1. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
2. Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
3. Blue, poems by George Elliott Clarke
4. Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
5. Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
6. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, illus. by Matt Phelan
7. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (audio book) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
9. wingless, scorched & beautiful (chapbook) by Allie Marini Batts
10. how i live now (audio book) by Meg Rosoff
Books Still in Progress at the End of the Month:
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić, Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone, poetry by Annelyse Gelman, and Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
REVIEWS:
1. A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
Set in the late 1930s, A Year Down Yonder is about a young girl whose family has fallen on hard times. Her parents have to move the family out of their apartment in Chicago, her brother signs on to a work farm out west, and Mary Alice is sent south to stay with her Grandma Dowdel.
Grandma Dowdel is a fantastic character, a shotgun wielding prankster and trickster, and it’s ridiculously fun to read about the antics and adventures she drags her granddaughter Mary Alice into. And though, she’s not a hugging woman, or even a soft words kind of woman, you can tell she’s got a lot of heart and love for the people close to her.
A wonderful story.
2. Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
(Coincidentally, this is the second book I’ve read about young girls sent away from their families due to hard times in the 1930s.)
Abeline rides the rails with her father Gideon, until he decides the rails are no place for a young girl and he sends her off to where he lived as a child, the town of Manifest. Taken in by a bootlegger, woodcarver, and preacher named Shady, Abeline goes looking for pieces of her father’s past in the town but ends up uncovering a wonderful and bittersweet story full of spies, diviners, con artists, the KKK, and other oddities instead.
This is a slow build of a novel, alternating between Abeline’s point of view, the old stories told of Ned, Jinx, and the town, and newspaper clippings from the past. As such it kind of snuck up on me, making me fall in love with these characters and this hard luck town a little bit at the time, so that by the end I was broken hearted to see what happened and to have it end.
3. Blue, poems by George Elliott Clarke
Blue is described on cover leaf as “black, profane, surly, damning — and unrelenting in its brilliance.” And George Elliott Clarke writes of his poems, “I craved to draft lyrics that would pour out like pentecostal fire — pell mell, scorching, bright, loud: a poetics of arson.” I think both these descriptions are fairly accurate.
These poems unveil ugly truths with strong, beautiful words. They get into the mud, roll around in it: they go straight for gut and expose the entrails. These are poems that mix abrupt, blunt English with profanity and lilting French. These poems “skillfully turn rage into a violet bruise of love and meaning,” according to the spine and I see that, too.
The one thing that unsettled me was how women seemed to be described as sluts and whores, with occasional visions of violence against them (although to be fair visions of violence happen throughout and to many, but it seems to be particularly hostile against women). Positive representations of women were few. But maybe I’m missing something, because these poems are not meant to be nice, but rough, ragged, and brutally real.
Many of these poems were not my cup of tea, they didn’t resonate with me. But I can see their beauty, their power and I did love the poems in the last section, called “Ashen Blues”. I respect the voice her, the full tilt bravery of the words. This collection is worth a read and many moments of contemplation. I’ll have to reread myself at some point to try to reconsider some of these poems from a different angle.
“A pen burns paper. A black Blitzkrieg
Blazes, leaving the glinting odour of charred
Diction, a vocabulary in ashes: Detritus.
The word-scorched paper smells darkly.”
— from “Burning Poems”
4. Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman
Although not a direct sequel to The Forever War, Forever Peace similarly explored war and the impact it has on society and soldiers, although from an entirely different angle. While Forever War explored issues surrounding the Vietnam War through a story of intergalactic war against aliens and space travel, Forever Peace is firmly earth-bound, providing a more modern look at war with explorations of colonization and race relations.
The Alliance clearly represents wealthy white culture with powerful robots driven by mentally linked soldiers. The Alliance has the ability to easily manufacture just about anything, from food to clothes to modern technology, by feeding the details into a machine. The Ngumi, which are not allowed access to these machines, represent parts of Africa and South America, poor and fighting back against more powerful force with guerrilla tactics. The story is told by a single Alliance soldier, Julien, who is drafted into the war and feels sympathetic in the face of the far less powerful enemy.
