Tag: Fiction

LisaAnnReads > Fiction
DBC January Theme: Foster Care & Adoption

DBC January Theme: Foster Care & Adoption

Posted on by lisaannreads

This month’s focus for the Diverse Books Club* was foster care and adoption. While foster care and adoption can be beautiful things, there can also be heartbreak and difficulty for all involved—birth parents, children, and adoptive parents. Too often, the hard reality of adoption isn’t discussed or portrayed when we speak of these things. Adoptive parents are saviors, the children are lucky to get out, and the fairy tale ends with the judge’s gavel pronouncing the creation of a forever family. But adoption is not a fairy tale for most. It is, quite often, simply a necessary evil.

As an attorney, I have seen parents with disabilities who needed temporary help lose their children entirely to the machine that is the child welfare system. I’ve also seen children who needed help far sooner, but even once the State intervened stood little chance of getting what they needed. The failures are typically not for lack of care on the part of the people involved, but rather a function of a behemoth grown too large to manage with perpetually underfunded staff and resources. The end result is that while individual caseworkers, attorneys, and judges may very well care, the system doesn’t. And it is the system that swallows parents and children whole.

I was grateful, therefore, to see that there are mainstream, accessible books that tackle some of these issues and that DBC selected this as a theme to explore.

forever, or a long, long time
The first DBC book I read this month, and my favorite of the two, was forever, or a long, long time—a middle grade book written by Caela Carter. This book was a pleasant surprise to me since I rarely really get into middle grade books. I’m not a teacher and don’t have children, so I don’t have a reason to ever pick them up outside of a book club selection and they’re usual hit or miss for me. I went ahead and got this one but assumed I might be quitting after a chapter or so. Thankfully, I was wrong.

Summary // Foster Care Damage
Forever is told from the point of view of fourth grader Flora who, along with her younger brother Julian has been adopted into what is supposed to be their forever home.   You quickly come to realize that due to some neglect faced by these two children before landing where they are, Flora struggles with processing language—she understands but has trouble putting her thoughts into words and speaking. Julian hoards food, even though he now receives plenty at the table everyday. For children who have been through at least four placements and “entered care” very young, these disabilities and issues are not terribly surprising. Language delays can be common in children who were neglected or otherwise not engaged at a young age. Similarly, hoarding is a common aftereffect of serious neglect where access to food was limited. Long after the neglect has ended, the psychological remains of this neglect stays—rooting this out and filling in the hole left can take far longer. Nor is it surprising that Flora self-sabotages in school, torn between wanting to do well and please her mom and teacher and not wanting to have to transition away from the teacher and classroom she knows and loves.

Though Flora’s and Julian’s new mom and dad do everything they can and show remarkable patience, the adoption is still hard. Adoption did not make Flora speak overnight or keep her from self-sabotaging. It doesn’t keep Julian from hiding moldy chicken nuggets tucked in the folds of his khakis in his closet. Nor does having a mom and dad keep the children from wondering about their first mom and dad, or where they came from. Since no one seems to be able to tell them, Flora and Julian have created a heartbreaking little game, where they come up with theories of where they came from—they formed on the bottom of the sea, they stepped fully grown from a television, etc.

Adding to the mix is the blended family—Dad had a family before and so adoption comes with a half-sister. Though the adults don’t use the “half” or designate the status/worth of their children by differentiating between those acquired by birth and adoption, you can bet the children do themselves. There is a pervading cloud of otherness that hangs over Flora and Julian, despite the efforts of their parents, teachers, and therapist. No one (except maybe dad’s ex-wife) is to blame and everyone is trying their best.

The final piece of the chaos is the loss of Flora and Julian’s files. No one—not Mom, not the agency—knows where the files are. And so, the family embarks on a quest to find where Flora and Julian came from, tracing back one placement by one placement. On this journey, hard truths come out about where Flora and Julian were placed, what motives some of the placements had, failures of the system that resulted in Flora and Julian losing a loving home that was ready and available for them many years before they stopped bouncing around the system. And they find the home where Flora and Julian were taken right after their emergency removal—the home that left me with the solid feeling that they may have been in trouble before, but the home they were thrust into was far worse.

Along the way are all the people—the loving foster home that Flora and Julian lost. The foster-farm parent who takes in large numbers of kids and gives them the bare minimum. The parent who was more concerned about herself than keeping Flora and Julian together. The caseworker who tried her best but still probably failed. And the forever mom, the forever dad, and the forever siblings. All of these people are real people in the system that makes the foster-adoption process the flawed, hot mess with sometimes happy endings that it is.

Recommended
Having written all of this out, Forever admittedly sounds like a bummer of a book. And yet, it was hopeful. It was hard but, as is age appropriate, it ends well for Flora and Julian. They have their forever family. Forever presents an accurate portrayal of what foster care and adoption can look like for one family in an accessible and age appropriate way. There is nothing graphic or scary; however, this is a book that will spark conversation about the fact that not every family is safe. Not every child is well taken care of. And that kid in class who seems kind of weird and doesn’t look like their family—may be one of the best people to get to know. Because not every family looks alike and that’s more than okay.

Forever is a beautiful book that I’m glad I read and will be recommending for friends with kids. Even those who aren’t involved in foster care or adoption should pick up this book for their children and begin exploring these topics so that when Flora and Julian shows up next to them in class, they have a head start on being kind.

Notes
Published: March 7, 2017 by HarperCollins (harpercollinsus)
Author: Caela Carter
Read: January 5, 2018
Rating: 4 ½ stars

Secret Daughter
Admittedly, I was a little less jazzed about Secret Daughter. I think we’ve pretty well established that I’m a book-snob and my tastes, with some exceptions, veer more LitFic than WomansFic. I don’t love the mass market paperback but give me the snobby book nominated for the Man Booker and talked about on NPR. I want to read and re-read a paragraph just to appreciate the cadence of the words. Secret Daughter is definitely more in the WomansFic class.

Summary
Secret Daughter follows two families beginning with the birth of their daughter in 1984 through 2009. Kavita is Usha/Asha’s birth mother, forced by circumstance to give her daughter up in order to literally save her life. Somer and Krishnan are Asha’s mixed-race parents in the States who adopt her as a very young child. As the book moves through time, you read about Kavita’s life—how she wonders about Asha, how her life slowly improves (at least on the surface) with her husband and her son she was allowed to keep, born about a year after Asha. You struggle with Somer over her infertility, her adoption of Asha, her sacrifice of much of her ambition in order to fit into her new role as Mom. And, when Asha grows old enough, you follow Asha as she wonders who she is and where she come from. Layered over this is the mixed-culture marriage of Somer and Krishnan. Krishnan was, with relatively little complaint from him, forced to assimilate to American culture when he came over many years ago for medical school. Somer, during short visits to India chafes against having to assimilate, even temporarily—leaving her with mostly negative feelings about the country of her child’s birth, even independent of any fears she has about Asha’s birth parents.

Verdict // Importance of books like these
I don’t have any major things I can point to about why I didn’t love this book—I think the problem is that I also don’t have anything I can point to that I loved. There were no paragraphs that I re-read to appreciate the writing, though I also never rolled my eyes at anything overwrought. (Secret Daughter is still head and shoulders above Lilac Girls.) I’d give it 3 ½ stars because it is an above-average book. It just isn’t the kind of book I gravitate to and I don’t want to rush to get back to it when I had to put it down.

While I didn’t love the book, after sitting with it for several days, I do think books like Secret Daughter fill an important role, much the way I think some Jodi Picoult books do. There are many readers who will not pick up a serious work on domestic violence or the recent unmasking of the rampant white supremacy around us and yet, these women will pick up Picture Perfect and Small Great Things. It is important that weighty topics not be limited to serious works but that mass-market fiction sold for $11 in Target also introduces these ideas.

