The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

My first adult book of the summer! Look at me go!

Because of the movie, you probably know that this is a book about a young girl who is raped and murdered by a serial killer. The story is told by the girl's ghost as she watches her family and friends deal with the tragedy of her death.

It wasn't quite what I expected. I thought more of the book would be devoted to tracking down her killer and bringing him to justice. But it was much more subtle and complicated than that. It's an upsetting story, but having Susie's ghost as narrator (yes, her name is Susie, and spelled the same way I spell it, which--not gonna lie--kept jarring me as I read it) lends a sort of peace to the story that it wouldn't have had being told by the father or the detective. The reader knows from the start what happened, so the pressure for justice and the need for the characters to learn the killer's identity isn't quite the same as it would be if we needed that information as well. Also, while Susie is dead to the characters, she is very much alive to the reader, an active participant in the story.

Incidentally, having now finished the book, I love what Alice Sebold does with the title. I can't think of many serial killer book that have so perfectly incorporated and thematic titles. And maybe that's what impressed me the most about this book: it's not just another serial killer book. The driving force behind it is much more complex than the surface murder mystery.

The ending is one of those perfect endings that is not what the reader expects, maybe not what the reader wants, but (after having read it) obviously the only possible way the story could have ended. An inevitable surprise.

Good book. I recommend it if you haven't already read it.

Thursday Next Series, Jasper Fforde

I decided to wait and post about this series in one entry. Fforde wrote four books about his "literary detective" heroine, Thursday Next: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten. They are set in England in a world that might-have-been, if Winston Churchill had not carried England through the Second World War.

Thursday, a Special Operations agent of the Literary Detectives, spends most of her days searching out forged Miltons and keeping Marlovites (those who think Marlowe penned Shakespeare's plays) from rioting. Then an operative from a high unit of Special Operations comes to seek her help. Acheron Hades, the archnemesis of the world as his name might imply, is plotting evil things, and Thursday can recognize him since he once was her professor. As events unroll, Hades and Thursday discover a way to travel into books, a feat Hades uses to blackmail the world when he threatens harm to Jane Eyre and Thursday uses to pursue Hades.

And that's just the first book. In subsequent books, Thursday battles more of the Hades clan (their names are Cocytus, Phlegethon, Lethe, Styx, and Aornis) and goes head-to-head with her country's personal evil corporation. She ends up living inside Book World, a complex fictional society where characters live and new stories are created. Ultimately, she has to save the real world from threats of its own and characters from the Book World.

Fforde creates an alternate England that provides a hilarious, witty, and sometimes scathing critique of the modern world. He throws in time travel, re-engineered extinct species, and full contact croquet just for the fun of it, and his novels are fun. However, I found his long sojourn to Book World very tedious. He creates a detailed set of rules and mores for his fictional world that fall flat after reading the parts that take place in the modern world. They tested the bounds of belief and were not always internally consistent. And, frankly, I ultimately did not care about the complexities of Book World. I wanted Next to get on with her life in the real world.

Still, I think this series (or at least the first one) is a must-read for any English nerd. How can you turn down a novel with Shakespeare vending machines?

Nation, Terry Pratchett

This book is wonderfully deep. It's for teens--middle and high school. I'd say older readers, except that this 6th grader in our book group seemed to understand it and enjoy it as much or more than the older readers. I could tell you what the book is about, but it's one of those books that you can know what it's "about" without knowing what it's about. . .

The basic plot is that some sort of plague has wiped out most of England's population (it's set in a sort of parallel universe of the Victorian period. At the same time, a giant tidal wave has destroyed a particular island nation. Only one boy (Mao) has survived, because he was off on an island undergoing his test to become a man. He has left his boy soul on the island, so he arrives back at the Nation, not a boy, not a man, with no soul, to bury the dead bodies of everyone he has ever known. The wave also wrecks a ship carrying the new heir to the throne (although she doesn't know she's the heir, since she doesn't know that the 139 people ahead of her in the line of succession have died of plague). Ermintrude (who decides to change her name to Daphne) is the only survivor on the ship; she meets Mao and together they try to fathom the tragedy and rebuild their lives, as more survivors begin to arrive on the island.

