Julie Halpern totally won me over with Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, so even though Don't Stop Now didn't promise me nerdy D&D hijinks, I still needed to check it out. There may be no D&D, but I love road trips, so I thought this would be worth a shot - and I was totally right.
When Lillian's sorta-friend, Penny, leaves her a weird voice mail at 4:30 in the morning, Lil doesn't think much of it. "I did it?" What does that even mean? But then her parents started calling. And then the cops. Apparently Penny has been kidnapped?
Except Lil is pretty sure Penny faked it - she kind of mentioned that once. And Lil has a feeling she may have run away to Oregon. So she calls up her BFF (and major-crush) Josh, and the two set out on a road trip from Chicago to Portland with nothing but Josh's dad's credit card and the clothes on their backs. Along the way the dynamic duo stop at all the great tourist-attractions of fly-over country - the Badlands, Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, etc. And Lil keeps hoping that this trip, probably their last great adventure before she moves away for college and Josh starts pursuing his music career in earnest, will be the trip that makes Josh see her as more than just a girl friend.
In between the chapters of Lil and Josh's antics, we also get short, heartbreaking scenes from Penny's life over the last year or so. Glimpses of a family that uses her as nothing more than a baby sitter, and boyfriend that uses her as a doormat - and a punching bag. It's not hard to figure out why Lil might have decided to run away - but did she really fake that kidnapping?
This story is a road trip and story of friendship first and foremost - the long term friendship between Lil and Josh, as well as the lengths Lil will go to in order to help someone who didn't have a lot of options in the friend-department. The romantic angle was played just right. There's some angst here, because Lil has pretty much always loved Josh but he's never seen it, but that never overwhelms their friendship. Even when she's a little disappointed that they only literally slept together in a cozy motel bed, she still has fun with their zany road trip.
Even though for most of the story we only get small insights into Penny, I really liked her as a character, too. Who didn't have a friend/acquaintance that they knew just well enough to say "hi" to at parties and work on projects together if there was no one else in the class? And a lot of us have probably been in friendships like that where one person clearly read a lot more into it than the other did. The vignettes also painted a clear picture of why someone might stay with a boyfriend (or girlfriend) who clearly isn't right for them - who can be outright abusive. It's terrifying and played exactly right - Penny's story lends some gravitas to what would otherwise be a light romantic comedy.
Julie Halpern is two-for-two with me so far. Her characters are always dynamic, funny and honest. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next!
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Nonfiction Monday Review: Flesh and Blood So Cheap: The Triangle Fire and its Legacy by Albert Marrin
My fascination with the tragedy at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 has been well documented on this blog, but one thing I've been looking for since reading my first book on the fire is a great, YA-focused nonfiction account of the fire. I love historical fiction as a way to introduce readers in a compelling, creative way to historical events, but eventually I start to hunger for some cold, hard facts. Finally, 100 years after the disaster, Albert Marrin provides me with the book I've been looking for.
Marrin gives a detailed account of late 19th-early 20th century immigrant life, focusing on the Southern Italians and Russian Jews who dominated the workforce in factories like Triangle. Marrin goes back to Italy and Russia to look at the "pushes" that started the huge waves of immigration that brought these people to New York City.
From there we see life in New York's poor immigrant neighborhoods, how the livelihoods of the immigrants back in the home country affected what jobs they took in America, how insulated the neighborhoods were, and how textile factory work became the position of choice for young immigrant women.
And then comes the terrors of factory life, and the nightmare that was March 25th, when the fire broke out just before closing time. Marrin provides plenty of contemporary accounts, from brief quotations from witnesses to longer excerpts of written accounts. When I told my husband I was reading a book about the Triangle Fire his response was "Another one? Don't you know everything?" But there was a lot here I didn't know. For example, I knew the fire escape quickly proved to be useless, tearing away from the building under the weight of the terrified workers. What I didn't know was the fire escape was never truly designed to be useful - it ended directly over a skylight in the roof of the next building, and was surrounded with a fence topped with four-inch spikes. If falling from the fire escape didn't kill someone, landing on those spikes did.
Marrin ties the story of the Triangle factory into today, looking at the governmental corruption that was overcome in order to ensure some basic workplace safety and the right for workers to unionize (a right that is, of course, under attack again today). Marrin also looks overseas to modern sweatshops in Asia, looking at the ethical implications of boycotting sweatshop labor, since the women who work in these factories have so few other options. (For an alternative view, that I don't think will be presented in YA lit anytime soon, no matter how "dark" we're getting, check out this recent Slate article)
I appreciate that Marrin hasn't white-washed history. When explaining the ethnic makeup of the workers at the Triangle factory, he notes right away that African-American women were absent due to racism. And then during the Uprising of 20,000, he brings up the important decisions African American women had to make regarding their own opportunities for job advancement.
The Triangle Factory Fire was such a pivotal moment in American history, it's a shame it isn't taught about more often, and that the names of those associated with it have been generally lost. I'm so thankful that Marrin introduced me to Clara Lemlich through this book - she was a tireless labor organizer during the Uprising of 20,000 (a massive garment worker strike that ended a few months prior to the Triangle Fire), she was blackballed from the industry afterwards, but continued to dedicate her life towards social welfare and became what we now call a community organizer. She was so bad ass, that even when she was in a nursing home in her 80s, she encouraged the orderlies to organize and form a union! What an amazing person.
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!
Marrin gives a detailed account of late 19th-early 20th century immigrant life, focusing on the Southern Italians and Russian Jews who dominated the workforce in factories like Triangle. Marrin goes back to Italy and Russia to look at the "pushes" that started the huge waves of immigration that brought these people to New York City.From there we see life in New York's poor immigrant neighborhoods, how the livelihoods of the immigrants back in the home country affected what jobs they took in America, how insulated the neighborhoods were, and how textile factory work became the position of choice for young immigrant women.
And then comes the terrors of factory life, and the nightmare that was March 25th, when the fire broke out just before closing time. Marrin provides plenty of contemporary accounts, from brief quotations from witnesses to longer excerpts of written accounts. When I told my husband I was reading a book about the Triangle Fire his response was "Another one? Don't you know everything?" But there was a lot here I didn't know. For example, I knew the fire escape quickly proved to be useless, tearing away from the building under the weight of the terrified workers. What I didn't know was the fire escape was never truly designed to be useful - it ended directly over a skylight in the roof of the next building, and was surrounded with a fence topped with four-inch spikes. If falling from the fire escape didn't kill someone, landing on those spikes did.
Marrin ties the story of the Triangle factory into today, looking at the governmental corruption that was overcome in order to ensure some basic workplace safety and the right for workers to unionize (a right that is, of course, under attack again today). Marrin also looks overseas to modern sweatshops in Asia, looking at the ethical implications of boycotting sweatshop labor, since the women who work in these factories have so few other options. (For an alternative view, that I don't think will be presented in YA lit anytime soon, no matter how "dark" we're getting, check out this recent Slate article)
I appreciate that Marrin hasn't white-washed history. When explaining the ethnic makeup of the workers at the Triangle factory, he notes right away that African-American women were absent due to racism. And then during the Uprising of 20,000, he brings up the important decisions African American women had to make regarding their own opportunities for job advancement.
The Triangle Factory Fire was such a pivotal moment in American history, it's a shame it isn't taught about more often, and that the names of those associated with it have been generally lost. I'm so thankful that Marrin introduced me to Clara Lemlich through this book - she was a tireless labor organizer during the Uprising of 20,000 (a massive garment worker strike that ended a few months prior to the Triangle Fire), she was blackballed from the industry afterwards, but continued to dedicate her life towards social welfare and became what we now call a community organizer. She was so bad ass, that even when she was in a nursing home in her 80s, she encouraged the orderlies to organize and form a union! What an amazing person.
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!
Monday, April 11, 2011
Review: Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland
My first introduction to Susan Vreeland was in high school when I read The Passion of Artemisia. At the time it was being considered for the BBYA list because of the teenage protagonist. It didn't end up making the list, but it was a powerful story - based on the life of Artemisia Gentileschi, a 17th century painter who often depicted strong women of the Bible and mythology. A haunting and captivating story. So when I heard that Vreeland had a new book, I knew I needed to get it - I didn't even look to see if it was based on a real person this time around and just dove in!
Like Artemisia, Clara Driscoll is an artist constricted by society's attitudes about what women can and should accomplish. Instead of paintings, however, Clara works in glass, and is responsible for creating some of the most famous designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany's innovative glass lamps.
While working for Tiffany is a dream come true in some ways, it's incredibly stifling in others. The unionized male glass workers don't appreciate the women's department, headed by Clara, getting some of the greatest commissions. And while Tiffany is rather forward thinking in hiring women at all, he has old fashioned notions about married women, namely that they shouldn't be working. Clara resigned from Tiffany's once before to get married, but returned upon the death of her husband. She longs to have a romantic companion in her life again, but is also loyal to Mr. Tiffany, and then there's the matter of her life's passion in being an artist. How is Clara supposed to choose?
There are also wonderful subplots and minor characters - Clara has several gay friends she interacts with throughout the story, growing quite close to some of them, but my favorite recurring subplot had to be Clara's burgeoning social consciousness and labor organizing. When the male glassworkers start grumbling about all the work the women are doing, Clara organizes all of the women to march to work in solidarity under the banner of labor rights and women's rights. She counsels many of the young women in her department to improve their skills so they can earn more money to support their families, and delay marriage as long as possible to be sure they can start their married lives with a bit of money of their own. She also gets a bicycle, which just makes me want to read Wheels of Change even more (NYPL, Queens Library: WHY DON'T YOU HAVE IT YET?!). I have a feeling Clara's bike rides really illustrate a lot of what that book is talking about.
Clara has some thoroughly modern attitudes, but they're tempered by some truly Victorian attitudes that keep her from coming across as too 21st century, such as buying into the "benevolent" stereotype that women are more attuned to color so it's okay that they are segregated in their own department in the glass factory. She's overall a great character because she has so many different interests, passions, and problems that she truly comes to life. The same can't be said for all of the side characters, as especially some of the men in the periphery of Clara's life are hard to distinguish from each other.
So was Clara Driscoll a real person? Absolutely - though no one knew it until 2006. Because I'm a huge geek I would have liked a longer author's note at the end about Vreeland's research. While she relates the discovery of Clara's letters that led to the re-evaluation of the design of Tiffany lamps, I wondered how much of the characterization of other historical characters were based on fact - especially Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. But hey, I suppose I can find a biography of him on my own and try to learn for myself what may have been fact and what was fiction in Vreeland's complex depiction.
Like Artemisia, Clara Driscoll is an artist constricted by society's attitudes about what women can and should accomplish. Instead of paintings, however, Clara works in glass, and is responsible for creating some of the most famous designs for Louis Comfort Tiffany's innovative glass lamps.While working for Tiffany is a dream come true in some ways, it's incredibly stifling in others. The unionized male glass workers don't appreciate the women's department, headed by Clara, getting some of the greatest commissions. And while Tiffany is rather forward thinking in hiring women at all, he has old fashioned notions about married women, namely that they shouldn't be working. Clara resigned from Tiffany's once before to get married, but returned upon the death of her husband. She longs to have a romantic companion in her life again, but is also loyal to Mr. Tiffany, and then there's the matter of her life's passion in being an artist. How is Clara supposed to choose?
There are also wonderful subplots and minor characters - Clara has several gay friends she interacts with throughout the story, growing quite close to some of them, but my favorite recurring subplot had to be Clara's burgeoning social consciousness and labor organizing. When the male glassworkers start grumbling about all the work the women are doing, Clara organizes all of the women to march to work in solidarity under the banner of labor rights and women's rights. She counsels many of the young women in her department to improve their skills so they can earn more money to support their families, and delay marriage as long as possible to be sure they can start their married lives with a bit of money of their own. She also gets a bicycle, which just makes me want to read Wheels of Change even more (NYPL, Queens Library: WHY DON'T YOU HAVE IT YET?!). I have a feeling Clara's bike rides really illustrate a lot of what that book is talking about.
