Author Archive
What if Harry Potter hadn’t been a charming British orphan, but a middle class nerd from Brooklyn? And, instead of attending Hogwarts as an 11-year old, he finished high school as a muggle and didn’t discover his wizardly talents until he was invited to apply to a prestigious magical university?
Lev Grossman’s The Magicians isn’t an imitation Harry Potter, but it definitely borrows some important plot points. Like Harry, Grossman’s “chosen one”, Quentin, is isolated from his peers as a child and finds a home in the world of magic, but the similarities pretty much end there. Quentin has a delightfully dry sense of humor, and he doesn’t have Harry’s moral compass clearly leading him down the right path towards the good side. In Quentin’s world, there’s no Voldemort to fight, so the differences between right and wrong are harder to see. The fact that Quentin’s magical education takes place at college, rather than high school, also makes them pretty different. By 17, after dealing with much more than your average teen, Harry is a mature young man, but at the same age, Quentin hasn’t yet begun to grow up.
This is not your typical fantasy novel. It’s self-aware and sarcastic, playing with the conventions of traditional fantasies while creating a fresh, new world of magic that coexists with our own. Quentin’s love of a book series set in Fillory, a world reminiscent of Narnia, adds a touch of irony and makes him an even more relatable character. Fans of exciting, out of the ordinary coming-of-age novels will be just as delighted by this book as fantasy readers, and anyone who read Harry Potter and mourned their muggle status will be insanely jealous of Quentin.
October 8th, 2009
Kylee
Banned Books Week is approaching, so if you’re looking for some rebellious reading, here’s a book for you.
Margo Lanagan’s novel Tender Morsels is pretty controversial right from the start, since it begins with a few scenes involving incest and gang rapes. However, despite these disturbing events, the book manages to use tragedy to create a sense of wonder. Predictably, this young adult novel has faced some individuals who want the book banned, but fortunately, librarians are sticking up for this startlingly beautiful book. Critics are also supporting it: it was named a 2008 Printz Honor Book and was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. (Lanagan’s first three books of short stories, Black Juice, White Time, and Red Spikes, are also pretty great. I definitely recommend checking these out if you’re not sure you want to start with Tender Morsels just yet. I bet after reading these, you’ll want more of Lanagan’s work.)
Tender Morsels is a fairy tale in a very real way; like the original stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm, this tale is filled with darkness while still maintaining a sense of hope. Lanagan’s heroine, Liga, lives through such horror as a girl that when she finally hits bottom, magical forces work in her favor to transport her to a parallel universe created especially for her. Here, she is free from the daily humiliations of poverty and the cruelty of men. However, the boundaries between her universe and reality are thin, and will not keep everyone out (or in) forever. Liga is a fascinating character, and the world she lives in is so perfectly described that it seems just as real as the world she left. The book unfolds slowly like an old-fashioned, traditional fantasy, but the events that take place are utterly new and original. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, and I hope its rebelliousness only works in its favor.
September 8th, 2009
Kylee
When I saw that Robert Goolrick’s debut novel A Reliable Wife was about a mail-order bride AND it was set in Wisconsin, I had to read it. Wealthy, lonely Ralph Truitt has a dark past that sets him apart from everyone in the town of Truitt, Wisconsin (named after his entrepreneur grandfather) in 1907. He places an ad in the newspaper to find a “reliable wife” to help him get through the harsh winters, but what he finds is not so reliable. Catherine Land, the woman he chooses to marry from the many responses he receives, is clearly hiding something. As Ralph and Catherine become acquainted amidst snowstorms and ice, their pasts and possible futures are slowly revealed - as is the small bottle of arsenic Catherine has tucked away in her suitcase.
Goolrick manages to incorporate elements of a gothic tale, a Dickensian tragedy, and a Harlequin romance into this suspenseful drama. If that sounds like way too much to pack into one book, well, it probably is, but somehow, Goolrick pulls it off. Though Catherine and Ralph are melodramatic characters and the events of their lives border on ludicrous, their earnestness makes them intriguing, and I was willing to set aside my skepticism just to find out what they were going to do. A word of caution, though: this book is pretty racy. Be prepared for more than one R-rated scene.
