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Three historical novels, quick review style

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I’ve read a ton of books for Cybils lately, and there is no possible way I could get through all of the reading and write up full reviews for each of the titles. But I can offer shorter reviews of a number of titles — and I’m going to quit calling them Twitter-style because, well, I can’t even pretend they’re that short. Alas, here are three historical novels, covering three vastly different time periods.

Purple Daze by Sherry Shahan follows six teens growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles during 1965, a year of war, civil unrest, and much more. Told through verse, the book reads quickly, but left me wanting a lot. The characters are underdeveloped figments of what they could be — they each become a representation of an issue, down to a girl giving herself a coat hanger abortion, a boy being drafted to war in Vietnam, a boy choosing to drop out and join the Marines, and so forth. The thing is, they could have been full and powerful, but instead, things stand in for development.

There’s an overwhelming sense of nostalgia at play in the story and it chokes any potential rise and fall in character arc. We know what kind of razors one of the girl uses (Lady Schick), but that’s about it. Given that verse is a challenging format to develop strong, definitive characters within — let alone six — I felt really let down when the sparse words were to brand names.

Moreover, the use of other voices choked the narrative. Not only were there six underdeveloped characters, but then there were interludes of presidential addresses, along with briefings about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. It took me out of the story and further distanced my emotional connection with the key characters in the story. What could have been an emotional knock out given the era became one note: flat.

It felt like the point of the book was to educate and little more. A good story, especially a good historical, does that without being obvious. This one made it obvious to the point of leaving me curious why there needed to be six characters in the first place. The writing left much to be desired, and the nostalgia factor won’t win over the intended teen readership. Other books do this better, stronger, and without sacrificing story for sentiment.

The Year We Were Famous by Carole Estby Dagg follows mother-daughter duo Helga and Clara (who is the 17-year-old daughter) as they embark on a cross-country walk from their small town in western Washington state to New York City, all of which is based on a true story from the author’s family. It’s 1896 and the family farm is in trouble; money is hard to come by, and the family doesn’t want to give up what they have. After trying to come up with a solution, Helga decides to respond to a publisher’s advertisement offering a $10,000 prize for someone who could make the journey across country, by foot, in months.

The time period for the novel is spot on, and the journey is enjoyable. I think I found this novel so fascinating because it was based on true events, and it’s a road trip before the concept of the road trip existed. Dagg’s novel works well in its diary format, as Clara depicts the journey well and in a believable teen voice. One of the challenges I had with this format though was the interspersing of letters inside. Clara kept postal communication with her family and with a reporter she met in Utah, and when those sneak into her diary, the story slows to a crawl. It takes the reader out of the adventure; even though it’s not info dumping, per se, it has a similar effect in providing too much tell and not enough show.

My biggest challenge with the book, though, was there wasn’t enough character development. We get the adventure and the weariness of walking (imagine walking that far – my mind still spins thinking about that and how there weren’t the road conveniences we had so they had to rely on the kindness of strangers), but we don’t really get enough of who Clara is. I wanted to know more about her; it’s here I fault the format because the diary doesn’t quite offer enough opportunity for internal thought here. It’s instead a record of events.

That said, this book was an enjoyable read, and it’s one I can see having huge appeal to younger teens and even for those tween readers who read up. Content isn’t really an issue here. An interesting time period, as well, and one I don’t think there is much about, especially when it comes to American events and experiences. Plus, it’s reverse what you’d expect — rather than a movement west, it’s a movement east.

Taking Off by Jenny Moss takes place in 1986, right before the launching of the Challenger, where we find 18-year-old Annie struggling to decide what it is she wants to do with her life. She lives near Houston and the space center, and her entire life has sort of amid this bubble of people who are career-driven and are eager to get out in the world and do Big Things. Annie isn’t sure she wants that though. She loves writing poetry (and this is sort of a secret, actually, since no one would ever take that seriously as an ambition), and she really likes her boyfriend Mark. Why leave a place that’s good for her?