Along these likes Secret Daughter raises points that are not highly talked about with international child adoption. Adoptive mom Somer feels she’s lost herself to give her daughter Asha a beautiful life in America—having, like many mothers, sacrificed her own dreams and ambitions for the sake of her child. For her part, Asha, though adopted as a very child, still wonders about her birth country and her birth family. Though Asha has everything she could want in America and two loving parents, there is still the very real urge to find where she came from and why her parents had to give her up.

Here to is where Secret Daughter raises important points, particularly about international adoption. Many if not most “orphans” in places like India, Haiti, and Ethiopia are not orphans. They are children of poverty whose families gave them up because it was the surest way to ensure they would have access to food and shelter. Or some other circumstances intervened to prevent their birth family from caring for them, but this doesn’t mean they are unloved, unwanted, or even actually orphaned. Even medical advances like the ultrasound and things like abortion access come into play in Secret Daughter as it’s a poorly kept secret that these things are used by some in countries like India for sex-selective abortion. The result in places like India and China is an imbalance where men outnumber women significantly by the time a generation reaches childbearing age.

Thematically, Secret Daughter isn’t a beachy read and yet, it kind of reads like one. The writing is straightforward, the characters easy to identify with. The plot has enough action to keep it moving at a decent clip. It’s not a book I plan to keep and I probably won’t recommend widely, though it is something I’d recommend to my mother since she camps pretty solidly in the Women’s Fiction section in her typical reading tastes. If you lean more Women’s Fic than LitFic this is a book you’d enjoy and I do think it a worthwhile use of your time.

If you do pick up Secret Daughter, make sure to read the author’s note about her inspiration to write the book and the real life facts behind Asha’s story.

Notes
Published: April 5, 2011 by William Morrow books (paperback) (@williammorrowbooks)
Author: Shilpi Somaya Gowda (@shilpi_gowda)
Read: January 11, 2018
Rating: 3 ½ stars

*New Members are always welcome in our community for Diverse Books Club!  We’re a publicly viewable group on Goodreads, but if you have any trouble finding us, leave me a comment with your Goodreads name and I can invite you directly.

Mini Reviews: Castle of Water and Dear Fahrenheit 451

Posted on by lisaannreads

While these two books might seem an odd mix – one fiction and one non; one written by a man and one a woman. (They are both written by white people but let’s be honest—that’s not a theme)—they’re both books that I read and immediately added to my To-Buy list. I didn’t expect to love them both and so both were library books for the first read. Castle of Water ended my year last year and Dear Fahrenheit 451 started my new one. If every year’s transition can go so smoothly for the next fifty or so years, everything might just be ok.

First Up– Castle of Water by Dane Huckelbridge

Why I Almost Quit This Book & Synopsis
I’ll admit, I almost didn’t read this book and even abandoned it after five minutes of trying to listen to the audio. (I couldn’t follow the weird French accent. It’s possible I was also distracted and was listening to a portion in actual French which would explain why I felt like I couldn’t follow it.) A handful of Bookstagrammers I trust had raved about it over the summer and it had the long library wait characteristic of many of the new books I love so I tried again in print. I am so glad I did. This was one of my favorite books last year and I’ve got my eyes peeled for my own copy.

The plot of Castle of Water sounds like one of the “women’s fiction” books that drives me a little batty, which was another initial turn-off. Investment-banker-turned-aspiring-artist Barry and newlywed-newlywidowed Sophie find themselves the sole survivors of a small plane crash, washed ashore on a literal deserted island. Because their plane wasn’t flying where it should have been (of course) no one is looking for them. They’re on the own with the limited supplies in the emergency raft and an endless supply of bananas.

And yet, Huckelbridge takes what sounds like the plot of a hastily written mass-market paperback or even a steamy romance (don’t worry—there are no pirates) and turns it into something absolutely gorgeous. The writing is elevated over your run of the mill fiction book—it’s lyrical in places, haunting in others, and beautiful throughout without ever feeling flowery. Huckelbridge has moments of levity (Barry is dependent upon contacts and only has the three pairs) with moments of deep sadness. As the book reached its crescendo, I found myself with tears streaming down my face in a sports bar. (I wouldn’t recommend reading the last chapters during halftime of a football game. I was trying to deny the emotional twist I suspected was coming and foolishly hit that part in public.)

Recommended
Both Barry and Sophie are well-rounded and believable, with aspects of their personalities and backstories that seem, on the one hand, ridiculous and on the other entirely believable. Would Barry really give up his entire life and fortune as an investment banker to become an artist? I don’t know, but as a five-foot tall former firefighter, now lawyer, I’m not one to judge on unusual backstories. Most people have something a little quirky in their experience-closets—Huckelbridge hits the right spot of just weird enough to be interesting but not so weird as to be eye-rollingly-unbelievable.

Castle of Water was the book that most surprised me in 2017 and left me wanting more of Huckelbridge’s fiction (this was his first). It’s also one of the books with the most mass appeal—unlike something like The Heart, Castle of Water isn’t so flowery as to seem pretentious. It’s easy to read—it feels accessible and not like something that’s gunning for a literary prize. And yet, there’s so much more to it than a cheap beach read.

Notes
Published: April 4, 2017 by St. Martins Press (@StMartinsPress)
Author: Dane Huckelbridge (@huckelbridge)
Date read: December 31, 2017

Next Up — Dear Fahrenheit 451

Synopsis
Smart-ass librarian writes letters to books in her life. Causing cringing, awkward moments of laughing-out-loud in public, and the expansion of many a TBR list.

Yes, I called Annie Spence A Smart Ass
I’m pretty sure she would agree with me. A sample quote:

Reading can get you more hot and bothered than a Tinder date, without the cost of drinks and with a lower frequency of unwanted dick pics.

I have to admit, I expected Dear Fahrenheit 451 to be cute, but I didn’t expect it to be irreverent. This is a librarian we’re talking about here. While Spence’s snark might turn off a handful of readers (I probably won’t recommend this to my mother), I loved her tone and found her sarcasm refreshing.

Her most-biting commentary, however, is directed at books that are safe. She pokes harmless fun at books about cat anatomy and “fun with calculators” (remember 80085?) but doesn’t turn her criticism toward any current books or authors who could take offense. You could see this as safe; however, having a friend who is an author and knowing how hard it is to write a book, this seems to me to be a kindness. Spence doesn’t make her jokes at the expense of anyone currently writing and the only truly negative post that goes beyond joking at outdated technology or weird dissection niches is reserved for a book on how to convert someone from homosexuality. If you’re looking for Mean Girls Read Books, this book isn’t it. I want to meet her—she seems like a girlfriend I’d want to meet at a wine bar and then not talk to while we both read books at the same table.

(Admittedly Minor) Complaints
My complaints about this book are only two and deal with two specific books she recommends—that she sort of spoils a twist in a book and that she recommended Roth’s Divergent series. As to the first, there is a book I love where a twist isn’t revealed for several chapters (though, I admit, it is revealed somewhere around a quarter of the way in, possibly earlier. It was an audiobook so it’s a little hard to recall how early it was. But it was early.). I loved that early twist and knowing it ahead of time would have taken something away from the experience for me. Spence summarizes the book in one sentence giving away that twist. I begrudged her a little for that. As to Divergent, I thought we all agreed that Allegiant was so awful that it ruined the books that preceded it?

Recommended
Even with those two little complaints, this is still a book I loved. Though I was trying not to add books to my ever-multiplying TBR, I still added fifteen books to the list of books I want to read. If you pick this book up and you’re trying to decide whether or not to read it, flip to page 36 in the hardback and read her summary of getting progressively drunker and angrier at a pretentious bookshelf at a party. This chapter had me in tears—I made several people read that chapter as an explanation of why I loved the book. If that chapter hits the right note in your snark bone (located just behind the funny bone), pick up Dear Fahrenheit 451. You won’t be disappointed.

Notes
Published: September 26, 2017 by Flatiron Books (@flatiron_books)
Author: Annie Spence
Date read: January 4, 2018

 

Review: My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

There is so much of her life she doesn’t understand. She knows what happened, but why it happened and what it meant, she doesn’t know.

