THEN SHE WAS GONE BY LISA JEWELL

This book made me sick to my stomach.

I’m skipping my usual review introduction: Omg, I’m such a bad reader. I haven’t written a review in years. Blah blah blah.

No. I have to tell you about the physical reactions that flooded through my body with each and every page. Well, maybe not every page. Lisa Jewell’s 2017 novel, Then She Was Gone actually bored me at first. I found myself putting it down and finding excuses to read other books and do other tasks. Then it got good and everything that wasn’t Then She Was Gone was an inconvenience.

What do you mean you bought tickets to the sold-out Barbie movie that I’ve been dying to see? Don’t you know my book just got good?

Jokes aside, let’s talk about the plot. Without spoiling anything, the story centers around the disappearance of a glittering and popular teenage girl named Ellie. She’s blonde haired, well-mannered, and well-loved. She’s likable. Once Ellie vanishes, we stick close to her mother, Laurel, whose thoughts swirl around Ellie and nothing else…for years. She is a shell of her former self until she is awoken. Then things get even more mysterious and sinister and perplexing than I thought possible. Laurel turns into a detective while coming to terms with the neglect she’s shown to her other two children and husband over the years. Eventually, a few other characters’ voices come into play.

In writing this review, I’m realizing I can’t even tell you what made me want to heave without sharing spoilers. We’re gonna have to start a book club, y’all. But I will say that it wasn’t just blood and gore that had me heaving. It was the slow realizations of betrayal; the intimate kind. Everything was too close, too concentrated. A little nauseating microcosm in one London neighborhood.

It all felt real, too. I’ve heard bits of every part of this story in true crime documentaries and news articles. I hate it all. You should read it.

As this is the writer who reads blog, we should talk about the writing. I’m always in awe when a story is all over the place and still makes sense. How does that work, Lisa Jewell? How does that look in your head? We have multiple narrators who tell the story in various ways: present tense, past tense, letter writing, and some weirdly aggressive form of journal writing. I ate it up. It wasn’t just the plot that kept me turning the page, but the need to get back to my favorite character and/or out of a psychopath’s head.

Amidst all of that, Jewell gives us some great writing. I would call her writing style balanced. Easy to read, clear, and laced with some really beautiful lines. Like when Laurel has a moment of self-reflection:

She’s talking in lazy clichés, using words that don’t quite add up to the sum of her disquiet.

p136

Maybe I just really love the word disquiet. Or maybe I liked how Laurel always seemed to call herself out internally because I can relate. Speaking of Laurel’s mind, there’s this bit in chapter 23 after another character shares their feelings:

The pronouncement is both surprising and completely predictable. She can’t process it fast enough and there is a small but prominent silence.

p129

I love how succinct Jewell is here. In two short sentences she says so much about Laurel’s emotional state, her ideas about this character, and gives a peak into the aftermath. The silence will affect them both.

As I wrap up this review, I’m remembering a moment right before the book got can’t-put-it-down good. My partner’s sister saw my book on the counter and mentioned that she’d read it awhile ago. She said something liked, “I can’t really remember much about it but it was really good.” Now that I’ve finished and gone through six stages of nausea, I need to ask her how she’d managed to forget the plot.

This book will stay with me. I’ll probably have the occasional nightmare. If I have a teenage daughter, she may never be allowed outside alone. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll forget on purpose.

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed this read and Lisa Jewell’s ability to stir a world’s worth of feelings within me in 356 pages.

Four and half stars.

Lilith’s Brood By Octavia E Butler

This is my first review since August 2018.

 Do I even know how to write a book review anymore? Did I ever? 

I’m pretty sure my last review of a novel by Octavia E. Butler was mostly a love note anyway. It should be no surprise that this one will be the same. 

Before we teleport into another timeline to discuss the dystopian, soul-shuddering, mind-fuck that is Lilith’s Brood, I want to start on the last page of the novel. There’s a small box about the author that inspired some intense feelings for me: 

I’m in awe of the trail this woman has blazed, proud of her blackness and activism, sad that she is no longer physically on this earth, and determined to live and write in a way that’s at least as vaguely impactful as she has. If I remember my old book review format properly (I don’t), I’m supposed to save my rating for the end. The absolute reverence and adoration I feel for this author and this story outweighs my self-control: Five Stars. 

It wouldn’t be a Writer Who Reads review without me ashamedly revealing the excessive amount of time I took to read this novel. But I have excuses! On top of my super demanding job and somewhat social life, Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is a compilation of three separate stories: Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago. At 749 pages, it’s practically three books in one. 

See, great with excuses. 

The three volumes were published separately between 1987 – 1989  and ultimately collected in a now out-of-print volume called Xenogenesis. In 2000, the trilogy was similarly compiled into the Lilith’s Brood collection currently in print. 

