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Audio Review: Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson

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Strands of Bronze and Gold is the story of Bluebeard set on a plantation in the antebellum South. I feel like that sentence perfectly sums up everything you need to know plot-wise, but in case you want a little more: Sophie is an orphan, a member of a family that is now what we may call “impoverished gentility.” When her godfather, Monsieur Bernard de Cressac, who had quite an admiration for her mother, invites Sophie to live with him, she is happy to accept. His plantation home is opulent and he treats her like a precious jewel. She admires him deeply, even finding him attractive, despite his age (he is portrayed as perhaps a man in his 40s).

And then things change, slowly. de Cressac begins to exhibit worrisome behavior, like being upset with her befriending a stray cat. Sophie learns that his moods are changeable and she never knows what will set him off. Worst, though, is that she senses he has romantic feelings for her, which makes her own childish affections for him disappear entirely. By this point, she’s a prisoner in all practical ways, though he doesn’t lock her in a room and bar the windows. And then, of course, there are the former wives. Four of them, all who met tragic ends. Accidental, of course…

Nickerson does some things very well. I really liked the slow pace of the story. It gave time for adequate, un-rushed development of de Cressac, as well as for Sophie’s slow realization of his awfulness. It also enhances just how creepy de Cressac really is. As readers, we are expected to be familiar with the Bluebeard story. The fact that de Cressac is a murderer and creep is not news to us. But the way Nickerson allows his character – and Sophie’s discovery of it – to unfold, slowly, deliberately, is quite excellent. I felt my skin crawl multiple times before there was any hint of violence.

Nickerson also does some things quite poorly. There’s a subplot involving the slaves at M. Bernard’s home and Sophie’s desire to help them run to freedom that is so tone-deaf, it was almost painful to listen to. She also meets a free black woman in the woods named Anarchy who teaches her Important Lessons About Life. Frankly, I could have done without this entire storyline. I didn’t find any part of it redeemable. (Delia Sherman is much more successful in writing about a white girl among black slaves in the antebellum South in The Freedom Maze.)

Some readers will likely find themselves frustrated at Sophie’s naivete. It’s necessary for the story to work, but I also found it refreshing to read about a girl who isn’t already worldly and tough as nails. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a girl in Sophie’s circumstances would be innocent. In many ways, this story is about the loss of that innocence (and how easy it is for a predator to take advantage of it). While many teen protagonists seem much more like adults, Sophie is clearly still a child.

I’m of two minds about the narration, done by Caitlin Prennace. Prennace is very good at portraying Sophie’s innocence. She doesn’t know much about the world and is easily scandalized, so Prennace’s voicing has a lot of gasps and shocked intonations. Sometimes it seems a little affected, though, and Prennace never quite sounds like a teenager. It’s not the greatest narration, but it’s more than passable.

Frankly, that’s a good summation of the book as a whole – not great, but passable. It’s an enjoyable listen and I don’t feel like I wasted my time, but I’m not sure I’m rush to recommend it. Ultimately, it wasn’t as atmospheric or creative as I think it could have been. It will be a good match for readers who like retold fairy tales, though I doubt it will be among their favorites. It also has a bit of a Southern gothic feel to it and should find a welcome home among those readers as well.

Review copy received from the publisher. Strands of Bronze and Gold is available now.

Conjured by Sarah Beth Durst

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Eve doesn’t know who she is. She only knows what people tell her: that her name is Eve, that she is in witness protection, that a serial killer from another world is out to get her. She learns she has magical powers, but whenever she uses them, she suffers more short-term memory loss. Despite her memory problems, she begins to discover that the people who work for witness protection may not actually have her protection as their primary goal. What’s more, she’s seeing visions of a storyteller and a magician at a strange circus, and they’re torturing her in these visions. She wonders if these visions could be her memories coming back to her.

Most of the book focuses on Eve’s struggle to remember what happened to her in the past, whatever it was she had to do with this mysterious serial killer. That’s what the people in witness protection want, and it’s what she wants, too, really. She wants her memories back. She wants to know who she is. The problem is, everyone around her is lying to her. She finally finds a boy she can trust, and together they set out to determine the truth.

