive it... at least, not as the girl she once was. Em and Marina are in a race against time that only one of them can win.

All Our Yesterdays is a wrenching, brilliantly plotted story of fierce love, unthinkable sacrifice, and the infinite implications of our every choice.


I don't think I've adequately mentioned how much I love time travel stories: I really, really love time travel stories. I don't think I've adequately mentioned how much time travel stories that aren't properly thought through and are full of logical impossibilities irritate me: I am really, really irritated by flawed time travel stories. Looper was very, very annoying. The movie I've seen most recently that does some version of time travel really, really well was probably Triangle, which reminds me of All Our Yesterdays - going around and around in time trying to fix the unfixable.

All Our Yesterdays reads like a movie, but I mean that in the best possible way - it's fast-paced and evocative and tightly-packed - cinematic but not tacky or cliche (they're turning it into a film, which I am not the least surprised about. I look forward to seeing it and not comparing it to the book, in order to avoid disappointment). A little overwrought at times but it works. A little predictable, sure - when I finished the novel I was still so incredibly excited by it, I went to convince my sister to read it. I explained the premise and she immediately guessed the ending. But there's a sort of dark inevitability to it when you're reading, so, yes, you'll likely work out the twist early on but it doesn't take away from your enjoyment of the book.

And the time travel? The time travel's perfect. It all made sense. I couldn't find a flaw in it. Amazingly well-plotted. I don't think you properly grasp how delighted that made me. It functions so beautifully as an action sci-fi thriller that I'll look past the fact that I find the protagonist annoying - I almost always dislike the protagonists in these big blockbuster-y novels, and I think it's possibly because I'm so used to reading character-driven fiction, where it is all about the protagonist rather than a big dramatic plot. It's sort of tricky to do both well, I think - don't really have room for a well-built interior life for a character when they're being shot at and sent through time and so forth. The villains are always my favourite, anyway.

It ends perfectly. Good endings are difficult. I was impressed. You like time travel, you should read it. You like any of the big dystopic YA novels, you should read it. I'm not generally all that enamoured with books in that category (I may just have bestseller prejudice. Is that hipster of me? Apologies), but All Our Yesterdays is a stand-out.

On book launches, book reviewing as a writer and The First Third by Will Kostakis

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Life is made up of three parts: in The First Third, you're embarrassed by your family; in the second, you make a family of your own; and in the end, you just embarrass the family you've made. 

That's how Billy's grandmother explains it, anyway. She's given him her bucket list (cue embarrassment), and now, it's his job to glue their family back together. 

No pressure or anything. 

Fixing his family's not going to be easy and Billy's not ready for change. But as he soon discovers, the first third has to end some time. And then what? 

It's a Greek tragedy waiting to happen.

I have attended two book launches in my entire life, not counting events that I attended without the prior knowledge a book launch would be included in proceedings (you think it's just a party then bam! surprise book launch. Which is preferable to bam! surprise zombie outbreak) which would bring the total to about five. Still, not a lot, especially considering the fact that I know lots of writers and they often write books which they feel compelled to launch. Good on them! I am far too introverted for such things. (I do dream of one day having a book launch, and not being reduced to hiding in the corner for the duration of it. Probably no one would show up, which would be for the best.)

The first book launch was for Emily Gale's Girl Aloud a million years ago (okay, four years ago), and the second was the Brisbane launch of Will Kostakis' The First Third seven months ago (I never know how to place an apostrophe in names ending in S. Correct me if I'm wrong). It was held at the very lovely TLC Books in Manly, which is such a cute little bookshop and I would go there more often if I did not live quite so far away. I had not previously realised there was a Manly in Brisbane. It's a nice place, by the sea. You learn something new every day. I read almost the whole book on the train trip home (it's a long trip), and yet it's still taken me this long to get around to writing a post about it. I'm genuinely terrible.

Of course there's all these issues with reviewing books when you know the authors (and I'm not especially great at reviewing books to begin with - my style is basically: here's some stuff that happened! here's what I thought was good! here's what I thought was bad! you decide based on that whether it's a book for you! I'm not an expert on structure or construction or the literary tradition. I just really like stories.), and I'm very fortunate to know lots of Australian YA authors.

I've never said I liked a book I didn't like (okay, not counting Catcher in the Rye, but that wasn't because I didn't want to offend Salinger) and I'm largely fortunate that a lot of the people I think are stellar human beings I also think are stellar writers. It's hard to say whether the fact you like the writers as people affects how you see their work. There are writers who I like as people whose work I don't like, so I just don't talk about their work. It's personal preference rather than anything problematic in the work itself.

The whole thing with blogging/reviewing/etc is that the internet allows a certain level of anonymity and the internet allows writers to connect with readers, and this is great and this is also not great. By which I mean there is no guarantee of objectivity. Personal opinion is patently not objective - how we feel about what we read is very much shaped by who we are and our experiences and nothing inherent in the work. Also, there are tons of non-writer bloggers and aspiring-writer bloggers and bloggers who are mates with writers whose relationships with those writers will shape their perspective. The best way to get a good perspective on a book (if you're the sort of person for whom reviews inform whether you'll read) is to just read a lot of reviews.

tl;dr - I'm friends with writers. But I'll only talk about how much I enjoyed their work if I actually did. Will was the first person to really welcome me into the whole bein' an author thing (before I even was an author, too) and is one of my favourite young writers (always nice when a writer is a stellar human, too. Luckily I have not encountered particularly many mean people who write good books. I'm not sure how I'd cope with that). And now this post is getting long and I've not at all spoken about the book, terrible.

