Review 3: "One In Every Crowd" by Ivan E. Coyote

When I first came across Ivan E. Coyote's work, it was last summer during the Vancouver Writers Fest.  One in Every Crowd was a new book she was promoting during the festival, and as soon as I read the description, I wanted to read it.  One in Every Crowd  is a collection of stories (essentially non-fiction) from the perspective of Coyote growing up in Northern Canada and later as she becomes a writer and anti-bullying advocate travelling across North American to high schools.

In all the collection touches on many themes, from family, to enduring love and loss, to addiction, gender, sexuality and the importance of community.  In the intro, Coyote addresses the book to the "Kid I Was," but really, the book is meant for all misfits.  Anyone who has been bullied because they were different, and especially if they were targeted because of their gender presentation.  The stories in this collections are offered as both a form of solace, and a rallying cry, calling for action and change.  Most importantly, they are there to say, "You're not the only one."

Growing up in small-town Northern Canada, Coyote talks about how she often felt that, in fact, she was 'the only one.'  Nearly every story touches on how her upbringing has shaped her as a person, but also how the ways she challenges notions of 'gender' have affected those around her too.  Whether it's being forced (kicking and screaming) into a dress for a wedding, learning to fix cars with her dad, or bringing home her girlfriend for the first time, Coyote's interactions with gender doesn't happen in isolation, although it is sometimes impossible for people around her to understand exactly what she is going through.

In many of the stories, Coyote talks about meeting young people who also challenge traditional notions of gender.  Some of the stories are encouraging, depicting kids who walk their own path and seem impervious to the slurs and hatred thrown their way (which makes Coyote, and the reader, tear up in joy).  And then there are the stories of the kids who, as they grow up, start to hide their true selves, fearing the repercussions their classmates may enact upon them.  In her talks at high schools, she never says the words "queer, gay, etc." (partly to appease skittish parents or faculty) but she hopes that her message will get to the kids that need it most anyway.  One of the most powerful stories in the collection, called "As Good as We Can Make It" encapsulates her frustration with our school system in particular and why hoping for a safe school environment where everyone is welcome is not just a crazy dream.  I particularly liked the anecdote about the school in Vancouver that held a birthday party for a student that was transitioning and ensured that everyone called them by their preferred pronoun.      

All in all, a moving collection, and one which I sincerely hope reaches the audience that Coyote addresses in the beginning.  I was never seriously bullied in school, still, I wish this book had been around back then.  

Genre: Stories, Young Adult Fiction/Non-Fiction
Recommended To: Youth 13-18; general audience
Rating: 8.0/10
Favourite Quote: "All day I had been searching for signs that things were different than they were when I was in school, that things were getting easier for queer kids, that we really had come a long way, baby.  I had overlooked the most obvious sign.  Of course things were changing.  I was here, wasn't I?"      

Review # 2: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

It is a testament to a great author when you finish a book and  immediately want to write an honours thesis about it.  This is how I feel after finishing Patrick Ness' amazing YA dystopia novel The Knife of Never Letting Go.  Surely, this is one of the finest YA novels I have ever read, and possibly one of my favourite dystopic ones as well.  This book just begs to be analyzed and discussed, and so while I still have a year until I'll be writing my honours thesis, this review will have to do for now (although I promise it will be significantly shorter than a 50 page thesis).

I'm sure that at some point in our lives, we've wished to have the ability to know other's thoughts.  To be able to look past a person's outer shell and understand what was truly happening inside their mind.  This is the world in which Todd Hewitt, a 12 year (and 12 month) old boy is growing up.  The inhabitants of Prentisstown, a settlement on the newly colonized planet of 'New World' can all hear each other's thoughts (and the thoughts of all of the animals) due to a germ which was released by the planet's alien inhabitants during initial struggles with the humans, killing all of the women and leaving only the men.  Or so Todd has been told since he was a child.

This is the brilliance of Ness's world.  In a world where everyone can hear each other's thoughts, there is a dark secret in Prentisstown, one which has been kept from Todd since he was born-- and which he happens to stumble upon one day when he is walking his dog Manchee through the swamp around Prentisstown.  Growing up in this noisy world, Todd grows accustomed to the white 'Noise' of men's and animal's thoughts all around him, and is shocked when he comes across a portion of the swamp in which he suddenly can't hear a thing.  There is a gap in the Noise.  

