This week's novel is The Girl from Everywhere, time travel fantasy by Heidi Heilig. This was recommended to me by NPR's list of the best books of 2016. Well done, NPR.
Nix's father has the ability to sail anywhere as long as he has a hand drawn, detailed map of the place. He can travel through time and even into myths, where he's picked up a rag tag crew turned family, but he's obsessed with getting back to 1868 Honolulu where the love of his life, Nix's mother, died of an infection that could have been cured with antibiotics. Nix is concerned that if he ever manages it, her existence will be erased, but her father brushes off her worries. Feeling as though she's living on borrowed time, Nix longs to learn to navigate so she can escape on her own ship and live out her life for as long as she can. When her father is offered the map he needs in exchange for robbing the Honolulu treasury, he agrees to teach Nix to navigate in exchange for her help on this one last job.
So much of the beauty of this story comes from the relationships between the characters: Nix and her father's rocky love for each other; Nix's blooming, hesitant romance with Kashmir, the thief they picked up in a town from 1001 Arabian Nights; and Bee's surrogate maternal relationship with Bee, the widow from Northern Africa, and her wife's ghost. They're all layered and conflicting, emotional and logical.
But it would just be wrong to not mention the lush locations. Most of the novel is spent in Hawai'i before the overthrow. Heilig does a fantastic job conveying the beauty of the island paradise, while also conveying the tensions of class discrepancy and racism in Honolulu. But all her settings are evocative. They surround you, from the bustling port in India to the buzz of modern New York City, to the eerie emptiness of the tomb of the first Qin Emperor. Now I want a whole story set in the first Quin Emperor's tomb.
And on top of the emotional weight and the scenery, there's what turns into a tight, intricate time travel story. Everything is set in motion for a reason and all the little details fit together. I like loosey-goosey time travel stories, but this kind of detailed, quick plotting in time travel is always so rewarding to read.
She gets into the issue that things that have happened will always happen, because if they happened, you as a time traveler made it happen. That sounds more round about than it feels--the worst part of time travel is talking about it--but not only is this part of the plot, but it works its way in as a motivation for the crew. They know robbing the Hawaiian treasury is wrong and will help the white Americans destabilize the government and eventually take over, but then again, they know the Hawaiian government will fall. And what's really neat about this is that in the author's notes at the end (which I usually don't care about) we find out that this heist really took place (more or less), which adds this whole other level of intrigue.
Highly recommend.
***
Next week: Every Anxious Wave, time travel for rock concerts by Mo Daviau.
January 31, 2017
January 30, 2017
Rhyming and Opression
In reading to my son lately, I keep coming across couplets that only work if "again" rhymes with "rain." I slow down and put on a funny voice for one word. "A Gaaain." Now, if you ask me, "again" rhymes with "begin," with an emphasis on the "i" instead of the "a." But then again, I have a horrendous Texan accent and most people do not.
So I have two ways to think about this:
1. The author clearly intended for me to pronounce the words a certain way. They make that clear. I wouldn't decide that I didn't like a note in a page of sheet music and I was just going to play something else. So I can do the funny voice and make it work. I can bring their vision to life.
2. The author may have intended one thing, but I can reject that. Don't force your pronunciation of "again" on me. My dialect is just as valid and saying that yours is better is linguistic imperialism. And especially don't force that while my impressionable son is listening.
If he starts saying "A Gaaain," I might explode. I'm all prepared for a Midwestern accent with plenty of "aww jEEze," and "well, oKAY then." I am not prepared for whatever "A Gaaain" is.
There's too much here to really analyze or make any kind of statement about if poetry is inherently about power or inherently biased, about how to write poetry or read poetry. I don't know. I'm not a poet. But I do have some related antidotes to share.
When I was in junior high I clashed constantly with my English teacher. (I actually clashed with most of my English teachers, but for the purposes of this story, I'm only talking about one of them.) The breaking point came during the horrible poetry unit when we argued over how many syllables there are in "chocolate." I say two: Chock-lat. She said three: Chock-o-lat. No amount of arguing or demonstrating got me a better grade on that sonnet.
I do get excited when rhymes get my accent right. In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, "aunts" rhymes with "pants." Heck yes, it does! Vindication! This alphabet book gets me and my accent plight!
