Back in October, I reviewed Samantha Shannon’s first published novel and the first in a proposed seven book series.  You may remember that I was head-over heals in love with both the story and the writer.  (Literary crush and all that jazz with a touch of jealousy.)  The Bone Season was brilliant – I have not changed my mind.  And Shannon can spin one hell of a yarn. 

I am always wary of sophomore attempts, especially in series, and I can be quite harsh in my reviews of them.  Contracts, agents, demanding publishing companies, etc. can all work together to push a work out before its time, so I was a little worried about The Mime Order.  My concerns didn’t stop me, however, from placing my order and eagerly awaiting the mailman to drop that large hardback with its red cover in my paws.

It was beautiful.  Heavy.  Stunning cover.  Smelled of a fresh printing.  I couldn’t wait to open it up and through myself head and heart first back in Scion.  But life and work got in the way until that gorgeous book was collecting dust on my nightstand.  A few months ago, I dusted it off and snuggled up to it, pulling a near all-nighter.  I have no regrets.

The Mime Order is just as beautifully crafted, though grittier/uglier, as The Bone Season.  Paige continues to grow as an independent woman who literally battles her demons. She spends much of the novel covered in blood and/or bruises, but shows herself to be extremely resourceful and one badass woman.  (Can Ronda Rousey play her in the movie, please?!?)

The love connection with the Warden (yes, he’s BACK!!!) and Nick’s relationship can seem a bit off-putting, especially when juxtaposed to “to the death” fight scenes, but that’s part of what makes this fantastical novel relatable.  Life doesn’t stop or hit pause for love – you squeeze in it when and where you can.

Much like The Bone Season‘s review, I don’t want to say too much because this book is simply too delicious to spoil.

I wanted to finish the series before putting pen to paper on this one.  Conclusion: it’s not a poorly written dystopian YA set.  (Interestingly enough, why is so much YA lit these days dystopian in nature?  Does it indicate a dissatisfaction among our youth with how the world is working?  Do they fear the decline in society that is ever apparent in dystopian works?)  It certainly is an active-paced edge of your seat read.  And it didn’t make me angry.  That’s always a plus.

The first of the trilogy, Divergent, was published in 2011.  It readily sets up the world of factions: Dauntless – the bad-ass, thrill seeking lot who use brute strength and fear to maintain power and control.  Abnegation – the selfless bunch who govern.  Candor – those that hold truth above all else.  Erudite – the intellectuals.  Amity – the peace-loving hippies who grow the natural resources (and have a peace serum that is fed to the folks daily – yep.  they are drugged.)  And then there are the factionless, people who couldn’t neatly fit in a box or did not pass the initiation into their chosen factions.  (Yes, you get to choose your faction – it does not choose you.)  The factionless are the lowest of the low, destined to do the “dirty jobs” no one else wants.  Being factionless isn’t exactly what people strive toward.

While you get to chose your faction, individuals are given an aptitude test when they are 16.  The test is destined to indicate what faction they are best suited for.  Those that do not neatly fit in a faction-box are considered “Divergent.”  A word that’s whispered in hushed tones.  Those who are Divergent, if they are lucky, find someone in their lives who tells them that they must hide the fact they are Divergent.  Those that aren’t lucky, are killed (or extracted, but more on that later.)

One of the many tasks of Dauntless is to patrol the fence.  To keep the residents in or something else out seems to be the question that’s touched on very early on in the trilogy, but for the most part, the “outside” does not factor into the first book, which focuses on Beatrice Prior, Abnegation-born, who chooses Dauntless after learning she is Divergent.  This choice means she abandons her family.  Her brother similarly abandons the family by choosing Erudite, leaving Beatrice initially confused as her brother had seemed annoyingly selfless his entire life.  (Little tidbits of memories reveal the clues of his thirst for knowledge and makes Beatrice realize she should have known.)

Beatrice changes her name to Tris.  With a serious chip on her shoulder, she sets out to prove that she is Dauntless through and through.  But Dauntless isn’t just power and brute force – they are cruel, selfish, and much like rabid dogs.  Eat or be eaten.  A large number don’t survive the initiation – both by choice and design.  Tris is almost killed by her “new” family.  Another guy loses an eye.  Yet a third commits suicide.  And that’s just her initiation class.

