Mockingjay

By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press

Mockingjay has finally arrived to conclude the breathtaking trilogy that began in 2006 with the conclusively-titled The Hunger Games. And this time, things have changed. In global effect, for better or worse, the main characters are bringing the furious fight to the enemy’s doorstep, in an act of rousing rebellion. But do they prevail? Well, I can’t answer that.

In Mockingjay, Collins holds her own under external pressure to show the blunted faces of the worst brought out in humanity, but also the best of what makes us human, compatible life forces willing to love, to teach, and to learn in the shadows of dark times. What was merely a sadistic game of cat-and-mouse is now a battleground, a fledgling place where heroes are born and lives are lost. Every punch is pulled, which is not to say the first and second books didn't contain conflict, but things are now broadened on the horizon. The characters realize they have entered an alien place, a wildfire atmosphere only done justice by a single word: war.

What really propels this book is its characters, particularly Katniss, who fight for what they believe in and stand alongside those they love. Each play pivotal roles in supporting each other, and adds a unique back story, just when you thought everything was already revealed. Loyalties are tested and occasional twists paint a very thin line between good and evil, relishing in the fact that, as human beings, we are collections of both.

Any age can enjoy this book; however, the content is some of the most unwaveringly brutal and violent written work on the young adult market. Accusing The Hunger Games of glorifying violence is putting a very narrow perspective on things. The violence is there because it is necessary, willing to achieve a point by demonstrating the calculating monstrosities of war, warning readers about the implications of certain decisions, and feeling powerless to stop others of a higher social status.

The inclusion of strong female heroine give a sense of feminism to the book. At times, Katniss remained stricken, almost too conflicted, but it is a foreplay, a buildup to the explosive climax. She learns things about herself, growing as a person. It is the emotion, what we feel in our heart, not the misguided actions that make us for who we are. Everyone has a flaw, whether it be acid, spiders, or fear itself.

All the while, Collins maintains the pacing she keeps in the previous two. I was floored from the first page all to the way to the spectacular last. Small things are left unanswered, forcing the reader to come away from the experience to visualize, decoding what they think and understand.

By the time I finished, Mockingjay left me conflicted but satisfied, ruminating on the implications of what I read. Thankfully, it was a virtuoso performance I will not forget in a hurry. And not many books can do that. In a sense, young adult literature has some startlingly powerful messages to deliver, even branded for a younger generation. Older readers, and even fully-fledged adults, would find much to enjoy here.

Mockingjay delivers a stark limelight of the gratuitous impact of war on life, and examines the most powerful force on the planet through post-trauma, blood, tears, and the unbreakable substance of love. It is a masterful conclusion to an already groundbreaking series in young adult literature. If you haven’t experienced the raw potential for what The Hunger Games is all about, then I highly recommend doing so.

Review by Dan Goodman

Excerpted from Literary Musings

Small Displacements

By Vanessa Furse Jackson
Livingston Press

This tiny, obscure (I am the only person as of this writing to add and review it on Goodreads) volume of short stories by England native and Ohio resident writer Vanessa Furse Jackson ties together eleven tales into a loose theme: sudden changes in someone's life, whether major or minor, and the resulting shift felt afterward. Most of the stories are overtly sad, with others having just undercurrents of a sort of foreshadowed melancholy with abrupt endings. These lead the reader to hunt backwards over what was just read, looking for further clues to piece together some sort of denouement other than the insidious daylight gloom at story's end.

The titular “displacements” experienced by the stories' characters range from the prolonged deaths of spouses, the growing apart of spouses, and the chance meeting of unhappy strangers with something to offer the other. Children are not spared these wounds and scarifications of life, and instead seem to fare the worst in Jackson's stories. Prankster adolescents are thrust from their childhoods by a strange, menacing adult, a fourteen-year-old girl waits with her mother in an abortion clinic, and two young siblings are faced for the first time with the death of a friend and their uncertainty at how to grieve. Though all the stories are brief and the characters necessarily sketched as concisely, the reader can't help but feel emotionally invested in them nonetheless.

I think Vanessa Furse Jackson shows skill as a character artist; her detail and language is sparse, but it doesn't hurt her storytelling and writing prowess. She just doesn't engage in overly flowery or purple prose, preferring to concentrate instead on her characters and the situations and actions in which they find themselves. At 155 pages, Small Displacements is a quick, needle-sharp, and gut-punching read.

Review by Natalie Ballard

Her America: “A Jury of Her Peers” and Other Stories

By Susan Glaspell
Edited by Patricia L. Bryan and Martha C. Carpentier
University of Iowa Press

Popular in her own time, Susan Glaspell has somewhat fallen out of favor in contemporary academic circles while other American writers of realist fiction such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Willa Cather have enjoyed more attention. Yet, Glaspell enjoys a mini-renaissance in Her America: "A Jury of Her Peers" and Other Stories, an edited collection of twelve short stories that joins a growing movement led by feminist scholars to recuperate her work.

Spanning the years 1914 to 1927, these stories are vibrant tales of the United States at the turn of the century and are alternately humorous and touching, speaking to timeless concerns such as individual isolation, our collective responsibility to each other, the illusions we hold about ourselves and others, and the cost of pretending to be someone we’re not. Many readers will easily see themselves and/or their neighbors in Glaspell’s vivid cast of characters—whether it’s the young adopted woman who mourns the discovery that her biological mother was not a gypsy (“Unveiling Brenda”), or the pseudo-intellectual who feels sorry for his brother’s “common” life only to learn that his brother had, in fact, felt sorry for him (“Poor Ed”).

Glaspell’s compassion for the people who populate Her America is striking. This is clear in such stories as “The Manager of Crystal Sulphur Springs” wherein a caretaker chooses to let her elderly patient die rather than have him suffer potential humiliation or in the case of the farmer from the beautifully written “Pollen,” a man who obsessively isolates himself from his neighbors until he realizes that “I can’t have good corn while their corn’s poor.” Yet, even in stories wherein Glaspell pokes fun at her protagonists, she does so with an empathetic touch, reminiscent of Mark Twain’s satirical humor. A memorable instance is the story “Looking After Clara” about a vain man whose romantic overtures are undone by his beloved’s wily cat.