Then she meets Christa McCuliffe at a friend’s dinner party, and her mind starts shifting. Suddenly, she’s looking at this ambitious teacher who is so down to earth and friendly, and Annie begins to realize that maybe getting outside of her comfort zone is something she needs to do. Not just that, but Annie is determined to watch Christa launch into space, and she convinces her father to take her to Florida to watch the launch. Despite knowing how that story ends, it’s still sort of surprising, and that’s a huge credit to Moss. She captures what I presume the emotions surrounding the launch well; I say presume because I was a baby when it happened, but I experienced every emotion Annie did in those moments following lift off.

For me, this book was all about Annie. She was such an interesting character to me, and I related to her in a lot of ways. I feel like a lot of what I thought about as a high school senior were the things she was thinking about, and Moss captured the emotions of feeling lost and clueless spot on, without making Annie sound like a wimp or like she was hopeless. In fact, I felt Annie had a lot more to offer than she gave herself credit for, and when she has her moment of realizing what her dreams really were, I felt the journey to get there paid off.

My biggest problem with the novel, though, came down to not believing how quickly Annie could attach herself to Christa’s story. They met by chance at a dinner party, though Annie had read about her in a magazine. I expected more of a fascination with Christa pre-party to make the post-party obsession more believable; Annie makes a journey half way across the country to see her launch into space, yet I didn’t quite buy the emotional ties here. Pushing this a little more would have made the story tighter and more powerful. Teens fixate on those they admire, and given how much Annie found herself fixating internally, I was a little let down how quickly and radically she connects to Christa.

The romance is sweet, and the story itself is one you could hand over to teens of any age. Although I question why so many novels lately have been set in the 1980s (a combination of a lack of technological conveniences and the fact it’s probably a time period a lot of authors are familiar with because of their own experiences), this one works because it’s actually about a historical event.

Making an Exit by Sarah Murray

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It’s been a while since I’ve talked about a non-fiction book, and admittedly, it’s because little has struck my interest lately. I’m not a huge memoir reader, and I’m not a reader of celebrity biographies, and it seems to me that’s where a lot of the push has been lately. I’ve found fewer of the sorts of things that work well for me. But when I stumbled upon Sarah Murray’s Making an Exit, I knew I stumbled upon something that was right up my alley.

Murray’s book is an exploration of a topic most people don’t like to talk about: death. But it’s not a grim book by any means. Rather, it’s a book about the different means of celebrating or mourning the deceased that span the globe. This aspect of the book is paired with a small narrative thread that talks through the experience of Murray losing her father. Her father — who she refers to only as Fa throughout — was not a religious man, and he believed heavily in the idea that the physical body was merely “organic manner,” an idea that emerges over and over throughout the book. So for Murray, the burial aspect of his death is really quite absent, and it’s the precise reason she finds herself curious how other cultures approach grief and loss.

The two lines of the book don’t get overwhelming, and more specifically, the secondary thread about the loss of Fa is small enough that it never detracts from the greater purpose of Murray’s book. It’s rather a means of comparison and discussion, and it works as breathing room after reading about some of the heavier methods other cultures have in burial rituals. Moreover, what works so well in this book is that the chapters are not dependent upon one another, and I bring this up because it’s an important reason why this book worked for me — I love non-fiction, but sometimes, I am not always interested in the entire book. If I can skip around and not feel I’m missing out, it gives the book that much more power. That’s not to say there’s not merit in non-fiction that builds upon itself, but rather to say, a book like this one is strong because it doesn’t employ that tactic. Reading this never felt like work. Though this isn’t a fast paced book by any means, the set up permits readers to go at it leisurely. It’s the kind of book you can pick up and put down for periods of time without missing out on anything.

Perhaps most importantly, this book is never morbid. Where it could have tread that world, it didn’t. Murray skillfully explores without exploiting either the topic nor the reader.

The more interesting rituals I found included, first and foremost, the tradition in Ghana for the dead to be buried in elaborate coffins. That means instead of thinking about death like we do in America, which involves somewhat stuffy and standard coffins, Ghana tradition allows people to decide what sort of bright, elaborate or symbolic coffin they’d like to be buried in. We’re shown this in a picture at the start of the chapter, where there is a coffin made in the shape of an airplane. Murray commissions one of the top coffin makers in the country to build her a coffin in the shape of the Empire State Building. While she muses about how many could think this a strange piece of furniture to store in her living room in New York, she offers a lot of interesting insight into the idea that Ghanaians are celebrating life in death through these cheerful caskets.