So I have two ways to think about this:
1. The author clearly intended for me to pronounce the words a certain way. They make that clear. I wouldn't decide that I didn't like a note in a page of sheet music and I was just going to play something else. So I can do the funny voice and make it work. I can bring their vision to life.
2. The author may have intended one thing, but I can reject that. Don't force your pronunciation of "again" on me. My dialect is just as valid and saying that yours is better is linguistic imperialism. And especially don't force that while my impressionable son is listening.
If he starts saying "A Gaaain," I might explode. I'm all prepared for a Midwestern accent with plenty of "aww jEEze," and "well, oKAY then." I am not prepared for whatever "A Gaaain" is.
There's too much here to really analyze or make any kind of statement about if poetry is inherently about power or inherently biased, about how to write poetry or read poetry. I don't know. I'm not a poet. But I do have some related antidotes to share.
When I was in junior high I clashed constantly with my English teacher. (I actually clashed with most of my English teachers, but for the purposes of this story, I'm only talking about one of them.) The breaking point came during the horrible poetry unit when we argued over how many syllables there are in "chocolate." I say two: Chock-lat. She said three: Chock-o-lat. No amount of arguing or demonstrating got me a better grade on that sonnet.
I do get excited when rhymes get my accent right. In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, "aunts" rhymes with "pants." Heck yes, it does! Vindication! This alphabet book gets me and my accent plight!
January 25, 2017
The Handmaid's Tale Review
This week's novel is the appropriately timed The Handmaid's Tale, the women's rights dystopia by Margaret Atwood. I had the chance to read this one in high school, but you had to get parent permission to read it because it "had sex in it," so I joined the group that read Flatland. I am now suspicious of this reasoning for requiring parent permission, because Brave New World had sex too and there was a group that read that with no parental input. Hmmmmm. So anyway, I avoided the horror of reading this book for a good long while, until my biffle read it and recommended it and it kept popping up in the news, so I checked it out.
In the future of what was once Boston, women's rights have been stripped away to the point that they're not even allowed to read, much less own property or have a say in their futures. Birthrates have plummeted, and the culture has focused on having babies and created a group of "handmaids" for wealthy households. The man of the house attempts to impregnate the handmaid, if they are successful, she hands the baby over to the family before being reassigned to a different family to try again. Our narrator tells of the loneliness of her position and of how little power she has. Her mostly solitary existence gives her plenty of time to ruminate on her life before with her husband and daughter and friends, and on how she came to be a handmaid.
Since the battle cry this week is Intersectional Feminism, I need to point out that this book is super white. It's second wave feminism through and through, but it's from the 80s so that's expected. It's a wonderful set piece in feminist literature, and it's a start, but we have to expand on it.
I'm not going to go into much of how awful the human rights violations are in this story. They're awful. Consent cannot be given under coercion, and "she had a choice: she could always die," is not a choice.
But I do want to talk about one aspect. When a handmaid does manage to get pregnant, they aren't allowed ultrasounds or epidural or much medical care beyond a midwife and a team of other handmaids chanting "breathe, breathe, breathe." It's like obstetric medicine has regressed along with everything else. But this makes no sense if you consider that they claim that the point of this whole operation is to produce more healthy babies. Ultrasounds can warn you about possible complications that can be handled with forewarning. C-sections can take care of a great many complications. And if they're worried about birth defects (which is the big problem in this dystopian future), it would make sense for them to do in vitro fertilization where they can assure a fetus will not be born a monster baby, AND they wouldn't just be rolling the dice trying to get pregnant. But they don't, because honestly it's not about healthy babies, it's about controlling women. It reminded me so starkly of what I hear constantly in our own time, in the real world. [Insert my pro-choice rant here, which will get me way too wound up to type out, and you know what it says anyhow.]
What really makes this book stand out, aside from its content, is that it's wonderfully crafted. There are sections in recollections where the dialogue is not enclosed in quotation marks a la James Joyce. It works amazingly well, because it blends the spoken dialogue with the narrator's reactions to what's being said, and this style choice occurs most often when the narrator is remembering her time being trained to be a handmaid--or in other words, where she's being brainwashed and threatened into submitting to their new culture and her new place within it. It's hard to tell if the brainwashing being said, or is the narrator thinking it because she's been convinced. It's subtle and beautiful and heartbreaking.
***
Next week: The Girl from Everywhere, traveling through time on a tall ship by Heidi Heilig.
