Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh

August 10, 2016 |

Prehistoric fiction is hard to come by, even in the adult world. If you go looking for it in the YA world, it’s like digging for mammoth bones – not easy to unearth. My induction into the world of Jean M. Auel as a high schooler thanks to my local library’s used book sale has guaranteed that whenever a novel set in prehistoric times pops up, it shoots to the top of my to-read list. Enter Ivory and Bone by Julie Eshbaugh.

The marketing material says Eshbaugh’s story is based on Pride and Prejudice, and it is – loosely. Like any good re-telling, the reader doesn’t need to know the source material to enjoy this prehistoric take, though it is fun to puzzle out who is the analog of whom while reading (it’s mostly gender-swapped, for starters, which is a fun change). In the end, though, the correlation is so superficial that you’ll do yourself a disservice by expecting Ivory and Bone to be a true riff of Austen. It’s not.

The precise moment in prehistory is never stated, though we’re given clues: mammoths and ice are both growing scarcer, and the wiser human clans have started supplementing their leaner meat diets with the new plants that are growing in greater abundance. The people use stone tools, spears, and kayaks and wear animal skins. There are no Neanderthals like in Auel’s books. These clues place Ivory and Bone in the Neolithic period at the end of the Stone Age, though I couldn’t ever pinpoint where exactly on Earth the characters were supposed to be. (I’m sure a more attentive reader than me could figure it out!)

Kol, our protagonist and narrator, lives in this long-ago world, where survival is hard and meeting someone outside your own clan is rare. That latter bit is especially important for Kol and his younger siblings, since there are no other young people in their clan and their parents worry they won’t be able to find mates, the only way to ensure the continuation of the clan. Then Mya, her sister, and her brother – the leader of a separate clan – come to speak with leaders of Kol’s clan. Something happened between Mya’s clan and Kol’s clan a couple of years ago, and Kol doesn’t know the details, but it seems Mya’s brother wants to make amends. The circumstances have made Mya very cold to Kol, though Mya’s sister and Kol’s brother hit it off immediately. For a bit, it seems like the two clans might have formed an alliance.

Until Lo, a girl from another clan, arrives. From the start, it’s clear that Lo and Mya have their own history. Kol can’t help but be drawn to Lo, who has a magnetic sort of personality and an undeniable ability to make people follow her lead. Readers who know the basics of Pride and Prejudice will recognize Lo as Mr. Wickham, so it’s not difficult to figure out that Lo is up to no good, but the exact circumstances of her estrangement from Mya and her plans for Kol’s clan remain mysterious up until about 2/3rds of the way through the novel, where it begins to really diverge from its source material.

Part of the reason I love prehistoric novels so much is that we know so little about that time. It gives the writer a lot of free reign, if they have the imagination for it. So while the first part of the book doesn’t have much action, it reads very quickly. Like Pride and Prejudice, much is said with looks and pauses, and much is misinterpreted. During Mya and Kol’s not-quite-courtship, Eshbaugh expands upon Kol’s Stone Age world, giving us those little details that fans of historical fiction crave: what family structures were like, what people ate, how people hunted, what people slept on, what was considered an appropriate gift, and so on. It’s all worked into the story of Kol and Mya getting to know each other – or forming incorrect opinions about what they think the other is like. And when Lo enters the story, the novel changes tone, and we’re given action and not a little amount of blood.

Eshbaugh took a risk with how she chose to tell her story: the majority is second-person POV, with Kol narrating to Mya. So instead of saying “Mya did this,” he says “You did this,” which I found jarring. This technique isn’t quite successful; it took me out of the story a lot and interrupted the smoothness of the narrative when I read “you” instead of “she” or “Mya.” I got accustomed to it a bit by the end of the book, but not entirely. Still, I admire the choice to try something fresh, and it does add another layer to Kol’s and Mya’s relationship that would not be there with a more traditional narrative style.

Eshbaugh’s writing is simple, but in the way poetry can be, revealing more in what it doesn’t say. It also feels true to Kol’s, who is a teenager without the benefit of a written language, since such a thing did not exist yet (at least as far as we’ve been able to discover). The story is completely immersive, taking the reader fully into this world that Eshbaugh has created from a combination of her own extensive research and her imagination. It’s fascinating and unlike almost anything else currently published for teens, both in terms of its story and its narrative techniques. Hand this one to teens looking for something different, whether it’s a fresh take on an old tale, a time period we don’t often read about, or a writing style that tries something new. Highly recommended.

