Saving Francesca (a book review)

Today: Awoke. Ate a bagel. Sold Girl Guide cookies at Sears for two/too hours/long. Dropped home on the way to work. Made an egg sandwich. Rushed to work while eating aforementioned sandwich. Packed groceries for two [long] hours (x3 = 6 hours). Got home. Poured smoothie. Sat on couch with computer, drinking aforementioned smoothie.

That was a beautiful smoothie. But onto my obsession with Melina Marchetta. *sigh*

I love Melina Marchetta's books. They are the food for my soul that I didn't know that I needed. And that is a bearable cliche because it's also the truth. Her books make me feel whole and broken at the same time, in the best ways. All I do is inhale and exhale the words and yet they make me want to be better. A better person. A better writer. A better daughter. A better sister. A better friend.

I don't know how she does that.

A summary
Francesca is starting her second term at a school that was just for boys until recently when they opened their doors to girls. She misses the consistency and complacency of her old school and her old friends and to add to the unease, her mother won't get out of bed.
The novel chronicles Francesca's struggles to slide, struggle free, through school and keep herself from falling apart. It's about love, romantic and otherwise, and friendship and being saved but mostly it's about saving yourself.

A couple comments
-- The voice of the book is so genuine and honest that you can barely set it down. Francesca's words have a cynical resilience that is remarkable and relatable, to me at least. Marchetta has such a way with sentences and paragraphs that I honestly feel as if I could survive on these beautiful words. Almost.
-- The characters are unique and plucky and whole. They're people you want to know, want to believe exist. The community and support and love and friendship are just something you want to experience. These are friends I'm jealous of.
-- I love Francesca. I love her and I feel like she's a piece of me, or I'm a piece of her. I don't know if I've ever really felt so similar to a character in so many ways. And sometimes so different. Francesca is like my dark side, I think.
-- Will Trombol.

-- The dialog. I am such a huge dialog fan that it's ridiculous and Melina Marchetta does not disappoint.

-- The story is just so believable. It's not like 'mother with depression' is a new concept for a book but it works here on so many levels. There's the gleam of romance. The trials and doubts and happinesses of friendship. The angst of teenagerdom. The reality is both unhappy and hopeful. Depicting not depression so much as the effect it has on the people it touches, the truth of this story is just so real. This story feels like something you could live in, even if you wouldn't want to all the time.

A recommendation
Read this book. I did, twice in one week. It's worth it, so ridiculously worth it.

Saving Francesca is officially on the favourites list. And it's getting to be a long list.

Nothing (a book review, or something like it)

This past weekend, I was rereading The Hunger Games trilogy, or at least the first two parts. I won't go off on a tangent about those books though I very easily could. What I'm writing about is the book I picked up to console myself from the fact that my dad has been in possession of my copy of Mockingjay for the past few months and I couldn't immediately pick it up after Catching Fire. I wanted a distraction.
 
And I got it. Oh god, I got it.

And it did win a Printz honour.

I don't know what I was expecting from Janne Teller's first book for young adults. I'd read the summaries. John Green said he thought it would win the Printz. My friend warned me off reading it, saying it was disturbing*. I reserved it from the library, it sat on my desk for a week and I finally picked it up the first night I'm housesitting and it was dark and I was alone and all I wanted to do is read Mockingjay, even though I've read it three times already.

Time must have passed while I lay on the couch with a blanket, turning pages rapidly and inhaling the language** but I didn't really notice. Afterwards, I stumbled upstairs to bed in a kind of daze and fell asleep to dreams that I don't remember.

Reflecting back on the book, I don't think it's something you can like or dislike. Maybe some people can but not me. I appreciate it and I read it in one hazy blur which must indicate some kind of merit yet it's not a book that you can enjoy. Do I think this book is incredible? Yes. Did I like it? I'm not really sure but probably not.

