Review: Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Summary (from Goodreads): August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?
R. J. Palacio has written a spare, warm, uplifting story that will have readers laughing one minute and wiping away tears the next. With wonderfully realistic family interactions (flawed, but loving), lively school scenes, and short chapters, Wonder is accessible to readers of all levels.

Review: I had heard so many positive things about Wonder before I read it, and I'm always a little nervous around books that receive so much praise because I'm anxious that they'll never live up to the expectations I have for them. Wonder, however, was everything that I heard it was, and more. It blew me away.

The story is told from six different points of view: Those of Auggie, his sister Via, his friends Summer and Jack, and Via's boyfriend Justin, before going back to Auggie's perspective again at the end of the story.  As a general rule, I'm a huge fan of books which switch narratives, but alas I often end up finding that all the perspectives tend to sound the same. However, Wonder was totally refreshing in this respect.   I should have been disinterested when the focus shifted away from the protagonist if it was any other book, but I wasn't- each character's voice was completely their own, and each had their own story to tell, so it was engaging from start to finish.  I thought it was a very effective way of telling the story, with everything revealed from all sides by people from all walks of life.  Via was one of my favourite characters (if not my favourite) and the section from her point of view was just flawless.  I wanted nothing more than to just give her a big hug, but also take my hat off to her for persevering so much, for being so brave, and for all the things that she does and sacrifices for Auggie's sake, because she understands that in many ways she has it so much easier.   

Auggie, though, was also one of the most entirely convincing characters I've come across in a novel for the longest time.  Palacio really captures him perfectly.  He is such an ordinary ten-year-old from the moment he starts talking, yet the way in which he conveys that is so haunting from the very first paragraph- "I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away screaming in playgrounds. I know ordinary kids don't get stared at wherever they go."  He talks about this so casually, as if it were really nothing at all, and I wanted to give him a hug right there before I knew anything else about him. For the next 313 pages I was crying and laughing and smiling along with him. You can't not, I don't think, he reads so realistically.

When I think about it, there wasn't much of a structured plot, and if it was there then it wasn't very strong. But I think part of the benefit from the book shifting to the perspectives of some of the secondary characters kept it from being as weak as it perhaps would have been if it had only been Auggie narrating, because there were always little stories within the story relating to their everyday lives, thoughts and feelings.  It's very much a character-driven story rather than one driven by action, but it kind of works here.  However, The ending was something I had a slight issue with; I thought it was a little overly sentimental. Saying that makes me feel kind of conflicted, because on one hand I feel like it's what Auggie and the rest of the characters deserved- yet it read as rather too good to be true  (conversely, I feel like Daisy dying was unnecessary, didn't add anything to the plot and was just perhaps there to get more tears out of the reader).

Still.  I suppose those issues are really kind of small, and this book really shouldn't be put aside because of them. Everyone should read it, and I also imagine that it would be a good book for discussion in places like book clubs. It's not to be missed.

In Three Words: bittersweet, thought-provoking, hopeful.
Recommended for: both children and adults alike.
Rating: 4.5

Thank you to Random House Children's Books for sending me a copy for review.

Review: Pink by Lili Wilkinson

Dear blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): Ava Simpson is trying on a whole new image. Stripping the black dye from her hair, she heads off to the Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, leaving her uber-cool girlfriend, Chloe, behind.

Ava is quickly taken under the wing of perky, popular Alexis who insists that: a) she's a perfect match for handsome Ethan; and b) she absolutely must audition for the school musical.
But while she's busy trying to fit in -- with Chloe, with Alexis and her Pastel friends, even with the misfits in the stage crew -- Ava fails to notice that her shiny reinvented life is far more fragile than she imagined.

Review: This is one of those books that totally proves why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover.  I was expecting this to be a light, fluffy sort of novel.  But it was so much more than that.  Although Pink is pretty lighthearted in a lot of ways, I quite enjoyed that: it was pretty refreshing to read a LGBTQ novel which isn't just about the protagonist coming to terms with their sexuality, coming out etc. A lot of the YA novels I read about sexual identity are pretty heavy going, which I do understand, but the general take on Ava being a lesbian in Pink seemed quite...relaxed, if that makes sense.

Ava already has a long-term girlfriend, but she's actually wondering if she's not gay.   She likes the colour pink, things haven't been going so well with her girlfriend Chloe of late and she doesn't see the appeal with hanging out with their edgy radical friends anymore.  She was an entirely likeable character for all her flaws, and I think that absolutely anyone could relate to her in one way or another. I'm sure everyone at some point in their life wants to be different, wants to fit in with the right crowd.  Throughout the book Ava made a lot of mistakes in her attempts to be accepted. She could be pretty selfish and thoughtless at times, and although I often facepalmed at her actions, I still totally understood why she did the things that she did.

The thing I loved best about this book by far was the characters.   Except Chloe.  Although I had high hopes for her when Ava mentioned she read Anaïs Nin (because anyone who likes Anaïs Nin is generally an awesome person in my book), alas that was not to be. She was mean.  Her remarks to Ava were so cutting and bitter I had a hard time understanding why the two of them were still going out.  Anyway, in the respect that she was totally three-dimensional and believable, yes, she was a good character. All the supporting characters were good.  Seriously, how do Australian authors do this?!  Jaclyn Moriarty and Margaret Wild have the most incredible cast of characters as well, and they both live Down Under.  It must be all that sunshine.

The Pastels were, again, characters I disliked, but were totally believable.  It's like Lili Wilkinson has gone into a school with a video camera, filmed everyone's comings and goings and then broadcast them on a giant outdoor television screen. Everything feels exposed, from the settings to the character dynamics.
Also, the Stage Crew, i.e Screws. They are awesome, although in their anti-Glee win and discarding of pecking order in their school, they made me feel slightly guilty for  being one of those people who loves singing on stage, and whose only pair of high heels is a pair of character shoes.  Still, reading the scenes with all their highly entertaining banter and trivia, it feels like you're painting the sets with them or half-asleep at the movie marathon (by the way, that was one of my favourite scenes in the whole book). 

 So, if the rest of Lili Wilkinson's books are as awesome as Pink, I'll definitely be reading more of her novels in the future.

In Three Words: light-hearted, excellent, refreshing.
Reccommended for: Anyone who's willing to see past the bright pink cover.
Rating: 4.5

Review: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Dear blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss-her life-and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend's memory and racked with guilt for not being able to help save her. In her most powerfully moving novel since Speak, award-winning author Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia's struggle, her painful path to recovery, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the most important thing of all-hope.

Review: Right now I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt, it's entirely humid and boiling outside and all the windows in the house are open.  I crave ice cream.  But Wintergirls is impressive (and slightly creepy) in that you can read it in this climate and still feel cold.  It totally leaps off the page.
Wintergirls is not an ideal summer read. It is not for the lighthearted. But it is one of the most disturbing, powerful books I've read in the last few months.

I think Laurie Halse Anderson took a risk with writing Lia the way that she did.  Her narration was cold and distant, like she was really keeping the reader at arms length.  She's one of those characters I didn't really like on a personal level, but totally had sympathy for anyway because of the downward spiral she fell into. I wasn't sure if I was going to like her, because I read Speak, one of Laurie Halse Anderson's contemporary "issues" novels, last year and I couldn't warm to Melinda however much I wanted to.  But Lia was interesting.  She had a personality, and just as importantly she had hobbies, which I think can sometimes get easily forgotten about in books dealing with contemporary issues: There's so much focus on one certain thing or event that defines the story, that the protagonists' background can get totally lost under everything else.  Naturally they're not the driving force of the story, but I still think that if you want to create an entirely likeable, fleshed-out sort of character, small things like hobbies can have a pleasantly surprising sort of effect.

