Category Archives: Fiction

Sin-Eater’s Confession

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I don’t have all the answers to what happened back home, or why people did what they did, or, more to the point, why I didn’t do what I should’ve.

sineatersconfessionThe Sin-Eater’s Confession by Ilsa J. Bick is a novel about truth and rumors and the murky area between the two. The book opens with a young man named Ben who writes down his story while he’s stationed in Afghanistan as a medic. In folklore, a sin-eater is “a man who (according to a former practice in England) for a small gratuity ate a piece of bread laid on the chest of a dead person, whereby he was supposed to have taken the sins of the dead person upon himself.” Now to me, that makes it sound like you could be a dark soul who while living enjoyed torturing small children and setting houses on fire, but as long as you died and some poor schmoe was around to absolve you of all sins your slate was wiped clean. 

Ben starts his story as a high school senior who has more than enough on his plate. His mother is constantly on his case to apply to dozens of colleges and he volunteers at the local emergency room just because his mom thinks it’ll look great on his college application. During the summer, another senior, Del, is killed by a drunk driver. Ben volunteers to help Del’s family on their farm, befriending his younger brother Jimmy. 

Del was a high school jock but his brother Jimmy is a timid kid who is verbally abused by his father. Jimmy’s father can’t seem to stand the sight of him since Del died. Ben feels sorry for Jimmy but doesn’t really know what to do. Jimmy confides to Ben that he wants to be a photographer. Ben tells him that he doesn’t want to be a doctor but wants to be a writer. They’re just two dudes talking, imagining the lives they’ll one day lead.

One day while taking a break under an unforgiving sun, Jimmy begins to tell Ben something. He can’t quite get the secret out of his mouth and Ben becomes uneasy because he thinks he already knows what that secret might be:

It’s terrible and huge and awesome all at the same time that I am dying to let out-and only to you. Because only you will understand. Only you matter. If I tell, maybe everything changes-and not for the good. And I don’t know if I can bear that.

When school starts there’s no time for Ben to help Jimmy on his family’s farm. He hates to admit it but he kind of forgets about Jimmy, forgets that he told him he’d be there for him if he ever needed a friend.

Rumors begin to fly when a picture of Ben shows up in a magazine. The picture is fairly innocent: Ben lying in the sun after hours of hard work, unaware of the camera. Jimmy had taken his photograph and entered it into a contest and won. Everybody’s talking about the picture. Jimmy must be gay. He took a picture of a shirtless Ben resting against a bale of hay. Ben must be gay too. It’s obvious.

But is it really? 

Ben begins to question himself. He’s never had a girlfriend but is that because he’s so busy volunteering, getting a 4.0 in school, applying to the most prestigious colleges that there’s no time for a girlfriend? Or does he keep himself busy because he doesn’t want to question himself too closely? 

Somehow Ben gets painted as the bad guy. Jimmy’s father doesn’t want him around because he thinks he’s a bad influence on his son. The photograph must have been Ben’s idea. The Christian coffee shop where Jimmy buses tables treats Ben like he’s something rotten they stepped in. 

Ben’s small and orderly world begins to spin-off its axis as the rumors grow teeth. All his life Ben has been pushed to be the best by his mother. She can’t have a simple conversation with him without asking if he’s written an essay for his Yale admission.  Little by little he’s admitting to himself that his life isn’t his own.

He decides to talk to Jimmy, this time without the evil eye from the coffee shop owners and the creepy pastor that seems to have a fierce hold on Jimmy’s family. He sees Jimmy behind the coffee shop, hears low murmuring voices and then a loud “No!” He watches as Jimmy gets into a car with someone he can’t quite make out and follows them for what seems like forever. The car finally pulls into a state park. What happens next shapes Ben’s and Jimmy’s lives forever.

There is no moral lesson in this book. There are no answers. But that’s how life is. Would I really be there for someone if they needed me or is that something I just say to make someone feel better? Do I keep myself busy because I can’t figure out who or what I want in my life? 

Can I count on myself to know what’s best for me? Barely. Will I sometimes get swept up in gossip and rumors? Most certainly. Will I be a strong enough person to find out the truth behind rumors and gossip? I hope so.

The Sin-Eater’s Confession did what it intended to do: it promised there’d be no answers to any questions. But it told a familiar story, one that we all face day-to-day. Who am I, really? Am I what I want to be or do I play a different role to make others happy?

There are no answers here.

Jennifer

Spot-Lit for May 2013

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So, you’ve probably heard that Dan Brown, John Sandford, John Le Carré, Isabel Allende, and Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini all have new books out or due out this month. Below are some more titles getting a lot of advance review buzz and/or publisher support. Click on the titles to read more or to place holds.

General Fiction / Literary Fiction 

Dual InheritanceA Dual Inheritance  by Joanna Hershon
A friendship formed at Harvard in 1962 then abruptly broken off is the focus of this love-triangle novel which spans the past fifty years. Hershon’s novel is being compared to Freedom, Rules of Civility, and The Marriage Plot.