The book is about identity, cultural heritage, language, racial prejudice, religion, friendship, love, and grief. And underlying all of it is Terry Pratchett's quirky sense of humor--especially poignant in this dark context. Definitely worth reading.

The Mysterious Benedict Society, Trenton Lee Stewart

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I won't say that it's the most brilliant bit of literature ever written, but then again it is for 3rd-5th graders. The characters are fantastic, and the book is full of puzzles for the characters (and reader) to problem solve.

Reynie Muldoon is an orphan incredibly gifted at solving puzzles and logic games. Kate Wetherall is an orphan who is incredibly resourceful with the items she carries around in her beloved bucket; she can create almost anything. Sticky Washington can read at lightning speed and remembers everything he has ever read, heard, or seen. And Constance Contraire. . .well, Constance is stubborn. And for reasons that will not become clear until the very end of the book, Mr. Benedict insists that she is far more brilliant than the other children realize.

Mr. Benedict gathers this group of brilliant children together to form a team of secret agents who will infiltrate an institution for gifted children that is a front for a madman's plot for world domination. Although the implications of the madman's plot are quite dark, the brain teasers vibrant characters keep the tone of the book light. I would not hesitate to recommend it to children. And to anyone who was once a nerdy child! It's a fun, suspenseful, exciting read!

Thanks for the recommendation, Tex :-)

Eleven Birthdays, Wendy Mass

We're doing this book in upper elementary book group this week. I enjoyed it. Not my favorite book in the world, but it was cute and engaging.

The story is that an enchantment has been placed on these two kids who happen to have been born on the same day. As long as they stay friends, everything's fine. In order to ensure that they stay friends, the enchantress arranges it so that they celebrate their birthdays together every year. But one year, they have a huge falling out (the boy is a jerkface and says mean things about the girl in order to seem cool in front of his friends) and so the next year--on their eleventh birthday, time changes for the two of them and they keep repeating the same day over and over again. Very Groundhog Day. And so they learn important things about themselves, each other, friendship, etc., etc., and in the end they're friends again (sorry to spoil the ending, but you had to see it coming).

It's a decent book. It's told from the girl's perspective, though, so boys won't be too keen on it.

The Shack, William P. Young

I absolutely loved this book! It's a story of a father whose daughter is kidnapped during a family camping trip. That is only the beginning however. As one might assume, he falls into a depression that he can't seem to find a way out of. He is invited back to the scene of it all-the moment when he learned that his daughter was dead. He is invited back to look at it through different eyes. Because waiting for him at the shack...is God.

This book is spiritual, but I loved it for its different approach to talking about the mysteries of God-its ecumenical approach if you will. Young encourages his reader to see God in a different way. It is a Christian approach to faith, but it is all-encompassing at the same moment.

It's not a book to "pound through." I often stopped to try to fully wrap my head around what was written. The most interenting part of the book is that it is a true story-true to the person it happened to. It's a great book to read for personal growth, as well as a great bok to read if you're looking for something more spiritual, and not a theology of some sort.

I hope you like it!

Paper Towns, John Green

This is a book for high school boys. And it is excellent.

The main character, Quentin, lives next door to Margo Roth Spiegleman--the girl of everyone's dreams. One night, near the end of their senior year of high school, Margo shows up at his bedroom window dressed like a ninja and takes him on an adventure around the town to exact revenge on her cheating boyfriend and various other offenders. The next morning, Margo has disappeared, and Quentin begins a quest to find her. Along the way, he discovers the real "Margo" behind the super-human image that he and the rest of the school has attached to her. He discovers her human fears and insecurities, and her human flaws. He also discovers a new confidence in himself along the way.

Because it is written for and from the perspective of 17 year old boys, there is a certain amount of discussion of masturbation and of body parts that isn't necessarily appealing to someone who is not of that gender and age group. But the story itself is deep and moving. I really enjoyed reading it, and its implications are still on my mind, which I find to be the sign of a good book.

