REVIEW: What I Leave Behind - Alison McGhee

• Year first released:  2018
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781481476560
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
• My rating (out of 5):  5

After last year's phenomenal Turtles All the Way Down (which I reviewed for you here), What I Leave Behind is the book I've been most excited about getting into. Though I've not yet reviewed any of McGhee's other books for you, two of her previous novels - All Rivers Flow to the Sea and Shadow Baby - are both incredible, five-star books that sit in a special place on my shelf. I'd even go so far as to say that Shadow Baby is one of the most well-written books I've ever read. Alison McGhee - more than other writers writing in her genre - has a downright magical way with words that somehow make them rise above their static, everyday meanings. Perhaps the best word to describe her writing is transcendent.

All of that said, What I Leave Behind certainly had big shoes to fill. The question is: did it succeed?

It did and it didn't.

Rather, it did, but in a unique way, and much differently than McGhee has done before.

The first thing to note about the writing in What I Leave Behind is that it follows a very particular pattern: all of the text only appears on the right-hand pages, and each of those pages has exactly 100 words. (And, considering that there are exactly 100 pages with writing, the math comes out to only 10,000 words - technically a short story wrapped up in novel form. But that's neither here nor there.)

I knew this fact going in to the book; it's been touted a bit in the marketing, pre-release interviews, etc. The idea appealed to me; I was interested to see how it would actually play out once I had the book in front of me.

For the first dozen or so pages, I was a bit put off by this style. It was a bit hard to separate this knowledge from the way the actual words and sentences came together. Why does Will [the protagonist] say "you know" so much? Why are there so many sentence fragments all throughout? For those first handful of pages, in all honesty, it felt like a gimmick, like McGhee was just forcefully throwing in these extra little tidbits to make sure she hit her 100-word mark for the page.

Somewhere along the way, though (thankfully not too far in to the book), something about this entire setup fell into place. There was a tempo to the book. All of those "you know's" sprinkled throughout gave Will a personality, a rhythm to his thoughts and speech. (Importantly, the book is written in the first-person point of view.) Those sentence fragments, half-thoughts, catchphrases, and repeated descriptions all came together to create a flow to Will's story.

After a couple things in Will's life suddenly spiraled out of control, he became a walker. He walks everywhere - to school, to work at the dollar store, to his friend Playa's house, around the neighborhood, to the Chinese goods market. By this walking, he develops a pattern to his life (a very common, human response to tragedy, if you've read any books on psychology). And, as we realize throughout the book, this pattern is his cadence, the normality which keeps his life grounded and together. In this way, Will is certainly one of the stronger, more realistic (and yet still optimistic) characters I've come across in young adult fiction.

It turns out the rhythm to McGhee's writing in What I Leave Behind mirrors the rhythm Will is attempting to bring into his life - a phenomenal marriage of content and form. It is exceedingly rare we find a book that pulls off this feat so well. Even without the strong characters and optimistic overtone, this marriage alone would make the book well worth reading.

Despite my hesitation in the first handful of pages, McGhee has once again proven that she is still a master wordsmith. This time around, she chose a different approach - a different way of tying all of the words and pieces together - than she's done previously, but with no less lyrical, transcendent results. I'll be just as excited to read her next work of art.

On Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartet

I can't recall when I first read A Wrinkle in Time anymore - I'm pretty sure I was in middle school at the time. I had to read it for a class assignment, I believe. And if I recall, I didn't necessarily love it, but I enjoyed how smart it made me feel. I mean, after reading it, I became someone who knew what a tesseract was. So. There.

(Mind you, a tesseract is actually a real thing, but it's nothing like what it is in Wrinkle. But of course I didn't know that at the time. Oh well.)

I read it again some years ago (I think about 10 years ago), and liked it quite a bit more than the first time around. That's when I decided - finally - to give the rest of the series a go.

Now, with the Wrinkle in Time movie (finally!) upon us, I have to say: yes, I'm excited for the movie. Based on what I've seen and read about it so far, it seems like the creators might be on to something special with it. But the rest of the books (after Wrinkle) were...well, underwhelming, to put it kindly.

