Bookslingers Blog

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

2013-09-04T11:45:00.000-06:00

The Ocean at The End of the Lane isn't quite like any other Neil Gaiman book I've read, and I've read them all.

It's spooky, but not about the dead, like The Graveyard Book. It occasionally fills you with existential dread, like American Gods, but on a much smaller, homelier scale. And it puts you in mind of secret worlds, but much earthier ones than Neverwhere. Also there's a lot more in the way of baked goods.

It's almost like Gaiman took all the fiddly, overarching complexities of all the mythologies in all his previous books and distilled them down, to big and vague-edged simple shapes that fit comfortably inside the perceptions of a seven-year-old boy like Ocean's narrator.

Said narrator is never named, but you forget about that almost immediately. It's not that you start to think of him as anyone in particular; more that he doesn't need a name. You know what you need to know about him: he is seven years old, he has parents and a sister, and he lives in a house in the country. He exists in a sort of negligent harmony with his environment the way most young children do, only noticing when something in that relationship changes that it was there at all.

In our narrator's case, the change comes the day their boarder steals the family's car and drives it down the lane to commit suicide inside it.

Things Start To Happen after that, and our narrator gets caught up in something much bigger than himself that may very well destroy him, helpless to extricate himself without the help of the three ladies I started calling the Triad in my head: Old Mrs. Hempstock, her daughter Ginnie Hempstock, and Ginnie's daughter Lettie, a girl a few years older than the narrator who says the pond in their back yard is an ocean. There is also a wicked nanny. Those are always fun.

It's a very grim sort of story; scary, but not nightmare-scary. More that feeling that you maybe shouldn't wander in the woods alone at night, because there are things out there that think you're delicious. It's a dark sort of story but doesn't exactly feel dark, even though most of it seems to take place at night. It's hard to explain, guys. But it didn't leave me feeling like I'd stumbled my way out of the dark. More like the darkness was not what I thought it was in the first place.

Nothing in this story is what it seems. The pond is not a pond. The wicked nanny fools both the narrator's parents and his sister into believing she is trustworthy and safe. The Hempstock ladies are something else entirely, something we're given the impression our poor mortal brains can't entirely comprehend.

Though you can always depend upon them for a good strong cup of tea, which isn't nothing.

Review: We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

2013-09-02T11:55:00.000-06:00

Every year when the Man Booker Prize longlist is announced, I think to myself: "I should read all those book and be an intellectual person that people see on the street and think: 'My goodness! There goes a well-read intellectual person.'"

This has never happened. The reading bit or the stranger admiration.

But, it's that time of year again and so I am here to talk about We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo.

This is a tough book to talk about for many reasons.

Firstly, I don't often read or review Literature with a capital L. Because it is often Depressing with a capital Damn, Bad Stuff Happens To People (Most of Them Jerks).

Secondly, this is not a fun book to read.

We Need New Names is the coming-of-age novel of Darling, who is growing up in Paradise, a shantytown in Zimbabwe. Her life there is divided into before and now. Before, she went to the school because there were teachers and she lived in a house and her father was home and healthy. Then, the entire village was bulldozed - sometimes with the children still inside the houses.

Now, they live in tin shacks and the men are gone to far-off countries to work and her mother is at the border trying to make money. Darling and her friends (Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho and Stina) roam the streets of rich neighbourhoods to steal guavas.

Bulawayo is a powerful writer. There's a steel and a poetry to her writing that marks her as one of the up-and-coming writers of this generation. We Need New Names is her debut novel based on her Caine award-winning short story "Hitting Budapest." The novel does feel more like a connected collection of shorts instead of one cohesive story.

In fact, there's a lot of whiplash. One moment we are watching the funeral in the makeshift Paradise cemetery and then we're in America in "Destroyedmichygen." And here's where the book faltered for me. Her prose really sang when she wrote about Darling's life in Paradise. But when we get to America, we see Darling and her friends watching violent porn in the basement and the transition severs our connection to the story. Who is Darling now? What are her hopes and dreams and feelings? Within the roaming pack of children, we understand her. But when she is alone and separated from the group and her place, she becomes a ghost.

Trying to put in the book in context though, this review by Helon Habila really resonated:

I was at a Caine prize seminar a few years back and the discussion was on the state of the new fiction coming out of Africa. One of the panelists, in passing, accused the new writers of "performing Africa" for the world. To perform Africa, the distinguished panellist explained, is to inundate one's writing with images and symbols and allusions that evoke, to borrow a phrase from Aristotle, pity and fear, but not in a real tragic sense, more in a CNN, western-media-coverage-of-Africa, poverty-porn sense. We are talking child soldiers, genocide, child prostitution, female genital mutilation, political violence, police brutality, dictatorships, predatory preachers, dead bodies on the roadside. The result, for the reader, isn't always catharsis, as Aristotle suggested, but its direct opposite: a sort of creeping horror that leads to a desensitization to the reality being represented.

And We Need New Names occasionally reads like a checklist of TV Africa: political corruption, inept World Aid, duplicitous clergymen, crushing poverty, orphans, AIDS, incest, child rape, etc. The children are a little too on the nose with their political observations: "Stina said a country is a Coca-Cola bottle that can smash on the floor and disappoint you."