This simple discovery is the catalyst for a series of events which will change Todd's life forever, as his adoptive parents, Ben and Cillian, force him to leave Prentisstown as the townsmen he has spent his entire life growing up around suddenly take up arms against him.  He is handed a map of New World, and a journal with his mother's last words--both of which he can't read--and told to run for his life.

Thus begins a profound exploration into what it means to be human, about history and hope, and how our thoughts and actions both reveal and hide who we really are.  The story is essentially a coming-of-age tale, but one that critically examines what it means to 'become' a man, and complicates traditional meanings of masculinity (and by extension femininity).  And (most poignantly, in my opinion), it highlights the struggle we all face between hatred and empathy, and how it is often far easier to hate something you don't understand than to imagine the world from another perspective.  As Todd says, just because something's silent, doesn't mean it's empty.

My only possible critique of the book (which seems to be echoed by other reviewers on GoodReads) is that the constant action of the book can become a bit fatiguing.  Like Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, the pace of this novel is breathless, without a lot of time to stop and process what is happening.  Often, Todd doesn't have time to comprehend a situation until two or three chapters after it has happened, and this can become a little confusing.  The relentlessness of the novel's villain's could also be read as tiring (see: Aaron), and at times, I too felt like crying, "Just die already, will you?!" but I think this just made Todd's struggle more realistic.  It takes time to deal with your demons, and just as safety seems increasingly unreachable, so does hope become even more crucial.    

In the back of the book, Ness states that the inspiration for the book came from thinking about the recent swell of advancements in communication technology, and how our access to information (at any time, in any place) has increased exponentially.  Information really is all around us, but how do we sort through the Noise and find the truth?  What is being hidden behind the stories, the histories that we are being told on a daily basis, and how do we determine what to believe?  In a way, we can read each other's thoughts, but that doesn't mean that those thoughts aren't lies, either to us, or even worse, to their owner.  In a novel told from the first person perspective, you'd expect that Todd would tell you everything, that in the relationship between narrator and reader, there would be no secrets--just like there aren't supposed to be any secrets between the men in Prentisstown.  But I was wrong: there are things Todd keeps from the reader and from himself, making him an unreliable narrator of the first degree, as he slowly struggles to process and accept the true history of Prentisstown and see through the lies that have completely shaped his perception of the world.  

In short, I was intrigued, and inspired and challenged by The Knife of Never Letting Go.  I have a few other books to read before I get to the sequel, The Ask and the Answer, but I will be waiting with baited breath until I can begin reading about Todd Hewitt's adventures again.

Genre:  YA Fantasy/Dystopia
Recommended To:  Fans of Cormac McCarthy The Road, The Hunger Games or other dystopic novels; everyone.
Rating:  10/10
Favourite Quote:  "Hope may be the thing that pulls you forward, may be the thing that keeps you going, but that it's dangerous, that it's painful and risky, that it's making a dare in the world and when has the world ever let us win a dare?"
                

Review # 1: The Diviners by Libba Bray

       To kick off my second summer of book reviews, I read The Diviners by Libba Bray.  It probably isn't a surprise to anyone that I would start by reading a novel from the Young Adult fiction genre (given last summer's selections), but this one definitely stands out in the crowd.  The Diviners  is the tale of Evie O'Neill, a seventeen year old girl growing up in the prohibition era of the US.  After revealing the secrets of a popular local young man by 'reading' his belongings at a party, Evie is sent to live in New York City with her Uncle Will.  The Big Apple in the Jazz Age turns out to be just the place for Evie (even if her uncle's job as a professor and curator of the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition and Occult isn't) and the reader is introduced to a cast of lively characters, including a sly pickpocket named Sam Lloyd, a numbers runner named Memphis Campbell, the beautiful dancer Theta Knight and her 'brother' Henry, the awkward Jericho, and Evie's best friend Mabel whose parents constantly neglect her for their political commitments.  At first, it seems as though Evie's stay in New York is going to be just swell--that is, until a young Polish woman is murdered and found with a pentacle carved into her chest.  Uncle Will is asked to consult on the investigation and soon Evie finds herself drawn into the race to catch the 'Pentacle Killer' and learn more about her powers before it's too late for all of humanity.

Bray's research into this particular historical era is evident from the first page of the novel, and it is definitely one of my favourite aspects of The Diviners.  The novel is bursting with slang and cultural references from the 1920's and it makes the narrative robust and realistic, even if the subject matter is obviously fantastical.  I appreciated all of the background on John Hobbes and the various religious organizations which Bray provides and how the main conflict of the story was contextualized within the larger ideological struggles during the 1920's (for example, the creationism vs. evolution debate of the infamous Scopes Trial, the Eugenics movement, and racial and ethnic tensions).  Balancing all of this historical detail with the different narrative and literary elements is perilous, and, while at times I felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information that was being thrown at me, overall, Bray is able to keep these various balls in the air.  On the topic of style, I also want to mention that I was surprised by the fact that this book actually made me scared, which is a first.  The villain is genuinely terrifying, and the suspense of the plot kept me up late into the night reading.

