I have four YA books to recommend for you this time, and they're all pretty different, so I'm not going to pretend there's a theme or something. The theme is: Books I have recently read and liked! (There may be some spoilers below, but I've tried to avoid major stuff, especially in regards to the more mystery-like plots.)
(Disclaimers: I know Steph Perkins and sometimes chat with Victoria Schwab and Michelle Hodkin on Twitter. But I would not recommend their books if I didn't really like them!)
Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
I liked Anna and the French Kiss a lot, but I love love LOVED Lola. It's quite possibly the best YA romance I've read . . . ever? I can't think of a better one offhand, anyway. I loved that Lola had her own interests and strong personality completely apart from any relationship. I loved that her family situation was complicated but the fact that she had two dads was the simplest, most normal thing about it. I loved that it wasn't about falling for her first boyfriend, that she spent a good chunk of the novel with the wrong guy. I loved that the fact that she was with the wrong guy made perfect sense and was completely in character, but it made even more sense for her to be with the right guy. I loved that Cricket was a geek and a little awkward. I loved that he was so obviously a good guy, in the moral sense of the word. I loved that he had his own family and personal problems, aside from the romance. I loved that the girl was more sexually experienced than the boy and it wasn't A Big Deal at all. I loved that Cricket and Lola had history but that it also made sense that they liked each other in the present. I loved that Anna and Etienne were around so much. I loved it ALL.
The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
This book was way different from practically anything I've ever read, and I don't say that lightly. And while there are probably books I love better, I can't recall being so gosh darn fascinated by one in recent memory. My friend Hermione is very picky about books, but after many years of friendship I know her tastes, so she relies on me to tell her if she'll like things.* As I read this one, she kept asking if she should read it, and I kept saying "I don't know! I can't figure out if you'd like it! I can't even figure out what it IS!" I knew I liked it from the start, though, partially because I had no idea what was going on - but in a very controlled way. I wasn't confused because it was badly written, but rather the opposite: I was confused because Hodkin did such a masterful job of deliberately confusing me. And I've just realized I haven't told you anything about the plot, so: Mara (not her real name) survives an accident in which her friends die, but she can't remember what happened. And she suspects there's more going on than everyone thinks, so (with the help of a really hot guy) she sets out to recover her memories and figure out what's going on. And that made it sound a million times more boring and normal than it is. I just can't find the words to describe how awesome and insane this book actually is, clearly. (An aside about the romance: I have seen reviewers complain that there was too much time devoted to the love story, and that some things about the relationship Set A Bad Example For The Dumb Impressionable Girls or whatever, and I just want to say that I disagree wholeheartedly with both of those objections, but alas, I can't say why without ruining a big part of the plot.) Oh, and if you were wondering, yes, I wound up telling Hermione she should give this one a try. So should you. Really.
The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab
This is another one that's a little hard to describe - it's fantasy, I guess, but reads like a fairy tale, more specifically. It's about a girl named Lexi in a town where there aren't ever any strangers, and what happens when a stranger shows up around the same time children start going missing. The plot is intriguing, but what really stands out about this book is the beautiful writing and how atmospheric it is. I'm not one to always picture what I'm reading, but I did with this book, especially (for some reason) Lexi's bedroom with its candles and piles of blankets. I kept wanting to cuddle up under lots of blankets while reading. And the wind, oh, the wind - it's practically its own character here, and Schwab did a great job with that. There was also more romance than I expected, which was a delightful surprise! This is the perfect book to curl up with on a cold, windy winter night.
Hush by Eishes Chayil
This semi-autobiographical novel (written under a pseudonym) is about Gittel, an Orthodox Jewish girl who witnessed her friend's brother sexually abusing her friend - and then the friend kills herself and the families and community cover it all up. As Gittel grows up, she tries to forget the whole thing, but can't, and eventually has to decide whether to expose the whole thing to the outside world. It deals with very serious, important subjects, of course, but my main reasons for liking it weren't very different from reasons why I like other books. First of all, I love reading about daily life in other cultures, especially cultures based on or highly involved with religious practice. And second, I liked that Gittel seemed very much a part of her culture. Her childhood rebellions were small and believable - eating a non-kosher candy, say. It drives me crazy when heroines who live in conservative societies (or who are in historical fiction) suddenly become fully-formed feminists without any real reason or explanation of their influences or why they're the one girl around who hates their society's strictures, and that was avoided here. It also had perhaps the best treatment of an arranged marriage I've read - Gittel saw it as a matter of course, because that's how all relationships in her society formed, and it didn't end up being love at first sight or anything, but it was, you know, fine. Perfect middle ground, and probably more common in real life than the usual fictional portrayals of "I will insist on marrying for LOVE even though I've never heard of anyone else doing that!" or "I was iffy about this but oh, look, he is hot! I love him!" or "Because this is an arranged marriage it is obviously ruining my life because how could it not?" The way it was handled in the novel just seemed more realistic.