Easily, the most engaging chapter for me was the one set in the Czech Republic and looked at the tradition of the ossuary. If that’s an unfamiliar term, I suppose the image might be helpful a bit — an ossuary is a cathedral of bones. The idea has always fascinated me, but I’ve never quite thought about why these things exist. Murray though has, and it turns out these were developed out of necessity of space. Centuries ago, space in burial grounds was at a premium, and rather than bury the dead as whole, it made more sense for bodies to be separated bone from flesh. The decomposition of flesh is quicker than bone, and it was easier to bury flesh, as it’s smaller than bone. The bones were put into these “cathedrals,” and the reason sometimes they’re not whole but instead are in interesting or unique displays had to do with the person in charge. It makes sense that when you’re surrounded by death, sometimes you have to have a sense of humor, right? I could have easily read an entire book on this topic because Murray approached it in such an engaging manner.

Other chapters that stuck out to me included the one about Mexico’s Day of the Dead — perhaps what struck me most about this was less the topic at hand and more the complete fascination with which Murray approaches it. I’m quite familiar with the rituals of this day, but Murray herself was unfamiliar, and the curiosity in her writing and exploration was simply fun to read. There is a respect in her tone that resonated with me as a reader, and it strengthened my trust in everything she was doing. This is the sort of experience I desire when reading a non-fiction book because it’s key to what makes the book work. If I don’t trust the authority, I can’t trust the book. Reading Making an Exit reminded me a lot of my experience in reading Eric Weiner’s The Geography of Bliss — there is a balance of respect and curiosity in the topic, and never once does the reader feel cheated or belittled in the process. These two books have an interesting conversation with one another, as both explore a heavy topic through a cross-cultural lens.

My only complaint about the book is the photography: there are black and white photos that open each chapter, and they relate to something of the ritual in the country in which the chapter’s set. However, the photos are small and only in black and white, and I found them to sort of be a lost opportunity, especially in the chapter about Ghana. I would have loved seeing the full color image, and more photos throughout would have made this book just that much stronger.

Hand this book off to readers of non-fiction, those interested in other cultures, and those who love reading about social rituals. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not at all a morbid book, despite the topic at hand, and I would have no problem handing this off to teen readers of non-fiction, even though it’s technically an adult non-fiction publication. It’s the kind of book I would have devoured in my teens, and because of the set up, it keeps the readers interested by allowing them to cherry pick what they want to read (and also has a payoff for those who read cover to cover).

Making an Exit is available now. Review copy received from the publisher.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

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In the dark of night, a monster calls at Conor’s home. He wants to tell Conor three stories, and in return, once the monster finishes his last story, Conor must tell the monster a story of his own. Something true. Conor knows what story the monster wants him to tell, but it terrifies him much more than the monster terrifies him.  
You see, Conor’s mother has cancer. She’s been ill for a while, but she reassures him constantly that she will be alright. Conor’s grandmother, his mother’s mother, has come to stay and has been trying to prepare Conor, however clumsily, for the fact that soon it will be necessary for him to live with her. She tries to make Conor see the truth, whereas his mother doesn’t believe he is ready for it. She is in denial herself.
A Monster Calls is basically an extended metaphor for loss. It’s well-written and engaging but oh so sad. So, so sad. The metaphor is built through the monster’s three stories and driven home by Conor’s own story at the end, although there is more to the book than their conversations. The monster’s three stories were far and away my favorite parts of the book. They have a fable-like quality, but they’re deceptive in that way. Just as Conor – and the reader – thinks he has figured out the message or meaning behind a story, the monster throws it on its head. The story is not what it appears, and any message it contains is more difficult to parse than Conor thought. 
Conor’s story he eventually tells is also not what you’d initially expect, but once it’s told, it’s just as true and moving as it should be.
Siobhan Dowd, who originated the concept for the book (novella, really), was prevented from writing it herself because she died of cancer before she could. Knowing that, it’s impossible to read A Monster Calls without thinking of how Dowd’s own story is weaved throughout its pages.
A Monster Calls will appeal to readers who crave something more literary. It will also certainly appeal to fans of Siobhan Dowd’s thoughtful and moving stories, but it’s very different in style and tone from Ness’ Chaos Walking. It does a credit to Ness, showing he’s capable of action-driven stories as well as quieter (but no less meaningful) tales. (Of course, both Chaos Walking and A Monster Calls are pretty depressing, but in different ways.) 
I’ve been fortunate in that I have yet to experience the loss of someone as close to me as my mother, so I wasn’t as affected by the book as someone else might be. I encourage you to read this review on Goodreads for a really moving depiction of how A Monster Calls can affect someone who’s experienced a loss like Conor’s.
Jim Kay’s dark illustrations are a good addition to the book, particularly his depictions of the monster. The monster seems to be made out of shadow, but he’s well-defined enough – with his jagged edges and looming size – to be very firmly there and not a figment of Conor’s imagination. While the book would have been good on its own, Kay’s illustrations really enhance the mood and add another level of meaning that would not have existed otherwise.
Review copy received from the publisher. A Monster Calls is available now.    