While it’s somewhat unfortunate that Glaspell is almost exclusively known for “A Jury of Her Peers” and the play Trifles on which it is based, it’s no wonder that this is the case. The story focuses on Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale who piece together a neighbor’s motive for killing her husband. While their husbands and the country attorney belittle their attention to Minnie Wright’s jarred preserves, quilt pieces and birdcage—what the men openly mock as “trifles”— these objects hold the key to her motive. These women come to realize Minnie’s desperation, and Mrs. Hale laments, “We live close together, and we live far apart,” questioning what was the greater crime—Minnie murdering her husband or her own failure to visit Minnie. Readers enjoy a pleasant surprise at encountering the story in its original version here. Between 1917 and its inclusion in The Best Short Stories of 1917 published in 1918, Glaspell made several revisions, most significantly deleting the final line, “He [the country attorney] did not see her [Mrs. Hale’s] eyes." Reprinting the original version opens up new interpretive possibilities for a classic of feminist literature.

Besides the stories, Her America opens with a very useful introduction by the editors Patricia L. Bryan and Martha C. Carpentier. It provides background information about Glaspell’s early career and publication history while also introducing the stories’ thematic concerns and summarizing key features of Glaspell’s style. Overall, this book is a welcome text in reviving interest in Glaspell’s shorter works, and its cast of characters should definitely be introduced to a new audience. Since this collection provides just a taste of Glaspell’s skill as a storyteller, one can only hope that a complete collection of her short stories is forthcoming soon.

Review by Dr. Jennifer A. Smith

Buddha's Orphans

By Samrat Upadhyay

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I’ve been behind the ball in the sense that I haven’t had a chance to read any works by Samrat Upadhyay. Upadhyay is a Nepalese-American writer, who has already published three full-length works of fiction, including Arresting God in Kathmandu, The Royal Ghosts, and The Guru of Love. His latest novel is called Buddha's Orphans, and since it was just published, I felt it would be the perfect place to address my reading oversight.

Buddha's Orphans is exemplary of a book that entwines the political upheaval of Nepal with a personal love story. The emotional core is the fragile romance that blooms between Raja, an orphan, and Nilu, who hails from an upper-middle class background. One might read the novel through the frame of a Jamesonian allegory, but there are really too many layers and too many subplots to consider that already fracture our understanding of the novel, where post-colonial allegory is perhaps one of many competing concerns.

What makes Upadhyay’s novel a success is not so much the romance narrative itself, but the concluding arc in which Upadhyay makes clear that Raja’s experience is not singular. Indeed, there is an incredibly interesting repetitive narrative motif that emerges toward the novel’s end that makes it unclear whether a certain portion is occurring in one time period or another. Yet the point is dynamically made: the “orphans” that populate the novel are many in form and character, and the novel imagines a way in which to interrogate the cycle of expectation and caste that are the mainstay of other works situated in the field. Indeed, Raja and Nilu embark on a love marriage, rather than the more traditional forms that arise out of arrangements and matchmakings.

There is also a very interesting occupational trajectory for Raja, as he begins to work for a publishing company that produces tourist guides. Here, I couldn’t help but think about the way Upadhyay “domesticates” the Nepalese fictional terrain so that we might move beyond the touristic gaze that reduces the local population to “local color,” so quaint as to be purchased through trinkets and souvenirs. To be sure, Upadhyay does grant the reader uninformed of Nepalese contexts an engaging narrative, but it is not without its political heft and Raja continually considers the nature of his own political activism and his desire to produce social change.

Given the additive impulse that still sustains many of our teaching interests in Asian American literature, Upadhyay offers us a narrative which calls attention to a country often overlooked with the pan-ethnic rubric that situates the field. In this regard, his works are a welcome addition to syllabi looking to extend into national territories deserving of more representational inquiry. I enthusiastically look to catching up on his previous works!

Review by Stephen Hong Sohn

Cross-posted at Asian American Literature Fans

Fall

By Colin McAdam
Riverhead

Fall is the second novel of Colin McAdam. Set in an exclusive Canadian boarding high school, it is the tale of Noel, who becomes obsessed with Julius and Fall, the most beautiful and most popular couple at school. He sees himself as becoming less of an outcast when he finds out that Julius is his new roommate. Then Fall disappears and this has a profound impact on the both of them.

As someone who shamelessly loves the scandalous lives of rich and irresponsible teenagers, I thought this novel would be a bit like a good and thought-provoking version of Gossip Girl. While the look into the lives in a private high school was interesting on some level, the confusing dialogue and narration, combined with a formulaic plot and a problematic female character, made this a primarily frustrating read for me. The novel involved a great deal of dialogue between the various characters, but it became hard to keep track of who was speaking. I am always open to new forms of dialogue, but it was very hard for me to get enveloped into a story that I did not feel was structured very well.

Much of the book switches between the perspective of Noel and Julius, and usually their thoughts involve Fall. Noel is one of the most unsympathetic characters I have ever encountered. He is obsessive and creepy, and I don’t even love to hate him. A quiet, smart, and selfish young man, he is convinced that there is a cosmic connection between him and Fall, if only she could notice him. I even sympathised more with Julius, who was a stock rich-athletic-handsome-cool-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold. Julius never really developed as a character, just as Noel remained one creepy teenager.

The character that irritated me the most was Fall. She was mainly spoken about and obsessed over, serving as the springboard of the fantasies of these two young men. She is merely a manic pixie dream girl in literary form. The only main female character in this novel exists in order to show the fantasies of two rich and irresponsible young boys. She is beautiful, mysterious, unattainable, and most importantly passive. It made me feel as though that was her most desirable characteristic. Throughout the entire novel, Fall is treated as an object, because the two boys are speaking about her. Maybe the intention is to show that she did represent a certain level of fantasy for them. But why do we need another character like this?