Reading these “weird” titles, you must’ve guessed that this is a science fiction novel. Of course! It’s what Butler does and does spectacularly well. The cover of my copy, tattered and beaten, reads: Multiple Award-Winning Author of Kindred and Fledgling. 

Multiple Award-Winning. 

Okay, I’ll stop flexing for Ms. Butler. You get it. 

This novel was a journey. Like most dystopian novels, it’s uncomfortable. It’s tragedy and unimaginable circumstances happening to humans just like us. It’s a cautionary tale, an alert, a call out. This is what happens when humans fuck up. So stop fucking up. 

Where Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian story rooted in realism, Butler’s Lilith’s Brood is dystopian in unthinkably distressing, supernatural ways. 

I don’t mean supernatural as in magic powers or spirits. The most soul-shuddering thing about the supernaturality of Butler’s world is the plausibility. She truly injects the science in science fiction, conveys it so thoroughly and simply and logically that you’ll spend hours educating your friends about the anatomy of an alien species. Share it as fact. 

Holy hell, Butler. 

Once again I struggle to intrigue my audience with a thorough synopsis without including spoilers, but here we go. Broadly, the world ends due to war. We’ve heard this story before; we’ve almost lived it a few times. If it happens tomorrow we won’t be surprised. 

Perhaps that’s why the story starts after the war—after our worst fears finally come to be. Butler allows her reader to fill in most of those blanks, which in itself is a lesson. See how easily you can imagine the end of the world? Stop it with the wars. 

We start with Dawn and meet Lilith, my favorite character. She’s tall, black, beautiful. She’s guarded and responsible, cautious and open, independent but yielding. I want to call her mother or sister. She’s black femininity in all the ways I’d like to express it. If I knew her in real life, I’d be desperate for her approval. 

So Lilith wakes, disoriented, on an alien spaceship. She remembers the war, her family, her losses, but not how she got to the ship. At first she doesn’t even know if she’s really on a ship. Eventually, slowly, the aliens reveal themselves, their wants, their nature and values. 

That’s really all I can share without spoiling anything. 

Adulthood Rites follows a character named Akin, whose background I will not reveal. 

Imago follows Jodahs, a character I relate to in disturbingly specific ways. Queer ways.

Both Dawn and Adulthood Rites were written in third person; Imago in first person. I speculate that this was done intentionally. Perhaps Butler needed the freedom that the third person perspective allows in the first two stories to flesh out the new world being created. Perhaps our first-person character Jodahs’ transformation called for a more intimate perspective. Or maybe Butler was just tired of writing in the third-person.

While we’re talking about writing, let’s dive into a few of the things that made my mouth water while reading. Normally I mark up my books with tons of hearts to indicate exceptionally written lines. However I always seemed to be moving while reading this: on a subway in NYC, a plane to New Orleans, a rooftop pool in New Orleans where a woman screamed, “You’re reading Lilith’s Brood! I love you!” Or a plane to London, a cafe in London. Yes, it has been a journey. A journey without a pen. 

I’m unable to identify one thing I love most about Butler’s writing, but I’ll focus on the graceful balance of it all. Butler never over-writes or rushes to cram everything in at once. The story unfolds, compounds, builds into a rich world that we fully understand because she’s not using big complex words or explanations. See this simplistic explanation of Lilith’s fear as she comes into contact with something otherworldly: 

“She did not want to be any closer to him. She had not known what held her back before. Now she was certain it was his alienness, his difference, his literal unearthliness.” 

Lilith’s Brood, p13

Other things Butler does well: juggles a ton of characters, building them through action and always keeping the story moving. Nothing is superfluous. No character is poorly thought out. Each has their own distinct voice. And the dialogue! I have to talk about the dialogue. 

The story is tense, of course. Butler expresses this tension, vulnerability, rage, sadness, conflict, recalibration, and more through her dialogue alone. Characters say things and we understand the weight and true meaning without being told. As seen in Adulthood Rites:

“Give him to me,” Galt said. “I’ll make him talk.”

“He’ll talk when he gets ready,” Iriarte said. “Hell, I had seven kids before the war. They’d talk all the time until you wanted them to.”

“Listen, I’m not talking about baby talk!”

“I know. I believe you. Why does it bother you so?”

Lilith’s Brood, p341

There are barely any dialogue tags or text outside of the dialogue here, but clear emotion, tension, and significant characterization. 

Okay, I’ve been patient. Can we talk about sex now? 

When I mentioned talking to my friends about alien anatomy, you had to know I meant sex. I meant that I needed to talk to someone—in this example, my podcast co-host, Trapper—about alien sex. 

And, honestly, all I did was confuse him and myself. I look forward to confusing you as well, as I try to explain how and why I’m enraptured with the way Butler expresses something that is pleasurable, sexual in nature, but maybe not always sex? 