FoolsFools  by Joan Silber
Occurring in many locations around the globe, and spanning the 1920s to Occupy Wall Street, these interlinked stories look at the ways people dupe one another – subtly or otherwise – and are likewise duped.

First Novels

ConstellationA Constellation of Vital Phenomena  by Anthony Marra
After her father is abducted, an eight-year-old girl and her neighbor, Akhmed, take refuge in a bombed out hospital in Chechnya where Sonja, the sole remaining doctor, treats the wounded and mourns her missing sister. In writing that is detailed and eloquent, Akhmed and Sonja explore their pasts and the events that have bound them together.

Red SparrowsRed Sparrow  by Jason Matthews
Pitting Putin’s SVR against the CIA, this exceptional spy thriller includes a host of villains, hit-men, and politicos while employing such spy-trade techniques as counterintelligence, surveillance, “sexpionage,” cyber-warfare and covert communications. Ex-CIA man Matthews knows his stuff.

Under Tower PeakUnder Tower Peak  by Bart Paul
Iraq-war vet Tommy Smith and his wilderness guide partner find themselves in the thick of things when they discover the wreckage of a missing billionaire’s airplane high in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Thugs and family members all seek their self-interest and Tommy has to dust off the sniper skills he thought he’d retired for good. 

Crime Fiction

End of the WorldThe End of the World in Breslau  by Marek Krajewski
Hard-drinking Eberhard Mock investigates the grisly murders of two seemingly unrelated victims in the Polish town of Breslau in 1927. Evidence deliberately left at both crime scenes points to a single suspect. Suspicion falls on Mock’s wife when she begins to display unusual behavior.

RedeemerThe Redeemer  by Jo Nesbø
Renegade detective Harry Hole has little to go on in solving the contract killing of a musician. Flawed, frail human nature is revealed in the characters of The Redeemer – along with their ambiguous quests for redemption. This is masterfully plotted crime writing that explores the darkest corners of the human psyche.

SF / Fantasy / Horror

Human DivisionThe Human Division  by John Scalzi
A bold, hard-SF novel in which earthlings find their own Colonial Union has deceived them and conscripted humans in a generations-long fight with aliens. Things get interesting when the aliens appeal to the betrayed humans to join them in the fight against the CU…  Bradbury and Heinlein fans will want to grab this.

nos4a2NOS4A2  by Joe Hill
Charles Talent Manx has a thing for abducting children. Victoria McQueen is the only victim to ever escape his grasp. That was long ago, but he hasn’t forgotten her. And now he has her son.

Red MoonRed Moon  by Benjamin Percy
This supernatural thriller featuring werewolves (lycans) in a story with strong social and geopolitical undercurrents should attract more than just horror fans. Percy’s book is drawing comparisons to Justin Cronin’s The Passage and Max Brooks’s World War Z.

Heartwood 3:3 – Apophenia in Blue

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speedboat  Bluets  Game of Boxes

apophenia - the perception of connections, patterns or meaningfulness in unrelated things.

As regular readers of Heartwood know (that’s right, all five of you), I am frequently stunned that whatever I happen to be reading seems to connect in surprising ways with other things I’ve read or recently lived through. I find this one of reading’s greatest pleasures.

A couple of years ago I was reading a book that briefly discussed Renata Adler’s Speedboat in glowing terms, especially appreciative of: its collage structure; its quick changes in subject; the aphorisms and miniature stories; the interweaving of ideas, emotions and experiences; and its thematic recurrences or reiterations. This made me think of another book I’d recently read and loved called Bluets, by Maggie Nelson – though clearly nothing in the above description would make one think that Speedboat would have anything to say about the color blue.

Anyway, when my interlibrary loan request for Speedboat came in (it’s recently been reprinted and is now in the EPL collection), I was pleased to find it did indeed share something of the structure and qualities I’d seen in Nelson’s book. Nevertheless, I was completely unprepared for this passage late in Speedboat, which looks like it could be an emblematic entry from Bluets:

We spoke of the quality of the blue in the stained-glass windows of Chartres, which modern science had not been able to reproduce, as though the medieval craftsman who had produced it were a colleague. He had, we knew, billed his diocese for the purchase of sapphires ground up to create that color. Modern science had, at least, established that sapphires played no part in its composition at all. It was our first, most scholarly appreciation of the padded expense account.

