Wither by Lauren DeStefano – Mini Book Review

Sep 052011

Wither by Lauren DeStefano
Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

This is the first book in the Chemical Garden trilogy.

Okay, so, here’s the deal. I read Wither months and months ago and the review got put off and put off, because I had some major issues with the book, and the negative reviews are never fun to write. The writing was perfectly good, but the main character was annoying and the world that DeStefano created didn’t make a heck of a lot of sense to me.

Before I go any further, here’s the publisher’s synopsis from Indiebound:

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape–before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden’s servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

It had the potential to be a really interesting story, especially as it was repeatedly compared to The Handmaid’s Tale. This world was much more one created by circumstances, however, as opposed to malevolent forces within the government. We’ve got science-created shortened lifespans and most of the rest of the world allegedly destroyed by melting ice caps, but Rhine is kidnapped and taken to Florida, which is evidently not underwater (yup, you read that right).

My biggest issue was with the technology. I could have accepted a lack of many of the technologies that we know now had society fully collapsed after the geneticists screwed things up, but there was some pretty elaborate technology and yet nobody even mentioned a computer.

I’m also not completely convinced that there were need to be Gatherers to kidnap girls and take them to these polygamous marriages. Rhine and so many other girls were living in constant fear of being murdered for the little food they had, or alternatively starving to death. In contrast, her life for Linden is pampered and easy, if somewhat constrained. It seems that there would be hungry girls vying for these spaces, if only to get by.

Wither got a lot of love when it came out, but I am relieved to find that I am not the only one to have had serious issues with it (and everyone seems confused about the Florida thing). There is a very interesting review on Goodreads that goes into even more detail, and points a few things out that I missed.

I think I’d be interested if DeStefano tried her hand at something contemporary, but I’m less than impressed with her world creating, and I don’t think I’ll be reading the rest of the Chemical Garden trilogy.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Publisher, via GalleyGrab.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Agoraphobics in Love

Aug 162011

Agoraphobics in Love: A Short Story by Lisa Tucker
Published by Simon & Schuster

Losing both of her parents at once caused Emily to retreat inwards – both into herself and into her house. When the thought of leaving home becomes unbearable, she finds solace in an online board for agoraphobics, where she meets Jules, a former ad director who lives within driving distance – if it weren’t for the fact that neither of them is willing to get in the car and drive.

Agoraphobics in Love is a lovely short story. Tucker manages fantastic characterization and a perfect story arc in the 50 pages of her narrative. Emily and Jules are both engaging and easy to relate to, even for readers without agoraphobia. I found myself wanting more than anything for their pseudo-love affair to work out.

If Tucker can do this with 50 pages, I’m very much looking forward to what she will do in a novel.

Tucker’s short story – which includes the first four chapters of her new book, The Winters in Bloom – is available now as an ebook for only $0.99. Buy it from your preferred ebook retailer.

About The Winters in Bloom, coming September 13 from Simon & Schuster:

Together for over a decade, Kyra and David Winter are happier than they ever thought they could be. They have a comfortable home, stable careers, and a young son, Michael, who they love more than anything. Yet because of their complicated histories, Kyra and David have always feared that this domestic bliss couldn’t last – that the life they created was destined to be disrupted. And on one perfectly ordinary summer day, it is: Michael disappears from his own backyard. The only question is whose past has finally caught up with them: David feels sure that Michael was taken by his troubled ex-wife, while Kyra believes the kidnapper must be someone from her estranged family, someone she betrayed years ago.

As the Winters embark on a journey of time and memory to find Michael, they will be forced to admit these suspicions, revealing secrets about themselves they’ve always kept hidden. But they will also have a chance to discover that it’s not too late to have the family they’ve dreamed of; that even if the world is full of risks, as long as they have hope, the future can bloom.

