STACKED

books

A Couple of Quick Reviews

|

Stray by Elissa Sussman
Elissa Sussman’s debut novel reworks the Cinderella story in a pretty unique way. Rather than focus on the orphan girl or her stepsisters, Stray focuses on the fairy godmother. In Sussman’s world, young ladies are to keep to The Path – a strict set of rules for behavior – and if they don’t, they’re exiled. All girls have some level of magic within them, but The Path mandates that they exercise tremendous control over it and basically never use it. Aislynn, unfortunately, can’t keep her magic contained, and at the ball where she hopes to meet a prince and fall in love, she loses control. She’s sent a school to learn how to be a Fairy Godmother to some other princess, a school where The Path is enforced even more strictly. It’s Aislynn’s last chance. If she fails at this task, she’ll be exiled – she’ll be a stray.

I really liked the premise of the book, and thought the main idea behind The Path – that girls must always restrain what makes them unique, what makes them magical – was an interesting one that rings true even in our own non-magical world. Magic is a fantastic metaphor for so many things: girls’ voices or bodies or talents or smarts or humor or anything else that might make men uncomfortable, and therefore must be locked away. I also liked the twist on the fairy godmother, which was quite creative and not something I’d seen before.

There were also some pretty major problems: sketchy world-building (I never quite understood how the magic system worked), a lot of loose ends that just seem dropped rather than deliberately unresolved, and rough, unpolished writing. Stray has some great ideas, but I don’t think anyone would be surprised it’s a debut. Still, the faults don’t completely outweigh the good stuff; this is a worthwhile read. Recommended for readers looking for feminist fantasy or fairy tale re-tellings.

Review copy provided by a friend.

Starlight’s Edge by Susan Waggoner
I am such a sucker for alien books, so I was immediately drawn to Susan Waggoner’s first novel in this series, Neptune’s Tears. Though it had a terrific concept, the book as a whole was pretty mediocre. And yet, there I found myself several months later, reading the sequel, eager to find out what happened next to the characters. That’s the problem (can you call it a problem?) with books with great ideas – even when they’re executed poorly, the ideas are still great.

This is a big spoiler for those of you who haven’t read the first book – it turns out the “aliens” that landed on Earth in the 23rd century were not aliens at all. They’re humans from 1,500 years in the future, sent back to rescue Earth’s literature and art before it’s mostly destroyed in a series of imminent meteor strikes. I was a bit bummed that there weren’t any aliens, but I didn’t care that much because instead I had time travel, and that’s nearly as awesome. In this sequel, Zee travels to David’s home time, leaving everything behind that she’s ever known.

There are a fair number of time travel books around in the YA world, but not many that take it as far as 1500+ years in the future. The opportunities for futuristic technology are really exciting to think about, and Waggoner does provide some cool stuff. Reading about Zee’s acclimation to this unfamiliar time is intriguing. There are other time travelers from the past and they form a sort of support group, giving the reader a window into lots of different time periods, not just Zee’s and David’s. The story takes a turn in the later part of the book, where David travels back in time to Pompeii – another idea that I loved.

The problem with this book, and with its predecessor, is that not much is fleshed out. The books are very short and there’s a lot of plot. They feel more like an outline than a novel. I never got a great feel for the characters and what made them tick. There are interesting details in both time periods, but neither feels fully-formed and alive. There’s just too much shoved into not enough pages. Still, I enjoyed the read, and it wasn’t a bad way to spend a couple of hours. Readers who can’t get enough of time travel may find this worth their time.

Book borrowed from my library.

The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod

|

Sometimes, you read a book and it hits all of the notes perfectly. Other times, you read a book and it misses them.

The Law of Loving Others falls more into the second category.

Emma is a high school junior at a boarding school in Pennsylvania. The story takes place during the twoish weeks of winter break, when she and boyfriend Daniel head back to their homes in the New York City suburbs and the city itself respectively. When Emma arrives home, she’s greeted by her mother who isn’t entirely the person she remembers her to be. Her mom’s making strange statements about her clothing not being the stuff she owns and that the world around her is out to get her.