This happens often with sequels/series, of course. (Especially, for some reason, movie sequels. It's not quite as bad with book sequels, but still too often.) Sometimes it's hard to say exactly what goes wrong with subsequent titles. They just don't have quite the same magic as the first entry, I suppose.

It's sadly, painfully clear what went wrong with Wrinkle's sequels, though. So let's explore that.

A Wrinkle in Time was an incredibly visionary book that took place throughout several corners of space and time. And, importantly, as the plot goes on, its scope increases exponentially - in fact, compared to other books, the rate of increase is much faster and larger than average. What begins as a search for a missing father quickly snowballs into an enormous spiritual war spanning space and time. Books just don't explode like this very often; it's to L'Engle's credit that she handled it so deftly.

Then we get to the second book, A Wind in the Door.

Well then. Let's begin with a synopsis of the plot from Wikipedia (accessed 1.29.18):

Main character Meg Murry is worried about her brother Charles Wallace, a 6-year-old genius bullied at school by the other children. The new principal of the elementary school is the former high school principal, Mr. Jenkins, who often disciplined Meg, and who Meg is sure has a grudge against her whole family. Meg tries to enlist Jenkins's help in protecting her brother, but is unsuccessful. Later, Meg discovers that Charles Wallace has a progressive disease that is leaving him short of breath. Their mother, a microbiologist, suspects it may be a disorder of his mitochondria and his mitochondria's farandolae, (fictional) micro-organelles inside mitochondria.

One afternoon, Charles Wallace tells Meg of a "drive of dragons" in their back yard, where he and Meg thereupon discover a pile of unusual feathers. Later, Meg has a frightening encounter with a monstrous facsimile of Mr. Jenkins. That night, Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe discover that Charles Wallace's "drive of dragons" is an extraterrestrial "cherubim" named Proginoskes (nicknamed 'Progo' by Meg), under the tutelage of the immense humanoid Blajeny, who recruits the three children to counteract the Echthroi.

Meg's first task, on the next day, is to distinguish the real Mr. Jenkins from two Echthroi doubles, by identification of the (potential) goodness in him despite her personal grudge. The protagonists then learn that Echthroi are destroying Charles Wallace's farandolae, and travel inside one of his mitochondria, to persuade a larval farandola, named Sporos, to accept its role as a mature fara, against the urgings of an Echthros. 

...because all of that makes perfect sense, and sounds like one cohesive book, doesn't it?

False. The book is a jumbled mess which begins with a down-to-earth-bullying situation and ends in a veritable Magic School Bus episode in which they shrink and travel through Charles' blood. Oh, and there are dragons and angels and some sort of immature amoeba along the way...or something.

All of the space and time mysteries from Wrinkle have disappeared. The deeply unsettling social commentary from the cookie-cutter-esque planet, the majesty and wisdom of the Mrs W's, the intricate workings of the tesseract - all gone the way of the dinosaurs. Now we have...well, that.^^^

The third book in the series - A Swiftly-Tilting Planet - plays out in a nominally more interesting way...at least until you stop and think about the synopsis, which is, basically:

Nuclear war is imminent. Luckily Charles Wallace (now 16 years old) is given a magical...you know, incantation/recital/abra-kadabra thingy which he chants outside one night until a unicorn comes to take him back in time, where he telepathically links up with various people in the past in order to change the present and prevent the war. (Which is, of course, clearly the most effective way to head off a nuclear war. Props to him.)

No really. That about sums it up. I wish I was kidding.

I mean, Swiftly was cohesive, at least.

Oh, and the fourth book - Many Waters - you ask? That's the one in which two of the minor characters from the other books finally get their turn at an adventure, by going back in time to the age of Noah (of the ark-builder variety) to...well, who knows why they're there, actually. Help herd the animals, I guess. Oh, and they help fight off the evil shape-shifting demons - here called Nephilim - who like to disguise themselves as animals, and occasionally try to seduce teenage boys.

(At this point, I'd insert an emoji for a a dry, sarcastic sniff, if only there was one.)

Really, though: what on earth went wrong? How could L'Engle have started with something so brilliant and moving and bigger than space with Wrinkle, then turn it into a Magic School Bus episode, then a time-travelling unicorn, and finally a replay of Noah's Ark with pedophilic demons?