My Absolute Darling centers around fourteen year-old Turtle and the world defined for her by her father’s making. The central character in her life, he has wrapped himself so tightly around her that he defines her thoughts and is the source of both her pleasure and her pain. Turtle is both everything (his absolute darling) and nothing (“kibble”) to Martin. Its only as others—a new girl named Cayenne and a boy named Jacob—enter Turtle’s world that the rot becomes obvious. Turtle struggles to escape—bound to her father by more than the physical isolation and difficulty of survival without him—until it becomes clear it is the only option to keep both Jacob and Cayenne safe.

Problems
I should never have finished this book. It might be unfair to say so…but I’m blaming this book for the slump I hit in the beginning of November and only managed to come out of a few weeks ago.   Suffice to say, I hated this book. It had all the hallmarks of a book I would love—complicated (to the extreme) families, a literary style, strong female protagonist, and (since I’m a snob) buzz from critics. And yet, in execution, this book not only fell flat for me, it dug a gigantic hole, fell into it, and dragged my reading life down with it. I finished it only so that I could review it—not sure I will make this mistake again since it had a larger impact on my reading generally that I anticipated.

My largest complaints with the book are two-fold: it was unnecessarily graphic and the word “cunt” was overused in the extreme. I don’t think I’m spoiling the book if I say that My Absolute Darling centers around a father-daughter relationship where the father has replaced his wife with his daughter. There are graphic descriptions of rape of 8th and 9th grade Turtle, along with graphic descriptions of Turtle reaching orgasm with her dad—this is all she’s known and her own body both obeys and betrays her in turns throughout the book. My issue here is that the descriptions go so far into these events that the descriptions of sex become pornographic and over the top. Tallent is showing off that he isn’t afraid to go there and can write these scenes. A better writer could still have made me hate Martin, could even have described some of the rape scenes and made the point about Turtle’s body, without the gratuitous showing off.

As to the c-word, Turtle has internalized Martin’s extreme misogyny—as evidenced by the reader’s view of her internal monologue, where every female Turtle encounters (and even Turtle herself) are “stupid cunts.” At some point, using over 100 c-words to describe women has gone so far past making Tallent’s point as to become, again, evidence of Tallent trying too hard. From his short biography at the back of the book, Tallent appears to have grown up rather liberally, raised by two moms, so this overabundance of the c-word seems less likely to be a product of Tallent’s own secret feelings and rather a symptom of Tallent perhaps not having spent time with any actual misogynists and, instead assuming they use the word “cunt” in every sentence. It felt cheap, it lost its shock value, and there were other, less obvious and more skillful ways to show Turtle has internalized her father’s deep hatred for women.

From looking at other reviews, these are the two main complaints. Some people aren’t bothered by these two elements and, as a result, My Absolute Darling has many five-star reviews on both Goodreads and Amazon. Indeed, if this is the kind of litfic you usually like and you can look past these two elements, this is a well-written book that you may really enjoy. I just couldn’t look past them.

Wild Coast
The setting in My Absolute Darling is so central to the book as to become here a character. The descriptions are lush and wild, reflecting back to Turtle and the reader the internal wildness Turtle feels and the barbaric way Martin is raising Turtle. I didn’t get as much out of these descriptions (they are legion) as I have in other books, though I suspect this may have been because my forays into the Pacific Northwest have been strictly limited to the streets of Seattle and the ferry to Bainbridge Island. Having no context or appreciation of either flora or fauna, the lengthy descriptions became a touch monotonous (I can’t tell an Aspen leaf from Maple, I just know I have to rake them all… so I’m not your girl here). For someone with any more appreciation of nature than I, the lush descriptions likely add to the overall feel of the book. For me, I know enough to know I didn’t know enough to fully appreciate these descriptions.

Characters
Outside of beautiful writing, the only elements that kept me going in My Absolute Darling were the female characters—Turtle and Anna. Turtle is resilience personified. I dislike what Tallent frequently did with her inner monologue embracing of misogyny, and she often seemed much older than fourteen (much older than even her forced life experiences would have made her). So she wasn’t perfect. But she was brave and she was fierce. Her internal struggles kept her from fully saving herself until it was clear the only way to save another was to save them both. She was sacrificial in unexpected ways and the last chapters of the book when she takes a stand are the reason I’m giving this book more than one star.  (That and it will be the rare book that would make me rate anything on the same level as Hillbilly Elegy). Even in her brokenness, I wanted to cheer for her. To encourage her to step out of her shell, even if that left her skin exposed and vulnerable.  Anna, as a minor character, is still well-fleshed out. You care for her as she cares for Turtle—pushing and fighting for Turtle, even as Turtle lashes out at her. For all the other flaws in the book, Tallent’s female characters—particularly these two—are beautifully thought out and presented with an internal integrity that makes them appealing, once you cut through the excessive usage of “cunt.”

Notes
Published: August 29, 2017 by Riverhead Books
Author: Gabriel Tallent
Date read: November 27, 2017
Rating: 2 ½ stars

Review: Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

“I was beginning to learn that your life is a story told about you, not one that you tell.”

“No, it’s not, Holmesy. You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get the pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don’t choose what’s in the picture, but you decide the frame.”

Synopsis
Turtles All the Way Down is the story of Aza Holmes, a sixteen year old Indianapolis high school student with a crazy best friend and a raging complex of anxiety disorders.  Throughout Turtles, Aza vacillates between being defined and driven by her anxiety, OCD, and grief for her departed father and  having moments of peace, during which she watches stars and eats Applebees with Davis Pickett, son of an eccentric billionaire who’s gone missing, and her best friend Daisy Ramirez, internet-famous author of Star Wars fanfic.  With a focus on Aza but eyes on Davis and Daisy as well, Turtles is ultimately a story of what it means to be resilient, even when everything — your family, your friends, life circumstances, and even your own brain chemistry– are fighting against you.

A John Green Book
I’ll admit. I’m one of those cliché people that loved The Fault in Our Stars (and to be further cliché—that’s the book and most definitely not the movie). I was so into it that I even finished listening to the audiobook on the way to a wedding and arrived a mess—red faced and sobbing before the wedding ever started. I was that girl who googled “An Imperial Affliction” and was disappointed to learn it was not a real book.

I then eagerly read Looking for Alaska and was disappointed and could never get into Paper Towns. My burning love for John Green ignited by TFIOS quickly fizzled and revealed itself as a mere flash-bang rather than an enduring fire. So it was with some hesitation that I even checked out Turtles All the Way Down from the library. And yet, Turtles is the closest I’ve found Green to come back to TFIOS—I’d even go so far as to say that Aza Holmes, in all her flawed glory, feels more authentic than Hazel and Augustus.

With that said, Turtles All the Way Down is still, 100% a John Green book. As Preston Yancey noted on an early episode of the What Should I Read Next podcast, YA should be vibrant and intense—the colors are bright and the feelings are feelings. The dialogue that happens in a John Green book is unlikely to happen anywhere else—it’s snappy and intelligent in ways that normal conversation is occasionally, but not all the time. Because of this, Turtles feels inauthentic in the best way—mental illness and grief aside, this is the world as it should be—the dialogue crackles, the air is crisp, and everything has meaning.

Aza’s Anxiety and OCD
Speaking of mental illness, Green himself apparently has OCD and anxiety so his writing these into the character of Aza feels authentic—an #ownvoices of a different type.

“And we’re such language-based creatures that to some extent we cannot know what we cannot name. And so we assume that it isn’t real. We refer to it with catch-all terms, like crazy or chronic pain, terms that both ostracize and minimize. The term chronic paid captures nothing of the grinding, constant, ceaseless, inescapable hurt. And the term crazy arrives at us with none of the terror and worry you live with.”