A summary, I think, is in order: One day, a seventh grader, Pierre Anthon, in a fictional Danish town stands up in class and declares that, "Nothing matters... So nothing is worth doing..." He then leaves the classroom and climbs a plum tree, where he stays during the day for months, pelting his peers with plums and screaming his discoveries of the meaninglessness of life at them as they pass by. Wanting to believe that there actually is a meaning to life, the students realize that they have to get Pierre Anthon out of the tree in order to prove him wrong. They start this task by pelting him with stones and then decide to create a "heap of meaing" in order to convince Pierre and each other that something matters. All the students in the seventh grade class are to contribute something of ultimate value and as the students decide what the others must sacrifice, the heap of meaning quickly takes a sinister turn.

As I said, it's not that I enjoyed the book, it's just that I couldn't stop reading it. Not in the way of The Hunger Games in that I need to know what happened next. Nothing's chapters aren't left dangling off a cliff the way most of Suzanne Collins's are. I guess I just needed to find out if they could convince Pierre Anthon of some kind of meaning which I partially knew they couldn't. I needed to see if they could even convince themselves that their heap of meaning mattered. I also needed to know how far it would go, how much these kids could force each other to give up. It really scared me what they did. Just when I thought things went a bit too far, the next request was even more demanding.

A new word I learned last week is 'visceral' which, in relation to writing, means something that made you feel physically. Yes, I'm talking about butterflies in your stomache and when your heartrate quickens from reading something.

This was the first time since I learned what the word meant that I thought about it in relation to a book I was reading. The writing of Nothing really was visceral to me. Not in a swooning, Peeta is so amazing *sigh* way, but in a gasping, shocked, hand to my mouth, horrified way. I actually clenched my fist and gritted my teeth at several points in the novel. There was a moment when I felt slightly nauseous. And though I'm not condoning the behavior of the characters in any way, I have to admit that reading something that actually makes you feel physically sick is pretty impressive.

The book is about much more than these kids and the way in which they decide to prove that something, anything, matters in life. It existential in that it deals with how people react when introduced to the possibility that there is no meaning to anything. It's about the cruelty of human nature and what horrors a group will force on its members but it's also about a personal struggle of what happens when nothing matters and how hard individuals and groups will struggle against that.

I'm still reacting and processing and I'm not sure exactly what I think but it's safe to say that I was impressed by this book. Horrifyed and jarred but ultimately better off. Nothing has a lot to offer and though it is disturbing at times, as John Green says: "So is life."

*Does it mean I have issues if I say that the disturbing comment made me want to read it more?
**Which should be noted was translated by Martin Aitkin from Danish. Though I don't speak/read Danish I can't judge whether the translation was accurate or not but I do think it was beautiful.

The Flying Troutmans (a book review)

Recommended to me by my Media Savvy mentor*, I picked up The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews with very few expectations. I'd read the summary which involved a road trip taken by an aunt with her niece and nephew to find the kids' absentee father. A road trip? Missing parent? Canadian writer? Count me in.

This feels like the first adult book I've read. No I don't mean "adult" in a sex way. It's not extremely mature, I mean it is, but not like that. There is some "course language" but nothing overly shocking. Realistic.

Jeez, I'm doing a really good job at this so far. Sarcasm, as Stephenie Meyer would write. How about we get on with it?

I loved that book. Not Twilight, shut up--although... yeah, never mind. Troutmans. Maybe it was the story or maybe it was the characters or maybe it was the dialog or maybe it was the road trip and all the weird and hilarious events revolving around that but no, no, it was definitely all of that stuff plus more than I can explain.

Good books rock my world. Daily.

It didn't make me rethink reality or the complexness of people or love or loss. Never mind, of course it did all of those things (a little, anyway). It didn't shift my perspective on the whole world and things might still be the same. But maybe they won't ever be.

Maybe in the end, it wasn't just a slew of quirky** characters and offbeat dialog and simply priceless scenarios or brutally beautiful realness. Maybe it was nothing but figuring out what love is and what your responsibilities are to your family and how to deal with things***. But maybe it was more. Great metaphors, gorgeous writing, a lovely, conflicted narrator/protagonist that I felt very similar to. General hilarity.

Maybe it was everything. Gah, I love life.

