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Sean Griswold’s Head by Lindsey Leavitt

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When Payton begins seeing her school counselor, she’s reluctant. Why would she need to get help? Her father’s the one who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and he and her mother have been keeping it a secret from her. How dare they! Payton’s only reacting how anyone who has had such a secret kept from them would: she’s not talking to them. Not acknowledging it.

Yet, there’s something in her counselor’s suggestion to keep a focus journal that appeals to Payton. She’s a bit of an obsessive organizer and perfectionist, so maybe focusing attention on one object not related to her at all might help. So she chooses the thing that’s always been in front of her but to which she’s never paid attention: the back of Sean Griswold’s head.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a story about Payton’s working through her problems via the back of some guy’s head if there wasn’t a little crushing involved. It seems natural when you spend hours every week thinking about this random guy’s head you’d begin doing a little more investigating. Then you’d be following them. And maybe you’d be really liking him. Oh, Payton.

Sean Griswold’s Head is the kind of story we need once in a while: Payton’s dealing with a very challenging life event, but it’s not really her event. Rather, it’s her father, and the fact of the matter is, he and her mother have tried to shield Payton from it. As readers, we side with Payton on the issue, knowing that not being honest about this is wrong. It impacts her more than if they’d been honest about the situation. But the truth of the matter is this isn’t really Payton’s issue. It affects her, certainly, but the reason mom and dad keep it from her is because this particular aspect of the story isn’t hers, and it shouldn’t be. What Leavitt’s done is set the ground for the story about Payton to play out — the one about her navigating a family challenge while also coming to terms with who she is as a person, and what she wants in her own life. A lot of stories that tackle teens and ill/unstable parents focus too much on the parents and not enough on the teen, but this one gets it right. The set up is very smart and smooth.

The issues are dealt with in a realistic, 15-year-old manner. Payton’s got a great head on her shoulders, and she has a sense of humor that carries readers through the ups and downs of her father’s illness and her working through her focus journal. We’re right there as she experiences some pretty horrific-to-see events happen to her father (though note that these are done exceedingly well and in a manner that’s not scary to readers) and while she does the funny stuff that teen girls do when they want to get to know a guy better (she stalks him but in a not-creepy kinda way). We’re laughing right along with Payton but we know that despite her strong attitude on the outside and her ability to make light of so many situations, she’s got deeper feelings going on inside and she’s working hard toward acknowledging them and figuring out how to work with them.

In addition to dealing with her father and Sean, Payton’s also worried a bit about her friendship with Jac. At the beginning, they’re as close as possible, but when things in Payton’s life begin to change with her father and she tells Jac about her focus project, things become a little unwieldy in their friendship. I thought Leavitt did a great job highlighting how friendships ebb and flow, particularly in high school. Although Payton and Jac bicker, they come back together as they should. The addition of a boy in the story is simply a small thing they surmount together, and he does not ultimately change their friendship nor does he change who Payton is as a character. This is exceedingly important, I think, in a world of books where boys too often change the core of who the female character is.

Some of the other things I liked about this book were the smooth pace, and both the story and character arcs are realistic. The prose isn’t chunky or clunky, and the writing itself is pretty good. Payton has a great voice in the story, and she’s self-aware without being self-aware — which she has to be to understand the value that a focus journal has in helping her work through the tough stuff in her life. The book’s also clean, meaning you could easily hand this to a middle school reader and not worry about language, drugs/alcohol, or sex. Some of the stuff with her father might be a little over the heads of some readers that young, but for those who have had family members dealing with physical challenges like this, it will all make perfect sense. Likewise, I thought the way the romance played out with Sean was sweet in a first-boyfriend kind of way. It ties together with what her father’s going through in the end, and I quite liked that. I’m purposely being vague because how these things come together is smart and yet, it doesn’t change the core of who Payton is.

While I liked this book, I didn’t get enough resolution with Payton’s father and I’m not certain I buy that Payton herself has completely come to terms with what this all means for her as a character. I’d have liked a little more of how this plays out. I’m afraid this might make the book a little forgettable for me personally as a reader. I know it will stick with other readers far longer, but for me, there wasn’t quite enough to hold on to. This is, however, the kind of book I think will make an excellent book talk title because it will certainly resonate with readers who have experienced similar situations.