The combination of a problematic female character, not much suspense, and a main character that was so creepy it was boring, I found Fall to be a very disappointing read.

Review by Sara Yasin

Blame

By Michelle Huneven
Picador

Michelle Huneven’s Blame spans twenty years in fewer than 300 pages but avoids any frantic pacing or strange leaps. Patsy MacLemoore, the main character, is an alcoholic. A young academic, her scholarly accomplishments initially help to balance negative effects of her alcoholism. Huneven’s protagonist has a professorship at a at a small liberal arts college. She had a small but sunny house, friends, family nearby, and was pretty, with long blonde hair, long tanned legs and a dazzling smile. At the county jail, the regular inmates call her “Professor” when she wakes up there after having had too much to drink.

When Patsy wakes up in jail—again—she assumes she’d simply had too much to drink; perhaps she’d driven even though her license had been revoked. She tries joking with the officers, the lawyers. She’d blacked out—again—and doesn’t know what she’d done to land in jail. “What is it?” she asks, “I really don’t remember. Did I kill someone?” She’s joking. Then they read her the police report. A mother and daughter, killed in her driveway, hit by a car.

Patsy pleads guilty and goes to prison. Huneven’s depiction of prison is sobering and not heavy-handed. She doesn’t romanticize Patsy’s prison experience, but neither does she withhold from her readers the moments of grace Patsy does experience there. In prison, Patsy sobers up, leaves prison and returns to town.

Patsy loses many friends, but miraculously (isn’t friendship and forgiveness always a miracle?), she is not left completely alone. Her ex-boyfriend visits her every week, becoming one of her most faithful and loyal friends. Her parents are gentle with her. Her brother looks out for her. When she leaves prison, she comes home to an apartment lovingly appointed by her best friend and his boyfriend. She meets an older man in AA and remains sober, gets married. Many years later, Patsy learns what happened when she blacked out in the car that night. That new information changes Patsy’s new and hard-won self-perception.

I didn’t want this book to end. The story isn’t incomplete, not by any means. Huneven’s feel for just the right bit of detail was wonderfully effective. I felt attached to these characters, their lives and stories, their back-stories, and their private moments very early on and simply wanted even more by the time the book ended. I loved them. I loved the depth with which Huneven wrote them. I am a sucker for stories depicting people who are deeply flawed but who are nevertheless very much loved. This was one of those stories and I hope to find another one like it again.

Review by kristina grob

'Til Death

By Miasha
Touchstone Books

In 'Til Death, the third and final installment for bestselling series Secret Society, Miasha takes us on a whirlwind adventure of sex, drugs, fame, and money. 'Til Death picks up where its predecessor Never Enough left off, and now fans can follow Celess and Sienna (better know as Si-Si) as they travel the world trying to avoid police who have accused them of murder and the psychopathic murderer who wants Si-Si dead. This fast-paced story takes you to places such as Rome, Italy; Cape Town, South Africa; and Dubai as our two leading ladies live off of rich men while building up an extremely successful escort agency.

I wanted to read the other books in this series so I would have a better sense of the current plot and background. While I love the storyline for its realism and energy and how it gives women power, I can't say I enjoyed the book as much as I would have liked to. Using the style of slang commonly found in R-rated gangster movies, 'Til Death is crudely written, making it difficult for a person not completely familiar with it to read the book without having to re-read, as much of it feels as if it hasn't been edited very well.

Along with this, the descriptions could use some cutting as they drag on needlessly, such as in Rome when Celess and Si-Si have multiple outfit changes. Miasha sees fit to take us from head to toe of everything the girls change into. While I understand that Celless is a shallow, money-obsessed woman who defines a person's wealth by what they wear, descriptions of all things Gucci that are a bit much for those of us who buy Levi's jeans. A simple and quick description would do just fine. The dialog also needs to be trimmed, such as when Si-Si, Celess, and Andrew go to a Roman night club to make a business deal and when Andrew finds the girls in Dubai. The reader is subjected to needless and sloppy segments of dialog that review what the reader already knows or can be pieced together from contextual clues.

All in all, the story itself was enjoyable but the way it was laid out left much to be desired. I wouldn't recommend 'Til Death to someone who isn't familiar with the author.

Review By Nina Lopez-Ortiz

The Second Trial

By Rosemarie Boll
Second Story Press

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a scourge that affects families in every country and at every social class. Between twenty-five and fifty percent of women worldwide will be a victim of IPV at some point in her life, and forty to seventy percent of female murder victims are killed by an intimate partner. These statistics are shocking, but what is too often left out of the discussion about IPV is the way violence can affect so many lives. When those in pop culture or the media explore themes relating to IPV, the conversation is limited to finding safety for the survivor, usually a woman, and to utilizing the traditional legal system to prosecute and punish the offender, usually a man. In The Second Trial, Rosemarie Boll moves beyond the dichotomy of perpetrator vs. victim and focuses on the too often invisible children who are harmed by IPV. Through the experiences of an adolescent boy, the book tells the story of a Canadian family coming to grips with extreme violence.

Boll introduces us to Danny, a thirteen-year-old boy who witnesses a family court hearing after his father seriously and continually abused his mother. The book tracks the boy through the court proceedings and then through life in a protection program designed to prevent his father from causing further serious harm to his mother. Viewing complicated legal issues around IPV through the eyes of a child highlights the disconnect between the formality of the legal system and the complex, sometimes contradictory emotions involved in family violence. Outsiders are used to seeing an evil offender and an innocent victim. But what does a child do when this “evil offender” is also a father? The Second Trial addresses these complicated questions of family and safety within an abusive household. Boll captures how a child can love and idolize a parent, even an abusive one.

By delving into tricky questions that surround IPV, Boll raises questions about how clunky traditional legal systems deal with complex issues in family law. She shines a light on non-court based innovations to keep families safe and introduces readers to New Identities for Victims of Abuse (NIVA), which was started by the Alberta government in 1997 to provide additional protection to victims of family violence. IPV is a serious and complicated problem that demands creative solutions. The confines of the courtroom should not be the limits of our solutions to IPV.