I had hopes for this one, but they didn’t pan out. The book is slow, and not much happens for the first two thirds aside from Eve doing magic, passing out, and seeing visions. It makes for a pretty dull book. Leisurely-paced books aren’t inherently bad, but when the pace is so glacial that you contemplate simply skipping to the end so you can be done with it, that’s not great. It didn’t help that for most of the book, the plot seems so very pedestrian.

Despite its common elements (visions, amnesia, witness protection), this is actually a pretty original book. But you won’t know that until the end, when the nature of Eve’s visions is revealed. I’m not sure the payoff, which is intensely weird (but not in a bad way, really), is worth the slog to get there. I wonder if hints to this big revelation at the end could have been threaded through the earlier parts of the novel more successfully. Then again, I wonder if the only way to do this is through more visions, and I certainly didn’t want any more of those.

Much of my aversion to this book is subjective. I dislike reading about visions, dreams, flashbacks, or anything related. (The Harry Potter books, for all the love I bear for them, drag whenever Harry has his prophetic dreams.) Truth be told, my attention wanders and I find myself skimming those sections. So the creepy descriptions and neat turns of phrase that populate those sections were largely wasted on me. Perhaps others get more out of them.

I also have to admit that I have a big aversion to circuses. You may be thinking “Kimberly, why did you read this book? It is full of things you know you do not like.” Well. That is a valid question. I loved Vessel. I like Sarah Beth Durst’s writing. I like that she doesn’t stick to certain types of fantasy and branches out, writing a bunch of different subgenres. I hoped this one would work for me, despite the warning signs. Alas, it did not.

I read an arc of this book, and the point of view changed from third person to first person abruptly near the end of the book. At that point, the book became much stronger, though that also may be due to the fact that the plot also picked up at the same time. I’m very curious to see what the POV is in the final copy, as this strange shift seems like an editing mistake rather than a deliberate stylistic choice.

Review copy received from the publisher. Conjured is available now.

Sex & Violence by Carrie Mesrobian

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Evan likes sex.

Or rather, Evan likes sex when it is easy.

He’s got a radar for this kind of thing. He sees the girl he knows will be down for getting down, he gets involved with her, they have sex, and then he moves on to the next one.

Evan can get away with it when he’s away at school. It’s never been a problem before because he’s grown up moving around a lot with his father’s job.

But this time, he meets Collette, and she is a challenge for him. Rather than be turned off by her being a challenge, though, Evan’s into it. And he pursues her because even though she’s playing hard to get, he has it in his head he can get with her. And he does. The real challenge isn’t getting with Collette though. It’s keeping their getting down a secret.

Of course, things can change in an instant. Evan finds this out after a trip to the shower. After having his body beaten by a couple of classmates who didn’t like the little game he plays. Because this time, he picked the wrong girl.

Collette is the ex-girlfriend of his roommate.

That’s where Carrie Mesrobian’s debut Sex & Violence begins. In one chapter, you meet Evan, his desire for sex, then you meet him as he finds himself the victim of violence. Following that introduction, you’re thrown into Evan learning how to reassess his own priorities when it comes to what it is he wants. He’s fearful in a way he’s never been before. What once came easily to him — the ability to seek out a girl and sleep with her consequence-free — is precisely why he’s fearful. The consequences presented themselves in a brutal manner.

Evan’s taken out of school after a stint in the hospital which didn’t heal him of all his physical wounds and certainly didn’t do much for his mental state. Evan and his dad move to a small town in Minnesota on a lake. When he moves, Evan begins therapy for what happened to him. But that therapy can only do so much. It doesn’t remove the overwhelming fear he has of showers. It doesn’t remove the fear he has of establishing a new life.

And even if his therapist insists he needs to make more human connections, convincing himself to do that is not a prospect Evan looks forward to. But he does follow through on one of the therapists suggested exercises, which was to write letters to someone as a means of practicing how to open up and express himself. Those letters he writes are all to Collette — though he won’t send them, it’s a pretty significant choice of a person to whom he chooses to open himself to.