Adler’s Speedboat crosses continents in passages that relate the life and observations of a woman who works as a reporter. Nelson’s Bluets takes an obsessive interest in the color blue, which she pursues through philosophy, art, personal experience, and other channels of research. Nelson breaks up these passages with others in which the narrator grieves a broken relationship and assists a friend who has become quadriplegic. Here’s a sample entry from Bluets that also touches on stained glass:

For Plato, color was as dangerous a narcotic as poetry. He wanted both out of the republic. He called painters “mixers and grinders of multi-colored drugs,” and color itself a form of pharmakon. The religious zealots of the Reformation felt similarly: they smashed the stained-glass windows of churches, thinking them idolatrous, degenerate. For distinct reasons, which had to do with the fight to keep the cheap, slave-labor crop of indigo out of a Western market long dominated by woad, the blue-dye-producing plant native to Europe, indigo blue was called “the devil’s dye.” And before blue became a “holy” color – which had to do with the advent of ultramarine in the twelfth century, and its subsequent use in stained glass and religious paintings – it often symbolized the Antichrist.

OK, now for round three. Last week I was reading Catherine Barnett’s smart and sensual collection of poems, The Game of Boxes, and came upon “Which System Is Most Miraculous?” It opens with the poet discussing the subject of the poem’s title, presumably with her partner who has since left her. Some of the miraculous systems they identify are language, vision, conception, and birth. Among the things she doesn’t name, but suggests, are time, love, and – if I can read into it a bit – the significations we attach to important life events, such as in the giving of wedding gifts. But as our lives progress and/or change direction, these systems can also change, break down, become ambivalent, deteriorate – which leads her to question whether she should outgrow her attachments. When faced with it, however, it’s not so easy. She informs us that “A blue glass broke but I can’t throw it away. / There’s room for it on the shelf. / Or there’s no room.” Even though the glass has been destroyed, she notes the absurdity of feeling unable to part with it.

The poem ends in lines that are as awestruck by this particular blue as Maggie Nelson is by the various blues throughout Bluets. Where the interpersonal bond has proven fragile, and where even the power of language has its limits, the immediacy and intangibility of this blue stays vibrant, persists, almost succeeds in holding together what’s been broken:

Words still fortify me but the blue is better,
brighter, almost as bright as when it was first
removed from its tissue and passed
from hand to hand.

*          *          *

I love that Barnett’s poem and the passage in Adler cited above happen to unite with Nelson’s Bluets in these unique, though somehow stylistically similar and excellent books. Yet, astonished and pleased as I am by this, another of Adler’s observations causes me, at least momentarily, to check my enthusiasm:

when invention failed them, they used the fail-safe method for undergraduate work at any solid institution: take two utterly unrelated things or matters and show that they are, if not in fact identical, actually related in the most profound and subtle sense.

What Not to Read

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Recently, the blog team was presented with an article by Maria Popova that contains an interesting quote:

“Non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught.”

 ~ from How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read by Pierre Bayard

How to talk about

This led to a lively discussion of what we read, what we don’t read, why we choose or don’t choose certain titles. It’s an interesting topic and something I think about frequently. But I’d never considered not reading to be a choice.

 The idea that by choosing not to read certain books one will be protected from drowning (presumably beneath a menacing flood of literature) intrigues me. As a person who spends most days besieged by the bursting bounty of books in the library, I am keenly aware of the perils embodied by this tumultuous torrent of tomes. So too am I aware of the debilitating reading disorder that plagues me and many others, causing us to throw common sense out the metaphorical window and to check out far too many books in a single go. This pestilence on our land, most commonly known as bibliorrhea, is a disease recognizable by the sufferer’s reading eyes being decidedly larger than his or her ample reading stomach, leaving plates and plates of unread or unfinished materials.

 Hence the need for a method of whittling down the teetering stacks of books in my office to a manageable pile. So I undertake the largely unconscious task of choosing what not to read.

There are unwritten rules my subconscious follows, which I will now write down, so strike this sentence. Here are the written rules I tend to follow in selecting books.

I seldom read non-fiction. In my formative years non-fiction tended to be as dry as a desiccant pack in the Mojave Desert.
Follows the rule:
Hedy LamarHedy’s Folly: The Life And Breakthrough Inventions Of Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman In The World by Richard Rhodes sounds absolutely fascinating, telling how actress and beauty icon Hedy Lamarr invented technology which was later used in cell phones and other devices. Who knew? However, the writing style of this book did not engage me (this tends to be my issue with non-fiction) and I quickly put it down.

ConfederatesIs an exception:
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz is a wonderful non-fiction book that looks at the effects of the Civil War which still permeate American thought and behavior, especially in the south. This non-fiction book is an exception to my rule.

Writing style is important. I generally do not like the prose employed in best-selling fiction.
Follows the rule:
TwilightTwilight by Stephenie Meyer, one of the most wildly-popular books in recent memory, is definitely not aimed at my age-group and gender, but still I found the text to be quite repetitive and unreadable, taking tens of pages to unfold a plot that could have been revealed in a single page or sentence. I was not able to complete this book due to annoyance with the writing style.