Aza’s thought spirals could easily feel overdone and stereotypical but Green pulls them back from this edge. Aza, for all her self-loathing and flaws, remains likeable. She breaks your heart as you watch her hurting, wanting to pull her back from the prison her mind has made for her. (Wanting to pull her away from the damn hand sanitizer.) In my experience working with and being friends with people with mental illness, Turtles All the Way Down felt like an accurate portrayal of these disorders that didn’t stray into sensationalism or stereotype, nor is Aza ultimately defined by her mental illness.

Supporting Characters
Aza’s love interest in the book was sweet and conveniently rich, making Davis the perfect John Green character. He was wiser and kinder than I remember sixteen year old boys being—though, as an aside—my recent spate of YA novels has me wondering if everyone was really having this much sex in high school and I just didn’t know about it (arguably, likely) or if the feeling that all these YA characters are more grown up than I was at their age is partly a function of the earlier and earlier sexualization of American teenagers.

But I digress. Davis was lovely and just the right amount of wounded and imperfect to be the foil for Aza. The Aza-Davis relationship differed markedly from Hazel-Augustus and, despite his immense wealth, Davis felt like a more well-rounded character than Augustus. (Augustus felt too perfect, except for the part where he was…you know, dying). I appreciated how Green resolved the Aza-Davis relationship—it was believable rather than forced, when the easy temptation (especially in YA) is for the happily-ever-after.

Aza’s best friend Daisy was perhaps one of my favorite characters, though one I remain a bit conflicted about. She had many of the hallmarks of the manic-pixie-dream-girl (hence the conflict), though her character revealed the growth in Aza, not a boy. Daisy was Alaska, but far less wounded, better fleshed-out, and a writer of Chewbacca fanfic.  (Her life motto—“Break hearts, not promises.) She was snappy and funny, quirky in the way I wanted to be but certainly never was in high school.   Turtles is told from Aza’s viewpoint, so part of the reason Daisy kept the manic-pixie-dream-girl vibe for so long was, frankly, because that’s the role Aza relegated her to. Daisy busts this mold to an extent part of the way through the book, when she chews out Aza for being self-absorbed—so caught in her spirals that she doesn’t see the hardship Daisy has been living with. While I doubt Green would do it, I would love a Daisy novella about this same time period so that we see Daisy as she sees herself. I want more of her.

The Ending
I’m going to be intentionally vague here so I don’t think there needs to be a spoiler warning. I’m not exhaustively versed in his body of work, but the voice, perspective, and final words are not a choice that I think we’ve seen Green make as readers. I go back and forth on whether I found the way this choice provided closure comforting or if it would have been better to leave the book more open-ended.   There are many books that I want to know what happened after the book, though having gotten that to an extent here, maybe we are better off not always knowing. The grass is always Greener….(Sorry. But not really.)

Recommended
If you find John Green or YA generally to be too much, this isn’t going to be the book for you. Green goes new places with Aza, but his voice and his writing remains true to what has made him the popular author he is. If you can handle the occasional YA and/or want to start a John Green book but don’t want to start with the one everyone talks about where the kids are all dying of cancer, then I absolutely recommend Turtles All the Way Down. The topic is serious but the dialogue makes it feel lighter and a thread of hope for Aza runs through the entire book. I listened on audio and found the voice to be a good match for the story—I may even use an Audible credit to purchase my own copy of the audiobook to re-listen.

Notes
Published: October 10, 2017 by Dutton Books (@duttonbooks)
Author: John Green (@johngreenwritesbooks)
Date read: December 23, 2017
Rating: 4 ½ stars

Mini Reviews: Dear Martin & I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Posted on by lisaannreads


Joanna Kosinska

Over the last few weeks, two of the books I read seemed worthy of discussion here but I struggled independently and for different reasons over both in what to write about them for a full post.   I don’t know that I will do this often but today is going to be a mini review of both. (And, it turns out, they share a book birthday! #serenedipity).

First up is Dear Martin by Nic Stone.

Synopsis
Justyce McAllister is a top student at one of the best prep schools in Atlanta. He also happens to be one of the only black students in the almost-entirely-white school. In the first chapters of the book, Justyce is aggressively detained by a white police officer over a misunderstanding—an encounter that leaves Justyce shaken. He begins to write letters to Martin Luther King to process through what it would mean to live by Dr. King’s nonviolent principles in a world that still seems hell-bent on forcing subjugation or violent confrontation on African Americans. A second encounter leaves Justyce grieving and grappling with the media spotlight.

The Hate U Give parallels
In many ways, Dear Martin, is strikingly like The Hate U Give—this is, in fact, one of the reasons I wasn’t sure I could do a full post justice. Many of the social justice issues I raised and linked to in that post apply equally. Justyce, like Starr, is one of the only black students at an all-white private school, has a white love interest, experiences micro-aggressions on a daily basis, and becomes a witness to an officer-involved shooting. Despite all of these commonalities, Dear Martin still feels fresh, relevant, and far from repetitive.

Dear Martin goes places The Hate U Give doesn’t—Justyce himself is detained by the police, he becomes hopeless enough that he’s drawn to a gang, he’s maligned in the media as a thug—this being the justification for an officer shooting at Justyce and his friend. Where the major characters in The Hate U Give were all either living in the poor areas Starr lives or, at best, a middle class neighborhood, Justyce finds himself surrounded by a world of money. With this change and the events that throw Justyce unwittingly into the spotlight, Stone is able to explore more fully the ideas of black “respectability” and the idea that, at the end of the day, when it comes to many encounters with white authority/law enforcement, a rich black teenager is just another black man and is just as likely to be killed by police.

Recommendation
I highly recommend Dear Martin for anyone who read and enjoyed The Hate U Give. I also recommend it for readers who were intimidated by THUG—Dear Martin is about half the length and I flew through it in a day. If you’re still not sure what the deal is with Black Lives Matter—why its necessary—or what micro-aggressions look like, Dear Martin is an easy place to start. Justyce and the supporting characters in the book are believable and mostly likeable (except the ones who aren’t supposed to be). The book is tightly written with both YA and adult appeal.

Notes
Published: October 17, 2017 by Crown (@crownpublishing)
Author: Nic Stone (@getnicced)
Date read: December 15, 2017

Next is I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, a National Book Award Finalist for YA Fiction.

Synopsis
First generation Mexican-American teenager Julia (not Jewel-ia) needs to get out of her parents’ house where the combined weight of her parents’ expectations and the perfection of her older sister is slowly crushing her to death in her roach-infested apartment. Until Julia’s sister dies and Julia begins to discover things about her sister that she just can’t let go. The deeper she digs, the harder life gets, the more Julia spirals until it seems there’s no way out. Was her sister’s death her fault? Can Julia ever feel free?

Hot-button Themes
Through Julia’s story, Sanchez is able to introduce scenarios that get at why many immigrants risk everything to leave their homes to come to the US, the dangers inherent in trusting coyotes to lead you across the border, the pressures many immigrant families place on their children, the extreme poverty many immigrants live in (particularly those without status who are then more vulnerable to exploitation), and the stigma of mental illness—both generally and within specific communities. Sanchez handles each of these with aplomb and gentleness, particularly the last.

Why Not a Full Review?
I’ve mentioned a few times that certain books—again, THUG—aren’t written for me. That doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy them but that at the end of the day I’m not the audience the reader had in mind when she wrote a book. I can learn from these books but I’ll never be able to fully identify with the main characters.   I still chose to review books like THUG in hopes that my blog might lead someone to pick them up who wouldn’t have previously, while acknowledging that my review would not be able to do full justice to the lived experience of those who look like and live like the characters. There are things I will never truly understand, as a woman with all of the privileges except the gender one.

My inability to fully review a book like this was never more true than with I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. The book has short conversations and ideas expressed in Spanish that went almost entirely over my head. There were also some significant cultural themes that I knew enough to recognize there was something happening that I didn’t fully understand. My reading of this book was likely only the top of the iceberg.