In the future of what was once Boston, women's rights have been stripped away to the point that they're not even allowed to read, much less own property or have a say in their futures. Birthrates have plummeted, and the culture has focused on having babies and created a group of "handmaids" for wealthy households. The man of the house attempts to impregnate the handmaid, if they are successful, she hands the baby over to the family before being reassigned to a different family to try again. Our narrator tells of the loneliness of her position and of how little power she has. Her mostly solitary existence gives her plenty of time to ruminate on her life before with her husband and daughter and friends, and on how she came to be a handmaid.
Since the battle cry this week is Intersectional Feminism, I need to point out that this book is super white. It's second wave feminism through and through, but it's from the 80s so that's expected. It's a wonderful set piece in feminist literature, and it's a start, but we have to expand on it.
I'm not going to go into much of how awful the human rights violations are in this story. They're awful. Consent cannot be given under coercion, and "she had a choice: she could always die," is not a choice.
But I do want to talk about one aspect. When a handmaid does manage to get pregnant, they aren't allowed ultrasounds or epidural or much medical care beyond a midwife and a team of other handmaids chanting "breathe, breathe, breathe." It's like obstetric medicine has regressed along with everything else. But this makes no sense if you consider that they claim that the point of this whole operation is to produce more healthy babies. Ultrasounds can warn you about possible complications that can be handled with forewarning. C-sections can take care of a great many complications. And if they're worried about birth defects (which is the big problem in this dystopian future), it would make sense for them to do in vitro fertilization where they can assure a fetus will not be born a monster baby, AND they wouldn't just be rolling the dice trying to get pregnant. But they don't, because honestly it's not about healthy babies, it's about controlling women. It reminded me so starkly of what I hear constantly in our own time, in the real world. [Insert my pro-choice rant here, which will get me way too wound up to type out, and you know what it says anyhow.]
What really makes this book stand out, aside from its content, is that it's wonderfully crafted. There are sections in recollections where the dialogue is not enclosed in quotation marks a la James Joyce. It works amazingly well, because it blends the spoken dialogue with the narrator's reactions to what's being said, and this style choice occurs most often when the narrator is remembering her time being trained to be a handmaid--or in other words, where she's being brainwashed and threatened into submitting to their new culture and her new place within it. It's hard to tell if the brainwashing being said, or is the narrator thinking it because she's been convinced. It's subtle and beautiful and heartbreaking.
***
Next week: The Girl from Everywhere, traveling through time on a tall ship by Heidi Heilig.
January 20, 2017
The Dark Days Club Review
Wait. It's Friday? What happened? Where did my week go? Welp, here's a late book review.
This week's novel is The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman, regency high society with monsters.
Lady Helen is a socialite in her first London season, excited for balls and dinners and keeping her uncle from getting her a horrible husband. Her first season is dampened by the odd behavior she's exhibited lately: heightened reflexes, antsiness, the ability to see into people's souls and read their auras. None of which is good for a lady of high society. When Lord Carlson, with a scandalous, mysteriouslly dead wife, shows up to tell Helen that there are monsters disguised as humans and her new gifts give her the ability to fight them, Lady Helen has to balance honing her new abilities and learning to fight monsters with her social obligations without causing a scandal.
This book is unique in its commitment to its setting. This is not fighting demons in regency costume. It doesn't ignore the societal mores that are inconvenient or outdated. Instead, it embraces that the need for a chaperone would create an additional obstacle for our heroine to overcome, that she has to be sneaky to send messages, and that she needs allies to have an alibi. It makes her a smarter, stronger character. The story also sets it up that I buy that Helen wouldn't just ditch her responsibilities to go be a monster hunter (which is what I would immediately do, because her life sounds awful and fighting monsters sounds rad). Her culture is written into the fabric of her character, and becoming a social pariah is inconceivable.
It's usually hard for me to read period pieces (especially regency era) with my modern sensibilities, because I judge all the characters for being prudish or racist or homophobic if those topics come up, or I judge the author if they sweep these things to the side to the tune of "[Whatever group] didn't exist back then" and wear rose colored glasses about tremendous wealth gaps. But this struck a good balance. At one point it mentions that Helen knows there are different kinds of people out there and through her super powers knows they're honorable, but she knows her culture doesn't accept them, like her culture wouldn't accept her. Also, her need to constantly outmaneuver all the rules, and how the rules actively detour her, makes a statement about the flaws in regency era high society.