Pass this one along to fans of realistic, clean fiction and though I don’t usually limit my readership by gender, I think this book will have stronger appeal for females than males, given the role Payton’s relationship with Sean has in the story. I’d give this to fans of Sarah Dessen, Siobhan Vivian, or Jenny Han pretty easily. It reminded me a bit of Han’s Shug and so your younger readers of that kind of fiction will certainly like Sean Griswold’s Head.

In My Mailbox (26)

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Welcome to another edition of In My Mailbox, a weekly meme hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren. This is a weekly look at the items received for review, purchased, or picked up at the library.

For review:

Illusions by Aprilynne Pike: This is the third book in a series, I believe. I haven’t read the first or second ones yet, but I know the covers pretty well.

Blood and Flowers by Penny Blubaugh: I think this one is about fairies. I’ll be passing it on to my book club kids since it’s not really my genre.

Purchased:

The Girl Who Couldn’t Come by Joey Comeau: A collection of short stories about sex. That’s all it is. They’re bizarre and funny and sad. I read this one really quickly and liked it quite a bit.

Fart Party 2 by Julia Wertz: I loved the first one so much that I had to pick up the second edition. So far, it’s not disappointing me!

I Saw You . . . Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections by Julia Wertz: The title pretty much gives the description. I am on a comic kick, actually.

Recovery Road by Blake Nelson: What I am loving about my nook is the ability to have the book when I have the unquenchable desire to read something right now. Friday night I decided I couldn’t wait any longer for the new Nelson book, so I bought it and read it straight through. This is a book about a recovering party girl, Maddie, and the way she beats her addictions. I’ll be reviewing it soon — it is incredible.

It’s Too Late to Say I’m Sorry by Joey Comeau: Another collection of Comeau short stories. I love these so much.

From the library:

Essex County by Jeff Lemire: After the CBC/Canada Reads discussions, this book really piqued my interest. Perhaps it was the drama over the idea of a graphic novel having literary merit or value. This looks really good!

The Kneebone Boy by Ellen Potter: This creepy looking (in a good way) book is one I want to read for my middle grade book talks and as part of the Cybils reading challenge.

Yummy by G. Neri: This graphic novel is based on the story of Yummy, an 11-year-old in the south side of Chicago who got caught up with the Black Disciples. I read this one in one sitting and know it’ll go over really well in my book talks with the high schoolers.

Guys Read: Guest Post by Matthew Jackson on Men of Letters

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In honor of Guys Read Week, guest blogger Matthew Jackson (A Walrus Darkly) steps away from the readers and concentrates on five men who inhabit books.

Five unforgettable men and the books where they live.

Most people come to the book for the concept. When you pick up a new novel, with a few exceptions, you generally pick up because you like the idea that drives the book. Dystopia, serial killer mystery, high fantasy series, paranormal romance, these are the things that make our heads buzz when we decide to check out, buy or download something to read. Once you’re in the thick of all that conceptual and thematic heaviness, though, something has to hold you. Something has to get hooks in and refuse to let go, or it just becomes a great idea poorly executed. For that, we turn to characters.

So, in honor of Guys Read Week here at Stacked, rather than focusing on the books guys read, let’s take a look at the guys inside the books. Here are five very different imaginary males guaranteed to keep you reading.

Roland Deschain (The Gunslinger), The Dark Tower, Books 1-7 by Stephen King 

The Gunslinger, art by Michael Whelan.

Stephen King’s The Dark Tower maintains one of the most rabid cult followings in modern fantasy, yet it seems so many readers still dismiss it simply because it was written by America’s Boogeyman. Like all of King’s works, the massive Tower saga (a work nearly four decades in the making and still growing) has elements of the horrific, but at its core is an expansive fantasy saga filled with parallel universes, complex worldbuilding, magic, monsters, warriors and a fight to very literally save everything.