It's a mystery, to be sure.

If you're scratching your head and thinking WTF? - well, friend, so am I.

Hopefully they won't bother making the sequels into movies. My wish that that they'll nail Wrinkle, then quit while they're ahead.

REVIEW: The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier

• Year first released:  1974
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780375829871
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Random House Children's Books
• My rating (out of 5):  4

In his introduction to The Chocolate War, Cormier explains that he was surprised when his agent called the book a "young adult" book. Apparently he hadn't meant for it to be a young adult book - just an "adult," general fiction book.

On the one hand, Chocolate falls pretty squarely into the label of young adult: the setting is a high school, all of the major characters are teenagers, etc. Their situations and struggles are reflective of - and highly realistically portray - high school life. Also, the actions and motivations of the characters are likely to be relatable and empathy-inducing for teenagers.

On the other hand, though I think I would have generally liked Chocolate if I had read it while in high school, I am certain I got much more out of it now, at age 32.

Chocolate has been labeled a "coming-of-age" story - a label that people are tempted to throw on pretty much any young adult novel that doesn't involve vampires or death matches - but this label is certainly false for Chocolate. It is not a book about growing up, finding your place in life outside of high-school for the first time, or anything of the sort. Yes, a couple of the characters experience growing pains once or twice, and the question of forging your own identity pops up here and there throughout (though mostly only for the main character, Jerry). However, to relegate Chocolate to this breed of story is to do it a disservice, and to miss the point of the novel.

Rather, Chocolate is a psychological game that resembles an intricate, dramatic thriller more than the writings of John Green or Rainbow Rowell. More than once, I've seen the book compared to S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Through a casual glance, I suppose I can see the connection. Having read both, though, Chocolate is a much more complex, psychological novel which avoids the brutish machismo of Outsiders in favor of a finely-crafted web of manipulation which grows to be downright Machiavellian.

The main antagonist of the book, Archie, goes far beyond a playground bully, landing himself squarely in the presence of Shakespeare's Iago (from Othello). Like Iago, Archie comes across as highly charismatic and honest (except to those who know his real motives). His charm allows him to weave himself into the lives and situations of nearly everyone around him, all of whom ultimately fall prey to his machinations. And, also like Iago is in Othello, Archie is undoubtedly the most fascinating character in Chocolate, and the gravity into which everything else in the story is drawn. He is a puppetmaster, pulling the strings of all the other characters.

Archie's strings are both what made me enjoy the book more than anything else, as well as what makes me think that I got more out of it now than I would have as a young adult. Though the story isn't hard to follow (I wouldn't call the plot simple, just well-explained), I think that it is easier to understand and admire the different situations and ideas now that I'm not so close to the world portrayed in the book. I imagine I would have thought the book was merely "cool" and "clever" at the time; now I am able to catch on to more of the psychological subtleties involved.

To put it more directly, without the charismatic, sinister, awe-inspiring genius of Archie, Chocolate would have been a completely different - and probably a completely worthless - book. I don't compare him to Iago hyperbolically.

Cormier certainly excelled at bringing his characters and their world to life in Chocolate. Each piece of this manipulative puzzle worked excellently. Nothing in the book left me confused, wondering why it happened or what the character's motivations were. This is all largely to Cormier's credit; most young adult authors seem incapable of weaving together such solidarity and meaning.

I have one complaint about the book, though, and it's too big to ignore.

Cormier's writing was mostly solid: his descriptions, characterizations, use of setting and metaphor and word choice were all highly effective. There is a consistent tone throughout Chocolate that most writers should be jealous of.

Cormier's use of point of view, though, could serve as an example for new writers of exactly what not to do in their own writings.

My personal preference is that a book - even one written from the third-person perspective, such as Chocolate - only follow the point of view of one character throughout the book's entirety. I say this, though, freely acknowledging how subjective it is. There's nothing, per se, inherently wrong with switching between characters. Many authors do it, and there's not necessarily any very concrete reason this should be disallowed.