But no one captures the simple wickedness of children better and this book is cruel and cutting in all the right places. Even weeks after finishing the book, I find myself thinking about the contradictions and ugly truths that Bulawayo exposes.

Will definitely be picking up Bulawayo's next book when it comes out. That and about four fluffy cozy mysteries to read afterwards to maintain equilibrium to prevent the post-reading "I am just going to curl up in a quilt under my bed and numbly contemplate the cruelty of mankind."

Where'd You Go Bernadette?

2013-03-04T15:25:00.000-07:00

So, in short, Where'd You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple was not the book for me.

It was the cover for me.

Looks at those giant black sunglasses! The weird fringe! Not wild about the blow up doll mouth though.

This is the story of Bee, her Microsoft-drone father, their aspirational neighbor with a topiary fascination Audrey, and her mother, Bernadette Fox.

In the form of letters, emails, transcripts and newsletters, Bee tries to unravel the mystery of her mother and where she may have disappeared. This will not be easy.

Bernadette is a bundle of hates. She hates the gnat-like parents at the progressive Galer Street School with their classes on Expressive Movement. She hates the fact that Washington State is adjacent to Idaho. She loathes Seattle with its mountains and rain and clouds and pitching-in and yuppies and Microsoft and people. Bernadette has outsourced her entire life to Manjula in India.

To the earth-friendly hybird driving parents, she is a aberration with no sense of community. To her husband, she is not the woman he married. For Audrey, she is the owner of the blackberry bushes that are threatening her perfect Prospective Parent Lunch to attract Mercedes parents to the school.

For Bee, Bernadette is someone who always has her back. She sings to Beatles songs and is calm in a crisis and chaos in regular life. So when Bernadette disappears without saying a word to her, Bee knows that she has to track her down and bring her back home.

Like I said, this is not the book for me. The story of a girl tracking down her mother and a woman struggling against the expectations of a ridiculous, accessory-based society? Awesome.

However, that's only half the book.

The other half is a biting satire of Microsoft and the Subaru-parents of Seattle. Which pretty much sailed over my head. As someone who is at best indifferent and at worst, will walk away from any conversation that surrounds Seattle and Microsoft, this didn't connect. Satire depends on recognition - a common base upon which to launch your barbs. I didn't feel like Semple brought us into the world enough for us to laugh along with her at the ridiculousness of the Galer Street School parents and their marimba demonstrations.

Maybe because of this, the whimsy in the book felt a little forced. All the slavish TED Talk admiration and Victims Against Victimization groups and Antarctica cruises just didn't connect.

But what did connect was Bernadette. She is a tough character. Fueled by petty spite and smug superiority, she navigates her world with a mix of dismissive selfishness and all-consuming rage at small Seattle things (like her day-long rants about five-way stops). But as you read further, you beginning to understand the root of her unbalance, of her frustration about everything around her.

You might not like Bernadette but you do care where she is going.

Home on the Range: Little Century by Anna Keesey

2013-02-11T01:31:00.001-07:00

You know, for someone who doesn't eat meat, I've been reading an awful lot of books about cows.

It's been one of those weird canoe trips through Bookland. One errant paddle stroke in the library bookshelves and all of a sudden you're in a cowboy tributary.

I currently reside in the prairies. If you stand on a pile of dirt, you can see the Rocky Mountains on a clear day. On a windy day, you can smell the cows and the feedlots. Despite or because of this, I've never had a jot of interest in western fiction. It's always been uncomfortably linked with the "cowboy and indians" variety of racism and seemed chockablock full of stereotypes.

So, imagine my surprise when I realized that I was reading on a theme:

It would see that this is the week of the cowboy.

One of the most pleasant surprises on this detour has been the cracking morality fable Little Country by debut author, Anna Keesey. Set against a deadly turf way between sheep and cattle ranchers in the barrens of 1900 Oregon, it tells the story of one community's greed for land and possession that will destroy them.

Esther Chambers is an orphan. Eighteen years old, alone and with only enough money to last the month, she writes a desperate letter to her only living relative in Century, Oregon. And receives a reply.

She sets out on a four-day journey west from Chicago and arrives in a new world. Far from the civilized world of road and brick buildings, Century is a boom town dependent on the farmers and ranchers etching out a living in the dry deserts of Oregon. Cattle is king and it's local lord is her cousin, Ferris Pickett. Calculating and complicated, Pick is the owner of the Two Forks ranch and uses Esther as a pawn in the chessboard of land that he is fighting over with the sheep herders.

Esther's new claim on Half-A-Mind take will be the community's battleground. What starts as tit-for-tat juvenile sabotage between the camps will erupt into violence between the wild ranching buckaroos and fierce shepherds. One girl's heart hangs in the balance. Century will end in fire and blood.

If you enjoyed Little Country or want cowboy/prairie angst/heart-stopping stories of revenge, try:

The past of this Oregon - settlers duped, children abandoned, Indians deported and murdered - this past guaranteed that someday this band of sheep would be destroyed. Dominion begets domination. How can it end? Only justice can pacify history. And justice is hard to come by.

From Little Country by Anna Keesey

I Do Not Like Bronson Alcott: An Understatement

2013-02-04T22:13:00.001-07:00

Pretty sure that if affordable time travel tourism is ever invented, my first visit will be to Concord, Massachusetts to punch Bronson Alcott in the face.