Before long, Emma’s mother is sent to the hospital, then on to an assisted living medical facility for treatment of a bad bout with schizophrenia. It’s a disease she’s had her entire life, but it’s entered into a flare up unlike any Emma has seen before.

Throughout her mother’s time away, Emma finds herself questioning the strength of her relationship with Daniel. He’s not there in the way she thinks he should be. She wants him to always be waiting for her, to always be reassuring her that he loves her, that no matter what she needs, he’ll be there waiting. He does love her, and he is there for her, but as Emma comes to figure out, he’s not a mind reader and he can’t possibly offer more to Emma than he already is. It’s Emma who complicates things more when she begins to spend time with Philip, someone she knows through a friend and whose brother is also at the same facility her mother is at. It took no time for them to dive into a very physical relationship, borne from their shared desires to be close to someone in their grief and sadness.

While Emma navigates her romantic life, as well as the challenges of her family life, something else is scratching at the back of her mind, too: what if she finds herself experiencing the symptoms of schizophrenia? Can someone love her if she, too, becomes mentally unwell? Her paranoia grows throughout, as she senses the anxiety in her own life becoming more and more problematic. Thinking about this makes her want to know more about the relationship between her own mother and father. How do they operate? How did they operate when her illness had been bad before she was born? This thinking is one of the things she can’t separate from her own relationship with Daniel.

Axelrod’s debut novel has a lot to enjoy. In many ways, it’s the romantic relationship in this book that’s most memorable and noteworthy. Emma’s desire to know how relationships work — as well as her own decisions in testing hers — are realistic and explored in a way that I haven’t seen in YA. There’s meat to how she wonders about her own parents and about the way relationships ebb and flow. Likewise, the manner in which Emma faces her own fears about her own mental status and the potential future of her own health are at times tough to read. With schizophrenia having an average age of diagnosis of 25, Emma knows she’s not out of the woods yet.

That said, many things in this book didn’t work.

This isn’t a YA novel for teen readers. While it’ll appeal to teen readers, it’s a YA novel for adult readers or, more realistically, it’s an adult novel with teen main characters. The writing feels so distant and removed, and the ways that the teens are rendered here are fantasies. The freedoms they have at boarding school — as told through reminiscent, dream-like flashbacks — are hard to believe. These teens read like college juniors attending a college, rather than high school juniors attending a high school. There are drug parties, a wildly deep college course catalog and opportunities for study, plenty of drinking, and almost too much freedom from any authority. While Emma has her parents present in the story, the setting at boarding school felt far too convenient. Not only was it convenient, but it permitted that dreamlike fantasy and more, it highlighted her privilege. Sure, her dad was a teacher at a great local school, but it was her parents who encouraged her to attend this school. Sure, it was so she wouldn’t have to potentially face her mother’s illness when it hit (though she did anyway). But ultimately, it was flimsy and cardboard and far more about developing a nice fantasy world for her to have when she had to face the tough realities of her home life and her relationship with Daniel.

There’s quite a bit of sex and discussion of sex in this book, and none of it feels authentic to the teen experience. Emma has had sex with three people, and while that’s believable, the fact none of her narrative experiences involve an ounce of awkwardness, messiness, or humor is hard to swallow. Both Daniel and Phil know how to get her off quickly and painlessly, and the sex becomes a balm to her. It’s weird because teen sex — even sex in adulthood — isn’t this easy or carefree or hygienic. More, the way that Emma narrates a sexual encounter with Daniel is well beyond her maturity or experience at 16 (maybe 17) years old.

From the onset, I could see the strings being pulled. Daniel’s mother was a doctor of mental health, and even at the beginning of the book, before we discover there’s a problem with Emma’s mother, she’s offering Emma an opportunity to talk. She presses Emma, too, asking if she’s feeling any anxiety, any worry, anything out of sorts herself. Then when Emma’s mother is sent to the group home for therapy, it’s Daniel’s mom that Emma turns to. It was too easy an out, and it was too conveniently placed. While there’s no denying that Emma had a big challenge in front of her and she grieved deeply, she had too many parachutes into which she could fall. There weren’t enough brick walls to force her to push farther or harder.