Of course she falls in love with the Dauntless eye-candy who is tasked with assisting in the initiation.  He too was Abnegation-born.  He too changed his name.  He too had something to prove.  Tobias became Four, a nickname born of the fact he only has four fears.  His father beat the hell out of him and his mother when he was a child.  When his mother “died,” he took the brunt of his father’s anger – an anger that was well-hidden from the rest of the world – what goes on behind picket fences and all.  He fled his father.  (His father and his father’s fists were one of the four fears.)  His relationship with his parents and his relationship Tris span all three books.  The romantic relationship has all the growing pain of a normal relationship – they fight over lies, trust, and jealousy.  And let’s just say this is no Bella and Edward relationship (thank goodness!)  The relationship with his parents is perhaps more interesting.

Long story short – the Dauntless are put under a “serum” that makes them mindless killing machines.  They attack Abnegation, as they are ordered to do.  Those who are Divergent are immune.  Tris and Tobias seek to thwart the attack.  They are unsuccessful and Tobias is captured.  Tris has to save him.  And the world.  Talk about an ass-kicking girl.  She does.  She breaks the simulation.  The attack stops.  The world of factions is forever shattered.

Insurgent shows a world where trust is rare, even between Tris and Four.  More fighting.  More people dying.  More physical intimacy between Tris and Four.  (Is it sex?  Is it not sex?)  Betrayal.  Faction before blood and all that jazz.  A video is played, a video Erudite sought to hide and Abnegation sought to reveal, showing that they were purposely placed there and that the Divergent are the key to saving the world.  (Cue dramatic music.)  Tris gets to be a hero again.  (I really stopped liking her much in this novel.)

Allegiant is written from both Tris and Four’s POVs, in an alternating fashion.  I found this unacceptable and jarring – their voices are simply to similar.  Had the other books been drafted that way or had the voices been different, maybe I wouldn’t have been as annoyed.  (I’m convinced she only did this so she could detail the death scene and the aftermath.)  Tris, Four and the rest of their motley crew make it outside the fence.  More dead people end up being alive.  (Neat little trick!)  They learn they were but a science experiment.  The battle isn’t between the factions, the battle is between the “genetically pure” and the “genetically damaged.”  (Plot twist: Tris is GP while Four is GD.)  There are some interesting things going in this book – of note is how the GP have been convinced that wars are only the product of GDs, even though GPs created the GDs.  History has been erased.  (Oklahoma and the AP history debacle anyone?)  More people die.  Tris learns her mother had been born in the Fringe and “planted” into the factions to “fix” the problem of Erudite killing Divergents.  She learns about the big bad world.  She flies in a plane.  And she decides to play hero again.  Her actions may make her character appear to come full circle – the selfless acts of Abnegation in sacrificing herself instead of her brother (who did some pretty crappy things), but it wasn’t selflessness.  It was pride.  Tris wanted to be the hero.  And Tris knew the death serum couldn’t kill her.  She wanted the world to think she was a hero, that her acts were selfless, and maybe Roth wanted that as well.  But she came across as a teenager with a chip on her shoulder who had to always be right, always had to know better than everyone else, regardless of the consequences.  Death really was the only proper outcome.

As a whole, I applaud the trilogy.  Unlike The Hunger Games, I didn’t feel like the subsequent books in the trilogy fell off in the writing or in the plot.  And while many hated the ending, I felt it was a necessary conclusion – but maybe that’s because I really had no mushy feelings for Tris.  And can I just say – Tris is BLONDE.  Roth tells us this every fourth line it seems.  Why couldn’t they make certain her hair color was correct in the movie!?!?!?!?!?!?!

It has been over a year since my last post, but not over a year since I’ve read a novel!!  Time and life have gotten away from me.  But the book I stayed up last night to finish has forced me to take some time out of my holiday in order to share the sheer beauty of an artfully crafted tale.

Tea Obreht was born in the former Yugoslavia, but spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt.  She immigrated to the US in her teens.  The Tiger’s Wife, published in 2011, is her debut novel.  (As of yet, a sophomore attempt has not been published.)  For a young writer, Obreht has scores of accolades already and, based on The Tiger’s Wife alone, she is well-deserving of every bit of praise.

The Tiger’s Wife sparkles with a magic that an author cannot learn – it has to be in your soul, and Obreht’s soul was pulsating.  The relationship she crafts between Natalia and her grandfather creates an easy pathway between family lore, magic, and the present.