I don’t know! I don’t know! I love it. 

Avoiding spoilers, please read and appreciate this short and breathtaking interaction between nameless individuals: 

Now their delight in one another ignited and burned. They moved together, sustaining an impossible intensity, both of them tireless, perfectly matched, ablaze in sensation, lost in one another. They seemed to rush upward. A long time later, they seemed to drift down slowly, gradually, savouring a few more moments wholly together. 

Lilith’s Brood, p162

And this excerpt from Imago:

“… the rhythm of her heartbeat, the rush of her blood, the texture of her flesh, the easy, right, life-sustaining working of her organs, her cells, the smallest organelles within her cells—all this was a vast, infinitely absorbing complexity.”

Lilith’s Brood, p678

The intimacy Butler explains in numerous skillful ways is not sex as we understand it, but it is pleasure. She used that word a lot: pleasure. It is elegant and transcending, attentive. I love how she writes these scenes. I love it and I don’t understand it fully. I don’t think I want to. How tantalizing. How grossly romantic. 

As this review comes to an end, I feel compelled to speculate on the overall theme. Butler built a whole species, an entire reality and potential future. 

Why did she do it? 

There’s something referred to as the Human Contradiction in the novel, which is the unspoken but thoroughly felt tension between impressive human intelligence and the innate deceit, jealousy, and deception that we cannot seem to shake. 

If Butler simply wanted to point that out, she succeeded. Although I go back and forth on whether she’s making a helpless observation or calling on the human species to change, to improve. 

In the end, I’m glad to say that I have a lot more Octavia E. Butler fiction to read. Butler seems to honor her connection with the story and the reader above any rules, natural or otherwise. It’s this attention to detail, this obvious passion, that has fully pleased me. 

Again, Five Stars. 

The Handmaid’s Tale By Margaret Atwood

We need to talk about The Handmaid’s Tale.

 

My professor in undergrad recommended this book to me. In my memory, she put down my 40-page manuscript, bleeding red with her notes, and sighed.

“Something very basic is off—your dialogue is wrong. Your tenses shift,” she said.  Then she told me to read Margaret Atwood. I bought The Handmaid’s Tale and ate it in days, so quickly I didn’t absorb what I needed. The story was just too good; I needed to get to the end.

Five years passed.

The Netflix show came out.

I hadn’t finished my manuscript.

It became clear that if I were ever going to write my novel or watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, I’d have to really read this book. And write a review.

All of the buzz I’ve heard surrounding the television show always involves the story-line. And why wouldn’t it? A shockingly well-formulated dystopian society that addresses troubling misogynistic realities within our own present-day society is enthralling to look into. To “what-if” until you convince yourself that it could happen tomorrow. To highlight, even further, the injustices we live with today. We like to watch train-wrecks, collapse and catastrophe—even more when they seem to be speeding towards us. Thanks, Margaret.

This is a great time to note that The Handmaid’s Tale was written in the 1980s.

But before we get into the plot, I have to touch on Atwood’s writing. I mentioned, briefly, in embarrassment, the comment my professor made on my tenses issue. It’s easy for me to slip in and out of tenses—a curse, actually. Lets call it a talent, which also happens to be a flaw. In this novel, Atwood manages to seamlessly slip between past and present—when society was normal and then when everything was changed.

How.

How does the story move so fluidly? One second our urgent need to know what exactly “The Ceremony” entails is undercut by a quick immersive flashback…then flows back to the present.

Formatting helps. And the novel reads vaguely stream-of-consciousness. Stay with me now, I’ll explain:

Offred, our protagonist, bounces around her story, sometimes shying away from especially painful flashbacks. Other times, she has no choice but to face them when something in the dystopian present reminds her of the past. It explains the flow and makes her human. It reaffirms that we, as readers, exist in her sometimes delicate, often distracted human mind.

But this isn’t a present tense with blind corners. She’s retrospective in a way that’s impossible in a true progressive present tense. It would be a journal, I think, but she’s not allowed to read and write. So it’s her own way of recounting her experiences as they happened.

Another note on Margaret Atwood’s writing: It’s Poetic. I found this in every line I underlined and, occasionally, in interesting formatting that read more like poetry than prose.

This is true of Atwood’s writing style, in general. I’m no Atwood expert or well-read fan (yet). But I did listen to A. M. Homes read Atwood’s darkly poetic (and oddly funny) short story Stone Mattress on The New Yorker’s podcast. And, stumbling through Foyles Bookstore today in London (Did I mention I’m in London? I’m in London.) I came across a collection of Atwood’s poetry. I didn’t know she wrote poetry. It all makes sense now.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s writing is poetic as she…

Plays with words [P.212]:

“Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that’s who this show is for.”

