REVIEW: Never Fall Down by Patricia McCormick

Never Fall Down

by Patricia McCormick

"I see all this, smell the blood, like raw meat. And my eyes see it. But I don't feel anything. If you feel, you go crazy."

Eleven-year-old Arn lives in his village in Cambodia, selling ice cream and listening to Elvis. There is a war going on, but it is distant. That is, until the Khmer Rouge, the communist enemy, come to his village claiming the Americans were coming to bomb it, and they "evacuate" the people to farming camps. The children are separated from the adults, and any intellectual or rich citizens are killed. The population becomes smaller and smaller as the Khmer Rouge find increasingly specific reasons to kill people. Arn does what he can to survive as his friends and family die around him in the Killing Fields. He volunteers to participate in a band that tours other camps, singing of the glory of the communist party and the paradise they have brought. He is soon able to protect a small group of kids because he has become "a little bit famous." But with so much death facing him every day, he must become like the Khmer Rouge to survive. Will he be able to ever find himself again?

This book was absolutely brutal. It was the most gory and graphic thing I have ever read, or seen, including Game of Thrones or Joe Abercrombie or Battle Royale. I do love me some dark and gory stuff from time to time, but it was too much for even me. I couldn’t go a page without someone drowning in shit, or having a person explode and parts of their body are hanging from the trees, or a kid shoots himself in the face. I felt like I was being sandblasted with violence, and the nonchalance with which it is treated in the narrative made it so much worse. It certainly put you in the mind of the character, where you had to at some point turn off your emotions or your attachment to anyone because they were going to step on a land mine sooner or later. Often, the writer would tease you with hope, only to have that hope snatched away offhandedly a page or so later.

The worst thing is, this happened. To a real person. I did not realize this until about ¾ of the way through the book. I thought the author was taking all the worst parts of what happened in Cambodia and giving it to one boy, but no, this is almost verbatim what happened to Arn Chorn-Pond, the real man.

That is the difficulty of this book. On the one hand, it is really brutal and gory and extremely difficult to get through, but on the other hand this happened to someone. The world needs to know that this level of evil happens in the world. We need to honor the dead by reading their stories and try to find ways to prevent this from happening again. I feel like people will have different reactions to this book: some will rise and fight against the evil, and some will feel overwhelmed and hide.

The most intriguing part of the book for me is the way Arn’s brain handles the situation he is in. In order to survive and protect the people he cares about, he plays along with what the Khmer Rouge want. However, after being given some small perks and power, he slowly begins to turn into them. He becomes what he hates most in order maintain his sanity and stay alive. Once he is safe, he struggles with who he is and what he has done. How do you have a normal life when you have seen what he has seen, and killed people?

It also makes me wary of believing what I hear or read. The Khmer Rouge used heavy manipulations, lies and propaganda to get people to do what they wanted, and there were deep consequences for those who believed them.

Hope only comes in the very end of the book, almost in the post script, where you find out how Arn decided to channel his anger and pain and use his experience for good. 

Here is an interview with Arn Chorn-Pond and Patricia McCormick:

I believe that this book is important for everyone to read, but you must be prepared for its contents. 

REVIEW: An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy

An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793

by Jim Murphy

I absolutely loved this book. I was shocked that it was for kids! It was so gory and psychologically scary, and utterly compelling and informative. I definitely recommend it for people who love zombie plague stories. Or the 1700s. Or both!

This book tells the story of the 1793 yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia. It starts out slow, listing one death, then several in a boarding house. Then, it spreads down the street and to other portions of the neighborhood until the entire city is infected. It chronicles the panic, how people left the city in droves, and abandoned family members. It describes in detail the horrifying symptoms (complete with illustrations), including vomiting black blood and bile. And it tells of the heroic efforts of those who stayed in the city to help, which to me was the most interesting part of the book: the survival efforts, what happens when government breaks down, the unlikely heroes. It concludes with the sociological aftermath, those who wished to forget the plague, those who pointed fingers, those who had to defend their actions. As an afterward, it tells of the discovery of the causes of yellow fever a century later, and a vaccine in the mid 20th century. It ends with a warning that there has been no recent vaccine for yellow fever, and if it reemerges, we would be almost powerless to stop it. Upbeat ending for a children’s book, huh?

And that is exactly why I loved it. I enjoy kids books that don’t pull punches. They tell it like it is. I feel that what kids fear most is the fear of the unknown. The things parents are whispering about, but won’t tell them straight up. The monster in the dark that you can’t see. I feel that adults are this way too. Once you know what something is, once you can name it, once you know how to fight it, it loses some of it’s power.