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

May 25, 2016 |

I described Julie Berry’s newest, The Passion of Dolssa, as “a slow burn of a book” on Goodreads. I wasn’t fully engaged initially, but by the end, I was totally immersed, and I can’t put my finger on exactly when that happened – it just happened slowly, over the course of this multilayered, character-driven, wholly unique novel.

It’s 1241 in Provensa (now called Provence, an area in France), and the people are still reeling from the Albigensian Crusade, one of those crusades ordered by the Pope where people killed their own countrymen in the name of God. It was a way to not only cleanse the area of heretics, but also to seize land and grow wealth (which Berry and her characters point out was often the true goal). The Albigensian Crusade ended in 1229, but “heretics” are still burned and the people still live in fear.

Into this fraught environment comes Dolssa, a gentlewoman and mystic who has a personal, almost romantic relationship with Jesus, whom she called her beloved. She’s a teenager who speaks frequently of her beloved to those around her. She’s revered by those who receive her message, and she’s believed to have worked miracles. She eventually catches the attention of church leadership, who aren’t about to allow a woman to hold such religious power. Dolssa is labeled a heretic and sentenced to death, along with her mother. Her mother dies, but Dolssa escapes (thanks to what she believes is the assistance of her beloved) to the town of Bajas in Provensa, where she’s taken in and protected by Botille and her two sisters, who run a pub.

Most of the story is told from Botille’s perspective, though we also get large sections from Dolssa and the obsessed friar pursuing her. There are also occasional snippets from people the friar interviews along the way. The whole book is a frame story, bookended by another friar who is reading about the incident (the story is meant to be the testimony of Botille and the other characters) and feels uneasy about it. Tacked on to the end is a note from the “author,” a modern-day scholar who claims to have found these papers and assembled them; she adds an epilogue that is haunting and will give you chills.

When I read about a book that people describe as “character-driven,” I often find that it’s code for “plotless” and therefore boring. Not so in this case. These people are fascinating and funny and I would love to be friends with so many of them. Botille’s voice is a treat. I listened to the audio version, so I mean that in two ways (Jayne Entwhistle reads Botille’s sections). She’s snarky and hands out as much shit as she’s given (and as a young woman in 13th century France, she’s given a lot). She’s a loyal friend and sister, always does what she thinks is right, and works hard. She’s an entrepreneur too – a lot of the humor in the story is derived from her matchmaking, which she makes a good amount of money from. And she’s good at it! She has a knack for knowing whose personalities will match in the long run, despite her tender years. She loves without judgment, too, most notably her drunk stepfather (her mother died some time ago) who can’t take care of himself or any of the girls but is seen as no less of a person worthy of care. His speech near the end of the book is one of the most moving – you might cry. In fact, there’s remarkably little judgment on the part of most of the characters in Bajas, who are fiercely religious and rally to protect Dolssa when it becomes clear that she does miraculous things and is being hunted because of it.

At times, the book has a magical realism feel, but I wouldn’t categorize it as such, nor would I call it religious fiction. The miracles that Dolssa performs are viewed in the context of the characters, who completely believe that she can do wondrous things – and Dolssa herself believes she can as well, working through her beloved, and that she has an obligation to do so. Berry writes about these miracles in such a way that the reader is free to decide if Jesus intervened or did not – and ultimately, it doesn’t matter what the reader decides. What matters is that the characters believe it, and that’s what propels the story.

Berry sprinkles her novel with lots of Old Provencal, the language spoken by her characters. It’s a little jarring to hear at first. To me it sounded like the audiobook narrator was badly butchering French words. But that’s not the case at all, and the meanings of the words are obvious in context (and probably faster to pick up in print). It’s just another way that Berry adds a feeling of authenticity to her story, making the reader feel as if she’s fallen into another time and place entirely.

Often when I read historical fiction, I find that books fall into one of two camps: the language and behavior of the characters has been modernized so much that they no longer feel historical; or the language and behavior feel so alien that it’s impossible to really understand the characters and their motivations. There’s a fine line that must be walked, and Berry is a master of it here. The beliefs of the people in Provensa, and Dolssa’s beliefs in particular, are not modern. Yet Berry does such a good job of getting us inside their heads that we understand these beliefs and how they lead to actions that we would never take ourselves in our 21st century context. These characters feel like inhabitants of another world, but they also feel immediate and real.

