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Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol

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I just love First Second (:01), Macmillan’s graphic novel imprint.  Not only are the stories and art almost always good, the books themselves always look pretty.  The binding is high quality, most are available as hardcovers, and the pages are thick and will hold up for many readings.
Anya’s Ghost, Vera Brosgol’s first graphic novel, is no exception.  Teenaged Anya considers herself to be something of an outcast at school.  Her family is Russian, and her mother understands nothing of what it’s like to be a teenager in America.  She insists that Anya eat fatty foods when Anya is trying to go on a diet, and she tries to get Anya to be friends with “fobby” Dima, a short Russian boy at her school who just doesn’t understand why it’s important to assimilate into the majority culture.  What’s more, Anya is crushing majorly on the school’s star athlete, who will never notice her.
When teenaged Anya is out walking after a particularly bad day at school, she has the misfortune to fall down a well.  Even more unfortunately, it looks as if someone else fell down the well, too, and her fate wasn’t terribly rosy – she’s now a skeleton.  After a good freakout, Anya discovers that her companion is a ghost named Emily who died around the time of World War I.  Emily’s a bit irritating at first, but she starts to grow on Anya, and ultimately helps rescue Anya from the well by waking up Anya so she can call for help from a passerby above.
Anya is happy to leave the well and Emily, but she soon discovers that she has accidentally taken a piece of Emily’s skeleton with her, allowing Emily to follow Anya home.  The two start to develop a real friendship, something Anya desperately needs since she feels like such an outcast at school.  Emily helps Anya cheat at tests, choose the right clothes for a party, and impress the boy she’s been crushing on for years.  Along the way, Emily shares the tragic story of her death, and Anya decides to keep Emily around for awhile.
Then things take a turn, and Emily’s concern for Anya’s life starts to morph into something a little closer to infatuation.  Anya discovers that Emily may not be who she says she is – she may be something very dangerous indeed.
Neil Gaiman’s blurb on the front cover calling this book a masterpiece is high praise indeed, and while I think Anya’s Ghost is good, it’s perhaps not that good.  It’s got a lot that any teen could relate to: issues of not fitting in at school, a weird family, an unrequited crush.  The artwork is nicely done – it’s got a generic cartoony feel to it, but Brosgol infuses real emotion into her facial expressions, so we always know when Anya is feeling scornful, anxious, excited, or ashamed.  The muted blacks/whites/grays are perfect for a ghost story.  I also really love the cover.
Despite all these positives, Brosgol spells out the lesson the reader is supposed to have learned at the end of the book, making it a bit didactic for my taste.  The twist with Emily near the end adds some nice excitement to the story, but once it’s revealed, the plot is fairly predictable from then on out.
I see some similarities with Deutsch’s How Mirka Got Her Sword in that both involve the exploration of a culture very different from the average reader’s – Jewish Orthodox for Mirka and Russian Orthodox for Anya.  Both female leads are also highly spirited with a lot of personality and a good amount of intelligence.  It’s also got some parallels with Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese – both explore what it’s like for a teen to feel divided between her parents’ culture and the “American” culture, how it feels to not be accepted by your peers despite desperate attempts, and a twist at the end that makes the reader view the story in an entirely different light.  I think Anya’s Ghost would be a good readalike for both books.  It’s also got enough widespread appeal to please almost any audience.
Anya’s Ghost will be on shelves June 7.  Copy obtained from my local library who somehow got it early.  Score.

What I’ve Been Reading and Listening to, Twitter-Style

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Some mini-reviews, Twitter-style, of what I’ve been reading and listening to lately!


My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies by Allen Zadoff
In Adam’s high school, the theater department is split right down the middle: the arrogant actors on one side, the nerdy techies on the other. But when Adam, a techie with a love for lights, falls for Summer, a new actress, he is torn between his friends and his heart. A quick read that falls a bit short of Zadoff’s debut, Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have, this book is nevertheless a wonderful depiction of a teen boy: his insecurities, fears, struggles, and aspirations.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
A compilation of Tina Fey’s musings on balancing career and motherhood, being a boss, comedy, and being a woman, this book was absolutely hilarious. Fey’s true voice shone through, and her anecdotes were laugh out loud. Her comparisons of being a little bit skinny and a little bit fat were especially amusing–this woman is a great observer of society.