Clara has some thoroughly modern attitudes, but they're tempered by some truly Victorian attitudes that keep her from coming across as too 21st century, such as buying into the "benevolent" stereotype that women are more attuned to color so it's okay that they are segregated in their own department in the glass factory. She's overall a great character because she has so many different interests, passions, and problems that she truly comes to life. The same can't be said for all of the side characters, as especially some of the men in the periphery of Clara's life are hard to distinguish from each other.
So was Clara Driscoll a real person? Absolutely - though no one knew it until 2006. Because I'm a huge geek I would have liked a longer author's note at the end about Vreeland's research. While she relates the discovery of Clara's letters that led to the re-evaluation of the design of Tiffany lamps, I wondered how much of the characterization of other historical characters were based on fact - especially Louis Comfort Tiffany himself. But hey, I suppose I can find a biography of him on my own and try to learn for myself what may have been fact and what was fiction in Vreeland's complex depiction.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Sci Fi Friday Double Review: ANIMORPHS #1 & #2, by K.A. Applegate
I've mentioned a few times before, here and in various blogger profiles I've done for other blogs, that I absolutely loved the Animorphs series when I was younger. It's been just about 14 years since I got my first book - Easter Sunday, 1997, I woke up to find a book tucked in amongst the candy in my Easter basket. A red book with a weird picture on the cover of a girl turning into a cat.
I stuck through the whole series for five years, through the ups and (devastatingly terrible) downs that the 62 book series took. I ran a fan website, wrote tons and tons of fan fiction, and made some of the best friends a girl could ever hope to have, all because of these books.
So even though the books didn't go out on the highest note, I was beyond excited when I heard they were getting re-released, with some small updates to correct mistakes and bring the books into the 21st century. And when Cindy asked me if I wanted to check out the galley copies she had, I about had a heart attack from excitement. I still have all of my original books (including that 14 year old copy of The Visitor...as well as a copy of the second print run version and a copy in German) but I wanted to see what had been changed in these new versions. What I was entirely prepared for was a) the huge wave of nostalgia I felt upon reading the opening lines and b) just how awesome these books still are all these years later! Trust me, there's nothing else like Animorphs out there for this age group right now.
The Invasion introduces us to Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco - five totally ordinary kids who make the fateful decision to walk home one night by cutting through an abandoned construction site. Their leisurely walk home is interrupted by a crashing space ship - and the kids make contact with their first alien, an Andalite called Prince Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul. He warns the group, telling them their planet is already being invaded by the Yeerks, slugs that crawl in through a person's ear before wrapping themselves around the brain and taking complete control of the body. Elfangor gives them the only weapon he can to defend their planet: the power to morph, to acquire the DNA of any animal and then change into that animal.
Jake, serious and responsible, quickly slips into the role of the leader of the group. The others all have strongly defined personalities as well: Rachel is fearless, Cassie compassionate, Marco a wiseass with a tragic past, and Tobias is quiet and shy with a good dose of tragedy of his own. Each book is told from a different character's point of view, so these first two give us the deepest looks into Jake and Rachel. If the other characters don't seem the most complex yet, just you wait.
The Visitor is set a short time later. Just long enough for the group to recover after some of the horrors they experienced in the last book before launching into another mission. This time we follow Rachel as she spends most of her time on reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, sneaking into the home of a friend in order to spy on her parents who are Controllers - people who have been taken over by the Yeerks. It's less action packed than The Invasion, but still filled with tension and drama of a different sort.
If you thought The Hunger Games was a little too violent...well, Animorphs isn't much better. It's not kids killing kids, but it does involve aliens being eaten alive by other aliens on a semi-regular basis. And Applegate doesn't pull away from these darker scenes - they're not gratuitous, but are certainly well-described.
K.A. Applegate absolutely doesn't condescend to her audience or pull any punches. I know the books end up dealing with some really serious moral issues, including war, murder/killing, the nature of evil and so on, but I'd kind of forgotten how outright violent they start. And I love it. The theme of the whole series is about war and its affects on people (much like the culmination of The Hunger Games), and you can't adequately explore that without getting into some bleak moments. Like I said, the descriptions aren't gratuitous - there isn't a grisly scene just for the sake of being edgy or dark - but they are definitely there, and are part of what really set these books apart (they're intended for ages 8-12...I was 12 when the series started. omg, I'm so old, and always have been in this fandom!).
There are also lots of little bits of awesome commentary that slip into these books. I immediately identified with Rachel back in the day (and she remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time), not only because she was tough and fierce and tall like I wanted to be, but she has lots of feminist moments, taking jabs at the boys when she thinks they are being unreasonably protective. There are also two characters of color - Marco is Hispanic and Cassie African-American. Their races are only mentioned in passing (until time travelling starts happening much later in the series), but it's there. There's also a bit of class consciousness - Marco's dad is extremely messed up after the death of Marco's mother a few years ago, meaning that money is short and they don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. Meanwhile Rachel is the daughter of divorced parents but has her own credit card. It gets a little bit into Five Token Band territory (warning: TVTropes link), but as their distinct personalities develop it doesn't feel like lazy stereotyping.
For a 15 year old series (I got into the game a year late), it holds up surprisingly well. There's nothing here that screams mid-90s, and as someone who read these books obsessively, I can also tell you that the updating is quite minimal. The biggest update was changing a major continuity error in the first book (well, it wasn't a continuity error then, but they made a big deal out of the opposite thing happening in subsequent books). Otherwise it was like changing the name of a specific game system to just say "system." When I read the new Babysitter's Club prequel last summer, the writing felt like it definitely could have fit in with the original books...which wasn't the greatest thing. Those books were kind of clunky - like the template of the second chapter of every book detailing the characters. Nothing about these books feel dated, other than the fact that they are designed to be a monthly science fiction series - a genre you don't see at the book store too often anymore.
The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May. Right now I believe the plans are for the first six books to get re-released over the next two years, so this definitely won't be the snappy pace I got used to back in middle school. Old school Animorph fans won't find much terribly new here - if your original books are still in your parents' basement, you're not missing out on anything if you just stick with those. But if tragedy struck so you don't have them anymore, and now you've got a serious craving for some old school Animorphs, you'll be pleased with these. Though I'm sad the corner morphing flipbook is gone :-( On the other hand: lenticular covers! The original cover style never excited me
(that's book #4 to the right), and the new cover style isn't translating well into online images - the background patterns are much richer in real life, and the lenticular action is really quite good!
So, to sum up an incredibly long entry, let me just say this: I am so excited to see these books come back so that a whole new generation can get to know these amazing books.
Reviewed from galley copies. The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May!
I stuck through the whole series for five years, through the ups and (devastatingly terrible) downs that the 62 book series took. I ran a fan website, wrote tons and tons of fan fiction, and made some of the best friends a girl could ever hope to have, all because of these books.
So even though the books didn't go out on the highest note, I was beyond excited when I heard they were getting re-released, with some small updates to correct mistakes and bring the books into the 21st century. And when Cindy asked me if I wanted to check out the galley copies she had, I about had a heart attack from excitement. I still have all of my original books (including that 14 year old copy of The Visitor...as well as a copy of the second print run version and a copy in German) but I wanted to see what had been changed in these new versions. What I was entirely prepared for was a) the huge wave of nostalgia I felt upon reading the opening lines and b) just how awesome these books still are all these years later! Trust me, there's nothing else like Animorphs out there for this age group right now.
The Invasion introduces us to Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie and Marco - five totally ordinary kids who make the fateful decision to walk home one night by cutting through an abandoned construction site. Their leisurely walk home is interrupted by a crashing space ship - and the kids make contact with their first alien, an Andalite called Prince Elfangor-Sirinal-Shamtul. He warns the group, telling them their planet is already being invaded by the Yeerks, slugs that crawl in through a person's ear before wrapping themselves around the brain and taking complete control of the body. Elfangor gives them the only weapon he can to defend their planet: the power to morph, to acquire the DNA of any animal and then change into that animal.Jake, serious and responsible, quickly slips into the role of the leader of the group. The others all have strongly defined personalities as well: Rachel is fearless, Cassie compassionate, Marco a wiseass with a tragic past, and Tobias is quiet and shy with a good dose of tragedy of his own. Each book is told from a different character's point of view, so these first two give us the deepest looks into Jake and Rachel. If the other characters don't seem the most complex yet, just you wait.
The Visitor is set a short time later. Just long enough for the group to recover after some of the horrors they experienced in the last book before launching into another mission. This time we follow Rachel as she spends most of her time on reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, sneaking into the home of a friend in order to spy on her parents who are Controllers - people who have been taken over by the Yeerks. It's less action packed than The Invasion, but still filled with tension and drama of a different sort.If you thought The Hunger Games was a little too violent...well, Animorphs isn't much better. It's not kids killing kids, but it does involve aliens being eaten alive by other aliens on a semi-regular basis. And Applegate doesn't pull away from these darker scenes - they're not gratuitous, but are certainly well-described.
K.A. Applegate absolutely doesn't condescend to her audience or pull any punches. I know the books end up dealing with some really serious moral issues, including war, murder/killing, the nature of evil and so on, but I'd kind of forgotten how outright violent they start. And I love it. The theme of the whole series is about war and its affects on people (much like the culmination of The Hunger Games), and you can't adequately explore that without getting into some bleak moments. Like I said, the descriptions aren't gratuitous - there isn't a grisly scene just for the sake of being edgy or dark - but they are definitely there, and are part of what really set these books apart (they're intended for ages 8-12...I was 12 when the series started. omg, I'm so old, and always have been in this fandom!).
There are also lots of little bits of awesome commentary that slip into these books. I immediately identified with Rachel back in the day (and she remains one of my favorite literary characters of all time), not only because she was tough and fierce and tall like I wanted to be, but she has lots of feminist moments, taking jabs at the boys when she thinks they are being unreasonably protective. There are also two characters of color - Marco is Hispanic and Cassie African-American. Their races are only mentioned in passing (until time travelling starts happening much later in the series), but it's there. There's also a bit of class consciousness - Marco's dad is extremely messed up after the death of Marco's mother a few years ago, meaning that money is short and they don't live in the greatest of neighborhoods. Meanwhile Rachel is the daughter of divorced parents but has her own credit card. It gets a little bit into Five Token Band territory (warning: TVTropes link), but as their distinct personalities develop it doesn't feel like lazy stereotyping.
For a 15 year old series (I got into the game a year late), it holds up surprisingly well. There's nothing here that screams mid-90s, and as someone who read these books obsessively, I can also tell you that the updating is quite minimal. The biggest update was changing a major continuity error in the first book (well, it wasn't a continuity error then, but they made a big deal out of the opposite thing happening in subsequent books). Otherwise it was like changing the name of a specific game system to just say "system." When I read the new Babysitter's Club prequel last summer, the writing felt like it definitely could have fit in with the original books...which wasn't the greatest thing. Those books were kind of clunky - like the template of the second chapter of every book detailing the characters. Nothing about these books feel dated, other than the fact that they are designed to be a monthly science fiction series - a genre you don't see at the book store too often anymore.
The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May. Right now I believe the plans are for the first six books to get re-released over the next two years, so this definitely won't be the snappy pace I got used to back in middle school. Old school Animorph fans won't find much terribly new here - if your original books are still in your parents' basement, you're not missing out on anything if you just stick with those. But if tragedy struck so you don't have them anymore, and now you've got a serious craving for some old school Animorphs, you'll be pleased with these. Though I'm sad the corner morphing flipbook is gone :-( On the other hand: lenticular covers! The original cover style never excited me (that's book #4 to the right), and the new cover style isn't translating well into online images - the background patterns are much richer in real life, and the lenticular action is really quite good!So, to sum up an incredibly long entry, let me just say this: I am so excited to see these books come back so that a whole new generation can get to know these amazing books.
