A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

April 27, 2016 |

What if the Sherlock Holmes stories were real?

Brittany Cavallaro explores this idea in her debut novel, A Study in Charlotte, set in a private boarding school in Connecticut and featuring the descendants of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. James (called Jamie, despite his protestations) Watson has been sent to the American high school on a rugby scholarship, and it just so happens that it’s the same school attended by Charlotte Holmes, a direct descendant of Sherlock. The two resemble their ancestors in personality, and just like Sherlock and John, they strike up a tense sort of friendship. When a student is found murdered and suspicion thrown on the them, they start investigating it on their own in order to clear their names.

Cavallaro has a ton of fun with her source material. The story is narrated by Jamie, who writes poetry and wants to be a writer like John (Arthur Conan Doyle is referred to as John’s literary agent, a fun little detail). Charlotte, like her famous relative, is a drug user and not very good with people, though she is a brilliant detective. The murders and attacks on the students at the school are all copycats of the cases the original Watson wrote about at the turn of the 19th century, which is fun not only for readers familiar with the originals, but will also spur those unfamiliar with them to pick them up. And of course, the Moriarty family makes an appearance as well. No prior knowledge is required as Jamie recaps the essentials needed to understand what’s going on.

Though the central mystery is quite good, with a number of red herrings and a couple of nice sub-mysteries, it’s the relationship between Jamie and Charlotte that provides the real sparkle and makes this a standout read. It’s a rocky relationship throughout, but it’s also deep and caring. At multiple points in the book, Jamie suspects that Charlotte may have actually committed the acts she’s suspected of, but that doesn’t prevent him from caring for her. For her part, Charlotte freely admits she is not a good person, but the fact that she knows this and tries to counteract it is what makes her press on. Cavallaro has done something pretty remarkable: made her Sherlock Holmes descendant different from her forebear in important ways (she’s not quite as antisocial, not quite as callous to Watson, admits to deeper feelings, and so on), but just as interesting.

Of course, this is all told entirely through Jamie’s eyes until the very end, where Charlotte makes a postscript, ragging a bit on Jamie’s sentimentality and correcting a few of what she sees as his errors. These dueling narratives add a bit of unreliability to the story – just how good or bad is Charlotte, really? – which I always enjoy. This unreliability is paralleled in the original Conan Doyle stories as well.

This should appeal to fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories, which are enjoying a bit of a mini-Renaissance, though they’ve always been popular. Teens on the hunt for a good mystery with interesting sleuths would love this too, even if they have zero knowledge of the source material. This is a better than average mystery and debut: it’s tons of fun with a lot of depth to its plotting as well as its characters. And that title is just perfect. Highly recommended.

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.

Recent Non-YA Reads

March 30, 2016 |

Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India by Madhur Jaffrey

Every once in a very long while, I’ll willingly read a piece of nonfiction longer than a hundred pages. This was my most recent pick, which was gifted to me by someone who knows how much I love Indian food. Madhur Jaffrey is an Indian food writer, chef, and actress, and this is her food-laced memoir of growing up in India in the 1930s and 1940s. It’s interesting both for its descriptions of the food, which are mouth-watering (a couple dozen recipes included in the back) as well as the details of her life during that time in that particular place. She writes of huge dinners where forty or more of her extended family were in attendance, and of how they got everyone in a single car to go downtown to shop (three layers of people, a child sitting on an adult lap who in turn sat on another lap). She writes extensively of the commingling of various cultures – mainly British, Muslim, and Hindu, and how her family took bits and pieces of all three. She writes about the Partition and its subsequent violence as well. Madhur’s memoir is a good pick for foodies (I craved mangoes badly after reading this and haven’t stopped craving them) as well as those who are simply interested in this part of the world during the 30s and 40s. Madhur’s writing is steady and descriptive, providing an individual account of everyday life in a time and place many of us here are not familiar with.