August 21st, 2009
Kylee
Now that vampires are everywhere, there’s a new trendy undead: zombies. They may not be as romantic as vampires, with their sometimes sparkly skin, glamorous fangs, and insatiable thirst for blood, but there’s a lot to be said for the plain old corpse about town. My first encounter with the zombie trend was in Carrie Ryan’s deliciously creepy The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Mary is an orphan, which leaves her only two options in her strict, old-fashioned society: marry and have children, or join the mysterious Sisterhood that watches over the town. When a mysterious outsider breaches the borders that keep the town safe from the Unconsecrated, the vicious, flesh-eating undead that surround them, Mary must fight to keep her loved ones alive. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is fast-paced and filled with action and drama, but there are a few holes in the plot, and the writing didn’t knock my socks off.
Zombie Blondes by Brian James is more my style. 15 year old Hannah is used to being the new girl in school, since she and her father are constantly moving, due his problems with creditors and keeping a job. Hannah usually has no problem spotting the popular group in school, and in Maplegrove, it’s pretty obvious: Maggie and her clan of blonde cheerleaders rule the school. When Hannah is invited to join the group, she learns that the cheerleaders’ seeming perfection is anything but natural.
I liked Zombie Blondes, but Generation Dead by
Daniel Waters is by far my favorite of these three. Phoebe is a goth outsider with a keen interest in a new phenomenon: teenagers across America are dying and coming back to life. Scientists are baffled as to why some teens come back and some don’t; they’ve considered mold spores in the brain, or the consumption of too many fast food preservatives. Regardless of the cause of the undead, they are a fact of life. Phoebe joins a group of students crusading for rights for the “differently biotic” and even meets a special someone with very cold hands. I can’t wait to read the sequel, Kiss of Life.
Teens aren’t the only ones benefiting from the zombie trend. For an adult perspective on the undead, give Breathers: a Zombie’s Lament by S.G. Browne a shot. This darkly funny novel is narrated by a young man who wakes from the dead and finds himself stuck “living” in his parents’ basement, trying to control his hunger for flesh. And of course, you may have heard of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which gives even Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy a chance to get in on the zombie action.
August 6th, 2009
Kylee
I had very high expectations for China Mieville’s sci-fi crime novel The City & the City, and while it was a good, well written story, I just didn’t love it the way I hoped I would. The story’s setting was my favorite part: the cities that the book is named for, Beszel and Ul Qoma, are located in Eastern Europe on the exact same spot on the map. Due to some unexplained political events, the two cities have come to exist in the same area. Though geographically next to each other, the citizens of each city must obey strict laws regarding their own city’s borders, to the point that they must “unsee” those who reside in the other city but are located within eyesight. A mysterious entity known as Breach watches over both cities to ensure that anyone who violates the border in any way is swiftly punished.
Inspector Tyador Borlu of Beszel is the unlucky official assigned to investigate a complicated situation: an American studying in Ul Qoma is found murdered in Beszel. The case leads him to Ul Qoma to collaborate with their police force, and while investigating the murder, Borlu becomes involved in a web of intrigue that links both cities and beyond.
The cities Mieville has created in this novel are fascinating, but unfortunately, I found his characters dull in comparison. Mieville blends his expert science fiction writing with the conventions of a detective novel, which unfortunately includes the shallow characterizations and cliched dialogue that can crop up in some mediocre examples of the genre. The author also provides little in the way of a history of the cities, which I found frustrating. I couldn’t understand why the two cities existed simultaneously, considering the fact that they were in the same space. Some of the oddities this arrangement creates are explained, such as intense training programs for any foreign visitors, who must learn to unsee the other city, and factions of rebellious “unificationinst” causing trouble, but I never found a satisfactory explanation of why these people can’t just live together anywhere in the book. I think I’m probably supposed to simply accept the situation, but I just couldn’t stop myself from finding it ridiculous, which probably kept me from enjoying the whole novel. That said, the book still kept me turning the pages, which I think has more to do with Mieville’s writing than anything else. I’m eager to check out more of his work, since it seems that The City & the City is a departure from his usual style. I think I’ll start with Un Lun Dun, which takes place in an alternate London and has been compared to Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.
July 13th, 2009
Kylee
Let me make this clear right off the bat: Truly Plaice isn’t really a giant. At least, she’s isn’t what you’d find at the top of a beanstalk. She’s more an Andre the Giant type; hence the “little” before “giant” in the title of Tiffany Baker’s debut novel The Little Giant of Aberdeen County. That said, it took me about half of the book to accept that Truly wasn’t going to be crushing towns beneath her feet or even yelling “fee, fi, fo, fum,” but once I got over my disappointment, I really started to enjoy this book.