Reviewed from galley copies. The Invasion and The Visitor will be released in May!
Monday, April 4, 2011
Review: Bitter Melon by Cara Chow
Speech geeks unite!
Debate gets brought up all the time as a geeky competitive high school activity, but I never did it. Because I was caught up in something even geekier: forensics, aka competitive public speaking. So when I saw that Frances joins the speech team in this book, I knew I had to read it, because speech geeks don't get nearly enough love.
Frances's life revolves around her mother. Her mother, an immigrant from China, demands utter perfection from her daughter, sending her to an academically challenging high school to ensure Frances will get into a prestigious college with plenty of scholarships to propel her through medical school, after which Frances will be able to take care of her.
The only problem in this scenario - Frances isn't positive that she wants to follow her mother's map for her life. When Frances is accidentally assigned to speech class rather than calculus, at first she figures she'll just sit in the class for a week or two and then transfer to the right one before the deadline. But as the hip and cool teacher recognizes an innate speaking ability in Frances, she ends up sticking around - the first secret she's kept from her mother. Frances knows on the one hand she is being ungrateful - her mother truly has made great sacrifices, working long hours in order to afford Frances' tuition, not to mention clothes, food and rent. But until taking this speech class, Frances has never had the opportunity to consider her own desires, and what might be driving her mother's quest for Frances' excellence. Is her mother truly concerned for Frances' future? Or merely her own?
Frances's mother isn't a nice person. This is probably an understatement. Reading the physical and, especially, the verbal abuse she puts Frances through is absolutely painful. But Chow does an excellent job of slowly revealing the abuse, as Frances's world is slowly opened through her experiences on the speech team. It's not so much that the team magically opens Frances's eyes, but rather as her teacher encourages her hidden talent, Frances begins to understand the power that words can hold.
While Frances and her mother have a very complex relationship that is the core of the novel, most of the other relationships suffer from lack of definition. The friendship between Frances and Theresa especially seems to be one of convenience, as the girls quickly befriend each other after one kind act on Theresa's part, as Frances seems to have resented the girl for years. After that the friendship's up and downs seem to be defined more by what will complicate Frances' life more than anything else. The romantic subplot also takes awhile to get going, and while her crush's personality may not be the most well developed, the details of their relationship were refreshingly authentic - overpowering deodorant, clammy hands, and sweaty outfits all called to mind my early romances more than any idealized romance novel ever could.
As a speech geek, I can totally vouch for the authenticity of the competitive aspects of the book. Frances' competitions superficially differ from how mine were set up, but different states have different rules, and of course she was competing over 10 years before I entered the high school speech scene. But there are some emotional aspects that will always ring true - and every speaker has faced terrible audience members like Frances' nemesis throughout the book! In more ways than one, the scenes of Frances' speech career are a light and necessary break from the oppressiveness of her home life.
Debate gets brought up all the time as a geeky competitive high school activity, but I never did it. Because I was caught up in something even geekier: forensics, aka competitive public speaking. So when I saw that Frances joins the speech team in this book, I knew I had to read it, because speech geeks don't get nearly enough love.
Frances's life revolves around her mother. Her mother, an immigrant from China, demands utter perfection from her daughter, sending her to an academically challenging high school to ensure Frances will get into a prestigious college with plenty of scholarships to propel her through medical school, after which Frances will be able to take care of her.
The only problem in this scenario - Frances isn't positive that she wants to follow her mother's map for her life. When Frances is accidentally assigned to speech class rather than calculus, at first she figures she'll just sit in the class for a week or two and then transfer to the right one before the deadline. But as the hip and cool teacher recognizes an innate speaking ability in Frances, she ends up sticking around - the first secret she's kept from her mother. Frances knows on the one hand she is being ungrateful - her mother truly has made great sacrifices, working long hours in order to afford Frances' tuition, not to mention clothes, food and rent. But until taking this speech class, Frances has never had the opportunity to consider her own desires, and what might be driving her mother's quest for Frances' excellence. Is her mother truly concerned for Frances' future? Or merely her own?
Frances's mother isn't a nice person. This is probably an understatement. Reading the physical and, especially, the verbal abuse she puts Frances through is absolutely painful. But Chow does an excellent job of slowly revealing the abuse, as Frances's world is slowly opened through her experiences on the speech team. It's not so much that the team magically opens Frances's eyes, but rather as her teacher encourages her hidden talent, Frances begins to understand the power that words can hold.
While Frances and her mother have a very complex relationship that is the core of the novel, most of the other relationships suffer from lack of definition. The friendship between Frances and Theresa especially seems to be one of convenience, as the girls quickly befriend each other after one kind act on Theresa's part, as Frances seems to have resented the girl for years. After that the friendship's up and downs seem to be defined more by what will complicate Frances' life more than anything else. The romantic subplot also takes awhile to get going, and while her crush's personality may not be the most well developed, the details of their relationship were refreshingly authentic - overpowering deodorant, clammy hands, and sweaty outfits all called to mind my early romances more than any idealized romance novel ever could.
As a speech geek, I can totally vouch for the authenticity of the competitive aspects of the book. Frances' competitions superficially differ from how mine were set up, but different states have different rules, and of course she was competing over 10 years before I entered the high school speech scene. But there are some emotional aspects that will always ring true - and every speaker has faced terrible audience members like Frances' nemesis throughout the book! In more ways than one, the scenes of Frances' speech career are a light and necessary break from the oppressiveness of her home life.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Review: Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang
Found via: Reading in Color
Considering how much historical fiction out right now is about privileged Western European and American girls in the last 150 years or so falling in love with various bad boys, it's refreshing to find a novel that is so completely different. In Daughter of Xanadu, we're talking 14th century Mongolia, and while there's a certain amount of privilege present (our protagonist is a princess), the romantic story arc is relegated to the back burner. Instead, this is a true coming of age story for a young woman trying to find her place in a world that is simultaneously foreign and totally familiar.
Emmajin is the eldest granddaughter of the great Khan Khubilai. While her sister and other women of the palace are content with the life of luxury being royalty brings, Emmajin has one dream: to become a soldier in her grandfather's army. When foreigners from Christendom come to the palace on a trade mission, the Khan asks Emmajin to work as a spy and befriend the foreign man Marco Polo, and report back on everything she's learned. Emmajin agrees, hoping that her compliance, in addition to her amazing archery and horse riding skills, will ensure her entrance into the army.
Marco is utterly foreign to Emmajin. He cannot shoot an arrow or wield a sword - his only defenses are his wit and his storytelling, less than useless to Emmajin. And yet despite her best defenses, Marco's charm begins to work on Emmajin, and even as her dreams are fulfilled she finds herself questioning if the way of the warrior is truly her destiny.
One thing I absolutely loved about this is that Emmajin becomes a warrior on her own terms, rather than having to masquerade as a man. Yes, being a princess helped, but she also recognizes that in order to be accepted by the men she's going to have to be even better than they are - just as modern women often feel they have to be to compete in male-dominated fields.
Every once in awhile, the relationship between Marco and Emmajin made me a little anxious. Christendom (Europe) and Mongolia are often presented as total opposites - and more often than not Emmajin seems to be coming around to the Western view of how things "should be," so at times I was getting vibes of the Western man civilizing the wild savages of the east. Thankfully, Yang is able to thoroughly describe Emmajin's evolving ideas so it becomes clear it's not just Marco's influence. I'd have liked it if we could have seen Marco adapting a bit more to Mongolian ways so it would be more like a true cultural exchange, but the ending is left open enough that maybe Yang can pull together another book out of that!
Like I said in the introduction, above all else this is Emmajin's coming of age story. She's truly learning what it means to be an adult and have to make tough choices and learn new things about herself. Yang has done an excellent job describing 14th century Mongolia, and by including the familiar character of Marco Polo she has a seamless way to weave all of the amazing facts about this setting into the narrative while rarely dragging down the story. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of the historical fiction/romance out there today! (And a brief aside: a book with a wonderful cover! After the whitewashing controversies of the last few years, 2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year for proudly putting the faces of characters of color on covers!)
Considering how much historical fiction out right now is about privileged Western European and American girls in the last 150 years or so falling in love with various bad boys, it's refreshing to find a novel that is so completely different. In Daughter of Xanadu, we're talking 14th century Mongolia, and while there's a certain amount of privilege present (our protagonist is a princess), the romantic story arc is relegated to the back burner. Instead, this is a true coming of age story for a young woman trying to find her place in a world that is simultaneously foreign and totally familiar.
Emmajin is the eldest granddaughter of the great Khan Khubilai. While her sister and other women of the palace are content with the life of luxury being royalty brings, Emmajin has one dream: to become a soldier in her grandfather's army. When foreigners from Christendom come to the palace on a trade mission, the Khan asks Emmajin to work as a spy and befriend the foreign man Marco Polo, and report back on everything she's learned. Emmajin agrees, hoping that her compliance, in addition to her amazing archery and horse riding skills, will ensure her entrance into the army.Marco is utterly foreign to Emmajin. He cannot shoot an arrow or wield a sword - his only defenses are his wit and his storytelling, less than useless to Emmajin. And yet despite her best defenses, Marco's charm begins to work on Emmajin, and even as her dreams are fulfilled she finds herself questioning if the way of the warrior is truly her destiny.
One thing I absolutely loved about this is that Emmajin becomes a warrior on her own terms, rather than having to masquerade as a man. Yes, being a princess helped, but she also recognizes that in order to be accepted by the men she's going to have to be even better than they are - just as modern women often feel they have to be to compete in male-dominated fields.
Every once in awhile, the relationship between Marco and Emmajin made me a little anxious. Christendom (Europe) and Mongolia are often presented as total opposites - and more often than not Emmajin seems to be coming around to the Western view of how things "should be," so at times I was getting vibes of the Western man civilizing the wild savages of the east. Thankfully, Yang is able to thoroughly describe Emmajin's evolving ideas so it becomes clear it's not just Marco's influence. I'd have liked it if we could have seen Marco adapting a bit more to Mongolian ways so it would be more like a true cultural exchange, but the ending is left open enough that maybe Yang can pull together another book out of that!
Like I said in the introduction, above all else this is Emmajin's coming of age story. She's truly learning what it means to be an adult and have to make tough choices and learn new things about herself. Yang has done an excellent job describing 14th century Mongolia, and by including the familiar character of Marco Polo she has a seamless way to weave all of the amazing facts about this setting into the narrative while rarely dragging down the story. A refreshing change of pace from a lot of the historical fiction/romance out there today! (And a brief aside: a book with a wonderful cover! After the whitewashing controversies of the last few years, 2011 is shaping up to be an amazing year for proudly putting the faces of characters of color on covers!)
Friday, March 11, 2011
Sci Fi Friday Review: XVI by Julia Karr
This has probably been one of my most-anticipated books of the year so far. What wasn't there to love about it? Dystopian SF that is actually feminist? So perhaps some of my ultimate disappointment comes from high expectations, but I'm pretty sure even if I'd gone in blind I would have come to a lot of the same conclusions.
All Nina Oberon wants is a totally normal, ordinary, boring life. Unfortunately, Nina is mere weeks away from turning 16 - an age all of her friends are eagerly waiting for, since they will receive their government-mandated tattoos and finally be "sex-teens," free to have sex whenever they want.
But Nina doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't even want a boyfriend. She wants to live in peace with her mom and little sister, and avoid her mom's skeevy boyfriend. But when her mother is mysteriously murdered, all of Nina's carefully laid plans are thrown out the window. With her dying breath, Nina's mother makes her promise to deliver a baby book to her father. The only problem: Nina's father died the night she was born. The truth about her father is one of many mysteries Nina must unlock, while trying to avoid her mother's evil ex, meeting a mysterious new boy, and trying to counter her best friend Sandy's increasingly sex-teen ways.
