Nonfiction Monday Review: Sugar Changed the World by Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos

Wow, this book has been getting a ton of praise recently - including making the shortlist for the LA Times Book Prize in the YA lit category. So I knew I had to check it out.

Marc Aronson and Maina Budhos both have family connections to the sugar trade - Aronson's family worked with beet sugar in Russia, while Budhos' family, originally from India, worked in Guyana. This personal connection is an early indication that the story of sugar is going to take us around the globe. Aronson and Budhos trace sugar from its probably origins in New Guinea, through the Middle East to Europe, and then spend the bulk of the book looking at how sugar drove the slave trade in South America and the Caribbean. As a USian, for whom the story of slavery was tied to cotton, it was eye opening to see how slavery influenced a different cash crop.

There are also interesting facts about sugar peppered throughout the book. Sugar is the only flavor humans like naturally - we acquire our tastes for salty, bitter, and other flavors. While the story Aronson and Budhos share pretty much ends with slavery in the US (going on just a bit longer to look at the indentured servitude of Indians, as well as the Asians of many countries who were brought in to Hawaii), there are tantalizing hints that the story of sugar isn't over - we've developed high fructose corn syrup as a replacement for cane sugar, and artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I think, rather than spending so much time going over the horrors of slavery again, I would have liked to see more about the modern quest for cheap sweeteners. While slavery is certainly an important part of the story of sugar, since Aronson and Budhos say in their afterword that this is a book intended for high school students I feel like rehashing a lot of the stories of slavery that aren't too different from accounts of life in the United States, with which US students will already be familiar, dragged down parts of the book.

Another small thing that I feel is missing from the book is any account of the Caribbean natives who would have been displaced by these sugar plantations. The way the book is now, it seems like the islands were discovered as empty, pristine places, perfect for growing sugar cane. I know initially native populations were used as slaves for the Europeans - by the time the Europeans got around to growing sugar, had the native populations already been exhausted by other slave work and disease? I certainly don't know - the only mention of natives doesn't even merit a listing in the index, as they are just briefly mentioned as members of the maroon population in Brazil - communities formed outside of the plantations by escaped slaves, natives, and even some white Europeans.

There were also two small passages that dragged down the quality of the book for me, because they are phrased...awkwardly, to put them in the most positive light possible.

First, on page 39:

You might be lucky enough to be trained as a specialist - the person who watched the cane grow and who kept an eye out for when the plants were ripe and ready to be cut. Special knowledge did not make a slave any less a slave - you were neither freed or paid. But perhaps some of the enslaved people had the personal pleasure of realizing that they had knowledge that the plantation owners needed.

I checked to see if there was a note in the back explaining where this notion of pleasure in slavery came from - if there was a slave narrative that had someone taking some form of pleasure in their work, this would be a much more credible statement. But since no such note exists, it seems rather tone deaf to talk about taking pleasure in having knowledge that's going to benefit the person that keeps you as property.

Then again, on page 70:

Africans were at the heart of the great change in the economy, indeed in the lives of people throughout the world. Africans were the true global citizens - adjusting to a new land, a new religion, even to other Africans they would never have et in their homelands. Their labor made the Age of Sugar - the Industrial Age - possible. We should not see the enslaved people simply as victims, but rather as actors - as the heralds of the interconnected world in which we all live today.

I think this one is worse for me than page 39 was. The slaves in the Caribbean had no choice in their situation - they were kidnapped from Africa, and their ability to act freely was removed. The enslaved Africans rarely got to enjoy the fruits of their labor - working in sugar cane was dangerous and claimed so many lives that once the Atlantic slave trade was abolished slaves weren't reproducing fast enough to maintain or increase the slave population numbers, so the sugar workers weren't usually the ones buying their freedom and then going on to be consumers of sugar (or any other goods harvested by the hands of slaves). Edit 3/14/11 at 11pm: Author Marc Aronson has posted a comment further explaining these passages.

This is a worthwhile book for those interested in another aspect of the dark history of slavery - I just had to point out those two instances because they left me feeling uncomfortable. In both instances I get the points that Aronson and Budhos are trying to make - I just think they end up falling a little short of their goal, as both of these passages almost seem to soften the tragedy that slavery is.





This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Chapter Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

What Have I Missed? Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

This is supposed to be my February book...but I ran out of days in February, thanks to my vacation/honeymoon. So here's the anxiously-awaited (if responses to my Goodreads review tweet are any indication!) of 2005 Printz Award winner How I Live Now.