I didn’t quite love Forever Peace the way I did Forever War. The POV switched back and forth between Julien’s first person view and third person, which was confusing at first. Despite the slow start, it built into thrilling conclusion. Although the ending wrapped up in a way that was a bit unsettling.
Nevertheless, it’s an interesting novel and one that could spark plenty of discussion.
5. Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee
6. The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, illus. by Matt Phelan
A young girl named Lucky lives in a tiny desert town in California, has a passion for science, and likes to eavesdrop on AA and other Anonymous meetings, which have inspired her to look for her own Higher Power. Terrified that her guardian Brigitte might abandon her and go back to France, she tries to find ways to get Brigitte to stay. A simple, sweet story with simple resolutions.
7. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
The second book in the Chaos Walking trilogy involves less action and more political and subversive maneuvering with Todd and Viola caught in the middle. Less action didn’t make it any less tense. I felt deeply for these characters and the dark holes of thought and emotion they plummeted into, so much so that at one point the series of events brought me to such a state of anxiety I had to put my book down for a few hours, just to breathe and relax before going on.
Ness asks some really interesting questions about responsibility, leadership, and war and its effect on soldiers and people. These are deep, complicated questions with often no good answers. At many points the question of right and wrong gets tossed right out the window, because there are no good answers, only an increasing cycles of violence from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself from.
As with The Knife of Letting Go, the book ends on a cliffhanger. Fortunately, I have the third and final book, Monsters of Men, already at home and I look forward to reading it with anxious anticipation.
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude (audio book) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The story follows the BuendÃa family and their lives in the fictional South American town of Macando, where fathers and sons, mothers and daughters face fate, broken hearts, civil war, household ghosts, betrayal, storms, droughts, hunger, and other misfortunes. I kind of dug the magical realism of the story with alchemy, most ghosts, family members who predict their own deaths, superhuman feats, and other wonders.
I feel like I should have liked this one more than I did, based on how many other people I know love it. *sigh* I struggled a lot, especially in the first half of the book. Though, the writing style was beautiful, there were so many family members and so many events both past and present being jumped back and forth between that it was almost too much. I didn’t know what or whom to focus on and I didn’t like any of the family members, which made it hard to give them sympathy.
The only character I liked was Ursula, who maintained herself as a grounding element among her flighty children and grandchildren, trying her best to anchor them morally and physically in the world, and standing up to them when they do wrong. She actively worked to keep the home and its inhabitants alive, continuing the effort even as they marched toward their own destruction.
It’s a very fatalistic novel, which is not really my thing (though I’ve read and loved bleak novels before). I did get into it more toward the end, but ultimately didn’t love it.
9. wingless, scorched & beautiful (chapbook) by Allie Marini Batts
10. how i live now (audio book) by Meg Rosoff
This was a strange book about Daisy, a young troubled teen sent to live in England with her cousins during an ongoing war. While she’s there the war slowly escalates, cutting her off from her home in New York — though Daisy and her cousins, parading freely through the fields in their innocence don’t notice it much since it doesn’t affect them directly. It’s not until war charges into their lives with the introduction of soldiers, fighting, and danger and causing them to be separated that the family begins to realize the impact of war on themselves and the people around them.
There’s a slight mystical quality to Daisy’s cousins, a natural charisma and a sort of telepathic ability. Edmund seems to be able to read people’s minds and the rest of them seem to be able to read and speak to animals. It adds an odd kind of surreal quality, especially to the airy joy of the first several chapters.
The most disturbing thing to me is the romantic relationship between Daisy and Edmund, because, you know, COUSINS.
I suppose I can understand how this got so popular. Daisy’s narration and voice is very real, sounding exactly like a bratty teenager. The story is fairly simple with a few interesting complexities slipping in. While I enjoyed the story, overall it felt a little off to me and I didn’t connect to it much.