Emma herself isn’t particularly complex, nor is she particularly memorable. She’s not a “likable” nor an “unlikable” character. While she does dumb things and is certainly not winning girlfriend of the year (she cheats on Daniel!), none of the consequences of those actions feel that detrimental. There are outs all over the place for her, and she lets herself have them. She left me feeling nothing toward her, which might be her downfall as a character. She’s there and that’s about it. One thing that did stand out about her — and it stood out because it’s a rare thing to see in YA — is that she’s ethnically Jewish.

The Law of Loving Others reminded me a lot of Nina de Gramont’s The Gossip of the Starlings, even though thematically they don’t have a whole lot in common. Instead, Axelrod’s writing and execution felt very adult, rather than teen, and I can’t figure out why this book is being marketed for YA, rather than adult. This is a romanticized, dreamy take on the teen experience, rather than a grittier, messier, truer version. It feels sanitized. While I think it has appeal to readers looking for a realistic novel about a parent struggling with mental illness, as well as a story that looks at romance through the lens of what makes a relationship work or not work, there’s little that makes it stand out loudly and strongly from what else is out there. It’s more of a palate cleanser: it achieves its purpose, even if it’s not particularly fresh or noteworthy. This is a solid example of YA for adults that you could easily pass along to adult readers.

The Law of Loving Others is available now. Review copy received from the publisher. 

Reviews: Two Recent Historical Fiction Reads

|

Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little
I talked about this one a little in my post about the dearth of ancient historical fiction titles not set in Egypt, Greece, or Rome. This book is unique because it’s set in ancient Mesopotamia, both the wide open desert and the many cities located within the region. It’s the story of Jayden, a member of a nomadic tribe that travels in the desert from oasis to oasis. She’s been engaged to a cousin (by friendship, not blood) since she was a little girl, and her engagement ceremony nears. The cousin, Horeb, will be king of their tribe once his father dies, making Jayden their queen. Jayden’s older sister was engaged to Horeb’s older brother, who died during a raid. Jayden loves the desert life, but her sister has become disenchanted with it and wants to live in one of the cities, becoming a priestess of one of the local goddesses.

The story takes a few familiar turns. Horeb is awful, as can be expected. A stranger from the southern lands – where the valuable frankincense is plentiful – shows up, gravely injured, and is healed by Jayden’s tribe. The two fall in love, again not a surprise. This is the main conflict of the story – and it is a dangerous once, since Jayden is at the mercy of her father until she is married, after which she will be at the mercy of her husband.

There are interesting details about life during this time in this region – the importance of camels, the many uses of belly dance, the tribe’s religion, raids on other tribes, the way women gave birth in a squatting position – but it never feels completely engrossing. Jayden’s voice seems a bit naive for a girl who lives the very hard desert life. Some events also don’t make sense: The men ostensibly keep a close eye on the women, but Jayden and her sister seem to go to the local city and its temple as they wish. The tribe also doesn’t notice or care when one of the city girls shows up at a tribal dance, despite the tribe’s mistrust of the city people. The story feels a bit meandering, particularly during the first half, which is taken up with a lot of travel and not much else. This won’t win over readers looking for a terrific story, but it should be engaging enough for people interested in lesser-known times and places.

(The author states in her historical note that she deliberately did not describe her characters’ skin tone, as scholars are divided on what color such people’s skin tone actually was. But the cover shows a pretty light-skinned girl, which I’m sure surprises nobody.)

A Brief History of Montmaray by Michelle Cooper
I’ve continued my historical fiction binge with this (somewhat) older title from 2008. This is a book I’ve heard subdued chatter about consistently since its publication, chatter that pops up again each time a sequel is released. It’s set in a fictional island country called Montmaray, located in the Atlantic Ocean near Britain and France, in 1936. The book is Sophie’s diary, and it tells of her life on Montmaray with her little sister Henrietta (Henry), her crazy uncle (the king), her cousin Victoria (the king’s daughter), a surly housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s son Simon, whom Sophie has quite a crush on. Sophie’s parents are both dead, and her older brother – the heir, since women cannot inherit the monarchy – is away at school in England. Occasionally they’re visited by their friends Anthony and Julia via airplane, but for the most part, their lives are completely isolated. The other inhabitants of the island mostly died during World War I, or moved away afterward.