I can appreciate his abolitionist beliefs, his dedication to educational reform and his ability to surround himself with generous friends (seriously Emerson. You are too kind).

However, he was a crap dad.

Watch yourself, Bronson.

The lives of lady writers in the 19th century often feel dominated by deadbeat dads. Christina Rossetti's political exile of a father's bad health forced the women of the family into governess-hood. Elizabeth Gaskell's father sort of forgot about her. Ada Lovelace was the daughter of Lord "Try to Find a Place Where I Haven't Put My Penis" Byron.

The prototype of bad Victorian daddies has to be Reverend Patrick Brontë. There are many delightfully apocryphal and deliciously untrue stories about much-maligned Patrick, including one where he threw the children's new shoes into the fire because they were too fancy.

Good thing he died before RuPaul's Drag Race

After finishing Heather Frederick Vogel's The Mother-Daughter Book Club, I decided to pick up Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography by Susan Cheever to delve a little deeper in the writer's life.

Boy, that was a frustrating read. For many reasons.

It was an exercise in rage to watch Bronson Alcott almost deliberately throwing away the happiness and health of his family to pursue some ridiculous agricultural fancy. But it was doubly so to have his story, his frustrations and triumphs, eclipse the story of one inspiring woman.

Susan Cheever is right on the nose when she discusses what readers want from Louisa's life. They visit Orchard House (one of their many family dwellings - although you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere in Concord or Boston where the family didn't live) and read biographies to discover what parts of Little Women are true. We want to know how much of the March family's lives can be found in the pages of Little Women. How much of Louisa was in Jo March? Was there really a Laurie? Did she live happily ever after?

For this reason, it is baffling as a reader that Cheever answers none of these questions. The focus of over half of the book is Bronson's transition from toasted educational reformer and patriarch to the bumbling dependent of his work-horse daughter. I came away from the book with an understanding of his life and the lives of the great men he surrounded himself with.

But I didn't have any sense of the woman. Cheever is informative and runs through the fact of her life with clarity but it lacks any psychological insight. There are some inborn difficulties with writing an Alcott biography as she was a woman who wrote and rewrote and edited her life. Not only fictionally but she was also fond of annual letter and journal burnings. Cheever rightly insists that this close-knit family created and clung to their own family mythology.

Two Characters In Search of Some Psychological Insight

The most insightful were the summary of other biographers' attempts to break through this carefully crafted legend. One theory mentions the possibility that Bronson Alcott sexually abused his daughters. Another that Louisa was a repressed lesbian. Instead of investigating, Cheever merely mentions and dismisses these theories in favour of more facts.

What was mystifying and deeply disappointing was that Cheever never turners her investigative eye on the family's relationships with each other. At the heart of Little Women and what keeps readers coming back year after year, is the warmth and love between the sisters and their mother. In A Personal Biography, there was no sense of the character or lives of the sisters or of the deep relationship the parents had with their children. Anna, Elizabeth and May are merely side characters and more mouths for Louisa to feed.

Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography does a fine job of relating the facts of her life but it does not illuminate her life. However, it was worth the read for this startling insight:

As a daughter, she never spoke a word against her father, against his irresponsibility or his bullying or his prejudice against her. As a writer, she expressed her feelings in a far more effective and literary way. She left him out of her masterpiece.

Shivers.

Review: Sprinkle With Murder

2013-02-01T19:21:00.002-07:00

Being a small business owner is tough. Much more so for Melanie Cooper who has just opened the Fairy Tale Cupcakes bakery with her best friend, Angie DeLaura. There's a rival bakery owner who has decided to become a full-time creep by driving past their shop in her delivery van all day long. And Mel and Angie's long-time friend, Tate, has an awful fiance who is bound and determine to own Mel's cupcake recipes and break up their friendship.

Then Tate's awful fiancee is found dead with one of Mel's cupcakes in her hand. The police seem to think that Mel looks awfully good for the crime.

I am a big Jenn McKinlay fan. Her Library Lover's Series is close to my heart (small town librarian solves crimes with best friend who is a children's librarian? I will take ten) so I was thrilled to learn that she has another one on the go. When does she sleep?

Mel is an incredibly sympathetic main character. She was a larger girl growing up and dealt with her fair share of body issues. She was a high flying marketing exucutive who threw it all away when she realized that she was miserable. And instead, she makes cupcakes with her best friend. DREAM JOB (except that I am rubbish at baking).

There are a few odd things (highlight for spoilers): How and why would someone get engaged to someone and not remember it and then still go through with it? Even if you were the nicest person in the world, wouldn't you... Ask? Or attempt to break it off?

The resolution is visible from a mile off (or 1.6 kilometers) but it's a pleasant drive getting there. Tate, Mel and Angie are close friends who trade classic movie quote and are supportive of each others goals (Huzzah for male-female friends!). The baddies are bad, the goodies are not so good as to be annoying.

Sugary escapism at its most delicious.

Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Infuriating Miss Corene

2013-01-27T16:00:00.000-07:00

We take a break from intense mysteries of intense intenseness for something a little big cozier.

Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death = (Father Brown - Catholicism) + (Agatha Christie - nastiness) / Brother Cadfael.