(Warning: The rest of the review is a bit spoiler-y, so you may want to avoid it if you plan on reading the book) 

Although when she is introduced, Evie's character seems quite unoriginal, I really liked the ways she develops throughout the course of the novel.  Surprisingly, the fact that Evie has a supernatural gift is actually quite a small part of her character, and it doesn't wholly shape her as a person, which was refreshing for a protagonist of this type.  Evie sometimes feels like an outsider, but this is because of her exuberance, self-indulgence and recklessness rather than her ability as a Diviner.  I was relieved to see that Evie doesn't fall for Sam despite his repeated attempts to woo her, and that their initial (forced) kiss in the train station is not romanticized in any way (see here).  Instead, the romantic subplot is unique in that Evie does not initially fall for Jericho.  He is not presented as an especially alluring figure, and just like her supernatural power, the desire to fall in love with someone is not a big part of Evie's character.  I actually thought that Theta and Memphis' relationship would be the only romantic aspect of the novel (and, surely, theirs is more typical relationship for a YA novel), but eventually Evie does come to see Jericho as a possible romantic partner, although this is complicated by her knowledge that Mabel has been in love with Jericho for years.  The build-up is not filled with angst, but rather a natural, matter-of-fact kind of attraction, and the final kiss is not some triumphant moment (at least from Evie's point of view), but a rather complicated and sad one.

With so many interesting characters and historical tidbits, there are so many things I could discuss in this review, but I'll end by saying that Bray has sufficiently intrigued me with The Diviners, and I will be waiting to see what future books hold for Evie and her friends.  While the villain may have been defeated, there is something far more sinister lurking in New York (and beyond), and many questions still to be answered about the mysterious Diviners and Project Buffalo.

Genre:  YA Fiction (Fantasy/Historical/Mystery)
Recommended To: Fans of The Great Gatsby; fans of mystery or historical fiction, specifically with a YA focus
Rating: 8.5/10
Favourite Quote: "People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-- words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History.”          

New year, new books, same old mediocre reviews.

Hello world (aka, just me, or anyone who might stumble upon this blog).

After a year of toiling away at university, I have decided to return to my abandoned project of writing book reviews for every book I read during the summer.

I fell a little short last year, and wasn't able to review all of the books I actually read (I hope no one was holding their breath for that review of the first Game of Thrones...) but I am approaching the task again with renewed diligence.  I am still working on my first book, but here are some reviews you can (hopefully) look forward to this summer:

• The Diviners by Libba Bray (currently reading)
• One in Every Crowd by Ivan E. Coyote (currently reading) 
• The Knife of Never Letting Go  by Patrick Ness 
• Every Day by David Levithan 
• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins 
• Orlando by Virginia Woolf 
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman 
• Catching Fire and Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins 
• The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Or, if for some reason you want the full list, see my ever-growing (and possibly far too ambitious) Summer 2013 'To Read' List on GoodReads.

Happy reading, and talk to you soon!

A.S.

Review # 8: "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"

During my trip home to Vernon last weekend, I read Ransom Riggs' first novel, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.  I chose this book because 1. I couldn't find a copy of Catching Fire at the library, and 2. Because John Green (YA author and vlogger extraordinaire) had recommended it in a video.  Miss Peregrine's was published in 2011 and has since become a New York Times best-seller, knocking my favourite YA novel The Fault in Our Stars out of the #1 spot.

To begin, I would say that what impressed me most about this book was how deceptive it was.  For example, the first chapter seems straight out one of John Green's earlier novels: 16 year old male misfit with a talent for the language arts living in the southern United States struggles to make/keep friends and deal with family problems.  However, after about 30 pages and a grisly murder, this book descends into something deliciously otherworldly and softly romantic, cleverly illustrated by a series of black and white photographs.    

Without spoiling anything, Miss Peregrine's tells the story of the aforementioned teenager, Jacob Portman, and his journey to a small island off the coast of Wales.  Guided by his grandfather's fantastical bedtime stories and his therapist's advice, Jacob seeks the mysterious children's home that once housed his Jewish grandfather after he was evacuated from Poland in the 1930's.  Although the house itself is in ruins, Jacob slowly begins to realize that it may not be abandoned, and that the 'gifted' children featured in a collection of old photographs owned by his grandfather may not only be alive, but in great danger.