A Couple of Good, But Not Great, Dystopias

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If you’ve been following me at STACKED for any amount of time, you know how much I love dystopias. Even the ones that I know will be terrible, I gobble up. Even when they’re written in first person present tense and don’t appear to offer anything new, I will read them.
The two books I talk about briefly here are a far cry from terrible. I went into them thinking I would enjoy them a great deal, and I did, but they fell short of my (admittedly lofty) expectations. I’ll probably read the sequels, but they didn’t blow me away like I wanted them to. Sometimes when a book is within a genre I love, it’s more disappointing that it’s not spectacular than when it’s in a genre I don’t love, if that makes sense. Kelly has actually reviewed both of these books before, and I encourage you to hop on over and read her reviews if you haven’t already.

Bumped by Megan McCafferty
There are so many funny things about Bumped. I think people who outright dislike it take it much too seriously. In a way, I don’t blame them. Most dystopias are so grim they can make the reader depressed, and they’re generally short on laughs. So when that’s what you expect going in to a book, it can be hard to shake it. Luckily, Kelly told me beforehand it was a dystopian satire, although I like to think I would have figured it out on my own soon enough. It’s refreshing to be able to poke fun at a genre you enjoy while still appreciating the aspects that make that genre so alluring in the first place.
My main problem with Bumped was the ending. It suffers from series-itis: there’s no real resolution and it leaves the reader wanting more (and not in a good way). A lot of good dystopias leave big, important questions unanswered at the end of the first book, but they’re good because they still have some sort of climax, falling action, and resolution, however wimpy the resolution may be. With Bumped, I felt like McCafferty just took a pair of scissors and lopped off the book at a random section. It wasn’t satisfying, and I was disappointed after it brought me so many chuckles.
Blood Red Road by Moira Young
Blood Red Road has two primary strengths: voice and setting. It’s narrated by illiterate protagonist Saba, and therefore uses no quotation marks and only a smattering of other punctuation marks. (She does use periods. If she did not, I would have put it down after the first page. Or probably before that.) It’s heavy on dialect and slang. Saba’s very imperfect narration provides good insight into Saba’s very imperfect character. She’s tough but frequently heartless. This was actually what I enjoyed most about Saba. Saba’s younger sister is the main ancillary character, and Saba is pretty upfront with the reader about how she resents her and doesn’t love her like she does her twin brother. It seems harsh, but it also shoots to pieces all those comparisons with Katniss (and those comparisons are legion).
The other strength is the setting. Saba lives in the Dustlands, and the more you read about it, the more parched you feel. It’s a place full of sand and blood and sand and trash heaps and more sand. This is a pretty terrible place to live in, and there’s no magical place where it doesn’t suck.
So, we’ve got great voice and great setting. Where were my expectations not met? The action. Blood Red Road is fast-paced and intense, but it was pretty predictable. I knew Saba would be captured, I knew how her fights would go in the cage matches, I knew how she would…well, to say any more would be spoiling it, but if you’ve read any dystopias (or any action novels, really), it wouldn’t be much of a spoiler. It became kind of a game to see how many of my predictions came true (all of them). I need my books to surprise me, and this one didn’t do it much.

Going Underground by Susan Vaught

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Three years ago, Del made a mistake that changed the entire course of his teen years. Actually, it’ll change the entire course of his life, as he knows that even after he turns 18, what he did will haunt him. It’ll keep him from going to college and it’ll cement the job he has now as a grave digger as his career. It’s the only job he can get.

