The Manic Pixie Dream Boy Improvement Project by Lenore Appelhans

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Lerner Publishing Group through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on March 5, 2019.

(My last YA review for a while…)

Cute and whimsical, this early YA book explores the world of stereotypes using fictional characters who long to be more than their boilerplate dictates. Riley is a Manic Pixie Dream Boy who works hard and is true to type, but chafes a bit under perceived Author mismanagement. He is sent to Group Therapy with a set of Manic Pixie Dream Girls — just one step away from termination — in order to learn to “remember his place” and “The Author is always right.” However, when the Trope Town Council decides that perhaps the Manic Pixie Dream trope is more trouble than it’s worth, Riley and his therapy cohort have to come up with something big to show how truly important their trope is.

On the surface this is fun and a little silly and will appeal to the younger part of the YA demographic. However, there is some depth to the discussion of literature, the use of stock characters (stereotypes) and the impact that can have on readers. In the Trope Museum the characters bear witness to old stereotypes that have been “retired” due to being offensively racist, sexist, etc. The Uncle Tomfoolery trope is a prime example. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope is on the chopping block for being sexist. But Riley, as an experimental “Boy” version, shows how it may be the association of a particular race, gender, sexual preference with a particular trope that is the issue, not the trope itself. I liked that a lot — there are various personality stereotypes that exist in the world — the damage (I feel) is associating them with whole groups of people based solely on physical characteristics.

*** Spoiler alert *** One more small thing I appreciated. Riley finds himself at the center of a love triangle between Zelda (a Manic Pixie Dream Girl) and Ada, a “Developed” girl in the novel he is working on. At the end of the book, all three step off into the sunset on the Termination Train to Reader World without having to resolve the triangle. They are happy to pursue their own lives and see where it takes them without necessarily “winning” the boy. When I was growing up, just about every movie I saw and book I read focussed on the girl falling in love with the right boy. Regardless of her other pursuits, if she didn’t get the boy at the end, she felt like a failure. Since I was never taught this explicitly, it was difficult to question to the premise. Fiction has a powerful ability to teach us norms of expectations and behavior under the covers as it were. I like the not-so-subtle messages in this book.

The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown

The last of the three!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Pushkin Press through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on March 12, 2019

An utterly delightful re-publication of a classic children’s series from the 1940s. I’m both embarrassed that I never knew this series existed and happy that I get to discover it now. Originally published in 1941, the author began work on it in 1938 when she was 14 years old — helping to explain why the children all feel so authentic. Maggie Smith says, “I wanted to act before I read this book, and afterwards there was no stopping me.”

This story follows seven children from three families in the town of Fenchester (based on Colchester in the UK) as they found the Blue Door Theater company and forge a future in the dramatic arts. Nigel (15) wants to be a commercial artist and designs and builds all the sets; Vicky (13) is a dancer; Bulldog (13) is a comic and a builder (he does the electric work himself and designs a mechanism to make the curtains “swish”); Jeremy (14) composes music and plays the violin; Lynette (13) is the consummate actress of the group; Sandra (14) sings beautifully and designs and makes all the costumes; and Madeleine (9) acts and works as the group promoter!

What I love about the story is the detail about every aspect of the theater — from converting an abandoned church into an actual theater to writing the pieces to performing them. The children do everything themselves — they create the costumes, they build the sets from abandoned materials, they write the plays and the music and act in them. They learn new skills and use them to create something where nothing had been before. They even make use of one of their mother’s “hair” — the ringlets she cut off and saved ages ago. They also make mistakes and while the story in the book does not revolve around these mistakes, they do lend an air of credibility to the story. Not everything goes perfectly all of the time! I also learned a lot about life in Britain in the 40s: an introduction provides currency translations (12 pence to the shilling; 20 shillings to the pound; 21 shillings to a guinea) and distinct art forms like the English pantomime are introduced. Each performance they give is described in great detail as well — the music, the drama, and the comedy.

This is the first volume of five and I’m happy to find that the publisher intends to release them all. Great for fans of Noel Streitfeld.

Famous in a Small Town by Emma Mills

#2 in the children / YA review series!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on January 15, 2019.

Writing: 4 Plot: 4.5 Characters: 5

A beautifully written book about the strength of friendships.

Sophie loves everything about her small Illinois town of Acadia — the Yum Yum Shoppe with its fourteen flavors, the school marching band, and the music of their one famous singer / songwriter — Meagan Pleasant. Most important is her close friend group, encapsulated in their WWYSE (where will you spend eternity) group chat — though newcomer August is a pretty intriguing addition.