Finally, this story is very well researched. The historically accurate skyline and costume stand behind historically accurate events that took place over the 1812 London season. However, I came out of descriptive sections thinking "Wow, this was well researched," instead of "Wow, what an immersive world." Goodman takes a great deal of pride in her research and you can feel her enjoyment for it. But for me, digging into archives for London street maps from 1812 so I could properly name the streets sounds like pulling teeth. Different strokes for different folks.
***
Next week: The Handmaid's Tale, the classic dystopia, that I got away with not reading until now, by Margaret Atwood.
This week's novel is The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman, regency high society with monsters.
Lady Helen is a socialite in her first London season, excited for balls and dinners and keeping her uncle from getting her a horrible husband. Her first season is dampened by the odd behavior she's exhibited lately: heightened reflexes, antsiness, the ability to see into people's souls and read their auras. None of which is good for a lady of high society. When Lord Carlson, with a scandalous, mysteriouslly dead wife, shows up to tell Helen that there are monsters disguised as humans and her new gifts give her the ability to fight them, Lady Helen has to balance honing her new abilities and learning to fight monsters with her social obligations without causing a scandal.
This book is unique in its commitment to its setting. This is not fighting demons in regency costume. It doesn't ignore the societal mores that are inconvenient or outdated. Instead, it embraces that the need for a chaperone would create an additional obstacle for our heroine to overcome, that she has to be sneaky to send messages, and that she needs allies to have an alibi. It makes her a smarter, stronger character. The story also sets it up that I buy that Helen wouldn't just ditch her responsibilities to go be a monster hunter (which is what I would immediately do, because her life sounds awful and fighting monsters sounds rad). Her culture is written into the fabric of her character, and becoming a social pariah is inconceivable.
It's usually hard for me to read period pieces (especially regency era) with my modern sensibilities, because I judge all the characters for being prudish or racist or homophobic if those topics come up, or I judge the author if they sweep these things to the side to the tune of "[Whatever group] didn't exist back then" and wear rose colored glasses about tremendous wealth gaps. But this struck a good balance. At one point it mentions that Helen knows there are different kinds of people out there and through her super powers knows they're honorable, but she knows her culture doesn't accept them, like her culture wouldn't accept her. Also, her need to constantly outmaneuver all the rules, and how the rules actively detour her, makes a statement about the flaws in regency era high society.
Finally, this story is very well researched. The historically accurate skyline and costume stand behind historically accurate events that took place over the 1812 London season. However, I came out of descriptive sections thinking "Wow, this was well researched," instead of "Wow, what an immersive world." Goodman takes a great deal of pride in her research and you can feel her enjoyment for it. But for me, digging into archives for London street maps from 1812 so I could properly name the streets sounds like pulling teeth. Different strokes for different folks.
***
Next week: The Handmaid's Tale, the classic dystopia, that I got away with not reading until now, by Margaret Atwood.
January 10, 2017
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Review
This week, I'm talking about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, by Jack Thorne, based on the story by John Tiffany and J.K. Rowling. I'm late to the party on this one because when I requested it from the library, I started at 368th in line.
This is the script for the play put on by the Palace Theater. It picks up where the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows left off, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione adults and Albus Potter heading off to Hogwarts. Albus has a lot of trouble fitting in and his only friend is huge nerd, Scorpius Malfoy. When the Ministry of Magic finds a time turner, Cedric Diggory's father shows up at Harry's house to demand they use it to prevent his son from dying. Harry turns him down, not wanting to mess with time travel, but Albus, who overhears the conversation and is having serious issues with his dad, decides to take matters into his own hands, sending him and Scorpius on an adventure to his dad's past and a series of darker and darker timelines.
While I did like Scorpius and Albus--their friendship, their snark, and their nerdiness--the returning characters felt off. It makes since because they've aged twenty years since we last saw them, and we wouldn't expect someone in their forties to act the same way they did when they were teenagers. But it feels like they've moved on without us and we don't know them anymore. We followed these characters through so much, that it seems unfair for them to mellow out without us. At one point Ron Weasley says he should do the thing because he's "the most chilled out of all of us."