He’s only 17 now, but everything from here on out looks bleak.

Susan Vaught’s Going Underground starts with what seems like the most dire of stories, one that prepares readers for a journey into a dark world, and twists it completely. Del, who sounds like the kind of guy you’d want to lack sympathy for (because he’s a criminal), is one of the most likable characters I’ve read.

At the onset of the story, we meet Del when he’s 17 and making a living digging graves. He’s a loner, and his best friend is a gray parrot named Fred. And while the cards are stacked against him, and while he’s put to bed everything that happened when he was 14, these realities begin to catch up to him when he meets Livia, a girl new to town. She’s been spending time in the cemetery where he works, and Del can’t help but be drawn to her. Yet he knows deep down that making any advances, even so much as reaching out to talk to her, could come back to haunt him. But he takes the chance, and when he does, we’re tossed back into the fateful events that changed his life.

Though this book tackles the heavy issue of sexting, Vaught handles it masterfully by offering us Del. We’re given this sweet and often romantic male character (who, despite being such, has an authentic and believable male voice). As readers, we feel awful for whatever happened to him because it’s obvious he feels bad about it. He wants a future, and I think that’s sort of what spins him into such a likable character. Too often, miscreants don’t desire a lot for themselves; they make trouble so they can feel a part of life. Del, though, has so much he wants to accomplish and it was one mistake that turned his bright future into little more than a ditch.

What I think worked well in the unraveling of the crime is that it’s done carefully. It’s not An Issue, but rather, it was a series of typical events. Del and his former girlfriend were having fun, enjoying one another, and they made a mistake. One that involved what the law sees as child pornography and not innocent curiosity. Throughout it all, Del is left almost entirely out of the equation. He’s in trouble but he has no idea why. The thought never occurred to him. This is the pivotal moment: Del is a good kid. Del knows he’s a good kid. When he’s taken as a criminal, he has no idea why because he has done nothing wrong. As a reader, I not only felt bad for him but I agreed with him, and this is where Vaught turns on her writing skills.

Del committed a crime, but I questioned this the entire time I read. Did he deserve punishment for what he and his girlfriend thought was innocent fun? At what point does that natural human instant cross the line into criminal territory? As a reader, I found myself rationalizing both sides of the argument. Del received a lifetime — LIFETIME — punishment for one activity he didn’t even realize wasn’t legal. This good kid can never have a real job (because he’s a criminal) nor can he go to college (because he’s a criminal) nor can he expect to ever date again or find someone who’ll accept him as he is (because he’s a criminal). While he’s come to terms with the first two things, it’s that third thing that sets the story ablaze for both Del and the reader.

Livia herself has suffered a great loss, and Del senses it immediately. He wants to comfort her and yet he doesn’t know how. I’m not usually a big root-for-the-romance-to-happen reader, but I could not help myself. I wanted something good to happen for Del and subsequently, for Livia. Even as I wrestled with the consequences of his actions, at the core of it all is a kid who made an innocent mistake that not impacts every single aspect of his life. I was never rooting for a bad guy. I was rooting for a good guy, a really good guy who downright deserved to succeed.

Going Underground has a cast of fully-fleshed characters amid the well-drawn legal issues. This is important because one never undermines the other in the story, and by navigating both successfully, there is a lot to dig into. This is not an easy read, but it shouldn’t be. There aren’t any cut-and-dry answers, and even at the story’s (satisfying) conclusion, things don’t wrap themselves up in a pretty little bow. There are more questions to consider and more consequences to ponder. I think this would make a spectacular book discussion title, though it has wide appeal to contemporary fiction fans. There is definite cross-over appeal for adults in this, too, particularly as it explores the ideas of sexting and the life long ramifications therein. Although they tread different territory, I think fans of Matthew Quick’s Sorta Like a Rockstar will find themselves falling for Del in the same way they fell for Amber Appleton and the challenge to the story itself will leave them satisfied. In addition, reading this one in conversation with Sarah Darer Littman’s Want to Go Private? seems natural; fans of that title should pick this one up as well.

Advanced reader copy received from the publisher.