The writing style took a little getting used to, as well.  There are lots of strikethroughs in the text, for example if she referred to her mum, then crossed out the world and referred to her as Dr. Marrigan to try and stop herself from getting too close to her.  It took a few chapters to adjust to that, but when I did it was a fantastic way of seeing into Lia's mind.  For a lot of the book she sounded cold and distant and slightly bitter.  Is it possible to feel like you're stood 100 miles away from someone, and there's just this big frozen wasteland between you, and still feel like you totally understand why they do the things they do and the entirely intense inner functionings of their mind? Lia is like that. I would run up to her and envelope her in a gigantic, entirely crushing bear hug, but I get the impression she would probably shove me away and ask what on earth I was doing. Oh, and, uh, she's fictional, so that also might stand in my way slightly.

But I digress.  The actual use of language, the choice of words and such, was fantastic for the most part.  It was entirely lyrical and flowing,  but there were a couple of points when Laurie Halse Andersen seemed to get almost too deep into all the similies and metaphors,  which made me busy trying to work out what she was saying I kind of forgot what she was actually comparing life/school/herself to in the first place. But aside from those few places here and there, the general flow of the words went pretty much uninterrupted. 

I guess my only real problem with the book was the ending.  Considering the rest of it was so hard-hitting and powerful, it left me feeling a little underwhelmed.  I mean, the actual turn of events were good, but I suppose that the way they were put across wasn't  as satisfying.  I can't really talk about it without giving it away, but it was quite hurried.  Like, once you'd reached the ending, that was the end and that was all there was to it, as opposed to going into more detail about Lia's gradual road on the way to recovery.

Still, I can totally disregard that because the rest of it was so intense, darkly poetic and thought-provoking.  It totally exceeded my expectations, as well, having only thought Speak was okay. But, anyway, this.  Wintergirls is totally unmissable.

In three words: Intense, haunting, cold.

Recommended for: Anyone who wants to gain insight into anorexia and self-harm. Book-clubs. Teenagers. Adults.

Rating: 4.5

Review: The Betrayal of Natalie Hargrove by Lauren Kate

Dear blog,

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for like a week.  Two reasons: 1) I've been kind of busy this weekend, and 2) I haven't actually been reading much YA recently, so haven't really had an awful lot to review.

Summary (from Goodreads): Natalie Hargrove would kill to be her high school’s Palmetto Princess. But her boyfriend Mike King doesn’t share her dream and risks losing the honor of Palmetto Prince to Natalie’s nemesis, Justin Balmer. So she convinces Mike to help play a prank on Justin. . . one that goes terribly wrong. They tie him to the front of the church after a party—when they arrive the next morning, Justin is dead.

From blackmail to buried desire, dark secrets to darker deeds, Natalie unravels. She never should’ve messed with fate. Fate is the one thing more twisted than Natalie Hargrove.  Cruel Intentions meets Macbeth in this seductive, riveting tale of conscience and consequence.

Review:   This is Lauren Kate's debut novel, but [as far as I know] it was only released this year here in the sceptr'd isle.  It's a retelling of Macbeth, but because I've never read any Shakespeare, I didn't realise this until about twenty pages from the end.  So the first thing that struck me about it is how different it is from the Fallen books.  There are no fallen angels to be found, no love triangles (which I was kind of relieved about because I swear, they lurk between the pages of whatever I read these days).  The only things that are the same are the fact that it's narrated by a girl, and the fact that both are set largely in and/or around a school.

Even though I found it pretty impossible to warm to Natalie, I still think she was a great  character.  She was cold, shallow and cunning, and knew how to get exactly what she wanted.  She just...didn't go about it the right way, and as she gets caught up in reaching her goal and becoming the Palmetto Princess things spiral entirely out of control. 
Still, even though her characteristics and such weren't really a big hit with me, she was fantastically created. I loved the parts of the book that went back to her past, and how more and more of her story was gradually revealed, because that really gave depth to a character who otherwise I wouldn't have been so keen on.  She's an entirely perfect example of proving the point that just because a main character isn't a genuinely good person, they should still be well-rounded and three-dimensional.

The setting of Palmetto High was pretty ideal for such a story, even though the school itself was questionable. There are next to no references to exams, homework etc., and one of the characters spends so much time hanging out in the bathrooms she has a beanbag there.  Really?  From my experience of secondary schools, the toilets are not nice places, and surely a library is a much better place to hang out..?

The pacing was pretty perfect all the way through, and the tension gradually built up throughout the book until the conclusion.  At some points it felt almost slightly suffocating or claustrophobic, and Natalie and Mike made me facepalm a couple of times as they went to more and more dire lengths to try and shift the blame and rid themselves of the crime that they had committed.  It was like there was no way out for them, and whatever they tried to to they just got further and further entangled in messing with their fate.

I'm not sure what  I made of the ending, which was entirely open and left a lot of questions to be answered.   Natalie and Mike's actions certainly seemed very desperate when you consider how it all started, and it was kind of sad how much their social status and such depended on being the Palmetto prince and princess and how far both of them were willing to go to get it.   But then if I had to try and end what they had started, I don't know what I would have done. 
But to conclude; power is entirely over-rated anyway, especially if you have to mess with other people's lives to get it.

In three words: Superb characterisation.  Intriguing.
Recommended for: Girls who like Macbeth. Also fans of books like Private, Gossip Girl and such.  This book is like a twisted amalgamation of the two.
Rating: 3

Thank you to Random House UK for sending me a copy for review.

Review: Junk by Melvin Burgess

Dear Blog,

note: this is published as Smack in the US. 

Summary (from Goodreads): Like so many teenagers, Tar and Gemma are fed up with their parents. Tar's family is alcoholic and abusive, and Gemma feels her home life is cramped by too many restrictions. The young British couple runs away to Bristol in search of freedom, and finds it in the form of a "squat." This vacant building is also occupied by two slightly older teens who share everything with Tar and Gemma (including their heroin habits). For a while, everything is parties and adventures, but slowly Tar and Gemma find themselves growing more and more dependent on the drug--whose strict mandates are even less forgiving than those of the parents they fled. As Gemma says, "You take more and more, and more often. Then you get sick of it and give up for a few days. And that's the really nasty thing because then, when you're clean, that's when it works so well."

Review:  You know when you read those books that are set at another point in time, or in another country, but still feel like they could totally happen to you, right here and right now?  Yeah, Junk is one of those books.   Even though it was published in 1996 (?) and is apparently set in the early to mid 1980s , it feels like that it's still set in the present day.  It's so contemporary, and so much of it entirely universal.  The desire to get away from your parents and stand on your own two feet, and  the urge to have a good time.  Alas, though, you know that it's inevitable that Gemma and Tar aren't going to go about it the right way. You have to watch on as gradually things go from bad to worse and worse than that.

For much of the first part of the book, I didn't really like Gemma.    I mean, I pitied her, and I wanted her to emerge from her nightmarish experiences alive, but that doesn't necessarily mean that I liked her.   Especially at the beginning of the book, I often wanted to slap her.   She was so frivolous and shallow, and so careless and thoughtless for others, it was entirely frustrating.
About two-thirds of the way into the book, though that seemed to change, and by the end of the book she seemed to be the stronger character; determined to get clean of her heroin addiction.  The book is set over the course of about five years, so you could certainly see how she had matured from a bratty child to a woman.