People tell me this has a very I Capture the Castle feel, but since I’ve never read that book, I can’t say. It does feel a little old-fashioned, in a sweet way. It’s not particularly exciting and not much happens until the end, but the journey is still interesting. The first part of the novel is very much a slice-of-life sort of story. The setting is intriguing and the relationships between the characters feel authentic (Sophie and her siblings share a secret language, and the whole family is close-knit but can also be quite prickly with each other). It’s kind of incredible to think about these teenagers running around unsupervised on this tiny island that they literally rule – if that means anything when there’s no one to rule over. Of course, the harder reality of their situation is also made clear: no doctors, no luxuries, and nothing to protect them against the onslaught of World War II. Then two Nazis show up on the island with unknown purpose, and the teens’ somewhat sedate lives take a big turn.

Sophie’s voice is great, and she’s brought to life quite well by Emma Bering (I listened to it on audio). While I do think this takes a while to get going, I did immediately begin listening to the second one upon the first’s end. It’s a different perspective on World War II than anything I’ve read before.

Reviews: Two Recent Historical Fiction Listens

|

The Mirk and Midnight Hour by Jane Nickerson
I listened to Nickerson’s first novel, Strands of Bronze and Gold (a re-telling of Bluebeard set in the antebellum South), and liked it well enough. Her second novel is in the South during the Civil War and re-tells a different legend: Tam Lin. Nickerson’s writing is slow with an emphasis on developing setting and building atmosphere. It worked pretty well in her first, but it’s less successful here. A full third of the book is purely expository. The protagonist, Violet, lives on a small plantation in the South. Her twin brother was recently killed in the war and her father remarried, then went off to fight himself, leaving Violet with a new stepmother and stepsister along with two male cousins who have come to stay. Nickerson spends a lot of time getting us acquainted with the farm, called Scuppernong, and its inhabitants, including several slaves.

About halfway through the book, Violet meets a wounded Union soldier named Thomas Lind. She dare not take him to a hospital, since he’d simply be taken captive. Thomas is being kept alive by a group of free Black people who practice hoodoo and are obviously preparing Thomas for some sort of ritual, which comes to a head at the end of the novel. This storyline is juggled awkwardly with that of the cousins at Scuppernong, one of them a young man whose intentions toward Violet and his younger cousin are anything but charitable. This would have been a stronger novel had Nickerson focused on one of these plotlines; as they exist now, they seem to be fighting each other for prominence. They don’t come together in any way by the end.

Violet’s voice is heavily accented and seems a little forced. I don’t think the narrator – Dorothy Dillingham Blue – has such a strong Southern accent naturally and it just comes across as fake. I also find books featuring hoodoo awkward when written from a white perspective, and I’m perhaps a bit tired of white Southern Civil War stories, where the white protagonist comes to the realization that people should not be owned and is lauded for it. It’s a hazard of Civil War historical fiction and it’s become cliche. A more nuanced and interesting take on slavery in a Southern plantation is Delia Sherman’s The Freedom Maze.

I don’t think this will appeal much to readers interested in Tam Lin; the retelling isn’t hugely obvious and it doesn’t even come into play until halfway through the book. Readers looking for setting and atmosphere may enjoy it, as well as readers who can’t get enough of this time period – and there are certainly those readers out there. Violet herself is an incredibly naive narrator, which may be accurate for this era when girls were meant to be quite sheltered, but it also slows the novel down some and keeps certain conclusions (mostly the cousin being a bad egg) from coming to light for much too long. I wouldn’t call this a first pick.

A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller
This novel is set in 1909 London and focuses on a teenage girl who is determined to become an artist. Vicky comes from a wealthy family and they are determined that she give up her foolish dreams and get married. She’s taking an illicit art class in Paris while she’s supposed to be at finishing school and she decides to pose nude – it’s a life drawing class, the model failed to show, and all the other male students had already posed. Of course, her act is found out by her parents and she’s sent back home to London in scandal.