I recommend this to anyone who likes books that are a bit unorthadox but full of lovely, real, fun, flawed, witty, humous dynamic characters and spontaneous road trips and (in my opinion, of course) fantastic writing. You think you have adjectives? *I* have adjectives.

Good night morning.

*that's not, like, code. She's the legit mentor of my Media Savvy course.
**and I mean quirky. You think you know what the word means until you read this book. Thebes = win.
***let me tell you, these things could not be more appropriate in my life right now.

Girl Saves Boy (a book review)

As a preface to this review, I've been wanting to read this book since before it came out in Australia and New Zealand. I was introduced to Steph Bowe through a NaNoWriMo* forum, something about teens writing and being interested in publishing. I think she started the discussion, introduced herself and her upcoming debut and I was somewhat enchanted. A home schooled, teenage writer with her first book coming out? It sounded like a idealistic depiction of myself in the future (substituting home schooler for unschooler, of course).


For over a year, I've been wanting to read her book, knowing very little about the actual premise. I was eager to support a fellow teen writer and I waited as patiently as I could for the Canadian release. Yet it still hasn't been released in Canada and I actually got my copy from a friend of my mom who bought me a copy in New Zealand and brought it back for me, as arranged as a Christmas gift from my ever lovely sister.


To get to the point, my feelings on this book are kind of jumbled up. I don't know if I really liked it or if I'm being a bit more forgiving based on the context. Unfortunately--or maybe not--I cannot eliminate my personal bias but nonetheless, here is my review.


Girl Saves Boy is a dual point of view novel following Sacha Thomas and Jewel Valentine. It starts when Jewel saves Sacha from drowning and alternates between their two stories as their lives intertwine.

I liked the two main characters. They could be a little whiny at times but their lives kind of sucked and most teenagers are at least a bit whiny so it made sense. They had neat voices and it was incredibly easy to get swept along in their waves of thought and got enveloped in their emotions--mostly. The secondary characters were neat, too. Quirky, as promised by what felt like a bazillion sources, but fresh and flawed and believable. They were people who I wanted to believe existed, who I wished I could be friends with.

Sometimes I was a bit perplexed at the characters reactions. Highlight for spoiler: Who runs away after the girl they really like and wanted to kiss all night leans over and kisses them? a) It was what you wanted!! b) Stop being so self absorbed with your 'I don't deserve her' and think about how much it would suck to be rejected like that.** I do like being able to think about what choices I would have made differently but I almost felt alienated at times due to the characters absurd decisions. It's interesting to see who different characters react to different situations but I would have liked to see those reactions a little more fleshed out.

There were moments where I could have forgotten to breathe and passages that made me want to go back and reread. I didn't shed tears but I got a lump in my throat once and I did feel deeply for the characters on more than one occasion.

Two different points of view can be tricky for a writer to pull off but I thought Steph Bowe did it beautiful. Each of the narrators were distinctive enough that I wasn't confused about who was speaking but they also had a similar cadence that it didn't feel disjointed or jumpy. One problem I found with this was finishing one chapter, wanting to know what happened next and being thrown into the other character's story. It kept me reading but I was, at times, a bit frustrated.

It was a nice, real***, lovely, wonderfully told story. It wasn't the best book I read in January but there was harsh competition. Also, I'm starting to think I have a thing for Australian books. There's something just so off beat and fresh and evocative and beautiful about them. Or at least what I've read which, I'll admit, isn't a lot. Still, Aussie writers = cool.

Now I have been inspired to go back and work on my own novel so I'm going to do that and maybe one day someone will have a minor crush on me and they will be inspired by me as I have been by Steph. First, though, I must finish my novel.

Stay gold.

*This was my first NaNo, 2009.
**Yeah, sure, teenagers can be self absorbed but come now, how idiotically hurtful could you be?
***Not a boring real but an "I wish this was real because it feels like it could be" real.

some books - On the Jellicoe Road

You have to finish reading them at 3 in the morning for two reasons. 1. There comes a point when you can't stop and you forget that you should be asleep and dreaming and that it's starting to get light outside. 2. When you're done and it's hours past midnight, you go to sleep. You know that's what you're supposed to do whereas when you finish at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, you can't close your eyes and wake up in four hours and start with a fresh new day. You have to sit on the couch with the closed book in your lap and stare at nothing because you can't even speak for half an hour after turning the last page.