Tar's character seemed to be the reverse.  At the beginning I thought he was the stronger of the two, more rational and thoughtful.  Plus I pitied him for the tough time he'd had at home;  he had reasons for running away from his family, and Gemma was just along for the ride. But in the latter part of the novel he seemed less likeable and weaker.  One thing stayed the same; I still felt sorry for him, but in a different sort of way, and I still wanted him to try and turn his life around.

If you've put up with my rambling for a while you'll know I am quite the fan of multiple-narrative novels.  Done well, they work fantastically.  Forbidden, Finding Cassie Crazy, Monsters of Men and so on are amongst my favourite books, and I probably wouldn't have liked them as half as much as if there had only been one of the principal characters telling the story.  Also, it particularly pleased me that some of the secondary characters like Vonny, Richard.  The look into Lily's mind was particularly creepy  insightful. 

The plot was pretty nightmarish. It's one of those books that you want to just keep reading into the small hours of the morning, and put it down and run as far away from it as possible.  It's dark stuff. Heroin, prostitution, homelessness, abuse, heroin, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, drunken all-night parties, and did I mention heroin?  In some respects you could think of it as overkill, like an overload of issues, but you can see how one leads to another.  It's pretty claustrophobic in parts, like you're in a dark tunnel, and you want to run to the end and get out into the daylight as fast as you can.  The ending to the book isn't entirely without hope, though, so you're left wondering how and if Gemma and Tar turned their lives around.
It's certainly not a book that I'll forget easily.

In three words: dark, hard-hitting, nightmarish.
Recommended for: older teenagers.
Rating: 4.5

Review: This is All by Aidan Chambers

Dear Blog,
a review In Which Tesni Fangirls. 

Summary (from Goodreads): Using a pillow book as her form, nineteen-year-old Cordelia Kenn sets out to write her life for her unborn daughter. What emerges is a portrait of an extraordinary girl who writes frankly of love, sex, poetry, nature, and, most of all, of herself in the world. As she attempts to capture “all” of herself on paper, Cordelia maddens, fascinates, and ultimately seduces the reader in this tour de force from a writer who has helped redefine literature for young adults. A book not to be missed by any serious reader.

Review:  I honestly have no idea where I ought to start.  I've spent the last week entirely engrossed in This is All, and now I finished it's like all I can do is completely fangirl over it and want to re-read the whole thing over and over again.

It's like a journey in some respects, that begins when Cordelia is fifteen and ends when she's about twenty.  The book is her life, and the reader is like her shadow so it kind of becomes a part of theirs, too.
 At some points in the book it makes for very confusing reading.  Part two of the book is split so that you have to read all the left sides of the page from 200 to about 400, then go back to 200 again and read all the right pages.  Also part four of the book, which chronicles her creepy experience with Cal, a man who's obsessed with her, will cut suddenly from her talking about what's happening to her to her thoughts on other, completely irrelevant things.  It's actually very clever in that sense; On one hand you want to whizz through those parts of the book to get back to the central plot, but on the other when Cordy's experiences with Cal are so terrifying, the interludes about school, sleep etc seem almost like relief and a diversion. 

I loved Cordelia for the range of emotions she possessed, and the variety of reactions she could get from me; one minute I would be shouting "Yes!  Life feels like that!   Poetry is like that, and loneliness, and music is that satisfying. If you were real and I would totally follow you around everywhere",   The next I wanted to hug her; others she made me facepalm (the "It's...it's your period" scene *cringes* 'nuff said), others she made me want to cry.  She's intelligent but naïve, romantic but selfish, sometimes intense and others silly.  How does Aidan Chambers, a man and an adult, manage to write the thoughts of a teenage girl so powerfully and so personally?   There are some sections about periods, masturbation and the appeal of breasts; sex is quite an important topic. It's quite a mature read, certainly, and some of the topics I imagine a lot of parents wouldn't want their little darlings to be reading; but all I can say to them is  to just deal with it.  It's an entirely enlightening, frank book.

If I said I didn't like Will, that would be lying.  However, if I said I liked him, that also wouldn't be true. There were some moments when I really wanted to slap him and shriek; "But you care about Cordelia and you need her and she needs you!  The balance of the universe can only be restored if you love one another!" I hated him for his actions, or lack thereof.  Other times, however, I just wanted to steal him for myself,  and I very much envied Cordelia. That's part of the glory of the book; it portrays love in an entirely realistic way, ups and downs; Take for instance their "sex saga".  Aidan Chambers has eight hundred pages to build up a really deep emotional connection between the two of them.  It's not just lurrrve at first sight, complications ensue, they break up and Cordy learns a valid life lesson. There's way more substance to it than that.

Miss Martin.  MISS MARTIN IS JULIE FROM NOW I KNOW.    When I realised this I totally punched the air.  And she's all kinds of awesome in This is All because she has a deeper understanding of herself, and after taking on Nik she's pointing even more people in the direction of fulfillment.  And she's an English teacher, too, so she reads books, which is always a huge hit with me.
Now onto Edward and Cal *shudders*.  They're both...yeah.  I absolutely loathe them both, but then I think I was supposed to.  Note to self:  Never go out with a man in his thirties who works in sewage.  Especially not if you yourself are only seventeen.  Cordy's experience with Edward was one of the only points in the book I wanted to slap her. Why? What did she see in him?  I guess there was a lot of psychological stuff going on about it; how after she breaks up with Will and Izumi goes back to Japan, she needs to feel loved and he makes her feel sexy and mature.    As for Cal *shudders again*.  The less said about him the better.  He's creepy right from the start, and you know he cannot bode well.  More I shall not say.

The ending.  I totally didn't see it coming.  More I shall not say because it would totally ruin everything if I gave it away. But the impact is sudden and entirely frank; one of those endings that both makes me want to burst into tears and smile at the same time.  It's also kind of like Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness in the way it ends; how when you've finished it all you can do is just stand there in an entirely shocked and/or blown away manner.

In conclusion=  Whoooah. Aidan Chambers you are amazing for being able to write that well and that convincingly, to the point where you forget that it's only a story.
In Three Words: incredible incredible incredible.
Recommended for: mature teenagers. Adults.  Everyone. 
Rating: 5.

In My Mailbox 22

Dear Blog,
IMM is hosted as ever by Kristi of The Story Siren.

This was another week in which my taste in books led me further afield than the local library.  I went to the Great Big Library in the centre of town, which is full of Exciting Shiny Novels I couldn't dream of finding in the library closer to home. 
Also, I've been reading a lot more recently.  Of late I'd kind of been in something of a reading slump; that doesn't seem to be so much of the case any more.  Maybe it's because I'm finding more books that I truly want to read, or my tastes have changed slightly.
Excuse the random bottle of water in the picture.  My desk is a mess at the moment, but left long enough it will clean itself.

BOUGHT

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

LIBRARY

We by Yegevny Zamyatin [currently reading]
Le Bal by Irène Némirovsky [read; next week's Foreign Language Friday post] 

The Plague by Albert Camus

Junk by Melvin Burgess

So that was my bookish week.  What about yours?

Review: Impulse by Ellen Hopkins

Dear Blog,

I know my blog has been kind of dead lately, and for that I'm sorry. Outside of string ensembles and guitar orchestras I don't really have a life, so you'd expect I would have plenty of time for blogging, but the rest of my free time seems to be sucked away by Goodreads and Ravelry  other bits and pieces that appear out of nowhere.

Summary (from Goodreads): Aspen Springs Psychiatric Hospital is a place for people who have played the ultimate endgame. The suicide attempt survivors portrayed in this novel tell starkly different stories, but these three embattled teens share a desperate need for a second chance. Ellen Hopkins, the author of Glass and Crank, presents another jarring, ultimately uplifting story about young people crawling back from a precipice.

