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Pulling Down the Stars
Charlie Lansdowne’s life is going nowhere ... fast.
Trapped at home with his eccentric father and his stroke-affected grandfather, he finds life a daily exercise in dysfunction as three generations of men strive to get along.
But when Charlie meets the volatile and tempestuous Maxine � a surfer girl who works at the local abattoir � his life goes supernova. Friendships implode, passions ignite and death comes stalking in the night.
Set in the seaside country town of Warrnambool, this is a contemporary Australian thriller likened to 'Jasper Jones'.
Trapped at home with his eccentric father and his stroke-affected grandfather, he finds life a daily exercise in dysfunction as three generations of men strive to get along.
But when Charlie meets the volatile and tempestuous Maxine � a surfer girl who works at the local abattoir � his life goes supernova. Friendships implode, passions ignite and death comes stalking in the night.
Set in the seaside country town of Warrnambool, this is a contemporary Australian thriller likened to 'Jasper Jones'.
376 pages, Paperback
First published December 20, 2012
18 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
January 2, 2013
James Laidler is the author of the verse novel The Taste of Apple which won the IP Picks Best First Book award a couple of years back, and now he’s followed that up with his second novel, Pulling Down the Stars. The focus is on prose this time, although there are snippets of poems and even the occasional song. It’s a heartwarming read and one that I’d recommend to anyone, but particularly older teenage readers.
Charlie Lansdowne is a young man with a number of heavy burdens in his life: he has a job in nursing and a grandfather suffering dementia who needs constant supervision and high-level support. Consequently, he has little time for love and his main pleasure is his band. But even there he finds trouble as his best friend Kane, who is the band’s lead singer, uses Charlie in a number of unpleasant ways that soon sparks a falling out between them. Fittingly, Charlie writes the band’s songs but Kane not only sings them but claims the lyrics as his own. Charlie lives with his father Roger and grandfather Frank and the relationship between the three men is not always harmonious, as we soon discover.
Maxine, known to her friends as Pepsi Max, has problems of her own. She’s a young woman living with her parents and working at the local abattoir, and her main interest is surfing. A drunken outburst sets into motion a series of events and disclosures that threaten to tear her family apart entirely. Things are not right in her seemingly perfect family, and Maxine soon finds herself taken in by Roger and co. after she’s taken advantage of by Charlie’s friend, Kane. Maxine and Charlie start off as close to arch enemies but their relationship thaws significantly as they get to know one another, and eventually Maxine comes to appreciate Charlie’s charms much more than those of the attractive but selfish Kane.
Pulling Down the Stars focuses on these two characters and we have viewpoint chapters from each of them, but the narrative does occasionally broaden to encompass peripheral characters too. Laidler writes confidently about occupations such as nursing and abattoir work, and there are a number of interesting sub-plots concerning Charlie’s dead mother, Maxine’s family and even that of a disgruntled co-worker who threatens to turn this at times into an entirely different kind of novel.
Laidler’s characters are warm and richly imagined and there’s an encompassing goodness to his worldview here, and due to the subject material I believe the novel would appeal to a teenage audience. There’s a subtext of social justice issues but Laidler never brings these fully to the forefront, leaving the reader to muse over the meaning of events as s/he chooses. This is the kind of novel that allows good to triumph over evil without violence in a way that leaves us feeling a little better about our place in the world. It’s a novel about constructing a sense of family and belonging amid situations that often serve to fragment us.
Charlie Lansdowne is a young man with a number of heavy burdens in his life: he has a job in nursing and a grandfather suffering dementia who needs constant supervision and high-level support. Consequently, he has little time for love and his main pleasure is his band. But even there he finds trouble as his best friend Kane, who is the band’s lead singer, uses Charlie in a number of unpleasant ways that soon sparks a falling out between them. Fittingly, Charlie writes the band’s songs but Kane not only sings them but claims the lyrics as his own. Charlie lives with his father Roger and grandfather Frank and the relationship between the three men is not always harmonious, as we soon discover.