Oh, and I should mention: the entire quest to find Margo (and "Margo") is paralleled by Whitman's "Song of Myself." Quentin discovered a copy of Leaves of Grass in Margo's bedroom that she had highlighted and written in, and he tries to use the poetry as a way to discover how she thinks and where she might have decided to go when she ran away. It ends up allowing him to better understand himself, the world, what it means to be free, etc. John Green handled it in such a way that the discussion of literature wouldn't be repulsive to his teenage boy readers; but anyone who reads the book finds himself engaged in the poetry and understanding it on the level that Green wants him to. It was very well done, I think.

The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank, Ellen Feldman

Following the theme of Beth's most recent post, I recently finished a novel relating to Nazi Germany.

The story is told from the perspective of Peter van Pels, the young boy who hid with the Frank family during World War II. Anne wrote in her diary that Peter told her that if he got out alive, he would reinvent himself entirely. Though Peter actually died in Mauthausen, in this novel, Feldman explores the possibility that he did survive. What if Peter, having been separated from Otto Frank at the concentration camp, lived the three additional days until the camp was liberated by allied forces? What if, alone in the world, he emigrated to the United States, where bearing an "American" surname he was able to shed off all traces of his Jewishness and his life before? What would've happened to him when Otto released Anne's diary to the world?

Though I can't say that The Diary of Anne Frank was one of my favorites as a child, it certainly had an impact on me, and the premise of this book was enough to draw me in. I wasn't too terribly impressed with it as a whole, but there are some sections which are so poignant that they more than made up for the rough patches. It raises some interesting questions -- Was the Nazi persecution one felt by all Jews, or just those who actually lived through it? By essentially "canonizing" Anne Frank, are we in a sense doing her a disservice? Do we fail to understand that, at age 13, Anne's view, though genuine, may not necessarily have been accurate? (There's a great part of the novel that deals with the "stealing bread" incident in Anne's diary). How long should we keep something on the forefront of our consciousness? How long are we even capable of doing so?

This novel isn't really a tear-jerker (you learn early on in the novel that Peter finds success and even happiness in America), but it's also not really an uplifting story either. I do find that it's genuine though. And when you're dealing with something as awful, as ugly, as the horrors of Nazism, I think that that's perhaps the best we can ask for.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

I should maybe leave this book to Susan, because she recommended it to me. However, I just finished it and have quickly added it to my favorite books.

The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a young girl living with foster parents in Nazi Germany. She cannot read at the beginning of the book, but slowly falls in love with words through the people closest to her. And these people offer different revelations about life, death, morality, obligation, love, and what it means to be human -- against the backdrop of one of the most inhumane times in history.

Zusak chose Death as his narrator, a character who has the dubious privilege of seeing much of Europe during the time of the book. This narrator places Liesel's story in a horrific historical context. At the same time, he keeps the story focused on, and revolving around, Liesel. Zusak's richness of metaphor and unique use of language fit both his narrator and his main character very well. Death is a straightforward narrator with an outside-of-human perspective on his subject matter.

Despite this understatement, the story loses nothing of the horrors of the time. Somehow, Zusak keeps a childlike tone to his narration, so that people like me, who are chased off by too dark subject matter, still enjoy it. The story made me cry without depressing me. It offered no false hope, but did not crush characters or readers. It is brilliant.

Other than that, all I have to say is, you should read it.

Persuasion, Jane Austen

"Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste!  Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting association, are inviting to you."

As I read these lines, I knew I had found a literary companion in Anne Elliot.  A sensible twenty-something among the vain, silly, proud, and rank-obsessed, Anne seems almost too perfect to be palatable.  Yet her faults - timidity, relying on the opinions of others, thinking perhaps too much about duty - do indeed make her human (though still enviable in my opinion).  Believable characters are key in a novel with a lot of talk and very little action.  Persuasion was engaging and funny - especially if you are used to Jane Austen's irony and sarcasm.  It was a fast read for me, and I certainly recommend it - if you have patience for a book of conversations.

As a bit of an introduction to my literary tastes, I float between 18th-20th century literature, history and historiography, anthropology and archaeology, Annie Dillard or Elizabeth Gilbert-style nonfiction, historical fiction, religion and faith, and the occasional just-for-fun read.  Hopefully I'll have some good reviews to come.

"She was feeling, though not saying, that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet cheerfulness."