At the center of all of this is Roland Deschain, the last of a vaguely Arthurian line of warriors called gunslingers (think Jedi Knights with six shooters). Roland’s home, the world and civilization he was sworn to protect, has been wiped from existence by a war, and the universe around him is steadily deteriorating. As the sole survivor of an order of men sworn to protect, he embarks on a quest to find The Dark Tower, literally the center of all things, and defeat the forces that seek to unmake existence.

While the series is eventually populated with a host of memorable characters, as it begins Roland walks alone. He seems simple, the archetypal strong, silent fighter with eyes as cold as the iron in his revolvers. As the series evolves, grows and deepens, it’s not only King’s story that keeps us going, but the deepening complexity of Roland. As the quest advances, he becomes teacher, philosopher, lover, friend, father and, ultimately, savior, all while maintaining his cool gunfighter exterior. He’s mythic but organic, superhuman yet precariously fallible, and it’s his journey, more than any of the story’s many other charms, that makes The Dark Tower great.

Grady Tripp, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

Michael Douglas as Grady Tripp, from Wonder Boys, directed by Curtis Hanson.

Like Roland, Grady Tripp is on a quest, but he’s anything but a warrior. He’s very nearly a schmuck, a has-been whose world is collapsing around him. His wife is gone, his mistress is in crisis, his agent is in town waiting for a long-promised second novel (his first was a smash hit…nearly a decade ago), the novel in question is more than 2,600 pages long with no end in sight, and one of his students is in desperate need of a mentor.

Wonder Boys is Grady’s story, told in his voice, of how he fought to finish his book and right his life, even as everything around him just kept getting stranger. It’s a brilliantly funny book, but it also has a great deal to say about the general frailty and insecurity of creative people, especially creative people who are attempting to maintain their reputation of brilliance (The book is Chabon’s sophomore novel, his first published effort after being hailed as a wunderkind when his first book was released.). Grady is not the nicest of men, nor the wisest, but he is painfully aware of how far he’s fallen, and it’s his desperate push to lift himself up again that makes Wonder Boys so powerful.

Elijah Snow, Planetary by Warren Ellis 

Elijah Snow, art by John Cassaday

 Moving into comics for a moment, we come upon Elijah Snow, a 100-year-old yet seemingly almost ageless man with the ability to subtract the heat from anything. He can turn a room cold in seconds, freeze the fluid in your brain and even turn your body rock hard and shatter you with a single punch. He’s also the apparent leader of Planetary, a shadowy organization of superhumans dedicated to excavating the world’s secret history and unlocking humanity’s true potential.

Planetary is an all-too-brief (less than 30 issues) series all about secrets, whether they’re the existence of ghosts, life on other planets or the creation of the universe. It’s also about personal secrets, and Elijah packs more in his being than any of his cohorts. His origins are murky even to himself, as are his motivations. Still, he fights to constantly uncover things, to excavate the impossible, to dig up the things that Powers That Be have long-since buried. Planetary is exceptional for many reasons, but Elijah Snow is without a doubt the coolest (pun intended) part.

Judge Holden, Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian is a brutal, gorgeously primal novel, and at the heart of that brutality is Judge Holden, a hulking, mystical and seemingly superintelligent albino who savors violence and mayhem. Based on an apparently real person who scalphunted Indians with the Glanton Gang in the mid-1800s, Judge Holden fades in and out of McCarthy’s novel like a spirit, sometimes helpful, sometimes vengeful, but always pulsing with an aura of savagery.

Holden’s ruthless spirit is contrasted with an almost impossible intelligence, and an almost supernatural ability to influence nearly every other character for good or ill. His mysterious presence, coupled with McCarthy’s biblical, visceral prose, makes him more than an antihero or antagonist. He’s a monster, alternately embraced and repulsed by the other characters, and he never stops being utterly fascinating.

Harry D’Amour, “The Last Illusion,” “Lost Souls,” The Great and Secret Show and Everville by Clive Barker 

 Before Harry Dresden, and before John Constantine got his own series, Hellblazer, Clive Barker created supernatural investigator Harry D’Amour. Poor, scruffy and covered with talismanic, protective tattoos, D’Amour delves into only the very strangest of cases, battling with demons and things not of this world with a combination of secret knowledge and Working Joe elbow grease.