Truly Plaice is truly out of place (sorry, I couldn’t resist) in Aberdeen County during the 1950s. There’s something strange about her from the start - when her mother’s stomach looks more like she’s carrying triplets than a single baby, everyone starts to wonder what kind of child is growing in there. Tragically, Truly’s mother dies in childbirth, leaving her father to raise her and her lovely older sister Serena Jane. Truly grows faster than a normal child, quickly outgrowing her sister’s old clothes until her father’s old shirts are about all she can wear. Her size and awkwardness are made even more obvious in comparison with Serena Jane, whose delicate, doll-like features make her one of the prettiest girls in town.
A series of unfortunate circumstances leads Truly to the home of the Dyersons, a poor family known locally for their consistent bad luck, and Serena Jane to a hasty marriage to Bob-Bob Martin, son of the town doctor. When Serena Jane leaves her family, Truly must pick up the pieces, and in the process, finally accept her own larger-than-life identity. Like its heroine, The Little Giant of Aberdeen County is a little giant of a novel. At 341 pages, it’s not overly wordy, or even too heavy to carry around in a large-ish purse or briefcase, yet it manages to pack quite a number of years between its covers. The ambitious story the author successfully folds into these pages follows Truly’s upbringing from childhood to her later life, and in between, elegantly reveals the changes in Aberdeen County itself through the decades. While barely spanning two generations, the novel captures the feeling of a sprawling epic with a refreshing clarity and conciseness, while subplots involving potential witchcraft and the Vietnam War also add to the intrigue.
June 29th, 2009
Kylee
Nearly every American has read at least one unflinching account of slavery - painful as it is, it’s an important part of our country’s history. Bernardine Evaristo has written an entirely new sort of slave narrative: an imaginative one in which the white people are the slaves, not the slave owners. Her novel Blonde Roots imagines what the world would be like if Europeans were smuggled into Africa to work on sugar cane plantations, rather than Africans being sold to Americans to work in their fields. She tells the story of Doris Scagglethorpe, a woman kidnapped from the Cabbage Coast of England as a girl, who has worked for Captain Katamba (whose initials - ironically, KKK - are branded onto her back) ever since. The book is divided into three parts: our introduction to Doris just as she’s given an opportunity to flee with the help of the underground railroad, a change in perspective to see things from her master’s point of view, and a return to Doris’s life on a sugar cane plantation. This is an ambitious, audacious novel, and I’m not sure it’s entirely successful. The tone of the narration is dry and clever, verging on snarky, which makes it interesting to read, but frankly, made me pretty uncomfortable. If the author intended to use shock value to make her point, it certainly worked on me.
After Blonde Roots, I decided to check out Octavia Butler’s classic science fiction-influenced novel of slavery, Kindred, which I though was a heck of a lot better. Dana is a 26-year old newlywed writer who is in the process of settling into her new home with her husband Kevin when she is instantly transported to a different time and place - the pre-Civil War South. After saving a young child from drowning, she finds herself back in her living room. Back in 1976, she deduces that the plantation she was on was the very same one that Alice, an ancestor whose name she has only seen in an heirloom family Bible, may have been a slave on. The next time she feels herself being pulled away, Kevin grabs her and is transported with her. Kevin’s white skin gives him an entirely different role in this other world, one that tests their relationship in ways nothing could today.
Butler brilliantly imagines Dana’s experiences as a highly educated, modern black woman thrown into the world of slavery, and reading about these experiences is painful and eye-opening. Dana’s relationships with Kevin and with Rufus, another ancestor who also happens to run the plantation, are expertly explored through Butler’s writing. I think Evaristo might have been attempting to evoke a similar effect in her novel, but if you ask me, Butler clearly has won this round. I also recommend M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing if you’re interested in fresh takes on slave narratives.
June 16th, 2009
Kylee
It’s been a long time since I read a biography. In fact, I think the last time I read one, I had to get up in front of the class and give a report about it. So, I wasn’t sure what to expect from James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. I figured I’d read about her childhood, her career, and her death - nothing too shocking or exciting.
Well, there were no surprises in the book’s plot - it followed her life, beginning, middle, and end, but I was surprised by how engrossing this factual information actually was. I’m generally pretty biased - I tend to think nonfiction is boring, simply because of that “non” at the beginning of the word - but I think my reading tastes are finally beginning to evolve. Or maybe Sheldon’s life is just exciting and quirky enough to satisfy my need for a good story, and author Julie Phillips’s writing is elegant enough to feel like a good “literary” work.
