Lizbee versus Reality

An Australian teen novel in which a white boy learns that racism is bad, thanks to his told-not-shown friendship with an Aboriginal boy who is conveniently removed halfway through the story.

That's a vast simplification, but it encapsulates the problems I had with the book. Believable characters, great dialogue, a likable protagonist, lots of problems.

It's the author's first novel, and I'm rather inclined to check out the sequel to see if his issues persist. I'm also curious to see the movie, but if the depiction of domestic violence is anything like the book, I may find it triggering, so I'm holding off.

It was a compelling story, and I can't praise Gwynne enough for his dialogue -- I'll even forgive it for being phonetic -- but I found the underlying problems difficult to overcome.

Chains is either a novel about the American War of Independence told through the eyes of a slave, or a novel about slavery set against the backdrop of the War of Independence.  I haven't been able to decide, but I have had a good time thinking about it.

It's the story of Isabel, a thirteen-year-old Rhode Island slave, sold to a Loyalist couple from New York.  Isabel has a younger sister, Ruth, and an eidetic memory, and a lovely narrative voice that never falters, making Chains incredibly compelling. 

As the British invade New York, Isabel struggles against the injustice of her situation, particularly her owner's wife, who is essentially a sociopath.  About halfway through the novel, Madam does something truly unforgivable -- I won't reveal what it is -- nearly breaking Isabel.  I haven't hated a fictional villain this much for many years, and it's to Anderson's credit that her writing is so restrained, otherwise Madam would be totally implausible.  As it is, she's merely terrifying.

The political and military movements are as fascinating as Isabel's personal story, even for someone like me, whose primary knowledge of the War of Independence comes from bad Mel Gibson movies.  Highly recommended.

Kathy Reichs's books are usually enjoyable rubbish.  This was merely rubbish. 

Reichs's "folksy" style has degenerated into something more reminiscent of Grandpa Simpson.  "We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell ‘em stories that don’t go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say.  Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."

In short, large sections of the book are rambling and difficult to follow.  Which is problematic, since it is not that long a book, and the chapters have shrunk down to Patterson-style bite-sized chunks.

Tempe faces the usual round of problems, half as interesting now as they were when she was first introduced.  The best thing you can say about Devil Bones is that Reichs breaks her bad habit of introducing random close friends of Tempe, only to kill them off.  I was amazed. 

An extension writing class contains a prankster, whose cruel jokes escalate into murder.

I was quite cynical when this turned up at work.  It smacked of self-indulgence, thinly-veiled digs at real people, and cheap jokes.  However, a free reading copy is a free reading copy.  And it was wonderful. 

The characters are all types familiar to ... well, anyone who has attended a writing course, or simply belonged to a community of fanfic writers.  There's the nice middle-aged lady who is uncomfortable with negativity.  The cranky feminist college graduate who never lets a sexist assumption slide.  The doctor who writes terrible medical thrillers about heroic doctors; nerdy boy-men who write children's lit; guys who are there to pick up chicks.  (Okay, that last one is a pretty rare beast in fandom.)

The central character is Amy Gallup, who was once a successful author, and now makes ends meet editing pieces for Who's Who and teaching these classes.  She's a wonderful character -- introspective, misanthropic, a keen observer who is drawn into the mystery against her will.  Without Amy, this would be a far weaker novel. 

The plot is hung together with bits of string, but that hardly matters.  I loved this for the characters.  Three thumbs up.

At risk of sounding like I'm offering damnation through faint praise, I tend to think of Sarah Dessen as a poor teen's Laurie Halse Anderson.  Both write melancholy tales of suburban teen angst, manicured lawns and hidden secrets, but Anderson is the more adept storyteller.

Lock and Key did nothing to change that impression, but that's not to say it's a bad novel.  On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and accidentally finished it in an afternoon, when I'd meant to make it last through a couple of working days.

It's the story of Ruby, abandoned by her feckless, alcoholic mother months before she turns eighteen.  She's sent to live with the sister she barely knows, who left for college and never came back.  Now Cora has a lovely house, and a great husband -- the perfect life.  With her material needs filled, Ruby can concentrate on becoming a whole, healed person -- if she can come to believe that she can and should shed her scar tissue.

I like Dessen because she writes about dysfunction and tragedy without indulging in melodrama.  Ruby, Cora and her husband, Jamie, are likable characters, and Dessen consciously avoids falling into the cliches of teen drama.  But I kept wondering what Anderson would do with the same material.

Cancer memoirs are a tricky thing at the best of times, with high potential for mawkishness and general self-indulgence.  Sadly, this falls towards the 'fail' end of the spectrum.

Lopsided starts off well, discussing the [African-American] author's life in France with her new husband, and the prejudice and stereotypes she finds herself fighting on a daily basis.  The sequence where she sees a series of doctors about her curiously lopsided and painful breasts, only to be told repeatedly that she's being a hypochondriac, are particularly good.

Then she returns to American for a family visit, swings by a doctor's surgery for a check up sans language barrier, and within days learns that she has an extreme form of breast cancer, with only a 40% chance of survival.