Valhalla
Is an exception:
Valhalla Rising by Clive Cussler is a thrilling thriller involving Viking runes, Nemo’s Nautilus, the Red Baron and countless other twists and turns. I consider Cussler’s best-sellers to be guilty pleasures that I do not want to admit to reading but secretly enjoy.


Dense or archaic language is difficult for me to enjoy. I prefer an easy read.
Follows the rule:
CopperfieldDavid Copperfield by Charles Dickens is a certified classic that I couldn’t read if my life depended on it. The language of Dickens’ England requires tremendous mental prowess to untangle, leaving me exhausted and searching for a Harlequin romance.

 Dickens may be a god among authors, but I remain an atheist.

Is an exception:
TetherballsThe Tetherballs of Bougainville by Mark Leyner is a book that defies description, filled with surreal run-on sentences that continue for pages, plot turns that don’t particularly make sense, and language that a diamond couldn’t penetrate. Yet somehow the result is freakishly enjoyable.

So there you have a little peek into the process I undertake when deciding which books to read and what not to read.

Next month the blog team will discuss, for your enjoyment, some titles that we will not read, cannot finish, or wish to destroy in excruciating fashions, along with justifications for our feelings and actions. It’s all in good fun, but at the same time this discussion might help us better understand our reading motivations, to venture into uncharted reading territories, and to discover an unexpected gem here and there along the way.

Ron                  

New (to Me) Short Stories

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I don’t set out intentionally to read short stories. Really. As I look through reviews and hear of books, I simply write down the titles that seem interesting. When I revisit that list later, though, it becomes painfully obvious that I’ve got a short story addiction. I’m sure it reveals some kind of character flaw, a lack of focus perhaps or maybe an inability to commit. Luckily for me denial is a favorite response to problems. So I’m afraid society will have to pry that copy of Winesburg, Ohio out of my cold dead hands.

If you share my affliction, or simply feel like trying something new, here a few superb recent collections.

weliveinwater

We Live in Water by Jess Walter
This is the first collection of short stories from Walter, who has recently become well known for the novel Beautiful Ruins, but let’s hope it is not his last. Each story has a strong sense of place, Spokane for the most part, and the empathy Walter displays for his down-and-out characters is matched only by his ability to bring out the humor in everyday situations. Particular standouts include “Virgo” (the tale of a newspaper editor who makes the horoscope section way too personal), “Wheelbarrow Kings” (detailing a misguied attempt to cash in a big screen TV for drug money), and “Don’t Eat Cat” (a dystopian view of a future Seattle that wants to mainstream drug addicted zombies).

athousandmoronsA Thousand Morons by Quim Monzo
Absurdity abounds in this surreal collection of brief stories. Be prepared for a man in a nursing home who decides to take up cross dressing (“Mr. Beneset”), and a woman who methodically tries to rid herself of every memory she has every had (“Saturday”). Interspersed are more meditative stream of consciousness pieces such as “I’m Looking Out of the Window” in which the title accurately describes all of the action. If you can, briefly, abandon your sense of reality this collection is well worth the effort and might lead you to see the world in a different light.

The People of Forever are Not Afraid: A Novel by Shani Boianjiu
Ipeopleofforever know, I know… this title states it is “A Novel”. But it is really a series of connected short stories, in my view, so I’m going to stretch a point. Each story, or chapter if you must, is a different episode from the lives of three young women who grew up together and were conscripted into the Israeli army. While the stories are connected, there is no linear sense of progression. Instead each serves as a vivid description of a time and place, be it a dusty checkpoint in the middle of nowhere with a group of protestors literally demanding to be tear-gassed, or a Tel Aviv sandwich shop which promises to make a sandwich any way the customer demands. Tying everything together is a direct and effective use of language which brings every scene to life.

revengeRevenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa
Ogawa is one of my favorite authors and is a prolific writer. Sadly many of her works are not translated into English. Imagine my delight then, when I found out, thanks Spot-Lit, that a collection had just been translated. Revenge is a series of stories that are connected but often in ways that seem oblique at first. I hesitate to describe the plots of the various stories. Let’s just say her language is sparse but very affecting and the overall impact is a quiet foreboding that is ultimately toxic. This may not sound like a compliment but trust me, it is. Here is an example, from the story “Afternoon at the Bakery”, for you to get a feel for her writing:

The kitchen was as neatly arranged as the shop. Bowls, knives, mixers, pastry bags, sifters—everything needed for the work of the day was right where it should be. The dish-towels were clean and dry, the floor spotless. And in the middle of it stood the girl, her sadness perfectly at home in the tidy kitchen. I could hear nothing, not a word, not a sound. Her hair swayed slightly with her sobs. She was looking down at the counter, her body leaning against the oven. Her right hand clutched a napkin. I couldn’t see the expression on her face, but her misery was clear from the clench of her jaw, the pallor of her neck, and the tense grip of her fingers on the telephone.