Up until the point when Evan had been a victim of violence, Evan had seen people and things in his life as impermanent. As disposable. That’s why he didn’t get invested in relationships with girls. He simply slept with them when he wanted to. A significant part of this is, of course, because his own father and he moved from place to place. It’s also because his mother’s dead and gone. There’s never been a solid basis for establishing connection and meaning for Evan, and after the incident in the shower, he sees this as even more of a truth.

Evan, too, becomes an object in that moment, rather than a person.

Of course, it would be a really boring story if the entire plot happened in chapter one and Evan put off doing anything to help himself after. Because as much as he learns a lesson almost immediately, there’s a lot more story to be told. Slowly, Evan begins to get to know some of the other kids at the lake, and all of them are partaking in their “last summer” as teens. It’s a chance for them to try the things they never did and to experience life in a way that they don’t think they’ll ever get to again. For these kids, the biggest choice is to practice “non-monogamy” (a phrase which becomes really funny with one of the characters). Evan can be down with this, but it is from a distance.

Enter Baker.

Baker is the first girl who approaches Evan in any meaningful way when he’s resettling in Minnesota. She’s curious about his late-night trips to the lake. He begins opening up to her, little by little, in a way that he’s never opened up to anyone before. In fact, he finds himself sort of falling for her. But again, it’s from a distance. He worries about consequence, even as he begins to hear her story and what it is that she has in her trunk for baggage. She kisses him, and it’s at that point he really begins to worry. Because as much as the kids have said they’re not practicing monogamy this summer, Evan fears that Baker’s boyfriend might not be into the relationship he’s developing with her.

Then they come close to having sex. Baker is the lady in control of their relationship in this moment, and it’s in this scene where Baker becomes my favorite character in the entire story. She’s not a game-player, either. In many ways, she’s a lot like Evan. When he comes to realize that she has the upper hand of power in their relationship, he also realizes how important developing a real relationship with another person is.

And thus, sort of discovers the ties between sex and violence. Both can turn people into objects and both can become means of figuring out that people are just that: people.

Sex & Violence has a lot going on in it besides this. The relationship between Baker and Evan isn’t necessarily the one that means the most to Evan, but it’s an important one in his progression and in his healing process. In fact, there will be more relationships for Evan, and he may in fact find a girl he can develop strong emotional ties to. Moreover, Evan discovers during this summer and subsequent school year that there’s a lot of baggage in his own family that he needs to unpack. It is through learning that other people have their own stories and dirt and crap within them that Evan understands how important those things he carries are what can help him establish something meaningful with other people. That he can’t outrun his own history, but he can instead let it be what it is and use it as necessary in understanding his choices.

As readers, we get this long before Evan does, thanks to his letters to Collette. But Evan doesn’t see it until the very final letter — perhaps the letter that is the most important one in the book and to his story. The circle finally makes sense (this is another little bit in the book, which I haven’t touched on and won’t touch on, but the circle is symbolic and comes together in the end).

Evan is a really complicated and layered character. He’s a teen boy through and through, and the way he approaches his relationships — both those prior to and following the shower attack — ring true. It’s uncomfortable at times to hear his thought process but it’s also true to character. Though the title itself will grab reader attention for sure, there is very little on-page sex and the on-page violence blacks out before become gratuitous. Much discussion of each happens, but in no way will there be anything sexy or bloody that sticks with the reader. Rather, what sticks with the reader is the complexity of either and of both, rendered through Evan and the relationships he does pursue and those which, well, he doesn’t.

There’s a lot to think about in Mesrobian’s book about redemption, as well. Does Evan ever become a character who is healed or better? At what rate is it believable that he can change as a person, and at what rate do we as readers forgive him? I wondered, too, about whether his family backstory aided in the way he understands himself and thus is a means for us as readers to better understand and forgive him, too. In many ways, it’s hugely positive that Evan isn’t healed immediately and that he makes some of the same mistakes he made prior to his being beaten up — even though he’s nervous to pursue sex for sex’s sake after, he doesn’t completely avoid it, either.

None of these questions are a knock on the book. In many ways, they’re what makes the book so memorable for me. I walked away with more questions about character than I did answers. And I also wondered a lot about whether this story would be any different had it been Baker’s story, rather than Evan’s. Would the take aways or perceptions of other characters and readers be different if a girl had been in Evan’s place? Because Evan’s not portrayed as a player here. He’s portrayed as a teen boy who happens to like sex. We accept that at that level. Would the same be true for a girl in that position? Or would more backstory be required or demanded?

