The Impossible Knife of Memory, Laurie Halse Anderson

It started in detention. No surprise there, right?

"For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own. Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over?"

I was expecting to love this one, and I did. Laurie Halse Anderson's writing is amazing, and this novel also had an excellent and heartbreaking plot and wonderful characters. I read it very quickly, and was just sucked in, oblivious to the outside world. 

The power of Anderson's writing is such that she has you laughing out loud in one moment, and then feeling like crying the next. Sometimes it's at the same time; you're laughing but you know you shouldn't be. I didn't necessarily feel that with Speak, but here, the writing was just that powerful. Anderson writes like a teenager, not like an adult trying to write like a teenager. Hayley's voice was so, so relatable and it felt so real; in fact, some of her thoughts seemed exactly like mine and in other respects her inner monologue seemed like people I know. She's so real as a character: bleak, cynical, humorous and poking fun at the system. Yet she's also deeply scarred. Some people on Goodreads said that they did not like her, but I sympathized and I loved her cynical voice, mocking the system and authority. 

I'm not sure how to express my love for this book. It was just so witty and wry and heartbreaking too. I have no experience with post traumatic stress disorder, so I don't know how realistic the portrayal was, but it certainly resonated with me. Hayley's father is such a scary character; on good days, he doesn't leave the house or do much; on bad days, he gets really drunk and angry. The result of this is that Hayley has to take on the role of caretaker, and it's very sad to see the roles reversed like that. Meanwhile, she's trying to deal with adolescence and everything else. It's all a mess of feelings and uncertainties. For example: "It [high school] was enough to make me want to flee into the mountains and live out my life as hermit, as long as I could find a hideaway that had a decent public library within walking distance and toilets that flushed...Then I'd see Finn in the hall, or I'd catch a glance of his profile out of the corner of my eye while we were driving to school, and he would turn to me and smile. And I didn't want to be a hermit anymore."

I could definitely relate to the descriptions of the high school Hayley attends, with its horrible education system and population of brainwashed "zombies", as she refers to them. While I do think that it's unfair to just label everyone like that, anyone who says that there isn't an element of truth to it either hasn't attended an American high school recently or is a zombie themselves (sorry). Some of these people aren't bad per se; not at all. It's just that they're so entrenched in the system that it's too late for them to break out of it. I see this all the time at my school, and there are plenty of people there that are nice and all, they're just, well, zombies. That's not to say that all of these people don't have their own joys and sorrows and heartbreak, but to me it feels as if they're just acting out parts scripted for them by their environment, and I feel sorry for them. It's all so fake and contrived and stupid, and it makes me angry. And then there are the Rules that Hayley refers to for how things work, and the standards for different people. Perhaps I'm too judgmental, but it's really true. However, there are also plenty of people who defy the stereotypes; for example, the cheerleaders at my school are not all skinny as sticks, and some of them are quite intelligent. People are complicated, but Laurie Halse Anderson portrays them well. There are many YA books that have undertones of this one and other novels of her's, but they fail utterly at engaging the reader. (That was quite a digression on my part).

Despite the fact that I loved it, the romance felt a little unrealistic to me; after all, Finn is somehow this really popular but really nerdy person who just sort of randomly takes an interest in Hayley, the dark, silent outcast. There's not really an explanation. The ending also felt rather rushed; it's really, really sappy, and I was not convinced at how everything got suddenly resolved. Not resolved, exactly, but how things with Hayley's dad went from an all-time low to getting better and better. Nevertheless, the ending appealed to me immensely and despite my criticisms I loved this novel. Even more than Speak.

391 pages.

Rating: *****

Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories From History Without the Fairy Tale Endings, Linda Rodriguez McRobbie

Princess Alfhild had a choice to make. On the one hand, a really awesome guy had finally managed to bypass her father's deadly defenses and call on her without being beheaded or poisoned. She could marry this brave young man and enjoy the life of domestic bliss that women of her era were supposed to aspire to. Or she could give up royal life and become a pirate. Guess which path she chose?

"You think you know her story. You’ve read the Brothers Grimm, you’ve watched the Disney cartoons, you cheered as these virtuous women lived happily ever after. But the lives of real princesses couldn’t be more different. Sure, many were graceful and benevolent leaders—but just as many were ruthless in their quest for power, and all of them had skeletons rattling in their royal closets. Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe was a Nazi spy. Empress Elizabeth of the Austro-Hungarian empire slept wearing a mask of raw veal. Princess Olga of Kiev murdered thousands of men, and Princess Rani Lakshmibai waged war on the battlefield, charging into combat with her toddler son strapped to her back. Princesses Behaving Badly offers mini-biographies of all these princesses and dozens more."