“In my earliest memory, my grandfather is bald as a stone and he takes me to see the tigers.  He puts on his hat, his big-buttoned raincoat, and I wear my lacquered shoes and velvet dress.  It is autumn, and I am four years old.  The certainty of this process: my grandfather’s hand, the bright hiss of the trolley, the dampness of the morning, the crowded walk up the hill to the citadel park.  Always in my grandfather’s breastpocket: The Jungle Book, with its gold-leaf cover and yellow pages.  I am not allowed to hold it, but it will stay open on his knee all afternoon while he recites passages to me.”

And so begins a story that is just as much Natalia’s as it is her grandfather’s.  Obreht cleverly weaves in and out of the present, juxtaposing stories passed down by Natalia’s grandfather with the present – stories that are full of magic and horror, love and loss.  The tiger’s wife, the deaf-mute who earned her rightful place as the namesake for the novel, has a story most beautiful and tragic.  Natalia’s grandfather’s memory of her, a memory of his youth, is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful.  A talented man whose closeted homosexuality and family obligations create a monster of a husband when all his hopes and dreams are shattered by his father.  A lost tiger in the war who finds love and sanctuary with a deaf-mute who was never the intended.  Cowards of men who fear the tiger and so seek to destroy.  A man made bear by legend.  A man, the nephew of Death, who could not die and travels throughout the story without aging, taking souls to his uncle in the hopes that he will one day be free.  An elephant led through the city in the magic of the night.  The breaking of a coffee cup.  Cheating death.  The magic of The Jungle Book.  A war torn zoo.  Animals turning on themselves and each other under the wail of sirens during air raids.  Teenage rebellion during a war.  Stolen skulls and lungs.  Forty days.  A war torn country where neighbors, family members suddenly become “the other” and sides must be chosen.  A tiger who hasn’t been seen in years, but who is always there.

Natalia is defined by her grandfather’s life and stories, as such, the tiger’s wife is just as much a part of her.  Even after her grandfather goes to meet Death like the old friend he is, the tiger is still there.

I have long considered myself a fan of Zadie Smith, though she is not a writer I’d ever want to have a drink with.  I have this strong feeling that she’s a bit of an arrogant bitch.  It may very well be misplaced, but I’ve felt that way since before NW.  That feeling, I believe it started after reading a Salon interview with Smith, hasn’t stopped me from devouring her novels like the gut-wrenching candies they are.  White Teeth still stands strong on my list of all time favorites.  Autograph Man, some markedly different from her first novel, was a specialness I’d like to see her revisit.  On Beauty was essentially a retelling of White Teeth that shows how Smith had grown as a writer.  And NW is along the same vein, though it shows not only the growth of a writer, but Smith’s physical aging as a woman.

Once upon a time, I read an African novel Nervous Conditions.  The novel, and the title, explained that awkward existence of trying to maintain one’s culture while being “westernized.”  While reading NW, I couldn’t shake the idea of it being a “nervous condition.”  Smith’s novels are full of people suffering from this condition.  The character of Natalie Blake is an excellent example:  Nat is a black girl.  A lawyer.  A mother because that is what was expected of her.  (The descriptions of her interactions with her two children show how disconnected she is from the idea of “mother.”)  Nat has it all.  But Nat is really Keisha, the second of three children.  She changed her name when she decided to change her life.  “Dress for the job you want, not the one you have,” is how Michell, Nat’s best friend’s husband, describes the name-change.  Michell means it as a compliment; it’s something he admires in Nat and something he strives for in his life.  He also is struggling with the “nervous condition” as an African trying to make it in England.

Nat’s best friend, Leah, has her own nervous condition.  She’s white.  In her 30s.  Often times dead in the eyes.  She never lived up to her potential.  She smoked her way through school, constantly trying to reinvent herself, but never really succeeding.  Parts of the novel are told from her POV and remind me of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”  Much like Nat, the pressure to have children is like an elephant on her tiny chest.  Michell wants kids.  Her coworkers constantly tell her “she’s next” and make her feel incomplete because she has not procreated.  So they are “trying.”  But trying for Leah means stealing Nat’s birth control and sneaking off for abortions when the pills are unsuccessful.  She’s had three.  Michell only knows of one.  Leah and Michell are only able to communicate with their bodies.  She is envious of Nat’s life, but even she doesn’t know that Nat frequents the Internet seeking threesomes.  (The encounters she has are both comical and heartbreaking.)

The novel contains a cast of colorful characters, all broken in some ways.  They either tried to get out of the life they’d been given (Nat and Leah) and they fall victim to it (Nathan.)  The sections on Felix are fantastic.  I’ve always thought Smith did well with men characters, and I wish there were more.  I won’t tell you about Felix other than to say it involves an old car, a Rasta father, a whore, cocaine, and a knife.