Representation Matters
With that said, I believe down to my bones that representation matters. That we need books like I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, Dear Martin, THUG, and American Street—books that are written by people of color about people of color and the unique struggles they continue to face in this country. Everyone deserves to see themselves in the pages of a book and there are not enough opportunities for non-white teenagers to see themselves in books of this caliber. For white audiences, these characters embody the grey of the black-and-white news stories on “illegal immigrants”* and yet another African American slain by cops for chewing his gum the wrong way in the “wrong” neighborhood (re: the nice one). I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter should be read by first generation Latinx teenagers who can’t remember the last time they saw someone who looked and talked like them in a book. It should also be read by the white woman who doesn’t have close friends without status, because even she should have exposure to these themes.

Notes
Published: October 17, 2017 by Knopf (@aaknopf / @knopfteen)
Author: Erika L. Sanchez (@erikalsanchez)
Date read: December 6, 2017

*Do not get me started on how it is impossible for a human being to be illegal.

Review: The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

“But now it’s more for me, to keep track of all these days, to make me remember them. Maybe I can figure things out later that I can’t understand now.” She slipped the diary back in her bag. “In the end, that’s really all there is to life, right? What you remember? And what other people remember? The forgotten moments are totally gone, no matter how good or important they might have been.”

Synopsis
The Confusion of Languages is the knitting together and unraveling of a friendship between two women. There’s Cassie, a military wife who has lived in Jordan for years, ready to take Margaret under her wing, and Margaret, new to marriage, to motherhood, and to the Middle East, valuing kindness over custom.

The book opens with a car accident, a mother disappearing, a friendship spiraling out of control. Fallon tells her tale in in alternating chapters between Cassie in real time and Margaret’s diary (as Cassie begins to read it), allowing the reader to see how the friendship was stitched together and how it was torn apart—two stitches forward, one stitch ripped back.

Finding the Book and Coming Up With a Rating
I picked up The Confusion of Languages because Anne Bogel recommended it on her summer reading list and it took me this long to come up on the library hold list. The summer reading list was a bit more hit-and-miss for me than I expected, with The Confusion of Languages being a bit of a let down initially. One book on the list drove me crazy (The Lost Book of the Grail) and one was okay but a bit unexpectedly fluffy (A Bridge Across the Ocean). Some were absolute home runs (The Fall of Lisa Bellow, Anything is Possible, The Almost Sisters, Beartown, The Hate U Give, Dreamland Burning). I wanted The Confusion of Languages to be a homerun for me but it just wasn’t. To be fair to Fallon, it was likely the bit of the slump I was in colored my feelings toward the book—I probably needed something that was less of a slow, simmer and more of an immediately-boiling-book last week.

On top of this, one of the characters is absolutely abhorrent and she is making it difficult for me to fairly rate the book. On the one hand, I despise her so much I want to rate the book low because of her centrality to the narrative. On the other, I’m certain that I’m supposed to have a visceral negative reaction to her and the fact that I did find her so unsettling is a credit to Fallon as a writer—I am feeling what she wants me to feel. My immediate reaction was to rate it three stars, but as I get a few days’ distance from it, I can see the power of Fallon’s writing, how she sucked me in and made me love/hate characters despite myself.   Like Lincoln in the Bardo, distance is making me recognize the power of the writing.

Kindness
Fallon does an excellent job at making her characters well-rounded. Cassie is recognizable as someone we’ve all met—deeply flawed but real. Margaret through Cassie’s eyes is flighty; yet, through Margaret’s diary we see the value she placed on kindness—particularly kindness over custom. This emphasis on kindness and how it plays out with friendships and actions towards the Middle Eastern men around her ultimately brings her trouble. You know it’s coming but Fallon allows you to hope that it won’t—that Margaret’s naïve believe in kindness can, in fact, win over everyone. That it is the value that can trump all others.

And yet, this was not kindness developed in a vacuum. Through telling her story of how she met her husband Crick and became pregnant, and life before Crick, Margaret reveals her innocence, how deeply she was sheltered. You see how Margaret came to believe in kindness-over-all and the blindspots her background gave her. It was refreshing to see this value on kindness and, even with the way Margaret’s kindness causes the events in The Confusion of Languages to play out, I was still left with the sense that kindness is still mostly worth it. That the risk of being kind is still worth taking.

Relationships
While the central relationship in the book is Cassie’s and Margaret’s friendship, each woman is in Jordan because she’s a trailing spouse of a military man. Margaret’s husband Crick is more fleshed out, mostly because he also interacts with Cassie, so stories of him are told by both women. He is a bit one-dimensional—walking machismo with the tiniest vein of tenderness and doubt that only Margaret got to see until the very end. He is the foil against which each woman reveals her own character, the brick wall for Margaret’s ivy tendrils and Cassie’s choking garden weeds. In contrast, Cassie’s own husband, Dan, is barely mentioned. We experience him almost solely through Cassie’s discussions of how he “unfairly” doesn’t trust her, how their infertility has become a cloud of judgment over her. This seemed to me a missed opportunity for Fallon. As portrayed, he is rather longsuffering and I do not for the life of me understand why he stayed with Cassie unless he was a bit of an emotional masochist. Having him be more fleshed out would answer so questions as to his own motivations and what the hell is going on with him and Cassie, since his staying seems so beyond anything I really understand.

Writing
Fallon’s style clearly delineated between Cassie’s current telling of the tale to the reader-audience and Margaret’s voice in her journal, intended solely for herself. Margaret’s unself-conscious writing was often briefly lovely—for example, when she told the story of her doorman giving her child chocolate intended as a welcoming gift but it was so old as to have gone grey. The baby spits it out and Margaret goes back in the dark to find the sliver of chocolate so that the doorman would not “find the spat-out gift and hav[e] to get down on hands and knees to clean up his own kindness.”

The two different focuses—Cassie to the audience and Margaret to herself—aided the story, enabling the reader to see Margaret as she was/saw herself as opposed to how only Cassie saw her—a detail that becomes important as the book progresses, since Cassie is slowly revealed to be a less than honest reporter of the people and actions around her.

There were no hiccups in the writing—nothing that made me cringe or roll my eyes. Here too the writing was tight, a credit to Fallon and her editor.

Overall Rating
Having had a few days distance from my gut reaction towards this book, I think it’s a solid almost-four. A three and three quarters. Fallons writing is heads and shoulders above many and the book was engaging with three dimensional characters that pulled you in despite yourself. It is a slow burn, more suited for a long, cold night by the fire than a summer day by the beach, even if the setting is warmer climes.

Notes
Published June 27, 2017 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons (@putnambooks)
Author: Siobhan Fallon
Date read: November 11, 2017
Rating: 3 ¾ stars
Tw: suicide, gaslighting

Review: Beartown by Fredrick Backman

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.

Synopsis
In the forest, there’s a town that loves hockey, whose identify is defined by the cuts of skates on ice, the check of bodies on the boards.  When one of their own rapes a classmate right before the game that could change the fortunes of the dying town, the question becomes –who and what does Beartown love most?

Why now?
Admittedly, this is the longest distance between the date I’ve read a book and reviewed a book. I finished Beartown shortly before I started this blog and I always meant to go back and review it. None of the other books I’ve finished recently really lent themselves to being reviewed (or, I didn’t really want to review some of them), and so this seemed like a good time to pull Beartown back out.

Beartown is one of those books that sits with you—it’s impactful as you’re reading it, as you finish, and even months later. Backman’s writing in A Man Called Ove was impeccable—he takes that vocabulary and skill and applies it to a harsher topic in Beartown. Where A Man Called Ove made you love a curmudgeon whose heart was, despite all appearances, too big for his body, Beartown makes you love and hate and rage at a small town torn apart by a date rape. It still feels like yesterday that I finished this book and I can feel the lump rising in my throat as I flip through the sections I marked and as I type this review.