Now: The First Third.

I read and loved Loathing Lola five years ago (six?). I'm not sure I would love it as much now - you know, reading particular books, being a particular age. (I was enamoured with Twilight when I was thirteen.) So, The First Third was a novel I was waiting to read for a very long time (comparable to the agonising wait for Simmone Howell's Girl Defective after I read Everything Beautiful).

I found The First Third to be not only profoundly funny but very genuine and insightful, and if you like contemporary YA fiction, it's well worth a look. The debut novel is usually the autobiographical one, but while Loathing Lola was hilarious, The First Third is also gorgeously earnest and heartfelt. I like stories about families - Billy's family functions better than most in YA novels, and a great deal of it rings true (you know what I mean about your subjective experience shaping how you view novels? I have a close family, their happiness is as important to me as my own, and so when I read a book where teenagers barely speak to their parents, I can struggle to relate).

I think it was worth the five year wait. (I'd rather not wait until 2018 for the next one, though. Must it take so long for people to write books? Gosh.)

All This Could End on the longlist for the 2014 Inky Awards!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

I am terribly excited about All This Could End making the longlist for the 2014 Gold Inky award, especially alongside such splendid writers (shamefully I've only read 4 out of 10 of these, including the one I wrote. So clearly I have some reading to do). The Inky Awards are for young adult novels, and they're judged by young adults, so obviously I think they're the best thing ever.

If you're 12-20 and in Australia you can apply to be an Inky's judge. I was a judge in 2009 and it was the most exciting thing ever (I got to go to an awards ceremony and everything. I don't know what happened to that pale pink outfit of mine. I probably gave the dress to my sister). This was during my era of 'I have to have my photo taken with everyone and then put it on the internet'.

I've never been on a longlist before. It's all very novel to me. (To be honest I am probably more excited about a longlisting than people get about winning awards. I'm an excitable person. Do you think I've used the word 'excited' enough yet? Exciting, excited, excitable. Maybe I should start using 'thrilled'.)

I really, really can't stand Girls

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Pop culture has an extraordinary ability to affect the perceptions of the masses – you view a whole bunch of TV shows about being stupid and self-involved and immature, and this starts to skew your idea of what is normal and acceptable in the real world. Television cannot accurately represent reality, but it still affects how we perceive the world and people around us.

Here's a thing I wrote for Birdee mag on Girls, how boring and white-washed mainstream TV is, and the perpetuation of dangerous stereotypes.

Asylum seekers and Australia: Some thoughts, of the rambling, off-topic kind

Thursday, March 13, 2014

I am so stupidly fortunate it confounds me. The pure luck of being born into a lovely family in a lovely area of a lovely country during peaceful times, with all my fingers and toes and not part of any oppressed minorities (and being female in a place/time that is one of the safest) and being academically smart and symmetrically-faced and able to make a liveable wage doing something I enjoy - it's pretty goddamn splendid.

Of course, I undergo a great deal of emotional turmoil because 90% of people have all these horrors in their lives (like hunger and homelessness and nobody to look after them) and I haven't really done anything to earn me the spot I have in the world. Just because of where and who I was born doesn't mean I matter more than anybody else. Everybody deserves basic respect and freedom.

Which is to say: I really hate (strongly dislike) the system of selfishness and greed that fuels capitalism, Australia and our government. We were built on immigration. We have an ageing population and need immigrants. Why on earth it's okay for us to accept New Zealanders and Brits en masse but not people from countries where they are actively in danger is utterly beyond me. The amount of cruelty that goes on in the name of protecting us from some great brown terrorist threat is unfathomable.

I mean, we lie in our national anthem. For those who come across the sea, we've boundless plains that we're not going to share. By debasing and dehumanising people in an isolated prison (people who have a right to seek asylum; hence 'asylum seekers'. We all know this 'boat people' thing is sensationalist rubbish designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator, who are well-trained to feel threatened by people who don't look like them), you're more likely to create something terrible than by putting all that money and effort and time into helping people assimilate into our society. Isn't this just common sense?

I don't know, I don't know. I find all of life terribly confusing. Doesn't this seem terribly basic? Why are so many people I know so disinterested? People pay more attention to acquiring as much random crap as possible. Nothing matters as long as you have what you want. Sometimes I think I have a part of my brain missing and that's why the programming didn't take. I'm still waiting for my people to show up and take me back to the home planet. I don't cope well with this world.

Irrespective, I am powerless and full of contradiction. I still like pretty things and still desire money and still watch TV. People thinking well of me still occupies a lot of my thoughts. I am not brave enough to do anything significant, or broadcast these thoughts anywhere other than where hardly anyone will care to read them (I should be writing you things about what I've been reading, what I've been writing - that's what you're interested in, the nice fiction stuff). I don't know whether I am a good or kind person or whether I only think that of myself. What you do counts for more than what you think, but I'm 99% thought, 1% action.

If someone could come over and write my novel for me while I have a nap that would be great.
Proudly designed by Mlekoshi playground