Canon Sidney Chambers doesn't really want to be involved in the worldly matters of murder but people keep dragging him into their sordid affairs. There is the mistress who insists that her lover was murdered, his sister's boyfriend whose father happens to be a famous jewel thief, the strangled cigarette girl at the jazz concert, the missing painting, the little old lady who may have been done in by her future son-in-law doctor, and the gruesome theatrical murder that turns a little too literal.

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is a collection of short mystery stories that are mostly gentle, insular crimes that play out like morality plays. Sidney is charming and spends a lot of time worrying that he should be a better priest and not running across the countryside tracking down killers.

I enjoy the book until one particular story: (Please note, discussion includes mention of sexual assault)
In The Lost Holbein, Sidney's socialite sort-of love interest is kidnapped and assaulted. As it was told from Amanda's point of view, it was an extremely difficult to read and I don't know that it had any place in this collection. What made it more disturbing, was that in the context of the narrative, the incident was there to punish Amanda for being the sort of upstart, aggressive woman that can never settle down with our main character.

The incisive Seanan McGuire has an excellent post about the societal expectation that rape/sexual assault will naturally be part of a woman's fictional narrative. It is well worth a read.

The entire situation read as taking Amanda down a peg for daring to function as autonomous from the males in the story. The narrative reads that because she took initiative to investigate on her own, she is naturally kidnapped and threatened with rape. And of course the righteous men (Sidney and the police force) are there to rescue her. I am sure that this was not the intent of James Runcie.

To make matter worse, the entire incident is played for laughs at the end.

Not. Cool.

Belated Season Greetings!

2013-01-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

Oh, I can hear you grumbling: "A Christmas cozy mystery? In January? 'Tis not the season!"

Yes, well, my library hold came in after the holidays so you will just have to lump it.

For Lady Georgiana Rannoch there is nothing like spending time with family during the holidays.

Despite being some off fish at a disastrous dinner party away from the English throne, she is penniless and facing the dreadful prospect of spending the season with her nasty sister-in-law who plans on spending her Christmas begrudging every lump of coal Georgie uses to heat her room in the crumbling ancestral castle. And Darcy O'Mara, her beau of sorts, is traipsing around South America doing mysterious things.

Georgie takes things into her own hands and (gasp!) finds employment. She arrives at a manor house in Tiddleton-under-Lovey to be a social hostess to a cast of characters straight out of an Agatha Christie novel. There's the harried mistress of the manor, the bedroom-hoping leech, the aged colonel with his endless stories about India and dreadful Americans.

Naturally when one has an eccentric cast of characters in one room, murders occur.

And if you ever see this guy across from you at a dinner party, immediately stand up and leave.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen is exactly what it promises to be: Frothy, delicious murder with a slice of suspense and bonus Noel Coward. Bowen is a master; blending romance and crisp English mornings in the frost, jokes at expense of Nouveau Riche Yankees, an eyebrow-raising body count and classic British humour.

It's like my friend's boozy fudge. Every Christmas, and only at Christmas, she makes this luscious melt-in-your-mouth boozy fudge. And when she hands you a tin at the gift exchange, you know exactly what is going to be inside but it doesn't make it any less enjoyable to eat. And such is this perfect present of a book.

But seriously, run.

Review: Ingo by Helen Dunmore

2013-01-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

I am always tempted to write the title of this book with an exclamation point. Ingo! I have no idea why.

I picked up this book, along with two of its sequels, a year or two ago on one of my carefully-regulated-because-I-also-need-to-buy-food (and-even-more-strictly-regulated-since-I-started-buying-comics-again) expeditions to Kidsbooks. I think it was around the time that the Next Big Thing in YA was going to be mermaids (they changed their minds again recently; apparently it is now going to be zombies). I did not, however, pick up this book because of its potential Next-Big-Thing-ness. I picked it up because I have a curious weakness to books set in places in the British Isles that are not London and environs; probably some residual effects of my brief undergraduate foray into Celtic Studies. One day I will have read excellent YA genre-fiction books set in all five Celtic Countries (So far I am missing the Isle of Man and Breton. I do not ever expect to swing Breton. If you know of books that will prove me wrong, please let me know!).

This particular book is set in Cornwall. One of my other favourite books, The Little Country by Charles De Lint (a book I seem to have tragically misplaced), is also set in Cornwall! (Fun fact: Cornwall in Cornish is kernow. Isn't that cool? Careful; if you stand still long enough I can still quote the names of all five Celtic Countries in their native tongues.) Also, mermaids. Mermaids are cool. This looked earthy and mysterious. "Okay," I said. "I'm in." And bought the first three.

Anyway the point was... mermaids. For some reason I'm always a little skeptical about mermaids. Maybe because I prefer my magical fantasy a little more grounded, no pun intended. But that's exactly what this was! Ingo is the story of Sapphire and her brother Conor, who live in a village in Cornwall, in a cottage by the sea. It's as idyllic as you might imagine, at least on the surface, but Sapphire and Conor's lives are plagued by Dark Family Secrets of my very favourite kind; I call it Secret Legacy. In this case...

...their dad was a merman! And they might be, too!