...Excuse me? Since when is Ron Weasley the most level headed person in a room? The Ron Weasley I know holds grudges and complains and turns bright red all the time because he's so angry. This must surely be the darkest timeline.
The story had a similar feel to the novels. There were shenanigans and magical goofiness and friendships and drama. There were red hearings and a fake ending and an unexpected bad guy (who for the first time in a Harry Potter book, I called on first meeting them). You can hear Rowling's voice in the stage direction.
I also imagine that the stage manager and art director read this and went, "Well...Crap...At least we have a huge budget to make this happen!"
Such imaginings pull me out of the story. And that's the problem here: reading the script is not a great way to experience the story. I wish I could see the finished stage performance (which I have no way of doing), or that this was a novel instead.
***
Next Week: The Dark Days Club, demons in period costume by Alison Goodman.
This is the script for the play put on by the Palace Theater. It picks up where the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deadly Hollows left off, with Harry, Ron, and Hermione adults and Albus Potter heading off to Hogwarts. Albus has a lot of trouble fitting in and his only friend is huge nerd, Scorpius Malfoy. When the Ministry of Magic finds a time turner, Cedric Diggory's father shows up at Harry's house to demand they use it to prevent his son from dying. Harry turns him down, not wanting to mess with time travel, but Albus, who overhears the conversation and is having serious issues with his dad, decides to take matters into his own hands, sending him and Scorpius on an adventure to his dad's past and a series of darker and darker timelines.
While I did like Scorpius and Albus--their friendship, their snark, and their nerdiness--the returning characters felt off. It makes since because they've aged twenty years since we last saw them, and we wouldn't expect someone in their forties to act the same way they did when they were teenagers. But it feels like they've moved on without us and we don't know them anymore. We followed these characters through so much, that it seems unfair for them to mellow out without us. At one point Ron Weasley says he should do the thing because he's "the most chilled out of all of us."
...Excuse me? Since when is Ron Weasley the most level headed person in a room? The Ron Weasley I know holds grudges and complains and turns bright red all the time because he's so angry. This must surely be the darkest timeline.
The story had a similar feel to the novels. There were shenanigans and magical goofiness and friendships and drama. There were red hearings and a fake ending and an unexpected bad guy (who for the first time in a Harry Potter book, I called on first meeting them). You can hear Rowling's voice in the stage direction.
"And there is a great woosh of light. A smash of noise.And time stops. And then it turns over, thinks a bit, and begins spooling backwards, slow at first...And then it speeds up."But let's talk about that stage direction. Stage direction is supposed to describe the scenery and tell the actors what to do and when to enter and exit and sit down at a table. Not how they feel. It's not supposed to provide backstory.
"There's real emotion in this room." So stop phoning it in, guys.
"And this scene is all about magic." As opposed to the rest of the play.
"This is St. Oswald's Home for Old Witches and Wizards and it is as wonderful as you might hope...These are people relieved of the burden of having to do magic for a reason--instead these witches and wizards do magic for fun. And what fun they have." The scene that follows is less than a page. I have no idea how they convey this backstory.One of the challenges to reading a script is that not only do you need to visualize the scene as you would if you were reading a novel, but there's an added layer where you have to imagine how it would work onstage. I can imagine an invisibility cloak, but imagining how an actor would put on a cloak and vanish pushes at my suspension of disbelief. there are dozens of scenes in each act, some only a few pages long, necessitating what I imagine to be massive scene changes.
I also imagine that the stage manager and art director read this and went, "Well...Crap...At least we have a huge budget to make this happen!"
Such imaginings pull me out of the story. And that's the problem here: reading the script is not a great way to experience the story. I wish I could see the finished stage performance (which I have no way of doing), or that this was a novel instead.
***
Next Week: The Dark Days Club, demons in period costume by Alison Goodman.
January 8, 2017
I am Bad at Titles
I'm struggling this week with a title for the dragon book. I've noticed that a gripping title is the fastest track to getting a
book added to my to-read list, and if titles work on me, they probably
work on other people. So the dragon story needs a catchy title. Something intriguing. Something that makes it stand out.
I gave it the working title of "Dumb Dragon Story," which is clearly a working title for a reason. This has become a problem though, because that's what I call it in my head, even though I think it's pretty good these days. It's like it's coming home for its ten year high school reunion all successful and glamorous in a killer little dress with great hair and skin and contacts, and some jerk shouts, "Hot damn! Get a load of Applesauce Face!" It'll be the dumb dragon story until the day I die.