While the premise here is sound, it totally falls apart in the execution by committing one of the gravest sins in speculative fiction - failing to define the new world the readers are dumped in to. Many of the important aspects of this future society are left unexplained - most egregiously the importance of the titular XVI tattoos. Why on Earth is the government so invested in the sexual goings-on of teenage girls? And while I can easily come up with half a dozen reasons the tattoo is mandatory for girls but apparently not for boys, I'd really like to have seen at least the government cover story for the tattoo. Another under-explained point were the Female Liaison Specialists, or FeLS - we know it's really the only way for lower class girls to rise in rank and that they must be virgins, and we end up learning what the real purpose of the organization is, but the cover story is foggy.
Almost as bad, is the fact that I couldn't stand the protagonist. Nina is the worst kind of dystopian protagonist: the one that not only recognizes she lives in a dystopia, but coincidentally holds 21st century values and isn't afraid of telling us and anyone else that will listen why she is better than everyone else for her enlightened views. I don't know why she and Sandy put up with each other - Nina clearly is contemptuous of everything that Sandy finds important. Why would Sandy not only put up with that disdain, but consider Nina her best friend? Nina is also conveniently open minded about people from all classes - she doesn't have a classist bone in her body and goes out of her way to help homeless people, even when it means putting herself in great physical danger. Noble indeed, but very little textual support for having such a counter-cultural attitude.
Slang is a tricky part of any YA novel, and most SF in general, but Karr comes across as quite tone deaf when she makes one of the most-used slang words in the novel a 21st century slur against transgendered people. Really, there was no better way to refer to transportation as "transports" which is then shortened into "trannies"? It was especially disturbing when, before it was made clear what trans/trannies was short for, a character who's been in a fight is asked if he "kissed a trannie." It just made me really uncomfortable and kept pulling me out of the book (which happened quite often because damn do these kids talk about the various transportation options a lot). Please folks, if you're going to make up words for your book, do a quick Google search to make sure it's not associated with something else (do not Google "trannies" while at work - the first several hits are porn sites, which should be the first clue this wasn't the best word choice).
There's lots more I could critique here - including the mystical Asian healer stereotype and this being another entry in the trend of dystopian stories eliminating/ignoring homosexuality - but I think we'd be here all day.
The novel wraps up rather neatly, so I don't think this is going to be part of that growing trend of releasing dystopian stories in trilogies. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of worldbuilding that could be expanded upon in a sequel, but on the other, all of the major storylines were wrapped up so neatly that there's very little actual story left.
All Nina Oberon wants is a totally normal, ordinary, boring life. Unfortunately, Nina is mere weeks away from turning 16 - an age all of her friends are eagerly waiting for, since they will receive their government-mandated tattoos and finally be "sex-teens," free to have sex whenever they want.But Nina doesn't want to have sex. She doesn't even want a boyfriend. She wants to live in peace with her mom and little sister, and avoid her mom's skeevy boyfriend. But when her mother is mysteriously murdered, all of Nina's carefully laid plans are thrown out the window. With her dying breath, Nina's mother makes her promise to deliver a baby book to her father. The only problem: Nina's father died the night she was born. The truth about her father is one of many mysteries Nina must unlock, while trying to avoid her mother's evil ex, meeting a mysterious new boy, and trying to counter her best friend Sandy's increasingly sex-teen ways.
While the premise here is sound, it totally falls apart in the execution by committing one of the gravest sins in speculative fiction - failing to define the new world the readers are dumped in to. Many of the important aspects of this future society are left unexplained - most egregiously the importance of the titular XVI tattoos. Why on Earth is the government so invested in the sexual goings-on of teenage girls? And while I can easily come up with half a dozen reasons the tattoo is mandatory for girls but apparently not for boys, I'd really like to have seen at least the government cover story for the tattoo. Another under-explained point were the Female Liaison Specialists, or FeLS - we know it's really the only way for lower class girls to rise in rank and that they must be virgins, and we end up learning what the real purpose of the organization is, but the cover story is foggy.
Almost as bad, is the fact that I couldn't stand the protagonist. Nina is the worst kind of dystopian protagonist: the one that not only recognizes she lives in a dystopia, but coincidentally holds 21st century values and isn't afraid of telling us and anyone else that will listen why she is better than everyone else for her enlightened views. I don't know why she and Sandy put up with each other - Nina clearly is contemptuous of everything that Sandy finds important. Why would Sandy not only put up with that disdain, but consider Nina her best friend? Nina is also conveniently open minded about people from all classes - she doesn't have a classist bone in her body and goes out of her way to help homeless people, even when it means putting herself in great physical danger. Noble indeed, but very little textual support for having such a counter-cultural attitude.
Slang is a tricky part of any YA novel, and most SF in general, but Karr comes across as quite tone deaf when she makes one of the most-used slang words in the novel a 21st century slur against transgendered people. Really, there was no better way to refer to transportation as "transports" which is then shortened into "trannies"? It was especially disturbing when, before it was made clear what trans/trannies was short for, a character who's been in a fight is asked if he "kissed a trannie." It just made me really uncomfortable and kept pulling me out of the book (which happened quite often because damn do these kids talk about the various transportation options a lot). Please folks, if you're going to make up words for your book, do a quick Google search to make sure it's not associated with something else (do not Google "trannies" while at work - the first several hits are porn sites, which should be the first clue this wasn't the best word choice).
There's lots more I could critique here - including the mystical Asian healer stereotype and this being another entry in the trend of dystopian stories eliminating/ignoring homosexuality - but I think we'd be here all day.
The novel wraps up rather neatly, so I don't think this is going to be part of that growing trend of releasing dystopian stories in trilogies. On the one hand, there's clearly a lot of worldbuilding that could be expanded upon in a sequel, but on the other, all of the major storylines were wrapped up so neatly that there's very little actual story left.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Nonfiction Monday Review: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge
I'm kind of a bad English major - I've actually never read one of Edith Wharton's novels. So why did I pick up this biography? Because even if I haven't read her work, I'm still fascinated by women who defied social expectations and made a career for themselves - and Edith Wharton was certainly one of those women.
Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.
While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.
Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.
This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?
This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!
Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.
Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.
This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?
This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!
Friday, February 18, 2011
Review: Love Drugged by James Klise
Found via: I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell do I Read?
The basic premise of this book is fraught with the possibility of going down a baaaaaaaaaaad road. Gay kid starts taking a pill that will make him straight. Not hard to see how this could open up some really bad plot lines, or at least unfortunate implications - and I can't tell you how relieved I am that it does not go in that direction!
Jamie Bates is 15 and if he knows anything about himself it's this: he's gay. But for Jamie, that's just about the worst fate he can imagine - he's sure that he'd be ostracized at school and maybe even kicked out of the house he shares with his parents and his grandparents. So as he enters high school, Jamie figures he needs to play it straight, if you will. He's going to keep a low profile, and just try to fit in. When one of the most beautiful girls in school starts paying attention to him, Jamie figures he might as well go for it - maybe he just needs to meet the right girl, right? And Celia Gamez is pretty much everyone's idea of the right girl - beautiful, funny, smart, and rich since her dad is a big name in the pharmaceutical development industry.
Jamie enjoys spending time with Celia, but isn't feeling much of a spark - until he discovers that her dad is developing pills that will eliminate homosexual desires in men. Desperate for some medical help, but unable to discuss this openly with his girlfriend's dad, Jamie starts stealing pills and taking them on the sly. As his relationship with Celia escalates, the drug starts having worrisome side-effects, and Jamie has to create an ever-more elaborate series of lies to explain his behavior, even as it's becoming obvious that whatever the drug is doing, Jamie isn't acting like the person he wants to be.
Klise is a debut author, but he handles this potentially fragile subject with sensitivity and deftness - explained perhaps in his author's note where he acknowledges that when he was 15 he just might have taken such a pill if it were available to him. I think anyone who has questioned their sexuality will recognize themselves in Jamie - the fear of being discovered by the wrong person, the internalized homophobia, and an overwhelming desire to just feel normal. Klise does an excellent job of bringing Jamie fully to life, flaws and all.
I'd say about 90% of this book is excellent - some of the plausibility is lost in the last chapter as the villain is revealed and the hijinks escalate to Saturday morning cartoon proportions. It's a weak note to leave the story on, but isn't insurmountable.
Love Drugged also presents a bit of a twist on the overworked-oblivious parents routine - instead of being high powered workaholics, his parents are working constantly to try to keep the family's heads above water. They moved in with Jamie's grandparents years ago, promising it as a temporary solution, that has slowly grown more permanent. It's not exactly a nuanced portrayal of how middle class families respond to economic crises, in part because most of the adults are two-dimensional and hardly have any screen time, but I appreciated a multi-generational household being presented as more-or-less normal.
I'm still accepting suggestions on which books I should take on my vacation! Check out yesterday's post and add your vote!
The basic premise of this book is fraught with the possibility of going down a baaaaaaaaaaad road. Gay kid starts taking a pill that will make him straight. Not hard to see how this could open up some really bad plot lines, or at least unfortunate implications - and I can't tell you how relieved I am that it does not go in that direction!
Jamie Bates is 15 and if he knows anything about himself it's this: he's gay. But for Jamie, that's just about the worst fate he can imagine - he's sure that he'd be ostracized at school and maybe even kicked out of the house he shares with his parents and his grandparents. So as he enters high school, Jamie figures he needs to play it straight, if you will. He's going to keep a low profile, and just try to fit in. When one of the most beautiful girls in school starts paying attention to him, Jamie figures he might as well go for it - maybe he just needs to meet the right girl, right? And Celia Gamez is pretty much everyone's idea of the right girl - beautiful, funny, smart, and rich since her dad is a big name in the pharmaceutical development industry.Jamie enjoys spending time with Celia, but isn't feeling much of a spark - until he discovers that her dad is developing pills that will eliminate homosexual desires in men. Desperate for some medical help, but unable to discuss this openly with his girlfriend's dad, Jamie starts stealing pills and taking them on the sly. As his relationship with Celia escalates, the drug starts having worrisome side-effects, and Jamie has to create an ever-more elaborate series of lies to explain his behavior, even as it's becoming obvious that whatever the drug is doing, Jamie isn't acting like the person he wants to be.
Klise is a debut author, but he handles this potentially fragile subject with sensitivity and deftness - explained perhaps in his author's note where he acknowledges that when he was 15 he just might have taken such a pill if it were available to him. I think anyone who has questioned their sexuality will recognize themselves in Jamie - the fear of being discovered by the wrong person, the internalized homophobia, and an overwhelming desire to just feel normal. Klise does an excellent job of bringing Jamie fully to life, flaws and all.
I'd say about 90% of this book is excellent - some of the plausibility is lost in the last chapter as the villain is revealed and the hijinks escalate to Saturday morning cartoon proportions. It's a weak note to leave the story on, but isn't insurmountable.
Love Drugged also presents a bit of a twist on the overworked-oblivious parents routine - instead of being high powered workaholics, his parents are working constantly to try to keep the family's heads above water. They moved in with Jamie's grandparents years ago, promising it as a temporary solution, that has slowly grown more permanent. It's not exactly a nuanced portrayal of how middle class families respond to economic crises, in part because most of the adults are two-dimensional and hardly have any screen time, but I appreciated a multi-generational household being presented as more-or-less normal.
I'm still accepting suggestions on which books I should take on my vacation! Check out yesterday's post and add your vote!
Friday, February 11, 2011
Review: Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
Two weeks ago I reviewed Donnelly's Printz honor winning A Northern Light as the inaugural book in my What I Missed reading challenge. I chose A Northern Light to go first because I knew Donnelly had another book out that was getting rave reviews, and I figured I might as well read the books in publication order. I am happy I didn't delay any further, because wow, was Revolution ever a trip.