In general, reading this book (for me) was like eating a handful of gourmet jelly beans, where the joy of eating jelly beans is increased by the fun of trying to guess which flavours you're tasting.  That is to say, Miss Peregrine's seems like a mash up of several different books I've read and movies I've seen, and instead of getting upset about Riggs 'copying' another author (because really, who doesn't?), I found it enjoyable to identify which other texts I was reminded of.  For example, to me this novel felt like a cross between the X-Men series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a John Green novel, and a Tim Burton film.  While the 'haven for magical/unique children' trope is used so often in fiction and film it is almost a cliche, I enjoyed Rigg's personal take on it, and I was pleasantly surprised to see how this novel exceeded my initial expectations.

Of course, this wouldn't be a proper review if I didn't point out the aspects of this novel I feel could use some work: namely, the protagonists.  As I mentioned, from the beginning, Riggs establishes Jacob as a stock character and he doesn't change much from there on.  This is very clear from how little his relationship with his father changes from the beginning to the end of the novel, which annoyed me.  I didn't find Jacob unlikable, just flat, and I felt that the plot of this novel required him to display a little more emotional depth.  Miss Peregrine's is full of really neat ideas and concepts and has much potential, unfortunately, Jacob fails somewhat in carrying all of this information for the reader.  The same goes for Emma, the other protagonist who readers won't meet until halfway through the novel.  For someone that plays such an important role in the story, Emma's character verges on boring, and her actions are predictable.

Despite the weak characters, I really enjoyed reading Miss Peregrine's.  In the time since finishing the book, I have become more critical and objective about the characters, plot, etc. but while I was reading the book, I felt as gripped and compelled as though I was reading a Harry Potter or Percy Jackson novel for the first time. My family can attest how excited I was as I was pulled along by the book's plot twists and beautiful imagery, and I hope that if you too choose to read this book, you will enjoy it just as much.                              

Genre: YA Fiction/Fantasy
Recommended To: Fans of John Green's work, Rick Riordan's YA books, readers 12 years and up
Rating: 8.0/10
Favourite Quote: "Stars, too, were time travellers.  How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead?  How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone?  I had always known the sky was full of mysteries--but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was."

Review # 7: "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins

WARNING:  A CORNUCOPIA OF SPOILERS LIES AHEAD. 

Unlike all of the other books I have reviewed so far this summer, I am not reading The Hunger Games for the first time.  When I first read the The Hunger Games, it was 2008. I read it on the recommendation of my friend and...  hated it, which was curious, because even at the time, it seemed like the sort of book that I should fall in love with almost immediately.  Obviously, I don’t enjoy every book that I read, even when they appear promising, still, I believe it is my presumed attraction to this series that drew me back to it 4 years later.  That, and my curiosity to see what millions of readers around the world were so excited about. 

Overall, I enjoyed my second reading of Hunger Games much more than my first.  Of course, despite the hype, it is not my favourite book I have ever read, and certainly not the best book I have read from the YA genre.  In general, I found Collins' prose to be rather uninspired, and was annoyed by her perpetual use of short sentences, for example: "She has no idea. The effect she can have," which is broken up in a way that totally ruins the effect of the sentence for me.  However, I have far more to say about the content of the book than its style:

I believe that my initial dislike of the book was due to a flawed understanding of the plot, resulting from reading much too fast.  I distinctly remember thinking that the book focused too much on the relationship between Katniss and Peeta, which I didn’t approve of, and allowed more important aspects of the plot to fall by the wayside (as I have seen happen in some other YA novels).  I understand now that this was because I thought that Peeta and Katniss’ relationship was meant to be separate from all of the politics of the games, and not a strategy to improve their chances and gain sponsors.  I remember disliking Peeta for being so greedy and constantly asking for Katniss to kiss him, etc. and being angry with Katniss for going along with all of this when she didn’t return Peeta’s feelings.

 

Now, I understand (unlike Katniss it seems) that Peeta’s feelings for Katniss were genuine even before the reaping, and that Peeta was just capitalizing on them during the games.  However, I still do not believe that Peeta was unaware that Katniss was doing the exact same thing; giving the audience and Peeta what they wanted by playing into the whole ‘star-crossed lovers’ bit.  Therefore, when Peeta went into a rage at the end of the book when it is revealed that Katniss may have been faking her affections, I was confused—which pretty much sums my feelings in general about Peeta Mellark’s character, who I had a very difficult time understanding and liking.