"My dumb dragon story needs a better title," I told my husband.
"What's wrong with Love Amongst the Dragons?"
"What?"
"Isn't that the title of your story?"
"No," I said. "That's the play in Avatar that the Ember Island Players put on when they're not doing the one about the avatar."
"Oh." He thought for a minute. "I'm sorry, hun. I can't for the life of me remember what your novel's called."
"My dumb dragon story needs a better title," I told my friend.
"Titles are hard," she said. "I'm bad at them."
"Is there a word that means both 'grappling with your identity' and some kind of polyester-cotton blend that you could build a dragon costume out of? I want that word to exist and I want it to be my title."
She had nothing to say to that.
I should note that she and I once wrote a short story together, and I saved the file as "Boat Story." Because the characters started off on a ship. It wasn't even a boat. And the characters almost immediately got shipwrecked. I still called it "Boat Story." And then she called it "Boat Story." And then we were doomed to have a miserable time finding a different title. And in all honestly, the first thing I named the file was "I'm on a Boat, Bitch," but I deleted it and replaced it with "Boat Story" in case my friend hadn't seen that sketch and thought I was calling her a bitch. I was not calling her a bitch. I'm just bad at titles.
In worrying this over, I've decided that the real problem is that I'm having trouble coming up with a title that expresses the tone of the book. Everything on massive squiggle monster of a brainstorming session sounds either generically high fantasy ("The Immortal Queen" "Borrowed Swords and Dancing Dragons") or too off the wall goofy ("I was Lying, there are No Dragons" "Dragons of Sequins and Polyester-Cotton Blend").
I would read that last book, but it is not the book I wrote.
I gave it the working title of "Dumb Dragon Story," which is clearly a working title for a reason. This has become a problem though, because that's what I call it in my head, even though I think it's pretty good these days. It's like it's coming home for its ten year high school reunion all successful and glamorous in a killer little dress with great hair and skin and contacts, and some jerk shouts, "Hot damn! Get a load of Applesauce Face!" It'll be the dumb dragon story until the day I die.
"My dumb dragon story needs a better title," I told my husband.
"What's wrong with Love Amongst the Dragons?"
"What?"
"Isn't that the title of your story?"
"No," I said. "That's the play in Avatar that the Ember Island Players put on when they're not doing the one about the avatar."
"Oh." He thought for a minute. "I'm sorry, hun. I can't for the life of me remember what your novel's called."
"My dumb dragon story needs a better title," I told my friend.
"Titles are hard," she said. "I'm bad at them."
"Is there a word that means both 'grappling with your identity' and some kind of polyester-cotton blend that you could build a dragon costume out of? I want that word to exist and I want it to be my title."
She had nothing to say to that.
I should note that she and I once wrote a short story together, and I saved the file as "Boat Story." Because the characters started off on a ship. It wasn't even a boat. And the characters almost immediately got shipwrecked. I still called it "Boat Story." And then she called it "Boat Story." And then we were doomed to have a miserable time finding a different title. And in all honestly, the first thing I named the file was "I'm on a Boat, Bitch," but I deleted it and replaced it with "Boat Story" in case my friend hadn't seen that sketch and thought I was calling her a bitch. I was not calling her a bitch. I'm just bad at titles.
In worrying this over, I've decided that the real problem is that I'm having trouble coming up with a title that expresses the tone of the book. Everything on massive squiggle monster of a brainstorming session sounds either generically high fantasy ("The Immortal Queen" "Borrowed Swords and Dancing Dragons") or too off the wall goofy ("I was Lying, there are No Dragons" "Dragons of Sequins and Polyester-Cotton Blend").
I would read that last book, but it is not the book I wrote.
January 4, 2017
Spontaneous Review
Coming back from the holiday hiatus, we start the year off with Spontaneous, a young adult novel about spontaneous combustion by Aaron Starmer. I heard about this from a Chicago Public Library list of young adult recommendations "Inspired by Bradbury: Teen Science Fiction," and, although I liked this book, it confirms my suspicion that this list is woefully mistitled.