There is plenty of plot — some romance, some adventure, and some revenge planning along with a well-paced unfolding of surprising secrets. However, the real attraction of the book lies in the characters themselves — likable kids dealing with the realities of life in ways that are focussed, but not dripping with drama. The dialog is natural and (very) funny. There were several points where I teared up reading inspired descriptions of the importance of friendships and family in life. While there is little of the grit present in some urban YA novels, it doesn’t shy away from elements in the environment that today’s teens may be exposed to: blended families, drug use, casual sex, single mothers, open sexual preferences, and even relatives in jail. Acadia isn’t a fairytale locale but a very real place where teenagers are simply trying to grow up and understand what is important to them.

The Library of Ever by Zeno Alexander

I took a break from all the heavy stuff I’ve been reading and read three wonderful children / YA novels.  Here is a review of the first (and my favorite) in the trifecta!

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on April 30, 2019.

A brilliantly imaginative story combining history, science, and the importance of knowledge into a children’s adventure story centered around the most impressive, awesome, majestic, humongous library of all time.

Lenora — our eleven-year old heroine — escapes from her (luckily) inattentive nanny through a secret arch of her local library and lands in the aforementioned “Library of Ever.” Confronted with a ten-foot tall stern and very pointy librarian who insists that only library employees may enter, she applies for and is immediately granted a job as the 4th Assistant Apprentice Librarian. Her largely self-directed adventures take her through the Calendar help desk, the cartography section, and a live-action diorama of Bubastes (look this up!). She helps penguins find their way home, a tardigrade (yes — this is a real thing — look this up too!) get directions to Alpha Centauri, and a King in the year 8000 unravel some trouble with time. My absolutely favorite part is when she dons a pheromone interpreter (in her nostrils) in order to help her understand a group of troubled ants.

Most importantly throughout, she works to fight off the Forces of Darkness personified as beings dressed in overcoats and bowler hats, who seek to extinguish the light of knowledge in the world around them.

This should be required reading for all middle schoolers — an ode to librarians and a concise and pithy description of the importance of libraries and knowledge freely available to all.

Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on Feb 5, 2019

Writing: 3 Plot: 3 Characters: 3.5

Daphne Maritch inherits one thing from her recently deceased mother: a 1968 High School Yearbook with regularly updated snarky marginalia. Newly divorced and living in a postage-stamp sized apartment in New York City, she tosses the tome and focusses on her “recovery project” — a course in chocolate making. However, thoroughly obnoxious neighbor, Geneva Wisenkorn, has another plan. Purporting to be documentary film maker (her main claim to fame is a Matzoh docudrama), Geneva has latched on to the yearbook (procured through dumpster-diving) as her path to fame and fortune. Thoroughly horrified, Daphne spends the book alternating between the shocking discoveries unearthed and trying to keep those discoveries quiet. She is helped by her father — whose move to New York fulfills a life long dream — and hunky across-the-hall neighbor, Jeremy, who plays a small part in the successful series Riverdale.

Entertaining and reasonably well-written with great humor. The plot is a little thin, and the characters are a little too stereotyped for my taste. We find out at the end that it’s really a (happy) love story though it doesn’t read that way from the start. I would have been a little happier if our heroine found something she actually wanted to do with her life rather than just find a boyfriend … but that was not to be.

There There by Tommy Orange

Writing: 5 Plot: 3 Characters; 4.5

This is a story of the Urban Indian. Set in Oakland, it follows twelve characters as they make their way to the Big Oakland Powwow. Each chapter is told from the perspective of one of the characters, leading to short, rapid-fire, entries at the violent end. The author experiments with different point of view techniques, utilizing first-person, third-person limited, and even second-person narration for specific characters. The structure comprises a set of interconnected stories, mostly current but some in the past, that lead up to the powwow. These are sandwiched between an introduction and an “interlude” which serve as essays on what it means to be an Indian today and how to answer the stereotype criticisms such as “Why can’t you just get over it?”

The writing is strong and the author does an excellent job of taking on a variety of personas across age, gender, and the degree of self-identification with “Indian-hood.” Each character possesses and expresses a rich interior world combating any lazy assumption about people in any particular group being “all alike.”