Berry’s author’s note at the end is a must-read, but it won’t completely quench your thirst for more. This is one of those novels where I immediately went to the internet to read more about this time and place, and I’m still curious and thinking about it weeks later. I feel as if my knowledge of real people who lived then has been expanded, and that my understanding of humankind in general has been enhanced as well.

I always yearned for more medieval-era historical fiction when I was a teen, in the vein of Catherine Called Birdy but for older readers. Not that this is a readalike (the tone and subject matter are very different), but teens who want to read more about the Middle Ages after having their interest piqued by Birdy and others should definitely seek this out. It’s also a great pick for historical fiction fans tired of the same eras being written about over and over again (World War II, the Renaissance), and for any thoughtful teen who wants to fall completely into another time, place, and way of life.

Historical Fiction Roundup

April 20, 2016 |

Da Vinci’s Tiger by L. M. Elliott

Elliott’s book is on a topic you won’t find much in YA fiction: the idea of Platonic love as it was practiced during the Renaissance in Italy. It was a concept I hadn’t even heard of until I took a specialized gender/history class in college. Elliott uses a real historical woman as her inspiration: Ginevra de Benci, who was painted by Leonardo da Vinci early in his career. The real Ginevra was a poet (only a single line of her poetry survives, echoed by the title of the book) who was married to a man much older than her at the age of 16. She was involved in a Platonic relationship with Bernardo Bembo, the ambassador from Venice, who commissioned poems about her and regarded her as his muse. Da Vinci’s portrait of her is remarkable in many ways, one of which is that it’s the first Italian portrait to feature a woman head-on, rather than a profile view.

Da Vinci’s Tiger chronicles Ginevra’s life from age 16 onward, showing her meetings with Leonardo da Vinci for the painting, her burgeoning relationship with Bembo (and its end), and her friendship with other Italian girls and women. It also touches some on the politics surrounding the de Medicis, which Ginevra becomes more involved in as her relationship with Bembo intensifies. It’s an interesting look at one young woman’s life, as well as an example of how some Italian women of that time achieved some independence or power within the very strict confines of their society via these Platonic relationships. This is not a book I’d hand to teens who don’t have a natural inclination to historical fiction, as it’s a rather quiet book and the historical details provide nearly all of the appeal. But for readers who want to know what Renaissance Italy really looked and felt like, this is a great option. Elliott separates fact from fiction at a page on her website, which provides further fascinating reading.

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

When Samantha’s father dies in a fire in their shop in Missouri in 1849, she’s left to fend for herself. She and Annamae, a runaway slave, set off on the Oregon Trail, disguising themselves as boys. Sam is after a friend of the family who has a priceless family heirloom she wants to recover; Annamae wants to find her brother, who promised he’d meet her out west after he, too, escaped slavery. Since Sam is Chinese and Annamae is black, it makes their journey all the more perilous – not to mention that there’s that little problem of the man that Sam killed before she fled Missouri, and she and Annamae are on wanted posters for his death.

Diverse historical fiction, especially set in the United States, can be really hard to find. This is a shining example of how it can be done, and done well. Lee weaves Chinese culture and beliefs into Sam’s character: the book is narrated by Sam and she often shares tidbits about the Chinese zodiac with the readers. There’s a bit of a culture clash between Sam and Annamae (“Andy” when she’s dressing as a boy) too, which helps give each girl a distinctive personality. This is a story about friendship, breaking gender barriers, and learning how to be a cowboy. It’s a great read for teens who are fascinated by the Oregon Trail but are tired of the same old story that just seems to copy the 90s computer game. There are no wagons, no oxen, just two girls (and a group of genuinely good boys who travel with them for a while) on the adventure of a lifetime.

The Forbidden Orchid by Sharon Biggs Waller

I quite enjoyed Waller’s first historical YA novel, A Mad Wicked Folly, about the feminist movement in 1909 London. Her second book is about Elodie, a teenage girl who goes orchid-hunting with her naturalist father in China during the Victorian era. This premise sounded interesting to me, and it’s a topic I know virtually nothing about. At one point, Elodie’s father explains just how dangerous orchid hunting in China really is – hostile Chinese people, hostile animals, diseases, thirst, hunger, and so on. I expected a pretty fun adventure featuring a girl who had to break all the gender rules of her time, but that’s not quite what I got.