That title's quite a mouthful. The book itself is pretty good. It's not great, but I came across some amusing and fascinating anecdotes. The author draws from all over the world and through many eras to find stories of princesses who had power and weren't afraid to use it, and who gloried in the strife and warfare they caused. Or did they? One thing I found quite interesting was the way the book focused on the different interpretations of some of the women; for many, not a great deal is actually known about them, so most modern images of them are guesswork at best. There are some princesses who now have a reputation for vicious bloodshed, but we don't really know what they were like. Some of this was quite annoying, as in many of the sections, it's all speculation on the author's part based on highly unreliable accounts, often written centuries after the events. For some of the mini-biographies, the author admits that it's not even known if certain things actually happened. But within each section, there are some facts, and I certainly learned a lot. I was definitely reminded of just how much history is out there. 

Each section was rather short; they are certainly mini biographies. I would have perhaps liked a little bit more information about each lady (and perhaps fewer ladies profiled), but McRobbie provided enough detail and narrative to catch my interest. I was quite surprised about how murky the history was, even through the 19th century. I guess people just don't often record details. There's also the added fact that many of these women were controversial, and their detractors tried to both tarnish their reputations and erase any record of their having existed.   

Lots of the stories had quite a bit of humor to them; many were also really, really sad. And some of the stories were simply bizarre and stretched belief. After all, many of these women were maligned, imprisoned and exploited for various reasons. The author recreates the facts pretty well, and I read each mini-biography quite quickly.

There wasn't much development in this book; it was just one story after another, which is an issue I often have with certain types of nonfiction. There was also no real conclusion or wrap up to the book; it just abruptly ended, and in that respect it was very unsatisfying. I wanted an ending which would talk collectively about the princesses. Or something.

However, for the most part this book wasn't bad; I certainly learned a lot of random and not very useful facts, which I delight in. I would recommend it to fans of quirky nonfiction; I received a copy from the publisher via Goodreads, which is incidentally is called Quirk Books.

285 pages.

Rating: ****

Rereading I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy.

From the back cover: "I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments."

I remember enjoying I Capture the Castle when I first read it; however, I don't remember loving it. This time I did; it's such an entertaining, clever, and beautiful book. It still feels so, so fresh, even though it was published over 65 years ago, and I found myself laughing and sharing Cassandra's joys and sorrows. 

Cassandra is by turns humorous, thoughtful, and witty. She makes a great many observations about her life, people in general, and the place she lives in, and many of her musings rang true to me. She's really a great narrator, and her descriptions of the little country town she lives by are marvelous. Godsend has all the hallmarks of a quiet, picturesque little English village with a quirky old castle overlooking it; this is obviously very romantic, but it's balanced by the fact that Cassandra and her family are living in extreme poverty, and their situation is precarious, absurd, and not a little comic. The whole set-up is one that's great for a story; clearly, the Mortmain family needs some help, and this comes in the form of the two Cotton brothers, although not as you might expect.

I enjoyed all of the characters, from the denizens of the castle to the people who arrive and shake things up a bit. I did find Cassandra's sudden falling in love a bit unrealistic, but I suppose that's how love can be sometimes. Anyway, Cassandra is definitely charismatic, and so are Simon and Neil Cotton.

There's plenty of action and suspense in this book, but it's also a quiet and tranquil read. The things that happen are like little ripples on a pond. There's nothing flashy or violent, and nothing is ever life and death, but I still read the book pretty quickly, wanting to know what would happen. At the same time, I didn't want to have to be finished reading, so I tried to conserve sections of the novel. You know something's really good when you want to be immersed in it forever. 

I remembered almost nothing about I Capture the Castle, but every so often there was one page or two that triggered a vague memory; it was quite odd, and the science of that would be interesting to study. For example, there was one page that wasn't even a very important one in the story where Simon sends Cassandra a big box of chocolates, and somehow it triggered something buried way back in my brain. There were a couple of other instances like that too.

I marked many passages as being of merit, both because of the ideas in them and because of the quality of the writing. Cassandra is seventeen, and she's figuring out lots of things about love and life, about who she is, and what she wants to do. For example, the middle paragraph on page 122 is quite interesting and well-written; it's a bit too long to quote in full though. Read more intriguing and witty quotes here on the Goodreads page for them.

