tiny pink books

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Random House, 2010

I’ve only read Aimee Bender’s short stories in the past, but they have always been a delight.  I picked up an ARC of this at a conference and was immediately attracted to the title.  Her newest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, took a while to get into, but once I did, it was reading treat.  Whimsical and strange, this is a unique treat of a read for fans of magical realism and Bender’s previous work.

Set in modern (yet wonderfully timeless) Los Angeles, Lemon Cake is about Rose Edelstein, a girl who discovers that she can taste the in food.  She discovers her ability as a very young age, when she tastes her mother’s depression in a slice of home baked lemon cake.  Growing up with this inexplicable and often disturbing ability is difficult for Rose, who faces family drama, childhood friendships and, of course, her struggle with overly emotional food.

It took me a while to get into this book (I think mostly because Rose’s childhood voice is not very childlike), but once Rose grows up a little, I found myself charmed by the characters and the general oddness to the story.  Rose’s ability is not the only piece of magic in here-there’s a whole heap of weirdness in these pages for the willing reader.  This is a book that takes place more in your head than on the pages-not recommended for the realists who want plot twists and dramatic cliffhangers.  For those who like fairytales, whimsy and emotional drama, Bender’s writing is right on key-delivering heartbreak and strangeness with a tender lightness that is captivating and completely engrossing.

Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine
First published in 1932

Reading this book is like taking a personal journey to the end of night.  A hard book to sell to the average reader, this is a bleak, semi-autobiographical work tells the long, dark and unhappy life of Ferdinand Bardamu.  An epic book, feeling even longer than its 462 pages should, Bardamu travels through World War I, to the colonies of Africa, to America and into the poor suburbs of Paris, as a somewhat shady doctor.  Seriously, there are so many journeys in here that it’s like reading five books in one!  Along the way, Bardamu contemplates the ever present inevitability of death and his complete disgust for humanity.  Sound fun?  The thing is, Journey to the End of the Night is hilarious in a sick way.  Celine also paints an incredibly vivid picture with his words that Journey, for me anyway, is more like a life experience than a book.

As for my journey–it took me 10 years to complete it!  I picked up this sunny charmer in high school (probably off the shelves of my intellectual then boyfriend) and the challenge and read it until I was merely 30 or 40 pages from the end…and then I lost the book.  Ten years later (aka, last month), I snatched it up in used bookshop, reread it and finally finished it with glee!  I feel like if books were races, this would be my marathon!

So if I haven’t made it clear yet, I recommend this book to intellectual, sarcastic and bitter high school students and other readers who can appreciate an amazingly written, yet meandering book filled with more depravity, disgust and musings on the brutality of life and death than you can shake a stick at.  I would not recommend this book for reluctant readers or people looking for something short, sweet or sunny.

Farewell to Arms

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
1929
First off, let me just say that I have absolutely loved all the Hemingway that I have encountered thus far.  He makes me want to go camping and hunt with my bare hands or fight a bull or something.  This was no exception, even though the ending left me furious and frustrated (and sad, sad, sad, sad, sad!).

A Farewell to Arms is a love and war story with some of the most interesting characters I’ve ever met on the page.  Lieutenant Henry, the main character, is serving in World War I in the Italian army, despite the fact that he is an American.  Complicated, yet oh so macho much?  Check.  He falls in love with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse who is stationed in Italy.  Catherine starts off crazy and soon becomes, well, interesting.  I’ve read some comments that describe Catherine as a sexist portrayal of a woman, but I found to be much more intriguing and complicated than that.  She and Lieutenant Henry embark on an intense, war hospital-based courtship that is all fairytale and no reality.  There’s love, there’s sexy banter, there’s some tough guy war stuffs (it is Hemingway, after all), a bit of adventure and them, of course, some tragedy.  It’s all very good and I think this is one of those classics for everyone.