The writing in this book is good, though I found at times the pacing wasn’t entirely consistent. At times it dragged a bit — particularly in the middle — and I thought that the ending came about a little bit quickly, particularly when it came to Evan’s new relationship and learning about his girlfriend’s backstory. I wanted to know more because she, too, had a lot of baggage and I wanted to know about how that interplayed with his own. It doesn’t matter in the context of the story (and arguably, it’s better not to know because that’s part of the point, but it left me curious anyway).

Sex & Violence is one to hand off to your fans of contemporary YA books that tackle messy subjects without fear. Evan has a great voice, and the writing — despite tackling a wealth of really hefty subjects — is at times really funny. Because as much as what’s happening is serious, Evan is a teen boy. He doesn’t take it all seriously all the time. He makes jokes. And some of the stuff he does is ridiculous, even if it’s a byproduct of the violence he experienced. He bathes in the lake! He won’t take a shower, even in a safely locked bathroom, but he’ll go take a swim in he lake late at night. It’s strangely funny. I don’t like laying books into categories of “for boys” or “for girls,” but I do think there is a particularly strong appeal in this one for guy readers who feel like contemporary YA is not for them. They’ll see themselves in Evan, even if they have never been in Evan’s place.

I do think this book has the potential to anger readers, particularly adults, who don’t think it’s “realistic.” But I think they’ll be overlooking the fact that teen boys think about these things, both in serious and less-than-serious ways, and they’ll overlook the fact that teen boys are . . . teen boys. While I don’t think this is a perfect read alike to Andrew Smith’s Winger, I think there are some interesting parallels, particularly when it comes to voice and writing and the relationships that develop between teen boys and girls (romantic and not-so romantic), that readers who enjoyed Smith’s novel may want to give Mesrobian’s debut a shot as well.

Sex & Violence is technically available October 1, but my library already has a finished copy ready and in circulation. So it’s also available now kind of. Review copy received from the publisher. 

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey

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One day, as humanity is going about its routine existence, an alien spaceship appears in the sky. While no one ever sees the aliens, it quickly becomes apparent that they are not friendly. In quick succession, they unleash a series of attacks that kill off over 90% of the world’s human population. Billions of people.

The 1st wave: an EMP that knocks out all electricity
The 2nd wave: manufactured earthquakes
The 3rd wave: a deadly disease carried by bird droppings
The 4th wave: surviving humans are picked off
The 5th wave: to be determined

Cassie lost her mother to the 3rd wave, but her father and little brother Sammy miraculously survived. By now, people have long abandoned the idea that the aliens hoped to coexist and they now recognize that humanity is being wiped off the planet systematically and purposefully, most likely to make way for an alien colonization.

Cassie’s family finds their way to a place they call Camp Ashpit, which is basically a tent city where survivors have huddled together, waiting for what is going to happen next. When official-looking people in uniforms with humvees show up, they think it’s the answer to their prayers. The uniformed people take all the children up to age 13 or so (including Cassie’s brother) away in a school bus to a refugee camp where, according to them, they’ll be “perfectly safe.” They say they’ll be back to pick up the teenagers and adults, and they leave a few soldiers behind to look after them.

I’m sure you know where this is going. Cassie quickly learns that the soldiers don’t necessarily have their best interests in mind. She survives the subsequent events, and she fears for her brother’s life. He’s only five, and he’s all she has left. Though she now believes that the aliens have somehow found a way to inhabit the bodies of humans, she’s determined to rescue Sammy. She sets out across alien-infested terrain toward the refugee camp.

This is a Book for Me. I love sweeping stories about the end of the world, and it’s extra special if the end is brought about by aliens. This is the kind of book that is filled with what I loving describe as “crushing despair.” (And hey, it doesn’t involve rape! At all! Imagine that.) It’s nearly as awesome as I wanted it to be.