Andi is one angry, troubled young woman. After losing her brother, her father took off and her mother is still having difficulties coping. Andi lashes out at anyone who tries to come close to her and refuses to put any effort into her schoolwork, even as the due date for her thesis approaches. The only thing Andi cares about anymore is her music - and sometimes even that isn't enough to keep the demons away.
Incensed by his daughter's near failure in school, Andi's dad insists she spend Christmas break with him in Paris so she can focus on her schoolwork while he works on a centuries-old mystery: identifying the owner of a heart long said to belong to Louis-Charles, the young prince who was imprisoned during the French Revolution. Though Andi's determined to finish her thesis in record time, she's distracted by the discovery of a diary written by Alex, a young woman who served the royal family right at the height of the Revolution. She is drawn to the diary and can't escape until she reads Alex's chilling final entries. That is, until an ill-fated trip into Paris' famed catacombs leads Andi to re-emerge into Paris in 1795, where everyone seems to think that she's Alex. Is it a bad drug trip, or has Andi actually stepped into the past? And if she's really there, can she change the future?
Wow, is Andi ever a painful person to read about. She is just so angry and hurt by her brother's death and her parents' reactions and Donnelly's writing made her ragged emotions just jump off of the page. Just devastating and heartbreaking. Donnelly also does an excellent job of describing Andi's rapidly declining mental state as Andi relies more and more on anti-depressants to keep her world in focus. Operating under the theory that if one is good, more is better, Andi takes an increasing number of pills throughout the novel and it's never quite clear if some things are happening because she is on too many drugs - or not enough.
It took me to get about halfway through the book before I was totally comfortable with using Alex's diary as our viewpoint into the past. Part of me wanted this to be a straight-up historical novel without all of Andi's angst. Or perhaps the story could have alternated chapters so we were fully immersed in Revolutionary-era France. But as Andi herself became more invested in Alex's story, so did I become invested in Andi as a character and the ways her and Alex's stories complemented and contrasted with each other.
Music fans of multiple stripes will have a lot to love in this book. I was never that great at musical theory, so some of the subtleties of Andi's obsession with the composer Mahlerbeau were lost on me, but this is an extremely musical novel filled with descriptions of both classical and ultra-contemporary music. Bigger music fans than me will probably enjoy sifting out all of the various musical references.
As she proved in A Northern Light, Donnelly has a gift for bringing the past to life through her excellent writing. With much of Revolution set in the 21st century, she proves that she's equally gifted with contemporary characters and problems, but by weaving in elements of history she helps illustrate just how timeless many stories are.
Andi is one angry, troubled young woman. After losing her brother, her father took off and her mother is still having difficulties coping. Andi lashes out at anyone who tries to come close to her and refuses to put any effort into her schoolwork, even as the due date for her thesis approaches. The only thing Andi cares about anymore is her music - and sometimes even that isn't enough to keep the demons away.Incensed by his daughter's near failure in school, Andi's dad insists she spend Christmas break with him in Paris so she can focus on her schoolwork while he works on a centuries-old mystery: identifying the owner of a heart long said to belong to Louis-Charles, the young prince who was imprisoned during the French Revolution. Though Andi's determined to finish her thesis in record time, she's distracted by the discovery of a diary written by Alex, a young woman who served the royal family right at the height of the Revolution. She is drawn to the diary and can't escape until she reads Alex's chilling final entries. That is, until an ill-fated trip into Paris' famed catacombs leads Andi to re-emerge into Paris in 1795, where everyone seems to think that she's Alex. Is it a bad drug trip, or has Andi actually stepped into the past? And if she's really there, can she change the future?
Wow, is Andi ever a painful person to read about. She is just so angry and hurt by her brother's death and her parents' reactions and Donnelly's writing made her ragged emotions just jump off of the page. Just devastating and heartbreaking. Donnelly also does an excellent job of describing Andi's rapidly declining mental state as Andi relies more and more on anti-depressants to keep her world in focus. Operating under the theory that if one is good, more is better, Andi takes an increasing number of pills throughout the novel and it's never quite clear if some things are happening because she is on too many drugs - or not enough.
It took me to get about halfway through the book before I was totally comfortable with using Alex's diary as our viewpoint into the past. Part of me wanted this to be a straight-up historical novel without all of Andi's angst. Or perhaps the story could have alternated chapters so we were fully immersed in Revolutionary-era France. But as Andi herself became more invested in Alex's story, so did I become invested in Andi as a character and the ways her and Alex's stories complemented and contrasted with each other.
Music fans of multiple stripes will have a lot to love in this book. I was never that great at musical theory, so some of the subtleties of Andi's obsession with the composer Mahlerbeau were lost on me, but this is an extremely musical novel filled with descriptions of both classical and ultra-contemporary music. Bigger music fans than me will probably enjoy sifting out all of the various musical references.
As she proved in A Northern Light, Donnelly has a gift for bringing the past to life through her excellent writing. With much of Revolution set in the 21st century, she proves that she's equally gifted with contemporary characters and problems, but by weaving in elements of history she helps illustrate just how timeless many stories are.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Review: Keep Sweet by Michele Dominguez Greene
Found via: 2011 Amelia Bloomer Project
I'm kind of beginning to feel like when it comes to stories of fundamentalist religious societies, all of the stories have been told. This is the third title about FLDS compounds I've read for young adults that has been published in the last three years, and all of the stories share the exact same structure (the other two titles being Sister Wife and The Chosen One)
Alva Jane has never questioned the tenets of living amongst the FLDS faithful in Pineridge. She comes from a long line of women who keep to the Principle - that a man must engage in plural marriage in order to secure his and his family's places in heaven. She is anxiously waiting for her period to start, signalling that she is a woman and ready to marry - hopefully to the young and kind Joseph John, which would also give her the status and privileges associated with being a first wife.
But when an innocent meeting between the two love birds is witnessed, both are fiercely punished, and Alva finds herself married to a cruel man old enough to be her father - a man who viciously beat one of his wives for attempting to escape Pineridge. Does Alva have the strength to defy the will of her husband, her family, and the very tenets of her faith, to find refuge in the world outside of Pineridge?
Well, if you've ever read any other books about young women in FLDS compounds, you already know the answer to that. You probably also know what Alva discovers immediately before she takes off. In an author's note, Greene notes that when she read accounts of women who've escaped FLDS life, their stories were all hauntingly similar, from British Columbia to New Mexico. That similarity is reflected in how many similarities Keep Sweet has to other YA books with similar settings. Obedient daughter who is enamored with a young man is punished for her curiosity by becoming the lowest wife on the totem pole to a much older man. About the only difference between Keep Sweet and other titles is that Alva Jane's parents show little to no remorse for the harsh treatment they heap upon her - they are more concerned with their own standing within the community than their daughter's happiness. This doesn't add much to the characterization of her father because he is so distant for much of the novel, but it does make her mother an interesting, if villainous, character.
On its own, there are few faults to be found with Keep Sweet, aside from an irritating habit in the first few chapters to go on page-long info-dumps about life in Pineridge and her family. If Keep Sweet were the only FLDS novel I'd ever read, I'd probably think it was pretty decent. However, the book doesn't exist in a vacuum, and ends up feeling quite derivative with nothing to separate it from the pack.
I'm kind of beginning to feel like when it comes to stories of fundamentalist religious societies, all of the stories have been told. This is the third title about FLDS compounds I've read for young adults that has been published in the last three years, and all of the stories share the exact same structure (the other two titles being Sister Wife and The Chosen One)
Alva Jane has never questioned the tenets of living amongst the FLDS faithful in Pineridge. She comes from a long line of women who keep to the Principle - that a man must engage in plural marriage in order to secure his and his family's places in heaven. She is anxiously waiting for her period to start, signalling that she is a woman and ready to marry - hopefully to the young and kind Joseph John, which would also give her the status and privileges associated with being a first wife.But when an innocent meeting between the two love birds is witnessed, both are fiercely punished, and Alva finds herself married to a cruel man old enough to be her father - a man who viciously beat one of his wives for attempting to escape Pineridge. Does Alva have the strength to defy the will of her husband, her family, and the very tenets of her faith, to find refuge in the world outside of Pineridge?
Well, if you've ever read any other books about young women in FLDS compounds, you already know the answer to that. You probably also know what Alva discovers immediately before she takes off. In an author's note, Greene notes that when she read accounts of women who've escaped FLDS life, their stories were all hauntingly similar, from British Columbia to New Mexico. That similarity is reflected in how many similarities Keep Sweet has to other YA books with similar settings. Obedient daughter who is enamored with a young man is punished for her curiosity by becoming the lowest wife on the totem pole to a much older man. About the only difference between Keep Sweet and other titles is that Alva Jane's parents show little to no remorse for the harsh treatment they heap upon her - they are more concerned with their own standing within the community than their daughter's happiness. This doesn't add much to the characterization of her father because he is so distant for much of the novel, but it does make her mother an interesting, if villainous, character.
On its own, there are few faults to be found with Keep Sweet, aside from an irritating habit in the first few chapters to go on page-long info-dumps about life in Pineridge and her family. If Keep Sweet were the only FLDS novel I'd ever read, I'd probably think it was pretty decent. However, the book doesn't exist in a vacuum, and ends up feeling quite derivative with nothing to separate it from the pack.
Friday, January 28, 2011
What Have I Missed? Review: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly
Recommended by: Bob
A Northern Light is one of the books that inspired me to start this challenge. Bob had recommended it to me ages and ages ago, but I never got around to it because I wanted to keep up with all of the new titles coming out. When I started seeing people rave about Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution I knew her name sounded familiar...all because A Northern Light was still in the back of my mind as a book I needed to read! So I decided this needed to be the first book I challenged myself to - and that my reward for getting this challenge under way would be getting to read Revolution next!
In 1906, in a small farming community and summer tourist town, Mattie Gokey dreams of going to New York City to study writing, to share her stories of everyday life with the rest of the world. But realistically, Mattie knows she's never going to leave North Woods. Her mother has recently died, leaving Mattie and her three sisters alone with their father, who can barely bring in enough money to keep food on the table through the winter. Even if she could get a scholarship to cover her tuition, where would she get the money for lodging, clothes and books? And then there's the fact that handsome Royal Loomis has come courting, and Mattie is feeling a surprising impulse to stay at home and settle down.
Taking a summer job at a big tourist hotel to help out her family and put away a little savings for herself, Mattie is implored one day by guest Grace Brown to burn a bundle of letters. Mattie takes the letters, but keeps them hidden, just in case Grace ever asks for them back. Until Grace's drowned body is pulled from the lake, the apparent victim of a boating accident. The young man she was traveling with is nowhere to be found. Mattie begins reading the letters, hoping for a clue as to who Grace was, and maybe for a little guidance from beyond the grave for who Mattie should be.
Donnelly weaves lots of complicated themes into what is on the surface a basic coming of age story with a bit of mystery. Classism is big, ranging from the rich tourists coming in to land that's been settled by poor farmers, to the poor farmers looking down on those who are even poorer. Sexism is the other big one, and all the myriad ways it rears its ugly head. There's the expected views that women shouldn't be educated, but also ideas about what is appropriate for women to be writing about and how to handle sexual harassment. Mattie's best friend is African-American, and she gives us a first hand look at the ugly realities of racism in a Northern state 40 years after the end of th Civil War. Want more? There's also wonderful questions about decency and obscenity, both in people's actions and in literature through the books Mattie's beloved teacher surreptitiously loans her.
My one irritant in this book is the use of Mattie's dictionary word of the day. On the one hand, it's a fun trope and is used well to indicate when a particular chapter is set (the story goes back and forth between the discovery of Grace's body and the months leading up to Mattie taking the position at the hotel). On the other hand, the bit began to wear thin about halfway through the novel as Mattie often would struggle with how the word did or didn't fit how her day was going. I felt that the idea was well established enough at that point that it could have been left to the reader to figure out how a word did or didn't fit thematically, and only have Mattie mention it when it was an important comment on the story.