D’Amour has his roots in the hardboiled detective tradition perfected by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the level of mystery that surrounds him, along with his attitudes, his interests and the creatures he faces, are all Barker. What makes Harry cool is not that he’s trying to be cool, but that he’s just working, fighting, scraping to get it done. The odds are always against him, and he always keeps pushing the limits of his own understanding of what lies beyond human experience. This not only makes him a badass, but an avatar for the reader. He’s our ticket to the ether. D’Amour is allegedly appearing as the protagonist of a massive upcoming Barker project called The Scarlet Gospels (which will also resurrect the legendary Pinhead), but at the rate the book seems to be going, there’s plenty of time to tackle every other D’Amour story before then.

So there, I’ve done it. A cornucopia of maleness. Happy Reading.

Guys Read: Guest Post by Swati Avasthi on Getting the Male Voice Right

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Today’s guest post is brought to you by Swati Avasthi, author of the Cybils-award winning SPLIT. I’m extremely excited to have her talk about writing a male voice as a female. We’ve all read books written by females that try to capture the guy voice; try as they might, they don’t always succeed. However, Jace — the main character in SPLIT — is an authentic and real guy. There is little doubt she got it right and there is little doubt the appeal to both guys and girls on this title. Without further ado, Swati shares her insights on the process.

Whenever I was asked how I – a thirty-something woman – captured the voice of a 16-year-old boy in my debut novel, Split, I would answer that Jace’s voice came to me fully formed. Which is code for “I don’t know.” Jace’s voice certainly came to me easier than either of the two protagonists’ voices in my second novel – both teenage girls. Which seems counter-intuitive, right?

After all, I have been a teenage girl; a teenage girl who really didn’t have any boys in her life until she started dating at 16. A teenage girl who grew up in a mother-centered family, with two older sisters, and went to a high school where two thirds of my graduating class were girls. My cousins (both of whom had older brothers) would rush over and sink into a “real girl’s house,” tentatively experimenting with make-up and indulging in the Charlie’s Angels paraphernalia.

So, why on earth was it easier for me to write from a boy’s POV than a girl’s?

It is because writing isn’t really about what we know. It’s about what we can discover. It’s about using the imagination to chart our course through the unknown.

The power of imagination has been losing value on the stock market of ideas in this post-modern, post James-Frey, reality TV, search-for-credible-information age, where we focus on the writer’s background. We ask, “What standing does the writer have to write their fiction?”

An actor once told me that when he used his imagination to get into his character, he would think of a piano: We all have the same 88 keys. The variations are infinite, but the notes are all the same. You just have to think about what notes this person plays loudest in their lives.

We use our imaginations, our ability to empathize, in order to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. We find the notes in ourselves that we don’t use and explore them.

So what makes one voice sound authentic and another sound false? Why did I have to work harder at capturing a girl’s voice?

As it turns out, Jace’s voice didn’t come to me “fully formed”, it grew through daily character exercises that pushed my imagination, that forced me to think of Jace in new and different ways. Book no. 2 has TWO protagonists, two characters and their voices to develop. It turns out gender differences had nothing to do with it, it just took me longer to develop both voices, and the truth is – there are no short cuts.

The question isn’t whether I, as a writer, have experience in the area. It is not about whether I am a teenager, or a boy, or an anything else so simple and generic. It is not about the depth of research, although that certainly helps. The question is whether I captured the heart of my character on the page. Have I found the character’s voice and have I let them speak, without flinching, and without manipulating them? Can my readers listen to the notes he is playing? If you can you listen to the rhythm, the flow, and the cadence, if you can imagine his life off the page with ease, then you have an authentic voice — gender differences be damned.

Leverage by Joshua Cohen

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When a book gives me a visceral reaction, I’m always a little surprised. Sure, there’s been more than one or two books that have made me tear up for one reason or another, but it’s rare to both cry and feel utterly sick to my stomach. I think I can count the number of those books on one hand.