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
A charming audiobook covering the courtship and marriage of Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, who clashed in their beliefs regarding natural selection and faith. Impeccably researched, Heiligman masterfully weaves together pertinent facts, quotations, and amusing anecdotes into a seamless narrative. Narrator Rosalyn Landor’s British accent is perfect for this production.


13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
I finally picked this up after hearing so much hype over the upcoming release of The Last Little Blue Envelope. Following Ginny on her quest throughout Europe as she opens up her aunt’s succession of notes to her is a blast, and Maureen Johnson’s writing is engaging and amusing. The cast of supporting characters is well-fleshed out and three-dimensional, and Ginny’s emotions are true-to-life. I started listening to this on audio during my commute and had to bring the print copy home on Friday so I wouldn’t have to wait until the next week to finish it up!

Upcoming Releases, TLA Edition

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My job sent me to the Texas Library Association annual conference April 13-15 in Austin this year, and it was a treat as always.  I’ve been lucky enough to be able to attend three straight years in a row.  In between attending sessions and speaking with vendors, I was able to pick up a few books from publishers that looked promising.  I’ve already motored my way through almost four of them, and although they won’t be released for a few months yet, I figured I would give our readers a peek.  Full reviews will come closer to publication date.
This is a change from Warman’s previous books.  Liz Valchar wakes up on her parents’ boat the night of her 18th birthday and realizes she’s dead, but she hasn’t “passed on” quite yet.  You see, Liz’s death wasn’t strictly accidental, and it appears she’s still hanging on in this world in order to solve her own murder.  She’s joined by Alex, a fellow classmate, who was killed in a hit and run the year before.  Unsurprisingly, the two deaths are linked.  The plot is nothing new (it’s really similar to Amy Huntley’s The Everafter and others I could name), but Warman writes well and she’s created a compelling character with Liz.  
Chloe lives with her older sister Ruby in a small town in New York, next to a giant reservoir.  One night, Chloe is with her sister at a party at the reservoir, and Ruby tells the crowd that Chloe can swim to the other side of the reservoir and not drown.  When Chloe attempts this, she finds a boat with her dead classmate in it.  This event prompts Chloe to leave town to live with her father, but Ruby wants Chloe back.  Two years later, Chloe returns to Ruby, and she begins to learn about the strange hold her sister has on the town and what really happened to the girl in the boat that night in the reservoir.  The book is incredibly creepy, thanks in large part to Suma’s writing style and the character of Ruby, who is beautiful, manipulative, and selfish, yet so protective of her little sister Chloe.  It’s a character study of the two sisters and a meditation upon sisterhood in general.  It toes the line between fantasy, magical realism, and straight-up realistic fiction.  So unsettling but very, very good.
Tamora Pierce, aka my favorite author from my teenage years, blurbed this book, so it was an immediate draw for me.  It’s billed as a fantasy in the same vein as Pierce and Kristin Cashore, but in reality, it’s got a lot of elements that you don’t normally find in fantasy adventures.  Carson is clearly trying something new here, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  When Elisa was a baby, she was gifted with a jewel in her navel, indicating she has been chosen to carry out a great act of service.  What that service is, she doesn’t know (and in fact she’s terrified of what it might be).  The book starts out slow, but the last two thirds pick up a great deal and they’re filled with some great action.  There’s a lot of Spanish flavor to this book, which I appreciated, since so many fantasies go straight for the weirder than weird made up stuff or rely on old British Isle stand-bys.  Religion also plays a major part.  Carson has created her own religion for her book, but it’s quite similar to Christianity (in particular Catholicism), and I wasn’t ever able to puzzle out if the similarities were purposeful or not.  This is not your typical fantasy.
I am about halfway through this book, and I am in love with it.  Two ships are bound for New Earth sometime in the future.  A girl and a boy, romantically linked, are separated by a battle between the ships.  The girl, along with the rest of the girls on the first ship (ages infant through 15), are forcibly taken to the second ship and told they have been rescued.  The boy remains on the first ship, along with a largely slaughtered crew, and must somehow work with the surviving boys to salvage a broken ship that’s filling with radiation.  What I like best about this book is how I feel that I know what’s going on, and then Ms. Ryan throws me for a complete loop.  She’s manipulating me in the best of ways.  Plus, the writing is polished, there’s plenty of action and intrigue, and she knows how to write a good character.  I predict this one is going to be huge.