Also, I should add that I listened to this in audio format.  How did this come to be?  I desperately needed a new audiobook for my commute home and my holds for the latest teen werewolf love story hadn’t come through yet, so I found myself browsing until I picked this one up.  I usually avoid the classics or anything really that could be defined as “literature” when it comes to audio format, but I figured that Hemingway is so short and blunt and downright uncomplicated that I could follow in audio format…and I was right!

How To Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Sandiford
Scholastic Press, 2009

Beatrice Szabo has just moved to Baltimore with her family.  Her father, a professor, moves the family often for his job.  With all the moving around, Beatrice has grown into an increasingly detached “Robot Girl,” emotionally distant from both her formerly close, but now crazy, mother and her would be friends at school.  At her new school, Beatrice is surprised when she is drawn into the world of Jonah Tate, the weird, friendless kid.  Their friendship develops and Robot Girl finds herself unable to stay detached from the intense emotions that surround their relationship.  Really, this is a love story…just not a romantic kind of love.

How To Say Goodbye in Robot occupies a strange place in young adult fiction.  It’s a quirky book with high quality writing and a strong sense of place, however, the plot is almost entirely internal.  With much of the drama unfolding in subtle emotions rather than direct action, this is not a book for reluctant readers.  It’s slow and meandering, but for readers who want an intense emotional drama, How to Say Goodbye in Robot is worth savoring.  The end left me deep in thought (and a little teary eyed).  The characters, including the smaller characters, are all extremely well developed.  Also, although this is definitely a YA book, I think it it most suitable to the older YA set in addition to the 20-something adult crowd.

Liar

Liar by Justine Larbalestier
Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2009

Told from the point of view of an admittedly compulsive liar, Liar is a psychological mystery with just a dash of the supernatural.  Micah lies constantly.  From pretending to be a boy at school, to her father’s occupation, Micah is compelled and fascinated with telling lies.  When her classmate and secret boyfriend Zach is found dead in Central Park, everyone suspects Micah, the liar, as his killer.  As Micah takes readers through the last few days of Zach’s life, she spins a web of strange and dark secrets.

Liar was an odd book.  From the very beginning, it has a strange, haunted feeling to it.  The lonely and dark tone of the writing at first reminded Speak (and books like it), but with a plot so uniquely crafted, I can’t fairly compare Liar to anything.  Without giving too much of the book away, I will say that there is a major revelation, mid-book, that changed the story completely.  At first I was frustrated (I actually threw the book down, shouting, “Seriously?!”), but I plodded on and became quite fascinated by the end.  Liar was definitely one of those books that grows on you over the read and in the aftermath.  Thought provoking and strange, writing becomes somewhat captivating.  I wouldn’t recommend it to reluctant readers, but for a special reader who wants a book that is intriguing and mysterious, this is your book!  A little bit science fiction, a teensy bit fantastic, and a lot of deep, almost tortured, character study, Liar is quality book that will hopefully find an audience between these genres.

Tales of the Madman Undergound:  An Historical Romance 1973 by John Barnes
Viking Juvenile, 2009

An interesting and unique book, Tales of a Madman Underground is an epic coming of age novel by John Barnes.  With over 500 pages, Madman chronicles the first six days of Karl Shoemaker’s senior year in high school in 1973 in epic detail.  Though his life is,a t surface level, dark and tumultuous, Karl manages.  His father is dead, his cat-collecting, drunk mother steals from him, he works more jobs than any teenager should, people think he’s a psychopath, and his friends consist of the other messed up kids in school–all of them forced to attend a therapy group at school, dubbed “The Madman Underground.”  As Karl struggles through this heap of problems, he discovers the strength of his relationships with both his friends and his community.