As with any acclaimed novel, there are a number of readers who gave this a vehemently negative review. Most cite the writing, which is strange for me. It’s not a straightforward narrative; it’s told in a slightly more conversational style with a great deal more fragments and run-ons than you’d find in the average book. It’s nothing close to stream of consciousness, but I suppose this type of writing doesn’t suit everyone. Still, I’d hardly call it bad writing, in an objective sense.

Yancey excels at making readers second-guess what they already know. Very early on, Cassie is rescued from certain death by a human boy who says his name is Evan. Evan has a secret, of course, and we know what it is. Cassie only suspects, but we know. And yet, over the course of many pages, Yancey sows a seed of doubt in our minds. How do we know, really? Isn’t it possible that Evan is exactly who he says he is? Isn’t it likely? This line of thought shows the strength in Yancey’s writing: despite the fact that he’s shared everything we need to know beyond a doubt, we still do doubt, because Cassie does. The book is full of plot points like this, and it’s part of what makes the story so engaging.

The romance between Cassie and Evan is a little hard to buy – a blip on
an otherwise stellar book. Cassie is suspicious of him from the
beginning, and Yancey relies too heavily on her falling for him due to
his rescue of her. The problem is, it doesn’t seem in Cassie’s nature to
do this. By now, she’s jaded, she doesn’t trust anyone, and she’s
gotten pretty good at taking care of herself. It’s possible she may not
want to kill him, but romance is another thing entirely.

Only half of the book follows Cassie. The other half shows us events from Ben Parish’s perspective, and his situation is much different, though their stories do converge by the end. He’s at a refugee camp, being trained by surviving adults to fight back. They don’t think they can win, but they plan to take down as many aliens as possible when they go. As with Cassie, things are not what they seem, and Ben’s struggle to sift truth from lies propels the story forward.

The pacing is a little strange. It’s not all breakneck, and at times it does start to drag…except just as I began to think “Hm, this may be getting a bit slow,” Yancey threw something completely new at me that had me fully engaged once more. Consequently, though the book has over 500 pages, it never seems long.

Cassie’s fear is palpable, but so is her drive to survive, particularly when she sets her mind on rescuing her brother. She and Ben both waver between hope and despair, between the need to seek safety and the need to exact revenge. They both witness and perpetrate horrific things. They doubt the humanity of others, quite literally, but they also doubt their own humanity in a more metaphorical sense by the end.

If you’re looking for a happy book, this is not for you. But it should have huge appeal for fans of apocalyptic or alien invasion stories, particularly those readers looking for a different kind of alien, a type that doesn’t necessarily look or act like us. Highly recommended and deserving of its accolades.

Finished copy borrowed from the library.

Review Roundup: Recent Reads

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Because I’ve gotten a bit behind in writing lengthier reviews, rather than skip out on writing about a few books I’ve read lately, I thought it’d be worthwhile to write up a few shorter reviews. There’s no theme or connection among any of these books except that I read them all around the same time. 

The Golden Day by Ursula Dubosarsky originally published in Australia a couple of years ago, and it’s out in the US from Candlewick now. This is a slight novel at under 200 pages, and the primary action of the story happens with the main characters being not-yet teens. 

Eleven girls went to the park with their teacher, but eleven girls came back from the park without their teacher. What happened to Miss Renshaw? Did Morgan, a guy who was avoiding the war and lived in the park and with whom Miss Renshaw was wildly smitten, kill her? Or did they run off together into the vast lands of Australia? 

Why do the girls share collective silence over what they did or did not see that day in the cave? Why does it take eight years for them to talk about that day together again and share something which they may have constructed entirely for themselves? And is something automatically true if it’s been written down? Or do we get to write down what we want the truth to be?

This is a heck of a little book. The story seems quite straight forward, but it’s rich with depth, and the writing is strong. The main characters are very young — late elementary or early middle school — and the story thus reads through that lens. There is loss of innocence here and it’s particularly tough watching that pain happen to the characters as an adult. But I suspect it is precisely at the right level FOR middle grade readers. That’s not to say there’s not good appeal here for YA readers, but I suspect it might be one of those books advanced middle grade readers would appreciate very much. 

The historical setting works — Australia during the Vietnam War — and makes sense, even as an American. I was struck especially by what it was Icara hid from her peers — Cubby especially, who she saw as a “friend” — because it really felt perfectly in the time period and perfectly what someone her age would do. 