Goodbye Stranger by Rebecca Stead

I’m a little torn on Rebecca Stead. I thought her Newbery winner, When You Reach Me, was a lovely book and a great pick for the Newbery, but I can’t say that I loved it. Ditto First Light, which had a similar sort of subtle SF bent to it. Goodbye Stranger is probably my least favorite of hers, though I will admit that it’s well-written and finely crafted and would certainly appeal to a certain kind of middle grade reader. Such a reader wouldn’t have been me at that age, though. It consists of two different story threads that ultimately converge, one in third person and another in second person. Second person narration is tricky, but overall this worked, and quick readers will pick up on who the “you” is soon enough. It’s difficult to say exactly what this story is about; there’s no good elevator pitch for it. It’s about friendship and bullying and first love. It features a girl, Bridge, who was in a terrible car accident a few years ago and is still recovering from how it changed her life, in ways not readily visible. It also features her two friends, one of whom is being pressured to send progressively more revealing photos to a boy. And then there’s Sherm, who befriends Bridge and has his own backstory. If I had to come up with a pithy description of the plot, I’d say it’s about a group of middle schoolers growing up. Which isn’t terribly descriptive. It doesn’t have enough of a plot to satisfy seventh grade Kimberly, but I’m sure there are other seventh graders who will enjoy reading about these kids’ ordinary – but not necessarily boring – lives.

Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick

Though I buy all the picture books for my workplace, I don’t get much time to actually sit down and look through them. I made a point to pick this one up after it won the Caldecott, and I can see why it got the honor. Sophie Blackall’s illustrations are quite child-friendly, I think, but what stuck out to me most is actually Mattick’s story. I had no idea Winnie the Pooh was based on an actual bear, and Mattick’s real-life connection to the real-life Winnie is lovely to read about. The way she frames it – as a conversation between herself and her son, ultimately revealing to him that the man in the story is her own grandfather, whom he is named for – is sentimental without being saccharine. It turns the traditional bedtime story into something very personal and profound.

Princeless: Raven the Pirate Princess Book 1: Captain Raven and the All-Girl Pirate Crew by Jeremy Whitley, Ted Brandt, and Rosy Higgins

March 16, 2016 |

I wrote about how much I loved Princeless before. I didn’t think it would be possible to love its spin-off more, but I think I do. Raven the Pirate Princess follows Raven, a pirate princess who was due to inherit her father’s ship – until her brothers betrayed her, locking her in a tower to be “rescued.” The girls in Princeless don’t wait around for a rescuer, though, and when Raven escapes, she sets about hiring her own pirate crew to get revenge. This first volume chronicles her attempts to do this, and it’s funny and exciting and entertaining the whole way through.

The cast is diverse (at most, three out of the five main crew are white, with varying body types and sexual orientations, and Raven herself is Asian) and the social commentary is pure genius. I literally laughed out loud during the interview process in the bar, where man after man walks up to Raven, hoping to be hired with pitches like “I’ve always been really into Eastern Pirate culture” and “I always thought it would be cool to work for a female captain…you know, she could be all stern but sexy” and “You’re probably not even a real pirate girl. I bet you don’t even know what Captain Fraction’s name was before he changed it!” And more. It’s like a bingo card of every tired, offensive, “innocuous” thing ever said to nerd girls, Asian girls, powerful girls…girls in general. Oh god, I love this whole scene so much, I want to hug it. Whitley manages to give each of the five main characters distinct personalities in a limited number of pages, and the art by Brandt and Higgins is expressive and builds these characters just as much as the writing does. Flashbacks are at times a little hard to pick up on right away – I didn’t notice anything artistically that marked a flashback, and there are no dates or “three years earlier” or anything like that. Still, context eventually got me there. For well-read comics fans, there are a few cameos, too, which are unnecessary to understand the story, but are nice little Easter eggs for those who notice them.

I’d say this book is for an audience a bit older than that of Princeless proper. I opted to place it in our teen section in the library, whereas Princeless is in our juvenile section. There’s nothing hugely objectionable, but a lot of the jokes would go over the heads of tweens and younger kids, and they’d likely not understand much of anything that happens in the bar scene, which takes up a big chunk of the book. There’s a bit more violence, too, and the characters are all 16 and up. Highly recommended.

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.