Elsewhere

Gabrielle Zevin

Scale of 1 - 10: 6.5
Pros: Well-written, with a good, thoughtful story

Cons: No explanation for why people in Elsewhere live their lives in reverse, which seems like a gimmick

My take:
Zevin has a good grasp of teen angst, and I like her take on what life - that we are here to live and learn, and that hanging on to the past does no one any good.  I like that.  What I don't like is the lack of explanation for why people "live backwards" once they arrive in Elsewhere.  It just makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.  If the point of it is to learn in some manner which you couldn't if you aged normally, then it would be good to know that.  

It may be that my main problem with that aspect of how Elsewhere is portrayed lies in the fact I do not believe in reincarnation, but I think it will be extremely off-putting to anyone who has very strong opinions about the afterlife.  It seems to me the reader will need to maintain an open mind on that subject, and some readers' religious beliefs may preclude that, which is a shame, as it really is a lovely story which caused me to become teary-eyed on more than one occasion.

There are gentle lessons to be learned in the pages of Elsewhere, if readers can set aside their religious beliefs and just go with Liz's story, which is about both growing up and coming to terms.  I recommend it for all ages.

Suite Francaise

Irène Némirovsky

I'm not going to scale this book, because you can't honestly scale a rough draft, which is what Suite Francaise is. It was handwritten during WWII, in a notebook, by a woman who did not live to see the completion of her planned work. Composed of two short books, entitled "A Storm in June" and "Dolce," Suite Francaise is remarkable, both because even in rough draft form it's in very little need of polishing, and because it was written so well under dire and terrible conditions. Married and a mother of two small girls, Némirovsky was both Russian and of Jewish descent, living in France under Nazi occupation and at a time when Germany had been attacked by and was engaged in war with Russia. In addition to the obvious stress that living with the fear of interment would cause, the German government froze her bank accounts and ordered her publishers to continue to deposit all payments owed to her into those accounts (as they did with all Jewish artists), greatly hindering Némirovsky from accessing her income. In addition, publication of works created by foreigners and Jews was forbidden, effectively severing her revenue stream. She was deported to Auschwitz in July, 1942, where she died one month later. Her children kept her notebook as a memento of their mother, believing it to be a diary. It was not until they had long grown into adults that eldest daughter Denise could bring herself to read the notebook and realized that what she held was her mother's final work.

I fully expected the book to be very sad and tragic, and for it to upset me. But Némirovsky's pragmatism comes across in the storytelling. People die, but they do so dispassionately. Their deaths may be violent, but they are also matter-of-fact: this is war - people die. I regret she was unable to finish the entire work, as both Storm and Dolce are vivid works full of memorable characters one can not help but think must be drawn from those Némirovsky knew in real life. They are detestable and not, honorable and not, and all their motives are made clear - Némirovsky does not leave the reader to guess at intentions, nor does she make excuses for their being or behaviour. Things are what they are. Némirovsky is a keenly visual storyteller, and I think Suite Francaise is probably a very good description of life in occupied France during the first few years of the war. It's a great loss that Némirovsky did not live through the war to document its end as she did the beginning.  

Suite Francaise is translated from the French by Sandra Smith, who seems to have done an excellent job. My only quibble with her work is that she left uncorrected a few things which Némirovsky would obviously have chosen to correct. She says she did so out of the desire to demonstrate the circumstances of its writing, but I feel it was a disservice to Némirovsky and her work to leave them as they were. I strongly recommend you read both appendices and the Preface to the French Edition of Suite Francaise, located at the back of the book. I started with the first appendix, which contains various of her notes on the writing and what she hoped to achieve, as well as her final journal entry, 2 days before she was taken. I then read the book and finished with the second appendix and the preface, both of which deal with the end days of Némirovsky's life and its effect on those who knew her, itself worthy of a book. I feel sad Némirovsky was unable to finish her opus and that her life was ended as it was. She was a gifted storyteller. And as a human being, she deserved better.