Maxine, known to her friends as Pepsi Max, has problems of her own. She’s a young woman living with her parents and working at the local abattoir, and her main interest is surfing. A drunken outburst sets into motion a series of events and disclosures that threaten to tear her family apart entirely. Things are not right in her seemingly perfect family, and Maxine soon finds herself taken in by Roger and co. after she’s taken advantage of by Charlie’s friend, Kane. Maxine and Charlie start off as close to arch enemies but their relationship thaws significantly as they get to know one another, and eventually Maxine comes to appreciate Charlie’s charms much more than those of the attractive but selfish Kane.
Pulling Down the Stars focuses on these two characters and we have viewpoint chapters from each of them, but the narrative does occasionally broaden to encompass peripheral characters too. Laidler writes confidently about occupations such as nursing and abattoir work, and there are a number of interesting sub-plots concerning Charlie’s dead mother, Maxine’s family and even that of a disgruntled co-worker who threatens to turn this at times into an entirely different kind of novel.
Laidler’s characters are warm and richly imagined and there’s an encompassing goodness to his worldview here, and due to the subject material I believe the novel would appeal to a teenage audience. There’s a subtext of social justice issues but Laidler never brings these fully to the forefront, leaving the reader to muse over the meaning of events as s/he chooses. This is the kind of novel that allows good to triumph over evil without violence in a way that leaves us feeling a little better about our place in the world. It’s a novel about constructing a sense of family and belonging amid situations that often serve to fragment us.
January 13, 2013
From the opening chapter where we meet Charlie as he baths his invalid grandfather, I wanted to know more. More about Charlie and his dad, more about how Maxine and Charlie cross paths, more about Bill and his...lets just say more about Bill.
There is a thriller element to this book, but it is so much more. In fact, the thriller aspect can be forgotten at times and then, when your drifting along nicely in the story, you're brought back to the darker side, rocketing back like an elastic pulled tight and then released. Each of these thriller moments are short, like a quick glimpse into the side of life we don't want to acknowledge is there. We turn back to the light, but with the thought in the back of our mind that things may not turn out the way we want.
Laidler's strength lies in his characters. Both Maxine and Charlie are looking for direction in their lives, but come from very different backgrounds. Maxine with her privileged up bringing resents her parents, rebelling against her mother's expectations and her father's infidelity. Charlie has spent his life aware that his birth caused his mother's death, leading his grandfather into alcoholism and his father's servitude to the old man. I felt for both of them and the other characters caught up in this tale. The strength of the characters and the readers empathy for them carried the book in areas where the story wasn't quite strong enough. At times issues seemed to be resolved rather abruptly with little or no lasting effect (such as Charlie's falling out with his best mate).
Unlike Laidler's other book, The Taste of Apple, which was written in verse, Pulling Down the Stars is prose. Yet in some of the text, that lyrical, poetical feel is obvious.
"I am all at sea.
First there's the surge, followed by the rush, as lying on my surfboard my hands excavate the water - fingers panning for hold.
I am all at sea,
feeling the lactic burn across my shoulder blades and the slow building elevation from behind."
The moments Laidler hits these lyrical bits are the best bits. They provide strong imagery, clear pictures of the characters and an ebb and flow that carries the reader easily, leading them further into the story.
All in all I enjoyed Pulling Down the Stars and would recommend it, especially older teenagers looking for that bridge between young adult and adult books.
Many thanks to the James Laidler and Hybrid Publishers for providing me with a copy to review. All views in this review are mine and mine alone!
There is a thriller element to this book, but it is so much more. In fact, the thriller aspect can be forgotten at times and then, when your drifting along nicely in the story, you're brought back to the darker side, rocketing back like an elastic pulled tight and then released. Each of these thriller moments are short, like a quick glimpse into the side of life we don't want to acknowledge is there. We turn back to the light, but with the thought in the back of our mind that things may not turn out the way we want.
Laidler's strength lies in his characters. Both Maxine and Charlie are looking for direction in their lives, but come from very different backgrounds. Maxine with her privileged up bringing resents her parents, rebelling against her mother's expectations and her father's infidelity. Charlie has spent his life aware that his birth caused his mother's death, leading his grandfather into alcoholism and his father's servitude to the old man. I felt for both of them and the other characters caught up in this tale. The strength of the characters and the readers empathy for them carried the book in areas where the story wasn't quite strong enough. At times issues seemed to be resolved rather abruptly with little or no lasting effect (such as Charlie's falling out with his best mate).