Her parents arrange for an engagement to a young man, a gambler who seems nice and whom Vicky believes may just be progressive enough to pay for tuition at the Royal College of Art. Vicky doesn’t mind marrying him if it means she can pursue her dream. The problem is, she starts to fall in love with a young police officer she met while sketching the suffragettes at a rally. Her life becomes a series of deceptions – sneaking away to meet the police officer (who has become her muse), sketching the suffragettes and eventually using her artistic talent to help them (a cause with which her parents heartily disagree), and applying for a scholarship to the art college.

Waller does a good job of showing Vicky as being progressive for her time but also caught up in its prevailing ideals. She can’t see a way to achieve her dreams beyond a man agreeing to give it to her. At the same time, she keeps pushing for a way to make it happen, and some of her actions would be considered progressive even for our own time (posing nude, for example). The suffragette storyline is a great subplot and helps give Vicky an arc – she realizes she has to fight for this cause if she ever wants to make her own dreams come true, that she can’t rely on others to do it for her. She’s a strong-willed protagonist who also seems like she belongs to her time, a fine line to walk in feminist historical fiction.

This is a great example of what historical fiction can be: a snapshot of a certain place at a certain time featuring an interesting protagonist in interesting circumstances. Readers wanting to know more about the suffragette movement in England would do well to pick this up – it features a number of real prominent figures in the movement and focuses on the force-feeding of the imprisoned women, a real-life occurrence which I know will be new to many readers. Katharine McEwan narrates Vicky’s story well, injecting personality into Vicky’s voice and slightly voicing the other characters.

Both audiobooks borrowed from my local library.

On Grief and Finding Love Unexpected: The Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds and The Carnival at Bray by Jessie Ann Foley

|

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve read two books that traversed some really similar themes and rather than review them at length in separate posts, I thought it would make more sense to review them together. Both explore grief and loss with a hopeful edge that comes from also finding a sweet, satisfying — even if not necessarily easy — romance.

These are also both titles that do one of my favorite things in realistic fiction: they showcase how you can bloom where you’re planted when the choice of where you are is outside your control.

Jason Reynolds’s sophomore novel, The Boy in the Black Suit, takes what he did great in his first book and makes it sing even louder.

After Matt’s mother dies, he finds himself looking for a job or an internship. He’s going to school part-time in order to gain work experience in those afternoons. It’s a way for him to escape his father’s own spiraling grief and challenges.

When Matt arrives at the local greasy, fast food chicken joint, he’s prepared for the work, even if it’s not something that interests him in the least — and even if it means dealing with obnoxious, rude customers, as he witnesses when he’s there filling out the application.

But when an offer to work at a local funeral home comes his way, he can’t pass it up, even if he’s hesitant to be working in a world of grief close to his own. It’s through witnessing those funerals, though, and seeing how other people process their losses, that Matt is better able to process his own.

It’s at one of the funerals, though, where Matt stumbles across Lovey. She looks familiar, and he realizes that’s because she’s the girl who he saw at the fast food joint when he went to apply who had been dealing with rowdy customers. Soon, the two of them begin talking, then spending time together, then finding themselves falling for one another.

Reynolds’s story is a quieter one, featuring the kind of character we don’t see enough of in YA: a realistic black boy who — while living in a tough part of Brooklyn and dealing with family and friends who aren’t always making smart choices — is himself intelligent, hard-working, and builds solid relationships with his friends, with his boss at work, and ultimately, Lovey. He isn’t stereotyped in any way, and he’s also not rendered as a boy who is all feelings, even though he has plenty of them. Rather, he’s fully fleshed, dynamic, and his story has a fulfilling arc. It’s hopeful, but it’s also imperfect. There’s exceptional compassion extended to Matt, and there’s exceptional compassion extended from him, too.

What stood out to me in this story was the way the relationship between Matt and Lovey grew. This is a sweet and realistic romance, one that’s tentative at times, and it’s one that’s not immediately nor easily rewarded. Since both are working through personal grief and change, it’s hard for them to be emotionally available to one another, even when they want to be that way. This is a slow-build and satisfying storyline, which begs readers to root for both characters and their successes alone and together.