This is a dark comedy about Mara, a senior at Covington High School in New Jersey. One day, one of her classmates spontaneously combusts in Pre-calc. Then another explodes in group therapy. Then another explodes. Then another. None of the senior class is safe, and everyone panics to find a pattern or a cure, resulting government intervention and wild speculation about terrorism and shrooms, a virus, a mass government conspiracy and promiscuity. The FBI gets involved. Church groups come to proselytize. The president reassures the kids via skype. And Mara tries to make it to graduation, which seems as likely a cure as any.
The voice sells this story. A lot of it is written in straightforward practicalities, because that's the only way for a traumatized teenager to tell the story without breaking down, and if that happened, we wouldn't have a book to read.
The student's reactions feel realistic as they swing from fear to determination to hedonism to nihilism. They give up and pull it together, give up and then try to make the most of it. It's not one set reaction, but a bunch that all happen at once, because no one knows what to do or how they should feel.
The reactions of the community also feel real. They let their prejudices and biases run away with them as they guess at reasons for the explosions based on the identity of the kids that exploded. Must be "a terrorist thing". Must be "a gay thing". Then their turn against the senior class as a whole, treating them as pariahs felt realistic too.
Mara and her best friend Tess have a wonderful girl friendship in this. They balance each other well and support one another. They fight and they make up. They annoy each other and listen to each other. I love seeing healthy relationships in fiction. It's so so so important to show them in YA fiction, and to show you can have conflict in a story without showing friends or romantic partners that treat each other poorly. (And as someone who always slips into friendships where they're the Bert to my Ernie, I especially like friendships between the goofball friend who can't get their act together and the competent friend who humors them.)
***
Next week: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne.
This is a dark comedy about Mara, a senior at Covington High School in New Jersey. One day, one of her classmates spontaneously combusts in Pre-calc. Then another explodes in group therapy. Then another explodes. Then another. None of the senior class is safe, and everyone panics to find a pattern or a cure, resulting government intervention and wild speculation about terrorism and shrooms, a virus, a mass government conspiracy and promiscuity. The FBI gets involved. Church groups come to proselytize. The president reassures the kids via skype. And Mara tries to make it to graduation, which seems as likely a cure as any.
The voice sells this story. A lot of it is written in straightforward practicalities, because that's the only way for a traumatized teenager to tell the story without breaking down, and if that happened, we wouldn't have a book to read.
For now, maybe it's easier to speak about practicalities, to describe what exactly happens after a girl explodes in your pre-calc class. You get the rest of the day off from school, and the rest of the week too. You talk to the cops on three separate occasions, and Sheriff Tibble looks at you weird when you don't whimper as much as the guy they interviewed before you. You are asked to attend private therapy sessions with a velvet-voiced woman named Linda and, if you want, group therapy sessions with a leather-voiced man named Vince and some of the other kids who witnessed the spontaneous combustion...
So that's what we did. Half of us "kids" from third period pre-calc met in the media room every Tuesday and Thursday at four, and we shared our stories of insomnia and chasing away bloody visions with food and booze and all sorts of stuff that therapists can't say shit about to your parents because they have a legal obligation to keep secrets.
Nutty as it was, Linda helped. So did Vince. So did the rest of my blood-obsessed peers, even the ones who occasionally called me insensitive on account of my sense of humor.Mara's personality is self-deprecating without being melodramatic, and cynical without being jaded. It matches the dark comedy tone of the story, and makes it feel honest.
The student's reactions feel realistic as they swing from fear to determination to hedonism to nihilism. They give up and pull it together, give up and then try to make the most of it. It's not one set reaction, but a bunch that all happen at once, because no one knows what to do or how they should feel.
The reactions of the community also feel real. They let their prejudices and biases run away with them as they guess at reasons for the explosions based on the identity of the kids that exploded. Must be "a terrorist thing". Must be "a gay thing". Then their turn against the senior class as a whole, treating them as pariahs felt realistic too.
Mara and her best friend Tess have a wonderful girl friendship in this. They balance each other well and support one another. They fight and they make up. They annoy each other and listen to each other. I love seeing healthy relationships in fiction. It's so so so important to show them in YA fiction, and to show you can have conflict in a story without showing friends or romantic partners that treat each other poorly. (And as someone who always slips into friendships where they're the Bert to my Ernie, I especially like friendships between the goofball friend who can't get their act together and the competent friend who humors them.)
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Next week: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne.
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