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park – Book Review

Aug 012011

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park
Published by Simon & Schuster

Life is good for Soo-Ja Choi, although she is not really content. The strong-willed young woman is determined to go to Seoul to become a diplomat, against the wishes of the father who loves her and wants to keep her close. Soo-Ja believes she has found a way to get what she wants when Min, a weak, impressionable man, asks for her hand in marriage. She is positive she can convince him to go with her to Seoul, but once they are wed it becomes apparent that Min is not the man he represented himself to be. Before long, Soo-Ja finds herself aware of just how different life could have been had she instead married Yul, the handsome young student activist who proposed to her during her engagement to Min.

When Yul asked that single yes or no question – Come with me – and she said no, Soo-Ja did not know what she was saying no to. She did not know the size and weight of the consequences, how life is not set down like train tracks, and you don’t just ride above it. The life she had could not be that different from the one she could have had, she had thought. I am the same person, surely the story unfolds roughly the same way?… We’re only given one life, and it’s the one we live, she had thought; how painful now, to realize that wasn’t true, that you would have different lives, depending on how brave you were, and how ready. Love came to her that day – she was twenty two – and wanted to take her, and she said no. -p. 245

This Burns My Heart is an exquisite debut novel from Samuel Park. Park manages to bring Soo-Ja to life in a compelling way, despite the fact that the novel jumps months and years at a time. No matter what circumstances occurred in the intervening time, Soo-Ja was always just as dynamic as she had previously been. This is a function both of Park’s strong characterization, but also of his vivid and poetic use of language.

Soo-Ja realized at that moment that the biggest luxury in life was the ability to make plans, to count on the future as if it were something pinned down on a map. -p. 111

In addition to his strength in characterization and prose, Park’s plotting was top-notch. He knows exactly how long to spend in any various period of Soo-Ja’s life to balance sufficient detail with the need to keep the plot moving forward. Of course, like any debut, This Burns My Heart isn’t perfect. Scattered in three or four passages throughout the book were parenthetical statements that would have worked better either incorporated straight into the text or eliminated altogether. Of course, the weakness of these parentheticals was only as apparent as it was due to the strength of the rest of Park’s writing, so the inclusion of, at most, five unsatisfactory sentences is hardly even to be considered a weak point.

All in all a stunning novel, Samuel Park is a writer to watch and I highly recommend that you start by reading This Burns My Heart.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion – Book Review

Jul 142011

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Published by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

R has always been a bit different than his zombie friends – if you can call them that – trying harder than most of them to hang onto his pre-zombie identity. So, perhaps it makes sense that it was R who managed to take in and keep the memories of a dying boy at the same moment that he was feasting upon his brains. R’s victim was in love with a girl named Julie, a girl who was in the same room, under the same attack, but somehow R manages to save her, and even bring him home with her. Back in the presence of the living in a non-predatory role, R begins to become more sentient, and even win Julie’s affections. How can their love survive, though, when zombies and the living are the most deadly of enemies?

I never expected to be talking about a beautifully written zombie novel, but here I am. At times, Warm Bodies verges on the poetic:

I don’t know why we have to kill people. I don’t know what chewing through a man’s neck accomplishes. I steal what he has to replace what I lack. -p. 8

The writing is lyrical and smart, including literary references to Melville and the Epic of Gilgamesh, not to mention the fact that the whole thing is essentially a post-apocalyptic version of Romeo and Juliet (R and Julie). Part of what is so interesting about Warm Bodies is that the Romeo and Juliet aspect is so subtle. Once you are alerted to it, it becomes obvious – what two groups could be more diametrically opposed than zombies and the living? – but Marion makes the story his own, instead of simply sticking to the story laid down for him by Shakespeare.

I will admit, I was very skeptical about the idea of a sentient, loving zombie, as that seemed to be the antithesis of all things zombie, but Marion makes it work beautifully. Not that there aren’t times where the improbablity of R’s character – even accepting the existence of zombies – can frustrate, but the story and the writing pull the reader through those times.