The reason she was crying didn’t matter to me. Perhaps there was no reason at all. Her tears had that sort of purity.

So there you go: Several short story collections from which you have nothing to fear. Well, be advised, they may be habit forming.

Richard

Then You Were Gone

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thenyouweregoneI knew I was going to like this book when I read the author’s dedication:  For my best girls and my ex-BFFs

I think most grown women and young girls understand the power of an intense friendship. These relationships can be beautiful and decades long or they can be short-lived and downright destructive to the point where a person loses their own identity. It’s not any comfort to know that friendships can be as baffling at the age of 40 as they are the age of 16. It is a comfort, however, to find friends you once thought lost.

At the start of Lauren Strasnick’s Then You Were Gone, Adrienne and Dakota have had an intense friendship that ended two years ago. Dakota was more than a wild child; she’s the kind of girl mothers want to keep both their sons and daughters away from. Dakota is the poster girl for damaged teenagers. She’s the girl who ingests a speedball and thrash dances barefoot on top of a thin glass table top. 

Now a high school senior, Adrienne has put her life back together. There are times she gets heart-sick thinking about Dakota, but she knows she’s better off without her. But one day Adrienne gets a phone call from Dakota and doesn’t answer. Adrienne is plagued by guilt when she finds out Dakota has gone missing. She should have called her back. Did Dakota commit suicide or has she just disappeared like she does now and again, both worrying and angering her loved ones? Dakota fronted an up and coming band that was picking up an underground following. There were even rumors of getting a record deal. So why did she disappear? 

The world Adrienne had put back together for herself begins crumbling after Dakota’s disappearance. She doesn’t know if she loves her boyfriend Lee or if being with him is comfortable and safe. Her best friend Kate doesn’t understand why Adrienne is obsessed with finding Dakota. Adrienne doesn’t understand it herself. Their friendship ended two years ago. Why should she care? But she does. She becomes blind to anything but finding Dakota. 

Adrienne begins to turn into Dakota, donning dark-colored clothing and lining her eyes with kohl. She begins to hang out with Julian, Dakota’s on again off again boyfriend. The two of them even break into the house Dakota lived in with her step-father thinking that maybe he killed her and did away with her body. Adrienne begins skipping classes, not turning in her assignments, and not participating in lectures like she once did. 

In the back of her mind she knows she’s trying to turn herself into Dakota. A small part of her is screaming at Dakota, shouting that she’s messing everything up, her perfect relationship with her boyfriend, her grades, even her relationship with her mom. She’s desperate to find Dakota. But she’s also desperate for Julian to see her as Adrienne and not “Dakota’s former best friend.” She starts to wonder if she and Dakota had actually been friends or if Dakota had just used her. After breaking into Dakota’s house and searching her room she finds a photograph tucked inside a book.

Slipping the book back on the shelf, I see it.  A photo corner jutting out the top.  I pinch it.  Pull slowly.  My belly bottoms out.  Me.  It’s me.  I’m twelve, maybe?  Thirteen?  I’m licking an ice cream cone.  My eyes are crossed.  Did she take this?  Proof, finally.  Of our friendship.  I mattered once.   Even if I don’t anymore.

Adrienne begins to get phone calls from a blocked number. She almost convinces herself it has to be Dakota. But that ship has sailed. Dakota is nowhere to be found. After someone finds one of Dakota’s boots washed up on the beach Adrienne decides to let go and accept that Dakota is dead. She dumps all of the dark clothing, gets rid of the kohl eye liner and is ready for things to get back to normal with her boyfriend, her English grade and her friend Kate. No more of The Mystery That Is Dakota Webb. 

Except it’s not so easy going back to the way things were. Adrienne’s boyfriend Lee has started seeing someone else after being ignored by Adrienne. She writes the essay she’s been given two extensions on and her English teacher won’t accept it. She’s let him down. She’s let so many people down.

Dakota Webb has done more harm in disappearing than she has by being around. Little pockets of freshmen start to dress like her. A memorial goes up. She gets raised to near deity status. You know you really matter only if you’re dead. Tupac’s been dead for years and he’s still insanely popular. Same with Elvis. I think they’ve both been seen alive and well, traveling somewhere in the North with Bigfoot. 

Dakota is becoming a legend and most people are forgetting how self-serving, how manipulative she was. Adrienne realizes that their friendship was never equal. She followed Dakota’s lead and let her abuse her because she thought that’s what friendship meant. Having a healthy friendship with someone like Kate restores Adrienne’s self-esteem. Life’s not perfect and life’s not always flowers and fairy tales but her life has become more stable having gone through her friendship with Dakota.

Read Then You Were Gone for the mystery inside but also read it to get a picture of surviving a tumultuous friendship and coming out of it a stronger person. Some of us have been like Adrienne, used and constantly tested. But with time we begin to return to who we were before, all the better for having gone through a rough friendship.