The Second Trial provides readers a glimpse into a child’s relationship with family violence, revealing an often forgotten voice in narratives about the subject. By contrasting traditional court-based solutions with the NIVA program, Boll makes us question the bounds of the traditional legal system. She leads readers to demand alternative avenues to justice and creative routes to safety for victims.

Review by Andrea Gittleman

Sacred Hearts

By Sarah Dunant
Random House

Sarah Dunant's first historical novel, The Birth of Venus, captured my attention right away with one of the best openings I've ever read. I picked up Sacred Hearts hoping for something equally brilliant. While I enjoyed the book, it is not one that will make your heart race; instead, you should immerse yourself in it, let it surround you so you are living with the nuns, at their pace. Enjoy the opportunity to sink into another life and another time.

Set in Florence in 1570, Sacred Hearts takes place within the walls of a convent. Young Serafina has been banished there by her family, to keep her from the man she loves. She is furious, and determined to escape.

Suora (Sister) Zuana is the convent's dispensary mistress, their only healer. She sees in Serafina more than just an unwilling novice. Though she carries out her duties (novices who wail through the night are sedated), Zuana's own troubling thoughts are rekindled. An educated woman with no dowry, she had no choice but to enter the convent. Her active mind clashes with the philosophy of convent life, and so she has had to dampen many of her more critical instincts.

Serafina arrives at a time when change is rocking the convent, the city, and the continent. There are many calling for stricter rules in these houses built for women and maintained by them. Abbess Madonna Chiara, Zuana's old friend, walks a fine line between hobbling her flock and appeasing the more radical members like Suora Umiliana, who believes they have a saint living among them.

All this excitement is tempered by the sedate atmosphere of convent life. Dunant has done an excellent job of crafting their world apart from the world. The convent is an insular place, where peace is maintained through quiet and routine. The disorder Serafina brings sends ripples through the convent, creating opportunities for some, and trapping others. The historical context of Florence in the early 1570s plays a large role in how the convent will, ultimately, change.

As for Serafina, her focus is solely on the man she loves. Her feverish desire turns to despair when their plans fall through, and the fever begins to consume her. Umiliana urges her on—deprivation will bring her closer to God, she insists, against Zuana's medical opinion.

The novel is a tapestry depicting the fight for balance and supremacy, woven with the threads of God, science, authority, family, love, and community.

Sacred Hearts makes it possible to both love and hate the convent system. Women enter for many reasons—poverty, tradition, disfigurement or disability, lack of a husband, to escape a bad husband, or even the opportunity for a different kind of freedom. Had Zuana married, she would be a wife and mother with no time to pursue her studies. Madonna Chiara has become a successful leader and politician, dealing with Church officials and the wealthy and powerful families of the nuns. The convent frees them of society's usual demands, creating a space for them to grow in other ways.

At the same time, there is much to rail against. Many of these women have been victims of society. Many, like Serafina, are not given a choice about entering the convent. Many fear the boredom—what is there to do for the rest of your life, trapped behind the walls? Add the usual feminist complains about religion (Chaiara is Abbess, but only a male priest can conduct services and give them the Eucharist.) and it sounds unbearable.

Dunant addresses this complaints in subtle ways, adhering more closely to the matters that concerned the women of the time. My fellow atheists may always be uncomfortable with topics like these, but Sacred Hearts affords us all a rare glimpse into the circumstances of these women.

Review by Richenda Gould

The Finishing Touches

By Hester Browne
Gallery

I consider myself a feminist yet I read chick lit like it's going out of fashion—is that strange? I'm aware this genre is often problematic from a certain feminist point of view, but it also provides ample material for a proper discussion. Hester Browne's The Finishing Touches really brought out the feminist in me and made me think about how things have changed—or have they?

The Finishing Touches is an incredibly witty and adorable story that I nearly stopped reading after the first few chapters. What bothered me so much, you ask? The novel is mostly set at Tallimore Academy, a finishing school in London that is running out of business. Prior to this reading, I was unfamiliar with finishing schools and I got my education as I turned each page. At finishing schools, young girls were taught how to be the most ladylike, perfect wives, which was to be their main purpose in life. This might sound terribly old fashioned nowadays, but this book puts a modern spin on the matter.

Our main character Betsy is called to the rescue; her adoptive parents own Tallimore Academy and she grew up there. Betsy's father asks her to save the school from its sure demise, and so she decides to update the courses to meet the needs of modern girls. The new classes include money management, parking properly, looking good in photos, walking in high heels, dressing for various occasions, and behaving well on dates. I think the reader was meant to be appalled by the original concept of finishing schools, but are these new courses really so different? Or are they just an updated version of old sexist ideas?

I'm sure you'll agree that mastering the above mentioned skills certainly can't hurt in today's shallow society. Personally, I find myself divided on whether I should be offended or consider them a clever idea (in a way). I certainly think these courses could be aimed at both sexes; after all, it's not just girls who need lessons in parking and relationships. I'm aware that these courses do nothing for female emancipation as a whole, and while a part of me rejects them immediately, another part asks, "Why not?"

The truth is that "being yourself," while a worthwhile goal, will often get you nowhere in our superficial society, so why not adapt? Why not make the best of your looks, get yourself noticed, and then show people what you're capable of instead of being dismissed before even getting a chance to succeed? Should a feminist stay true to herself by focusing more on intellect than appearance and counting on this being enough to reach her goals? Or should she make yourself as pretty and likable as possible (maybe even with the help of courses similar to those in this book), even though she knows the rules of this game are dictated by men and consumerism?

Personally, I've tried both. And I've been forced to do the latter quite often because I've found that the first method just doesn't seem to be enough. Nonetheless, I like to think I'm not betraying my feminist beliefs, and I feel that paying attention to my appearance gives me a confidence boost that helps me succeed. Maybe that's the trick: maybe it all just comes down to confidence. How confident are you to be yourself?

The Finishing Touches is an escapist read, and thus meant to be taken lightly, but it did a pretty good job of making me think about the predicament of modern women.