Smith is still Smith.  She has a way with words that can leave you gasping for breath.  But her ending is shit. It would appear she didn’t know how to bring her story to a close, so she neatly packages up a reconciliation between Leah and Nat that involves them turning on someone they grew up with, someone whose life could have very well been theirs.  The idea isn’t shit, the execution of it was.

This was my first go with David Mitchell, perhaps best known for Cloud Atlas.  Mitchell has written 5 books; 2 ended up shortlisted for the Booker Prize.  (He hasn’t won yet.  In time.  He’s quite the wordsmith.)  The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (2010) was longlisted for the prestigious prize, but it received quite a few other accolades, including winning the Commonwealth Writers’ prize, listed as one of Time’s best books of the year, as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.  It was also shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize.  Mitchell clearly has the umph it takes to be an excellent author, so why do I feel unsatisfied?

The answer isn’t all that simple.  I feel cheated.  That’s the best way to sum it up: cheated.  Mitchell created a world for me and characters that I felt vested in and then…  BOOM! War novel and my most beloved character only appearing in flashes of dreams, at graveside funerals, and years later as a flash of a face behind a scarf.  The title should have tipped me off.  This was the life of Jacob de Zoet, a Dutch trader in Japan, not the beautifully scarred midwife Orito.  But Orito was the story and the story she should have been.

The novel opens with Orito delivering a baby.  It’s a descriptive scene, aided by a drawing of a fetus tucked in his mother’s womb, a cord wrapped around his neck, and only one arm reaching out from her womb.  Orito and the doctor discuss amputating the arm and pulling the baby they both assume dead from the concubine’s body, but end up using forceps to remove the lifeless body.  “A crib for a coffin, she thinks, and a swaddling sheet for a shroud.”  But all is not as it seems.  Orito drops the forceps, making a horrible clattering sound and an animal starts mewling.  ” Surely not, thinks the midwife, refusing to hope.  Surely not.  She snatches away the linen sheet just as the baby’s mouth opens.  He inhales once, twice, three times; his crinkled face crumples… and the shuddering newborn boiled-pink despot howls at life.” 

While this may seem out of place as the novel then launches into Jacob de Zoet and the adventures of Dutch trading in Dejima, it is quite a fitting place to start.  We see the object of de Zoet’s affection doing what she was gifted to do, a gift that brought her to Dejima to train under the Dutch doctor (the fact the baby survived when all hope was lost resulted in the privilege of study under the good Doctor), and a gift that ultimately resulted in her being essentially enslaved in a most horrible of places where women are bred like cattle and the children sacrificed unbeknowst to their mothers.  It is Orito’s life’s journey that propels de Zoet forward; most of his actions are with thoughts of her quick on his tongue.

I know next to nothing about the late 1700s – early 1800s era in Japan and cannot speak to the details.  Those that do know these things applaud Mitchell for his extensive research and attention to detail.  The setting for the novel, the backdrop of an English war, the tensions between East and West, man and woman, are all beautifully crafted and unfold without effort.

My dissatisfaction come from loving the character of Orito and the idea of monks impregnating women at a temple shrine with no one else in the world any the wiser.  I wanted more of that world, of her experiences there, her fear there, the drugs they fed her to break her mind and keep her numb, her near escape and return.  I’m disappointed because Mitchell is that good in crafting his characters.  It’s an unfair disappointment; Mitchell wrote an excellent novel and my criticism is undeserved, but is it not the mark of a good writer that the reader finds herself disheartened as the novel concludes?

I know it has been a horribly long time – my apologies.  I am full of excuses, but I will spare you and just get right into the review.  Michael Synder’s first novel, My Name is Russell Fink, is dubbed “Christian Fiction” in some circles but don’t let that dissuade you; it’s quirky, neurotic, intense, and cleverly executed almost entirely throughout. 

Let’s introduce some characters to give you a full sense of what Synder does in this fun little book.

Russell Fink:  Our hero and the teller of our tale.  This young man has more issues than publishing clearinghouse.  Seriously.  I think they make medication for people like this.  He is a hypochondriac who goes to the doctor almost as much as he actually shows up at his job – he’s an office supply salesman and he isn’t exactly happy about that either.  He’s an artist, of sorts, and like most artists, his muse is a woman.   He lives with his parents. He blames himself for his twin sister’s death (she died of cancer when they were young) and in addition to self-loathing, he has issues with his Bible-thumping TV evangelist father, alcoholic mother, gambler brother, and God.  He loves his dog, Sonny, hates his neighbor, and has been head over heels for his college chum Geri for years.