* No offense intended to any authors or books here: this has nothing to do with the quality of the books. It's kind of . . . idiosyncratic. For example, she has Demon Issues. And issues with anyone who reminds her of Fanny Price. ANYWAY.
Showing posts with label issue books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label issue books. Show all posts
Friday, November 25, 2011
Friday, August 5, 2011
Books involving issues don't have to be Issue Books.
Deb Caletti's Stay and Jennifer Brown's Bitter End both came out this year, and I picked them up at the library and read them almost back to back partially because they were reviewed together in the Times. Now, I have plenty of issues with that review - most notably with the idea that most YA books are designed to Teach A Moral - and don't necessarily agree with its assessment of these particular books, either. I do agree with the reviewer that Stay is far better, but I don't think it's particularly light, and I don't think Bitter End is more realistic.
Let's deal with the one I liked less first - and I should emphasize that I didn't think Bitter End was a BAD book, at all. (And I probably would have liked it better had I not just read Stay.) But it read very much like an Issue Book, to the point that I never really got into it as a novel. And after thinking about it for a week or so, I've concluded that most of my problems with it came down to the fact that it felt like Brown was so dedicated to Getting The Issue Across that the characterization suffered for it, and that ended up making the book worse as a book as well as undermining the Teaching Of Issues. Because when you want readers to buy into a story in which the heroine gets into a relationship with an abuser, the reader needs to be able to see at least a hint of why she finds him attractive. And that just wasn't here. From his first entrance, Cole is clearly A Big Jerk. And shortly thereafter, he becomes A Big Jerk Who Is Also Evil. Everyone in Alex's life can see this (and tries to tell her). The reader can see this. I'm not saying that people don't fall for jerks - we've all done it - but the author needs to give us something to go on so we can understand the attraction.
And Alex herself . . . I never really warmed up to her, and I read mostly for the characters, so this was a big problem. And she was . . . a little boring. At first she was Sad About Her Dead Mother, and then she was Sad About Her Dead Mother and also In Love With This Jerk. She complains about her sisters not being focused enough on the fact that their mother is dead, and because I'm a horrible person that kind of made me wonder if books about the sisters would be more interesting.
But let me emphasize that this wasn't BAD! There were some minor characters I loved, who were perhaps more complex than the main characters, and some aspects of the book seemed really promising, and I wished she'd spent more time on them. The whole question of what happened to the mother and how the family could go on living around that big event was fascinating, and I felt somewhat let down by how quickly it was wrapped up, almost as an afterthought. I did wholeheartedly love Alex's best friend Zack, and would happily read a book about him.
On the other hand, Deb Caletti's Stay is one of those books that I loved so much that I have a hard time being coherent about it. But I think the main difference is that it read like it was a novel, first of all, that happened to involve an abusive relationship as part of a larger thing, rather than a Lesson that was pushed into the form of a novel. I adored the main character, Clara, and her flawed but lovable father, and the seaside town where they went to recover from Clara's trauma. I loved the tone and the writing and the whole atmosphere of the thing. I loved it so much that I immediately requested the rest of Caletti's books from the library.
But what really got me was the extremely realistic description of what it's like to love someone who has mental illness. At one point when Clara's talking about dealing with her boyfriend Christian's moods, she says "You anticipate, and when you do that for a long while, it's hard to shake. You get edgy. Like men back from the war who jump when a car backfires." That's one of those lines that made me stop reading and stare at the book because it was so true. I am in no way claiming to understand Clara's specific situation, but I dated someone who had a mental illness (though very different from Christian's and not related to abuse), and Clara's descriptions of what that's like - both while you're in it and the lingering effects afterwards, which is the part people don't usually talk about - were probably the best I've come across in any novel.* Overall, Christian was a much more nuanced character than Cole from Bitter End, so it was much easier to buy into the fact that Clara had ever liked him in the first place. (Of course, this apparently led to Amazon reviews saying he "wasn't abusive enough." Gaaaah.)
Of course, if that aspect hadn't won me over, the HOT SAILOR BROTHERS would have. Swoon. I love sailor stuff, and hot brothers, and I loved the way these brothers appeared in the role of saviors but wound up being very human at the same time. Finn is definitely one of my new Literary Boyfriends - he's funny and confident and outdoorsy and also caring and perceptive. And his big brother's no slouch, either. Their family as a whole was one of those warm, chaotic fictional families whose house I want to show up at for Sunday dinner.
Another quote from Stay that I loved:
Summary: Read Stay by Deb Caletti! I loved it! It will make you laugh and cry and think and cheer and want to move to the beach. Bitter End by Jennifer Brown was okay, and reviewers who think the point of YA is to teach morals should just FIND NEW JOBS already.