Review by Suzana @ Bookalicious Ramblings

Does this book sound interesting enough to read? Well, Suzana is giving away a copy on her blog. Click here to enter the giveaway.

Claire de Lune

By Christine Johnson
Simon Pulse

Claire de Lune, Christine Johnson’s debut novel, is a good, but not standout, addition to werewolf lit. The simple way that this twist on werewolf lore is presented will make it a quick and satisfying read to ardent werewolf lovers, though it will have a tougher time winning the hearts of others.

In Claire de Lune, Johnson introduces us to a different type of paranormal world, in which only females can be werewolves. It’s not a feminist book, per se, but the dynamic that this sets up allows Claire to grow into a strong and self-reliant girl/werewolf. Here, it’s the girl protecting the boy, not the usual other way around.

Having a girl be the strength in a relationship would be a great story, but the book never fully lives up to its potential. Outside of Claire, I found the characters difficult to get to know, most of them only fitting roles expected to appear in a paranormal romance: the tensions among the werewolf group members, the love interest’s villainous father, the head-butting mother. I never found myself fully immersed in Claire’s family dynamics, with her mother’s Type A “bad parent” personality and their rather inconsequential au pair (who’s more a red herring than a useful character). All of Matthew’s father’s supposedly malevolent machinations and campaign against werewolves remained in the distant background and never fully took on immediacy.

I guess I’m just extra cynical when it comes to paranormal romances nowadays: it’s going to take a lot to make something stand out for me. Claire de Lune never reaches that point, but I have no doubt that it will find its audience as scores of werewolf lovers prowl the shelves for something equally supernatural and romantic after watching Twilight for the twenty-eighth time.

Review by Steph Su Reads

Beauty

By Raphael Selbourne
Tindal Street Press

Beauty is the outstanding first novel of British author Raphael Selbourne, winner of the prestigious 2009 Costa First Novel Award (formerly known as the Whitbread Literary Awards). The novel’s plot is seemingly predictable–an illiterate girl runs away from an abusive home where she had been forced to marry a much older mullah (religious man) at the age of fourteen. However, Selbourne’s pen transforms the story into an insightful glimpse into British-style multiculturalism and immigration, from the point of view of a young woman. Beauty Begum’s tragic tale is one of a young immigrant woman doubly alienated by her family and her environment.

Beauty's timely publication in 2009 is worthy of note, given the paranoia and terror surrounding the tragic London bombings in 2005 and the overt racial profiling that has been ongoing in the Western world. Writer and filmmaker Hanif Kureishi (himself a Whitbread prizewinner) had previously focused in on the immigrant experience and depicted the struggles of Muslim immigrant families in Britain in his screenplays for My Beautiful Laundrette and My Son the Fanatic, for example. Selbourne’s novel can be seen as a valuable continuation of these themes. Although Beauty never directly addresses the reasons and context for the racism it exposes, it presents us with diverse xenophobic scenarios that are all equally deserving of consideration. It also brings to light the very complex circumstances of women immigrants, domestic abuse, and the everyday struggle of women who are caught between lived tradition and modernity. The author, previously a student of Islamic Studies, is clearly knowledgeable about the topic, a fact that counteracts any reservations we might have about the author’s being just another patriarchal gaze on the “subordinate.”

Selbourne’s secondary characters are rich in detail and complexity. From Mark, the gruff bloke who takes Beauty into his dog-infested home, to Peter, the newly single, perverted neighbor who fantasizes about seducing her, all the characters are cleverly constructed. However, Selbourne’s tour de force lies in his depiction of the feminine psyche. Beauty is very much a convincing female character, of the depth and quality that I had previously only encountered in Roddy Doyle’s Paula Spencer from The Woman Who Walked into Doors. The writer’s sensitivity is key to developing a plausible protagonist.

Raphael Selbourne establishes himself in the proud tradition of English-language writers who manage to paint realistic and tender portraits of specific social groups. Having lived in West Midlands teaching English, he captures the much-ridiculed West Midlands accent in his writing in the same way Roddy Doyle captured the Irish brogue in his novels. Selbourne’s Bangladesh-born Beauty speaks a drawl that is perfectly representative of the West Midlands (UK) setting of the novel. Furthermore, the author scatters Bengali terms in the novel, such as Beauty’s interjections, or explanations for her reactions, thoughts, or actions. Admittedly, Beauty is occasionally an exercise in reading; one must decipher, literally, the spoken language that the author has committed to the page. However, do not let this dissuade you from reading this engaging and thoughtful novel.

Review by Sophie M. Lavoie

29: A Novel

By Adena Halpern
Touchstone

If there is one book that will certainly be made into a successful film, it is this one. All the ingredients are there for an entertaining feature-length romp. The plot is quite simple: a seventy-five year old grandmother celebrates her birthday and, while blowing out her candles, makes a seemingly unattainable wish, to be twenty-nine again. Through the magic of Adena Halpern’s imagination, that is exactly what happens the next morning, with the ensuing hilarity and zany situations–including some saucy details!–which make this day-long trek through Ellie Jerome’s “new” life quite an exciting one.

The “flashback/forward to your own life” cinematographic genre is not a new one, and many films (that I admittedly have not seen) have capitalized on this popularity, such as 17 Again with teen heartthrob Zac Efron and 13 Going on 30, starring Jennifer Garner. Like Halpern’s book, this type of movie capitalizes on the public’s regrets and fantasies about our own lives. Who hasn’t had one of those “what if” moments or wished they could opt out of a difficult situation? Ellie, the main character of Halpern’s novel, upon seeing her granddaughter Lucy at her party, wants to live her life differently than she had: marrying young, a man with whom she does not think she was really in love, and always doing what was expected of her as a lady. And, for those of you who will read the book, or see the film version, I will not give away the ending or moral of the story (of course, it contains one!).

Amidst the book’s seeming superficiality and overt sentimentality, there lies a very real social phenomenon. As our elderly population grows and lives longer, how are older women reacting to the societal changes going on around them? How do they reconcile their lived experience with that of their descendants? Given her young age, Halpern manages to convey realistically the mental state of the “granny” figures in the book and their relations to the younger women and men. She also skilfully paints the granny-granddaughter relationship and promotes inter-generational connections and understanding amongst women.