Cassandra's narration is very British, and I quite like it. She's fanciful and matter-of-fact at the same time, full of melancholy but remarkably clearheaded. The setting is also quite lovely, and provides an excellent backdrop for the events.

I wanted a less ambiguous ending to this one; it would have been nice for everything to have turned out very well and for the events to be resolved neatly like in a Jane Austen novel. However, that didn't happen. I was surprised by how much I loved this one reading it a second time; I was able, perhaps to appreciate more of the subtleties. It's a book that I know I'll cherish.

343 pages. 

Rating: *****

Flora and Ulysses, Kate DiCamillo (illustrated by K.G. Campbell)

Flora Belle Buckman was in her room at her desk. She was very busy. She was doing two things at once. She was ignoring her mother, and she was also reading a comic book entitled The Illuminated Adventures of the Amazing Incandesto!

"Holy unanticipated occurrences! A cynic meets an unlikely superhero in a genre-breaking new novel by master storyteller Kate DiCamillo. It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is the just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry—and that Flora will be changed too, as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart."

I read Flora and Ulysses in the span of a day; it flew by, but I'm still not really sure what I thought of it overall or what rating to give it. On the one hand, it was entertaining and funny, and I loved the illustrations; on the other, it was such an odd specimen of a book. I have to say that I was immediately drawn in by the first scenario: a squirrel is accidentally vacuumed up by the Ulysses Vacuum Cleaner, and when he emerges, Flora gives him squirrel CPR. Ah, the absurdity of it all. The newly named Ulysses comes back to life - only now he has powers that no other squirrel has. As it turns out, Ulysses has super-squirrel strength, flies, and...he can type. Which he enjoys.

But a lot happens before all that is revealed, and it was quite amusing to be swept up along with Flora on her wild, surreal adventure. Things are not all light-hearted; Flora's parents are divorced, and she lives with her romance-writing mother, who doesn't pay much attention to her, to say the least. The cynical Flora believes that her mother loves a shepherdess lamp more than she does Flora, and it certainly seems that way, because Flora's mother is always, always criticizing her. And she's not pleased by this new addition to the home; to her mother the squirrel is just another embodiment of Flora's quirkiness. 

Quirky is how I would describe this book in general. There are so many little things just not quite right about the book; sometimes it seems realistic, but then of course it takes a turn into the wildly fantastical, with Ulysses typing up not very good poetry and craving giant donuts. It was all very goofy, yet there was also a certain charm about the book. It might appeal to younger readers, especially the cute, furry, intelligent animal aspect of it. And it's illustrated superbly.

I just loved the illustrations; they're skillful pencil drawings, and there was just such detail in each and every drawing, down to books on shelves and small objects in the scene. The drawings weren't life-like, but they were certainly realistic; it was easy to tell what everything was, and every detail fit the book. I also loved the illustrations of Ulysses; he's so cute and mischievous looking. My favorite was probably towards the beginning when he gets crackers out of the vacuum cleaner. The other characters are interestingly drawn  too, and I think the book worked very well on that level. Also, how is anyone able to draw like that??!!!? Other people's talent always inspire envy.

Flora was also a pretty awesome character; she's intelligent and animated and she longs for adventure. Her father was odd though, and I really disliked her mother, whose sudden change of heart at the end seemed rather sudden. And I have no words for William Spiver.

Some parts of the book were sort of corny, especially the exclamations of "holy bagumba" and other things. I got kind of tired of those after a while, and the insanity was a bit much. However, in short bursts it was amusing and welcome. I'm not sure that Flora and Ulysses is worthy of the Newbery Medal, but it's a fun children's book. Thanks to Candlewick for providing me with a review copy, and a worth a read for the humor.

233 pages.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

Attending the AWP

On Friday and Saturday, I had the privilege of attending the American Writers Program's annual conference, which this year was held in Seattle, near where I live. My parents were both on a panel, so I got to come along, both as a blogger and as a reader. Unlike ALA and BEA, AWP is more focused towards smaller journals and presses, although plenty of larger publishers had tables and booths as well. I had a lot of fun, though it can get quite overwhelming; the book fair was held in a giant, noisy room, and there are so many tables and so many publishers vying for your attention.

There was also a lot of free paraphernalia, designed to attract people to booths. I picked up a great deal of it, including....

Notebooks:


Buttons:
 

Writing utensils:

 

And, of course, chocolate, mainly dark...:

They sure know the way to attract people...