And now I add Joshua Cohen’s debut Leverage to that elite group of books. This is one you need — need — to pick up and read.

Danny is a gymnast: he’s small, nimble, and he’s impressive as hell at what he does. He knows how the locker room works, too; steer clear of the football players, the track players, and go only to where his teammates have their space and everything will work out fine.

Kurt is the new guy in town. He’s been moved around more times than he can count, but now in the new school, he’s ready to just settle. He’s a football player and can probably best be described as a tank. He’s huge and he incites fear where he goes because of it. But Kurt’s a bit of a wimpy guy. At least, in comparison to his football teammates. Those guys define fear and power; Kurt is more laid back, less willing to jump into their coach’s offer of enhancing supplements.

I don’t want to explain too much more of the plot, but I’ll say this much — this is a mean guys story. This is the story of what happens in the locker room when smack talk goes beyond talk and turns into an all-out physical display of power. The things that the leaders of the football team do to other boys is unimaginable and leads to consequences far greater than one can imagine. We’re not talking about a little hit or slap in this book; we’re talking lives. And their reactions are probably what made this book so difficult to get through without a few tissues.

As far as Danny and Kurt are concerned, the two of them play a key role together. They’re allies, despite not necessarily knowing that or acknowledging it after everything plays out. Both are fully fleshed characters, and Cohen gives them distinct personalities and voices. In fact, they’re so distinct, I noticed when there was an error in the ARC where one chapter heading was swapped with another (that is, one of them was labeled Danny when it was really Kurt and vice versa). Both characters are sympathetic, and their growth is well developed. As readers, we get to know the bulk of Danny’s story upfront; we know what he’s all about and what his motivation and drive is. Kurt, on the other hand, we don’t. Since he’s the new guy, we learn very little about him except that he’s got some real stories to tell. There’s something about him that aches, and we want to know what it is because it will play a huge role in how he reacts to his teammates and their actions. The way these details come together is smart, and it gives the same insight into Kurt’s character that Danny has. This technique lets us play along with Danny and dares us to draw conclusions alongside him. We have to learn to trust that his actions will be self-guided and not guided by the actions of his team.

Leverage is an important book about athleticism, about sportsmanship, and about the cruel truths that happen in a setting that involves extreme competition, alpha male syndrome, and most importantly, steroids. The football coach has let his athletes partake in the use of supplements to make themselves bigger, stronger, and more intimidating; worse though is that the coach supplies these supplements to his players. This lengthy book — over 400 pages — clips along at a rapid pace because there is so much going on, and as readers, we can’t help but hope for some sort of justice in the story. Danny and Kurt make us care. And we want to know what will happen to the coach, to the team leaders who ruin lives.

While I was emotionally invested and knew what was going on was about as real and honest as it could be (and I know this not as someone who has experienced this personally but who spent a lot of time with a guy in high school who quit the football team because of the bullying), I felt that the ending was a bit of a let down. It was the easy way out. Too obvious.

I kept comparing this book to Courtney Summers’s Some Girls Are and I think these two books are excellent (unfortunate, even) readalikes. The grit and honesty, as well as the unflinching look at power dynamics among teenagers is brutal. The biggest difference, I think, is that despite a couple of things that Danny and Kurt do that make them unlikeable, they are ultimately likeable characters. They come out ahead, and they have redeeming qualities.

Cohen’s Leverage will have appeal to boys who are and aren’t athletes, as I think a lot of the experiences in here will ring true in more ways than presented. This is a book for the boys; while girls will surely enjoy it, there is little doubt that boys will get this. There is a real sense of emotion here without it being an emotional story. The emotions are manifested physically, which is true to how guys process the big events in their lives. And I don’t think anyone will be intimidated by the length because it speeds along. There were times I had to put it down because the events were that powerful, but the lapse in time was short. I wanted to see the redemption, the reaction, the way the rest of the story would play out.

Don’t go in with expectations, since they’ll all be tossed. I had an event spoiled for me (by choice) but that didn’t even bother me. There were enough other shocking events in the story to keep me surprised.