Questions motives [P.155]:

“As a request it was opaque.”

Makes the intangible, tangible [P.126]:

“Envy radiates from them, I can smell it, faint wisps of acid, mingled with their perfume.”

 

Poetic.

One final note on Atwood’s writing deals with dialogue. In the past tense, the dialogue isn’t punctuated. I like this. I envy this skill of writers—to write clear dialogue without huge punctuation screaming, “someone is talking now” is a talent. Not overly difficult to do, but pleasant and easy to appreciate.

Lets proceed to the plot.

Take a momentary reading break to imagine me staring at a wall for five minutes asking myself how I can sum this up.

The Handmaid’s Tale is something all women carry in the back of our heads when we think of the past, the present, and the future. It’s a cautionary tale backed by indirect historical elements. It’s the story of what happens when everything goes wrong for women all at once.

Basic freedoms, body autonomy, and individuality are replaced with a hideously patriarchal society where tyrannical laws, backed by scripture, create an unrealistically conservative society. The story takes place a few years after the government takeover, so the old freedoms are still fresh in everyone’s minds. Rebels are still fighting the new government—spies and violence and paranoia abound.

It makes sense that Margaret Atwood wrote this in and around West Germany in the early 80s.

Things aren’t great for all of the men, but they aren’t as bad as they are for women. Sounds familiar to me, a black woman. Hi.

I don’t have much else to say about the plot. It’s dystopian and original, relevant and personal. I want to write stories like this, where the category/genre list looks hectic: Fiction, Political, Feminist, Fantasy. Where believable, factually dense worlds are created with scraps of ours. I want to suck in readers, take them far away, and spit them out… only to realize that they’d barely gone anywhere.

These are some of the things Margaret Atwood does well.

Five Stars.

 

 

 

 

 

Kindred by Octavia E Butler

My sister recommended this book to me with a tone that was more demanding than anything. See, she knows I’ve been “writing a book” that teeters on science fiction and explores some heavy topics.

Kindred teeters on science fiction and forcibly explores antebellum slavery.

It’s a complex novel, a timeless work of literary genius. Kindred is—for every ounce, page, sentence, word, letter—everything that I am trying to achieve as a writer. For this, I want to give it every star possible in the first paragraph of this review and encourage you to read it every few years for the rest of time.

 

Now that you have your orders, the review:

Kindred follows our protagonist, Dana Franklin, a young black woman in 1976, as she is mysteriously transported back to various points in 19th century antebellum-era Maryland where her brown skin instantly brands her a slave. She is only “called” back in time when Rufus, initially a young boy—a red-haired, white, slave-owning boy—is in danger. Of course there’s more to the story, but I won’t expose any twists, though there are many.

I’ve been known to leap right into an analysis of the actual story, so easily wrapped up in the plot. Butler’s writing won’t allow it. Kindred is written in first person, past tense and it was the perfect choice. Perhaps I’m so enthralled with the point-of-view/tense choice because I am struggling to choose a tense for my novel, which also includes some graphic scenes.

Is it best to highlight the sheer terror of a traumatic moment by putting it under the microscope of present tense? Or, maybe, allow the reader to understand more angles of the issue as the protagonist recounts the tale using past tense? Either way, Butler chose past tense and I speculate whether it’s for the reason above or because, perhaps, we are physically transported to the past—it would make sense. I respect the choice and the idea that our narrator needed time to breathe and process the events before sharing them with the reader.

Another thing Butler handles effortlessly is the dialogue, creating a steady flow of conversation that folds naturally into the action despite a lack of dialogue tags. As a writer, I’ve come to understand that this works not only because of smart formatting, but also because all of the characters are, well, excellently characterized. Cut out the lines of dialogue, put them in a hat, shake them up, and you’ll easily be able to guess who said what.

When I picked up Kindred and read the synopsis on the back, I had to prepare myself for discomfort.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum south. 

As a 26-year-old modern black woman, I steeled myself for whatever depiction of slavery neared. Surely it would hit me instantaneously—horrific and graphic from the start. Instead, Butler started in present day, explaining Dana, her history. This introduction not only characterized Dana as a likable, strong, intelligent woman, but a relatable one. We eased into her life, laughed a little and commiserated with her modern-day problems. When Dana was transported to the past for a brief moment, we were confused with her. When she went again, we finally understood with her. When she was abused, well, we felt some of the pain.

I also want to highlight Butler’s patience and the supreme death grip that she has on realism. For me, racism is difficult to write about. A writer needs to rely on their experiences while simultaneously removing themselves from a story to create a realistic tale, so of course I struggled when I found myself not fully hating one of the slave owners. At points I stopped and considered that these slave owners were humans—something I’d never done before. I didn’t like it. It made me uncomfortable, but it also made me respect Butler.