* This was a long time ago, and there was nothing directed at me and I was never in danger like Clara or anything, so please, no need to call the police or my mother.
Let's deal with the one I liked less first - and I should emphasize that I didn't think Bitter End was a BAD book, at all. (And I probably would have liked it better had I not just read Stay.) But it read very much like an Issue Book, to the point that I never really got into it as a novel. And after thinking about it for a week or so, I've concluded that most of my problems with it came down to the fact that it felt like Brown was so dedicated to Getting The Issue Across that the characterization suffered for it, and that ended up making the book worse as a book as well as undermining the Teaching Of Issues. Because when you want readers to buy into a story in which the heroine gets into a relationship with an abuser, the reader needs to be able to see at least a hint of why she finds him attractive. And that just wasn't here. From his first entrance, Cole is clearly A Big Jerk. And shortly thereafter, he becomes A Big Jerk Who Is Also Evil. Everyone in Alex's life can see this (and tries to tell her). The reader can see this. I'm not saying that people don't fall for jerks - we've all done it - but the author needs to give us something to go on so we can understand the attraction.
And Alex herself . . . I never really warmed up to her, and I read mostly for the characters, so this was a big problem. And she was . . . a little boring. At first she was Sad About Her Dead Mother, and then she was Sad About Her Dead Mother and also In Love With This Jerk. She complains about her sisters not being focused enough on the fact that their mother is dead, and because I'm a horrible person that kind of made me wonder if books about the sisters would be more interesting.
But let me emphasize that this wasn't BAD! There were some minor characters I loved, who were perhaps more complex than the main characters, and some aspects of the book seemed really promising, and I wished she'd spent more time on them. The whole question of what happened to the mother and how the family could go on living around that big event was fascinating, and I felt somewhat let down by how quickly it was wrapped up, almost as an afterthought. I did wholeheartedly love Alex's best friend Zack, and would happily read a book about him.
On the other hand, Deb Caletti's Stay is one of those books that I loved so much that I have a hard time being coherent about it. But I think the main difference is that it read like it was a novel, first of all, that happened to involve an abusive relationship as part of a larger thing, rather than a Lesson that was pushed into the form of a novel. I adored the main character, Clara, and her flawed but lovable father, and the seaside town where they went to recover from Clara's trauma. I loved the tone and the writing and the whole atmosphere of the thing. I loved it so much that I immediately requested the rest of Caletti's books from the library.
But what really got me was the extremely realistic description of what it's like to love someone who has mental illness. At one point when Clara's talking about dealing with her boyfriend Christian's moods, she says "You anticipate, and when you do that for a long while, it's hard to shake. You get edgy. Like men back from the war who jump when a car backfires." That's one of those lines that made me stop reading and stare at the book because it was so true. I am in no way claiming to understand Clara's specific situation, but I dated someone who had a mental illness (though very different from Christian's and not related to abuse), and Clara's descriptions of what that's like - both while you're in it and the lingering effects afterwards, which is the part people don't usually talk about - were probably the best I've come across in any novel.* Overall, Christian was a much more nuanced character than Cole from Bitter End, so it was much easier to buy into the fact that Clara had ever liked him in the first place. (Of course, this apparently led to Amazon reviews saying he "wasn't abusive enough." Gaaaah.)
Of course, if that aspect hadn't won me over, the HOT SAILOR BROTHERS would have. Swoon. I love sailor stuff, and hot brothers, and I loved the way these brothers appeared in the role of saviors but wound up being very human at the same time. Finn is definitely one of my new Literary Boyfriends - he's funny and confident and outdoorsy and also caring and perceptive. And his big brother's no slouch, either. Their family as a whole was one of those warm, chaotic fictional families whose house I want to show up at for Sunday dinner.
Another quote from Stay that I loved:
"One of the hardest tasks as a human being is knowing when to keep an open mind. And when not to."And I think that's another good example of why I preferred this book - that's a Lesson, sure, but it's not a hit-you-over-the-head lesson on one exact topic. It's more general, and it ties into the dating violence plot as well as other situations in the book and plenty of situations in life in general. The point of fiction ISN'T to get a message across, but if it were, such a universal and less-obvious (than "don't stay with the boy who hits you") message is almost certainly more worthwhile - and springs from a more interesting novel.
Summary: Read Stay by Deb Caletti! I loved it! It will make you laugh and cry and think and cheer and want to move to the beach. Bitter End by Jennifer Brown was okay, and reviewers who think the point of YA is to teach morals should just FIND NEW JOBS already.
* This was a long time ago, and there was nothing directed at me and I was never in danger like Clara or anything, so please, no need to call the police or my mother.
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