I fear this book fell victim to my expectations. Over half of it was set in England and involved the setup for the adventure – Elodie’s father fails to bring back the orchids he’s been commissioned to find due to a horrible event he won’t talk about, and as a result, Elodie and her mother and sisters may be sent to the workhouse. Her father’s employer has the right to recoup his losses by seizing their possessions and their house. So Elodie convinces her father to go back to China, and she finagles a way to go with him, which involves stowing away on the ship dressed as a boy, which doesn’t go very well. She ends up in a somewhat coerced marriage and there’s some awkward romance that I didn’t especially love (and I’m normally a big fan of it). By the time they finally get to China, over half the book is done. None of this necessarily makes it a bad book, but it wasn’t what I was hoping for, and I was a bit disappointed. For readers who don’t crave that adventure aspect, though (or don’t mind waiting for it), this could be a winner. It’s set right after Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species and covers some of the religious tension over it, plus it touches on English imperialism in China and the opium trade.

Historical Fiction Roundup

March 9, 2016 |

The Diviners by Libba Bray

Libba Bray’s books are really hit and miss for me. I liked the Great and Terrible Beauty series at first and then lost interest. I loathed the Printz-winning Going Bovine; it’s probably the worst book I ever finished (I really should have given up on it but I persevered, to my misery). But many acquaintances loved The Diviners and I myself love some historical fiction, so I gave this a try, with the promise to myself that I’d give up on it if it was more Going Bovine than Great and Terrible Beauty. To my delight, it wasn’t either. The main character is Evie O’Neill, a spoiled and headstrong teen who embraces the flapper life of 1920s New York, where she’s sent from Ohio after accidentally-on-purpose (alcohol was involved) revealing that she has the ability to learn things about people by holding objects that belong to them. Of course, people think it was just a party trick, but Evie knows better. She’s sent to live with her uncle, who runs an occult museum and who is soon tasked by the police to help solve murders that have occult overtones. Evie becomes involved, naturally, as she’s not about to let her uncle have all the “fun.”

I loved Evie a lot as a character, though I’m not sure I could handle being her friend. She’s outspoken and stands up for herself and her friends. She’s energetic and embraces life, but she uses a lot of that energy to hide significant unhappiness. The story is told in third person and occasionally switches perspectives to other “diviners” like Evie who have supernatural powers and are connected to the murders in some way. It also occasionally switches to the murderer, and these sections are truly creepy (the murders themselves are paranormal in nature as well). Whereas in Going Bovine, I felt like Bray just threw a bunch of things together and hoped it would stick (it didn’t), The Diviners was planned and executed so well, with sophisticated writing, multiple interesting subplots, layered characters, and extraordinary period detail, plus a good dose of humor. The 1920s aren’t my favorite years to read about, but I was fascinated with the New York Bray portrayed. This is a winner and the first book by Libba Bray that I truly loved.

A Madness so Discreet by Mindy McGinnis

I usually avoid stories about insane asylums since I find them really depressing (yet I still love reading dystopias, go figure). But I’m working my way through all of my library’s YA audiobooks rather quickly and this one at least involved historical crime-fighting and, more to the point, was currently available, so I checked it out. I’m glad I did – it was excellent, though certainly not a happy read. It’s the late 19th century and Grace’s family has put her in the “care” of an insane asylum because she’s pregnant – by her own father. The asylum is a miserable place that regularly abuses its patients, dispensing dubious “treatment” that’s more like torture. Such treatment was common at the time, though as McGinnis writes in her author’s note at the end, better asylums did exist. Such an asylum is where Grace lands after she’s rescued by a doctor – a psychologist – who is pioneering what we now regard as criminal profiling. He noticed Grace’s sharp observational skills and that she does not belong in an asylum and takes her on as an apprentice. In order to keep her away from her sociopathic father, they fake her death. Of course, she’s still living in an asylum, since it’s where Dr. Thornhollow practices, but she has a purpose to her life and a reason to live, something she thought she’d never have – she would have been handed right back to her father after giving birth.