I really enjoyed this book and despite this, although I’m sure I would have enjoyed it as a teen, I’m not sure if the YA section is the best place for it.  Sure, it’s about teenagers and it is a coming of age story in the truest sense, but it’s also very nostalgic and feels more reminiscent of adolescence than the immediacy we usually encounter in YA literature.  It’s not just that it is set in the 1970’s (though that is part of it)…it has some very adult themes (and language, to boot!) that made me wonder if this book is really going to work for the YA audience.  It appealed to me as a good book with that perfect balance of funny/sad characters, but it just didn’t scream “teen appeal” to me.  I’ve had it on display in my library for two weeks now with no takers, but I’m hoping that buzz will grow and this book will find an audience.  Older teens, those who can handle the length at least, will pick this up if word of mouth grows, but I would hesitate before recommending it to a young readers.  Additionally, I really think that adults (especially guys), particularly younger adults (twenty-something, early adults, whatever you call them), will really enjoy this.  If only there was a way for them to find it…

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
HarperTeen, 2008

Taylor Mackham, seventeen, was abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe road when she was eleven.  She has since lived in Jellicoe School, a boarding school with other kids like herself and a woman named Hannah who has a mysterious connection to Taylor since she has arrived.  As leader of her dorm, Taylor is captain of the school’s involvment in longstanding, traditional territory war with the Townies and the Cadets, who come into town once a year for nature training.  As Taylor fights in the territory war, she begins to ask questions about her life’s story, her mother’s past, her confusing attraction to Jonah Griggs, leader of the Cadets, and her relationship to Hannah.

It’s hard to sum up my feelings about Jellicoe Road, the 2009 Printz award winner.  The second half of the book is powerfully emotional and gripping.  I found myself doing all the things you need to do when you read a book that is as moving as this–ignoring (or rather resenting) all conversation through lunchbreaks in order to read, staying up way past bedtime to finish another chapter or two, and tearing up as one emotional outpouring is followed by another in this heartfelt book.  If I were just reviewing the second half of the book, I would tell you that I loved it and that it was the best book I’d read in ages.  Unfortunately, there is the matter of the first half of the book.  I understand that it takes subtlety and length to built up to the kind of emotional power that the second half of the book offered, however, the confusing, nonlinear style of writing combined with the overly large percentage of pages dedicated to getting things going was frustrating to me.  I knew that this would, at some point, become a great book.  I just don’t think that it should take half the pages of a book to get started and I believe that a lot of teen readers will give up somewhere in the first 200 pages.  All in all though, there are a lot of things to love about Jellicoe Road. Despite the slow start, this is still one of the best books that I have read in a while.  I recommend it to teen and adult readers seeking a really layered and emotionally driven book.  Not for reluctant readers or readers seeking action though.  Oh and the book is Australian, which to me = love…because I love Australians (err, an Australian at the very least) and the slang (pashing!), the slightly different cultural references (to the song, Flame Tree, which is such a perfect song for Marchetta to pair her story with), and the way they spell the word jail (gaol!) is charming in its own way.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Faber and Fraber, 2005

I had been meaning to pick Never Let Me Go off of the shelf for a while now.  I haven’t read any of Ishiguro’s other works, but I’d head so many good things about the quality of his writing that it was time to give it a go.  I wasn’t disappointed either.

Never Let Me Go is the coming of age story of Kathy and her dearest friends from school as she vividly recounts her memories from childhood, where they all grew up in a boarding school-like environment together.  The story is set in a dystopian Great Britain, though the details are laid with such expert subtlety, that the true darkness of their existence is revealed slowly, in touches here and there.  Kathy grew up in Hailsham, a mysterious school set out in the countryside.  The children are encouraged, almost to an irrational degree, to create art, there is no trace of parents, and there are several other details to the setting that make you realize that Hailsham is not a normal boarding school environment.  That said, the children have relatively normal lives.  Kathy recounts every emotional detail, especially within relationships with her close friends Ruth and Tommy, of her childhood.
While the book is told almost entirely in the past tense, it is completely compelling and engaging.  Ishiguro’s writing conveys to subtleties of emotion with such control that makes the book become more and more wrenching as you read on.  By the end of the book, I found myself feeling swept away in the emotional power of Kathy’s memories.  Also, Ishiguro keeps absolutely subtle with the dystopian details of the society he has created, layering them to build to a final and heartbreaking conclusion, making this book work more as an emotional tale than a science fiction novel.  Never Let Me Go reads like an adult take on The Giver, though the details of the characters and their worlds are completely different.