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Statues That Walked by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo – Book Review

Jun 292011

The Statues That Walked: Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo
Published by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

If you have read Jared Diamond’s Collapse, you know that the natives of Easter Island caused the collapse of their own civilization in the course of building their famous statues, causing the deforestation of their island by cutting down trees to transport the giant heads. Hunt and Lipo did not set out to disprove this widely accepted truism when they ventured to Easter Island, called Rapa Nui in the local language, but disprove it they did and, in the course of doing so, they unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding Easter Island: from the true cause of the deforestation of Rapa Nui, to the social structure that supported statue building, to the statues themselves and how they were moved.

One need not be an archaeologist to find The Statues That Walked fascinating. Hunt and Lipo lay out their arguments for the past of Rapa Nui in a clear and articulate manner, providing just enough evidence to lend them credibility, but not so many technical details to lose their lay readers. Assuming their science is valid – and Hunt and Lipo give the reader no reason to assume it is not – this team seems to have made great headway in explaining the history and basic culture of the people of Easter Island, not least the explanation that the statues were moved by ‘walking’ them.

The only real problem with The Statues That Walked is the extent to which its authors inserted themselves in their story, which was either too much, or not enough. In no way did they introduce themselves or give any sense of who they were, and yet they referred to their findings, their state of mind going into the research, etc. Inserting oneself into a story such as this one can lend a greater sense of narrative flow and make it easier to engage readers, but in order to do that, an actual sense of the personality of the authors must come through. The writing was clear and engaging enough that the authors were not a necessary plot device to keep readers interested. In the end, their random insertion served only to distract from the fascinating picture of Easter Island painted by The Statues That Walked.

A solid work of nonfiction, odd insertion of the authors not withstanding. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound.*

Source: Simon & Schuster Galley Grab.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Where’s Baby’s Birthday Cake? – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jun 252011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

Where is Baby’s Birthday Cake? by Karen Katz
Published by Little Simon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

It occurred to me recently that I haven’t shared any Karen Katz for Saturday Story Spotlight, and I’m not exactly sure how I committed such an oversight.

Daniel loves Karen Katz’s books featuring ‘Baby.’ In most of them, Baby (not always the same baby, by the way) is looking for something, looking behind, under, and inside things to find it. This is accomplished by the reader lifting the flaps and looking at the shiny things beneath them. In Where is Baby’s Birthday Cake? Baby looks under the bed and finds presents, behind a chair and finds balloons, and in the refrigerator and finds ice cream.

Karen Katz’s books are basically 100% guaranteed to captivate Daniel. He loves anything with flaps to list, and Katz’s books are extra good because of all of the shiny elements. I appreciate that the babies alternate gender from book to book, but always are sort of nondescript, other than a pronoun here or there. I do wish, however, that she had more diverse babies. Looking through the covers of her books, I can see that Katz has a few babies of African descent, and certainly some of the babies have slightly darker skin than others, but the vast majority of her babies appear to be Caucasian.

We enjoy Karen Katz and Daniel has been particularly enjoying reading Where is Baby’s Birthday Cake? in preparation for his own birthday today; if only she would start publishing a greater diversity of babies in her books I would be an undying fan.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound.

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly – Book Review

Jun 202011

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly
Published by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Lulu is the failure of the Atwood family, at least that’s how she feels. Her younger sister, Sophie, seems to actually be on the verge of a successful acting career, and their responsible elder sister Emma is getting married. Lulu is not in a relationship, and has no idea what she wants to do with her life, taking dead-end jobs that drive her parents mad. Somewhat depressed, Lulu is up in the attic on an errand when she discovers a trove of letters from her great-grandmother Jo March to Jo’s sister, Meg. Jo reminds Lulu so much of herself: unsure the path she wants to take in life, unwilling to enter into romantic entanglements with her neighbor. Both women are spunky, but somewhat lost. Watching Jo find herself in the series of letters, Lulu begins to feel better about her prospects, and finds herself too.