While I’m glad I read this book, I did find it depressing and disturbing. Like many of the Native American books I’ve read, it is difficult to find any thread of hope. Most of the characters are caught up in drugs, poverty, alcoholism, babies born to addicted mothers, single or absent parents, foster care, etc. Even the characters who manage to avoid the worst, end up caring for family members who did not. It felt like the main aspect of Indian culture that was passed down was a sense of inherited oppression and anger, which while justified, does not help anyone move forward. I prefer novels that focus on some kind of positive path rather than dwelling exclusively on the misery of the past and present without any suggestions of hope. One character — a substance abuse counselor who herself is only 11 days sober — says that it is hard to sell “Life is OK” when it isn’t. But why not focus on what is possible for each person to do to make life OK? To be fair, several of the characters really were trying, but the overall message was one that said their chances of success were slim to none.

Leadership in Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I love Doris Kearns Goodwin — she is an amazing writer. She gets to the heart of any subject and draws you in. In this book — quite appropriate for our times — she profiles four American presidents whose strong leadership skills were critical in helping the country make it through a “turbulent” time. This includes: Lincoln and the Civil War (Transformational Leadership); Theodore Roosevelt dealing with the 1902 coal miners strike (Crisis Management); FDR bringing the country out of the Depression (Turnaround Leadership); and Lyndon Johnson and Civil Rights Legislation (Visionary Leadership).

She poses and tries to answer the big questions: “Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Do the times make the leader or does the leader shape the times? How can a leader infuse a sense of purpose and meaning into people’s lives? What is the difference between power, title, and leadership? Is leadership possible without a purpose larger than personal ambition?” How could you not be hooked?

The book is divided into three parts: Ambition and the Recognition of Leadership; Adversity and Growth; The Leader and the Times: How they Led. She looks at each man through the lens of leadership qualities and how they are attained, developed, and used: intelligence, energy empathy, skill at dealing with people, verbal and written gifts.

Although she has written about each of these men at length in previous books (which I’ve read), I was spellbound by this new curation of the facts. Each president faced horribly difficult challenges for the country and in each case their approach brought about a (positive in my opinion) shift in thinking. Lincoln brought together a cabinet of his competitors, valuing competency and other opinions over agreement and consensus; Teddy Roosevelt with his “Square Deal” championed the concept of a president being the steward of the people, rather than the servant of Congress; FDR brought regulation to industries — particularly the banking industry — to help prevent the kind of wholesale loss that led to the Depression; and my favorite — Lyndon Johnson (not an orator by any means) making the speech championing civil rights saying “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the issue of human rights.”

Definitely worth reading.

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

Characters: 5 Writing: 5 Plot: 4.5

A remarkable and entertaining book — appealing to literary fiction and mystery lovers alike. As a whodunit, it has it all — convoluted plot, simmering tensions in the community, and plenty of motive to spread amongst an array of characters. What takes it past straight mystery and into the realm of literary fiction is the top notch writing (see great lines below), truly in-depth characters, and the fact that the narrative never takes the easy way out.

This is a story of murder in the small, East Texas community of Lark (population 178). Two bodies are pulled out of the bayou behind Georgia Sweet’s Sweet shop within days of each other — a 35-year old black man and a 20-year old local white woman. Darren Matthews, one of the few black Texas Rangers (his now-deceased favorite Uncle was the first) is unofficially asked to nose around the case. Darren is the epitome of the Hero — a strong, capable, focussed man who can’t bear to injustice — especially when it has a racial component. He won’t stand by as the black community takes the heat for the white girl’s death, but neither does he give in to the temptation of assuming the Aryan Brotherhood (ensconced just down the road at the Ice House) are to blame. He must work around a local (white) Sheriff who seethes under Matthews’ technically superior rank, the threatening Brotherhood members who would love to get “credit” for bringing down a black Ranger, and even a black community that doesn’t appear to trust him.

This 2018 Edgar Award winning book goes deep into the way racial tensions can fracture a community and give rise to crimes that are far more nuanced than your typical hate crimes. I couldn’t put this book down, though I have to say the stress level (for me, as I can never seem to separate myself from a book that feels as real as this one) was quite high.

Strongly recommended!

Some of my favorite lines:

“Seemed like death had a mind to follow her around in this life time. It was a sly shadow at her back, as single-minded as a dog on a hunt, as faithful, too.”

“Criminality, once it touched black life, was a stain hard to remove.”

“…men of stature and purpose, who each believed he’d found in his respective profession a way to make the country fundamentally hospitable to black life.” (about his uncles…)

“But sometime after he hit forty, the word Mama shot out as if it were a stubborn seed lodged in his teeth all these years that had finally popped free.”

“Most black folks living in Lark came from sharecropping families, trading their physical enslavement for the crushing debt that came with tenant farming, a leap from the frying pan into the fire, from the certainty of hell to the slow, torture of hope.

“For black folks, injustice came from both sides of the law, a double-edged sword of heartache and pain.”