Huge thanks to Bob for recommending this to me! Next on my list? Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, winner of the Printz in 2005 and recommended by Rachel!
In 1906, in a small farming community and summer tourist town, Mattie Gokey dreams of going to New York City to study writing, to share her stories of everyday life with the rest of the world. But realistically, Mattie knows she's never going to leave North Woods. Her mother has recently died, leaving Mattie and her three sisters alone with their father, who can barely bring in enough money to keep food on the table through the winter. Even if she could get a scholarship to cover her tuition, where would she get the money for lodging, clothes and books? And then there's the fact that handsome Royal Loomis has come courting, and Mattie is feeling a surprising impulse to stay at home and settle down.Taking a summer job at a big tourist hotel to help out her family and put away a little savings for herself, Mattie is implored one day by guest Grace Brown to burn a bundle of letters. Mattie takes the letters, but keeps them hidden, just in case Grace ever asks for them back. Until Grace's drowned body is pulled from the lake, the apparent victim of a boating accident. The young man she was traveling with is nowhere to be found. Mattie begins reading the letters, hoping for a clue as to who Grace was, and maybe for a little guidance from beyond the grave for who Mattie should be.
Donnelly weaves lots of complicated themes into what is on the surface a basic coming of age story with a bit of mystery. Classism is big, ranging from the rich tourists coming in to land that's been settled by poor farmers, to the poor farmers looking down on those who are even poorer. Sexism is the other big one, and all the myriad ways it rears its ugly head. There's the expected views that women shouldn't be educated, but also ideas about what is appropriate for women to be writing about and how to handle sexual harassment. Mattie's best friend is African-American, and she gives us a first hand look at the ugly realities of racism in a Northern state 40 years after the end of th Civil War. Want more? There's also wonderful questions about decency and obscenity, both in people's actions and in literature through the books Mattie's beloved teacher surreptitiously loans her.
My one irritant in this book is the use of Mattie's dictionary word of the day. On the one hand, it's a fun trope and is used well to indicate when a particular chapter is set (the story goes back and forth between the discovery of Grace's body and the months leading up to Mattie taking the position at the hotel). On the other hand, the bit began to wear thin about halfway through the novel as Mattie often would struggle with how the word did or didn't fit how her day was going. I felt that the idea was well established enough at that point that it could have been left to the reader to figure out how a word did or didn't fit thematically, and only have Mattie mention it when it was an important comment on the story.
Huge thanks to Bob for recommending this to me! Next on my list? Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, winner of the Printz in 2005 and recommended by Rachel!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Review: Taking Off by Jenny Moss
There's a superstition out there that whatever you do on the first day of a new year is something that you'll be doing often for the rest of the year. I'm kind of hoping that I can apply that superstition to books: the first book you read published in the new year should be indicative of how the rest of the year's books will turn out. So I'm really, really glad I chose and AWESOME book to be my first published-in-2011 read.
Annie is a senior in high school in a suburban Texas town facing large, looming questions. Like where is she going to college and what will she do with the rest of her life. Surrounded by engineers who work with NASA, and fellow students who know that college is the next step, Annie isn't even sure she wants to go to college. She loves poetry, and has tried her hand at writing a few times, but is pretty sure she's actually terrible and knows there's no money in the endeavor. She hides her passion from everyone - her divorced parents, her best friend Lea, and even Mark, her boyfriend of two years.
When Lea, the daughter of NASA engineers, invites Annie to yet another dinner party featuring NASA personnel and astronauts, Annie drags her feet until she learns the Teacher in Space, Christa McAuliffe, will be there. She maneuvers her way to sit next to Christa at dinner, and even though the conversation is rather routine, Annie finds herself inspired by Christa's passion for life and following her dreams. While Annie doesn't know the answers to her big life questions yet, she knows she wants to see Christa's launch into space.
Meeting Christa, and roadtripping with her dad and his handsome young friend Tommy to see the Challenger launch, and ultimately the disaster after takeoff, inspires Annie to start taking risks. Small ones first, but bit by bit Annie draws strength and inspiration from Christa's memory, and is finally able to take off for herself.
Annie is a senior in high school in a suburban Texas town facing large, looming questions. Like where is she going to college and what will she do with the rest of her life. Surrounded by engineers who work with NASA, and fellow students who know that college is the next step, Annie isn't even sure she wants to go to college. She loves poetry, and has tried her hand at writing a few times, but is pretty sure she's actually terrible and knows there's no money in the endeavor. She hides her passion from everyone - her divorced parents, her best friend Lea, and even Mark, her boyfriend of two years.When Lea, the daughter of NASA engineers, invites Annie to yet another dinner party featuring NASA personnel and astronauts, Annie drags her feet until she learns the Teacher in Space, Christa McAuliffe, will be there. She maneuvers her way to sit next to Christa at dinner, and even though the conversation is rather routine, Annie finds herself inspired by Christa's passion for life and following her dreams. While Annie doesn't know the answers to her big life questions yet, she knows she wants to see Christa's launch into space.
Meeting Christa, and roadtripping with her dad and his handsome young friend Tommy to see the Challenger launch, and ultimately the disaster after takeoff, inspires Annie to start taking risks. Small ones first, but bit by bit Annie draws strength and inspiration from Christa's memory, and is finally able to take off for herself.
First of all, I have to give massive props to Jenny Moss for how she carries off the climactic scene of the Challenger's explosion. I knew going in that it was going to happen, and yet when the shuttle finally launched, and then broke apart, my heart was in my throat. I felt like I was right there with Annie, even though Challenger happened when I was barely a year old.
The romantic subplot in Taking Off is absolutely superb - because it reflects a lot of the indecision that can happen in relationships, especially young ones. I've gotten burned out on the number of YA books that end with the teens finding their soul mates. Annie is content with Mark, but knows they're not soul mates. So refreshing to see a girl exploring her options!
This Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, meaning this book is set at a very specific time that is close enough to feel contemporary but long enough ago that the book's intended audience wasn't even born yet. This is historical fiction that will still appeal to people who think they hate the genre, because aside from the Challenger and a few mentions of cassette tapes, Annie's personal struggles are truly timeless.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Review: Another Pan by Daniel & Dina Nayeri
I knew going in that this was a sequel of sorts to Another Faust, which I totally missed out on. However, I was interested enough in the Peter Pan aspect to want to give it a shot. Considering that the jacket makes no mention that this is part of a series, I figured I was in the clear. And in a way, I was: only one character returns here from Another Faust, and she seems to stand up well enough on her own. However, when it came to actually enjoying the book...
Another Pan is set at the exclusive Marlowe school in Manhattan, where largely discredited Egyptologist Professor Darling is a teacher who has just scored a great exhibit of Ancient Egyptian artifacts on loan from the British Museum. The artifacts relate to his life's work: uncovering a Death goddess that was an alternative to Anubis, and discovering the truth behind the legends in the Book of Gates - legends that are supposed to hold the key to immortality.
Roped into helping their father set up the exhibit, 16 year old Wendy and 13 year old John would rather be elsewhere - Wendy with her jock boyfriend and John developing his street cred. But when a charismatic new RA by the name of Peter shows up, who has an obsession of his own with the ancient book, Wendy and John eagerly join his quest. Wendy is drawn to the dangerous Peter, despite her boyfriend and her father's disapproval. John craves acceptance, and longs to be seen by Peter as being worthy of joining his Lost Boys gang. As the underworld begins to take hold of Marlowe, and a conniving assistant from the British Museum also closes in on the truth about the books, the two Darlings and Peter are in a race to complete their quest first - to find the secrets to immortality before death catches up with them, permanently.
Lurking at the periphery of most of the story is the new, decrepit school nurse, who was apparently the governess in Another Faust. It's clear that part of her story has been told elsewhere, but the lack of detail didn't seem to impede the story.
What did impede the story? The pacing and the characters. This was a slow, slow book. I wanted to give up several times, but forced myself to keep going, mostly because I have a huge weakness for Ancient Egypt (even though it seems the stories of the Book of Gates are totally new with no relation to myths that are currently known) and also because many of the nods back to Peter Pan were quite clever. The pacing felt off, and the overall writing felt stilted. The third person point of view wasn't used naturally, and there were weird line breaks within the chapters; instead of using a break to indicate a change in place or time, sometimes they would be used to denote a switch in POV character - but other times would be used traditionally. It pulled me out of the story every time.
Most of the characters were extremely flat. Simon Grin was practically a cartoon villain - I kept waiting for him to start muttering how he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. Wendy and John were easily manipulated, though a lot more time was invested in John and his motivations so he was slightly more sympathetic. Really the most intriguing character for me was Peter, and that was probably me trying to fit this slick and handsome young adult into the story of the perpetual child I know.
In any re-telling, I love finding the ties back to the original story, and here many of them were quite clever. There's the obvious Barrie Auditorium (which still gets cleverness points, because Peter Pan was originally a play), but then little things like Peter always hanging out by windows, or checking out his shadow. His Lost Boys gang is also constantly plying Peter with happy thoughts (often things relating to youth or staying young) whenever he starts to get grumpy, though the rationale behind it is never explained.
But ultimately, this was a frustrating read. There was just enough intrigue with the myths and the quest that kept me turning the page, but I was always thinking ahead, hoping the book would finally end so I could move on to something else. While part of me is curious about what connections this had to the previous book, I don't want to have to wade through a similarly tedious book to get there, so I think this is my first and only encounter with the "Another" series.
Another Pan is set at the exclusive Marlowe school in Manhattan, where largely discredited Egyptologist Professor Darling is a teacher who has just scored a great exhibit of Ancient Egyptian artifacts on loan from the British Museum. The artifacts relate to his life's work: uncovering a Death goddess that was an alternative to Anubis, and discovering the truth behind the legends in the Book of Gates - legends that are supposed to hold the key to immortality.Roped into helping their father set up the exhibit, 16 year old Wendy and 13 year old John would rather be elsewhere - Wendy with her jock boyfriend and John developing his street cred. But when a charismatic new RA by the name of Peter shows up, who has an obsession of his own with the ancient book, Wendy and John eagerly join his quest. Wendy is drawn to the dangerous Peter, despite her boyfriend and her father's disapproval. John craves acceptance, and longs to be seen by Peter as being worthy of joining his Lost Boys gang. As the underworld begins to take hold of Marlowe, and a conniving assistant from the British Museum also closes in on the truth about the books, the two Darlings and Peter are in a race to complete their quest first - to find the secrets to immortality before death catches up with them, permanently.
Lurking at the periphery of most of the story is the new, decrepit school nurse, who was apparently the governess in Another Faust. It's clear that part of her story has been told elsewhere, but the lack of detail didn't seem to impede the story.
What did impede the story? The pacing and the characters. This was a slow, slow book. I wanted to give up several times, but forced myself to keep going, mostly because I have a huge weakness for Ancient Egypt (even though it seems the stories of the Book of Gates are totally new with no relation to myths that are currently known) and also because many of the nods back to Peter Pan were quite clever. The pacing felt off, and the overall writing felt stilted. The third person point of view wasn't used naturally, and there were weird line breaks within the chapters; instead of using a break to indicate a change in place or time, sometimes they would be used to denote a switch in POV character - but other times would be used traditionally. It pulled me out of the story every time.
Most of the characters were extremely flat. Simon Grin was practically a cartoon villain - I kept waiting for him to start muttering how he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids. Wendy and John were easily manipulated, though a lot more time was invested in John and his motivations so he was slightly more sympathetic. Really the most intriguing character for me was Peter, and that was probably me trying to fit this slick and handsome young adult into the story of the perpetual child I know.
