Let's have a chat about books...

So, I read quite a bit, and I write reviews for work every once in a while, so I thought maybe I'd share a few with the blogosphere. I don't like every book I read,
so some reviews are critical. I think that's a good thing though, whether you agree with me or not. I read some book reviewers and movie critics because I know what they like I won't, and what they don't like, I will probably enjoy. I think we should have an anti-staff picks shelf at the library. It would be fun and useful!

So, with that said--the inaugural "Gently Down the Stream" book reviews.


Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King (2011 Printz Honor)

There are going to be some people who have objections to this book, which is really too bad. King’s characters are the kind of kids who don’t get any breaks; in fact, they’re lucky if they don’t get broken. Her heroine is Vera Dietz, a bright high school senior growing up in less-than-stellar circumstances. Her parents were teenagers when they had her—an eighteen-year old alcoholic and a stripper who eventually decided that motherhood was not for her and took off with her lover to Vegas. Vera’s dad is now a recovering alcoholic and a reasonably successful accountant, but in their economically depressed town, Vera needs her pizza delivery job and the local thrift stores. She’s mourning the loss of her childhood friend Charlie who died under mysterious circumstances months before. Charlie, the son of a wife-beater and a doormat, had been drifting into a failing life of drugs, sex and trouble with the local “detentionheads”. He’d been drifting away from Vera in the months before his death, and Vera’s feelings for him have swung between loving and loathing. Now, nearly nine months after his death, Vera is unsure whether she should keep her head down and just survive, or whether she should speak what she knows and clear Charlie’s name.

There’s drinking, sex, and cussing, but none of it is gratuitous in any way. Kids who relate to Vera and Charlie’s circumstances need to see characters like Vera who, though flawed, is striving to take control of her own life and destiny. And kids who never have to face the kind of troubles in this book can gain some much needed empathy toward their less fortunate peers. It’s not a perfect book, but it’s an honest one, and I appreciate it.




Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (2011 Morris YA Debut honor)

This fits into the category of great opportunity ultimately squandered by poor execution. The YA market is currently (still….) dominated by heroines of various stripes who fall in love with a supernatural creature and are thrust into some monumental battle between good and evil. Healy, a New Zealander herself, roots her version in Maori cosmology. Her heroine, Ellie Spencer, is seventeen and away at boarding school while her parents are traveling the world in a post-cancer scare long-term vacation. (Who does this? Drop your life and your kid for a year while you gallivant? Odd.) Ellie’s best friend Kevin (platonic) has wrangled her into helping another classmate with a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the local University. Ellie’s mysterious crush Mark seems to have some interest in her, and it turns out that he’s not just mysterious, he’s supernatural. He’s part of an ancient race of New Zealand fairy-like folks, and he’s trying to protect Ellie and her friends from his ravenous mom and other paranormal powers that would do them harm. Of course, it turns out Ellie has some latent powers of her own.

Admittedly, I was tired of this genre about ten seconds into reading Twilight, but I can’t understand how it hasn’t worn out its welcome in the publishing world. I think Healy has potential--this was an opportunity to do something really unique, but it just buzzes along in first gear. It never really soars, you know? Too bad. Next!

And here's a few for when you want to read "grown-up" stuff

All the Little Live Things and The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner

Stegner never fails to amaze me. Of the two, All the Little Live Things impressed me more. It’s probably the best thing I’ve read in years—devastating and beautiful. After a somewhat slow build of tension, Stegner blew the top of my head off with the ending. This novel finds Joe Allston, a somewhat curmudgeonly retired literary agent, and his wife Ruth newly retired and relocated to California in the 60s. They are still struggling with the death of their son, with whom Joe had a contentious relationship, when they find themselves hosting a hippie squatter on their land. Joe doesn’t like him, being opposed to all the values of the free love/free drugs generation, but can’t bring himself to kick him out either. At the same time, another newcomer appears in the form of Marian, a thirty-something mother with whom Joe is smitten. She’s like the daughter he wishes he would have had, even though she has some opposing opinions of her own. Stegner builds Allston’s philosophies about love, responsibility, wildness and order through his interactions with these two characters, blows everything away with a tragedy unlike anything I’ve ever read, then somehow ties it all together in a satisfying, if bitter, resolution. Masterful—and in my eyes, as good as anything he wrote.

The Spectator Bird takes place about ten years later, as Ruth and Joe are facing their friend’s, and thereby their own, mortality. Joe inevitably begins to recall and weigh his life, and he finds himself lacking—a spectator rather than an actor in his own story. He receives a postcard from a countess they boarded with on a trip to Denmark twenty years earlier just after the death of their son. That card leads him to pull out the journals he wrote that summer, and somehow his wife finagles him into reading them aloud to her. Dangerous memories are revealed and, finally, resolved between them as he recounts the life of this beautiful, tragic woman and the relationship that blossomed between all three of them. Not my favorite Stegner by a long shot, but still worth reading. Stegner, who had an enduring and successful partnership with his wife Mary, has something to say about both the challenge and the ultimate joy of being and staying married.

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

The Lonely Polygamist is a sprawling story about a sprawling, typical American family, albeit a polygamous family. Okay, so maybe some things about Golden Richards, his 4 wives, 28 children, a failing construction business and a forbidden flirtation aren’t exactly typical, but it’s surprising how relatable Udall makes his characters. They deal with the same things we all struggle to overcome—a desire to feel loved and connected in a world that is big and busy and chaotic and filled with competing needs. In this family, as in the whole world, it seems like nobody’s needs are being met, and the various ways characters try to overcome that conundrum are by turns hilarious and tragic. I hesitated to read this one, simply because my own thoughts and feelings about polygamy are not clear and most attempts at portraying it in media I find utterly uncomfortable and often offensive, but I’m so glad I did. It’s not about polygamy, really; it’s about family, just intensified exponentially by the sheer size of the Richards clan. The writing is admirable, as well. Definitely recommended.

Read on, my friends. Read on!