So I don't regret only getting five hours of sleep in the space between Saturday and Sunday.

How could I not love that feeling? I feel like I was born to feel it with its all consuming reach as I am enveloped in someone else's story. Are readers born or made? I can't tell and I guess it doesn't matter but I am always wondering why more people don't take up reading for pleasure. What are video games and sports and needlework and shopping to letting words on a page swirl around you in a story until you don't even remember what's real anymore. I love books way too much. And they've ruined me. I guess I let them do that.

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Machetta was extraordinary. Truly exquisite and so heartbreaking and profound that I don't really feel like I'm the same person that I was starting it. It's about hope and trust and love and abandonment and what happens when you feel like there's nothing left to hold on to.

This summary will seem completely inadequate but regardless: It follows Taylor Markham who was abandoned on the side of the Jellicoe Road when she was ten. She is now seventeen and leading her school in the territory wars between the Townies and the Cadets and she gets to find out that the leaders of the two groups are not soulless thugs but real people, tangible and alive. There's also Taylor finding out about five teenagers who lived in the area twenty years ago and how they relate to the territory war, her life and everything she really knows about herself.

Like I said, completely inadequate.

There's intensely great character development, supremely well woven plotlines and breathtaking romance. I could probably go on about how much I loved this book for a while longer but I'm not going to. All I will say is that if you like incredible books, read this one.
I will add that the beginning is confusing and you may get lost or feel dizzy with all the different characters and story lines spinning around you. To this I say, keep reading. Melina Marchetta is like Marcus Zusak in the way that it all makes sense at the end. It's one of those books where if you get past the first 30-50 pages, you will be undeniably happy you did when the story starts to untangle in a way that's so organic you can't even understand why you doubted it in the first place.

I hope that as I get older, I will keep this late night reading habit of mine. I wouldn't want to lose the feeling of being so far away that I ignore time, hunger and sleep to feel someone's else's life so deeply.

Q: Have you read any books lately that made you stay up too late to finish?

White Cat (review)

I've been posting quite a bit of my writing lately (other than that post about my mother's habit for bringing random furniture into our home) so, to switch it up, I'm going to post a review today. I read White Cat by Holly Black a week or two ago and really enjoyed it. It kind of reminded me of Graceling and Inception, both of which I enjoyed. Brief overview? Okay:

Cassel (I say it Cuh-sel whereas my sisters pronounce it like castle) lives in an alternate reality that is mostly like ours only there are supernaturally gifted people walking around who are referred to as 'curse workers'.* These people range from luck workers to physical workers to memory workers and everything in between. Cassel's entire family are workers. All except for him.

All his life, he's been attempting to be normal. He goes to boarding school and had a girlfriend (who he apparently wasn't a good enough conman to keep) and a reputation as the school bookie. Then one night he wakes up after a dream in which a cat stole his tongue and he is on top of his dorm building in his boxers. The school thinks he was trying to kill himself and so they suspend him. Because of this, he has to go stay with his grandfather and clean out his parent's house because it's a mess (his dad is dead and his mom's in jail). The novel goes from there.

It was kind of a mystery, contemporary only alternate reality and the blurbs on the back said romance but that was just one big disappointment. I liked Cassel. He had some problems (trust issues, mostly) but he evolved a bit and he was charming and entertaining. The were some seemingly random plot threads (what was with the girlfriend bit?) but the characters were endearing (and frightening) and it was a pretty good book. I liked the writing. At the end, though, I felt like something was missing, like it wasn't finished or something. I can't describe it exactly but it felt wrong. It was completely captivating and I recommend it if you're wanting to stay up until 1am reading. If not, try The Bell Jar. That's pretty good, too.

*See the Graceling similarity? That's basically the only one.