In an attempt to escape her father and her horrible new stepmother, Manhattanite Daisy is spending the summer in rural England with family she hardly knows - her mother's sister and her four children. What is supposed to be a boring and relaxing summer takes a turn for the unexpected when, a day after her aunt has left the country on business, war breaks out in England.

Alone in the countryside, the five kids band together as a family in ways Daisy never imagined possible - from becoming so close they're practically telepathic to the decidedly more than familial love she shares with Edmond. But as the danger moves closer to their secluded outpost, Daisy must draw on reserves of strength she hardly knows she has to try to keep the little family together.

Pretty much every review of this I saw before going in brings up the incest - and now I guess I'm guilty of that too. But all of those reviews made such a big deal out of it I was sure I was going to end up with a romance story with some vaguely dystopian feelings. Let me assure you, that's totally not the case. Really, I'm kind of surprised that cousin-incest really gets people up in arms at this point. Just because you don't want to bang your cousin doesn't mean it's actually the grossest thing in the world. Much grosser: undead boyfriends that watch you sleep and try to control who you can spend time with. Or kidnappers. Abusive relationships of any kind, really. Priorities, people.

What this is, is a survival story. This is about how Daisy finds the strength, through extraordinary circumstances, to stop beating herself up and rediscovering her family and her will to live.

But ultimately, that wasn't quite enough to keep me riveted to the story. I put the book down a couple of times and wandered away to read something else. It may have had something to do with the writing style - it's very postmodern what with its complete absence of quotation marks. Considering the kids are pretty much psychic that makes it very hard to tell what is actually spoken and what is thought. The psychic-abilities were a bit random themselves - the whole of the writing just felt rather unsettling and unjustified.

What I did like was how Rosoff was able to subtly show how Daisy evolves over the course of the novel. There are hardly any moments when these changes are stated outright and instead they're left for the reader to pick up on and contemplate. An excellent example of an author trusting her audience to get it without hitting us over the head with character development or Messages.

Review: Prisoners in the Palace by Michaela Maccoll

Okay, enough slacking off from me! I've had essentially a month's vacation from blogging, and hopefully I've gotten that slacking out of my system. It's the beginning of a new month, the last month of the year, and I'm going to be much better about blogging regularly from here on out!

On to the book at hand: I was already looking forward to reading Prisoners in the Palace: How Princess Victoria became Queen with the Help of Her Maid, a Reporter, and a Scoundrel before Chronicle contacted me and offered me a copy for review (so thanks for that!). If nothing else, I was eager to get my hands on a copy to get a look at the cover up close. The Space Between Trees, reviewed in July, had a beautifully unique cover, with the cutout silhouette revealing a pearlescent paper. This time around the front cover is metallic (I'm like a magpie when it comes to shiny stuff), with the back cover invoking the 19th century equivalent of supermarket tabloid with excerpts of gossipy articles teasing plot points of the book. Underneath the jacket, the book is decorated in a damask design. Chronicle is clearly invested in making their books look just as good on the outside as they are on the inside - and Prisoners in the Palace is quite excellent!


Just as Liza Hastings is preparing for her grand debut into London society in 1836, tragedy strikes - her parents are killed in an accident, leaving Liza penniless and destitute. Through generous family connections, however, Liza is able to apply for a position in the household of Princess Victoria - as a lady's maid. It's a huge step down socially for Liza, but when the other option is to be out on the street, she is determined to make the best of her situation.

A cunning and clever young woman, Liza is drawn into the intrigue of royal life, and the lives of the royal servants. Genuinely fond of the princess, Liza looks out for the naive young woman and does all she can to protect the princess from her predatory guardian, while trying to avoid being fired for impertinence. She is assisted by, as the subtitle says, a reporter and a scoundrel. The newspaper industry was growing rapidly during this era, and Liza teams up with a promising broadsheet entrepreneur to promote Victoria's interests. The scoundrel facilitates Liza's meetings, and even has the chance to be a hero in his own right.

Maccoll has crafted an excellent work of historical fiction. In fact, I think this is even deserving of the title historical thriller, as Laurie Halse Anderson has asked that her historical works be called. Prisoners in the Palace is filled with intrigue and danger, though perhaps on a smaller scale than Chains and Forge. Maccoll truly brings her characters to life through engaging dialog and seamless integration of historical facts into the narrative. History is further brought to life through excerpts of Victoria's journals and other contemporary writings, though Maccoll admits in the author's note that she fudged the date and order of some of these.