Maybe. Sort of. Probably. Their mum is stubbornly... um, mum on the subject (I'M SORRY). All they know for sure is that one day not long ago, Dad went down to the cove and never came back.

I get frustrated sometimes with stories told out of order, but this is a case of that being done particularly well. It's not exactly non-linear, but peppered throughout the story are Sapphy's memories of her father, of his disappearance, of the way nobody wants to talk about it. And their father's disappearance is all tied up in the legend of mermaid of Zennor (the name of their village), about a man who lost his heart to a mermaid, went with her into the sea - Ingo - and disappeared.

I love, love, love stories about deep dark family secrets. But what I like best are stories where the secret is some special nature; where they're secretly witches, or werewolves, or long-lost royalty, and Mum and Dad or Auntie or Cruel Grandma or Guardian Title Here just never said, for whatever reason. In this case the not-exactly-linear nature of the story is great, because the story is all about Sapphire piecing things together from her memories, from stories her father told her, and from what's happening around her, and finally figuring out the truth. And in the present-day worrying things are happening. The more Sapphire finds out about her family, about her father, the less she thinks she knows about herself; the less in-control she feels. Her sense of displacement is powerful and really well-conveyed. There's also a great sense of double-vision, because as the reader you can see the places where Sapphy's judgement is impaired even while you understand her reasoning; Sapphy worries about Conor becoming more and more distant, afraid he'll disappear like their father did, even though once things come to a head, she's the one who's tempted to lose herself to Ingo; to the sea.

Other things I like about this book: Dunmore's take on mermaids! Also their sass. Mermaid sass! Brilliant. And I really like the instinctive way magic is described, or not-described. Everything feels very organic and necessary without a lot of obfuscating rules and explanations. The underlying atmosphere is just right for the sort of story being told, where everything is obscured behind a warm-coloured summer haze.

Add the air of cozy mystery I like best about my favourite mystery novels - soft-edged like a well-worn book cover - and you have a book that is a great way to spend an afternoon.

Though if you are like Miss Corene, it might just give you one more reason to avoid the ocean.

This Is Not the End of the Book - But It Should Be

2013-01-08T14:29:00.000-07:00

This is Not the End of the Book by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere

Would that the end of this book would come earlier. Somewhere around page one. Took most of my adult life to finish this book (wait. I have actually finished it, haven't I? HAVEN'T I?) which could passably be summarized as:

"Hey Umberto Eco! How vast and amazing is your book collection?"

"Oh Jean. It is both vast and amazing in way that mere human beings cannot understand. Until you own such beautiful and rare antiques as I, you haven't really lived."

Dear, dear 84, Charing Cross Road

2013-01-04T20:43:00.002-07:00

There are some books that are just dear to your heart and you can read over and over and over and (in some cases) over again. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff is one of those books that I always turn to when I'm down or in a reading slump.

This book is a collection of letters between the brash American writer, Helene Hanff, and the Marks & Co. bookseller, Frank Doel. Hanff was a struggling writer with an antiquarian taste in books who wrote a desperate inquiry to the British bookshop as all she could find in New York were the "Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies."

Her sarcastic, witty letters eventually melted Doel's British reserve and an epistolary friendship developed between one woman and an entire bookshop.

An intriguing book link is that the son of the bookshop's owner, Leo Marks, was a codemaker during WWII in SOE and wrote a thrilling book about his wartime experience:

84, Charing Cross Road is a delightfully true story about how books and a love of books (and powdered eggs) bring people together.

"I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St. Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on whens he refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:

'Then it's there.'"

Books I Have Bawled Through - 2013 Edition

2013-01-03T22:16:00.002-07:00

Welp, The Boy on Cinnamon Street by Phoebe Stone is officially my first tearjerker of 2013. And we are ... 3 days into the year.

Start strong, wibble on.

I want her shoes so much - ever if they are covered in tears

When Thumbelina (formerly Louise) Terrace orders from Palomeeno's Pizza after selling her balance beam, she gets more than cheesy deliciousness. Stuck underneath the door there's a letter from a secret admirer:

I am your biggest fan.

With her friend Remi cheering on and her bookish brother Henderson offering analysis when not writing his sci-fi robot romance, Louise navigates the possibility of her first love (who may or many not be the Kerouac-reading pizza delivery boy). But the deeper mystery is why one year ago Louise quit gymnastics and can't remember anything about the night of her mother's death. Or anything about her mother at all.

Exquisite heartbreak that's perfect for fans of Linda Urban via E.L Konigsburg holding hands with Stephanie Perkins.

Also flippin' delightful

If you need me, I will be wiping the tears from my glasses.

Review: Chime by Franny Billingsley

2012-05-03T12:19:00.000-06:00

Chime is the story of Briony, who thinks she's going to burn in Hell. Briony lives in a town where witches are hanged, and she's also spent the past several years believing herself not only a witch, but responsible for all the ills of her family.

Enter the Hot Guy, AKA: the Lion Boy, AKA: Eldric.

Eldric is clever, and kind, and interesting - all the things that Briony Does Not Need, considering how busy she is denying herself anything that makes her happy.

Because Briony, you see, is a witch. Or at least, she fears she's a witch. And in Briony's town, they hang witches. On top of that, Briony is absolutely certain - since her stepmother spent such a long time convincing her of it - that she's responsible for every single terrible thing that has happened to her family, ever.