The Poison Apples

Lily Archer

Scale of 1-10: 6.5
Pros:Strong female leads, enough conflict to make it interesting and unpredictable, decent character development, and solid writing all make this a book both teens and tweens can read and enjoy, though I'd only recommend it for tweens if they read above their level. Moms who vet their teens' reading can also rest assured this is a healthy read.
Cons:Archer chooses to write in the first person from different points of view, and while I find nothing wrong with that, all three girls sound pretty much alike, despite coming from very different backgrounds and being of different ethnicities and ages. Her geeky, younger character from the sticks sounds exactly like the affluent hipster with literary star parents, who sounds very much like the trendy, nouveau riche Beverly Hills daughter of an Indian heart surgeon. Had Archer given her characters each their own distinct voice, this would have been a much better and stronger novel. It's still a good one, but it could have been much better, and it's a shame Archer missed the boat.

Synopsis: Basically, the plot boils down to three young girls whose fathers have recently remarried, to stepmothers who are not the sorts of women many of us would appreciate as a parent, step or otherwise. Lives are upheaved, conflict ensues, and each of the girls ends up either choosing to go or being shipped off to boarding school, where they all eventually run into each other and plan revenge on the stepmonsters who have absconded with their formerly happy lives and paternal relationships.


My take: Despite a lack of strong, individual voice for each girl, Archer tells a good yarn and weaves the girls' stories and lives together well. I could see each character and the people in their lives clearly in my head, and nothing about the story was too horrendously outlandish, penguins notwithstanding. I liked that lessons were learned and the characters all grew and developed as the book progressed. There's no Mean Girl Syndrome or sexual conquest in the book, but there is plenty of Girl Power, and the story stresses healthy relationships. Archer left room for a sequel, and if she writes one, I will most likely read it. Despite what seems to be a deploring trend in first novels these days, The Poison Apples is a solid, dependable read, and much better than most teen fiction currently sitting on the shelves at your local Big Chain Bookstore.

You can find Lily Archer on MySpace.

Bras & Broomsticks

Sarah Mlynowski

Scale of 1-10: 2
Pros: Mlynowski's sentences do not suck, and she does a decent job of setting scene and showing her characters to the reader.
Cons: Mlynowski actually plagiarizes Spiderman (yes, the comic book superhero) and gives us a main character who is not only shallow, self-absorbed, immature, and stupid, but arrogant about it. As well, the implausible device of a high school "fashion show" in which everything has to be choreographed and danced a la the Corny Collins Show drove me up the wall, not to mention the incredibly predictable outcome.

Synopsis: 14-year-old Rachel wants 4 things out of life: popularity, fashion, hot guys, and boobs, and she isn't much concerned with earning them. So when she finds out her younger sister is a witch, she immediately begins scheming to use it to her advantage. Despite repeated and very stern warnings from the girls' mother (who naturally used to be a witch but decided to forgo her powers years ago), Rachel convinces her little sister Miri to put a spell on her so that she can dance and be in the fashion show her high school puts on every year. A more lame device does not exist in the entire annals of teen fiction, but that's what we're stuck with, so here we go. And on a personal note, I would like to say that a) I am very tired of books written in the first person, and b) I will never again purchase any book whose cover proclaims it "Screamingly funny," courtesy of Kirkus Reviews. Those Kirkus folks obviously have painfully low standards and a vastly differing definition of "funny" than the one I use.

My take: OMG, how did the totally awesome sparkly green suede shoes my mom told me I could not have end up on my feet? I thought I wore my crappy Docs to school today - how weird is that? You know what, I don't care; I wanted these shoes more than life itself - or maybe big boobs - and now they're mine! If I gave much thought as to why, that'd stress out the few brain cells I have that have not yet atrophied from non-use, so nevermind. This is my 2nd best friend, Tammy. She uses scuba diving hand gestures for everything, which is totally not weird and does not make her a social outcast in high school, at all. I'll just borrow Tammy's phone to thank my mom for buying me the shoes even though she said I couldn't have them, and we couldn't afford them, and even though I can't remember actually putting them on at any point in the day today, and Tammy has never seen them before in her life. To any normal teen, that might send up a red flag, but you know what? I totally deserve to have these shoes, so I don't care.