Bitter End by Jennifer Brown

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Going into Jennifer Brown’s Bitter End, I knew what I was getting into: this is a story about relationship abuse. Unlike Deb Caletti’s recent Stay, which also tackles this topic, Brown’s book faces it head on as it happens, rather than reflects back on it after the fact.

It doesn’t take long for Alex to fall head over heels for the new guy, Cole. He’s been assigned to her tutoring duties, as he’s a little behind from changing schools. He’s a sports star, and though Alex believes he’s way out of her league, Cole finds her attractive, smart, and completely his kind of girl: the kind he can manipulate.

When they begin dating, Alex’s best friend Zack becomes a problem for Cole. He’s jealous of the time she spends with him, and he’s begun showing up whenever they’re hanging out as friends. It’s just an accident — really — when Cole walks in at a time that Zack happens to be on top of Alex; they’d been goofing around like good friends would. But that’s only the first instance of Cole’s anger. When he begins taking out physical aggression on her, Alex writes it off as accidental; she even goes as far as to cover it up with makeup when he’s knocked her down and turned her face a few shades of black and blue.

Zack and Bethany — Alex’s other good friend — become increasingly concerned as she writes off Cole’s stalking behavior as his desire to spend time with her because they’re both so busy and when she writes off his attitude and his acts of assault as simply his stress relief. Moreover, they know Alex is lying to them and to herself about the severity of Cole’s actions, but it’s not until she’s ready to handle the issue herself that Alex will finally realize she’s in a mess of a situation and it won’t get better if she continues to ignore it. And the last act of this show is brutal: so brutal, in fact, Alex finally discovers the real reason Cole had to transfer to her school in the first place.

Bitter End is an extremely difficult book to read. What I have come to appreciate so much about Brown’s writing both here and in her debut Hate List is that she’s willing to delve into a challenging problem facing teens, but she does it in a manner that is full of heart and understanding, rather than one meant to teach a lesson. With Bitter End, we come to really like Alex: she’s an average girl. There’s nothing spectacular about her, and she has the same insecurities any girl has while dating a guy she’s thrilled to be with: she wants Cole to keep loving her no matter what because it feels good. The abuse, though it doesn’t really feel “good,” feels right to her because it’s a sign that he’s paying attention to her. And though we’re right there with Alex knowing what he does it wrong — so, SO wrong — we can almost understand why she explains it away. We almost understand why she’s willing to ignore all of the warning signs about Cole.

Of course, we don’t accept this abuse as readers. We’re squarely on the side of Zack and Beth in the story: we want Alex safe. She’s worth a heck of a lot to them, and they care so deeply about her. But they realize early on that their influence over Alex to change her attitude toward Cole is pretty limited; she has to come to terms with what he’s doing in her own way. That’s not to say they think she deserves what she’s getting nor that they’re ignoring it. They’re pretty blunt with her about how awful she looks when she’s wearing Cole’s scars and they’re perfectly honest about the fact she needs to get out of the relationship. But they can’t actually remove her from the situation because she’s also stubborn. She’s finally got something she’s wanted for a long time — a cute boyfriend who she believes cares so much about her he can’t let her go — but she doesn’t want to come to terms with the fact he abuses her. Or that he has immense baggage and issues he needs to deal with, and she doesn’t deserve to bear the brunt. The thing is, both she and we as readers know that these things are wrong. She knows she doesn’t deserve this treatment. But the fact is, she feels trapped and continues making excuses.