Beartown’s events detail how a date rape happens and one version of the impact, though a common version. Rape can happen to anyone—there is no one who is immune from this awful possiblity.  And when it happens, the victims (usually, but not always, girls and women) are overwhelmingly not believed. They are “encouraged” and they are threatened to take it back, to consider the impact on the man, the family, the team, the town. Women are sacrificed at the altar of men’s reputations every day. Beartown is Everytown. Beartown is how we get to #metoo—because many, many girls and women do not want to survive what the survivor goes through in Beartown.

And yet, Beartown is a beautiful book. It’s fair that there are (probably a lot) of people who don’t want to read a book about rape. Who have experienced it (1 in 4 women), who know someone who has (everybody—whether you know it or not), and so do not want to read a book about rape. I absolutely get that and wish you nothing but light and hope if that is you. But don’t let this book turn you off just because a rape is the inciting incident. There is tenderness and love in Beartown.   There is a Mama Bear whose heart made me want to rage right next to her. A boy whose outward bruiser appearance belies the tenderness within him. (I wanted to wrap Benji in a warm blanket and give him a place to rest, though he’d certainly have resisted.) There is a bullied child, given the opportunity to become an insider, but at a cost that may turn him into someone else entirely. There is a victim who becomes a survivor, a woman strong enough to live and move on, despite everything she endured that night and the months and years that followed.

With everything happening in the media, this book feels so timely and true—everyone who is emotionally able should read this book.

But so…it’s a sports book?
The heart of Beartown is its hockey rink, so much of the plot revolves around this rink and it’s teams. I am not absolutely sports inept (I love baseball) but I know next to nothing about hockey. This knowledge isn’t necessary, nor does the fact that it’s about hockey take away from the overall plot. Backman sets up what you need to know—that hockey defines this town, these people, circumscribes the culture.

A common refrain I’ve heard from the many other women who’ve read this book is that they thought the hockey part would detract from the story or would otherwise affect their interest, but it didn’t. The set up within the hockey rink, however, gives the book a solid cross-gender appeal and is a book I think even stereotypically masculine cis-men find relatable and compelling.

Character Development
It would take days to discuss the various characters Backman created, nor do I want to spoil every bit of character development, so I’ll refrain from discussing most of the characters and only go into a few below (and not even discuss some of my favorites, like Benji). It worth note, however, that with his skill Backman manages to present even minor characters who don’t show up often (like Ann-Katrin) with a depth directly inverse to the amount of words spent on them.

While there is a clear villain and Backman is not morally vague about his wrongs or the wrongs of the town, he also does a surprising job at humanizing the rapist. You can see how this kid got to where he is, the pressure people put on him…and yet you never feel so sorry for him that you excuse his actions. It’s a razor-fine line that Backman balances on so effortlessly you almost miss the skill with which he presented the rapist to the reader.

There are things fifteen year-old children should never have to experience. And while the obvious thing here is rape, another example is to have a friend be a victim of such a crime. Where you were when it happened, how you responded, how you respond now are all impossible enough when your brain isn’t still developing, when Facebook and texts and high school aren’t still a thing. God forbid, should such a thing ever happen to a child I know, may they have a friend like this survivor’s friend.

Within the larger story is also a theme of what it means to be an “insider” – who is “us” and who is “them.” Like almost anywhere else, Beartown is divided socioeconomically with the poor kids—the ones who rarely become good at hockey because they can’t afford the equipment, the lessons, the time to practice—so often left on the outside. Yet in skates little Amat–not-white within the homogeneous milk-white of Beartown’s racial landscape—and poor to boot. Backman makes you love Amat, cheer for Amat, cringe and wring your hands at his choices, and the cost he’s apparently willing to pay to be inside. Amat is a high school everyman and I loved him.

Generally speaking, Backman also does a commendable job making his characters diverse. There is a gay character whose inclusion could easily feel like it was done as a token inclusion in anyone’s hands other than Backman’s. There are characters of color and from a wide swath of Beartown’s socioeconomic strata. I defy you to read this book and not find at least one character you identify with.

Writing
I could wax poetic about Fredrick Backman’s writing. He has these pithy turns of phrase (“Amat sat in the corner, doing his best interpretation of an empty corner”) and descriptions that make you laugh and feel like you were right there (“the president is sitting at his desk eating a sandwich the way a German shepherd would try to eat a balloon filled with mayonnaise.”). He also has stretches of beautiful prose, of short truisms that never feel trite and cut deeply as they land.

The feat accomplished here is all the more impressive when you consider that the book is translated and yet the writing still holds up so well. The writing isn’t overly flowery or poetic, there’s nothing that feels lofty. Backman is both genius (who describes someone as a dog eating a balloon of mayonnaise…and yet you know exactly what he’s describing) and down to earth (see, again, balloon of mayonnaise). Because the style makes the book so accessible, Beartown is a surprisingly easy read, necessary when you consider the difficulty of the topic. The writing also lends Backman’s books to being easily enjoyed on audio—I loved A Man Called Ove on audio and, while I have not listened to Beartown, would expect no different of this one.

Ending (No Spoilers…Mostly)
Because this is a Fredrik Backman book, the ending is bittersweet. There is redemption for most of the major characters. Of course, not every rape story ends this way—many people aren’t able to seek the help they need, are never believed, are never able to recover fully or even mostly. Because of this, I can see (though haven’t heard) Backman drawing some criticism for prettying up his victim’s ending. It would be foolish to assume that every victim can be as resilient as the victim—there are a myriad factors that enabled the victim to end where she does when Beartown ends, many of them out of her control. Because of this, this survivor should not be the measuring stick against which other victims are judged. I ultimately have no problem with the way Backman ended his book on a mostly redemptive note, so long as this ending isn’t seen as representative or possible for all victims.

Notes
Published April 25, 2017 by Atria Books (@AtriaBooks)
Author: Fredrick Backman (@backmansk)
Date read: July 15, 2017
Rating: 5 stars, in top five books of 2017

Review: Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

“I refused to be shamed.”
“How did you do that?” you asked.
“When they came at me, I kept coming.”

Synopsis
In the early-to-mid 2000s, Aviva Grossman was a Congressional intern who fell for her boss, got caught up in an affair, and caught. In essence, she was Monica Lewinski with a blog. Young Jane Young is how it happened and what followed—as told by Aviva’s mother; a wedding planner named Jane Young; the Congressman’s wife, Embeth; Jane’s daughter Ruby; and Aviva herself. At its heart, Young Jane Young is the story of the choices women make—the ones they are forced to make, the ones others make for them, and the ones they are finally able to freely make themselves—and the way society treats women for these choices.

The Author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
One of the books that people (particularly women) in my bookish community seem to love is The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry—it gets referred to and recommended frequently. So frequently, in fact, that I read it as my first book of 2017 for the “Book You Were Excited to Borrow or Buy But Haven’t Read Yet.” To be fair to Fikry, very little probably could have held up to the hype. It was…fluffier that I expected. It was quick and it was cute and I can see why people love it, but “cute” isn’t really my thing when I read, unless I’m deliberately looking for something lighthearted after a run of dark books. When Anne announced the picks for the Modern Mrs. Darcy book club for fall, I’ll admit to being a little let down—I didn’t think Fikry was poorly written, (quite the opposite) I just didn’t see Zevin’s books as book club discussion material.

Thankfully, I was wrong. Zevin’s style is still very much the same—her writing as a lighthearted quality to it and parts of it are still what I would refer to as “cute;” however, the subject matter for Young Jane Young is timely and Zevin seems to have a deliberate point of view in Young Jane Young that was missing in Fikry. Where Fikry sought to entertain, Young Jane Young sends a clear message about the names and values we place on women and their mistakes—particularly compared to men who make the same. This isn’t to say Young Jane Young isn’t entertaining—it still is. But this one had the “hook” that Fikry seemed to be missing that gave me a reason to want to keep reading.