What follows are her meandering adventures through treatment, intercut with increasingly-tedious childhood memories.  Norton's narration, initially charming, quickly becomes grating, and by the end I was actually skimming through each "quirky" anecdote about her "hilarious" middle-class mediocrity.

Apparently, it's still not common knowledge that "zigazig ahhhh" was Spice Girls slang for sex c1996.  I find this odd, as my ninth grade class had figured it out for ourselves, right before we all realised that we were way too cool and mature to be Spice Girls fans, and settled for buying all their albums, reading all their interviews, being part of "ironic" tribute bands at school talent nights and concentrating on cultivating our alternative streetcred by talking up Alanis.  What can I say, it was the nineties.

Anyway, that SHOCKING REVELATION aside, Spice Girls Revisited was a pretty good read.  Sinclair maintains a good balance between exploring the Spice business -- from songwriting to product endorsements -- and gossip (apparently Mel B was unbearable by the end, but Posh is witty and self-aware).

What I particularly enjoyed were the chapters that put the Spice Girls in the context of wider media issues: a decision by The Mirror to declare the Spice Girls a failure while, by any objective standards they were the biggest band in the world, and the influence of the Spice Girls, and their one-time manager Simon Fuller in changing the face of the entertainment industry as we know it, with the rise of Popstars and Idol and family-friendly Disney popstars/actresses.  Sinclair has a great deal of sympathy and affection for the Spice Girls, and points out every instance of institutionalised sexism in their media coverage, but he is detached enough to draw attention to bad decisions, poor behaviour and plain old obnoxiousness.  It's only in the case of Emma, Baby Spice, that he never finds a bad word to say, and really, does anyone have a bad word for Emma Bunton?

I had greatly looked forward to reading this book, and I wasn't disappointed.  I joke a lot about being into tacky biographies about British B-list celebrities of the 1990s, but really, that is a period of pop culture that I find deeply fascinating, and this book was a deeply rewarding read.

I wasn't going to read this, but all the sparkly text and crazy fangirl hystrionics on OhNoTheyDidn't piqued my curiosity.  It took a couple of goes to get into it, but once the story hooked me, I found it difficult to put the book down -- except for those moments when I had to stop and shriek at my flatmate, "SPARKLY VAMPIRES!" or "VAMPIRE BASEBALL!" or "WHY IS BELLA SO STUPID?"  These moments came increasingly often as I reached the climactic chapters, until I simply reached the point where I had to stop and flail around laughing. 

The plot -- Twilight seems to be one of those publishing phenomenons where somehow the plot itself isn't common knowledge -- revolves around Bella Swan, a classic Sue whose primary skills seem to be having a martyr complex, attracting trouble, and falling down.  She moves to the rain town of Forks to live with her father after some banal shenanigans make it impossible to live with her mother.  Actually, that's not strictly true, but like I said, one of Bella's superpowers is Being a Martyr.  At her new school, Bella is instantly feted as the queen of the social scene -- everyone likes her except (shock!) the impossibly beautiful Edward Cullen.  Who is a vampire.

(Particularly grating is Bella's OUTRAGE that the normal boys of Forks like her and want to spend time with her, and express this by being friendly and openly indicating that they have a romantic interest in her.  I mean, sure, it's awkward being the subject of unwanted romantic attention -- or so I've heard -- but at least they're not playing creepy mind games and breaking into her house to watch her sleeping, because that would be -- oh, hang on...)

Edward doesn't actually hate Bella, he simply lusts after her.  I mean, wants to suck her blood.  I mean, sniff after her creepily.  Bella apparently poses a threat to the entire non-evil vampiric subculture, so of course Edward asks her to go steady with him.  But not until they've spent many, many, many chapters engaged in tedious 'banter' that is possibly intended to remind the reader of Pride and Prejudice, or at least, remind the reader of some fanfic based on a loose film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. 

Then they hook up, and Edward glitters in the sun a bit.

Then some evil vampires turn up, one of whom is obsessed with Bella.  Why?  Beats me -- by the end, I was of the opinion that she's too stupid to live.  Apparently there are sequels -- well, there's no "apparently" about it, I can see the sequels from where I'm sitting -- but unless they involve Bella Swan and the entire town of Forks being obliterated in a nuclear devastation, I don't plan to read them.

(Wait, I lie -- apparently one of the sequels features Edward demonstrating his love for Bella by cutting her brakes, and that's the kind of hilarity I enjoy.)

Twilight should be taken as mindless fun, but it has a lot of subtextual ugliness that makes its popularity disquieting.  Bella is one of the most useless, insipid heroines I've encountered in a long time -- and I genuinely love Fanny Price, btw -- while Edward is like a textbook example of a creepy stalker boyfriend.  There's a strong element of wish fulfillment -- average girl attracts bad boy who's willing to change for her -- but I cannot be comfortable with a text that portrays abuse as love.  Apparently, the series is popular for its abstinence subtext -- Edward and Bella can't be together until their relationship has taken the proper form, that is, Bella's a vampire -- but possibly parents should be wondering if it's really a good idea to conflate "marriage" with "death". 

Or, possibly, I'm overthinking.  When a series has become this massive, and when you're paying $29.99 for a paperback -- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by comparison, is a measly $22.99 -- thinking becomes almost mandatory.