This is a novel primarily populated by women, and they are a diverse and engaging group, ranging from disgraced maids to Queens of England. The men don't get as much screen time so they come off flatter in comparison to people like Liza and Victoria, but still support an excellent story.

I enthusiastically recommend Prisoners in the Palace to fans of historical fiction thrillers, and even to those of you who claim you'd rather stick with contemporary or fantasy novels. Maccoll clearly paints the picture of early-19th century England for those of us who know little of the time period, and populates the world with characters who perfectly balance historical and modern sensibilities.

Reviewed from review copy received from publisher.

Double Review: The Education of Bet by Lauren Baratz-Logsted and A Golden Web by Barbara Quick

A backlog of reviews means more double reviews, simply so it doesn't take me two months to catch up with myself. On the other hand, I would probably have reviewed these two together anyway, since they share a few elements: historical fiction, romance between students, and girls disguising themselves as boys in order to receive an education.

In 19th century England, Bet is the orphaned daughter of a maid, and has been the ward of a relative of her mother's employer for most of her life. Bet occupies a precipitous place in a society rigidly defined by class: she comes from the humblest of beginnings and has been raised in the lap of luxury, yet now belongs to neither world. What Bet longs for most, however, is an education - something denied to her and yet forced upon the unwilling Will, great-nephew of her benefactor who lost his parents to the same illness that killed Bet's mother. Will wants a life of glory in the military. Bet wants to go to school. So Bet concocts a plan: since Will is due to be sent to a new school at the start of the term, she will dress as a boy and pretend to be him, leaving Will free to pursue military service.

Away at school, Bet thrives in her classes, but finds interpersonal relationships much more tricky, as she attracts the attention of bullies and generally has no idea about how boys act when girls aren't around. To make matters trickier, she shares a room with an attractive roommate, and discovers that even the best laid plans can have holes in them (for example - in a school full of men and boys, how is she supposed to handle her period?).

A Golden Web is set much earlier, going back to 14th century Italy, and follows Alessandra Gillani, who is thought to be the first female anatomist. As Quick's author's note explains, no one is entirely sure if Alessandra existed or if she was as educated as legend says she is, but Quick paints a rich picture of her possible life. Daughter of a wealthy book maker, back when books were still written and illustrated by the hands of apprentices, Alessandra has access to a wealth of knowledge denied to other girls and women of her age. Threatened with an arranged marriage at 15 by a disapproving stepmother, Alessandra first hides in a convent, then disguises herself as Sandro and makes her way to Bologna to study with the masters of medicine and the fledgling science of anatomy, where her talents make her the enemy of a jealous fellow student, and also attract the eye and support of a handsome student who she may just be able to trust with her secret.

With so much in common, these books are actually vastly different. The Education of Bet focuses almost exclusively on the romance between Bet and her roommate, to the point where at times it hardly even seemed like an historical fiction novel, and the cross-dressing was merely an elaborate plot device to bring the two unlikely lovers together (unlikely thanks to that pesky class difference). A Golden Web spends much more time on historical details, making it totally believable why Alessandra would have to disguise herself as Sandro. And despite her younger age, Alessandra is much better equipped for an extended disguise - even though she set out before she started her period (or "flowering," which is probably the most ridiculous euphemism I've ever heard), she knows it's going to come thanks to her medical books and quickly adapts. Bet has been menstruating for awhile, and yet totally forgot to plan ahead, which struck me as ridiculous. I've been known to forget to have pads or tampons with me on a trip, but that's not because I forgot I was going to have my period, rather I was just too scatterbrained to throw extras in my bag. Bet just forgot it was ever going to happen.

Parts of A Golden Web feel slightly too coincidental to be realistic, and for awhile I wondered if this was actually going to go into a Cinderella-style story since her stepmother is just so wicked. However, I loved Alessandra's special interest in women's bodies and health, and descriptions of her visiting midwives and female healers in the unsavory part of town to learn from their traditional knowledge, handed down orally from generation to generation, and combining that with her schooling.

If you're looking for a fluffy romance, you could do worse than The Education of Bet. If you want a nuanced historical novel, A Golden Web is the book for you.

Review: Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray

I love road trip stories. The physical journey works as an excellent metaphor for a character's personal journey, and usually involves some sort of wacky hijinks (why doesn't Chrome think hijinks is a word?).