Jennifer

Spot-Lit for April 2013

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General Fiction / Literary Fiction   

click to enlargeThe Flamethrowers  by Rachel Kushner
An aspiring artist with a passion for Italian racing motorcycles heads to 1970s New York. The romance she falls into while there propels her to Rome, where she gets mixed up in Italy’s radical late ’70s politics. Advance reviews have been hugely enthusiastic.

click to enlargeLife After Life  by Kate Atkinson
Ursula Todd lives and dies many times, always reborn back into the same family, where she sometimes corrects her past mistakes, and where she finds herself in a position to truly change the world. From the author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Started Early, Took My Dog.

click to enlarge Woke Up Lonely  by Fiona Maazel
Thurlow Dan is separated from his wife and daughter, and he runs Helix, a loneliness-battling cult complete with communes and speed dating. As it’s grown, Helix has attracted the attention of governments from around the world – which leads to botched reconnaissance and hostage-taking, and involves his ex-wife. A crazy quilt, funny look at mass culture and loneliness.

First Novels

SnapperSnapper  by Brian Kimberling
An eccentric cast of characters swirls through this finely written tale about a young, barely-scraping-by bird researcher living in Indiana, his love for a mysterious woman, and the twisty, risky road to full adulthood. Humorous and thoughtful reading.

Movement of StarsThe Movement of Stars  by Amy Brill
Hannah Price lives within the restraining principles of her 1840s Nantucket Quaker community, but her nights are given to rooftop star-gazing in hopes of discovering a comet and attaining scientific recognition. Based by the work of America’s first female astronomer, Maria Mitchell.

Amity and SorrowAmity and Sorrow  by Peggy Riley
A mother flees from the compound of a polygamist cult with her daughters Amity and Sorrow, who have never seen the outside world.

Crime Fiction / Suspense

SubmergenceSubmergence  by J.M. Ledgard
Readers open to non-linear, beautiful, and thought-provoking storytelling should take a look at this novel that explores the tensions between Islamic fundamentalism and Western views, while also exploring marine biology and other subjects. A visceral, rewarding and unusual “spy thriller” set in Somalia and France.

Tuesdays GoneTuesday’s Gone  by Nicci French
A social worker finds her client serving tea to a dead man. Frieda Klein is called in to investigate, but fears whoever killed this man may be targeting her next.

SF / Fantasy / Horror

River of Stars

River of Stars  by Guy Gavriel Kay
Another epic, historical fantasy from the acclaimed Kay (Under Heaven), this one set in China’s Song dynasty.

Why a YA Mystery?

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I do love a good mystery. A good mystery. Which eliminates roughly … all of them. Of course I’m exaggerating for comedic effect. As my divinity mentor was fond of saying, “You are nothing if not a clown. And don’t touch that divinity, I just finished cooking it!”

But seriously mystery fans, sometimes it seems that any object affected by gravity thinks it can pen a mystery novel. This, of course, makes for a lot of poorly written mysteries. On the other hand, a spiffing good conundrum offers rewards beyond even the wildest dreams of Melvin.

Mysteriously, today’s blog about mysteries began as something of a mystery itself. You see, I undertook a search (much as a dime-novel detective) of the catalog without a particular destination in mind, and soon found myself (surprisingly) delivered to the sub-genre of YA mysteries, uncharted waters for this reader.

Deadly CoolThrough some arcane process comprehensible only to a Floridian vote counter, I arrived at the title Deadly Cool by Gemma Halliday. This book is a fairly standard take on the mystery genre, with young adult characters setting it apart as reading aimed at, wait for it, young adults. Here we find Hartley, a high school junior suspicious of her boyfriend’s fidelity. Rushing to his house for a confrontation she discovers the body of the girl he was allegedly dallying about with. The book does a most excellent job of creating a realistic teen culture and dulling the bite of a potentially disturbing topic with abundant humor. Incidentally, this is the first in a series of books featuring our protagonist Hartley Featherstone.

The search continued. In our newly-improved catalog, one can easily find suggestions of additional books that might be of interest to the searcher. Deadly Cool yielded the following:

RecommendationsReformed vampireNever one to turn down a name like The Reformed Vampire Support Group, I clicked on this title and discovered a promising description of vampires who are, “anemic, whiny, unattractive, they feed on guinea pigs…” I was sold at anemic. This book stands above the insurmountable glut of vampire books that have hit local bookselling establishments in recent years, offering a fresh take on vampire culture while throwing in some tip top murder and mystery to boot.


EtiquetteAnother title that turned up in my search was Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger. In a steampunk version of 1851 we find Sophronia Temminnick, an unusual 14-year-old girl who is more interested in machinery and shenanigans than in curtseying and obtaining a husband. These activities so aggravate her mother that the girl is unexpectedly whisked away to Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. However, unbeknownst to Sophronia’s mum, the school is actually an academy specializing in espionage and assassination. And this suits Sophronia just fine. Adventures, paranormal creatures and mystery abound in this amusing and exciting debut in the Finishing School series.