In any re-telling, I love finding the ties back to the original story, and here many of them were quite clever. There's the obvious Barrie Auditorium (which still gets cleverness points, because Peter Pan was originally a play), but then little things like Peter always hanging out by windows, or checking out his shadow. His Lost Boys gang is also constantly plying Peter with happy thoughts (often things relating to youth or staying young) whenever he starts to get grumpy, though the rationale behind it is never explained.
But ultimately, this was a frustrating read. There was just enough intrigue with the myths and the quest that kept me turning the page, but I was always thinking ahead, hoping the book would finally end so I could move on to something else. While part of me is curious about what connections this had to the previous book, I don't want to have to wade through a similarly tedious book to get there, so I think this is my first and only encounter with the "Another" series.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Review: Trash by Andy Mulligan
This one has been getting lots of love from the start - and while it wasn't awarded any serious hardware at the recent ALA awards, Trash does have the honor of being one of the top ten books chosen by the Best Fiction for Young Adults committee, a great honor in itself!
Rafael, Gardo and Jun-Jun, aka Rat, are trash boys. Living among the dump site Behala, the boys spend their days climbing mountains of trash, sorting out what can be re-sold, earning meager pay that is hardly enough to support themselves and their extended families. Most of what they find is shtupp, until one day Rafael pulls a leather bag out of the refuse - a leather bag with an ID card, and over 1,000 pesos inside. It's more money than Rafael has seen in his life - this sort of money represents hope for his family.
But before Rafael can get too comfortable with his newfound luck, the police come to Behala, saying they're looking for a leather bag. Instinctively, Rafael hides his treasure, and with Gardo and Jun-Jun's help, begin their own investigation into the man on the ID card and former owner of the cash. Their search will bring them face to face with some of the darkest secrets of their country, with the ones whom power has corrupted. But the boys hold out hope, that they can solve the mystery, and perhaps bring about some small amount of justice.
The theme of trash comes up in so many ways in this book - there's the actual trash mountains the boys climb every day, and it's where they find the money that jump starts their adventure. But it's also how people treat the boys - as if just because they're poor these boys are worthless. It's also a term that comes to mind to describe the corrupt politicians and other people in power.
The narration jumps between the three boys, with the occasional chapter told by other supporting characters, like the man who runs the Mission School in Behala who befriended Rat. It's never totally clarified who the story is being told to, or how long after the events the story is being relayed. This would be an excellent book to use when writing teachers are talking about audience and first person narration, because these boys are very aware that they are telling a story.
Mulligan does an excellent job describing th downtrodden settings and fast-paced action. He cultivates an excellent sense of danger as the boys are on the run. There's a bone chilling scene where Rafael is taken in for questioning by the police that had my heart in my throat the entire time.
There's a lot of awesomeness going on here. While this one personally wouldn't have made it onto my personal best read in 2010 list (and won't be going on my 2011 list), I can still see why it's garnered a lot of praise, and highly recommend it.
Rafael, Gardo and Jun-Jun, aka Rat, are trash boys. Living among the dump site Behala, the boys spend their days climbing mountains of trash, sorting out what can be re-sold, earning meager pay that is hardly enough to support themselves and their extended families. Most of what they find is shtupp, until one day Rafael pulls a leather bag out of the refuse - a leather bag with an ID card, and over 1,000 pesos inside. It's more money than Rafael has seen in his life - this sort of money represents hope for his family.But before Rafael can get too comfortable with his newfound luck, the police come to Behala, saying they're looking for a leather bag. Instinctively, Rafael hides his treasure, and with Gardo and Jun-Jun's help, begin their own investigation into the man on the ID card and former owner of the cash. Their search will bring them face to face with some of the darkest secrets of their country, with the ones whom power has corrupted. But the boys hold out hope, that they can solve the mystery, and perhaps bring about some small amount of justice.
The theme of trash comes up in so many ways in this book - there's the actual trash mountains the boys climb every day, and it's where they find the money that jump starts their adventure. But it's also how people treat the boys - as if just because they're poor these boys are worthless. It's also a term that comes to mind to describe the corrupt politicians and other people in power.
The narration jumps between the three boys, with the occasional chapter told by other supporting characters, like the man who runs the Mission School in Behala who befriended Rat. It's never totally clarified who the story is being told to, or how long after the events the story is being relayed. This would be an excellent book to use when writing teachers are talking about audience and first person narration, because these boys are very aware that they are telling a story.
Mulligan does an excellent job describing th downtrodden settings and fast-paced action. He cultivates an excellent sense of danger as the boys are on the run. There's a bone chilling scene where Rafael is taken in for questioning by the police that had my heart in my throat the entire time.
There's a lot of awesomeness going on here. While this one personally wouldn't have made it onto my personal best read in 2010 list (and won't be going on my 2011 list), I can still see why it's garnered a lot of praise, and highly recommend it.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Review: Dragon Chica by May Lee Chai
Found via: Forever Young Adult
This is definitely a novel with cross over appeal - I'm pretty sure technically it's written as an adult novel, just because of stylistic quirks that aren't part of the YA tradition, but since it covers Nea's young adulthood (we meet her when she's 11 and follow her through the end of high school), it's definitely accessible to teens as well. I could definitely see this being one of those mother/daughter book club picks.
It's the 1980s and Nea, her mother, older sisters, and three younger siblings, are scraping by in Texas. The only Khmer in the community - the only Asians, really - and not knowing if any of their relatives were also able to escape from the Khmer Rouge regime, Nea feels more isolated than the average 11 year old. So when an aunt and uncle write her mother, saying they now live in Nebraska and run a Chinese restaurant there, Nea's mother promptly packs up the family and their few belongings in their beat up car, and drive from Texas to Nebraska.
Nebraska is not the land of dreams as her aunt and uncle promised, however. While Chinese restaurants were prestigious in Cambodia, Nebraskans haven't developed a taste for Asian cuisine yet. The family spends long hours at the restaurant for little pay off, and eventually Nea's sister Sourdi is set up in an arranged marriage with a much older man who her uncle is in debt to. At 16, Sourdi is suddenly put into the role of a grown woman, and Nea loses the one person in the family she feels she can talk to. Nea spends the rest of her teen years feeling increasingly isolated and angry - at the hicks who shout racial slurs at her family, at the family the demands she works when she should be studying, and at the mother who doesn't understand her Americanized daughter.
While this novel covers ages and experiences that are often part of YA novels, it really brought into focus for me some of the stark contrasts between adult and YA. For one thing, YA novels don't usually last very long - I think covering the course of a single school year is the longest period of time I can think of off hand. More often the novel's events will happen in days or maybe weeks. Dragon Chica covers 7 years in under 300 pages. This isn't a criticism, as Chai does an excellent job of picking out the important events over those 7 years, but merely an observation of one of th major differences between YA and adult novels.
Nea's story is painful to read at times, as her family is the victim of some ugly racism. Her family also has some difficulty adjusting to their places in America - her younger siblings are too young to remember their time in Cambodia so they are excused from acting "American," while Sourdi is old enough that she has extensive memories of Cambodia and wishes in many ways to remain true to that heritage. Nea is truly a child of both worlds, with vague memories of Cambodia but an intense desire to fit in as much as possible with her American schoolmates. While parts of Nea's story are surely unique to the Cambodian immigrant experience, large parts of it also seem like they apply to all immigrants, and will be appreciated by anyone with close ties to another country and culture.
This is definitely a novel with cross over appeal - I'm pretty sure technically it's written as an adult novel, just because of stylistic quirks that aren't part of the YA tradition, but since it covers Nea's young adulthood (we meet her when she's 11 and follow her through the end of high school), it's definitely accessible to teens as well. I could definitely see this being one of those mother/daughter book club picks.
It's the 1980s and Nea, her mother, older sisters, and three younger siblings, are scraping by in Texas. The only Khmer in the community - the only Asians, really - and not knowing if any of their relatives were also able to escape from the Khmer Rouge regime, Nea feels more isolated than the average 11 year old. So when an aunt and uncle write her mother, saying they now live in Nebraska and run a Chinese restaurant there, Nea's mother promptly packs up the family and their few belongings in their beat up car, and drive from Texas to Nebraska.Nebraska is not the land of dreams as her aunt and uncle promised, however. While Chinese restaurants were prestigious in Cambodia, Nebraskans haven't developed a taste for Asian cuisine yet. The family spends long hours at the restaurant for little pay off, and eventually Nea's sister Sourdi is set up in an arranged marriage with a much older man who her uncle is in debt to. At 16, Sourdi is suddenly put into the role of a grown woman, and Nea loses the one person in the family she feels she can talk to. Nea spends the rest of her teen years feeling increasingly isolated and angry - at the hicks who shout racial slurs at her family, at the family the demands she works when she should be studying, and at the mother who doesn't understand her Americanized daughter.
While this novel covers ages and experiences that are often part of YA novels, it really brought into focus for me some of the stark contrasts between adult and YA. For one thing, YA novels don't usually last very long - I think covering the course of a single school year is the longest period of time I can think of off hand. More often the novel's events will happen in days or maybe weeks. Dragon Chica covers 7 years in under 300 pages. This isn't a criticism, as Chai does an excellent job of picking out the important events over those 7 years, but merely an observation of one of th major differences between YA and adult novels.
Nea's story is painful to read at times, as her family is the victim of some ugly racism. Her family also has some difficulty adjusting to their places in America - her younger siblings are too young to remember their time in Cambodia so they are excused from acting "American," while Sourdi is old enough that she has extensive memories of Cambodia and wishes in many ways to remain true to that heritage. Nea is truly a child of both worlds, with vague memories of Cambodia but an intense desire to fit in as much as possible with her American schoolmates. While parts of Nea's story are surely unique to the Cambodian immigrant experience, large parts of it also seem like they apply to all immigrants, and will be appreciated by anyone with close ties to another country and culture.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Review: Sphinx's Queen by Esther Friesner
I picked this one up in my ARC grab way back at ALA (yes, I'm still working through those books!), solely based on my love of Ancient Egypt. I think Ancient Egypt was the first historical period I became obsessed with and my fascination with the subject hasn't left me yet. So I was very much looking forward to this one, only to be sorely disappointed.
Nefertiti is on the run from the Pharaoh's court, after being accused of a heinous crime she didn't commit. With the help of Amenophis, brother to the crown prince who accused Nefertiti, and Nava, a young Hebrew slave girl, Nefertiti is able to escape Prince Thutmose's clutches and report his treachery to Pharaoh. While Pharaoh and his wife, a power hungry woman determined to see her favored son take the throne one day, are at first disbelieving, Pharaoh agrees that justice must be sought, and grants Nefertiti the chance for a fair judgement before the goddess Bast.
As Nefertiti continues her quest for justice, she finds herself increasingly isolated from her friends and family in the palace. She discovers twists and treacheries that force her to question some of her fundamental beliefs in the gods, but while she knows she may not have all the answers, there is only one just answer to her cause, and she will not rest until the world knows of her innocence - and her love of a certain prince of Egypt...
The biggest problem this novel has is how one dimensional the story and the characters are. While the fundamental plot is strong enough, I found being in Nefertiti's head to be tiring because she was just so. Darn. Good. She never has a selfish thought and is benign and forgiving of all who sin against her. She's so kind and good that she ends up changing the less savory characters in the story with little effort, they're just so charmed by her. She's so perfect that there's really no narrative arc for her - she's essentially a Mary Sue.
The secondary characters are no better. The villains are cartoons until they have the opportunity to really get to know Nefertiti - somehow she inspires them to want to be better people, just for the sake of being good after a lifetime of selfishness. There's also another royal wife who fits almost all aspects of the magical negro stereotype. She's the only character who is highlighted as having exceptionally dark skin (she was originally a Nubian princess before the Pharaoh claimed her as one of his many wives), she's all but forgotten in the palace and prefers to live that way, only suddenly coming out of hiding to help out the fairer-skinned Nefertiti because, again, Nefertiti is such a good person. Her presence is random and really rather jaw dropping.