Sheldon’s life is undeniably interesting. The daughter of a successful writer and lawyer, Alice grew up shuffling between her family’s penthouse in Chicago and their lengthy forays into the African wilderness. Always a rebellious girl, she eloped the night of her debutante party, and eventually ended up in the armed forces. After WWII, she and her second husband (her former boss) decided to try their hand at chicken farming, but after a few years of the quiet life ended up with jobs in the CIA. And then, as if this weren’t enough, after leaving the CIA and earning a PhD in psychology, Alice began to dabble in writing fiction. In order to protect her shyness and scholarly reputation, she sent her science fiction stories (which she considered a guilty pleasure) to publishers under the name James Tiptree, Jr., a moniker she and her husband jokingly created one day in the grocery store. Tiptree’s stories were immediately successful, and eventually became some of the most highly respected works in the genre.
I won’t tell you what exactly what happens at the end of her life, but it’s definitely dramatic enough to be a novel. And with the excerpts from Sheldon’s and Tiptree’s prolific epistolary relationships with other authors (including sci-fi favorites like Philip K. Dick and Ursula LeGuin) that Phillips includes liberally throughout the book, it does almost read like a novel. I must confess, I haven’t read any of Tiptree’s stories yet, but I was interested in him/her because I’d heard of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is given to outstanding works that play with the idea of gender in science fiction - pretty cleverly named, huh? I highly recommend the 2006 winner, Half Life, by Shelley Jackson, previously reviewed here, and I’m really looking forward to the reading the 2007 winner, Sarah Hall’s Daughters of the North. Another cool fact about the award: it was first announced in 1991 at WisCon, the only feminist science fiction convention, which happens to be held every Memorial Day weekend right here in Madison!
May 12th, 2009
Kylee
I’m not sure when or where I first heard of Martin Millar, but for some reason, his name has been on my radar for a while. Millar’s best known book is probably The Good Fairies of New York, which was a success in England when it was published in the early 1990s, but it didn’t make its way to us overseas until just a few years ago. He’s one of those authors that other authors love (see the glowing introduction by fantasy master Neil Gaiman in the newest edition of The Good Fairies of New York), but his books are just beginning to catch on beyond an underground cult following.
I’ve never been to New York City (though I plan to go someday), but after reading this book, I almost feel like I have. If there are invisible fairies all over the place getting involved in everything from beer-stealing to race riots, that is. In Millar’s New York, Heather and Morag, two Scottish thistle fairies, have found a hiding place from the law, which is after them because of an incident involving a precious fairy artifact and their noses. Though they’re in hiding, they don’t keep themselves well hidden; their brightly colored hair and artfully tattered kilts easily reveal their rebellious punk sensibilities. In order to find shelter, and to make the most of their time in the city, they start up friendships with two humans who can actually see them (not all humans can see fairies - only those with a special sensitivity). Heather and Morag’s love/hate relationship leads them into some extreme difficulties with their humans, who they attempt to persuade to fall in love in a roundabout sort of way.
If you’re looking for a light, clever book to kick off your summer reading, I’d highly recommend this one. Heather and Morag’s antics made me laugh out loud, and their interference in their humans’ lives created some hilarious situations. Even if you’re not a big fan of fantasy, this one might be a good introduction to the genre, since it blends the fairy world and the human world seamlessly.
April 30th, 2009
Kylee
You might think you don’t like science fiction, but you might really like the story of Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, the lone survivor of a long expedition in an unknown territory. Sure, the “long expedition” may be a 40 Earth-year trip through space in a refurbished asteroid, and the “unknown territory” is the planet Rakhat, millions of miles from our solar system, but the setting is really secondary to the story. In The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell has done what I thought was impossible: she has written a novel that includes space travel, aliens, and asteroids that doesn’t confuse me, bore me, or make me giggle when I’m not supposed to. In fact, I absolutely loved it.
Sandoz isn’t your typical space traveler. He’s extremely intelligent, but not when it comes to physics or aeronautics or any of those other science-y things that are so important on a spaceship. He’s actually a linguist, one who specializes in learning languages by being thrown into the thick of them. He’s worked in remote areas of Earth with tribes that rarely see modern men, but he hasn’t seen anything like what he finds on Rakhat. His story begins in the year 2059, when he returns to Earth without the seven colleagues he originally left the planet with, utterly traumatized in mind and body. He must explain himself to his fellow Jesuits, who learned from transmissions from a group that were sent to Rakhat after his own that Sandoz had murdered a child and worked in a brothel during his time away from the planet. Sandoz admits that these shocking events are true, and explains how and why these things happened through a series of intense conversations with the priests and flashbacks to more innocent times, when enountering Rakhat and its inhabitants was merely an exciting idea.