This isn’t a story about the broad topic of slavery. Butler dives into the broad subject, but also spends time in the quiet corners. She approaches the incapable white woman—paranoid, abusive, voiceless, and jealous in Margaret Weylin. She occasionally considers the complexities of interracial marriage across time with Dana and Kevin. Ultimately, however, the major themes that I took away from this novel speak to black endurance; the ability to exist and find strength, if not hope, in a world constructed to harm one for the benefit of others.

As the last few pages dwindled, I wondered how this story could possibly end. Our protagonist had been through so much, physically and mentally; she was scarred by a very real, tortuous anti-humane experience and that had to break something in her—alter her view of humanity. It’s frustrating, but understandable why Butler doesn’t allow her to go on unscathed.

Blacks in America today do not exist unscathed.

It took me about half a second to form a correlation between Dana’s experience and the larger experience of being black in America. To reexamine its roots and know all over again how and why it plagues our society, yet, to still feel shock when it is experienced—to be surprised by the sting when you knew it was there, waiting for you to let your guard down.

I recommend this book. I plan to read it again. And I plan to learn something new each time. All thanks be to Octavia Butler.

Five stars.

True Thing About Me by Deborah Kay Davies

This review could easily consist of three intense all-caps sentences, which would cover every emotion possible. Part of me is angry that I ever set eyes on the book, and another part is grateful that I have this mess of a protagonist to distract you all from my hiatus from this blog and…fiction reading. For both of these things, it is what it is.

I picked up Deborah Kay Davies’ True Things About Me: A Novel at The Last Bookstore, one of the best tourist stops in Los Angeles, in my opinion. The place is stuffed with all kinds of books, awesome records, and even a vault with “ancient” texts. Yet somehow I walked out with this.

 

 

I was in Los Angeles for a long weekend, scoping out the city for a possible move (I decided to stay in New Orleans, by the way), seeing some friends, and really being honest about where I was in life. I’m not making excuses but, hey, I was vulnerable enough to read the back cover and think, “I need this.”

True Things About Me hurtles through the terrain of sexual obsession and asks what it is to know oneself and to test the limits of one’s desires.

Are we closer now?

Seriously, enough of the dramatics. If the book were actually horrible I would’ve set the thing alight. In reality, Davies is an incredible writer. The story is told in short chapters with first person titles that add to the introspectiveness of the novel. Dialogue isn’t weighted down by pesky quotation marks, making the whole thing vaguely stream of consciousness. But not.

Overall, Davies does what I often struggle to: writes succinctly. She uses short sentences and observations that somehow work to move the story forward. Some things may appear to be unnecessary, but every detail is being added for a reason. I found myself underlining particular lines, marking them with hearts and checks, hoping that one-day I’ll get on her level.

In a chapter focused on touch, taste, and a very physical experience, I swooned at the simple line:

The wine was warm, perhaps at blood temperature.

Thus I feel compelled to rate Davies’ writing separately. Crazy, I know. 4 stars.

The plot. Here’s where things go downhill. While you’ll find checks and hearts in my copy of this novel, you’ll also find angry remarks scribbled aggressively in the margins. “Idiot” seems to have been my word of choice. The main character, our protagonist, is nameless. A device commonly used to make a character more relatable. If she doesn’t have a name, I can see myself in her shoes more easily? Perhaps that’s not what Davies is trying to do here, but I didn’t like it, mostly because of the aforementioned “idiot” thing. I found it easier to distance myself from the character.

I don’t usually struggle to summarize a story without giving too much away, but there isn’t much going on here. A bored office worker enters into an abusive relationship with a criminal and can’t let go…for some reason. We spend most of the novel trying to understand why while a mini-cycle of idiocy repeats in an impressively unentertaining way.

At a point, I began writing the word “pathetic” so many times that I wondered if it were a real word. But that’s enough stalling with irrelevant facts—I’ll try to share what I ultimately think this novel is about.

Talking about abusive relationships broadly would be irresponsible of me. For one, I haven’t been in one. Two, all of them are different. However I think the relationship that Davies’ True Things About Me centers around can be explained by one major question posed by the nameless protagonist:

Was there anyone else like me?

She seems to have internalized everything horrific, sexist, and subservient that society has imposed upon women and taken it to heart. Despite the lackluster examples of healthy relationships she sees through her friends and parents, she goes to a completely unrealistic extreme in a backwards way of trying to fit into an “afflicted woman” narrative. To be a part of something dangerously not…lackluster, but still mundane in many ways.

I cook for my man.

I wait for him to come home.

I neglect myself.

Perhaps I disliked the story so much because I know relationships like this exist and, in frustration, know I can’t put the blame all in one place. So, as much as I’d love to call our nameless, unfit protagonist every rude name I scrawled in my copy… I can’t.