Indeed, for the first 13 chapters of Chocolate (just under half the book), the POV changes at chapter breaks. The shift is always easy enough to follow. But then inexplicably, beginning with chapter 14, the POV begins switching much more erratically throughout, even multiple times mid-chapter. Though I still didn't have any trouble understanding where the story was or whose mind we were following, this constant shift was distracting and, I fear, a bit lazy on Cormier's part. Was there no other way to relate these occurrences through the eyes of the character whose mind we were following on the previous page? - I'm sure there was, if Cormier had thought through it a bit more. Granted, obviously these shifts were intentional - but intentional or not, they rubbed me the wrong way.

Worse, along these lines, there's also one - but thankfully only one - instance in which Cormier switches POV mid-paragraph for one little sentence. This, clearly, was not intentional, but rather a mistake on Cormier's part (which somehow also passed untouched through his editor's desk).

(I'm referring to a scene in the final quarter or so of the book. I no longer recall the page number, but it's in a dialogue between Jerry and one of his friends, The Goober. The scene follows Jerry's perspective, but then for one little, insignificant sentence, suddenly we're in The Goober's head, before immediately switching back to Jerry's in the very next sentence. Oops.)

As much as I enjoyed Chocolate - particularly the machinations of Archie, which were sheer, twisted delights - this large mishandling of point of view will keep me wary of reading Cormier's other books. No doubt someone who is less picky about this sort of thing won't be as bothered as I was, though. And, even still, it was worth trudging through the erratic POV for this fantastic story, in order to read what is, deservedly, a pillar of young adult fiction.

REVIEW: Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780525555360
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Penguin Young Readers Group
• My rating (out of 5):  5+

It’s no surprise that I’m a big fan of John Green. That said, I’ll admit up front to perhaps a small bit of bias. If you can forgive me this minor bias, though, and trust me on how incredible Turtles All the Way Down really is - and how you really, really should read it - I hope you'll discover the same sheer magic in it that I did. 

Like all of Green's best books (Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and the Fault in Our Stars, in order of their release), it'd be easy enough to categorize Turtles as simply a young adult romance, maybe a coming-of-age story (a label I don't really care for because of its overabundant use and yet lack of any inherent meaning, but there you have it). But, like each of those others, Turtles presents us with so much more than "just" a romance, "just" a drama, "just" a young adult book...in fact, it's far beyond "just" anything. 

Turtles wastes no time in diving into the deep end of human struggle. And though its main character Aza is definitely a teenager with teenage emotions and concerns and struggles, we quickly realize that her story is something that touches just about all of us. Almost nothing about Aza is ordinary, per se, and yet she's completely credible as a character, through and through - I might even say that she is Green's strongest, most believable single character to date. Never have we been so deeply invested inside the in's and out's of one of Green's character's minds - the good, the bad, the quirky, the heartache. 

To say much about the plot would certainly give away the magic of reading the book for yourself - a magic which Green establishes within the first few pages. The most I'd dare say is that, after no small amount of pressure from her best friend, Daisy, Aza begins seeking clues about the disappearance of a fugitive billionaire, hoping to claim her stake in the $100,000 reward. Things very quickly complicate from there, and it's not long before we discover that this really isn't about the money or the manhunt at all - it's about how our stories shape us, how we shape our stories, and about the glorious, painful in between: 

Are we simply on the receiving end of our circumstances? Are our stories really our own? Do they shape us, or do we shape them? Are we more than the sum of our parts? Are we even as much as the sum of our parts?

These are not young adult questions - these are human questions, which Green deftly weaves into page after page of Turtles. I'm convinced that you simply cannot read the book without wrestling with these questions for yourself. That's what it left me with, at least, and I'm 32 - about twice as old as Green's target demographic (haha).

If you've read any of his other works, you've no doubt seen Green's nigh-supernatural ability to take a dozen pieces which feel like they're from a dozen different realities, and yet combine them into the most cohesive, relatable package one can imagine. The same is true here - more so, in fact, than he's accomplished previously. 

I'm still too close to Turtles to definitively say if it's better than Paper Towns (my standing favorite of Green's books), but it is absolutely a worthy successor to it, if nothing else. 