I keep thinking, too, about what Miss Renshaw said to Icara. She was “too practical” and wasn’t enough of a dreamer, and her father’s career as a judge also made her resented by Renshaw. This was yet another layer upon a complex line of questions, particularly about truth, innocence, and the imagination.

The Golden Day explores the idea of history and the idea of collective memory and experience. There’s not a solid answer to this story, nor does there need to be. In fact, part of what makes this book so good is that it leaves more questions than answers. Those are the take aways: what happened and what did we make up? Ultimately, do the answers matter? I think Duborsarsky’s novel is one to keep an eye on for potential awards early next year. It’s a dark horse that I hope more people pick up and experience. 

Dead Ends by Erin Jade Lange (available September 3) will feature plenty of spoilers in the review below, so be prepared. This book left me feeling less-than-enthusiastic, and I want to lay out exactly why that is. 

Dane’s a bully. He has no friends, a long-gone father, and he and his mom are poor. She’s an expert at winning the lotto but she doesn’t ever cash in the tickets. She frames them on the wall. But her luck might be running out as her job teaching yoga classes continues to be cut back due to low class participation. Worth noting, too, she had him as a teenager and everything since then has been hard times.

Billy is the new kid in town. He just moved in next to Dane, and on the way to school, he follows Dane. Eventually, he makes Dane talk to him. Eventually, he’s the reason Dane has another chance at school after yet another fight sends him to the principal’s office. 

Because Dane has standards — not hitting girls or people with disabilities — he’s been “kind” to Billy. And that kindness is now an obligation, as the principal declares that in order to keep in school and not be suspended or expelled, Dane has to be Billy’s ambassador to his new school. Billy has Down Syndrome, and he fears he might get beat up regularly (a lie, kind of) and Dane can prevent this from happening. Oh, and Dane also has to agree to doing one thing that Billy asks of him. 

So what is that one thing? 

Dane has to help Billy find his father. The father who disappeared. Who made a “goodbye” gift of a map of strange-named towns scattered throughout the US. Billy wants to help Dane find his dad, too, even though Dane wants nothing to do with finding that man. He’d rather get Billy reconnected with his dad and put it all to bed. Oh also, Billy wants Dane to teach him how to fight, so they practice in the park every week. 

Then there’s Seely. She’s the girl who bumps into them, who wears her hair short and proud, and who is the daughter of two gay men (non-biological daughter — she had surrogate parents). She wants to help both boys out in her own way.

If you’re counting up the issues in this book, you’ve likely lost track at this point: there’s the bully; there’s the social class situation; there’s the forced companionship between Dane and a boy with Downs Syndrome; there’s the romance; there’s the two-boys-missing-fathers; there’s the boy who wants to find his dad; there’s the girl who is herself a story and a half. But wait, there’s more! Billy is a LIAR. He makes up stories. He’s mislead Dane time and time again about why his parents split. His father was abusive and a hitter and that is why his parents split and his mother moved him away from dad. But don’t worry — there will be misadventures as they seek out this father, and when Billy finally gets in touch with his dad, then he has to move again. Not to mention at the end of the story, Dane finds his dad, too, happy and with another family.

There’s too much packed into this novel, and much of the middle sags beneath the idea of the story. For much of the time, I felt like Billy was depicted as very juvenile. He has Down Syndrome, and he’s high functioning. The problem was that Dane talked to him and treated him like a child — and through Dane’s “bully” lens, it makes sense. However, this felt so much like a cliche: the bully befriends someone who is Different and therefore becomes a better person because of it. There’s very little depth to their relationship, even as it progresses towards the ultimate revelation of what happened to Billy’s dad. The depth comes later, when it is revealed that Billy isn’t reliable or forthright, and then in that moment, he’s suddenly got more depth to both the reader and to Dane. Which is a weird, uncomfortable way for his character to be fleshed out — I wanted to actually know this boy. I wanted him to be a real person. Instead, he is flat, one-dimensional, and only ever comes to life when it’s revealed he’s lying. Isn’t there more to him?