Also, here are a few of the pens and pencils I found particularly amusing or nice: 


But of course the main things of interest are the books. Oh, so many books, of all different kinds, poetry and fiction. I saw many books that looked interesting, but I only ended up buying three (though I wrote down the titles of many more).

1. The 13 Clocks, James Thurber (published by the New York Review of Books!)
2. Momo, Michael Ende: Ende's Neverending Story is quite well-known, but I'd never heard of this one before; it sounds intriguing.
3. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, Brad Gooch

I also was fortunate enough to receive many more books from various publishers (Archipelago, New Directions, Spuyten Duyvil). Hopefully I'll be reviewing some of them very soon.


Here are the titles:
Conversations, Cesar Aire
Elsa, Tsipi Keller
The Ivory Hour, Laynie Browne
Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm (featuring illustrations by Haitian artists, this one looks amazing).
Plants Don't Drink Coffee, Unai Elorriaga
A Treatise on Shelling Beans, Wieslaw Mysliwski
Spring Tides, Jacques Poulin
The Chukchi Bible, Yuri Rytkheu

Just as my shelf of books that I need to read was thinning out, more books came pouring in. But I'm not complaining...

Overall, I enjoyed the conference very much, although I would have liked to have been able to go to more panels (E. Lockhart was on several, and I missed it!) Despite the disapproval of many and the fact that it is rather chaotic and uncivilized, I think the conference is a great way for small publishers and journals to promote their work to a good audience, and for people to find out about less popular (and probably better) fiction and poetry. It's no BEA, but AWP probably has more books of merit.

The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack

On a drizzling afternoon in old London, in an age when men of certain stature or pretension still carried swords about the city's crowded streets, two scholars sat fireside at the Grecian Coffee-House on Devereux Court, arguing fiercely over the accent of a Greek word. 

"The pun is commonly dismissed as the lowest form of wit, and punsters are often unpopular for their obsessive wordplay. But such attitudes are relatively recent developments. In The Pun Also Rises, John Pollack-a former World Pun Champion and presidential speechwriter for Bill Clinton-explains why such wordplay is significant: It both revolutionized language and played a pivotal role in making the modern world possible. Skillfully weaving together stories and evidence from history, brain science, pop culture, literature, anthropology, and humor, The Pun Also Rises is an authoritative yet playful exploration of a practice that is common, in one form or another, to virtually every language on earth. At once entertaining and educational, this engaging book answers fundamental questions: Just what is a pun, and why do people make them? How did punning impact the development of human language, and how did that drive creativity and progress? And why, after centuries of decline, does the pun still matter?"

The Pun Also Rises is a slim but clever exploration of the fascination that puns have for some of us, and the exasperation for others. Or both. Because of the book's length, I raced throughout without really writing down any notes, but I did find it fascinating. I'd never really thought before about the scientific aspects of punning and humor in general. After all, depressing though the thought is, we only find things funny because of reactions in the brain. Everything happens solely because of reactions in the brain. The only reason I'm able to type this review is because of my brain (and my hands too, of course). You get the point. 

The humor we find in puns themselves is basically at least partially because of the incongruity good puns cause between our right and left hemispheres as the brain tries to toggle both meanings. Of course, knowing this might take the humor out of puns for some, but I found it interesting to know. The brain is such a fascinating organ, and obviously that's a grossly oversimplified explanation; Pollack goes into greater detail, although most of the book isn't scientific. 

There are many great puns from history woven into the book, as Pollack explores the many ways in which puns and other humor have helped form society. That said, I think he made a few too many leaps in declaring puns to be so, so influential on culture; I wasn't entirely convinced, although some of his arguments made sense. After all, puns allow us to consider different contexts, and to realize dual (or triple) meanings of things. Pollack reveals that in reality, interpreting and processing the pun takes a lot of effort on the brain's part. 

There's a fair amount of history in The Pun Also Rises, both the history of puns and of nations. This is, I think, where I wasn't entirely convinced; Pollack wrote as if puns were the single most important part of society at certain periods, when obviously this wasn't the case. I realize this was a book on puns, but it almost felt like he was focusing too much on puns. Does that make sense? Anyway, the history was still really intriguing, and I enjoyed reading about the way that puns have pervaded much of society, and also how they began to fall and become denigrated as low-brow humor. 


As well as including puns in anecdotes, there are many puns in the chapter titles and subheadings (and in the title and subtitle). One of my favorites was the pun where someone was asked whether they would like a nightcap before bed or a candle to take with them and they responded in ancient Greek "Neither one nor the other", which phonetically sounds like "Neither toddy nor tallow". It was genius.