A fascinating idea to me, the concept of Little Women never having existed, because the Atwood sisters are continuing to live in the March sisters’ universe. Even so, just as millions of young girls have found strength in Jo March, her great-granddaughter is able to do the same. Donnelly had a bit of a tricky line to walk with The Little Women Letters. On one hand, she could have made them too much carbon copies of the March girls and their experiences, and made the whole book trite and derivative. On the other hand, she could have made them too very different from Jo and her sisters and the Little Women angle would have felt tacked on. Instead, Donnelly found a lovely balance. Leaving out Beth, she imbued the other three March girls into each of the girls in the Atwood family, while still leaving Emma, Lulu, and Sophie to be thoroughly modern English girls.

Perhaps the best part of The Little Women Letters were the titular letters which Lulu discovered in the attic. Donnelly caught Jo’s voice and style very well, creating letters that are not canonical to Little Women, but do mesh with the happenings in the book.

All in all The Little Women Letters is a hugely enjoyable novel for fans of Little Women. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: publisher, for an episode of What’s Old is New.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A to Z – Saturday Story Spotlight

Jun 182011

Welcome to Saturday Story Spotlight, my feature where I discuss books my husband and I are reading with our son, Daniel. These are books that he, we, or all of us particularly enjoy.

A to Z by Sandra Boynton
Published by Little Simon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Generally on Saturday Story Spotlight I only talk about books that Daniel and (or) I love. Today, though, I’m going to talk about a book that really isn’t working for us at the moment, that I thought would be amazing.

Typically we love Sandra Boynton, but her alphabet book, A to Z, just does not work for my young toddler. Daniel loves letters (like really seriously loves them), and as such, he loves alphabet books. We read them incredibly frequently, because he’s in a phase where he wants to know words that start with each letter of the alphabet. A to Z starts out strong, with an aardvark admiring, an elephant eating, and some hippos hiding. Eventually, though, it gets to uglybirds being ugly and a xylo xylophoning. In between there is a vicuna violinning, salamanders singing, and iguanas itching.

Here’s the thing when we read alphabet books. Daniel want to say every letter and every THING before I can get to it. The salamanders and iguanas confuse him enough (he calls them all frogs), but the uglybirds and the xylo are invented animals. I love Boynton’s whimsy, but I think it goes a bit too far in this book; I’m all for quirky alphabet books, but complete inventions in an alphabet book that is clearly for young children – as evidenced by the board book format – seem overly confusing.

Not that A to Z is a bad book, per se. It is certainly fun to read, and might be appropriate for much younger children who are not trying to put phonemes to letters and words, and it might be appropriate for older children who have a firm enough grasp and are able to take things less literally, but it is not a good book at the moment for my letter and language-obsessed child.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

A Covert Affair by Jennet Conant – Audiobook Review

Jun 082011

A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the O.S.S. by Jennet Conant, narrated by Jan Maxwell

If you posted an audiobook review today, Wednesday June 8th, please leave your link in the Mr. Linky before midnight Central time (US) and you will be eligible to win a prize.

Synopsis:

Julia Child is best known as a famous American chef cooking French food. Before she knew how to make the perfect omelet, though, she was a member of the O.S.S., an intelligence agency that was the precursor to the CIA. It was actually in this agency that she met her husband Paul, while both of them were serving in the Far East. It is that period of time, from their work in the O.S.S. through their courtship on which A Covert Affair focuses.

Thoughts on the story:

I must admit that I felt slightly misled by A Covert Affair. It purports to be the story of Paul and Julia during their time in the O.S.S., but having listened to it, that is not at all how I would classify it. In my opinion, A Covert Affair looks at the O.S.S. during the war, and its place in the McCarthyism that subsequently overtook the sanity of America. In order to avoid having a 3,000 page treatise on the agency, Conant uses the Childs as a way to frame the story she wanted to tell. The audiobook opens and closes with the Childs post-war, with Julia working on her cookbook and Paul called back to the United States so his loyalty can be questioned. In the course of the questioning, the name of their O.S.S. acquaintance Jane Foster came up over and over.