Oh, man, my mom says I have to come home right now, so I won't get to go have pizza with all the cool kids. One of them invited a friend who invited a friend who invited a friend who invited Tammy, so we're in! Only I can't go, because my stupid mother said I have to come home. My very, very best friend, Jewel - the one I call Bee-Bee, for Best Buddy, which totally isn't annoying to read at all - is one of the cool kids now, but she totally blew me off when she became one, and we never hang out anymore. This was totally my chance to use Tammy to get close to Jewel - and all the other cool kids, of course, of which there are many, many superhot guys, one of whom I deludedly tell myself is going to take me to Spring Fling this year. So as you can see, I really need to go have pizza and pretend I'm a cool kid too. Too bad my mom is so unreasonable.

So like, I get home, and it turns out my little sister Miri is a witch, and she magicked up the shoes for me. Awesome. My mom is a witch too, which totally sucks, because all this time she's been making me study and stuff, I could have had excellent grades, clear skin, trendy and expensive clothing, fabulous hair, and boobs. I really want all of those (except for the grades part, really, because what's the point of that?), so I'm really mad that not only does she expect me to get all of them the old-fashioned way, but she forbade Miri from getting them for me either. Something about how "with great power comes great responsibility," the laws of the universe, and rule of three or something, blah blah blah. Doesn't she realize that only losers do things the old-fashioned way? Jeez! I am so mistreated. You know what? I'll con Miri into doing them for me, anyway. She totally owes me on accounta I'm such a wonderful, caring big sister. I'll guilt her into doing it for me. And while we're at it, we'll break up my dad and his new fiance, whom we both hate. What good is magic, if you can't totally use it for personal gain? Consequences, schmonsequences. Who does my mother think she is?

So, cool: I got Miri to cast a spell on me, and now I can dance! Yay! She refused to do a boob spell, but I'll get her to do one later. Look at all that junk in my trunk! Watch it jiggle and move and shimmy and shake! I can moonwalk! I can dip and vogue, and I don't even have to practice or try or anything! I rule! I tried out for the fashion show my school puts on every year, and I won a place! Now Jewel will have to pay attention to me again and stop calling that other girl in the fashion show her Bee-Bee. I'm her Bee-Bee, darn it, not that cow who actually has to practice dancing. Shuh. Oo, and boys are talking to me! Hot, cute, popular boys! It's the Spring Fling for me, baybee! All I have to do is break up my dad's wedding, which should be pretty easy, now that I've convinced Miri we should do it. Or rather, she should do it, since she's the one with the power, and I'm way too busy with all my new, popular friends and dance rehearsals to bother helping. I know I promised, but what I want is more important, and anyway, I have a dance to cajole an invite to, and pizza to eat with the cool kids. My little sister likes books and learning and working hard, so it's not like she has any right to expect me to help her with it, no matter what I promised her I'd do. And ugh, why is stupid Tammy bothering me all the time? She actually thinks I'm going to hang out with her and her other stupid loser friends instead of practicing my hot dance moves all the time. And okay, I know she's my friend and all, but you know, she's pretty goofy, and her hair is really lame, and she can't dance, and neither can any of the other girls I used to call my friends back before I got cool, so it's really embarrassing that they expect me to slum and hang out with them. I mean seriously, how would that look to Jewel and the rest of my cool posse? I just can't do it. I'm sorry, but it just does not befit my new status as Dancing Queen. Plus, I'm having guy issues, because Raf, the guy who is supposed to ask me to Spring Fling, just isn't paying the kind of attention to me that he should. I mean seriously, doesn't he get how hot I am and that I have moves? What is wrong with him? And my dad is just not cooperating with Miri's spells. He's supposed to fall out of love with his wife-to-be and fall back in love with my mom, but it totally isn't working, and if he gets married the weekend of Spring Fling, it is totally going to crimp my style. I can't be in two places at once, and my school dance is waaay more important than any stupid wedding. Where are his priorities, for crying out loud?