At first, Sandoz’s situation doesn’t sound like something anyone could relate to, but I’d challenge anyone who reads this book not to empathize with him at some point. His struggles with his faith throughout the novel are poignant and very real, and his need to reconcile his past as the son of a drug dealer in Puerto Rico with his unknown future in a very different environment also resonates with the reader. And on top of it all, he has a great sense of humor. Even better: he isn’t the only character that is so wonderfully written! The novel is filled with characters just as fascinating as Sandoz, and their relationships and conversations throughout their ordeals are beautifully portrayed. I could go on and on about how much I love this book, but I think I’ll just pick up its sequel, Children of God, instead.
March 3rd, 2009
Kylee
I somehow missed a very important aspect of Andrew Davidson’s debut novel The Gargoyle when I skimmed some blurbs about it: the protagonist is a former porn star/director/producer. I’m not usually easily offended, but I almost put down the book after the first few chapters, which detail the narrator’s history and the tragic end of his career due to a disfiguring car accident. The book wasn’t outrageously scandalous, but I just didn’t like the narrator. I didn’t think he had any redeeming qualities, despite his amusingly arrogant delivery. I kept reading, though, and I ended up getting pretty engrossed in the story. Once our hero ends up in a burn ward, anticipating a new life of celibacy, he meets Marianne Engel, a sculptress from the psych ward down the hall. Marianne Engel (who is consistently referred to by her full name throughout the book) claims that she has known the narrator since they were first lovers in the 14th century. As she becomes a frequent visitor, she tells tales of her own history, as well as stories of other lovers throughout time and space, whose lives seem to intersect with each other, as well as Marianne Engel’s. When Marianne Engel’s 14th century past collides with the present, the narrator is forced to come to terms with this woman and his relationship with her.
While I’m usually quick to buy into any fantastical setting or premise, I just didn’t love this book. I liked that it’s incredibly ambitious, and many of the historical flashbacks are fascinating stories in themselves, but I didn’t see the relationship between the two main characters as the tragic romance I felt I was supposed to. Their love that had supposedly lasted for hundreds of years seemed rather shallow to me, and the character’s conversations left something to be desired, especially in the scenes of their modern-day romance, a fault made more noticeable by the often eloquent prose detailing the historical scenes. For a really great time travel love story, I’d recommend The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, a book that may not span more than a single lifetime, but in which the dialogue generally doesn’t make me cringe.
February 11th, 2009
Kylee
I LOVE Kelly Link. If I were stranded on a desert island and could bring just one book, her short story collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners would be very strong contenders. These two collections feature brilliant stories that bounce between the real and surreal, written in a way that manages to be witty without being smug and poetic without being over-the-top sentimental. When I saw that a new collection of her stories was being published for young adults in Pretty Monsters, her “major label debut”, I was very excited. (Her other works have been published by her own Small Beer Press, where you can download Magic for Beginners for free!) When I finally got the book in my hands, I was a little disappointed to find that many of the stories had been taken from her two previous collections, but the reprints are some of my favorites, and the new stories are equally delightful. The stories that are reprinted in the collection are many of those that feature a young protagonist, making them a perfect introduction to Link for young adult readers in particular, but also for anyone else interested in short stories that are out of the ordinary.
For me, the highlight of the collection is the story “Magic for Beginners”, from the book with the same title. In this story, a teenage boy goes on a quest to save Fox, his favorite character from a renegade TV show that’s randomly broadcast whenever and wherever its anonymous producers decide. His journey with his mother in a very fancy van takes him to various eccentric libraries and his own phone booth, ending at a wedding chapel in Las Vegas that his mother has inherited. Describing the plot doesn’t do the story justice; the breathless, excited narration makes the story so much more than a series of odd happenings. Another favorite is the title story of this collection, “Pretty Monsters,” which interweaves a few different stories about teenage girls with werewolf connections in a pop culture-laden tale of teenage relationships. I really can’t say enough about how fantastic these stories are, and Shaun Tan’s illustrations introducing each story add a lovely touch to an already exquisite book.
January 23rd, 2009
Kylee
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