I would recommend this book to readers seeking something simple and easy to read, yet emotionally deep.  Although I would not say that Never Let Me Go has an action based plot, there’s enough human action that even readers seeking drama regarding relationships will probably be satisfied.  Readers seeking a fast paced plot or a more detailed, science fiction style dystopia will probably be a little disappointed, but I have to admit that, while Never Let Me Go was filled with controlled subtlety, it still managed to be a relatively quick page turner.

(winner of a 2005 ALA Alex Award, named best fiction novel of 2005 by Time Magazine)

Bliss by Peter Carey
Vintage International, 1981

I was handed Bliss from a trusted source, but really, I had no idea what to expect.  Even 100 pages into it, I still had no idea what this book was really trying to do.  Part magical realism, part satire, and part mid-life crisis, Bliss is the story about Harry Joy and his awakening to life after suffering a heart attack that left him clinically dead for 8 nine minutes before he was revived.  Harry, generally regarded as a “Good Bloke,” comes to realize that his life, including his successful career in advertising, his wife, and his children, are all signs that convince him that he is actually trapped in Hell.  He runs into many interesting characters, the most interesting of which is Honey Barbara, part hippie, part prostitute who understands his plight and offers him wisdom and guidance.  It’s an interesting concept and the satirical tone keeps things on track as Harry bumbles his way, trying to find a way out of Hell.

The best parts of Bliss  are in the characters.  Harry is fairly passive, but the women in his life fascinated me.  Harry’s wife, a power hungry woman who has been held back by her husband, is both cruel and somehow understandable.  Honey Barbara, as well, is another strong female character, but in a completely different way.  Honey Barbara is practical, earthy, and kind.  Throughout the course of the book, her purity seems to be corrupted, leading her on a journey that is, in my opinion, more interesting than that of Harry Joy.  This would be the downfall of Bliss for me.  I found myself more interested in the characters, especially the women, around Harry than Harry himself.  As such, there were a lot of parts of Bliss that I found to be slow and disengaging.  The tone also changes.  I felt like I had read three books after reading Bliss.  This is not necessarily a negative experience, but it did take me much longer to finish this book than it does for most 300 page novels.  I still enjoyed Bliss, despite these aspects, for the quirky characters and the interesting ideas within its pages.

The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler
Berkley, 1986

I have to admit, I knew very little about The Accidental Tourist when it was lent to me by a friend. Of course, I had heard of Anne Tylor and the title was familiar, but that was about it, as far as background. The book was pretty much as I had expected. I thought that it was going to be a good book that was fairly quirky and very well written. There you go.
Macon, the main character of the book, is a travel writer of guidebooks for people who don’t like to travel. He is compulsively anal and persnickety to a fault. The book chronicles his separation from his wife in a sort of mid-life, “coming of age” style story as Macon learns to deal with himself, his relationships, and the death of his 12 year old son, who was murdered in a random act of crime. The Accidental Tourists covers these topics with both humor and insight.
For those readers who enjoy quirky characters, The Accidental Tourist delivers. Not only is Macon’s obsessively organized and uptight nature entertain the reader, but there are other characters still. Macon’s family of siblings, his accidental girlfriend, and his boss are all quirky and amusing, yet fleshed out enough to empathize with. It’s this balance that makes The Accidental Tourist to work out. Without the depth and deeply buried emotions that Taylor gives to her characters, we would simply laugh at him and eventually grow annoyed. Macon, especially, is both annoying and sympathetic enough to laugh at and with, so to speak.
This book will be enjoyed by people who love dramatic fiction, especially more literary fiction. It will not be enjoyed by those looking for a fast-paced or adventurous read.