New Century Reading

Thunderstruck

It's such a treat to read a book of short stories as good as this one. Elizabeth McCracken has a wonderful way with the form, creating entire worlds that can be lived through without the length of the novel (although that said, there were a couple I wouldn't have minded being a lot longer, at least a novella). She roves through the real world with the occasional touch of other-worldliness and does it so confidently that I believed everything she told me, hook line and sinker.

The characters themselves talk about ghosts, and vampires, and wolves, and it's not that these things appear, but the unknown, the hovering darkness just beyond our peripheral vision, is always present. It's in the stories kids tell to scare each other, such as in the opening story Something Amazing when kids taunt each other with the threat of a child ghost, to the irascible Peter Elroy telling the children of his former friend stories that will give them nightmares. Sometimes that hint of other-world comes in a different form, such as in the title story (or novella), in which a brain-damaged child and her father find a way to reach each other that's simultaneously creepy and wonderful.

McCracken is so good with setting scenes. Here's the opening to "The House of Two Three-Legged Dogs":

"In the December rain, the buildings around the town square were the color of dirty fingernails. Still, the French had tried to jolly things up a bit. Decorations hung from streetlamps, though at midday, Tony couldn't tell what lit bulbs would reveal at night: A curried prawn? A goiter? People had dangled toddler-size nylon Father Christmases out their windows, each with a shoulder-borne sack of presents. There were dozens of Father Christmases, and they hung slack, sodden, like snagged kites. They looked lynched."

I wish this book had been longer. It's one to savor.

This One Summer

This graphic novel is supposedly for the 12-18 age group, but I have to wonder if it isn't more for adults who have lived through that age. I would have liked it if I'd read it back in the day, but now, as a mother and, bluntly, person way past my teens, I think I find more complexity in this book, more that's flawed but sympathetic about the characters, than I would have back then. Isn't that what makes a book good, though? That you can read it at different life stages and find ways to appreciate it? Sorry, crazy lady from Slate who says adults shouldn't read YA. You're wrong.

Anyway. This One Summer is written and illustrated by cousins Jillian and Mariko Tamaki, and it's a beautiful partnership. It's the story of Rose and Windy, whose families have been taking them to Awago Beach in the summer for years. They're friends who love to hang out and play and talk. But this summer, there are some subtle differences: Rose's parents can't seem to get along; Rose's mother continues to withdraw; Rose herself finds some of Windy's behavior annoying and childish; and an object of Rose's shy affection turns out to be involved with another girl, with graver consequences.

This is such a lovely coming of age story. We feel Rose's frustration with Windy at times, even if she doesn't seem to realize it or why she feels that way, and we see her struggle with what's happening between her parents. As an adult, I can see what's happening with the parents more clearly than Rose can, and I can see how that year-and-a-half age difference between Rose and Windy can become problematic at a certain stage of life, something Rose doesn't yet understand.

The illustrations are beautiful, sometimes more broadly drawn like a comic book, other times with more detail. All the characters are carefully detailed, both in terms of artwork and story. This is a lovely book, for any age.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

I probably shouldn't have liked this book at all. Truth be told, I only liked it somewhat. That said, I stuck with it to the end, and don't even feel bad about doing that. On Goodreads I gave it 3 stars.

It starts out promisingly with A.J. Fikry, cranky owner of an indie bookstore on a small island. He's grumpy, difficult, and wonderfully opinionated about what people should be reading and buying:

"Like," he repeats with distaste. "How about I tell you what I don't like? I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be--basically gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful--nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups a la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages and or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and--I imagine this goes without saying--vampires."

Can't say I agree with Mr. Fikry about all of these things, but you have to admire his stern principles.

There are some wonderful literary moments in the book, lots of discussion and back and forth, and a fun subplot involving the chief of police eventually creating a book club of emergency responders to meet at the store, even though they want to read things Fikry doesn't approve of.

There are also, unfortunately, some contrived plot points, many of which are telegraphed miles in advance, and other subplots that really add no value to the book at all.

I suspect this one will do well with book clubs, and I don't mean that unkindly. It feels like it's written for that. I didn't love it, but I did enjoy enough of it to finish, and it's a quick read. Besides, just when I found myself frustrated, I'd come across something like this: "We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are not alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books."