If you're waiting for a punch line from me - a disclaimer, a tiny gripe, a "it's-good-but-not-as-good-as...", etc. - there isn't one. Turtles is absolutely a masterpiece, and absolutely once again proves that John Green sits at the pinnacle of modern authors. 

REVIEW: Thornhill - Pam Smy

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781626726543
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Roaring Book Press
• My rating (out of 5):  4.5

If I could draw (and I sincerely wish I could), I would create books like Thornhill. It is lovely, imaginative, succinct and with a fantastic dose of eeriness.

It’s a rather simple story, told half in prose and half in drawing:

The prose half of the book is the diary of a girl in an orphanage in the early 80’s, who is bullied by another tenant. The orphanage is struggling to keep its doors open, and one by one, all the other children and workers move on from the home.

The art half of the book – which is basically told only through drawing – is modern day, and shows us another girl, new to the neighborhood, who has more than a healthy amount of curiosity about the creepy, abandoned building not far from her house.

This delivery – of telling two intertwining stories, one with only words and the other with only art – is a fantastic approach. If this book were handled any other way – only prose or only art, or even all prose with occasional illustrations of both stories – surely something vital to the effect would have been lost. This combination does a truly remarkable job of creating precisely the right ominous atmosphere for this ultimately sad, dark story about loss and hope and bullying and figuring out where we belong.

And make no mistake, Thornhill is quite dark: according to the publisher, the age range is 10-14 years old. This sounds about right (actually, I would just say 10+, rather than capping it on the upper end at all), but it's perhaps not for a kid who is particularly susceptible to frights. (Though if you’re a parent, you know your kids well enough to know the right amount of thrills for them. My son, for example, loves creepy books and movies. I may pass this book on to him even earlier than 10.) 

Either way, at 32, I enjoyed it immensely. It’d be a fantastic book to read alone late at night, or curled up on the couch with a cuddle-buddy or squeamish friend. If you want a simple, easy, but still truly haunting book to read with your friends or loved ones on Halloween, Thornhill would be an exceptional candidate.

(Don't let the 544-page count put you off: since half is art, and the prose half doesn't actually boast too many words per page, it's not an especially long read - totally doable in a couple hours on Halloween night.)

REVIEW: Lockdown (Escape from Furnace 1) – Alexander Gordon Smith

• Year first released:  2009
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0312611935
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Square Fish
• My rating (out of 5):  2.5

  

I've always been a believer in "young adult" books not only being for teenagers. Of course the Hunger Games and Twilight series are highly popular with adults as much as teens (even though at least one of those really really shouldn't be - but I won't say which *cough, cough* Twilight *cough, cough*), and I would argue strongly that Paper Towns by John Green is just as applicable to adults as it is to the younger crowds it was theoretically aimed at.

Then I come across a book like Lockdown, and I remember that, actually, some books really are for one specific demographic. I can imagine my 14-year-old self enjoying Lockdown immensely. It has a gritty, action-packed, thrilling story in an imaginative, disturbing setting, and with a main character who is at least half a step deeper than the protagonist of many other teen thrillers. 

Really, Lockdown wasn't bad. It didn't do anything unforgivable. The mystery it builds and the curiosity it inspires are admirable. But its constant stream of - and overt reliance on - testosterone and adrenaline really drive the point home that Gordon Smith was unmistakably trying to appeal to just one particular group of people (12-17 year-old boys, give or take). 

Perhaps it is not fair of me to judge the book too harshly. It wasn't written for me - and so, if I don't like it, this doesn't actually say anything against the book as a whole, does it? We might say that I wasn't, per se, meant to like the book.