Review: You should know this by now, dear blog; I cannot get enough of Ellen Hopkins' novels.  The four that I've read have been so intense and hard-hitting that I finish them feeling all exhilarated and shocked.
But be warned: they aren't for the faint-hearted.  They're full of contemporary issues that make you think that Melinda in Speak has it easy.  Impulse is no different. The story begins narrated by some unknown narrator; one of the characters, or someone else entirely, you don't know.  The first of the characters to be directly introduced is Conner, who has ended up in Aspen Springs after trying to shoot himself following the end of an affair with a teacher. Soon afterwards, Tony is introduced; before he came to Aspen Springs he was among other things living on the streets and selling his body for drugs. Last but not least, there's Vanessa- a cutter with a dark secret.  When the three of them meet, their lives change in ways they could never have expected.

I think it's kind of impossible to properly dislike any of the characters, with the situations they're in and how vividly their thoughts and actions come off the page. That doesn't mean, however, that I liked them. Conner, for instance, was a complete train wreck of a character who seemed to be having the hardest time of the three emotionally.  I would have disliked the idea of him, nay, I do.  A rich boy who allegedly has it all but is struggling under the surface seems to be done so often nowadays, and his relationships and attitudes towards the other characters didn't really make me warm to him either.  He was also the character that didn't change or develop at all throughout the novel.
But I couldn't really dislike him. I just felt sorry for him, I suppose, just experienced his emotions so vividly it was hard to be like, "Ugh, just be likeable." So much as  "Confront your parents. Tell them how you feel.  Just speak to somebody." 
 I wanted to slap his parents.  Oh, how I hated them *insert scowling gif here*. So, I must have wanted the best for him if I felt that way. 

Tony was probably the character that I found both most likeable and the one with the most interesting story to tell; but as with all the characters I had to kind of piece together his story; nothing was really revealed straight out.  He was witty, observant, kind; He deserved happiness and a relationship with Vanessa (though I don't think Vanessa deserved him, if that makes any sense). 
Speaking of Vanessa; I thought she fell somewhere between the two of them.  I found it pretty hard to really sympathise with her, mostly because her thoughts often felt like she was keeping the reader at a distance...almost cold, in a way.  But conversely, her actions, and her emotions, seemed vivid; like how she felt when things were "blue", for instance. 

As for plot; this is one of those books where there isn't really a very distinct storyline; It's very much  a character-driven novel.  The writing style was slightly confusing at times; the narrative shifts every three or four poems or so, and often the three voices weren't very distinct and I ended up being like, for example, "Wait, but, Vanessa's the narrator at the moment isn't she?  Hmm, maybe not." quite often.   Still, it's great poetry- or rather, verse.  It flows like poetry, but it isn't really- it's too unsettling, too clever, too unusual and clear to really fit in amongst another of the YA free-verse books I devour so.

This is one of those books where I can't really talk about the ending, because it's so...yeah.  It's more closed and more obvious a conclusion than, say, Burned; but  more shocking and sudden and aaaargh.  For some of the characters, things end well; for others things are worse than when they first entered the story. And the last sentence; for a lack of a better, more professional word: Omigod. It is the conclusion to all conclusions, the most powerful and final last couple of lines I've read for months, probably.  
It's a good thing, then, that a companion novel, Perfect, is coming out in the autumn. I can't wait for another installment set in that same world, where among other people Conner's twin sister Cara takes centre stage. We'll see.

In three words: haunting, dark, riveting.
Recommended for: Mature teenagers.
Rating: 4

Review: That Summer by Sarah Dessen

Dear Blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): For fifteen-year-old Haven, life is changing too quickly. She's nearly six feet tall, her father is getting remarried, and her sister,the always perfect Ashley,is planning a wedding of her own. Haven wishes things could just go back to the way they were. Then an old boyfriend of Ashley's reenters the picture, and through him, Haven sees the past for what it really was, and comes to grips with the future.

Review: I've been kind of ill on and off  over the last week or so, and Pride and Prejudice, which I'm currently reading, wasn't providing the sufficient sort of comfort reading that you need when you're ill.  So after re-reading all the Strawberry Marshmallow books two or three times each, I was like: "I know what I need!  Some Sarah Dessen will do the trick to cheer me up in a way that Elizabeth and Darcy's verbal sparring will not."  And I had That Summer on my bookcase, still unread, so, I read it.  And of course it provided sufficient easy reading.

This is Sarah Dessen's first novel, and was first published back in 1996.  Which means that you can't complain it being formulaic or repetitive, because the formula hadn't been set yet, even though to me it seems like I've read it before [which I haven't]. 
But for all the predictability, there is something refreshing about That Summer, and that's the fact that Haven herself isn't in a relationship. Certainly it might have been interesting if Haven and Sumner had gotten together; (one word: fanfic) but the five-year age gap and the fact that he's Ashley's ex would probably make things...a little awkward.
The story mostly revolves around love and marriage; but it pleased me that none of it was in fact Haven's, and that was entirely effective in making all the aspects of change and moving on all the more powerful. 

Speaking of Haven herself. How does Sarah Dessen do it?  How does she manage to write such convincing, entirely believable voices that have you instantly on the narrator's side? She writes with the wonder and concern of being fifteen and exposed to the big wide world, and the cool, reserved tone of adulthood, which works perfectly for some of her other protagonists, in particular Auden and Macy (Yes, that's my attempt at writing poetically  *awkward turtle*). 
I say that, but.  Every character has their flaws, every character has something that can find irritate the reader, and for me that was how Haven complained about her height on  every other page.  I'm 5'5", which isn't so bad for one of my age,  but height = a definite advantage.  For one thing, it means that you can reach the top shelves in Waterstones.

Haven's various friends and family reminded me a lot of Melinda's in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson,  mostly because I detested all of them at one stage or another.  They frustrated Haven so much; so naturally I wanted them to just stop getting married and take into consideration how she felt about everything. Even her best friend seemed so thoughtless and self-centred.
Sumner, however, was particularly fantastic.  He was crazy and upbeat and...his outlook on the universe was just what Haven needed at the time.  He was, in a word; fun. But not entirely without enough thoughtful, deep substance to make him likeable.  Nay, he seemed to have reasons for the way that he went about life; not just that he couldn't be bothered to conform.

Even though That Summer is very much about moving on and the future, there's a very nostalgic feel about it, for years and summers and loves gone by.  The combination of the two is so balanced, like one can't be experienced without the other. And so the book concludes; Haven  thinks back to when her family was complete, and forward to how it might be.  It was an entirely satisfying (and predictable), but just what I was after, and just how everything should have worked out. 

In three words: sufficient Sarah Dessen.
Recommended for: girls.
Rating: 4.

Review: Burned by Ellen Hopkins

Dear blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): Raised in a religious -- yet abusive -- family, Pattyn Von Stratten starts asking questions -- about God, a woman's role, sex, love. She experiences the first stirrings of passion, but when her father catches her in a compromising position, events spiral out of control. Pattyn is sent to live with an aunt in the wilds of Nevada to find salvation and redemption. What she finds instead is love and acceptance -- until she realizes that her old demons will not let her go.

Review: You may or may not know that I'm a massive fan of Ellen Hopkins, after reading her novels Crank and Glass (strangely, I never actually reviewed them, though I mention my fandom a lot). Anyway, my expectations for Burned were very high.
It was no disappointment.

Burned wasn't quite as...dark, I suppose, as the disturbed-and-disturbing Glass. That doesn't mean that Ellen Hopkins doesn't pack a punch in this one. She does. Though it's probably the one of her books that deals with the least- or at least *lighter* issues, dark things abound, sometimes until you feel almost claustrophobic, especially towards the end of the book, when it seems like there's really no way out for Pattyn in the midst of her misfortune. And, well, there isn't, really. Compelling as it is, Burned isn't the sort of book that the reader really enjoys (Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma springs to mind).