  

Enough about Peeta though, and on to Katniss.  In this regard, I must really commend Collins for writing such an independent and fierce female protagonist.  During my second reading, I paid a lot more attention to Katniss’ character, considering my interest in feminism, but also the huge influence that this book has made on teenage readers (like another wildly popular series I could mention...).  Although I hope readers never find themselves in the same situations that Katniss does, I think she is a good role model for how to deal with such situations nonetheless. I especially liked that, although Katniss does have completely human moments of weakness during her ordeal and faces truly horrific things, she never sees herself as a victim, but a survivor and a fighter.

    

My second reading also allowed me to think more about the games themselves.  I suppose I was too worried about whether Katniss and Peeta would get together during my first reading to really let the concept of the games sink in, but this time it did, and I was swept by waves of horror the further I read.  Like Gilead in Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale or London in George Orwell’s 1984, the world of Panem is a terrifying mirror of our own world, and I think that the concept of the games is so sickening because it doesn’t seem that far away from reality—especially considering the lengths people will go to on reality television to gain viewers.  In this way, I think that Collins has created a sharp critique of our own world, and a capable heroine aware enough of these problems to help fight against them.        

I am currently trying to get my hands on the second book, which I am genuinely looking forward to reading.  In it, I hope that 1. Collins explains more about the history of Panem and the uprising that led to the Hunger Games, that 2. Katniss continues to be a bad ass and rebel against the Capitol, and that 3. the entire thing isn't dragged down by a somewhat inevitable Twilight-esque love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale.  

Genre: Dystopian YA

Recommended To: Fans of Harry Potter; Young adult readers; fans of the dystopian genre

Rating: 7.5/10

Favourite Quotes:  "Yes, frosting.  The final defense of the dying." 

(Seriously, this was the only line I genuinely liked enough to quote). 

Review # 6: "The Golden Mean" by Annabel Lyon

Last week, I finished my 6th book of the summer, Annabel Lyon's The Golden Mean.  The Golden Mean was published in 2009 and has since won several major Canadian fiction awards, in addition to becoming a national best-seller.

Try as I might, my words cannot do justice to this fantastic novel.  Set in ancient Greece, The Golden Mean gives a fictional-historical account of the life of the philosopher Aristotle and his tutelage of the young Prince Alexander of Macedon (later, Alexander the Great).  Out of all of the historical novels I have read, The Golden Mean is the best proof that historical novels can be just as engaging, alive and colourful as a novel with fictional characters and settings.  Here, ancient Greece is not romanticized, but feels rough and visceral, and the characters are set upon a background that is bursting with evidence of Lyon's research.  I learned so much about the culture of ancient Greece from this novel, but without feeling like I was in a classroom, taking notes.

As a character, Aristotle is fascinating.  From all that has been written about him, he seems like a very daunting choice for a main character--especially one that tells the story in first person--but Lyon does a wonderful job of peeling back the layer of mystery that will always proceed Aristotle (and Alexander) and examining the mind behind the name.  Part philosopher, part scientist, Aristotle seems to simultaneously transcend his own time and be entrenched in it.  Like his tutor Plato, he has an imagination that extends beyond the physical realm, but also focuses a lot of his energy on revealing the secrets of physical bodies and minds.  The many depictions of early medicine and surgical practices in this book were particularly interesting to me (though fairly gruesome) as well as discussions of mental illness.  I should note that this novel doesn't focus so much on the work of Aristotle, but rather the mindset and circumstances that may have led to his writings and his influence on the court of Macedonia.  However, it has inspired me to read more historical texts about the lives and achievements of both Aristotle and Alexander the Great.    

Overall, The Golden Mean is a beautiful and haunting novel that is at times poignant and bitterly humorous.  I highly recommend it, and will be on the look out for any upcoming novels from Lyon.

Genre:  Historical Fiction
Recommended to:  Anyone interested in the writings/life of Aristotle or Alexander the Great; ancient history or philosophy students; general audience.
Rating: 10/10
Favourite Quote: "I accept that the greatest happiness comes to those capable of the greatest things.  That's where we leave my brother behind.  That's where you and I walk away from the rest of the world.  You and I can appreciate the glory of things.  We walk to the very edge of things as everyone else knows and understands and experiences them, and then we walk the next step.  We go places no one has ever been.  That's who we are.  That's who you've taught me to be."