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith

Writing: 4.5 Characters: 4.5 Plot: 4.5

Another great installment of the Cormoran Strike series. These books just fly for me — 600+ pages and I finished it in two days. The plot is just convoluted enough to require focus, but not confusing or (even worse) stupid. Rowling is the master of the archetypal character — each appeals to us in deeply rooted ways, but is fleshed out enough to feel fully human. I am drawn to Strike, and the reason is nicely summarized in this line: “…but the itch to detect, solve and reimpose order upon the moral universe could not be extinguished in him.” I like characters that are aware they dwell in a moral universe and apply themselves to keeping it that way!

In this episode, Strike and his equally well-developed sidekick Robin Ellacott, investigate the blackmailing of the distinctly unlikable Jasper Chiswell, Minister of Culture. Coincidentally, Strike is approached by a malodorous and highly agitated young man who claims to have witnessed a strangling and burial on the grounds of Chiswell’s estate when he was a small child. While he is most likely delusional, there is just enough about the interaction to turn “that niggling doubt into a significant and possibly permanent impediment to the detective’s peace of mind.”

Plenty of color is provided in the interactions between aristocrats (the Chiswell family and friends) and a group of Marxists, including the son of the old Chiswell estate caretaker. While none come off as particularly appealing, the aristocrats come off decidedly worse. While some are less unpleasant than others, they all share a disregard for the lives of those who are not in their social class. Also included, some pretty funny references to the experience of “sudden” fame for Strike, which must have come directly from Rowling’s own experience.

The writing is as great as you’d expect — my only complaint is that too much time is spent on the nature of the relationship between Strike and Robin. Does he like me? Why is she still with her twit husband? Is he falling for another woman? Blah, blah, blah. That part reads like a poorly drafted romance novel that has run out of ideas. Luckily, plenty of action and intriguing characters help distract the reader from that small irritation.

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House Publishing Group through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. The book will be published on March 26, 2019.
Writing: 5 Plot: 4.5 Characters: 4.5

69-year old leading Cambridge economist Professor Chandra is a shoe-in for the Nobel prize in Economics — except that he doesn’t get it. Divorced, distant from his three children, and frustrated with the new tenor of academic life, this “non event” coupled with a silent heart attack sends him off on an unintended, Siddhartha-like quest for personal enlightenment (naturally starting with a sabbatical at UC Bella Vista in Southern California).

His journey takes him to unlikely places — both physical and emotional. He is tricked into attending a weekend workshop at Esalen; he visits his ex-wife and new, annoying husband in Boulder in order to see his troubled daughter Jasmine; he searches for a way to reach his middle daughter Radha — an angry Marxist who hasn’t spoken to her conservative father in over two years; and visits his son Sunil’s highly successful Hong Kong-based “School for Mindful Business” (based on principles completely antithetical to his own). He learns that he is human and not infallible and finds himself more OK with that than he would have expected.

Excellent and insightful writing — wry and witty with deliciously pithy and often hysterical articulations of his evolving viewpoints. Lots of interesting commentary about psychology, economics, spirituality, achievement and the personal search for meaning and happiness.  I appreciate that while he learns more about himself, his priorities, and his relationships, he does not relinquish his intellectual interests or accomplishments.

Some great lines:

Brief but scathing summary of the identity politics Radha adheres to:
“‘West’ … ‘bourgeois’ … ‘capitalist’ … these words would fly from her lips like tiny swastikas, her knuckles turning white, her jaw clenched, her eyes hard as Siberian pickaxes as she sentenced most of the world to the gulag for their crimes against ideology.”

“An Indian Miss Havisham with an Emeritus Professorship and a takeaway menu.”

“… but he couldn’t help believing meditation was best suited to those with less mind to be mindful of: sociologists, for example, or geologists”

“Humans were like those snowflakes against the window, buffeted by winds no one understood.”

“Chandra accepted the phone as if he’d been handed a small but quite genuine lump of plutonium.”

“They seem to come pre-offended, forsaking any analytical content in favor of emotion and outrage.”

“But the undergraduates were even worse than in Cambridge: arrogant, unhygenic, and brazen, convinced that lazy platitudes and fallacious arguments would earn them nothing but praise if delivered with sufficient conviction.”

“King’s was Chandra’s least favorite college. It was the intellectual equivalent of a Disney princess, fluttering its eyelashes at tourists who didn’t know any better.”

“It was what Chandra loathed most about liberals — their shameless self-righteousness, as if the species’ failings were always someone else’s fault, while anything they did, murder and arson included, were heroic acts in the service of liberty and justice.”