The way that Ellen Hopkins writes intrigues me.  She dares to do interesting, exciting things with her poetry; shape poems, double meanings, and in some cases poems within poems. It's pretty inspiring (at least to me, struggling to finish a couple of verse novels), and not once does it sound awkward or interrupted.  The whole thing flows continuously, kind of like listening to one long song in a way. 
I've read a fair few reviews from readers who've despised this book because they think it doesn't portray contemporary Mormon life in an accurate sort of way. I couldn't say whether they're right or not because I'm not LDS myself.  So I'll just kind of skirt round that and leave you to make your own conclusion on the matter.  So moving swiftly onwards and upwards. 

The heroine of the story is Pattyn, who is like her six sisters named after a military general from one point or another in American history.  She is- was- depends how you look at it- a nice character, though I found it quite hard to relate to her- which could just be because our circumstances are so different.  Still, she was one of those characters who changed, one of those characters who by the end of the book was completely different from the girl she had been at the start, and for that I liked her.  She had an interesting voice, or narration you could say; she seemed quite matter-of-fact, and never seemed very self-pitying yet didn't really possess a stiff upper lip.  Maybe it was her upbringing- for all her unruly actions, especially in the first part of the book, she almost seemed almost calm in the way she told her story. 

Burned is, among other things, a love story.  And the object of Pattyn's desire is Ethan.  He was nice enough, I suppose, but not one of those crushworthy fictional boys that I come across now and again *cough*YukiSohma*cough*Nate*spluttercough*.
Anyway.  I liked him, but that was probably only because I wanted so much for Pattyn to be happy and if he made her happy then I was happy.  Kind of.  Apart from the fact that he kills mountain lions- which is in fact pretty awesome-  he himself didn't seem to have any other vaguely remarkable characteristics.  

The ending is the thing that causes so many of the one and two-star reviews on Amazon, at least it seems so.  It's very vague, very uncertain and very agonising in the way that it finishes. Still, I think it was quite a fitting end.  The thing that leads up to the end (I won't say what it is) I definitely saw coming, but then I didn't see the ultimate conclusion- that is, the cliffhanger.   If you don't like the way it finishes, then go and watch an old My Little Pony video.  Alternatively you could do this after you've finished Burned, to cheer you up and give you some more hope for humanity. 

In three words: devastating, compelling, incredible.
Recommended for: everybody who hasn't read an Ellen Hopkins book yet; I think this is a good  introduction.  Wait until the Crank trilogy or Tricks for the really dark stuff. 
Rating: 5.

Review: Now I Know by Aidan Chambers

 Dear blog,

So.  First post of 2011.  Feels like I haven't written an actual review in ages.

Summary (from Goodreads): Now I Know is all at once a compelling meditation on faith and religion—and the difference between the two—and an intense love story.

When a body is found hanging from a crane in a scrapyard, Tom sets out to investigate this strange case. Nik embarks on a research mission for a film about a contemporary life of Jesus. Then there’s Julie, a girl bandaged from head to toe and laid up in a hospital bed.

These three simultaneous plots— presented through a combination of letters, prose, poetry, jotted notes, flashbacks, and puzzles—are woven together into a provocative novel of mystery and self-discovery.

Like the other books in The Dance Sequence, Now I Know can be read alone or as part of the series.

Review: Following reading Postcards from No Man's Land a few months ago I've been quite the fan of Aidan Chambers.   Postcards  didn't quite live up to my expectations, but I was still intrigued enough to want to read the rest of the six-book Dance sequence, even though I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the rest of the series.  Well, Now I Know has restored my faith- no pun intended in relation to the subject of the book- in the Dance novels.

It's a strange little book in this respect; it's not actually narrated in any sort of chronological order.  It's a slightly confusing mix of letters, journal entries, transcripts and thoughts (not really unlike a Jaclyn Moriarty novel, I suppose). One part of the story seemed to be moving forward, while the other was kind of moving backwards with the same events...if that makes any sense.  Which I'm pretty sure it doesn't (but please give me a break. It's New Year's Day).  Anyway, by the time I'd worked this out, it occurred to me that it obviously wasn't that confusing, or else it wouldn't have taken so long for me to finally click which order the events of the novel were running in.  It didn't interrupt the flow of the story- nay, it was the flow of the story, and it worked well. 

Now I Know is very much a character-based book, for it has three central narrators: Nik, Julie and Tom.  In that order. I'll start with Tom first, seeing as there wasn't an awful lot to say about him.  Maybe  by calling him a central narrator I'm lying slightly, seeing as he can't have had more than forty-odd pages of the two hundred or so in the book, and for that he was probably the most disappointing thing about the book. He played a significant role, I'm sure, but perhaps if Aidan Chambers had spent a little more time writing from his perspective then I would have found him  a more likeable character.  Well, that's not to say that I disliked him.  Because he was so much of a two-dimensional character, I had no strong opinion on him.

Nik.  Now then.  At the start of the book, I actually kind of detested him and his general outlook on life.  Despite the fact that he seemed to play himself as the victim, he was actually one of those irritating people who looks down on Christians and other such forms of organised religion.  I don't see why he protested so much at playing Jesus in the film he was helping to make when, as the director of the film said, he acted like he was the son of God anyway; almost too clever and cynical, I suppose, for his own obnoxious good.  However, his encounters with Julie lead him to change into a much better person in many aspects of the phrase, until he was totally changed. He was open-minded, suddenly,  intelligent in as non-snarky a way as possible, and a pretty fascinating character to follow along on his spiritual journey (in the afterword of the edition I read, Aidan Chambers says that thought that Nik's name should be, well, Nik because the title was Now I Know. See?)

Nik had Julie to thank for all of this.  She was probably my favourite character in the book.  And what's not to like about her? She always had some sort of response to Nik's bitter put-downs of Christianity.  I felt kind of torn when I was reading her rambling monologues in the form of recorded letters to Nik, when she was talking about belief and Christianity.  Did I really buy into it or not?  Was I entirely persuaded to believe that there might be such a thing as a God, masculine or feminine (read the book and you'll get it)? Hmm.  It gave me a lot to contemplate, much like Nik I suppose.   She had many faces; one minute she was all serious and intense, wondering deeply into the human heart, and then the next she was lively, witty and utterly charming.

With the narrative told the way it was, it's hard to say where the climax of the story was; in terms of events, probably within the first hundred pages, but in terms of plot, and the way it all fitted together, it was conventionally towards the end (I hope that made sense). Which I loved.  The way everything fell into place, and the way that Nik and Tom's stories collided at the end was perfect in a "ta-da!" kind of way. It was hugely satisfying. 

So, in conclusion: Now I Know was everything that I wanted Postcards from No Man's Land to be, and it was no disappointment. And now I'm off to finish The Grapes of Wrath and South of the Border, West of the Sun so I can start on the next book in the Dance sequence, The Toll Bridge.
 
In three words: provocative, fascinating, deep.
Recommended for: teenagers who want answers.
Rating: 4.5. It would have been 5, had Tom been more well-rounded, probably.

FIVE challenge: Five Great Miracles...

...That Occurred To Get Me Reading More Contemporary Fiction.
So. Day nine of the Persnickety Snark FIVE Challenge, and with that,  I present you the five novels I read this year that got me reading more contemporary novels.
I've probably mentioned once or twice how now and again that contemporary fiction holds few thrills for me.  However, as the year's gone on I've noticed that I've been reading and reviewing more and more of it; a  And these books are why.