In the end, the story melts into an abstract mush of dreams or hallucinations amid some very big issues that are all pretty predictable. Davies’ writing never ceases to impress. After finishing the book, I held it up and stared at the seemingly harmless baby pink cover as I mulled over the degree of genius I may be missing here.

Did Davies want to frustrate women readers into never taking any shit from a man?

Did Davies want to frighten male readers into never being a piece of shit man?

I don’t know. At this point, it doesn’t matter. I’ll donate my copy to the local library in the hopes that an impressionable teenager will pick it up and read it as a cautionary tale, improved only by the entertaining curses of a frustrated writer who reads.

 

 

 

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

My next review starts in a Denver airport, or maybe it was Houston—it doesn’t matter.  I was alone in an airport bookstore clutching onto a box of flu medicine, a water bottle and the ability to stand, and I decided I needed a book. Though I was returning to Seattle (after a luxurious holiday back home) with no job and a heap of bills, I bypassed the self-help books and gravitated straight to a glowing black-and-white cover where a little girl belonging to another time, stood eerily.

Peculiar

A slight shadow beneath her feet caught my attention. The girl was levitating.

“That’ll be $14.68, hun,” the sweet lady in the Denver/Houston airport said. And thus began my desperate, hungry, stuffy-headed experience with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Ransom Riggs is the author of this dark twist of fiction, and he’s gotten some rather extraordinary recognition for the novel, which was released by Quirk Books in 2011. Peculiar Children (yes, it’s a nickname) made the #1 New York Times Bestseller List, was called the next Harry Potter by CNN, and was referred to as “Tim Burton-esque” by USA today.

I believe that’s enough praise for Mr. Riggs.

Excuse me, my jealousy is showing.

To get to the base of it, this book is an experience. From the dark patterned pages that introduce each new chapter to the photographs laced throughout, supplementing the story—but not supporting it—this book is a gold mine. No, literally, I felt like I was digging for gold. With the dusty confusion of reality trying to ground me, and the shimmering draw of fictitious peculiarities attempting to pull me into a delicious new world. Every bit of gold, every detail, was vital to the story;  oddities didn’t exist in the novel merely to supplement the chilling mood. And for that, I was grateful for each one.

Something I wondered continuously while reading, however, was if this book was meant to be Young Adult. Our focal character, sixteen-year-old Jacob, is an interesting kid who has a good deal of graphic, traumatizing encounters, but is he interesting enough to keep my adult attention? From a first-person perspective? I asked myself this as I swallowed the first half of Peculiar Children  waiting for my flight. Then I realized that I had swallowed the first half of the book. Then I stopped asking dumb questions. Then I kept reading. I suspect that the key to forming a successful young adult character who is able to capture the attention of most readers, independent of age, is to display growth. In 352 pages, Riggs not only achieves this, but does it believably. Each new scene or experience has an impact on Jacob, sometimes stunting him, and other times forcing him into adulthood. Coming of age, you say? I think it’s a little more than that.

However, for the sake of brevity I’ll move on to the speck of things that I didn’t quite enjoy:

  • The parents. I’m not sure if Jacob’s suffocating and concerned, but not-quite-there parents are unfairly pulling at the corner of a distant memory of mine, but I wanted more or less of them.
  • I understand the flood of details that needed to be poured into the reader’s head, and I enjoyed the majority of them. At times, though, I felt that a couple of key conversations existed more for the reader rather than Jacob, our vessel into the unknown.
  •  I expected an open ended close to the story. I wanted to hungrily scour the internet for the next installment’s release date and mark my calendar but, while I know the series is only beginning, I somehow feel content with the ending. C’mon Riggs, be a tease once in awhile!

Despite these small irks, I recommend Ransom Riggs’ first novel, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, to everyone over a certain age. But I urge those who enjoy an escape, goosebumps, photographs, kind-a-sorta historical fiction, and mystery to go get a copy immediately. Like, now. Also, quit your job, catch a cold, book a flight, and get stuck over-night in Denver—it makes the read that much more thrilling!

Thanks for the scares and near heart-attacks, Riggs. 3.5 stars.

P.S. Coincidentally, Hollow City, the second installment of this series was released today, 14 Jan 2014. Now isn’t that creepy. I guess I better go buy it….

My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife by Bina Cady Kiyonaga

I’ve read some rather lukewarm reviews of this autobiography and I don’t understand them.

 My Spy

I like tall people. I like Action. I like spy stories. I like travel. I like hard lives lived easy. I like real women who get things done; who occasionally cry. I like interracial couples. I like family and reality.

Therefore, I like My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife, the true story of Bina Cady Kiyonaga who has known, lived, and felt all those things I’ve listed above.

My Spy was a solid Amazon wish list maybe that accidentally wound up in my shopping cart. Two days later, an inattentive essential oil purchase plopped a surprise, book-shaped package on my front porch. And what a great surprise it was.