Unlike Laidler's other book, The Taste of Apple, which was written in verse, Pulling Down the Stars is prose. Yet in some of the text, that lyrical, poetical feel is obvious.
"I am all at sea.
First there's the surge, followed by the rush, as lying on my surfboard my hands excavate the water - fingers panning for hold.
I am all at sea,
feeling the lactic burn across my shoulder blades and the slow building elevation from behind."
The moments Laidler hits these lyrical bits are the best bits. They provide strong imagery, clear pictures of the characters and an ebb and flow that carries the reader easily, leading them further into the story.
All in all I enjoyed Pulling Down the Stars and would recommend it, especially older teenagers looking for that bridge between young adult and adult books.
Many thanks to the James Laidler and Hybrid Publishers for providing me with a copy to review. All views in this review are mine and mine alone!
January 12, 2013
Charlie Lansdowne lived at home with his father, Roger and grandpa Frank…three generations of males living at the same address. Charlie had a job in nursing, and his days were spent looking after the psychiatric patients, in particular the volatile Benny. When he wasn’t at work, he was helping his father look after his grandpa, who had suffered a stroke, was wheelchair bound and needed full-time care. The days were long, tiring and stressful. But most of the time the three men got along reasonably well.
Maxine (or Pepsi Max as she was known) worked at the local abattoir, loved to surf and lived alone in a small apartment rented and paid for by her parents. She resented them immensely, mainly because of what she had seen her father get up to when she was only seven years old, but also because they wouldn’t let her live her own life, telling her what to do all the time. Consequently she was a ‘wild child�, doing as much as she could to annoy her parents. When the day of a huge party for her parents� 20th wedding anniversary arrived…something she couldn’t get out of� she fortified herself with alcohol. The ensuing outburst when it was her turn to give a speech created havoc and the fractured family looked like falling apart�
Charlie and his band were playing at a local pub when Maxine staggered in after the party, looking for more alcohol. When Charlie’s best friend Kane, singer in the band, and resident bad boy, took a shine to Maxine, Charlie was not impressed…then with Maxine subsequently getting to know Charlie and his family, changes started to take place, both in Charlie’s life and Maxine’s.
Interspersed throughout the book Laidler has some minor players, but the main focus is on Maxine and Charlie. I would have liked more detail about the killer and his activities, and any ensuing police work regarding same, but there wasn’t very much, which disappointed me a little. I enjoyed the aspects of the novel, the different perspectives of each character, but in the end, it just didn’t seem complete.
Many thanks to the author for my copy to read and review.
Maxine (or Pepsi Max as she was known) worked at the local abattoir, loved to surf and lived alone in a small apartment rented and paid for by her parents. She resented them immensely, mainly because of what she had seen her father get up to when she was only seven years old, but also because they wouldn’t let her live her own life, telling her what to do all the time. Consequently she was a ‘wild child�, doing as much as she could to annoy her parents. When the day of a huge party for her parents� 20th wedding anniversary arrived…something she couldn’t get out of� she fortified herself with alcohol. The ensuing outburst when it was her turn to give a speech created havoc and the fractured family looked like falling apart�
Charlie and his band were playing at a local pub when Maxine staggered in after the party, looking for more alcohol. When Charlie’s best friend Kane, singer in the band, and resident bad boy, took a shine to Maxine, Charlie was not impressed…then with Maxine subsequently getting to know Charlie and his family, changes started to take place, both in Charlie’s life and Maxine’s.
Interspersed throughout the book Laidler has some minor players, but the main focus is on Maxine and Charlie. I would have liked more detail about the killer and his activities, and any ensuing police work regarding same, but there wasn’t very much, which disappointed me a little. I enjoyed the aspects of the novel, the different perspectives of each character, but in the end, it just didn’t seem complete.
Many thanks to the author for my copy to read and review.