Dept. of Speculation

Dept. of Speculation made me think about music, specifically music used in TV shows and movies. You know how some shows use music obtrusively as a way to tell the viewer how to feel? And how obnoxious that is? While other shows are far more minimalist, using music sparingly and assuming the viewers can figure out their own responses to the show without beating them over the head with it. A good example of the latter, which I can't find online, is the opening of the very first episode of The Walking Dead, when what turns out to be one of the main characters is shown walking dazedly through a scene of destruction. There appears to be no other life. Everything is silent, except for the normal outdoors sounds, birds, etc. A crappy production would swell ominous music, telling us: Be afraid! Be very afraid! The world is not as it seems! But the Dead folks figured the audience would be smart enough to feel the tension with no music, and ultimately, it made it even creepier.

Dept. of Speculation has nothing to do with zombies, but I think it's a shining example of a how to be very minimalistic in your text and get maximum response from your reader. Author Jenny Offill doesn't waste a single word in this short (177 pages) book. She doesn't need to force her readers to emotion and tell them what to think. Her characters are briefly drawn, yet realistic, flawed, and complex. And when bad things happen to them, it hurts. An exchange between a husband and wife, when the wife finds out the husband is seeing someone else:

"Taller?
Thinner?
Quieter?
Easier, he says."

It's a short book with a large world, looking at parenting and life expectations and what happens when the marriage doesn't turn out to be all you think it should. Or the wry wistfulness that comes with growing older:

"How has she become one of those people who wears yoga pants all day? She used to make fun of those people. With their happiness maps and their gratitude journals and their bags made out of recycled tire treads. But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make un of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be."

Lovely, understated, simple-but-complex book.

Casebook

Miles Adler-Hart is a boy on a mission in Mona Simpson's Casebook: he so desperately wants his mother to let him watch Survivor that he hides under her bed, hoping to eavesdrop on phone conversations she has with other mothers to discuss that very issue (not to mention whether or not he should be allowed to have a Gameboy). But he gets far more than he asks for when his father shows up too, and the parents discuss the end of their marriage instead of Survivor.

Not surprisingly, this is a conversation that makes Miles reel, since it's the first inkling he's had of his parents contemplating divorce. As for any kid of that age (with younger twin sisters to boot), it's a big change. He also learns that his best friend Hector's parents may be going down the same road.

A rational person would stop eavesdropping right there, but we're talking about pre-pubescent males. Miles and Adler go further, figuring out how to wiretap the landline (but not, to their frustration, cell phones), something that comes in handy when Miles' mom begins dating the mysterious Eli.

Simpson nails the adolescent boy, his perseverance and sometimes cluelessness. Miles and Hector are endearing even when they're frustrating, and they're always believable.She also gets family dynamics and how parental guilt plays into things:

"Before, my parents had fought about which one of them would have to go to the class picnic, who'd show up for the teacher conference, back-to-school night, blah blah blah. Now they still fought, but over who would get to. Had to or get to, the Mims [Miles' mom] always did. Since the separation, she seemed in constant motion. Like Avis, the second-biggest car-rental company, she tried harder."

However, once we've moved past the divorce and get into mom's new beau, the story begins to drag significantly. There's a long stretch of Miles and Hector trying to figure out what's weird about Eli, when the reader figures it out pretty early on. It's not surprising the boys don't, but I don't think we need quite so much time focused on their cluelessness.

Then, finally, all is revealed, and whoosh! We zip right through several years and all kinds of summation that, frankly, would have been more interesting if explored more thoroughly, instead of mom's boyfriend issues.

My final quibble is the book is set up as a manuscript Miles has written as an adult, which Hector occasionally comments on. This would have worked--would have been wonderful, really--if Simpson had put more effort into it. Instead, Hector's comments only appear once in a great while. It could have been so fun to have adult Hector more often contradicting what adult Miles remembers. But unfortunately, it's so rare that Hector comments that it feels annoying after a while, as if Simpson wrote dozens of pages and then thought, oh, hey, I should have Hector weigh in here. Go big or go home, I say.

So, 4.5 stars for the first half, 1.5 for the second half. Sad.