Many, many books for young people have to do with orphans or young people who have been adopted. The attraction that these plotlines hold make a lot of sense to me. What tween or teen, looking around them with newly worldly eyes, doesn't wonder how they ended up in this family? No one in the family understands them, no one makes any sense, no one "gets" them. Perhaps there is someone out there who does.
Caroline B. Cooney's newest young adult novel, Three Black Swans, fits right in. This is territory that Cooney has successfully covered before, notably in her novel The Face on the Milk Carton, in which young Janie sees a younger "missing" photo of herself on the side of a milk carton in the school lunchroom, setting off a search for the truth. I lost myself for a day or two in that story almost 20 years ago, and so I picked up Three Black Swans at the library last week.
If you think about it, orphans or adopted kids figure heavily in literary history--think Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Anne of Green Gables, or Harry Potter. And for Christians, the idea that we don't really belong here, that we are strangers, aliens, not of this world, is a comfort. We don't feel comfortable, things aren't right, and that's okay, because we really belong to someone else, in another relationship.
In Three Black Swans, two cousins attempt a hoax, pretending to be long-lost identical twins. It turns out that they are on to something, and when the video ends up on YouTube, it opens up a whole world of possibilities that they had not anticipated.
While this is not Newbery-award-winning material, it is an interesting plot and a well-rounded exploration of the motivations of all of the characters involved. No one is innocent, but there are ways to feel sympathy toward every character. One of the clunkier aspects: while the author intends to show an awareness of the use of technology (texting, internet, etc) and the generation gap in that area between parents and children, sometimes it feels too self-conscious.
As a young teen, the thought that someone out there who looks like me, thinks like me, and was still considered beautiful and talented would have been a pretty good fantasy! This book feeds that fantasy, but it goes a step beyond it to meditate a bit on love and forgiveness. It may not be great literature, but it is worthwhile entertainment for its target audience.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
"The Cookbook Collector"--Modern Jane Austen?
The Cookbook Collector was a title too good for this book collector pass up. In spite of the fact that I don't have a strong affinity for cookbooks or cooking, I love food and books, so it seemed like a natural. Add to that great reviews on NPR and in magazines that mentioned the similarities between Allegra Goodman's newest novel and Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and I couldn't possibly resist!
Emily and Jessamine Bach are sisters living in Berkeley, California, and they are nothing alike. Emily is the "sense," and Jessamine is the "sensibility." Emily is a dot com executive during the Silicon bubble, and Jess is a tree-saving, philosophy-loving vegan who is also attracted to Jewish mysticism. Emily is engaged to Jonathan, a bookend match to her executive life, while Jess moves from relationship to relationship. While there are similarities to Austen's novel, this book only borrows a few structures. Goodman's story is her own.
Jess, pursuing yet another degree, works at an antiquarian bookstore. The owner, George, is doing everything in his power to win a collection of cookbooks from a mysterious seller. Emily is all responsibility, running her high-powered business, putting off her marriage until just the right moment, whenever that will be.
There are many things I like about this novel. For instance, there are many allusions to poetry. How many contemporary novelists allude to T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? (Though I suppose the question could be asked, how many people care? Well, I do.) The cookbook collection itself is intriguing--I want to run my hand over the spines of these books and explore the color plates and tissue pages inside. And George, the bookstore owner, has a house I'm dying to tour.
In my last blog entry, I said that A Reliable Wife was like a classic gothic novel, HBO style. Well, The Cookbook Collector is Jane Austen, "Modern Family" style. Rather than love and lust repressed under 19th century maiden facades and respectability, the characters of the book move toward consummation long before any actual commitments have been made. After reading so much, well, sex in A Reliable Wife, and then moving on to this novel, where characters don't bother to leave the one they are living with to start up new liaisons, I'm ready for a book with less of a moral void. I could really use another Peace Like a River right now. But that's beside the point, sort of.