Sonny:  Old basset hound who prefers his dog biscuits soaked in vodka.  He may or may not be clairvoyant.  His murder sends Russell on a quest to find the culprit.

Alyssa: Russell’s (ex) fiancee.  Wannabe actress.  Prom queen mentality.  Every thing she does must be dramatic, including her on-again off-again relationship with Russell.

Peter Fink: Russell’s older brother.  Gambler (deeply in debt), coffee-shop owner, a bit shady, obsessed with winning a Pulitzer for his family memoirs.  Hates Sonny.  Subject of threatening letters.

Gary Fink:  Russell’s father.  Pastor.  Rose to fame when praying for a group of cancer-ridden patients, his daughter included.  A large number of them were “healed” – his daughter was not one of the survivors.  Desirous to be on TV.

Geri: Russell’s best friend.  Able to tell when the time zone changes whilst traveling.  Makes her own clothes out of things like Canadian flags and Russell’s old sweatshirts.  Has a few secrets of her own.

Other characters include Russell’s alcoholic mother, the neighbor who puts dog poop in the mailbox, Geri’s cousin Dan – owner of the pet funeral home who tends to heat everything before eating it – including oranges, coworkers, a PI, and Russell’s grandfather, a man who found Jesus while in prison for killing his wife.

The book runs quite smoothly until the end, where everything rushes into a neat and tidy conclusion, which does the book a disservice.  But I would recommend it.  Not a bad first novel.  And certainly worthy of a beach read.

I decided to follow my candy up with a novel by Lawrence Durrell.  I consider Durrell a brilliant writer – the word choice, the plot, the flow, the dialogue, the descriptions…  His books are everything I love in a novel.  What’s more is that Durrell wrote about what he knew.  His life was like living a novel.

His real life involvement in politics and travel couldn’t help but work their way into his fiction.  He with the Foreign Office.  He lived in Egypt, Greece, Yugoslavia, England, India, etc.   He disliked English culture but has a knack for detailing it quite well.

Durrell is best known for the Alexandria Quartet.  The first three of the four tell the same story but from different perspectives.  You get a love story, a political thriller, an action story.  The final of the series, Clea, advances the story and brings it to a close.  I remember reading the quartet in undergrad and falling madly in love with Durrell. 

I picked up White Eagles Over Serbia (1957) at the library sale.  It was published just before the Alexandria Quartet and is pretty much defined as a spy thriller.  The story revolves around Methuen, a spy for the British Secret Service and his mission in Serbia.  It is reportedly based on Durrell’s own experiences with the Foreign Office.

The novel opens with Methuen, having just returned from the jungles of Malaya and craving the sound of English, hanging out in a private lounge.  He simply wanted human company.  The reader learns of Methuen’s involvement in the Awkward Shop (the British Secret Service) and how it was his ability to speak many language, “a gift of tongues,” that made him a most popular spy.  Methuen essentially gets tricked into deciding to do the mission in Yugoslavia.  The trickery is that Dombey convinces Methuen that he really wants to go – and maybe deep down he does long for more adventure.

A fellow spy had recently been murdered in the hillsides.  It is suspected that the underground Royalists group, the White Eagles, was behind it.  Dombey wants Methuen to get in there and figure out what the White Eagles are doing that is worth killing over.

Methuen sets up camp in a cave with a snake.  (A snake that basically saves his hide later.)  He waits for someone to find him while fishing.  (What he had HOPED to be doing in Scotland.)  The man alone in a cave quickly finds himself sought after by the Communists and the Royalists.  A lucky chain of events helps Methuen join the White Eagles as one of them.  It is then that Methuen learns their secret:  they are trying to get the gold that was stolen from the banks years ago out of the mountains and out of Yugoslavia.  This gold can give them the army they need to overthrow the Communists.  Methuen finds himself weighed down in gold as he joins the White Eagles in their walk to get the gold out of Yugoslavia undetected.

He nearly dies doing it.  The White Eagles are not successful.  When he returns to England, he finds a few of the coins in his pockets that support his story.  There’s a woman involved, Walden as a codebook, and poetry that sends the White Eagles into action.

It is an artfully written spy novel.