Customer Reviews

This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

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Award-winning author Aiden Chambers presents This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, a unique work of fiction in that it is not told in the traditional narrative style of a novel; instead, its story is rendered as a "pillow book" or collection of notes recording poems, emotions, daily impressions, letters, stories, ideas, and descriptions, compiling the life of a pregnant nineteen-year-old girl who wishes to preserve and pass on her memories to her unborn child. This Is All ranges the gamut of experience, from early friendships and thoughts on classical literature to simple amusements, teenage love, and the heady pleasures of sex. A verbose, descriptive, and often intimate portrait of all the good and bad in a soon-to-be mother's life.

In the beginning, I started the book with no expectations, only to be amazed by the end of it. Not only is this story extremely realistic in the adolescent sense, it also had many other lessons to teach about life in general. It was beautifully written, funny, witty, and I'm glad that I picked this book up, despite its thickness (which may ultimately seem a little intimidating to impatient readers). But read it!! You will not be disappointed...

There are two complaints people seem to make about this book - that it is too long, and that they don't believe that what happens to Cordelia and her reactions are realistic.

To the first, if you are a lazy reader, sure, it is a very long book, but everything in it is there for a reason, is an essential part of what makes Cordelia a completely real person.

Which is my answer to the second complaint - Cordelia is completely real. If you can't realate to Cordelia I'm sorry you were never in love at a young age. I can only imagine that those critics have lost all touch with who they were as teenagers and simply can't temember what it was like. I find it remarkable that a seventy year old man could write such an incredibly accurate book about a teenage girl. This book runs eerily parallel to my life at that age, and I reacted much the same, even down to having an affair with an older man, so I can only repeat: these things happen and young girls do feel like Cordelia.
This book is amazing.

I bought this book straight out of the book store, mainly because I liked the cover (I'll admit it I'm very shallow when it comes to book covers), description, and sheer size. I'm not a fan of light reading. I honestly didn't think I'd like it as much as I did.
Getting over the lenghty sexual passages, I discovered a character more real than I'd ever encountered. It was like a book made of my thoughts and emotions. Of course, this might have something to do with that I'm also a sixteen year old girl. In short, I adored it, the prose, everything. It was the kind of book you can open to any page and be entertained. You really have to digest it though, if you read it from start to finish.
I cried, I laughed, it was everything a book should be.

I have probably read over five thousand books in my sixteen years, and this is my standout favorite. Though lengthy (it initially took me the better part of three months to read), this contemporary masterpiece is a must for all readers. Aidan Chambers crafts protagonist Cordelia Kenn to be amazingly well-developed and very much alive. Never in my life have I connected so intrinsically with a character, nor been so captivated by a novel. I cannot over-emphasize this book's importance in my life. A must-read!

This was an awesome book. Read it. After that having been said,...I am a pretty advanced reader, and am always looking for good books that are interesting and entertaining, and present a good challenge. This is not easy. Also, as I am a speed demon, books that are huge. Adding that, finding my definition of a "good book" is almost impossible. This book, though, meets all the requirements. It is very different in the way it was written (the mother, Cordelia Kenn, is writing to her unborn daughter, writing in the present, and also using her "pillow books", books similar to journals Cordelia wrote in her teenage years, and the entire book is a mixture of the two, and you hardly ever know which is which), and even has one section where you have to read two different stories, or memories, or writings. Whatever you want to call them. The left hand side is not chronological, and has a couple lists, seperate memories, that kind of random thing. The right side is a chronological sequence of events in her life, as are most books. This is All has a lot about how she loves Will, but it is not how she adores him, or her huge crush on him. It is her relationship with him, and how it grows and progresses, and is nothing like the stories involving a girl's crush on a popular boy, and how hopelessly obsessed she is. Will is in the book a lot simply because he is a huge part of her life.

Also, this book fascinated me and surprised me with many very interesting little sections about things in life, that got me thinking. For instance, sleep. I can't explain it as well as the author, but it was very thought provoking and presented an entirely new view. The book is, overall, wonderful. I loved it. However, if you are not an advanced reader or an adult, I recommend you do not read this book. It is for older readers, because of the topics and the ideas. You will not understand it, and will walk away confused and thinking it is a horrible book. But when you are a better reader, definitley check this book out. It's great. I loved it, and the author showed a lot of ingenuity. I would highly recommend reading this sometime in your life!

The most heartbreaking and beautiful book I've ever read. I'd recommend it to anyone. I love this book.

This book is like a roller-coaster ride. If you are or have ever been a teenage girl then everything in it will make total sense to you. It does take a mature reader and one who really loves to read to truly appreciate the genius that is This Is All. It has been a long time since I found a book that really touched me on such a deeply personal level.

I did like this book when I first started reading it - the beginning is great, in fact, though our Cordelia does seem to worship the boy she seems to love. However, the book went downhill after that.

The writing became less believable - no emotions were inspired in me from reading the book. Therefore, everything that happened seemed unrealistic and drab. I found the book mundane and basically set on one thing - the worship of Will, Cordelia's love. Maybe that is what sixteen year old girls do, but I don't want to read about it.

Everything that happened to Cordelia seemed unimportant. She was the one telling the story, but she had no emotion for it - her own story. She hardly seemed to care, and when she did care, it seemed faked, or forced, a facade.

I was rather annoyed with more of this book, but I won't tell it here, because it contains spoilers and I hate it when people give away the endings or important parts of books before I have even had the chance to read them.

Some people who like these kind of books or have read this author's other books and liked them may like this one, but if you are into other sorts of books and were looking for a change of pace, don't let this be you change.

~Kate

"This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn" is a collection of thoughts and recollections put together by Cordelia Kenn for her unborn daughter. Cordelia relates her experiences, her beliefs, her likes, and her dislikes, touching all subjects. She writes of sex, Shakespeare, love, books, poetry, friendship, food, and spirituality (just to name a few) with a very wise perspective for someone of her age, while narrating events in her life.

It sounds boring (and sometimes it is)--reading somebody else's ramblings about why they like this or that, but it is surprisingly entertaining. Not only does Cordelia ramble on about these things, interrupting the "plot", but she does so for 800 pages! (Now, just imagine the sheer amount of paper, writer's cramp, and pens it would take for Cordelia to handwrite 800 typewritten pages. Aidan Chambers only knows where she found the time.)

Cordelia writes like an extremely intelligent, mature person, but she almost never acts like one. Her actions and the maturity of her writing and thoughts are hardly consistent. Cordelia can be very annoying because she says one thing and does another.

There was a 200 page section in this book that was extremely irritating: it consisted of two different storylines that switched every other page--mid-sentence. I don't understand why Aidan Chambers did that: it was irritating and confusing. If he wanted the two storylines side by side, he could have at least switched back and forth at convenient times.

Also, this book is extremely descriptive about sex and periods. It got quite nasty at some points, and was unnecessary.

While I disagree with most of Cordelia's philosophy, I still enjoyed reading her point of view. If you intend to read this book, read it to the last page or not at all. The ending makes the book.