Other exciting YA mysteries recommended by the catalogue:

Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams.
Black Mirror by Nancy Werlin
The Girl is Murder (1st in a series) by Kathryn Miller Haines
I So Don’t Do Mysteries (1st in a series) by Barrie Summy

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 I’d Tell You I Love You, but then I’d Have to Kill You (series) by Ally Carter
Ruby Redfort Look into my Eyes by Lauren Child
Ripper by Stefan Petrucha
Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

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Today’s lesson is this: One can find a young adult mystery that is suitable for an adult reader. And, just as in anything else, there are gems and there are maggots, but rooting out the maggots, as Hercule Poirot might have said with an outrageous accent, is at least one-third of the fun. So expand your horizons, take advantage of the cool features of the catalog, and most importantly, be careful out there.

Ron

 

One for the Ladies

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DivergentIt may seem a bit odd to celebrate Women’s History Month by talking about fictional females, but here I am. I’ve noticed that I wind up reading a lot of fiction with males in lead roles; I guess it’s all that wizardry, sword fighting, and space travel going on – apparently lots of testosterone is needed. Needless to say, I always find it refreshing when I come across a woman in a book that I’m reading who can play with the boys, sometimes even beating them at their own game. Whether it’s mental, physical, or emotional, I love the strong ladies of lit. Sometimes things don’t work out well for them at the end of their journeys, but reading their exploits can be a welcome change in perspective from chest-thumping bros or hand-wringing ninnies. Here are some of my favorite female leads for those of you looking for a sassy lass or two:

True GritMattie Ross – True Grit by Charles Portis.  Mattie just might be #1 on my list, so I figure she’s a great place to start. Not long ago, a librarian friend of mine challenged me to name an of-age female protagonist from a book, written for an audience older than age 12, who had no romantic or sexual subplot attached to her. At first you wouldn’t think this type of character would be hard to find, but the only person I could come up with was Miss Ross. Mattie spends much of the story as a teen, so that’s not too difficult to explain, but she also ends the book as a wise old spinster. Aside from settling a bet among librarians, Mattie is great for other reasons. She is undeniably the heroine of the story, and throughout shows cunning, bravery, and determination. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who have never picked up this book, but I think most readers will enjoy Mattie’s particular brand of pluck.

Beatrice “Tris” Prior – Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth. If you liked Katniss Everdeen trust me, you are going to love Tris Prior. Unlike Katniss, Tris made the conscious choice to enter a life of danger and adventure. In a post-apocalyptic Chicago, society is broken down into five factions where individuals live according to a core value that they choose to uphold. At sixteen Tris does the unthinkable and opts to leave her humble faction of service, Abnegation, for the daredevil warrior faction, Dauntless. This choice sets off an avalanche of challenges for Tris as she struggles to prove herself as a Dauntless member and gain acceptance into her new faction. The stakes are high, and failure could be fatal. You don’t want to miss this series.

DraculaMina Harker – Dracula by Bram Stoker. In the opening chapters of Dracula, Mina is a single, orphaned, yet financially-independent woman – no mean feat in the late 19th Century. When I first read Dracula, I had to do a double-take on the date of publication because I was surprised by the strong lead role that Mina played. Clearly Mr. Stoker thought that Mina was exceptional as well; at one point he describes her as having a ‘man’s brain.’ Throughout the book, we learn bits and pieces about Mina’s life by reading excerpts from her correspondences and journals. Mina comes across as a very intelligent person – not only perfecting her stenography skills in order to succeed as a legal assistant for her fiance, but also studying his law texts so that she can better help him in his practice when he becomes established as a solicitor. She is an interesting mixture of the stereotypical gentle, subservient Victorian wife and a brave and intellectual heroine, often leading her vampire-hunting counterparts to important clues about Dracula’s location and plans. This mix of femininity and intellect makes her a very believable and likable protagonist.