The rise and fall of the dot coms is an interesting enough subject, and 9/11 figures into the story as well, though not nearly as powerfully as in my recent read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In the end, Jessamine is my favorite character, and the portion of the book where she and George explore the cookbooks is the best. Still and all, I prefer the original--I'll stick with Jane Austen.
Emily and Jessamine Bach are sisters living in Berkeley, California, and they are nothing alike. Emily is the "sense," and Jessamine is the "sensibility." Emily is a dot com executive during the Silicon bubble, and Jess is a tree-saving, philosophy-loving vegan who is also attracted to Jewish mysticism. Emily is engaged to Jonathan, a bookend match to her executive life, while Jess moves from relationship to relationship. While there are similarities to Austen's novel, this book only borrows a few structures. Goodman's story is her own.
Jess, pursuing yet another degree, works at an antiquarian bookstore. The owner, George, is doing everything in his power to win a collection of cookbooks from a mysterious seller. Emily is all responsibility, running her high-powered business, putting off her marriage until just the right moment, whenever that will be.
There are many things I like about this novel. For instance, there are many allusions to poetry. How many contemporary novelists allude to T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"? (Though I suppose the question could be asked, how many people care? Well, I do.) The cookbook collection itself is intriguing--I want to run my hand over the spines of these books and explore the color plates and tissue pages inside. And George, the bookstore owner, has a house I'm dying to tour.
In my last blog entry, I said that A Reliable Wife was like a classic gothic novel, HBO style. Well, The Cookbook Collector is Jane Austen, "Modern Family" style. Rather than love and lust repressed under 19th century maiden facades and respectability, the characters of the book move toward consummation long before any actual commitments have been made. After reading so much, well, sex in A Reliable Wife, and then moving on to this novel, where characters don't bother to leave the one they are living with to start up new liaisons, I'm ready for a book with less of a moral void. I could really use another Peace Like a River right now. But that's beside the point, sort of.
The rise and fall of the dot coms is an interesting enough subject, and 9/11 figures into the story as well, though not nearly as powerfully as in my recent read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. In the end, Jessamine is my favorite character, and the portion of the book where she and George explore the cookbooks is the best. Still and all, I prefer the original--I'll stick with Jane Austen.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Bleak Midwinter in "A Reliable Wife"
Creepy. Depraved. Uncomfortable. Absorbing. Just a few words we came up with at the Fab 5 Book Club after reading A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. We could only wonder what sort of man would come up with a book like this, and we decided that the man on the jacket flap was not someone we'd want to run into alone on a dark street. He has quite an imagination.
Wealthy Ralph Truitt lives in an isolated Wisconsin town in the 19th century. The town is named Truitt, after his father and his father's business. He is desperately lonely. He places an ad in several newspapers, and he makes a tentative agreement with Catherine Land, a young woman who professes to be a simple, honest woman. She is nothing of the sort.
Catherine must adjust to rural Wisconsin, where, apparently, people are killing or maiming themselves or others with alarming regularity. The winter drives them crazy, and they just go off. Barbara checked into this with a friend who lives in that area, and she said that is still true. So, the first moral of the story is, be careful where you move in Wisconsin.
Interestingly, the author says he came to this character and town because of Kohler, Wisconsin, where one of our members just took a tour of the Kohler factory. Goolrick wondered what it would be like to live in a town named after you and where most of the town is employed by your company in some way.
Ralph and Catherine find a quiet passion for each other, but Ralph is tormented by his past and the son for whom he's been searching for a long time. And Ralph is aware that Catherine isn't the woman she professes to be. There is a lot of imagery of birds, sometimes caged, sometimes free, and we have only vague notions that this connects with the characters in the book. Sonya was annoyed that there is a red canary, because there is no such thing. Just ask her.
This book is like a classic gothic novel, after it's been turned into an HBO special. While there is a sort of redemption in the story, you have to read through so much obsessive sex and deviance to get there that the redemptive value is minimal. Still, the book grips you because you want to see what happens.