LOCK AND KEY or basically ANYTHING ELSE BY SARAH DESSEN
I discovered Lock and Key in February, and since then I've been rapidly devouring Sarah Dessens, occasionally all in one sitting.  True, when you've read a few they all start to become slightly formulaic, but who cares when it's that well-written? When the romance is that sweet, but when the story still touches on serious issues?

FAR FROM YOU by Lisa Schroeder
Also a book that confirmed that I was completely obsessed with novels in verse. I could ramble on for a very very long time about how poetic and well-written the book is, but I need to touch on the contemporary part of it because that's what I'm here for. 
Anyway.  The main character, Alice, is one of the main reasons that I love this book so. Because she starts off irritating, and then by the end has changed into the sort of person that you'd want to be best friends with.  Her general outlook on the world was very...ordinary, and so as much as I wanted her to get a grip at the opening of the book, I guess it's no different from me if I had been in such a situation.

HOLD STILL by Nina LaCour
There are numerous books nowadays about suicide, death, and any other variation on the theme.  So it's hard to say what it is that makes Hold Still stand out. Well, to me, many things; the writing style seems to have a big impact.  And the main character, Caitlin, changes.  She doesn't just grieve and mope.  She makes friends.  She changes. She grows into someone who has lived through such a terrible event as the suicide of a best friend and come out the other end.

FORBIDDEN by Tabitha Suzuma
Because, seriously;  How many YA books are there about consensual sibling incest? And how many, of all those, are so well dealt with that something I imagine would make people all, "move awaaaay from the controversial topic" has been hugely well-recieved.  Hear hear, I should say.

LOOKING FOR ALASKA by John Green
The first John Green book I read, and for that I will always love it.  True, it's slightly bizarre; a boarding school in which students go to classes in their pyjamas and wander round quoting François Rabelais and García Márquez.  However, for all that everything about it seemed very real.  Miles' voice (yay for male narrators in YA!), the romance, and the devastating event that marks Before and After.

 

Five Challenge: Great Book Covers

Dear blog,
day two of the Persnickety Snark FIVE challenge, in which I blog about which five books of 2010 have (in my opinion) the most gorgeous book covers.
This was a hugely hard sort of post to write, because anyone who stalks my blog frequently knows how much I love book covers, however many times I buy books with nice covers and then they end up being totally awful.
Anyway.  So here are my five favourites, in no particular order.

THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson
The UK cover is nice, but the US edition is even better.  (That is, the one I've pictured here).   I'm currently reading it-almost finished- and it seems so relevant to the book.
Anyway.  Much love for this cover.

HARMONIC FEEDBACK by Tara Kelly
So I haven't actually read this yet, but look at that cover.  That alone makes it worthy of my to-read shelf on goodreads.  However, I hear it's also about music, and that's a bonus.

 LOSING FAITH by Denise Jaden
Haven't read this either. Still,  I love simplistic book covers, and so the cover of Losing Faith is right up my street.  And it's pretty. 

FALLOUT by Ellen Hopkins
*drumroll* the grand conclusion to Ellen's gritty trilogy about Kristina Georgia Snow and her addiction to methamphetamine.  I love this cover because it's so relevant to the book; what you see is what you get.  A raw, disturbed and disturbing rollercoaster that follows the lives of three teenage siblings.

LIFE, AFTER by Sarah Darer Littman
Tree. Flowers.  Beautiful font.  Enough said.

Well, that's all.  It was irritatingly hard to pick my five favourites, so I'd better post this entry before I change my mind about some of them. 

Review: Kissing the Rain by Kevin Brooks

Dear Blog,

I've written loads of reviews since the chaotic month that was NaNoWriMo, but I've been so busy since all of them have ended up being half-finished or some such. 

Anyway.  This is going to have to be a quick review because it's just gone 10:30 here and I have a German lesson tomorrow morning and I've done barely any homework. 

Summary (from Goodreads): Moo Nelson likes to be alone. Overweight and shy, Moo is constantly mocked and bullied by his cruel classmates. He's happiest spending time on a secluded bridge above the highway, watching the cars go by. One day, from his special spot, Moo witnesses a crime that changes his life forever. He sees a car chase and a murder--and suddenly Moo's a celebrity of sorts. The police, the lawyers, and even the bullies are now really interested in Moo. But so is one shady character who seems intent on tracking Moo down. Now all Moo has to do is find out the truth behind the crime...before it's too late.

Review: I've heard many good things about Kevin Brooks since I started spending hours engrossed in book blogs and such.  Hence when I saw Kissing the Rain at a library the other day and finally decided to borrow it.
How glad I am that I did!  My expectations were pretty high after having heard rave reviews 90% of the time, and it was certainly no disappointment.

I read few thriller novels, for no apparent reason other than the fact that I don't tend to do gore and depressing things aside from apocalypse literature and the occasional film (Or an Ellen Hopkins novel.  Who doesn't want to read the most disturbing amazing contemporary YA lit out there?)  There wasn't much gore at all in Kissing The Rain, aside from the occasional fight (Oh, and the murder of course), and it was so...compelling.  Any depressingness was so well-written and enthralling that I couldn't help but want to devour it all in one sitting.  I'm sure I would have, had not small trivial things like eating and Christmas concerts with my string ensemble and such gotten in the way.

As well as being an utterly gripping plot in itself, I think that it wouldn't have been half the book it is if it wasn't for the writing style (if that last sentence makes any sense).  It's told on the first person, from Moo's perspective, and his outlook on the world is what makes him such a fascinating character, and the way he tells things.  For instance, the monotony of his life and the RAIN call for him to rename the days of the week: Oneday, Twoday, Threeday, etc., with Scatterday and Dumbday making up the weekend.  And the RAIN is the bullying that he has to put up with (and tries to ignore) at school because of his weight.  Such things seem like vital things for a unique character.  Some people complain that Moo's grammar and spelling, which are deliberately left uncorrected, make for an annoying and hard to decode book. I, however, loved it.

It took me a little while to get used to the way that he goes from one point in the story to another point in time which is referred to as now.  Now mainly concentrates on his emotions at the time, leading up to a certain event, which turns out to be a trial. Everything else just leads up to it, until finally everything is now.  Not to say that everything outside of now is just narration- it's not.  There's lots of monologue, and lots of rambling stream-of-consciousness thoughts.  But they're so direct in their rambling sort of way, every little thing that he says contributes. 

As for the  characters.  Moo was probably the only character that I did really like, mostly because Moo's own sense of paranoia and doubt about them, and there was no distinct good or bad side to the network of judges, criminals and lawyers that pressurised Moo for the truth. I do know however that I disliked Brady for a lot of the book- he was one of those characters that I just wanted to hit over the head with a hardcover copy of Anna Karenina.  Alas, fear is fear and I think that's what got the better of him more often than not.  Also, Moo's parents.   Providing I hadn't already worn out my copy of Anna beating Brady around the head then I probably would turn it on his parents.They were just so...ignorant.  I suppose mostly because Moo never really spoke to them about anything.  But was that because they never spoke to him?  This could go on for a while, but the dynamics (or lack thereof) in his family were frustrating. 

And the ending?  Whoooooah.  I shall say no more about it, leaving you only to throw the book against a wall and scream "No, curse you, Kevin Brooks, for ending it like that!" much the way you did when you read Catching Fire.  The ending, or lack thereof, is probably what stopped me from rating it a 5. The rest of the book was so good, the ending should have at least concluded things better than it did.

 I'd better mention that this is another one of those books that I've read it reviews can be with all its English dialect "awkward for the American reader".  All I can say is, enjoy it, because Moo is what makes it so unique.