Okay. So my dad is finally in love with the right woman and blowing off my stepmother-to-be. Raf finally asked me to the dance, and the fashion show is in less than a week. Of course, Tammy figured out that I'm a beyotch and hates my guts. It kinda sucks, but I got bigger fish to fry, so while it sort of upsets me that she doesn't think I'm totally awesome, I don't have a lot of time to think about it. Miri's mad too, because I've been blowing her off and not keeping any of my promises to her, but you know, whatever. I have a dance to plan, my father's wedding to destroy, and a stepmother-to-be to frame for it. Wait. That's The Princess Bride. But you know what I mean. Life is too good to worry about the little people.

Oh noes! My mom found out about the magic and undid all of it! I can't dance! I have zits! My father called off his wedding, but Mom knows it's because we put a spell on him to love her, so she took that off too, and now my father is getting married the day I have Spring Fling. How inconsiderate. But I can't think about that now, because I have to get to the Fashion Show and shake my booty on the catwalk. I'm kinda nervous about doing it without the magic, but whatever. I can't back out because the girl who planned it said she'd kill me. I've been practicing for forever, so I'm sure it'll be totally cool and nothing embarrassing or awful will happen, right? Right!

Well, that plan took a dive. I very predictably destroyed the entire fashion show. Literally. Like, the set, the dresses, the catwalk, everyone. I even caused the girl leading us all to break a leg or something. I mean, I humiliated the heck out of everybody, not just myself. Didn't see that coming from the moment I got cast, did you? So now all the cool kids totally hate me, Raf probably doesn't want to speak to me ever again, let alone dance with me, and Jewel turned her back on me when I needed her to tell me everything is going to be okay. It's the worst day of my whole life. And my mom guilted me into fixing the mess with my dad, so now I have to re-plan the wedding Miri managed to destroy. Which means I'm totally going to miss Spring Fling, so I may as well get my dad back together with my stepmother-to-be and get the wedding back on. Which Miri and I do, and even though my new stepmother was a real snot nearly the whole book, it turns out she's really nice and just wants us to like her, and Tammy totally forgave me and came to the wedding anyway, so even though I'm not a witch and everything went wrong when I tried to manipulate the world to my will, all's well that ends well. Which is good, because it turns out there's the tiniest chance Raf might actually still like me, and there are more books in this series, which means that I totally have at least 3 more books (to date) in which to finally learn that self-centered manipulation does not fly (or that there's more to life than looking good, having big boobs and great hair, and hanging with the in-crowd), so why bother to learn it now? Oh, Miri...

Best Read of 2008

I read a lot of books last year, and by far the best-written (and my favorite) was Nicholas Drayson's "A Guide to the Birds of East Africa," a quietly vivid and charming novel about love with an unlikely hero. It's really been too long since I read it to review it now, but I refer you to this blog entry by a birdwatcher who also dug it. I agree with his review wholeheartedly, except for the ornithological stuff, since I'm not a birder and couldn't comment one way or the other on that aspect of either the novel or his review. :)

Vampire Kisses

Ellen Schreiber

Scale of 1-10: 2.5
Pros: Spunky heroine who isn't afraid to stand up for herself and be who she is, and more importantly, does not fit the norm.
Cons: Kitschy vernacular wore on my nerves and was caricatured, while some of the dialogue was downright painful.

Synopsis: 16-year-old Raven has wanted to be a vampire since she was 5. On the day she turns 16, a mysterious new family moves into the old mansion down the street - the very same "haunted" mansion that Raven snuck into back when she was 12. A rumor starts that the family are vampires, which thrills Raven, and antagonizes her archnemesis Trevor, the town superstar. It's outcast vs. hunk, with Raven's future love at stake. (stake - get it?! bygones.*)

*(i would have peppered this entry with vampire puns, but the book really burned me out on them for at least the next 100 years; all the holy water in the land couldn't make me pony up another one.)