Would we recommend it to others? Not so much. Sonya would prefer to not have some images stuck in her head. Yet we all finished the book in a very timely manner, a rare occasion in this group. And the author's description in the interview at the back of Nancy's book made it sound much more profound than we had thought. Still. Pretty creepy.
If you enjoyed the V.C. Andrews books that no one could get enough of when I was in high school, the Flowers in the Attic series, you might enjoy this. I did not read them--I was too busy reading my sister's romance novels. Sonya remembers being freaked out by The Amityville Horror, and Barbara found the Harry Potter books a bit spooky. Barbara should not read The Amityville Horror.
Which led us to talk about TV shows that creeped us out. Sonya and Nancy watched a lot of X-Files, and I personally never quite recovered from Twin Peaks. My husband Brian's impression of a certain giant speaking as a small person danced on stage can still send me running for cover. And lights.
Then we talked about TV shows, in general, that we've liked--Mad About You, Northern Exposure, Frasier, and Lost. Which led to Nancy letting us in on her current favorite commercial, which features two hamsters driving a box and dressed like rappers. We are not sure if this is really a commercial or if the weird book we just read led to even stranger dreams.
As you can see, we are a literary crowd with a high level of intellectual discussion regarding books. In our defense, we are all very tired.
Wealthy Ralph Truitt lives in an isolated Wisconsin town in the 19th century. The town is named Truitt, after his father and his father's business. He is desperately lonely. He places an ad in several newspapers, and he makes a tentative agreement with Catherine Land, a young woman who professes to be a simple, honest woman. She is nothing of the sort.
Catherine must adjust to rural Wisconsin, where, apparently, people are killing or maiming themselves or others with alarming regularity. The winter drives them crazy, and they just go off. Barbara checked into this with a friend who lives in that area, and she said that is still true. So, the first moral of the story is, be careful where you move in Wisconsin.
Interestingly, the author says he came to this character and town because of Kohler, Wisconsin, where one of our members just took a tour of the Kohler factory. Goolrick wondered what it would be like to live in a town named after you and where most of the town is employed by your company in some way.
Ralph and Catherine find a quiet passion for each other, but Ralph is tormented by his past and the son for whom he's been searching for a long time. And Ralph is aware that Catherine isn't the woman she professes to be. There is a lot of imagery of birds, sometimes caged, sometimes free, and we have only vague notions that this connects with the characters in the book. Sonya was annoyed that there is a red canary, because there is no such thing. Just ask her.
This book is like a classic gothic novel, after it's been turned into an HBO special. While there is a sort of redemption in the story, you have to read through so much obsessive sex and deviance to get there that the redemptive value is minimal. Still, the book grips you because you want to see what happens.
Would we recommend it to others? Not so much. Sonya would prefer to not have some images stuck in her head. Yet we all finished the book in a very timely manner, a rare occasion in this group. And the author's description in the interview at the back of Nancy's book made it sound much more profound than we had thought. Still. Pretty creepy.
If you enjoyed the V.C. Andrews books that no one could get enough of when I was in high school, the Flowers in the Attic series, you might enjoy this. I did not read them--I was too busy reading my sister's romance novels. Sonya remembers being freaked out by The Amityville Horror, and Barbara found the Harry Potter books a bit spooky. Barbara should not read The Amityville Horror.
Which led us to talk about TV shows that creeped us out. Sonya and Nancy watched a lot of X-Files, and I personally never quite recovered from Twin Peaks. My husband Brian's impression of a certain giant speaking as a small person danced on stage can still send me running for cover. And lights.
Then we talked about TV shows, in general, that we've liked--Mad About You, Northern Exposure, Frasier, and Lost. Which led to Nancy letting us in on her current favorite commercial, which features two hamsters driving a box and dressed like rappers. We are not sure if this is really a commercial or if the weird book we just read led to even stranger dreams.
As you can see, we are a literary crowd with a high level of intellectual discussion regarding books. In our defense, we are all very tired.
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