A former columnist for Marie Claire magazine, Halpern has previously authored two books, the fashion memoir Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown and the novel The Ten Best Days of My Life. She also holds a Masters degree in screenwriting, a fact that shines through in this new novel. A film version cannot be far behind. My bets are on actresses Glenn Close and Amanda Seyfried to play the aged Ellie and the younger Ellie. Bets are now on!

Review by Sophie M. Lavoie

Dreams in Prussian Blue

By Paritosh Uttam
Penguin India

For a long time, it seemed to me as if all Indian writers in English wrote “serious” things—complicated stories, language that needed some getting through, “big” themes, weighty tomes. And then came Chetan Bhagat and the many followers in his footsteps, who unleashed upon us a spate of poorly-written novels, mostly to do with engineering institutes and adolescent angst. It seemed as if one could either have five-star hotel caviar or roadside vada pav; if you weren’t in the mood for the first and couldn’t stomach the second, poor you!

Luckily, times are changing. In the last couple of years, Indian writers in English are attempting every possible genre, including murder mysteries and graphic novels. There is a growing market for well-written, yet easy-to-read fiction, which is probably why Penguin has brought out a new series, Metro Reads, dubbing them “fun, feisty, fast reads.”

One of this series, Paritosh Uttam’s Dreams in Prussian Blue, would probably not qualify for the "fun" bit, given its somewhat serious story, but it fulfills the rest of the criteria. Dreams in Prussian Blue is the unconventional love story of art college dropouts, Naina and Michael. The novel sticks to a small group of characters and does that well—while Michael is the anti-hero, Uttam takes the reader to the darkness behind seemingly "nice" and bland characters as well.

The bonus is that while the story is novel and the characters real, the language is simple enough for the average reader. A live-in relationship, a selfish artist, a naive young woman who realizes that love and fresh air may not be enough, the Indian art world, nosy neighbours and traditional parents who can no longer hold on to their children—the plot moves forward quickly, and kept me engrossed wanting to know what happens (and plenty does!). The dialogue works too, with the lingo of the twenty-something crowd captured well.

It so happened that the last few weeks, I’ve been snowed under work and reluctant to take on anything too complicated. Dreams in Prussian Blue fits perfectly into that sort of mood—when all you want is a good story.

Review by Aparna V. Singh

Cross-posted at Apu's World

Everything Matters!

By Ron Currie, Jr.
Viking

Someone should count how many coming-of-age novels have ever been written that focus on white, male characters. To me, it seems like every time I browse around in a bookstore and skim through the back covers of books in the “New & Hot Fiction” section, the onslaught of these story set-ups just doesn’t end. I realize that some topics never get boring, like love, betrayal, or war. But in a seemingly endless sea of new and existing stories about the teenage and early adult years of white men, it must be incredibly hard to create a story that is exciting and different.

This is where Everything Matters! comes in. Or so I thought. Based on descriptions and reviews elsewhere, I decided to override my own personal annoyance with characters like Holden Caulfield, Pip, or Adrian Healey. Hailed as a small miracle and a delightful read by reviewers at NPR or the New York Times, Everything Matters! is the story of Junior Thibodeau who is born with the knowledge that thirty-six years into his life, an asteroid will destroy the earth and all human life. Written in a quirky, rather unpredictable sequence of countdowns and changing narrative perspectives, the book follows Junior’s life from early moments in his mother’s uterus to the final moment. Junior hears a voice that tells him exactly what will happen, not just in terms of the earth’s demise, but also throughout his life. That would be unusual enough, but Junior is also portrayed as a genius who seems to be able to accomplish anything, including discovering the cure for cancer in only two weeks, if he sets his mind to it. Yet, despite these super-human abilities and an all-encompassing knowledge of the future, Junior must grapple with the fact that no matter what he manages to achieve, the world will still be destroyed.

This is what makes, or should make, Everything Matters! different than other coming-of-age stories. The plot allows for unique opportunities to explore existential questions, to play with the irony of creating a character that is capable of ending suffering from diseases, poverty or global hunger in a situation where none of that really matters. Or does it? And this is where the book falls short. Of 302 pages, only the last thirty or so actually dive into the possibilities that are set up by the story. It is here that Currie tackles, and somewhat heavy-handedly, the “why bother making an effort in life if you know it’s all going to end soon anyway?” questions. The rest of the novel very much gets lost in the sea of other coming-of-age novels. We hear too much about how Junior screws up with the love of his life, how as a result, he spends years getting drunk in cheap, dirty bars and how he still manages to be the hero for his family (and briefly also for all mankind). It’s all too familiar and too much.

Technically, the book is very unique. The narration switches back and forth between the omniscient, all-knowing narrator (the voice that Junior hears) and the various characters in the novel. The book starts with a countdown, but then abandons the countdown for large parts of the book, only to pick it up again toward the end. For someone interested in playing with structure and narration, it might be well worth the read just to see what Currie manages to come up with. However, I often felt that Currie was a bit too much into playing with technique at the expense of the story itself. There were numerous times in the book where I thought that often very bizarre sub-plots were inserted only to incorporate another writer-technicality, with little or no purpose for the content of the story. Again, it was all a little much.

All in all, I can’t say that Everything Matters! did away with my annoyance with yet another supposedly witty but deep story about some white dude in his teens and early adulthood. There is a lot of potential in the set-up to make this a different and exciting read, if Currie lost some of the showing-off of technique and the all too common features of the development of his protagonist. A few stronger female characters would be nice, too. As it stands, Everything Matters! over-promised and under-delivered for me, but I would love to see someone pick up on where the last thirty pages of the novel left off.

Review by Annette Przygoda

Alone With You: Stories

By Marisa Silver
Simon and Schuster

For years, I read The New Yorker for the politics and music reviews more than for its fiction. Aside from stories by some of my favorite novelists—Jhumpa Lahiri, Zadie Smith—I was content to skip most fictional pieces.