What Brown does so successfully in this story is set up a victim who cannot be blamed. We empathize with her immensely because we are right there in her mind. And while we know Cole is a bully and deserves everything coming to him, we also sort of understand that he’s not necessarily doing what he does to Alex because he’s mad at her. He’s got much bigger issues he needs to tackle — we see this through what we learn of his own family’s challenges and manners of dealing with those troubles — and we almost sympathize with him too. As readers, we actually want him to overcome his own hurdles, but we know he can’t do it through Alex.

The secondary characters in this book are all well drawn and add to the greater arc of the story. I liked Zach and Beth quite a bit, as they’re the kinds of people I’d always wanted as best friends. They care deeply about Alex and they offer her all of the help they can without downright meddling in her affairs. Each of them has a distinct personality, despite not having all that much page time. I also really liked Georgia, one of Alex’s coworkers at the bistro where she works. Georgia has a bit of a history and some experience with pain herself, and it’s almost through her that Alex garners her own strength and pulls out the realizations that Cole’s behavior toward her is not excusable.

Bitter End is steadily paced; it’s not a fast read nor a slow read, but it’s one that’s deliberate in execution. I had to read this one in spurts, since it does get difficult to read straight through. It’s emotionally challenging, as I had to remind myself more than once that what Cole was doing was wrong and that the way Alex justified things was wrong. Brown’s talented in developing these characters that beg you to drop into their skewed mental perceptions; however, what I most appreciated in reading was that we never once are able to excuse Cole’s actions, despite feeling sorry for everything he’s got going on in his own life. We can sympathize without justifying. Perhaps most important, though, is that Brown never makes any sort of statement that creates a villain of one gender and a victim of another. What she sets up in doing in this story is exploring relationship violence in this instance, rather than create a generalized story to talk in a grand sense of violence in domestic relationships, and she’s successful in doing just that.

The one thing that didn’t quite work so well for me in this book was the ending, but I won’t say it’s not a fitting end to the story. I prefer my books to end a little messy and with a little uncertainty, since that’s how things are in the real world. Alex’s story wraps up pretty neatly in the end and too quickly. This is probably due to the fact this story focuses less on plot and more on character, and the wrap-up is key to the plot, rather than the character.

Pass this book off to your contemporary fiction readers and those who found Brown’s Hate List a compelling story. Fans of Sarah Dessen or Deb Caletti will likely enjoy this book, as well. I don’t usually think of books in bibliotherapeutic ways, but this is the kind of book that would resonate with a person experiencing relationship abuse. I’d also hand this book off to adult readers easily.

Divergent by Veronica Roth (aka my seventh dystopia of the year)

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You know, I have to admit it is kind of lovely that the publishing world has seized upon a subgenre I was obsessed with as a teenager.  There’s so much to choose from!  Sure, some of it is dreck, but a lot of it is pretty darn good.  And just think, so many of these books never would have stood a chance at being published (or even written) before the subgenre’s popularity exploded, thanks in large part to a little book called The Hunger Games.