It is Jane’s story that seems to be the real heart of the book. Her life with the O.S.S. is much more closely examined, from the time she signed up, through her exploits taming wild animals, to an affair of hers and her post-war marriage. Always somewhat of a leftist, and not particularly discreet, it is no surprise that she came to the attention of HUAC during the years of the Red Scare.

A Covert Affair does then close again with the Childs and their shock at the things Jane Foster is accused of, but it seemed like they were a convenient way for Conant to sell the book, with the recent interest in all things Julia after the popularity of Julie and Julia. I admit to falling into this popularity trap, it is why I wanted to listen to A Covert Affair, and why I listened to My Life in France last year.

All that being said, however, once I got over the fact that I felt a little duped, I realized that Conant did have a very interesting story to tell. In fact, I think it is quite likely that Jane is a more interesting focus during the O.S.S. years than either Paul or Julie would be. In addition, the way the story concludes makes me glad I knew so much about Jane and made it begin to feel that I had been told the story of the Childs experience with the O.S.S., if not exactly their time there.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Jan Maxwell does a very good job with the narration of A Covert Affair. She is one of those no-nonsense narrators who avoid getting overly dramatic, but simply tells the story in front of her with poise – and with enough inflection to keep the story engaging.

Overall

I remain unconvinced that A Covert Affair‘s subtitle Julia Child and Paul Child in the O.S.S. is an accurate depiction of the contents of the book, but there is a very interesting story there that deserves an audience. If you are extremely interested in the history of US intelligence, pick this up in print so you can pore over the details. If you’re more interested in a sketch of the O.S.S. and the place of the Childs and their friends, pick it up in audio to keep the story moving engagingly. As long as you aren’t reading or listening solely for news of Julia and Paul, you won’t be disappointed.

Check out Simon & Schuster’s page to listen to a sample of the audio

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: Simon & Schuster Audio.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

If Sons, Then Heirs by Lorene Cary – Book Review

May 302011

If Sons, Then Heirs by Lorene Cary
Published by Atria, an imprint of Simon & Schuster

Every Easter, Rayne Needham makes his way down to his Nana Selma’s place, to help her around the heir property she has held for the family since the death of her husband, King, Rayne’s great grandfather. Rayne wants nothing more than for Selma to sell the land, so she can live out her last years in something closer to luxury. It turns out, though, that the fact that this is heir property – an arrangement common among African American farming families in the South – complicates everything. Selma is not the sole owner of the land, really not the owner at all, but all of King’s progeny, and that of his brothers, are equal owners.

Rayne’s attempt to unravel the reality of the situation with the land coincides with and feeds into his finally learning some of the most disturbing of his family’s history, and the reuniting of what has been, until this point, a rather dysfunctional family. Told largely through the eyes of the increasingly frail Selma, and through bits and pieces from other family members, the Needham’s family history is told in a largely nonlinear fashion. This unmooring in time and repetition of certain family lore gives increased weight to what Rayne finds in his family’s past.

Although it took me some time to become invested in the lives of the Needham family – mostly because of the jumping between multiple family members – the history and the issue of heir property, which is still an problem for many families, absolutely fascinated me. I ended up extremely engaged, and really enjoying the If Sons, Then Heirs.

Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells| Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

Wither by Lauren DeStefano – Mini Book Review

Agoraphobics in Love

This Burns My Heart by Samuel Park – Book Review

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion – Book Review

The Statues That Walked by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo – Book Review

Where’s Baby’s Birthday Cake? – Saturday Story Spotlight

The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly – Book Review

A to Z – Saturday Story Spotlight

A Covert Affair by Jennet Conant – Audiobook Review

If Sons, Then Heirs by Lorene Cary – Book Review

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