However, a few weeks ago, I happened upon Marisa Silver’s astonishingly lovely story of youthful shiftlessness and indiscretion, “Temporary.” Imagine my delight—and surprise—when I sat down to my latest short story collection and found that it was not only by the same author; that same story was the first in the book.

Silver is one of those fortunate writers whose work has been selected by the literati for praise. Fortunate though she may be, she is also remarkably talented and deserving of such accolades. In Alone With You, she writes with empathy and grace about a diverse collection of characters. From the humiliation suffered by the Polish immigrant handyman to the embarrassment of young girls whose mother has a little too much to drink at seemingly every inopportune occasion, Silver explores each individual and their unique situation with the sensitivity of an insider. Many of the stories are tinged with sadness, but really, isn’t life just a collection of bittersweet moments?

In my mind, the best fiction comes from personal experience, so much so that it may not deviate far from actual events that once transpired. Though it’s impossible to say for sure, Silver seems to go beyond that limitation and write about universals without necessarily having lived so close to them. Whether you choose Alone With You or another of her short story collections, pick one up immediately.

Review by Brittany Shoot

Half Life

By Roopa Farooki
St. Martin's Press

Love stories aren’t really my thing, but Roopa Farooki’s newest novel, Half Life, shows many shades of love in a way that warms the heart, wets the eye, and expands the mind. The book opens with Aruna Ahmed Jones’ seemingly crazy and impulsive decision to leave her year-old marriage. She does this quite literally by stopping mid-breakfast, throwing on a light jacket, and making her way through the Tube to London’s Heathrow International Airport where she hops the next plane to her hometown of Kuala Lumpur, and back into the arms of lifelong friend and ex-lover Jazz Ahsan. We soon learn that two years ago Aruna left Jazz in a similarly rushed and unexplained exit, and the story progresses by attempting to resolve the characters’ (and reader’s) unanswered questions about her ostensibly hasty retreats.

To go into any depth about the somewhat unsettling plot would be to reveal too much; indeed, I recommend the reader skip even the publisher’s description on the front cover flap and dive headfirst into chapter one. The core of this story revolves around the destructive nature of family secrets and the reparative qualities of truth. Half Life is full of subtle yet astute observations about the personal and social functions of one’s identity as a person of a particular class, gender, nationality, and mental health status—and exemplifies how all are historically and geographically situated. Without being too obtuse or heavy-handed, the story is, ultimately, about finding one’s authentic self while avoiding being a detriment to those one cares for deeply.

Language makes the ordinary extraordinary, and Farooki’s gift is in the ease with which she perfectly captures the complexity of a moment with a casual, pithy description. Literary hat tips are littered throughout with tender references to such masterful figures as the Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore, British poet Wilfred Owen, and Jacobean dramatist John Ford—all of whose influences can be readily felt while turning the book’s pages. Farooki is obviously a thoughtful writer, and the story is executed with well-planned precision. Half Life is penned in a visceral style similar to that of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies or Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows. Farooki’s witty wordplay constructs a melancholy emotionality that mirrors the interplay between the main characters. The ubiquitous sense of suspense maintains reader’s interest even after the elements of surprise are effortlessly divulged.

Half Life is a substantative beach read that is engaging as it is accessible. But be sure to slather on the sunscreen or find a cozy spot in the shade before cracking the spine. You might just find you’re unable to put this book down once you pick it up.

Review by Mandy Van Deven

Cross-posted at VenusZine

Ilustrado

By Miguel Syjuco
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado is the novel made for re-reading. There are continual twists and turns and questions about the nature of fiction writing that immediately attune one to the constructed nature of the textual landscape. Indeed, Ilustrado is a metafiction, as it involves a character by the name of Miguel, a writer living in New York who is researching the life of a Filipino expatriate writer named Crispin Salvador.

At the beginning of the novel, the readers discover that Crispin has died under mysterious circumstances. Miguel, having been acquainted with and impressed by Salvador’s work and life, goes about trying to find out what might have happened to Salvador, especially as he embarks on writing Salvador’s life story. The novel is written with this main storyline, but scattered throughout are excerpts from Salvador’s many creative writings, both fictional and nonfictional in scope. There are also various interviews and blog excerpts that continually provide more context and more complexity to Crispin Salvador.

The other major narrative involves Miguel’s own life, one marked by the tragic and premature death of both his mother and father. Miguel and his many siblings are raised by his grandparents. Perhaps, not surprisingly, the novel takes us to the Philippines where Miguel is both haunted by the tensions that have disintegrated his family and looks to discovering more about his esteemed Crispin Salvador.

The title of Miguel’s novel, comes from the Filipino elite that traveled to Europe in the late nineteenth century in order to receive an education. In this regard, the “enlightened ones” speaks to the complicated ways in which the colonial subject could continue to be indoctrinated by the cultural capital devised out of the imperial enterprise. Nevertheless, the education that the ilustrados received also helped foment the revolutionary ideals espoused by those such as Jose Rizal. In this way, the novel is distinctly postcolonial in character inasmuch as it might be called Asian American.

Following Crispin’s life through the eyes of Miguel’s work and by other creative excerpts, the novel does track an impressive array of historical changes that have typified the Philippines in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Crispin, having been raised in affluence, must come to terms with his class background and finds himself using writing as a venue to share his political sentiments. The hope for the venue of writing as a direct instigator of political activism is a vexed issue throughout the novel and we can see that Syjuco is tarrying with the complex ways in which representation, referent, and social protest collide. Miguel, too, comes from a clearly privileged background and all throughout the novel we see the ways in which class stratification details the Manila landscape that becomes a sort of “third” character.