Structure
The structure of Young Jane Young is interesting—each character’s section is told in its entirety before moving on to another’s so there is some moving back and forth through time. Zevin clearly distinguished between her characters, using a different form for each section, in addition to including speech patterns unique to certain characters like Rachel’s use of Yiddish phrases and Ruby’s more modern slang.

We start with Rachel, written in stream-of-consciousness and move onto Jane, written in a more typical literary style. Ruby follows written purely as emails to her pen-pal Fatima. Embeth, the Congressman’s wife uses free and direct discourse in the third person—this use of third person distances her from the other characters and emphasizes her outsider status compared to the other four voices. Finally we hear from Aviva, written as a choose-your-own adventure novel, with the choices removed. This form highlights Aviva’s relative youth at the time of the scandal and allows the reader to see her choices dwindling as the action progresses. The last section borders on gimmicky and might throw off a reader unfamiliar with Zevin’s style. From reading Fikry, I expected the “cute” so this didn’t bother me as much as it might have otherwise and it services Zevin’s purposes well. By the time this structural choice came up (the last section of the book), I was invested in the narrative and message, so I didn’t find this off-putting, though I freely admit it is the kind of thing that usually drives me to sprain my eye-muscles from rolling them too hard when it isn’t done really well.

Feminist Choices
I was a child when the Monica Lewinsky scandal happened so I honestly haven’t thought terribly hard about it—it wasn’t on my radar then and it doesn’t really come up often anymore. Young Jane Young forces the reader to reconsider the narrative—at least in the mainstream media that I vaguely recall from the time, there was not an emphasis on the power imbalance, on the age imbalance. Words like “slut” were thrown around to describe her while President Clinton’s punishment came not for the sex, but for lying about it to people who wasn’t supposed to lie to. She was punished for the act, he was punished only for trying to cover it up the wrong way. People questioned her parents’ choices, her morals. She was the temptress, the woman who should have kept her legs and mouth closed. She was, quite simply, at fault, despite the fact that she was 22, only five years’ removed from being legally a child. Indeed, it seems everyone wants to blame everyone except President Clinton—Hillary Clinton found herself in the spotlight from whispers about why she wasn’t able to keep her man happy so that he wouldn’t stray to why she chose to stay.

As Zevin noted in the discussion with the MMD book club, the scandal at the heart of Young Jane Young is not really a sex scandal—it’s a sexist scandal. Aviva’s mother Rachel sets the stage, providing the foundation and background facts of the scandal and the current state of affairs ten years later. Next is Jane, living a quiet life in Maine with her daughter Ruby, as far removed from the scandal as possible, yet still not far enough away not to have the Grossman scandal come back up. Ruby follows, with wide-eyed precociousness giving a black-and-white, right-and-wrong perspective common only to children and newscasters. Embeth follows—the woman scorned yet also the woman who stayed. Finally, Aviva and her choices filling in the gaps. At each step, we see the effect of judgment on the character speaking, on Aviva generally, on women as a whole since we so often live and die on each other’s mistakes being held against us. One of Aviva’s vignettes that stood out so starkly was a discussion with a political science professor where she remarks that the feminists didn’t stand by her—didn’t point out the age gap, the Congressman’s role. The professor remarks that it was true but the Congressman was good on women’s issues. The one woman was sacrificed for the man, in hopes a greater good might result from the man remaining in power.  And so nothing seems to be changing.

Recommended
While I likely wouldn’t have picked up this book if not for the MMD Book Club, I’m glad I did and I’m keeping an eye out for my own copy. Zevin kept the quirk and cute that made Fikry so popular while having meat and a message behind Young Jane Young. It is rare that a book comes across as so light and readable while still packing this much of a punch. Zevin does a remarkable job packing the book with the myriad examples of the way women are held to an entirely different standard than men in politics (and generally) without the book ever becoming preachy (save for the vignette with the professor). The book made an excellent book club selection—any time there are lots of choices made by multiple characters there is plenty of fodder for discussion. Young Jane Young goes one further in that characters make choices but the message of the book turns the reader’s reactions back on them—i.e. Aviva made a choice and this is your reaction to it—what does that reaction say about you? About society? About how we judge and value women? About the standards we measure them against?

Notes
Published: August 22, 2017 (my birthday!) by Algonquin Books (@algonquinbooks)
Author: Gabrielle Zevin (@gabriellezevin)
Date read: October 10, 2017
Rating: 4 stars

Review: The Power by Naomi Alderman

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

It scarcely matters what is actually happening. She could kill them. That is the profound truth of it. She lets the power tickle at her fingers, scorching the varnish on the underside of the table. She can smell its sweet chemical aroma. Nothing that either of these men says is really of any significance, because she could kill them in three moves before they stirred in their comfortably padded chairs.  It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

Synopsis
The Power tells the time period during which the power balance shifted—women (starting with teenage girls and waking in older women) have gained the power to electrify those they touch and, as a result, have become the default stronger, more powerful sex. Suddenly men find themselves in an unfamiliar landscape where every interaction with a woman can suddenly turn dangerous.

The Handmaid’s Tale
The Power has drawn numerous comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale—I understand this comparison but it is somewhat misleading. In plot, The Power is the exact opposite of The Handmaid’s Tale.  Rather than men running the world and a shortage of women, the world of The Power flips the power dynamic entirely and places women at the apex of power with men being the ones subjugated. Where the comparison rings true is the message and POV of the book. Alderman was literally mentored by Atwood and both books highlight the evils that arise when men are the sole sex in charge—Atwood by describing the extremes of men in charge and Alderman by narrating what happens when women take over and the gender-roles of power are flipped.

Structure and Writing
Alderman’s writing is well-constructed and snappy—there aren’t long poetic runs of prose, except in the religious “excerpts” where the prose fits the Biblical-style. Despite presenting four major viewpoints, Alderman is able to distinguish the voice and present distinct points-of-view for each character. Adding to the narrative are selected “primary” documents – letters, pictures of artifacts, excerpts from The Book of Eve. This could easily become gimmicky but because Alderman uses them sparingly, they add to the story. It is worth noting that with the use of the female-based religion (venerating the Mother over Jesus specifically), this book could easily become distasteful (or downright blasphemous) to devout Christians. The book is presented as a countdown to some unknown event so the timeline remains in flux—while the book doesn’t need a mystery element like this to be page-turning, it does add an additional element of the unknown—the book had a very clear climax that it worked towards.

Depth and Breadth
Arguably The Power’s greatest strength is also it’s biggest flaw. I was hard pressed to think of any gender role, stereotype, or gender crime that didn’t get flipped and addressed. I’m sure I missed some but the list includes religious-based sexism/gender-roles; how women can “control” sexual impulses (for both genders) by just keeping their (in this case) arms crossed; the plagiarism of women’s writing and the need to use nom de plumes in order to have women’s writing reach a wider audience; the rates of domestic violence and murder of women; gender-based gang violence; women who are opposed to feminism/women having power; women wanting to be men because of their power; women needing to take self-defense classes; parents worried about how girls are being victimized in school; gender roles in newscasting with a patronizing man covering business topics and the giggly woman covering serious topics like bobbing for apples; having a war correspondent be known/popular for how hot she looks when reporting; gender roles within families; having to have permission to travel/having to be with a guardian in public; genital mutilation; internal classes within gender where those who have less of the traditional (or new traditional) features of “masculinity” or “femininity” are judged/less than; and historians interpreting historical artifacts based on the current understanding of power (and discounting that which doesn’t fit).

There was a point at which it almost felt like too much—like Alderman was trying too hard to fit absolutely positively every gender issue into The Power. On the flip side, I know there are many who think this is an impressive feat that Alderman accomplishes and that each of these issues deserves to be mentioned, if for nothing else, than to show the impact misogyny has on absolutely every area of life. At the end of the day, for me it felt like hammering just a little too hard but wasn’t so distracting that it took away from the reading experience for me.

