Karen Foxlee

"Lenny’s Book of Everything" is a heartfelt and quietly powerful novel that blends the everyday with the extraordinary. Karen Foxlee crafts a touching story that centres around Lenny, a bright and curious girl, and her younger brother Davey, who has a rare growth condition that causes him to grow at an alarming rate. I loved them both.

Set in 1970s America, the story is both grounded in realism and touched with a sense of wonder, largely thanks to the arrival of an encyclopedia set that show more opens up the world for the children. The structure of the novel, broken into monthly installments aligning with the encyclopedia deliveries, is both clever and emotionally resonant. It’s through these entries that we witness the subtle shifts in their lives, hopes, and fears.

Foxlee’s prose is lyrical, and she captures the nuances of childhood - the yearning, the frustrations, and the fierce love between siblings. What holds this back from being a 5-star read is a slightly uneven pacing in parts and a narrative voice that, while poignant, occasionally leans heavily into sentiment. However, the depth and originality of the characters more than make up for it.

Ultimately, "Lenny’s Book of Everything" is a beautiful, bittersweet novel about family, resilience, and the ache of growing up. Overall, a poignant and beautifully written coming-of-age story. show less

I received Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy by Karen Foxlee from Random House Kids early last week and while I was in the middle of some other books at the time, I thought I'd at least sit down and read a couple of chapters to get a feel for the book. Half the book later I realized I needed to set it aside or I wasn't going to be getting to bed at any sort of a reasonable hour that night.

Foxlee takes the fairy tale The Snow Queen and gives it a lightly modern spin. In an unnamed town, Ophelia's show more father has taken a job organizing an exhibit of swords at an unnamed museum, being the international expert on swords that he is. Ophelia and her sister, Alice, try to find ways to amuse themselves while their father is hard at work on the exhibit. Exploring on her own one day, Ophelia discovers a young boy locked away in a room deep in the sprawling museum. She befriends the boy, and the story he tells her of how he came to be locked away in the room in the museum with the name the Marvelous Boy is its own story within the story.

As Ophelia journeys through the museum on various quests to help the Marvelous Boy escape so that he can finally defeat the Snow Queen, she creates her own fairy tale. There are elements here that will be familiar with all readers of fairy tales, but Foxlee handles them all beautifully, so that you don't really feel like you are treading too familiar water. I found myself re-reading entire chapters because I simply loved the way that Foxlee was telling Ophelia's story. It's a middle grade book, so there are elements that are fairly predictable and foreshadowed rather heavily, but even knowing how the story was going to end, I still enjoyed every bit of it. There is an ethereal quality to the story that is both charming and magical. I don't want to give too much away about the ending, but I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that Ophelia doesn't try to handle everything on her own, as in other young reader books. I find that annoying. I suppose it's to instill a sense of independence in young readers, but sometimes there are things in life that are just too much for a young person to handle, and it's perfectly normal to go to your parents for help, which Ophelia does. This was refreshing for me.

I think anyone who enjoys a good fairy tale and a beautifully written story will absolutely enjoy this book. Highly recommended! show less

Had this book not been chosen by my face-to-face reading group, I probably wouldn't have come across it, but I'm glad I did. Karen Foxlee is a new-to-me Australian author.

Apart from anything else, the structure of the book is unusual and interesting. After the annual Harvest Parade in which they both participated, two girls are missing in a coastal sugar cane town in mid-northern Queensland.

Each of the chapters is headed with the name of a stitch used in tailoring or embroidery.
e.g.
Anchor show more Stitch
Oyster Stitch
Catch Stitch
Straight Stitch
Binding Stitch
Spider Web Stitch etc. etc. (I didn't know there were so many stitches)

And the reader's attention is captured straight away in the opening of the first chapter, Anchor Stitch:

Will you forgive me if I tell you the ending? There’s a girl. She’s standing where the park outgrows itself and the manicured lawn gives way to longer grass and the stubble of rocks. She is standing in no-man’s-land, between the park and the place where the mill yards begin.

It’s night and the cane trains are still.

It is unbearably humid and she feels the sweat sliding down her back and she presses her hands there into the fabric to stop the sensation that is ticklishly unpleasant. She lifts up the midnight dress to fan her legs. It’s true, the dress is a magical thing, it makes her look so heavenly.

After a couple of pages from this narrator, the chapter continues with the story from the beginning. Rose Lovell arrives in town with her father at the Paradise caravan park where they will live for the next few months. She meets Pearl Kelly in the next day or so when she goes to school. They will be the central characters of the story, but there is also Edie Baker, an eccentric dressmaker with a history, Rose's alcoholic father, and Paul Rendell who runs a Book Exchange in the back of his mother's shop.

The first chapter sets the pattern for the rest. There is always a preface from the narrator, helpfully written in italics, and then the continuing story. There's the feeling of two paths, with the main story slowly catching up to the point where the narrator's brief snippets begin.

The two teenage girls are trying to establish their identities. Rose has been on the move with her father for a number of years after the apparent drowning suicide of her mother. She has had little chance to establish friends, and she connects surprisingly well with both Pearl and Edie, who agrees to help her make her dress for the Harvest Parade. Pearl is trying to work out who she is too, looking for her Russian father, by writing to men surnamed Orlov in Moscow. As Rose and Edie make the dress, so the tragedies of Edie's life emerge.

After a stuttering start, the book gathers pace. The author drops information all over the place and there are many little stories for the reader to piece together. It is a very effective technique.

So for me, Karen Foxlee is a new author to watch out for. A great book, not just a coming of age novel, but a well constructed mystery on many levels. show less

Heartbreaking and uplifting – this book is everything every reviewer has said....and more.

In Lenny’s Book of Everything Karen Foxlee wanted to convey love in all its forms, sibling love, motherly love, neighbourly love and what it means to love someone who is different and the emotions that go with it. What I find she has also conveyed was the feelings of shame and self loathing when sometimes that love slips and you are left feeling embarrassed, even annoyed by this person you are meant show more to love.

Foxlee’s writing is reminiscent of Sofie Laguna’s The Eye of the Sheep (one of my all time favourite reads) only it’s not as complicated making it excellent for younger readers.
‘She was thin with worry our mother. She was made almost entirely out of worries and magic.’ - Lenore Spink

The story is narrated by Lenny as she worries about her mother, her brother and her absent father. She tells the story of her brother’s ‘growing’ as it is at first brushed off as tall family genes, then visits to the specialist, stays in hospital and how a community comes together to give help.

Foxlee has created a likeable and realistic cast of characters. Cynthia Spink with all her worries, Mrs Gaspar, the Hungarian neighbour, and her strange dreams, Lenore and her beetle mania and Davey, it was easy to see why everyone loved him.

In Lenny’s Book of Everything Foxlee captures life in the early 70’s where man has recently landed on the moon and knowledge comes from encyclopedias (not the internet) via weekly instalments arriving through the mail. Lenny’s family won their set of encyclopedia which would have been akin to winning the lottery. A set of encyclopedia on your bookshelf in the 70’s was like a status symbol and I remember eagerly purchasing the new issue from the newsagent each week and like Lenny and Davey poring over the facts and pictures in each book.

Lenny comes across as a bit of a tomboy, a deep thinker and a deep feeler. She bristled, she felt ashamed, she took on a lot of her mother’s stoicism but mostly she loved.

Lenny’s Book of Everything is a heartbreaking and wonderful read full of the kindness of people everywhere.

*I received an uncorrected proof copy from the publisher. show less