In Three Words:  gripping, gritty, true.
Reccomended for: Everyone who hasn't read anything by Kevin Brooks yet.  Seriously, go and read it now.
Rating: 4.

Review: An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

Dear Blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. He's also a washed up child prodigy with ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a passion for anagrams, and an overweight, Judge Judy-obsessed best friend. Colin's on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which will predict the future of all relationships, transform him from a fading prodigy into a true genius, and finally win him the girl.

Letting expectations go and allowing love in are at the heart of Colin's hilarious quest to find his missing piece and avenge dumpees everywhere.

Review: You may or may not know if you've been reading my blog for a while that I am a total fangirl of John Green's works after I read Looking for Alaska last summer.    Paper Towns followed quickly after and now, alas, the only of his works I have left to read for time being are his collaborate novel with David Leviathan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  Anyway, so no doubt I shall spend a lot of time in this review comparing it to his other works, and I'll probably repeat myself once or twice.

Anyway.  So I had pretty high expectations for An Abundance of Katherines and, most of the time, it didn't disappoint.

Maybe it's just me, but you can't help but speculate slightly at this formula: a protagonist with some strange personality quirk, a highly amusing sidekick, a strong love interest, and a lack of parental authority.  So there wasn't really much new, but it's physically impossible to not enjoy anything by John Green.  He is, along with Sarah Dessen, one of my few favourite contemporary authors.  It doesn't matter, at least to my mind, if you can start to predict what's going to happen.

A lot of An Abundance revolves around mathematics.  I should probably mention that all of this was totally lost on me because my knowledge of maths is totally appalling and I probably have the same mathematical knowledge as an eleven-year-old.  All the discussion and examples of the Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability went over my head.  I did read the appendix at the end, by the way, but I just ended up saying to myself, "So, he's written a formula...which will tell him how long a relationship will last...so this line here is supposed to represent today...eh..." Maybe it was just me being mathematically challenged, maybe not.  Maybe there were just too many numbers.

That said.  Despite all that, like Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines is full of small, quirky facts that you wouldn't have known otherwise.  Read John Green books and you'll become one of those interesting intellectuals who can surprise their friends with things that none of them know.  Become cultured and exciting and intriguing and have people look up to you (or else just think that you're slightly bizarre). 

Colin was a nice enough protagonist.  He wasn't quite as humorous as Q and he didn't have so much to learn, I suppose, as Miles.  And his incessant whining did get on my nerves considerably a little at the start.  And for all his three dimensions, he seemed almost overly dependent on having a Katherine constantly at his side- though Lindsey Lee Wells was a welcome surprise, she was still amorous material.  That doesn't mean I disliked her.  Nay, I thought she was actually pretty awesome, and if there's any romantic material in a novel I like it to be sort of like her; Clever. Witty. Sassy.

The writing style is, strangely, told in the third person, which was a nice change.  And I think that's what actually set Colin apart from Q and Miles.  In not narrating the whole story, it made his dialogue and his thoughts seem even more...original, I guess you could put it.  If that makes any sense. 

So.  Hmm. Is it a good book?  Yes, definitely, compared to a lot of the novels in the vast expanse of YA lit.  But is it as great as I was expecting?  Hmm, not sure. When novelists are so fantastic I think it's hard for their second and third novels to live up to expectations. 

In Three Words: not quite Alaska.
Recommended for: John Green fans.  Despite a few flaws it's worth it.
Rating: 4. 

Foreign Language Friday: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

Dear blog,
Because I haven't done a Foreign Language Friday, and Dance Dance Dance is one of those adult books that's so good I just have to review it.

Name: Dance Dance Dance (originally published as Dansu Dansu Dansu)
Written by: Haruki Murakami
First published in: Japanese
Translated by: Alfred Birnbaum
Summary (from Goodreads): In this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller, and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table.

As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Haruki Murakami's protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls; plays chaperone to a lovely teenaged psychic; and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man. Dance Dance Dance is a tense, poignant, and often hilarious ride through the cultural Cuisinart that is contemporary Japan, a place where everything that is not up for sale is up for grabs.

Review:  If you like Japanese fiction then it's kind of undoubted that you will have heard of Haruki Murakami, the hugely popular author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and other such novels.  He left the country after the huge success of his most popular novel, Norwegian Wood, when he became a national celebrity.  Most amusingly, the head of a newspaper claimed that "Haruki Murakami has escaped from Japan!"   This is enough to make me want to read his work.

Dance Dance Dance is, largely, a very confusing book. It's wildly chaotic, some characters and setting appearing for know apparent reason, and seemingly the un-named narrator already knows about.  The Dolphin Hotel, for instance.  Did I miss something there?  For a lot of the book I was expecting some sort of flashback to sort of explain everything, but largely most of it remained unexplained, and kind of threw the reader in at the deep end.  Kiki, for instance.  She was one of the most important characters in the book, but it was like, "this is Kiki, a high-class prostitute  that the narrator was once in love with.  She's disappeared".  Still, I think it was this air of mystery about her that made her so intriguing.  Who was she?  Why did she vanish?

Ditto the Sheep Man. The man who apparently ties everything together and connects thoughts and people.  He serves as a switchboard of sorts. Amusingly, the sheep man stars on the German cover , (the German title translates as Dance with the Sheep Man) although in the book he is actually described as an old man wrapped in some sheepskin, I prefer the idea of a sheep wearing human clothes.  Who wouldn't?  Anyway, I love the Sheep Man mostly for his whole "Yougottadance. Aslongasthemusicplays. Yougotta dance. Don'teventhinkwhy" speech, which is to my mind the Japanese "She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl." It's one of those quotes that there are about three different versions of in the Goodreads Quotes section.  With reason, I suppose.

And there are, of course, a multitude of other exciting characters: Yuki, a psychic thirteen-year-old and one of my favourite characters in the book for her frankness, Yumiyoshi, a constantly uptight hotel receptionist, and Gotanda, a divorced actor so handsome he's forever doomed to play dentists or teachers in teen romance movies. Oh, and look out for Yuki's father, Hiraku Makimura.  Stare at his name long enough and you'll get it.

The narrator is un-named throughout the book.  Still, his first-person voice seems very direct, as if he's speaking right to the reader, and how could you not root for him as he traverses across the far side of the world from Tokyo to Hokkaido to Hawai'i in his attempt to see how everything ties together?  He's humorous, realistic and quietly observant of the chaotic advanced capitalism of 1980s Japan, but more than anything he's just an ordinary divorced thirty-something trying to hold everything together.  His voice is realistic, slightly cynical and darkly humorous; it's very believable, mostly because he is nothing special. Until, that is, the string of encounters that throw him, the sheep-man and the other main characters together in the mysterious hotel room.  Still, aside from that obvious fact he is totally, 100%, undeniably ordinary.

And the plot itself is well-paced. I don't read mystery novels very often, mostly because I can't stand all the tension of the unanswered questions.  Maybe it's just me being unfortunate and reading the wrong stuff, but in the mystery novels I read the secrets either all get answered all at once in one big, life-changing scene or else they ask more questions than they answer (*cough* A Series of Unfortune Events *coughcough*).  But Dance Dance Dance is very engaging in how the author strings the reader along in a paperchase of murder, mystery and humour, slowly revealing things bit by bit.