For the next three days it was My Spy and I making our own private “Read More” campaign montage. Reading in bed, Reading in the bathtub, Reading beneath a tree. Reading is Fun!

Lately I have been trying to pinpoint a character that I have absolutely adored in the novels that I’ve read. And not just adored because they are pure-hearted, but because they are perfect even in their flaws.

The only character to come to mind at first was Katniss Everdeen and that’s only because she reminds me of myself.  My family has taken to calling me Kait-niss, if you want proof. So, shout out to me! (And you, Ange.)

All Hunger Games aside, I’ve never liked someone on the page as much as I have Bina Cady Kiyonaga. You know why? Because this woman is honest, and at points, painfully so. Since reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography (well, as much as I could stand) I have learned not to trust a person’s own biased account of their life, but I trust Bina. She expresses thoughts, experiences, and some insecurities that even your best friend might hesitate to share. I realized this when she explained the complications that befell upon her and her husband, Joe, after the first few days of marriage and a quite unspectacular wedding night. Ehem.

Most of all, I love this autobiography because I like Bad-asses.

Who marries a fine, tall Japanese-American soldier who later becomes a CIA agent? Oh, well, this fabulous Baltimore-born, Irish-American Catholic girl who doesn’t give an eff about 1947-era racism.

Who lived all over the globe, raising five children, and always whole-heartedly working on her marriage? Bina. Bina Cady Kionaga. Keep up, y’all.

I give this novel five stars because of the—what seems like—legitimate honesty within. This woman was not perfect, her family was not perfect, money wasn’t always plentiful, and every thought expressed in the book was not always positive. Yet, somehow, I still aspire to be a woman as strong and alive as Bina.

As a writer, I admit that My Spy wasn’t a vivid work of literary genius, and I’m glad. The book was written conversationally, candidly—and that made the story of the Kiyonaga family that much more enthralling.

Final confession. After days of reading this book non-stop, I put it down a few pages shy of the end…for two years. It didn’t slip my mind. My Spy sat on my dresser, daring me to suck it up and finish. But Joe had become ill and Bina’s language hinted that the outcome would not be pleasant. Death is inevitable for us all, yes, but I couldn’t bear to read her pain. That is what makes this book spectacular: me fearfully staring down the pink cover of My Spy for 730 days.

Thank you for sharing your story, Bina Cady Kiyonaga. Five stars.

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

*I will try not to include any spoilers in any of my reviews, now until the end of time. Amen. 

In the About Me section you heard me describe my “struggle” with books. I admitted that I am picky and maybe even a bit strange. Well, I lied. I didn’t lie. I under-exaggerated. Stay with me here, I promise that we’ll get to the truth eventually.

I am not a freak, but my tastes in books are freakish.

The supernatural is really big nowadays after that young adult, anti-feminist little series that shall not be named, blew up. I am very wary of the supernatural and have gotten into many arguments with a handful of creative writers who have critiqued my own work. They call my stories supernatural and I get offensive. Then we dance along this supernatural, fantasy, dystopian line until we get tired, have a beer, and rest our feet.

In the end, I like oddities. I like strange occurrences that could actually happen. I like time travel and absurdly corrupt governments (on paper). And I love the quiet stories with main characters who fill the concrete world with lofty ideas and intentional hallucinations.

Mr. Fox

Hey, talking about intentional hallucinations and how much I like them, let’s talk about Mr. Fox since that’s what we’re really here for. Mr. Fox, which is written by Helen Oyeyemi was on the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books list in 2011 and I’m sort of surprised that I hadn’t happened across it until late 2012. The book is about Mr. Fox, a writer with a wife, Daphne, and a Muse Mary Foxe.

Mr. Fox has pressure coming from all directions with a difficult marriage, a cheeky muse, and the inability to stop killing off all of his female characters. All these pressures eventually intersect, creating a disturbing yet refreshing story.

What I really want to talk about is Oyeyemi’s writing. It’s one of those books that you read slowly for a few reasons. One, there are jumps between reality, make-believe conversations between Mr. Fox and Mary, and the fantastic short-short stories tucked in between where Fox is working through the whole killing heroines issue. Two, well, the writing is marvelous. How Oyeyemi avoided confusing me once was a miracle. How she maintained countless voices in such a small space is awing. Her dialogue is quick and witty and supports her unnatural ability to allow a scene to be sexy, disconcerting, tense, and sweet all at once.

There are many poems, short stories, and novels out there that are just weird for the sake of being weird. They throw out curse words and make characters lick things just for the shock value. Perhaps what is most impressive about Mr. Fox is that Oyeyemi very clearly began this novel with a story in mind and the weirdness just followed naturally.