Here come the spoilers!

Briony has a (largely absent) father and a twin sister named Rose. Though she often denies that she is an ordinary girl, Briony styles herself as the ordinary twin, at least in relation to Rose. Despite this, her thought-processes are strangely up-and-down, circuitious, at turns starkly-detailed and lushly-vague. Sometimes it annoyed me, as too-lyrical language in fiction not-infrequently annoys me, but what it reminded me of the most was, actually, Sherlock Holmes. Reading Briony thinking was a lot like reading the way you imagine the inside of Benedict-Cumberbatch-as-Sherlock's head looks like, if Sherlock were of a more poetic bent. A lot of round-and-round, too-close focus, fitful and petulant denial, boredom, quicksilver deduction (except when Briony is being infuriatingly, stubbornly stupid; this happens a few times).

The language in this book is lovely, even when it's disturbing. I really enjoy the way Briony sometimes loses herself in sensation - when she describes being a wolfgirl in the swamp, for instance - but at the same time I sometimes find that her too-close physical descriptions are a little jarring; mostly this comes up in physical descriptions of people. Her romantic-rival-possibly-an-evil-fairy Leanne is almost uniformly nauseating, and the scene where she offers a blood sacrifice to the Boggy Mun actually made me flinch away and my eyes skip over several lines until the cutting was over. Briony is full of weird details and weirder similes. The book is also full of restlessness and discontent and that sensation of unhappiness and guilt becoming a physiological symptom; usually nausea.

An unsettling book to read, all in all. In turns pretty (in highly unconventional ways) and funny and sweet but also spooky and frustrating. Frustrating because much of the time, it seemed more a set-piece than a story.

The thing about Chime is that for much of the pagecount, not very much actually happens. There's a lot of leading-up to things about to happen, but mostly this book is made up of remembering things that have already happened, and the remembering happens very, very slowly. It reminded me a little of reading Lark Rise to Candleford, which I remember getting about 85% of the way through before realizing there wasn't actually a story happening: it was just one long, meandering description of the people, the buildings, the society. And because of the lost-in-her-head, super-descriptive style of the narrator, we're often drawn off into side-tracks of imagery and it becomes hard to tell how much time is actually passing; a sensation not unlike spinning around and around enough times that when you stop, the room doesn't stop turning.

Or The Last September, except Billingsley actually pulled it off - at no point did I feel an overwhelming urge to throw the book across the room.

There was a story happening, though; you were just so disoriented for so much of the time that it was hard to tell, all the time. I liked the characters I think I was supposed to like and disliked the obviously unlikeable ones, but some things were absent or invisible or too soft-edged or stagnant, which is actually a pretty good word to describe a story that takes place in a swamp. The swamp itself is actually a pretty compelling character in and of itself; its presence is often stronger than that of the human characters.

I also wanted the mythology better explained, but that might just be me - actually this was done in a very taken-for-granted folklore style that implied there was no need to explain these things - they were obvious. In many places it was less a story and more a series of vignettes - a girl with a sad past trying to remember a series of events that made up the kernel of her sadness.

So, it was lovely, though while in the midst of it, it felt unstructured and like you were supposed to simply understand things that were neither shown nor told.

Fortunately, it's also one of those books where the last twenty or thirty pages spontaneously and retroactively restructures the previous two hundred. While you may feel a little wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey while reading this book, once you get to the end it solidifies and most things make sense. And while it's a rather rueful happy ending - not a lot of lasting optimism - it's a happy one nonetheless.

In which Ari is a model of restraint

2012-01-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Every year, Vancouver treasure Kidsbooks has a 20% sale. Usually this is a dangerous time for bibliophiles: 20% off is a perfect excuse to extravagantly overspend on our book budget. One protects oneself from this by taking allies (in this case my friend Jen); people who don't think it's at all strange to want to spend an hour in a bookstore. Unfortunately anybody who wants to go shopping with you at a bookstore dedicated to children's and YA literature is probably similarly vulnerable to temptation.

But I escaped with only a reasonable number of books this year. (And then I went and spent too much money at the yarn shop, but that's neither here nor there.)

Two were replacements, or already-reads that I'd been meaning to actually own for a while. the first was Enchanted Glass, by Diana Wynne Jones. You've probably read this (if you haven't, you should), but if you haven't, I'll just tell you that this is a lovely, comfortable little book, pleasant and well-rounded and rich, and that the reason I didn't already own it is because the Canadian edition took a while to come out in paperback, and also the American edition had one of the worst covers I have ever seen. This is the Canadian cover. Isn't it nice? Enchanted Glass is about Andrew Hope, who inherits his grandfather's house. Surprise: his grandfather was probably a wizard. Full of fairy tales and folk tales and family secrets and friendly monsters and walks in the woods. Delightful.

The second already-read was one of my favourite books of all time: From The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, in which Claudia and her brother Jamie run away from home and move into The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. There they stumble upon a mystery/conspiracy about a priceless work of art. I cannot emphasize this enough: this book is amazing, and everyone should read it. Twice. Or so many times that you lose count, and the spine cracks, and the pages fall out, as probably happened with my copy (before my cousin, who was obsessed with this book at the same time that I was, probably stole it). And I'm not just saying that because running away from home to live in a museum was something that eight-year-old me seriously considered on multiple occasions, totally independent of the influence of this awesome, awesome book.