Like the recently reviewed, A Thread of Sky, Syjuco excels at painting a picture of modern metropolitan Manila in all of its intricacies and these urbanscapes become the terrain upon which power and difference can be situated. As the plot moves directly into the homes and lives of individual characters, we see, for instance, the way in which the domestic workers are subordinated and often times flagrantly abused. In the clubscapes, individuals worry about the latest fashions and where to score a round of drugs. The profligacy of the Manila elite is meant to destabilize any deterministic trajectory of the country’s progressivism. In addition, the political ruling class is also portrayed as corrupt and ineffectual. In this general space of guarded pessimism, the novel begins to turn inward with a major shift in the conclusion that queries the entire nature of the narrative trajectory itself. It begs the question about the construction of the modern Filipino/American subject, and he or she has come to exist at hazy boundary between fantasy and reality.

Ilustrado is a consummately entertaining book, one that will have you immediately re-reading, spending more time on the many different threads that hold the book together.

Review by Stephen Hong Sohn

Cross-posted at Asian American Literature Fans

Cook the Books

By Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant
Berkley Publishing Group

Cook the Books is part of a series of mystery books (Gourmet Girl Mysteries) by mother-daughter writing team Jessica Conant-Park and Susan Conant.

Chloe is a graduate student in her mid twenties, who lives by herself and has a passion for food. She has an incredibly gorgeous best friend named Adrianna, who is married to a goofy but honest and lovable free-spirited (broke) man named Owen. They have a delightful little bundle of joy named Patrick, who happens to melt Chloe’s heart so much that she overspends and ends up in debt because she just can’t resist buying him all the expensive toys and clothes she sets her eyes on; he’s that adorable. Then there’s Josh, her ex-boyfriend, a chef, who left a year before for a better job in Hawaii and left her behind.

Did you get all this? If you didn’t it’s okay because once you start reading the novel, this will be retold in pretty much every chapter. Do you want to know what else is constantly repeated? The word “Josh.” It comes up in every other sentence. Of course there’s more to the novel: there’s murder, there’s cooking, and there’s a villain (or many?). More importantly, at the end Josh returns to make everything alright (because he’s perfect). But don’t worry, I haven’t spoiled the end; you can guess that one by the end of the fourth chapter.

The story itself is pretty bland but its biggest sin is mainly that it’s not very relatable. Chloe is supposed to be young, bright and independent, and yet she appears to be everything but. Why am I supposed to care about this character? She has no true interests other than her godson, the lives of other cooks and her ex-boyfriend. It probably doesn’t help that the novel is written with a significant amount of dialogue, which, for the most part, is heavily contrived. For example, Chloe’s employer, a serious man in his mid-thirties has just met new mommy Adrianna and all three of them are sitting down for dinner, his treat:

“And Adrianna,“ he said to my friend, “you especially should eat a lot, since you probably have no time to eat while taking care of a tiny baby, huh?”

This was not meant to be funny, or sarcastic (or creepy) but rather to portray what a great guy Chloe’s employer is! The entire novel is written in this type of dialogue, which aside from being annoyingly predictable, becomes overly repetitive.

Cook the Books is filled with bad cliches and references. The murder that sets motion to the core of the storyline leads to Chloe’s view to the “dark” side of cooking, the cutthroat competitive world of chefs. It’s in fact the same world described by so many other chefs, except that in this case, it’s overly dramatic.

The book cover includes a review blurb promising "snappy dialogue, puzzling murder and mouthwatering menus," which I guess is what fueled my disappointment, as I did believe it. In contrast to other mystery novels that portray unlikely heroines, Cook the Books didn’t hit the mark, It has no sparkle and the heroine lacks a sense of self and definition. It was difficult to really care. It could have been light, fun reading, if only it had been half as long. If I was to recommend the book, it I would assume pre-teens might not mind it, but I don’t know how memorable it would be.

There are some recipes added at the end of the book, which only adds to my confusion as to who the target group for this book is supposed to be. The recipes are courtesy of other authors and chefs. Some are easy enough to follow and make (the Baked Tomato Nests), and some (like the Grilled Ohio Lamb Steak) are meant for the serious cooks who strives to entertain. The Baked Tomato Nests are a cute and fast idea, and in fact, the recipe jumped out at me from one of the actual chapters of the novel, so there was a nice connection there. However, overall the recipes were not very innovative, and in a way, that echoes my overall impression of the book.

To put it simply: it didn’t leave a bad taste in my mouth, it needed spice (cayenne, Habanero, or even just plain old pepper)—it was just too bland.

Review by Jessica Sánchez

Angel and Apostle

By Deborah Noyes
Unbridled Books

Deborah Noyes’s Angel and Apostle, styled as a sequel to The Scarlet Letter, is a fascinating journey and an interesting effort to flesh out the life of a child attempting to live under the shadow of shame, guilt, and community exile. Set shortly after the ostracism of Hester Prynne we see the common adage that the “sins of [in this case the mother] shall be visited upon her children” is a fatalistic axiom that can be made real and that hangs heavy over the heads of Hester and Pearl her precocious and earlier-than-normal world-weary daughter.

Even as the townsfolk lay upon Pearl, the dubious title of “the child of the temptress”, and as much as the other characters of the small New England town would have it otherwise, she appears to lead a life where the consequences of her mother’s supposed social transgression are at the margins of her world. Pearl finds work within house of the sickly mother of a small blind boy, Simon, who she has befriended, and like the child of any time period, sees enthralling mystery and adventure in the countryside. This, for me, is a significant point of the book, the disallowing of the community and previous circumstances through which Pearl, first in New England and then in the “motherland,” seeks her own path and an ultimate sense of individual freedom.

Noyes does a remarkable job of weaving rich depictions of puritanical New England society as the backdrop for the affairs of a strong woman, her bold progeny and the lives of the sordid people that orbit in challenge. Angel and Apostle is a fulfilling next chapter in the darkly romantic or perhaps bittersweet tale of Ms. Prynne and Pearl. Upon finishing every good book, your heart sinks a little at the conclusion of such a wonderful tale but Noyes can rest assured that the humbling task that she assumed in writing a professed sequel to The Scarlet Letter was a riveting success. I am sure that, as I did, Nathaniel Hawthorne would find Angel and Apostle a delightful extrapolation on a master’s work built upon by another master in deliciously page-turning form.

Review by Brandon Copeland