My take: Ouch. There's good stuff for teens, and then there's everything else. Ellen Schreiber's Vampire Kisses falls into the everything else category. About the nicest thing I can say about it is that it wasn't awful and is a quick read. Sadly, that's not saying much.

Schreiber needs to spend more time with teens (or at least with the entertainment they enjoy), and she seems to have trouble finding her voice and staying with it. After a brief and promising introduction of sorts, Vampire Kisses lapses into a too-cute-to-be-hip tale of Raven's early school years and the birth of her baby brother before switching to the present day and adopting a too-cool-for-school attitude that would work if it were actually as hip as it tries to be, but is instead very much geek trying for goth and way missing the mark. I can not imagine Schreiber was at all anything but a geek or wannabe during her teen years, as she manages to nail the nerdy aspects of her main character completely while completely missing anything even remotely cool about the self-described "Goth Girl." Her prose is so juvenile as to occasionally dip into silly, and at times the narrative is rushed, jumping from one scene or moment to the next without any connective tissue. In addition, Schreiber relies heavily on the use of "catchy" (if only) nicknames and seems to think that assigning them to things (Goth Girl, Goth Guy, Nerd Boy, Creepy Man, Monster Chick, Dullsville) makes one hip and her lingo tight. And it might, if she were a more talented writer or gifted mimic of the Joss Whedon School of Vernacular; unfortunately, their relentless cheese factor and high rate of repetition is fairly annoying, as is Schreiber's lazy use of them to establish character. Throughout her novel, Schreiber's hip shots miss their mark, calling more attention to that fact than to actually imbue the book with any semblance of teen cred, though there are stretches which did not bother me, where Schreiber seemed to forget she was supposed to be hip and cool and just wrote.

Many authors writing teen fiction seem to think they need to dumb down for their audience, and unfortunately, Schreiber seems to have fallen into that trap. Her book alternates between being right on track - when Raven schools her nemesis Trevor, for instance - and wildly missing it's mark - Raven's dinner at the mansion. Don't get me started on the romantic dialogue. I wouldn't have bought it when I was 13, let alone 16 or 17, it was so painfully wooden and obvious, and I doubt there's a vampire pun or reference Schreiber left untouched.

Vampire Kisses is book 1 in a series, and it definitely leaves the reader hanging in an attempt to lead sales for book 2. I'll pass. Schreiber would have benefitted by watching a few seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer before she started writing her series. Sadly, the best thing about Vampire Kisses is the synopsis on the back cover. A synopsis Schreiber clearly didn't write.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Kate DiCamillo

Scale of 1-10: 10
Pros: Great writing - DiCamillo really knows her audience, but she also writes bedtime stories, perfect for reading aloud and good reading for the adult, not just the child. The illustrations at the beginning of each chapter are fantastic, and there are full page color plates throughout.
Cons: None. It might be nice if there were more color plates, but not necessary.

Synopsis: Vain and heartless, porcelain rabbit Edward Tulane falls overboard on an ocean cruise with the little girl who loves him and through a series of miracles and mishaps, learns to care for others.

My take:
DiCamillo has really quite outdone herself with this one. It's bound to become a classic. It's easily read aloud, with DiCamillo's trademark short chapters and easy language, and Edward is very well-developed; children should have no problem identifying with him as he becomes more real. The story moves very well and will hold young readers' interest. I read the whole thing through in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half - I just did not want to put it down. DiCamillo makes excellent use of language, capturing a time when little girls had porcelain rabbit toys with real rabbit fur ears and tales and complete wardrobes with pocket watches but still making the book's voice easily accessible to younger readers. It flows well and makes excellent bedtime reading.