I’m happy to report that Veronica Roth’s debut novel Divergent is one of the good ones.  And because I’ve harped on this ad nauseam in practically every single review of a dystopia I’ve written lately, I feel the need to state this right away: this book tells a complete story.  That’s right folks, it’s the first in a trilogy, but there is still a beginning, a middle, and an end.  I feel like hunting down Veronica Roth and personally thanking her for this favor.
Now that I’ve gotten that important tidbit out of the way, I suppose you’d like to know what Divergent is actually about.  In a future Chicago, the people have been divided into factions that each value a different personality characteristic: Erudite values learning, Dauntless values courage, Amity values kindness, Candor values honesty, and Abnegation values selflessness.  Something terrible happened in the past (what that terrible thing is, we don’t find out, but it’s implied that it’s a big war) and the faction system was created to prevent that terrible thing from happening again.  Each faction believes that a lack of their own chosen characteristic was the cause of the strife that plagued the world before – Erudite thinks ignorance is to blame, Dauntless thinks cowardice is to blame, and so on.  It’s an interesting idea that I don’t fully buy into, but Roth’s writing and plotting is good enough that I was willing to suspend my disbelief.
Beatrice Prior, our protagonist, was born into Abnegation.  She’s about 16 years old (people in Abnegation don’t keep track of their birthdays since that would be selfish) and will soon choose which faction she wants to be a part of, along with all the other 16 year olds.  Most people choose the faction they were born into, but not all.  Those who don’t choose their parents’ faction are usually ostracized by their family (you see the problems beginning already).  
Prior to the choosing ceremony, all 16 year olds undergo a test whose purpose is to help them decide which faction is best suited to them.  The test isn’t decisive – it’s merely meant to guide the person.  Beatrice’s situation is unique: the test tells her she is best suited for not one faction, but two, making her a divergent, something very dangerous in Beatrice’s world.  Luckily, the person administering her test is a kind soul and erases Beatrice’s results, entering in a manual result for one faction.  Beatrice then struggles with her decision at the ceremony – which faction will she choose?
Initiation into the chosen faction follows the ceremony, and it’s anything but pleasant.  It’s a long, drawn-out process that takes weeks where the initiate must prove she belongs in that faction.  During initiation, Beatrice discovers that her secret status as a divergent means more than just the fact that she might belong in two factions.  She also begins to uncover secrets about the faction system and their leaders (I love a dystopia with some juicy secrets that are revealed at key points in the story).  The stakes are high and the trustworthy people few.
Divergent is action-packed the whole way through, aside from the first few chapters that set up the premise.  Beatrice’s initiation into her chosen faction is particularly well-done.  The initiation challenges both her body and her mind, and the process also allows the reader to get to know the other initiates and their foibles and fears.  While many of the ancillary characters aren’t fully fleshed, Beatrice herself is a dynamic character who grows and changes throughout the book.  There’s also a romance, but it doesn’t overwhelm the story and it makes sense in context.  What’s more, Beatrice relies on herself rather than her love interest during initiation and what follows, and even supports him at times.
There’s a lot of comparisons with other dystopias that can be made – I personally don’t mind that there’s a lot of derivative dystopias out there as long as the author can write well and add a unique twist  – but I actually found myself thinking of the Harry Potter books as I read Divergent.  In both series, children/teens are divided into houses/factions based on personality characteristics, with one particular characteristic overriding the others and determining much of the person’s future.  The problems with this system of separation are similar in both sets of novels: rather than fostering teamwork and togetherness among each house or faction, the system fosters hatred of other houses or factions and derision of their most valued characteristic.  The special hatred between Slytherin and Gryffindor in the Harry Potter novels is mirrored in Divergent with the hatred between Erudite and Abnegation.
Divergent avoids a lot of the pitfalls that other recent dystopias have fallen victim to: it tells us something about how we live now (how labels can divide us, the importance of teamwork, the difficulties of friendship during competition, and the dangers of a herd mentality), the characters’ actions make sense within the context of the novel, it tells a complete story, and the female protagonist is active rather than passive.  
I would have liked to see more world-building.  As I mentioned before, I don’t completely buy into the premise, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that Roth doesn’t tell the reader what happened to create this very unique society.  Julia Karr’s XVI – another dystopia set in Chicago – does a much better job of this, but her world is also more closely related to our own, so the world-building comes a bit easier.  I hope that future installments will give me a better picture of the decimated Chicago and greatly expand upon the snippets we saw in Divergent.  Overall, though, Divergent is a book that stands out from the pack, and I look forward to the sequels.