The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson. I picked this one up mainly because our good friend and fellow reviewer Pippa liked it so much, despite Miss Corene's lukewarm feelings about it. It's about an American teenager who goes to boarding school in London, and apparently there's a mystery. I am told that the cover is misleading and that there is in fact no Victorian murder mystery, as it takes place in present day? So far it's... good? I think? Apparently we're going to be talking about it on next week's podcast, so we'll see.

The Grimm Legacy, by Polly Shulman, which Jen made me buy. Okay, she didn't exactly twist my arm: apparently this book is about library pages going on adventures and fighting evil. Basically. More details when I've read it, but with an endorsement like that, come on. What choice did I have? After all, Jen was the one who made me buy Graceling, so I think we can all agree that her judgment is pretty sound in these matters.

I, Coriander by Sally Gardner. All I know for certain about this book is that it takes place in 17th-century London, that the main character's name is Coriander, that there are magic shoes involved somewhere, and that at some point she gets locked in a trunk and left to die.

Also she's ginger. I think. Often that's enough for me, so maybe let's wait until I've actually read the book.

New Review: The False Princess

2011-12-19T19:08:00.000-07:00

This was one of those impulse buys you make - I’m sure we all do this - when you already have an armful of books at Kidsbooks and that little voice, the one responsible for most of your more ruinous financial decisions, assures you that one more book won’t make any difference on top of the nine you’re already carrying, and after all, you should support local independent bookstores!

I call it Book Voice.

Anyway, The False Princess, by Eilis O’Neal (and how great an author name is that?), is all about Nalia, the Princess of Thorvaldor, who, in her own opinion, isn’t much of a princess.

Except the book is actually about Sinda, the daughter of a weaver who was taken as a replacement for the real princess when both girls were infants and someone predicted that Nalia would die before her sixteenth birthday; the real Nalia has been raised in seclusion under the name Orianne.

And then again it’s about Mika, who is the real real princess, who was swapped out with Nalia at the last second and has been living in a hovel all her life.

It goes like this: the royal wizard (narratively, our Grand Vizier) cast a spell on Baby Replacement Princess so that her identity would remain unknown, and that everyone would believe she was the Princess. When her parents break the news to her, the spell is lifted, and Sinda’s sent packing with a few coins for her trouble and not much of a thank you.

This part is genuinely upsetting, because hey, her parents just kicked her out with a bag of gold and told her she was being replaced with their real daughter. It’s like every terrible story older siblings tell annoying younger ones - the “you were adopted, and then Mum and Dad decided they didn’t want you, but the orphanage wouldn’t take you back” story (look, don't pretend you never did this). Except in this case, it’s true, and you spend twenty pages totally aghast at how coldly Sinda’s been cast aside. (Well done, Ms. O’Neal.) The only person who hasn’t given up on her is her childhood-best-friend-who’s-obviously-in-love-with-her, Kiernan, and he’s charmingly loyal, despite her best efforts at discouraging him.

Now-peasant Sinda, the girl formerly known as Princess Nalia, is shipped off to her aunt in the countryside to learn how to dye cloth and live like a commoner, something we actually see her having trouble doing. Sinda turns out to be terrible at all of this, in addition to discovering a dangerous magical gift which it seems the Grand Vizier’s spell had suppressed along with Sinda’s true identity. Sinda has to flee back to the city in the hopes of finding someone teach her to control her magic even though she isn't a noble and therefore legally entitled to the schooling, and meets a Kindly Old Professor type who does just that in exchange for her becoming, basically, her secretary.

Sinda, of course, is plucky and curious and clever and becomes the only hope for a kingdom in the grips of a dangerous conspiracy to usurp the throne, with only Kiernan, her replacement Nalia (formerly known as Orianne, who it turns out isn't the real princess either), and the actual princess Nalia, AKA Mika, to help her.

This book has... well, not everything I enjoy, as there were no spaceships in evidence, but most of the things: magic, conspiracy, a good strong plot, pretty sweet worldbuilding, and a clever and independent female protagonist who ultimately does all her fixing on her own. (Fun aside: all the important people in this book are female, even the bad guys! A refreshing surprise.) Plus a mind-bendy three-way shell-game of princesses and a major plot-point in the form of an evil spell and a you'll-never-guess villain switch-up that keeps you guessing pretty much all the way to the end.

If you think this sounds complicated, you’re right. It’s really complicated. But it’s also excellently written, has great characters, and despite (what I initially thought to be) a shaky start has a wonderful ending. Not quite happily-ever-after, but content-for-now-and-getting-better.

New Review: Secret Keeper

2010-07-07T00:05:00.000-06:00

In honour of Mitali Perkins's awesome book being released in paperback this month, the Bookslingers newest review is the bittersweet tale of two sisters Secret Keeper.

Asha is her family's secret keeper. Every year on her birthday, her Baba gives her a new diary that she fills with the secret desires of her heart and her family’s unspoken secrets.

When her beloved father leaves India and moves to America to find work, Asha finds herself at the mercy of her father’s traditional family. She thinks that she has just lost her father but Asha has lost so much more...