The story isn't just about a rabbit's journey, however. It's about love and learning to love. It's also about loss, as throughout his journey, Edward is separated from each of the persons he learns to love, until once again he is reunited with the little girl who loves him so well at the book's beginning. All the characters are very well-written and whole, not just characters who serve as foils for the main character. One wants to know more about them and how they fare - I wished they could all be reunited with Edward. There's more than a bit of melancholy in the tale, as Edward learns to love and each person he learns to love is in turn lost to him, but it's a marvelous kind of melancholy, building always to a happy ending. The epilogue made me cry, but it made me cry in a great way, as Edward lives happily ever after with the girl he has learned to love with all his heart and soul.

I can't sing the praises of this book highly enough. It was nominated for a Quills Award and won a Boston Globe Horn Book Award, but I find it shocking and appalling for it not to be a Newbery Winner. It really should be. If you can get it in hard cover, it's well worth the price.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

Scale of 1-10: 8
Pros: Strong, well-developed characters; makes beautiful use of language without getting too purple or verbose
Cons: A tad long, sometimes hard to follow

Synopsis: Time-traveling Henry DeTamble meets his wife-to-be, Clare Abshire, when he is 28 and she is 20. She meets him when she is 6 and he is 36. She lives life linearly, he lives it as a jumbled mishmash of random hops and jumps throughout his also somewhat linear life. At its heart, this is a book about true love, but it's also about destiny.

My take:
I really enjoyed Niffenegger's story, though I did find it a tad long. The prose is beautiful, and only every once in a while fails to fit the telling - once or twice, I thought it was a bit too mature for the narrator's age at the time. Generally, though, it fits well and is descriptive without bogging down the reader in too much detail. The tale is told in chunks, from both Henry and Clare's points of view, now in the present, now in the past, always preceeded by date and the ages of both Henry and Clare during each vignette. That helps, but while the leaps back in time mostly follow chronological order, they don't always, so every once in a while, it get confusing. Likewise, every now and again, Niffenegger retells one of the jumps to the past in the present, and that can also be confusing. Mostly, it isn't, as she has been very careful to cover with enough detail for the reader to follow and remember, but every once in a while, I had to page back to remind myself what happened the first time, from the other character's point of view (generally, one character tells the story the first time, and then when it happens "again" in the present, the other character will tell his/her side of things).

I thought Niffenegger handled the subject of time travel really well, avoiding inconsistencies nicely and offering a reasonable explanation for the lack of effect Henry has on the future when he's traveling through the past. Which is where the destiny part of the telling comes into play. Perhaps part of the success in Niffenegger's explanation is a lack of detail; she does not bog herself down in lengthy explanations of how or why things happen and whether or not they can be changed. We get Henry's explanation of the facts as he sees them, and as they are as pragmatic as they are sketchy, I find myself willing to accept Niffenegger's version of time travel without real question.

My only real nits with the book were having to page back sometimes to remind myself what had happened before, and some of the scenes really only needed one telling, as Henry was the only character in them, from different times in his life. In addition, there is one very dramatic part of the book where Henry materializes in his own apartment while he, Clare, and some friends are all having dinner, but Niffenegger never explained why it happened or what was going on with the time-traveling Henry. I found that really aggravating, as the scene was really dramatic. I mean if you're going to drop a convulsing time-traveler into the middle of a dinner party, destroying a china cabinet (or something that sounded like a china cabinet) in the process, you might want to drop me a clue somewhere down the line telling me why the character was convulsing and what happened to him when he made it back to his own time, all sliced up from the broken glass and crockery he landed in. As well, since at no other point in the book does Henry displace solid objects when he "lands" in another time, I don't understand why he did then, either. Perhaps he only tripped and fell and knocked over the cabinet, but since Niffenegger never tells that part of the story from the time-traveling Henry's point of view, we'll never know. It really irked me that she never bothered to explain that scene. She also failed to adequately explain why when Henry travels to the future, he seems to avoid contact with Clare. That doesn't really make any sense to me, given the characters' love, and one or two sentences from Henry in the future would have sufficed to explain it. I find that a bit lazy on Niffenegger's part. Aside from those small things, however, I definitely enjoyed the book and am very glad I read it.