Amazon tells me this is part of a series - it looks like Friesner tackles the stories of many historical women, and in fact Sphinx's Queen is the sequel to Sphinx's Princess, though this one stands on its own well enough. There's no mention on my ARC version that this is a sequel and there were no glaring holes in the narrative that made me feel like part of the story was missing - unless Sphinx's Princess includes an explanation for why Nefertiti is so perfect. Since I haven't read any of Friesner's other titles, I can't say how this compares to her other works and whether this is a satisfying sequel, but I can say that this gives me no desire to pick up any of her other titles.
Nefertiti is on the run from the Pharaoh's court, after being accused of a heinous crime she didn't commit. With the help of Amenophis, brother to the crown prince who accused Nefertiti, and Nava, a young Hebrew slave girl, Nefertiti is able to escape Prince Thutmose's clutches and report his treachery to Pharaoh. While Pharaoh and his wife, a power hungry woman determined to see her favored son take the throne one day, are at first disbelieving, Pharaoh agrees that justice must be sought, and grants Nefertiti the chance for a fair judgement before the goddess Bast.As Nefertiti continues her quest for justice, she finds herself increasingly isolated from her friends and family in the palace. She discovers twists and treacheries that force her to question some of her fundamental beliefs in the gods, but while she knows she may not have all the answers, there is only one just answer to her cause, and she will not rest until the world knows of her innocence - and her love of a certain prince of Egypt...
The biggest problem this novel has is how one dimensional the story and the characters are. While the fundamental plot is strong enough, I found being in Nefertiti's head to be tiring because she was just so. Darn. Good. She never has a selfish thought and is benign and forgiving of all who sin against her. She's so kind and good that she ends up changing the less savory characters in the story with little effort, they're just so charmed by her. She's so perfect that there's really no narrative arc for her - she's essentially a Mary Sue.
The secondary characters are no better. The villains are cartoons until they have the opportunity to really get to know Nefertiti - somehow she inspires them to want to be better people, just for the sake of being good after a lifetime of selfishness. There's also another royal wife who fits almost all aspects of the magical negro stereotype. She's the only character who is highlighted as having exceptionally dark skin (she was originally a Nubian princess before the Pharaoh claimed her as one of his many wives), she's all but forgotten in the palace and prefers to live that way, only suddenly coming out of hiding to help out the fairer-skinned Nefertiti because, again, Nefertiti is such a good person. Her presence is random and really rather jaw dropping.
Amazon tells me this is part of a series - it looks like Friesner tackles the stories of many historical women, and in fact Sphinx's Queen is the sequel to Sphinx's Princess, though this one stands on its own well enough. There's no mention on my ARC version that this is a sequel and there were no glaring holes in the narrative that made me feel like part of the story was missing - unless Sphinx's Princess includes an explanation for why Nefertiti is so perfect. Since I haven't read any of Friesner's other titles, I can't say how this compares to her other works and whether this is a satisfying sequel, but I can say that this gives me no desire to pick up any of her other titles.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
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 historicalfiction 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.
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
Reviewed from review copy received from publisher.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Review: Life, After by Sarah Darer Littman
This is an excellent look at how terrorism can effect one family, but with an unexpected angle, at least from this USian's perspective: instead of looking at terrorism in the US or radical Islamic terrorism, this is some homegrown terrorism - in Argentina.
Dani's life changed forever on her 7th birthday. That was the day terrorists loaded a truck with explosives and drove it into the AMIA building in Buenos Aires. Among the victims was Dani's pregnant aunt.
In the following years, political and economic upheaval has rocked Argentina, and Dani's family. Her father has lost his successful business, reducing the family to dinners of wrinkled potatoes - when there's food in the house at all - eaten by candlelight since the electricity has been turned off. As Dani watches her best friends move - one following her family's Jewish heritage to Israel, another to Miami - she is full of both hope and dread when her parents finally announce they, too, will be moving, to New York where her uncle lives.
Dani has to adapt to life in a new country, a new language, and even a new hemisphere where the seasons are the exact opposite of what they should be. To make things harder, her father isn't having an easy time adapting, and has sunk into a shell of his former self, depressed about the move, everything he's lost, and the charity they must now accept. Dani is scared and angry about the person her father has become, and is tired of having to step up to help take care of him, her little sister, and her mom, when all she wants to do is make friends and maybe even go on a date for once. Life After the terrorism and collapse in Argentina is no picnic, but is it even possible to return to the life they had Before?
I loved Dani, as she's genuinely a good kid, but her entire life is falling apart around her and it's all she can do to keep her head up. Her most complex feelings are reserved for her father, who is clearly suffering from deep clinical depression. As a reader, this was totally clear to me, and sometimes I had to stop myself from empathizing too much with Dani's rages against her father. Yes, he should be picking up her little sister from school or helping with the housekeeping, and it was easy to be angry at him for failing miserably at that, but knowing what depression can do to a person I know I shouldn't have those feelings!
What a sad, yet sweet, book. Littman has taken on several complicated issues, yet distilled them into a clean novel. I loved that Dani's family is not only Argentinian, but Jewish as well, a combination I don't think I've ever seen before. However, this isn't a book about being Argentinian Jews - it just adds a little depth to the family's background and gives them a reason to search out help from Jewish aid organizations. On the flip side, I know there are religious reasons for it, but it was a little jarring to see references to a deity written as "G-d" or "D-os." And there's a lot of praying in this book, so it happens rather often.
Like the kids in Dani's school, most of my knowledge of Argentina comes from Evita, so I loved the insight into the political and economic upheaval that has been rocking the country. The focus of the book is definitely on Dani and her family, so there perhaps aren't as many descriptions of life in Argentina as I would have liked, but Littman does a good job of giving peeks at how life has changed drastically while not distracting from the story she wants to tell.
Dani's life changed forever on her 7th birthday. That was the day terrorists loaded a truck with explosives and drove it into the AMIA building in Buenos Aires. Among the victims was Dani's pregnant aunt.In the following years, political and economic upheaval has rocked Argentina, and Dani's family. Her father has lost his successful business, reducing the family to dinners of wrinkled potatoes - when there's food in the house at all - eaten by candlelight since the electricity has been turned off. As Dani watches her best friends move - one following her family's Jewish heritage to Israel, another to Miami - she is full of both hope and dread when her parents finally announce they, too, will be moving, to New York where her uncle lives.
Dani has to adapt to life in a new country, a new language, and even a new hemisphere where the seasons are the exact opposite of what they should be. To make things harder, her father isn't having an easy time adapting, and has sunk into a shell of his former self, depressed about the move, everything he's lost, and the charity they must now accept. Dani is scared and angry about the person her father has become, and is tired of having to step up to help take care of him, her little sister, and her mom, when all she wants to do is make friends and maybe even go on a date for once. Life After the terrorism and collapse in Argentina is no picnic, but is it even possible to return to the life they had Before?
I loved Dani, as she's genuinely a good kid, but her entire life is falling apart around her and it's all she can do to keep her head up. Her most complex feelings are reserved for her father, who is clearly suffering from deep clinical depression. As a reader, this was totally clear to me, and sometimes I had to stop myself from empathizing too much with Dani's rages against her father. Yes, he should be picking up her little sister from school or helping with the housekeeping, and it was easy to be angry at him for failing miserably at that, but knowing what depression can do to a person I know I shouldn't have those feelings!
What a sad, yet sweet, book. Littman has taken on several complicated issues, yet distilled them into a clean novel. I loved that Dani's family is not only Argentinian, but Jewish as well, a combination I don't think I've ever seen before. However, this isn't a book about being Argentinian Jews - it just adds a little depth to the family's background and gives them a reason to search out help from Jewish aid organizations. On the flip side, I know there are religious reasons for it, but it was a little jarring to see references to a deity written as "G-d" or "D-os." And there's a lot of praying in this book, so it happens rather often.
Like the kids in Dani's school, most of my knowledge of Argentina comes from Evita, so I loved the insight into the political and economic upheaval that has been rocking the country. The focus of the book is definitely on Dani and her family, so there perhaps aren't as many descriptions of life in Argentina as I would have liked, but Littman does a good job of giving peeks at how life has changed drastically while not distracting from the story she wants to tell.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Review: Wicked Girls by Stephanie Hemphill
Every time I'm ready to write off verse novels, something pulls me back. The last verse novels I read were back in April, Firefly Letters and Crossing Stones and I concluded that, for me, verse novels really only work when they're contemporary stories. For historical novels, I need a vested interest in the material. Then along comes Wicked Girls, covering the Salem Witch Trials that have fascinated me for as long as I can remember...in poetry.
The basic story is well-known by now: in 1692, a group of young women and girls in Salem Village started accusing their neighbors of witchcraft. What followed was a literal witch hunt, as the authorities were determined to drive out all hints of sin in their village, and relied on the testimony of the girls to send 19 people to their deaths, and scores more to prison.
Wicked Girls delves into the inner lives of Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott and Ann Putnam Jr., following the girls and their cohorts from the initial incriminations through to the bitter end. Hemphill hypothesizes what drew the girls to accusations of witchcraft and why they continue even in the face of doubts.
I'm truly torn about this book, because on the one hand, Hemphill has crafted an amazing story. There are many theories about why the girls began crying witch, and Hemphill explores the possibility that the girls were essentially drunk on power. Once the girls started making accusations, they suddenly had the attention of the entire town. Powerful men were listening to them, and servant girls were just as powerful as the daughters of the merchant class. Some of Mercy's poems were almost physically painful, as she describes being looked at as a powerful person to be respected, rather than a pretty girl to be lusted after by men young and old. Hemphill also explores some scary "mean girl" dynamics, as the ringleaders try to ensure loyalty among the group, showing just how strong peer pressure can be.
On the other hand, as I said at the start of this review, I'm just not a fan of poetry for historical fiction. The poetry itself is fine, though it was more the content that affected me rather than the style. I can't see what the poetry added to this story that couldn't have been achieved through prose. As I said in my Goodreads review, I wanted to give this 2.5 out of 5 stars as a perfect half-way point, reflecting all the good things I felt about the plot that were essentially negated by the format.
The basic story is well-known by now: in 1692, a group of young women and girls in Salem Village started accusing their neighbors of witchcraft. What followed was a literal witch hunt, as the authorities were determined to drive out all hints of sin in their village, and relied on the testimony of the girls to send 19 people to their deaths, and scores more to prison.Wicked Girls delves into the inner lives of Mercy Lewis, Margaret Walcott and Ann Putnam Jr., following the girls and their cohorts from the initial incriminations through to the bitter end. Hemphill hypothesizes what drew the girls to accusations of witchcraft and why they continue even in the face of doubts.
I'm truly torn about this book, because on the one hand, Hemphill has crafted an amazing story. There are many theories about why the girls began crying witch, and Hemphill explores the possibility that the girls were essentially drunk on power. Once the girls started making accusations, they suddenly had the attention of the entire town. Powerful men were listening to them, and servant girls were just as powerful as the daughters of the merchant class. Some of Mercy's poems were almost physically painful, as she describes being looked at as a powerful person to be respected, rather than a pretty girl to be lusted after by men young and old. Hemphill also explores some scary "mean girl" dynamics, as the ringleaders try to ensure loyalty among the group, showing just how strong peer pressure can be.
On the other hand, as I said at the start of this review, I'm just not a fan of poetry for historical fiction. The poetry itself is fine, though it was more the content that affected me rather than the style. I can't see what the poetry added to this story that couldn't have been achieved through prose. As I said in my Goodreads review, I wanted to give this 2.5 out of 5 stars as a perfect half-way point, reflecting all the good things I felt about the plot that were essentially negated by the format.
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