Here are the things I can say about it, with at least a little less bias:

• The book does a good job of creating a sense of claustrophobia. Its prison setting - both in appearance and in the society that inhabits it - is strongly developed and suffocatingly small (in a good way). 
• The overall story kept me interested throughout the book, but the twists and tropes it employs (who lives and dies, the pace at which the events unfold, etc.) were overly transparent. Though I still don't know what's lying at the heart of the mystery (this was only the first book in the series), the types of events were rather predictable. 
• Gordon Smith's writing style was tense and atmospheric, but not particularly unique in any other way. Also, it suffered from as many run-on sentences as the worst of Suzanne Collins' books. (Seriously: why is it okay for young adult books to be littered with so many run-ons? How disappointing. No wonder people don't know how to use commas and semi-colons anymore.)
• In theme, plot, and overall content, Lockdown bears a striking resemblance to the much-more popular Maze Runner series by James Dashner. That said, I'd happily suggest Lockdown before Maze Runner. Though Lockdown doesn't transcend its demographic (neither did Maze Runner), it at least fixes many of the egregious errors of Dashner's book.

All in all, I can maybe see myself picking up volume two at some point in the future, but I doubt I'll make it through all six volumes of the series. It's interesting, but not six-books interesting. (To be fair, I can't think of any story which is worth being six books long.)

If you're a 12-17 year old boy*, I'd wager you would enjoy this book quite a bit. If you're not that demographic, though, then...meh. If the premise really sounds interesting to you (or if, for some reason, you enjoyed The Maze Runner), then sure, give it a shot. It's a rather quick read, at least - you won't lose too much of your life to it. But I can think of several other books - even similarly-themed young adult books - that I'd recommend before Lockdown.

*My apologies; I don't mean to play a gender-roles card here. Let me instead say: If you're a 12-17 year-old reader who enjoys actiony, adrenaline-packed thrillers, I'd wager you would enjoy this book quite a bit.

Fair?

REVIEW: One of Us Is Lying - Karen M. McManus

• Year first released: 2017
• ISBN of the edition I read: 9781524714680
• Publisher of the edition I read: Random House Children’s Books
• My rating (out of 5): 3

Five high-schoolers are sent to after-school detention. The teacher steps out of the room just long enough for one of the five kids to drop dead. This is going to be a hard semester for the other four, all of whom are suspects in his murder.

One of Us Is Lying has plenty of twists to keep you hooked. Nearly every section includes – or ends with – some sort of new tidbit, factoid, or event, begging you to dive deeper into the mystery of who really killed Simon. It’s certainly an effective approach, and many of the twists were quite unexpected.

In a vacuum, this would be good. When butted up against the point of view(s) in which Lying was written, though, it proved to be a bit more of a challenge than I’d have preferred.

The narrative alternates between the other four kids who were in the room when Simon died: nerdy, overachiever Bronwyn; popular baseball player Cooper; pretty trophy-girl Addy; and troubled delinquent Nate. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more cliché cast of high-schoolers. This isn’t necessarily troublesome or distracting (except in the case of Addy, who is downright annoying for at least half of the book), but McManus certainly won’t win any awards for her characters.

What is distracting, though, is the shifting first-person point of view. We spend a few pages in Bronwyn’s head, getting her take on the situation, adjusting to her personality, etc., before switching over to Cooper. After a few pages with him, realigning ourselves with his viewpoint, we then move into… etc.

In principle, I’m not against this sort of approach in writing. Certainly each of the four characters’ viewpoints added to the intrigue and complexity of the mystery.

And though the book announces whose mind we’re in each time, the shift was often abrupt enough that it took me a good page to readjust to the new character’s mindset. Several times I had to re-read a few paragraphs when I remembered that I was actually in someone else’s mind now.

Wait a second: Why would Nate say this?

- oh, right. He wouldn’t. Now the “I” is Addy.

When you have to work to keep track of this frequent, abruptly-changing viewpoint, then mix it in with the constant twists of the plot, it can be a little overwhelming.

I fear I’m making the book sound bad; I certainly don’t feel that way. The plot was legitimately interesting. I enjoyed the amount of/the level of twists (when I was able to keep them straight, anyway). It took me quite awhile to catch on to the secret behind everything. (I got there a little before McManus directly says it, but not too much before.) And the slow-growing relationship between two of the four characters (I might as well not say which two) was warm to read, and a nice change-up from many of the more screwed up relationships that books so often include.

If you’re going to read Lying – which is recommendable, at least if you’re into twisty YA books – make sure you’re ready to pay close attention. I only wish the book demanded attention for the sake of noticing fine details, as opposed to for the sake of keeping straight who is who.