Anyway, ultimately through this delightful book, Pollack illustrates that puns are indeed more than "some antics."

154 pages.

Rating: ****

Across a Star-Swept Sea, Diana Peterfreund

If the Wild Poppy dared return to Galatea, Citizen Cutler was ready. He'd stationed armed guards at the entrance to the estate and placed an additional ten soldiers around the perimeter of the taro fields. 

"Centuries after wars nearly destroyed civilization, the two islands of New Pacifica stand alone, a terraformed paradise where even the Reduction—the devastating brain disorder that sparked the wars—is a distant memory. Yet on the isle of Galatea, an uprising against the ruling aristocrats has turned deadly. The revolutionaries’ weapon is a drug that damages their enemies’ brains, and the only hope is rescue by a mysterious spy known as the Wild Poppy. On the neighboring island of Albion, no one suspects that the Wild Poppy is actually famously frivolous aristocrat Persis Blake. The teenager uses her shallow, socialite trappings to hide her true purpose: her gossipy flutternotes are encrypted plans, her pampered sea mink is genetically engineered for spying, and her well-publicized new romance with handsome Galatean medic Justen Helo… is her most dangerous mission ever. And Justen has secrets, secrets that could destroy their entire world."

I enjoyed For Darkness Shows the Stars, but it wasn't great or anything; this book, inspired by The Scarlet Pimpernel, was much better in many respects. Towards the end, I started to get tired of it, but I raced through most of the book, entranced by the world-building and action-packed plot. I was immediately swept away by this book; it was suspenseful and gripping, much more so than the other Peterfreund I've read. There's nothing very thought-provoking here (despite the author's attempts), but it's certainly good entertainment. There are some questions of morality that are in the story though, just like in The Scarlet Pimpernel. On the one hand, the aristos who are being rescued are nasty, entitled people, but on the other, they're still people and despite their own cruelty they don't deserve to be treated like animals, having their intelligence Reduced.

The Reduction is of course an added plot-line (it's also in For Darkness Shows the Stars). Basically, way back, some people started genetically engineering themselves, which worked for a while, but it resulted eventually in the Reduction, where "regs" lost their intelligence. Those who didn't undergo the genetic modifications (called Luddites in the world of For Darkness Shows the Stars) ruled quite cruelly over the Reduced, until a cure was discovered, and then the tables were turned. It's these harsh aristos who are being subjected to a taste of their own medicine, so to speak. It's quite horrifying, and also provides plenty of opportunity for political power play. And, Justen is part of it as well, having made the "pinks", the pills being used to reduce the aristos and anyone affiliated with them. All of this is a little confusing to sort out, but once I did I was fine.

The romance is added as well, because of course YA fiction has to have it. It wasn't bad, though I would have cut some of the scenes with Persis and Justen (what is it with weird names in YA fiction?) I was more interested in the intrigue and the action. I also feel there was another issue here; the two of them wouldn't tell each other things! I feel like Persis should have told him about her identity as the Wild Poppy early on, and he should have told her of his inadvertent involvement in making the pinks, and how sorry he was. Then a lot of the book's machinations would be have been irrelevant.

I enjoyed the way Peterfreund adapted The Scarlet Pimpernel; unlike the original novel, from the beginning we know the identity of the Wild Poppy, but Justen does not, and that is a particularly agonizing part of the story, which again, could have been solved if they had just been as honest as possible with one another. Still, Persis's personas are portrayed well; she's playing a dangerous role, as both a courier and spy and as a shallow socialite interested only in her wardrobe. You can tell that she's frustrated by always having to pretend to be so dumb.

One of the best things about this novel was the world-building; New Pacifica and its society really came to life, and I was enthralled by the descriptions of this lush world. It seems like paradise, but of course it's not. The book also boasts plenty of action.

More than halfway through the book, the characters from For Darkness Shows the Stars appear! I wasn't surprised, since I'd read a review that mentioned this, but it did feel a bit odd to me. I also didn't remember them that well, and they introduced a whole other aspect to the story's complexity (admittedly, the story isn't that complicated.

Ultimately, Across a Star-Swept Sea was a good book of its kind, so if you like YA, I'd recommend it. However I've found lately that a lot of YA fiction feels trite and shallow and frivolous to me; I'm becoming even more of a snob.

449 pages.

Rating: 3.5 stars.