The funeral home job element made this story unique, as did its gritty, urban setting. The juxtaposition is, at times, uncomfortable. But that’s purposeful, and it makes Matt’s voice and perspective shine even stronger. This is a quick read, despite being a quieter one. Hand The Boy in the Black Suit to readers looking for urban-set fiction, for those seeking a nice male-led romance or male-led story about grief and loss, or those looking for something “different” in realistic YA fiction — this isn’t the go-to pick for those who love the best-selling titles. Readers interested in an intergenerational relationship will appreciate Matt and his boss’s connections, and those looking for a good male friendship story will appreciate Matt and Chris’s relationship, too.

Jessie Ann Foley’s The Carnival at Bray had the set up of everything I dislike: a 90s setting that served the purpose of being so for the grunge music and to avoid the social media/mobile phone reality of today. 

But I loved it. 
When Maggie’s mother remarried Colm, they — along with her younger sister Ronnie — move to Bray, a small area on the Eastern shore or Ireland. It’s a lonely time in a new place for Maggie, but she’s buoyed by her uncle Kevin’s letters and packages, as well as by the boy she’s run into who she can’t keep her eyes off of, even if she has no idea who he is or what he’s about. For a short time, Maggie keeps herself occupied with her new friend Aine, but it’s not a great friendship. Aine has little interest in Maggie as a person, but in Maggie as a way to spend time with her boyfriend Paddy. 

But when Kevin dies unexpectedly, Maggie has to reassess her life as it is and figure out how to make a life in the place she’s been planted best she can. There is an adventure to be had, though, when Maggie discovers a letter her mom has hidden from her, where her uncle Kevin has left her a pair of tickets to see Nirvana in Italy, telling her to take the boy with her. Maggie hems and haws about it, being a good girl like she is, but then she and Eoin take the adventure. It costs them both deeply. 

What was great: this wasn’t about the music as portrayed in the book. It was about the power of music, period. It was about fulfilling that dream of seeing a band you love and being part of a crowd of other people who are sharing an experience with you, but not necessarily sharing the exact same experience you are. It’s about friendship and about the challenges of meeting new people and learning to trust their intentions. It’s about romance and finding someone who gets you, through thick and thin. It’s, even more, about family. The relationship between Maggie and her mother is rendered so well and so painfully, and the relationship between Maggie and her sister Ronnie is so a relationship between a 16-year-old girl and her 11-year-old sister. But more, it was the Kevin-Maggie relationship I loved most. 

Foley’s use of setting is really great, and the use of third person was surprising and perfect for this story. The writing itself was smooth, and in the first sex scene of the book — not one between Maggie and Eoin, but Maggie and another boy — it was awkward and written in an honest manner that handled it better than many first-person narratives do. But this isn’t a book where sex matters much. Rather, what makes it good is the longing we get from Maggie and how much she yearns and craves something physical from Eoin, and he doesn’t press her for it. Instead, we see intimacy — they shared a bed, fully clothed, and it’s that which Maggie lets linger and sustain her through the separation they have.

This isn’t a big story — Kevin’s death and subsequent understanding of why and how he died isn’t a huge part of the book — and it reads quickly, but there’s a lot of story packed in here. This is a story about love and loss, about learning how to make a life and a living when everything that had been a part of your life is torn away, by forces you can never understand. It’s about choices other people make and how deeply they impact you personally. 

I’d avoided picking this one up because of the time period setting, even after it was named a Morris finalist. The 90s setting is a convenience in the story; there’s no way that Maggie would have gotten away with a cross-continental trip in the same way with modern technology, and there’s no way the final moments of the story, which happen at a concert after Kurt Cobain’s death was announced, would have happened, either. Fortunately, these conveniences for the purpose of plot weren’t distracting and didn’t overshadow the strengths of the story or of the voice. I suspect most readers won’t be paying attention to those workarounds. 
Hand The Carnival at Bray to readers who love foreign settings, as well as those who like a story set in another era. This is the kind of book that fans of Melina Marchetta will dig, especially for how it portrays the complexities of family relationships. There’s an excellent intergenerational relationship between Maggie and an older man in Bray, and there’s an interesting — and surprisingly refreshing — religious school that plays a notable part in the story.