There’s a lot going on in this book, but it’s all tied together so well. There’s the historical aspects: the infancy of criminal profiling, treatment for the insane, how asylums were often used as a way of disposing of “inconvenient” women (pregnant, outspoken, or odd). There’s a central murder mystery which Grace and Dr. Thornhollow work together to solve. And there’s Grace’s personal story, which comes to a head at the end and combines elements of the murder mystery and criminal profiling, pulling everything together. It’s a dark book with a dark ending, though ultimately hopeful as well. It’s feminist throughout, marked by deep and meaningful female friendships, unconventional justice, and a feminist man in Dr. Thornhollow, who doesn’t demand recognition for simply being decent. Not gory, but also not for the faint of heart due to its disturbing subject matter, this is well-written historical fiction, a stellar example of its genre.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi

This was a re-read from my childhood. I remember being delighted by the mystery when I was a kid (sometime in late elementary school, probably); it was likely one of the first mysteries I ever read aside from Nancy Drew, and it was a much more dangerous one with much more risk than Nancy ever encountered. This time around, I was curious to see if the story as a whole held up (it did) and I was fascinated much more by the historical aspects and Charlotte’s character arc. Charlotte is not particularly likable at first. She’s naive and snobbish and buys completely into the worldview she’s been taught, even when it goes against her own instincts. But she changes, she grows, and by the end of the story, she’s taken her life entirely into her own hands, not to mention made amends for her previous actions. This is perfectly written for its target age group of late elementary/middle school kids, with plenty of twists and turns and enough clues for a savvy kid to pick up on what’s going on – just before Charlotte does. Still a winner.

Recent Reads That Didn’t Work for Me

March 2, 2016 |

I’ve gotten a lot better at giving up on books that just aren’t working for me, but occasionally I persevere, pushing through to the end. In the case of these two titles, I recognized that the writing was technically good and the plots were interesting to me on paper (pun intended), but I just never got sucked in the way I normally do with a great book.

The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Vol. 1: At the Edge of Empire by Daniel Kraus

This is a book in search of the right reader. It’s about seventeen year old Zebulon, and it begins with his life in the latter part of the 19th century. Raised in privilege, he rails against his absent father and his coddling mother who wants nothing for his life that he himself wants. He runs away and becomes…a gangster, in a bit of a roundabout way. It starts small, with petty theft and impersonation of members of the Black Hand, but then grows much larger, until he’s committing regular acts of violence for a living. This way of life gets him killed. Only he doesn’t die, not quite. He continues to exist, in a sort of zombie-like way, but without the need to eat brains. He doesn’t need to eat anything, actually. Or drink. Or breathe. He can’t have sex, either, which is a bit of a downer. And he can’t heal, allowing Kraus to imbue the story with a bit of a horror touch. But he continues to exist.

This makes him a curiosity, and it brings him to the attention of all sorts of unsavory people. He becomes part of a freak show, participates in experiments with a mad doctor, fights in World War I, spends time as a bootlegger, and on. He himself is an unsavory character, which makes him interesting; it’s not yet clear whether his story arc will be redemptive, but I don’t think it needs to be. Kraus gives Zebulon a distinctive voice and a vibrant personality, and his adventures should have been more interesting to me than they were. Instead, I grew tired of the episodic nature of the novel. It’s a catalog of Zebulon’s life, and that life is certainly a unique one, but I prefer my stories to go places, and to get there a little more quickly. This is a book for patient readers who like the weird and have contemplated what it would be like to live for a hundred years and never grow old.

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

It’s possible that Jennifer Donnelly’s books just aren’t for me. I read A Northern Light, her book that garnered a Printz Honor, and was underwhelmed, contrary to the opinion of pretty much everyone else. But she writes historical fiction about girls trying live independent lives in times when it was much more difficult, and that’s always been one of my genre kryptonites. Jo Montfort is from a wealthy family and anticipates that she’ll soon be engaged to a young man from another wealthy family, a friend whom she actually does like – but doesn’t love. What she really wants, much more than getting married, is to be a journalist like Nellie Bly. When her father dies, supposedly in an accident, her life is thrown upside down. She soon discovers that it wasn’t an accident at all – he was murdered. She teams up with another journalist, Eddie, and the two grow closer as they unravel what really happened.

My main issue with this book was its length. Some books deserve to be 500 pages, but I don’t feel like this one warranted it. There was a lot of repetition as Jo fretted over the danger of what she was doing, over her new feelings for Eddie, over her desire to be a journalist versus her family’s pressure to make a good marriage, over the thought that her father could have been betrayed by someone close to her. These are all valid things to fret about, but so much time is spent on it that it slows the pace of the novel. It felt tedious instead of exciting. Additionally, I knew who the culprit was pretty soon in the novel, but it’s likely teen readers who have less experience with historical mysteries won’t. This is another novel for patient readers (perhaps I’m less patient than most?) who would love getting sucked into 19th century New York. It’s got a little bit of everything for them: murder, mystery, romance, friendship, and lots of period detail.