Read the Bookslingers' review of Secret Keeper

New Review: Ever by Gail Carson Levine and Our First Honorary Bookslinger

2010-06-28T14:22:00.000-06:00

Bookslingers are very proud to welcome our first guest reviewer and honorary Bookslinger, Miss Elee.

Miss Elee is a science/engineering genius who will probably take over the world one day with maths.

She is also a devoted JUV and YA reader with an eye for quality and a very low tolerance for bad writing and mushiness.

We are very pleased to host reviews by the sharp-witted and discerning Miss Elee.

Her first (and hopefully not last) review is about Ever by Gail Carson Levine.

*

These are Kezi's last days on earth.

She has recklessly offered herself as a sacrifice to fulfill her father's foolish promise to their god, Admat. In her country, a debt unpaid and a broken promise bring shame and disaster on the family. But in her last living months, Kezi falls in love with Olus, the lonely god of the winds.

Torn between her love and her family, Kezi and Olus embark on a quest to find another way to honour her father's promise without ending Kezi's life. But this journey will test them sorely and make them face their darkest fears. Will their love be enough to defy the power of the gods?

Read the Bookslingers' Review of Ever

New Review: Gunnerkrigg Court by Thomas Siddell

2010-05-31T18:46:00.000-06:00

Robots, demons, and mad scientists – just another school day for Antimony Carver. After the death of her mother and her father’s disappearance, Antimony enrols in the very British and very mysterious boarding school called Gunnerkrigg Court.

More than just a school, Gunnerkrigg Court is home to a host of strange creatures and characters who hold the key to Antimony’s past. The halls are filled with shadows that speak, portals to alternate dimensions, poltergeists with a peculiar sense of humour, teachers with double-lives, and powerful spirits who all knew Antimony’s mother.

Along with her friend and scientist extraordinaire, Kat, Antimony explores the secrets of Gunnerkrigg Court in this collection of the first fourteen chapters of the popular webcomic.

Read the Bookslingers' Review of Gunnerkrigg Court, Volume I: Orientation

IN BRIEF: How come my high school didn't have robots? When can I transfer?

Smile by Raina Telgemeier

2010-05-10T14:32:00.000-06:00

Braces are just the beginning of Raina's dental drama.

Before she starts sixth grade, Raina's dentist cheerfully tells her that she's going to need braces for her overbite. And just when she starts to think that being a metal mouth might not be all bad (at least they might force her to stop chewing her nails!) dental disaster strikes.

She trips and smacks into the pavement and her two front teeth are knocked out.

Growing up is hard enough without headgear, removable teeth and retainers. And between her straightenings and brace tightenings, Raina learns about boys, the difference between good friends and not so good friends, getting your ears pierced, bratty younger sisters, art, how to deal with earthquakes, and becoming a dreaded teenager.

Read the Bookslingers review of Smile

But here's the review in brief: I LOVED IT AND I WANT TO HUG RAINA TELGEMEIER.

Graceling: the best butt-kicking girl of them all.

2010-05-02T01:52:00.001-06:00

I'd like to celebrate the second day of Bookslingers.com by reviewing a fabulous book. Luckily, I have one near at hand!

Graceling, by Kristin Cashore, was recommended to me by a friend during our last ill-advised trip to a Kidsbooks sale. I admit, I doubted her hand-wavy praise of this book (I have become cynical) but I was wrong. Graceling is a fabulous, magnificent book. I want to read it three more times. And then make everyone else read it. And talk about it all the time. (Just ask everyone who's had to spend time with me for the last week.)

Seriously, go read it right now. But if you need more convincing in regards to this book with a well-rounded female protagonist, a believable and un-infuriating heterosexual relationship in a fantasy novel, and the just general sheer awesomeness of the characters, go check out our review, which contains several more enthusiastically positive adjectives, plus some actual information.

In the spirit of butt-kicking girls (and in honour of our first week with a more-or-less-functioning site), tomorrow Miss Corene and I will be recording our first podcast. I have no idea how regular a thing these will be (or how interesting you may actually find them), but we're giving it a try anyway. Watch this space for Bookslingers Podcast #1: Books About Butt-Kicking Girls.

It'll be awesome. Really.

Read the Bookslingers Review of Graceling.

Bookslingers Review: Copper Sun

2010-03-23T01:07:00.000-06:00

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper

Synopsis: In an instant, fifteen-year-old Amari looses everything.

Her village and her people.

Her handsome fiancée and their future life together that she dreamed about.

Her wise mother, her storytelling father and her impish younger brother.

Her freedom.

Read the Bookslingers Review of Sharon Draper's Copper Sun...

Bookslingers Review: Thirteenth Child by Patricia C. Wrede

2010-02-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

To the very few people already reading this blog: please bear with us while we test our review label RSS. This just happens to be the only complete review we have so far. ;)

Eff Rothmer is a thirteenth child, which in her world means she's destined to bring doom to everyone around her. Her twin brother, Lan, is the seventh son of a seventh son, which everyone knows means he'll be lucky and powerful. And so Eff's been told her entire life, until one day her parents decide to move the whole family West to the frontier town of Mill City, and everything changes, especially Eff.

Read the Bookslingers Review of Thirteenth Child.