February 20, 2013
I read James Laidler's free verse novel The Taste Of Apple in 2011 and loved it so when James asked if I'd be interested in reading his latest novel I jumped at the chance. Set in the Australian seaside town of Warrnambool, Pulling Down The Stars has a standard narrative with smatterings of song lyrics and poems but there's nothing standard about the poignant and powerful lyrical style I first fell in love with in The Taste Of Apple.
I liked the fact that Charlie and Max (Maxine) were outside the norm of YA fiction protagonists; Charlie with a nursing position in a psychiatric ward, living with his father Roger (who's an absolute gem) and his stroke-effected grandfather Frank, and Max, a surfing abattoir worker.
No insta-love for Charlie and Max, (phew) I loved the way their romance developed, like them - a little left-field but relatable and very likeable. Actually James 'does' characterisation brilliantly, you really get a feel for the characters, even the minor players.
I wanted to keep this short but just have to mention these two things:
- I never thought I'd say this but as gag-worthy as I find abbatoirs, I was completely fascinated by the descriptions of the different stations at the Carrington Meats.
- For me, the 'thriller' element was a peripheral subplot that neither added nor detracted from the story ... it just ... was.
Pulling Down The Stars is a beautiful, quirky story revealing love in all its facets and highlighting 'family' can encompass and mean many things. There's just something very addictive about James Laidler's writing, I could seriously read it all day!
I liked the fact that Charlie and Max (Maxine) were outside the norm of YA fiction protagonists; Charlie with a nursing position in a psychiatric ward, living with his father Roger (who's an absolute gem) and his stroke-effected grandfather Frank, and Max, a surfing abattoir worker.
No insta-love for Charlie and Max, (phew) I loved the way their romance developed, like them - a little left-field but relatable and very likeable. Actually James 'does' characterisation brilliantly, you really get a feel for the characters, even the minor players.
I wanted to keep this short but just have to mention these two things:
- I never thought I'd say this but as gag-worthy as I find abbatoirs, I was completely fascinated by the descriptions of the different stations at the Carrington Meats.
- For me, the 'thriller' element was a peripheral subplot that neither added nor detracted from the story ... it just ... was.
Pulling Down The Stars is a beautiful, quirky story revealing love in all its facets and highlighting 'family' can encompass and mean many things. There's just something very addictive about James Laidler's writing, I could seriously read it all day!
August 4, 2013
From the beginning we meet two strong male characters, Charlie frustrated with looking after his Grandpa Frank and frustrated by life in a small town. Frank trapped in his invalid body still showing his powerful personality, swearing and being less than co-operative with his career Charlie.
In chapter three we meet Maxine, like Charlie, she is finding the small town and family expectations not to her liking. Then in chapter four we meet Bill and the books dark side appears. Bill is not nice, he loves knives, he loves cutting and yes, he loves killing.
The cover implies this is a sweet romance book and yes there is an element of relationship turmoil abut it is also a book with an evil crime element and unfortunately I think this is lost in the cover and many readers who would enjoy this book will not pick it up.
I really enjoyed James first book, A taste of Apples and this too is a book too good to be looked over.
In chapter three we meet Maxine, like Charlie, she is finding the small town and family expectations not to her liking. Then in chapter four we meet Bill and the books dark side appears. Bill is not nice, he loves knives, he loves cutting and yes, he loves killing.
The cover implies this is a sweet romance book and yes there is an element of relationship turmoil abut it is also a book with an evil crime element and unfortunately I think this is lost in the cover and many readers who would enjoy this book will not pick it up.
I really enjoyed James first book, A taste of Apples and this too is a book too good to be looked over.
October 11, 2013
What a great story! James set the bar high with "The taste of apple", and I wondered how his second book would compare. On beginning "Pulling down the Stars" I found I was instantly hooked, the opening scene holds so much of what life is about that I just wanted more. The characters emerge, each of them so different but we find that despite difference people can be drawn together. In a short novel, we face so many of the big issues of life - love, lust, death, violence, but I think what really stands out for me in this story is the sense that people can choose how they deal with the difficulties that come and that those choices make all the difference. Read it!!
January 4, 2013
This was a great Aussie novel!
January 4, 2013
well done James! some big issues in a familiar setting. beautifully done
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