End game
It is easy to rue men’s current leadership and latch on to the idea that if women ran things the world would be better—everyone would be more gentle, there would be no war, and we’d all skip through fields of daisies, holding hands. Had this been where Alderman took The Power, it would have been a weak utopia. In contrast, Alderman’s message (one of the many) may be the idea that “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Where Atwood left open the possibility that a female-run world would be better, it’s not clear that Alderman’s world is actually better. Certainly, it’s better for women and you can make a convincing argument that men have had the run of things for a couple millennia so it’s our turn. But Alderman doesn’t buy the idea that women in charge automatically means a more harmonious world. It wasn’t entirely where I expected the book to go but it was the right choice—both logically and for purely for the story’s sake as well.

Recommended
As noted, this book is a bit gritty and raw in plot—it is unapologetically and in-your-face feminist. I loved it and am glad it was my Book of the Month pick this month—it is still available a la carte to add for future months if you’re a current member. It is also well-crafted and well-written, hitting those notes in my grammar-and-structure-loving heart.

Notes
Published October 10, 2017 (in the US) by Little, Brown and Company (@littlebrown)
Author: Naomi Alderman (@naomi_alderman)
Date read: October 19, 2017
Rating: 4 ½ stars

Review: The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst

Posted on by lisaannreads


rawpixel.com

Disclaimer: I was provided a free copy of The Floating World in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Algonquin Books, and C. Morgan Babst for the advance copy.

We don’t have time for the future, doctor. We hardly have time for the past. The only thing to do in the desert is to keep walking. Otherwise you will die of thirst before you make it to higher ground.

Synopsis
Set in the days and months following Hurricane Katrina, The Floating World tells the story of the disintegration of the Boisdoré family—mother, psychiatrist Dr. Tess Eschleman; father, artist Joe Boisdoré; sisters Del and Cora; and grandfather, former master woodworker Vincent Boisdoré. Before the storm, Tess and Joe try to get their daughter Cora to go with them—she refuses and her parents evacuate without her. Del rides out the storm in New York, where she fled many years before. After the storm, Tess and Joe return, first to find Cora physically, then to bring her back from where she’s been locked up mentally. Del returns as well, attempting both to draw Cora back to herself to quell pull of New Orleans in her own bones.

Subject Matter
With the focus on this family, the book felt less about New Orleans and the aftermath of Katrina and more about this family and their dynamics. When the books opens, it’s several weeks after the storm. While Joe and Tess evacuated and returned together, upon reentry they separate. Turns out, the winds were simply the thing that revealed the previously hidden distance between them.

An interesting (arguably frustrating) thing here is that “complicated family drama” isn’t the main way this book is marketed. Even within the publisher’s Amazon summary, the three paragraphs end by emphasizing that Katrina’s damage was “not, in fact, some random act of God, but an avoidable tragedy visited upon New Orleans’ most helpless and forgotten citizens.” With this summary, I went into the book with very different expectations. Katrina set the stage but neither the storm nor, frankly, the unequal impact of the devastation were really the subject here.

Complicated Family
This normally wouldn’t be an issue since complicated families are a favorite subject of mine for reading; however, something in The Floating World just fell flat. Much of my problem stemmed from my inability to really connect with any of the characters. Normally, there is something in at least one character that I can connect to—even if only tangentially. That connection makes me care about what happens to that character and, in turn, the characters that person cares for. While Babst attempts to make Cora’s sister, Del; her father, Joe; and her grandfather, Vincent into sympathetic characters, there just wasn’t enough there for me to connect to. Her mother, Tess, was so utterly selfish that I didn’t care to try to find a connection there. In hindsight, she’s probably supposed to be at least a little sympathetic—the psychiatrist on the edge of the nervous breakdown herself—but I found her so unlikeable as to almost a villain—nothing she did was right and her meddling was irritating.

Another White Author Problem?
I don’t want to over simplify and say it was entirely this; however, I do think at least some of the issue here came from a white writer trying to write black characters. Babst mentions things like the failures of the Army Corps of Engineers and the racial divide that placed the people of color in the areas that wound up with the most devastation, but she does it in a way that feels almost like an afterthought—she doesn’t show. She simply tells. A character gets up on their tiny soapbox for a moment, says their pithy background comment about how racism created the situation that Katrina revealed, climbs back down, and the narrative continues, totally disconnected from the point she was making. It was as if Babst herself didn’t realize there was such a racial impact to the storm until she learned about it afterwards, reading the newspapers, and felt compelled to share these nuggets to make her book more accurate. Which—these things are absolutely true—there was a huge racial impact. But Babst’s presentation of them was blunt and served more to make it clear she knew there was an impact so she could then carry on with the story she was otherwise telling.

Babst also attempts to get at some of the racial divide by having Joe be black and Tess be white—so, of course, Cora and Del are mixed race. This also didn’t seem to be done particularly well, especially when compared to a character like Rowan in Dreamland Burning. It felt almost like Babst wrote the story she wanted to tell, decided to make Joe black, and went back and changed some details to correspond to Joe being black. There is so much more here that could have been explored, but it felt half-hearted. I honestly wondered whether Babst had gotten POC beta readers.

Redeeming points
The only really redeeming points for me in this book were Cora and Vincent. When the book starts, you don’t hear much from Cora herself—there are a few small vignettes from her but the majority of the impression you get about Cora is from others—her mother and her sister in particular, as Joe is largely consumed with caring for his ailing father. You quickly gather that Cora has survived some unknown trauma that has caused her to curl into herself, sucking her into a depression she has apparently experienced before. She doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t bathe. She wanders in the flooded city full of toxic mud at night. Tess and Del attempt to help her, though it quickly feels obvious that these attempts are as much about Tess and Del as they are about Cora. Cora’s point of view isn’t tangibly presented until almost halfway through the book—which is a shame. She is perhaps a character I could have connected to and identified with; however, by waiting until over a third of the way in to really flesh her out from her own point of view, Babst waited too long. It was too late for me to feel invested in her or the book.

I did feel for Vincent as well—in the throes of Lewy Body Dementia, he bounces around in time, sometimes in the present, oftentimes not. He wasn’t a character I could identify with; however, I did feel sympathetic for him and his inclusion did make the story richer. Babst also probably missed some opportunities here by not having more scenes with Vincent’s past experiences of New Orleans. One of the most poignant scenes with Vincent is when he wanders off through the abandoned cars seeking a pie, seeing instead a New Orleans fifty years prior.

Mental Illness
I do think Babst did a respectable job with the treatment of depression in The Floating World—both with Cora and another character. As much as I hated Tess, her overbearing know-better-ness was also spot on for at least a handful of psychiatrists with whom I’ve interacted. Babst treated this particular topic respectfully, if not perfectly. Shoddy treatment of mental illness is a pet peeve of mine but nothing Babst did in this particular area set my nerves jangling.

Writing
Overall, The Floating World was technically well written but because I didn’t connect to the characters in any way, it just sort of…fell flat. There were several well-written paragraphs and turns of phrase that made me pause to appreciate the writing. (Tess’s paramour is described as “an aging Debutante’s Delight of middling intelligence”—I might have guffawed out loud at that one.) It was a solid effort and, if she can make me care about her characters, I’d give her sophomore attempt a go. Overall, the book is well above average in writing and there are definitely some reviewers out there that will disagree with my assessment about the characters being too unlikable or half-heartedly presented for connection. It was the writing that pushed me to a three and a half rating, rather than just a three.

One final note—Babst did make a style choice that didn’t bother me but may be disconcerting to some readers. Her sections are long and she switches back and forth between each family member without warning—there are no headers to tell you that you’ve switched characters. I didn’t have too much trouble figuring out that she’d switched points of view within a few second just by topic—the voice of her characters doesn’t vary terribly much between characters—this was perhaps a missed opportunity, though in Babst’s hands this could easily have become gimmicky (or worse).

Notes
Published: October 17, 2017 by Algonquin Books (@algonquinbooks)
Author: C. Morgan Babst (@cmorganbabst)
Date read: October 16, 2017
Rating: 3 ½ stars