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.

Foreign Language Friday: The Book of Everything (and Book blogger hop)

Dear Blog,
Before I start with Foreign Language Friday, let me say welcome to all the people visiting by way of the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Jen at Crazy for Books.  Hello, and nice to meet you. Welcome to my humble weblog.

Now on to Foreign Language Friday.  Today I'll be talking about Guus Kuijer's excellent The Book of Everything.

Name: The Book of Everything (originally called Het boek van alle dingen)
First Published In: Dutch
Translated By: John Nieuwenhuizen
Summary (from Goodreads): Thomas can see things no one else can see. Tropical fish swimming in the canals. The magic of Mrs. Van Amersfoort, the Beethoven-loving witch next door. The fierce beauty of Eliza with her artificial leg. And the Lord Jesus, who tells him, "Just call me Jesus." Thomas records these visions in his "Book of Everything." They comfort him when his father beats him, when the angels weep for his mother's black eyes. And they give him the strength to finally confront his father and become what he wants to be when he grows up: "Happy."

Review: Because the picture quality is so rubbish, you can't read all the words swirling around the outside of this editions' cover.  It's all praise from newspapers and websites, and this extraordinary book really deserves every word that spins around the bright yellow cover.  However, despite all the critical acclaim, nobody I know seems to have read or even heard of it.  Which is a shame because it's great.

This is, as the title suggests, a book about everything.  Mostly, it's about emotions,and people, and religion, and where it all fits into the world.  It's true in this case that less is more: The Book of Everything has more meaning than a 1000 paged tome about the history of the world, or even Sophie's World, because The Book of Everything is on ground level with people.

  My favourite characters were Mrs van Amersfoort, the quirky "witch" from next door, and Margot, Thomas' older sister.  Margot was particularly awesome, even though she was portrayed as a giggly suck-up to their father, she snaps out of it about 3/4 of the way through the book when she's had enough of their obsessively religious and abusive father.  Go Margot!

Thomas was heartbreaking.  Mostly because of his innocence.  I'm not sure if his naïveté is actually realistic for a 9-year-old, but it his extraordinary way of looking at the world and the strange things he sees is still slightly heart-wrenching, but on the other hand he's utterly charming and sweet.  For example, the letter he writes to Eliza, a sixteen-year-old with a leather leg who lives down the street.  I wish he was my little brother (I would happily swap him for the 4-year-old  Star Wars obsessed jedi-in-training who is currently my brother).   He's so honest and funny.  I loved the lines, "she was religious, but not too badly", and "Thomas went to a Christian boys' school, so naturally he swore all the time with his friends, but he had never heard an adult swear" (or something like that, but I don't have the book with me at the moment so I can't quote it directly). 
So  much like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, his innocence makes the tragic things (his father beating him and his mother, etc) seem even  more horrifying, even though they're not too graphically described.  So it's hard to tell if this really is, as a quote inside the book says, a book for both old and young.  

There's a lot in this book about religion, including the fact that Jesus appears now and again to Thomas, and both he and God are portrayed as pretty useless and unable to intervene with anything.  Jesus seems like a nice enough character in this book, even though I don't believe in God, Jesus, the afterlife, etc.  At one point Thomas realises God can't help him, and believes that God died because He (I'll put He with a capital H) was so sad at what was happening. 

Apparently Guus Kuijer is a very popular author in the Netherlands, but this is his first book to be published in English.  I'm not sure if any more of his work has been translated into English since then, but if so I'll definitely read them. Speaking of which, the translation is excellent.  Though I guess I wouldn't know since I haven't read the original, even though I can read Dutch pretty fluently (even though I can speak barely a word).  This is because I speak English, German and some Norwegian and by putting them together, you get Dutch.  It's like a northern European pidgin.  Anyway, if it weren't for the various indications that it was first published abroad, you wouldn't know.

Summary: quirky and serious, funny and tragic, weird and wonderful, original and yet full of post-war everyday life, though you can read it in one sitting, The Book of Everything deserves to be read by teenagers, pensioners, schoolchildren, parents, basically everyone.  Rating:3.5