And maybe it wouldn’t have been so frustrating as a reader for that to be the big character development moment if the story wasn’t set up in the somewhat cliched ideal that a bad person can be made a better person by being forced to spend time with someone who is “different.” Because in this instance, Billy’s “differentness” is what makes Dane a better person. It’s what forces him to reconsider his bullying tactics and what forces him to reconsider the power of actual, meaningful human relationships (that comes in the form of Seely). Which Seely herself is also flat and underdeveloped. 

I get it — Dane would see these people that way. But it felt like a cheap way to prove a point, by offering up two very Unique characters. They felt shoehorned into a bigger story about bullying that was itself unsatisfying. I wanted Billy to be a full character, rather than a tool. And he is a tool, since the story begins with his first arriving at the school and it ends with him being whisked away — all within a matter of weeks.

Where Lange wrote an incredible story of bullying in Butter, here that thread gets short shrift to the missing father/social class issues. And it’s weird, too, how social class is depicted. Dane is very bitter that he can’t have a car like everyone else at school because everyone knows all sixteen year olds get cars (not true in the least, but I buy his hyperbole since he is a 16 year old boy). Poor in Columbia is the trailer park. He is one stop away from there in terms of financial issues at home. And if that is the case, then it makes no sense why his mother is as she is. She works an unsteady job (okay, could buy it, since it’s likely her passion) but the lottery tickets she buys, ends up winning, then hangs on the wall rather than cash in? She’s SELFISH. It’s not a sign of economic struggle; it’s a sign of SELFISHNESS. It may be worded as pride, but that pride here evolves into sheer selfishness. In many ways, this is the weakest plot point in the story, and it’s what Dane’s character and story really hinge on: he bullies because he’s jealous. He calls it that eventually, and he owns it — which I commend — but I never found myself sympathizing for his situation or WANTING to sympathize, either. Maybe I don’t need to, but given how much emphasis he places on social class, it should have actually made a bigger impact than it did. The show of class here was superficial.

In many ways, this felt rushed. It could have been stronger with a few more rounds of editing, with some tougher questions being pursued and explored, and richer characterization of both Dane and Billy beyond their “labels” as bully and boy with a disability who then turns out to be a liar.

The Color Master by Aimee Bender (available now) was a book I looked forward to for a while because I love Aimee Bender’s signature style (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt is in my top ten all-time favorite books). 

These short stories are glimpses into worlds so different from our own and yet completely, utterly our own. They are all very sad and very aching. As soon as one ends, it lingers in your chest. These are heavy, meaty stories, even though they feel as though they are not. They are about loss and loneliness, about death and never connecting, never relating to the world and those within it. Of course because these are fairy tales for adults, many — most — involve sex and the mythical and mystical power of the act and what it may or may not mean. “On a Saturday Afternoon” perfectly encapsulates this. 

Most of the stories in here are excellent, though I felt the lead story “Appleless” was by far the weakest. I was also less impressed with “A State of Variance” (I skimmed the last portion of the story). My favorites were “The Red Ribbon,” “Tiger Mending” (perhaps my favorite, with the killer lines Bender is so careful at weaving in that just cut to your core — “That’s the thing with handmade items. They still have the person’s mark on them, and when you hold them, you feel less alone. This is why everyone who eats a Whopper leaves a little more depressed than they were when they came in.”), “The Color Master” (which depicted feelings — chest-pounding anger and frustration — in such an honest way), and “Lemonade.” 

And this is one of my favorite scenes in one of the stories because it captures precisely what it is what Bender does that makes her work so, so good: “But just beyond his sandwich, and the four TV shows he watched back to back, and his teeth brushing, and his face washing, and his nighttime reading of a magazine, and his light switching off, just the faint realization that there were many ways to live a life and some people were living a life that was very different than his, and the way they lived was beyond him and also didn’t interest him and yet he could sense it.” — The Doctor and the Rabbi.

Readers who love magical realism and are okay with heavy sexuality in their short stories will appreciate Bender’s collection. I wouldn’t necessarily hand it over to a teen reader, though there will be teen readers who appreciate and love The Color Master. It’s the kind of book you give to those with a deep appreciation for the way that language works both with a story and on its own separate from the story at hand.