Amelia Peabody's EgyptAmelia Peabody Emerson -The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. Last summer I was quoted as saying that I wanted to be Indiana Jones when I was a kid; that was true, but I think I should have added that I wanted to be Amelia Peabody as well. I was in love with the Amelia Peabody mystery series when I was younger, possibly more than I was with the Indiana Jones movies because I could actually imagine being Peabody. Amelia was everything I wanted to be: mature, insanely smart, funny independent, and above all – an Egyptologist at the turn of the century! This was an intoxicating thought to a nerdy little girl who loved to daydream about digging in the sand in a pith helmet and bloomers, and peering through cracks in ancient stone doors with Howard Carter to discover ‘wonderful things.‘ Through the magic of fiction, Amelia got to do all of this for me, and was witty and endearing while she was at it. To be fair, the entire cast in this series is wonderful – from Amelia’s ornery beau to their precocious children who arrive later in the series. I’d highly recommend these stories to anyone who likes both a good mystery and historical fiction.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour BookstoreKat Potente – Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. Let me just say, completely aside from the topic of this post, that I fell hard for this book; what an absolute delight it was to read! Even if you weren’t on a quest for a new female heroine I would tell you to grab this book and love it. But back to the topic at hand! Kat Potente enters the scene as the love interest of our male protagonist, Clay, but you soon learn that she is far more than a pretty face. Kat is one of the data visualization whiz kids at Google – a beyond-smart techie who seems to be on the verge of climbing high up the ranks at the internet powerhouse. When Clay becomes obsessed with mysterious goings on at his very unusual place of employment, he turns to Kat to help him find answers through the far-reaching network of information and technology that she has access to through Google. I like Kat because I find her work to be a fascinating look into the near future of where Internet technology, and the digitization of old texts, will take researchers. To a librarian and archivist, it’s tantalizing to see the concepts at play in this book, even if it’s fiction. You know that not far beneath the surface there is a lot of reality in what Sloan is writing about.

Juego de TronosA Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones), by George R.R. Martin. Do I have to pick just one? This series is chock full of awesome ladies; my personal favorites are Arya, the young tomboy of House Stark, and Brienne of Tarth, the warrior maiden. Both ladies are fiercely independent, even when it causes them great pain and hardship. Without risking too much in the area of spoilers, I can also let it slip that Caitlin Stark (Eddard’s wife), Osha (a wildling woman taken captive by House Stark), and Ygritte (another wildling woman) play very important and interesting roles in the series.

Of course there are many other fascinating women in literature that deserve a write-up. I’ve tried to include books/heroines that do not get mentioned as frequently in the numerous ‘Women in Literature’ lists that can be found online. I would love to hear about your personal favorites!

Lisa

Warm Bodies

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warmbodiesMy skin is always cold. I don’t like people to touch me, to try to hold my hand or touch the back of my neck because the skin there is always cold. Even in the middle of a scorching August day parts of my body are cold. Passing mirrors or shop windows I’m startled into remembering I’m inside this body. I feel like I just fell into it, that I was somewhere else a few minutes ago and then boom! I’m human again. Being inside this skin is almost ridiculous. I think that’s how zombies would feel if they were real. Or had thoughts beyond “That brain looks tasty.”

Isaac Marion’s Warm Bodies is a beauty of a book. It’s an atypical zombie read with surprisingly beautiful writing. There’s R, a zombie who lives at an abandoned airport along with hundreds of other zombies. There are out-posts of survivors who go on foraging missions for supplies and weapons. Some make it back in one piece. Some are lost to the world of the dead. There’s no explanation for the zombies or how they came to be. We seem to be the cause or the wrong we’ve done to the planet and to each other:

We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. Now here we are in this dry corpse of a world, rotting on our feet ‘til there’s nothing left but bones and the buzz of flies.

From the very beginning R is a different kind of zombie. He loves Sinatra and lives alone in one of the grounded airplanes while all the other zombies group together. He can’t remember his name or who he was before becoming a zombie. He dreams. “Normal” zombies don’t sleep much let alone dream. R gathers bits of memories when he eats people. He sees their lives spread out before him. He savors their lives the way a zombie savors….well, human meat.

One day R and a few other zombies go out on a hunting mission and run up against human survivors. There’s a battle (the humans lose, of course) and R meets Julie. He’s chomping away at her boyfriend’s brain and quickly falls in love with her. He feels an overwhelming need to protect her and this freaks him out. He’s a zombie. He’s not supposed to feel protective of anyone or anything except maybe what bit of flesh belongs to him.

Surprisingly, the feelings are mutual for Julie. The only problem standing in their way, besides the whole he’s a corpse and she’s alive thing, is Julie’s father who’s a big muckety-muck in the service. He runs the small city Julie and other survivors live in. There’s always a psychotic father/general/sheriff in the zombie world, huh?

R tries to get across the message that the zombies are changing, evolving into something different. Julie sees this and tries to explain it to her father but Crazy General Dad can’t and won’t see the changes. All he sees is death and destruction and his own place eradicating the zombies from this world.

The one thing both zombies and humans have in common is their fear of the Boneys. These are zombies so ancient that they have only the slightest of skin stretched tight over their bones. They’re walking skeletons. They do not evolve. In fact, they seem mighty ticked off at R for becoming something and someone new and try to put a halt to it.

Part love story, part survival story, Warm Bodies is a novel about change and acceptance and loving someone even if they eat your boyfriend’s brain. I was once told that there’s a lid for every jar when it comes to being loved, that there’s someone for everyone. If you can love the zombie who ate most of your boyfriend then you, my friend, have found the best kind of love.

Just make sure your zombie boyfriend brushes his teeth before he leans in for that kiss.

Jennifer