I know I trash-talked it before but this story does get somewhat supernatural, especially where things like death are concerned. Again, I appreciate this for two reasons. Firstly, the supernatural aspects come within Mr. Fox’s writing. Meaning the story is still grounded; we have not left reality. Second, who am I to say that people don’t waltz in their tombs after death? I can assure you that I have never spent the night in a mausoleum…yet.

Finally, to reveal why this book caught my attention: I have a muse. A completely made-up, call-me-crazy muse. While I don’t fondle my muse or have loud and mentally scarring conversations with it, yes, I have a muse. We run through dialogue in my head. We make words sound genuine and interesting (I think). We explore different stories and, okay, I sometimes wish my muse were real.

Don’t look at me like that.

Anyway, I give Mr. Fox four stars for originality and excellent writing. The cover art is rather impressive too. If you’ve read the book, I hope you found my review unbearably accurate. If you haven’t read the book, what are you doing just sitting there? Go. Buy it. And support a small, local bookstore if you can.

Up Next: This Is Not Chick Lit by Various Authors

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl” makes me want to start a book club. Not some new, trendy (I hate to say—hipsteresque) book club where we drink PBR out of eternally dingy thrift store goblets, and talk about vinyls more than books.

I’m talking a real book club.

I want a gaggle of forty-somethings with wrinkled mommy-pooches, where you’re side-eyed if you don’t have more than two children, a disinterested husband, and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. I want to sit back on Lydia or Martha or Betsy’s plastic covered sofa, eating a processed mash of lukewarm casserole off of a recycled forest-green plastic spoon, and delight in the thrilling strictly book-centered conversation. I want this because I believe in New York Time’s Best Selling Author Gillian Flynn’s recent novel. Because while reading I clutched my heart and walked around my house cursing characters under my breath. I squealed, and growled even more. I thought: I trusted you! How could you? And, to be honest, I genuinely had my feelings hurt more than once.

I know that forty-something year old women (for the most part) have seen it all. I respect them. The screaming kids, long days at work, that damn toilet seat that is never down, and whatever other dumb things husbands do after twenty or so years of marriage. These everyday grievances—very reasonably—would make it more difficult to be shocked or wowed or amazed on a daily basis. I would love to see that amusement. Maybe amusement is a poor word choice when we’re discussing a book so rich in murder, deceit, and scandal. But I want to see whose side they take—or are tempted to take—in this dark novel.

Basically, a group of 21-year-old hipsters reading some book and gasping at everything wouldn’t match or amplify the laborious tug that “Gone Girl” inflicted upon my heart.

(I am a 21-year-old anti-hipster in a way so passionate that I am often called a hipster.)

Gone Girl

The review, the review. Back to the review.

Gone Girl.

Flynn does everything right, as can been seen through her fame and (I assume) fortune. A few things she does exceptionally:

  1. Her characters: Well-rounded, realistic, human.
  2. Her Formula: Not all books have one so unique.
  3. Her plot: It’s a puzzle, cemented together in the end.

To put it all into actual thought: Flynn’s characters are varied, plentiful, realistic. They evolve. I marveled at her ability to create such depth in each character—depth that goes beyond the handful of focal characters, but reaches out to form very real and important people through phone conversations and second-hand reports of “off-screen” encounters.

The formula here says a lot. It does a lot. The diary entries are a device, another way in which we experience a character. The relationship quizzes splattered within these entries solidify this character. And, perhaps, that is what Flynn does so well. We have two narrators, but more than two voices coming through. With this, I must say, that I was always entertained, switching from one to the other like a stupid-hungry-excited puppy. But how dare I say any more? I might ruin the novel.

Finally, the plot. A big ole’ mash of cause and effect: That happens because of this. So this happens because of that. Of course! It is a mystery. You knew this from the start. From the spindly white scratches across the ominous black cover to the eerie synopsis, you knew this was going to get juicy. But I didn’t know how it would seep, so wonderfully laden with secrets and lush, substantial facts. I love facts—they make everything so real. They make a sunny New Orleans afternoon feel like midnight during a hailstorm.

I can’t go outside. Are you crazy?

 

I ran into some frustrations, but none I could harp on. Like my opinions of the characters, my stance on these frustrations changed constantly. The feminist in me felt troubled at times by how the female was handled. Were feminists getting a bad rap here? Were we being misrepresented? Or, were women just out of luck in Flynn’s novel? I don’t know, I couldn’t decide. It may have been the discomfort of seeing various, misfortunate women losing that disturbed me. After all, no one really won here. I could speculate out loud, give passages and ruin “Gone Girl” for any innocent passerby, but I’m no hussy.

If you’re looking for an addictive, twisty, and slightly-gruesome read, this book is for you.

Ultimately I cannot give Flynn’s “Gone Girl” less than four stars.