Sim, Kenny, Blake and Ross have been best friends for ages, until suddenly Ross dies in an accident - his bike was hit by a car. The three boys are angry and sad - especially after sitting through the impersonal funeral at the church - and decide the best sendoff for Ross would be to take him to the town of Ross in Scotland, where he'd always wanted to visit but had never quite managed.

The road trip is off to a bad start before it even begins when Blake fumbles the kidnapping of Ross' ashes. Then Kenny loses his train ticket, and all of the extra cash. It never gets much better as one misfortune after the other befalls the boys. But bound by their friendship they refuse to give up their quest.

Over the course of two days, we really see the boys growing up and coming to terms with what their friend's death means to each of them. All three boys, as well as the various people they meet on their journey, are very distinct. Sim was the hardest to read about for me - that boy has a lot of anger, and acts like the arbiter of what makes a good friend. For example, throughout the novel he harps on Kenny for not helping Ross with a computer problem the day he died, which just feels ridiculous, since how was Kenny supposed to know what was going to happen? But it's an early clue into Sim's overall disposition. Blake is a sage narrator and loyal friend. I really enjoyed being in his head for the duration of this novel, that felt a lot shorter than 300 pages.

And the ending is the type that I love most: while there's a solid conclusion to the road trip, there are no easy, final answers given. It's clear that while this particular story has finished, the boys are going to go on to have other adventures. It's the most realistic sort of ending their is, which is always the most satisfying for me.

Review: Wildthorn by Jane Eagland

I picked this one up in the mad dash for galleys at ALA in June. A corset on the cover, a story of mistaken identity in a 19th century asylum, I figured it was worth a shot - even if it has the cheesiest tagline ever on the cover. "Treachery locks her away. Love is the key." Ignore that, it gets much better!

Louisa Cosgrove is a young woman of privilege. Her father is a respected doctor and encourages his daughter's precocious and inquisitive mind. Her mother is disappointed she doesn't have a more traditional daughter, and her older brother is jealous of the time Louisa gets to spend with her father as they bond over their shared passion for medicine.

Louisa's luck changes after her father's death. Her brother, now the man of the house, forbids Louisa from furthering her education. Her mother falls into a devastating depression. Louisa's only reprieve is when she visits her beautiful cousin, Grace, but even that will soon be taken from her, as Grace is preparing for her wedding. When Louisa's brother finds a companion position for her with the family of a friend, Louisa takes the opportunity, if only to escape the heartaches of home.

But Louisa never arrives at the home of the Woodvilles. Instead, she's dropped off at Wildthorn, an insane asylum where they insist she is Lucy Childs. Louisa - or is it Lucy? - is stripped of her belongings, forced to face indignities like being locked in a bathtub in the dark and drugged whenever she tries to argue with the staff. Only Eliza, one of the assistants, shows a hint of compassion for Louisa, and the pair form an unlikely bond as Louisa plots her escape.

Eagland paints a terrifying picture of a 19th century asylum. Abusive and untrained staff severely hinder the healing process for the patients thought curable. Worse staff and egregious conditions condemn those thought to be incurable (or just too difficult for other people to work with). Louisa's plight in the asylum was especially terrifying for me, since not being believed is one of my worst fears (outside of things that could actually kill me. Like bees). Since the book is set before people were carrying IDs with them all the time, it's easy to see how a new identity could be quickly created - but Eagland also does a good job of making us question Louisa's mental state. There are just enough hints at some potentially traumatic incident in Louisa's past that had me wondering if she really was Lucy Childs and she'd created an alternate personality in Louisa Cosgrove.

Now about that tagline. It's not only cheesy, but it's misleading, since the romance plays only a small part in the story, and doesn't even appear until near the end. Now I can't say I'm entirely disappointed in it, because surprisingly it's a lesbian romance (no mention of that in the jacket copy!), and I'm never going to say we need fewer lesbians in YA lit, but at the same time this one never quite rang true for me. By making Louisa a lesbian, it falls dangerously close to lesbian stereotypes: she's an uppity 19th century woman with an interest in masculine sciences like medicine, of course she's a lesbian. As I'm a fan of stories that eschew the "rule" that all books need a romance, I would have preferred Louisa to be a solitary character who simply formed strong friendships (and if readers wanted to read some subtext into those relationships, I would totally encourage them!).

Wildthorn was released yesterday, September 6th (Labor Day in the US). Picked up ARC for review at ALA.