The ending.  Hmm.  The ending, the ending, the ending.  I can't tell whether or not I liked it, actually.  One one hand it seemed like a nice enough stopping point, but it's clear that the narrator's search doesn't end there, and that he could spend his whole life traversing the globe trying to find answers to the multitude of questions left unanswered at the end of the book.  On the other hand, it was a little disappointing that the ending was so inconclusive.  Also, the penultimate scene in the book got on my nerves somewhat, because it seemed kind of "and then Harry woke up in the cupboard under the stairs and it was all a dream".  Let me say before you rip your hair out and scream "Oh my word she hasjust given away the ending", let me assure you that it was not all a dream.  However, mostly because so much of the book seems to surreal, I call into question how much of it was actually real (the obvious answer being none of it because it's fiction), and how much of it was just a figment of the narrator's imagination. The mind boggles, but such is the brilliantness, such is the author's writing that you have to doubt what really happens and what doesn't.

In three words: chaotic, surreal, engaging.
Reccomended for: Murakami fans old and new.
Rating: 5.

Review: I Heart You, You Haunt Me

Dear Blog,

I'm sorry I've been neglecting my blog so much of late.  But I'm trying to finish writing a novel,  and of late I've been spending insane amounts of time doing music practice and playing in consorts and such.  Anyway, it's half term this week, so (fingers crossed), you can expect a few more reviews from me.

Summary (from Goodreads): Girl meets boy.   Girl loses boy.

Girl gets boy back...
...sort of.
Ava can't see him or touch him, unless she's dreaming. She can't hear his voice, except for the faint whispers in her mind. Most would think she's crazy, but she knows he's here.
Jackson. The boy Ava thought she'd spend the rest of her life with. He's back from the dead, as proof that love truly knows no bounds.

Review: Having read Far From You I'm now quite a fan of Lisa Schroeder, and had high expectation for this, her debut novel. And it was no disappointment.  It's the most romantic, poetic book I've read in ages.  The sort of book that critics would describe as one that breaks your heart and then fixes it again.

The story centres around fifteen-year-old Ava, and opens at the funeral of her recently deceased boyfriend Jackson.  For much of the book his death remains a mystery, until Ava finally faces up to the terrible night of his death about 3/4 of the way through the book.  Ava herself is a nice enough protagonist, though she does remain much of a mystery.  One one hand, all the poems offer a fragile glimpse inside her head, but on the other, who is she? Such is the problem with the first person, dear blog.  The first person doesn't need to explain to his or herself what he/she does or doesn't like.
Ava reminded me, actually, a little of the protagonist in Sonya Sones' What My Mother Doesn't Know, because even though the poetry offers a huge insight into the darkest depths of the narrator's mind, their outer self still seems very vague. 
And I would say that aside from that, Ava was a likeable, three-dimensional character who was easy to relate to, but if you find out little about her personality and such, does that really make her three-dimensional?

The mind boggles.

The relationship between Ava and Jackson is, in a word, strange.  Mostly because, apart from flashbacks,  Jackson is a ghost for the whole book. At first it seems slightly charming, but then  as the book went on I found myself disliking Jackson more and more, but then as his intentions were revealed right at the end I forgave him slightly.  Their relationship seems so human, just because of their reactions to the comings and goings of one another- for instance, when Ava goes out for a while and when she gets back all the kitchen drawers are open and the CD player is on (a.k.a Jackson's way of expressing his anger that she had left him to go elsewhere).  The ending was very satisfying, when both of them finally learn how to let go and move on.  In that sense it makes having your ghost of a boyfriend not seem romantic, but actually irritating when he stops you from having a life, especially when you can't see or talk to him.

But I think the thing I like most about Lisa Schroeder's novels is the prose.  Some verse novels read like prose novels that have been through a shredder, but every single sentence in I Heart You was just fragile, poetic perfection, from the choice of words, occasional alliteration, and form and shape of the poems, which changes now and again.  For instance, in parts in relevant scenes the words
go
    down
             like
                   this
and such. As well as being a fan of Lisa Schroeder as a reader, I admire her as a writer.  I'm currently writing two novels-in-verse myself (one of which is the one I mentioned that I'm trying to finish), and she along with
Sonya Sones, Ellen Hopkins and Virginia Euwer Wolff is one of those authors I'd answer with if I had to answer the question "if you could invite five authors to a dinner party, who would you invite?"  That way I could beg her to give me the secret to her awesome novels (*snorts to self* as if).

And, tragically, it was a very short book, and I read it in one sitting.  Perhaps if it was longer then there would have been more depth to the characters- all the characters, not just Ava. For instance, one of the things I like most about Ellen Hopkins' novels is that with most of them around five or six hundred pages (Glass is at present the thickest at 680 pages) The reader really gets to know the character in a way that you wouldn't with a 230-paged novel like I Heart You.  It would give the reader a better understanding of all the characters, especially the minor ones, if it was longer.
So, I don't quite think it was as good as Far From You, if only because of Ava's personality, or lack of description thereof.  Still, it was an excellent read and I'll definitely seek out her third novel, Chasing Brooklyn, which is also a companion novel of sorts to I Heart You, You Haunt Me.

In Three Words: romantic, poetic, hopeful.
Reccomended for: everyone.
Rating: 4.5

Review: What My Mother Doesn't Know

Dear Blog,

Sorry this review is one of my shortest ever, but I'm pretty busy this week.

Summary (from Goodreads):
My name is Sophie.

This book is about me.
It tells
the heart-stoppingly riveting story
of my first love.
And also of my second.
And, okay, my third love too.
It's not that I'm boy crazy.
It's just that even though
I'm almost fifteen
it's like
my mind
and my body
and my heart
just don't seem to be able to agree
on anything.

Review: I am a fan of two things; verse novels, and Sonya Sones.  And the reason I like Sonya Sones is because she writes verse novels.  I read her novel Stop Pretending  a few months ago (review here), and have since been meaning to seek out more of her work.
What  my Mother Doesn't Know is much more joyful and light-hearted.  The narration is noisy and happy in the same way that Stop Pretending seems distant and quiet, if that makes any sense, though there are some moments of seriousness as Sophie contemplates life, love and the world around her.

Speaking of Sophie.  She was completely boy crazy but instantly likeable anyway.   Probably, as nostalgic adults say, she was "in love with love" more than her boyfriends themselves, of which there are three.  There's Dylan, who seems nice enough at first but then just tapers off in typical teenage-love fashion, Chaz, an internet stalker, and Murphy, the class geek.  For a long time, although Sophie tells her friends she has a boyfriend, she doesn't actually confess it's Murphy for as long as possible.  But they were so cute together anyway.  Sophie herself was frighteningly realistic, complete with flaws and angry emotions and everything else that makes a character complete.  

The writing style is good in that it isn't just poetry that's been through a shredder.  Sophie has a voice, a certain way of talking.  Quite often it seems that poetry is poetry, and the narrator loses his/her voice in the attempt to make the poetry sound like  more than prose that's been through a shredder. And while it's told in a typical free-verse form, instead of experimenting with different shapes and forms  à la Lisa Schroeder or Ellen Hopkins, the choice of words and so on seems quite unique.

What My Mother Doesn't Know interestingly features on the ALA list of Most commonly challenged books in the United States in 2004 and 2005.  Having read up a little more about it, it's due to two things, 1 being, poems like It's That Time of the Month Again, which speaks for itself, and Ice Capades. The second reason is it being mismarketed and appearing in elementary school libraries, aimed at 11 and 12-ear-olds and so on. I suppose parents dislike the idea of their little darlings reading about the truth. Forgive me for being frank, but the truth is truth and  whether people like it or not we young people find reality interesting.  It seems a little unfair that due to the faults of various publicity departments and whatnot it should be so challenged everywhere.
Enough with my speech.  On to the summary.

In Three Words: Funny, realistic, rude, truthful.  Oops, that's four. 
Recommended for:
Rating: 4