This book is not only compelling, but it is highly informative. Jim Murphy did extensive research into primary sources, including letters, diaries and personal accounts of those who were there. Because of this, he was able to build a very intimate and highly descriptive narrative without embellishing with fiction. It does what the best nonfiction does: place you there in the dirty, quiet street, watching another cart full of dead bodies creak by. You feel you know the historical figures personally.

I would recommend this book to my adult friends too! Nowhere in this book did I think for a moment that it was “dumbed down” for children. I think it is comparable to John Adams by David McCollough (though a lot shorter) or Devil and the White City by Erik Larson (but with less speculation)!

If you want a quick, informative, highly disturbing glimpse into a moment of real life in the 1700s, this is the book for you!

I recommend this book if you liked:
Devil and the White City by Erik Larson
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Unfinished Book: The Affinity Bridge

The Affinity Bridge

by George Mann

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sorry to say this so early on in my blog, but I could not finish this book. I vowed to give it 100 pages before I gave up, and I did. However, I did learn a lot from reading it, especially about my own taste and style, so I thought I'd devote some time to it on the blog. 

The story takes place in steampunk Victorian London, where Sir Maurice Newberry (a paranormal investigator) and his new assistant Ms. Veronica Hobbes try to solve the mystery of the crashed airship and the glowing murderous bobby, while trying to avoid the zombie plague. This is a recipe for awesomeness, yes?

Alas, it does not fulfill its potential. First, the characters are incredibly flat. Sir Maurice is a good-natured, reserved middle-aged English gentlemen. He accepts a woman as his assistant and treats her as a (delicate and feminine) partner. He is extremely attentive to her. He has a problem with laudanum, which is probably his most interesting attribute. But there is absolutely no color or texture in his character, no unique voice.

Ms. Hobbes was even more disappointing. When I see boy/girl detective partners, I expect playful snarky banter. Maybe I've been spoiled on too many episodes of Castle, Warehouse 13...or really any other boy/ girl detective paring. I wanted it to be Emma Peel and John Steed. I got bland, restrained, grey, blah. For example, I have no idea why she was hired. Sir Maurice has complete confidence in her abilities, though all we saw her do in the first 100 pages was clean well, make tea, state the obvious (at which everyone gasps and sputters to hear such wisdom from a girl), and vomit at the sight of bodies. I would have loved to see some glimpse at the extraordinary, a reason why a woman would get that position, a reason why Sir. Maurice treats her like trusted friend only after a few days. They are quite touchy-feely too, and makes you think there are romantic flutterings, when that does not seem to be what the author intends. 

The style bothered me the most. It may be because I recognized a lot of my own flaws in his writing, but it got to the point where I got so annoyed by the frequent blunders, couldn't read any more. It was like being beaten to death with a swarm of cotton balls. 

1) Repetition: First, he repeats metaphors mere pages apart. For example, he describes a crashed airship as a beached, dead, half-rotted whale, and then a page away describes it as a dead ancient primordial beast (with the skin rotted in places, and the ribs exposed, etc). Second, he repeats information. For example, he mentions in a telegram to Newberry and Hobbes that 50 people were killed in the airship crash. When they are told the same information at the crash site, Ms. Hobbes gasps in surprise and horror. Third, he has a bad habit of describing the same action from two different POVs without adding anything new to it: He describes Ms. Hobbes pulling her cloak to her because she is thinking of the dead bodies from the airship, and a few lines later, he has Sir Maurice observe her pulling her cloak to her because he presumes she is thinking about the dead bodies from the airship. We know.

2) Word choice: "pucker up that resolve." Really? Not pluck? Pucker just sounds dirty. He also loves the phrase "reminiscent of..." when presenting a metaphor. And his metaphors often are not well-chosen either. He describes "an army" of men, which he clarifies a sentence later as "at least ten." Most of the time he sounds like a man with a limited vocabulary using a thesaurus. 

3) Violent Emotional Reactions: I believe this is not a character trait, but a style snaffoo. When Sir Maurice is introduced to a character, we get a description of that character, and a sudden declaration from Sir Maurice that he admires or loaths the character, without making it clear what was to admire or loathe.   He also has violent reactions to any opposition. When police or a clerk won't give him information -- they don't know who he is -- he gets very shocked and huffy, and waves his Crown credentials around, and then the peons go scurrying. It does not match with his fatherly academic demeanor, and makes the reader think he is a dick. 

4) Don't Tell Me, Show Me: My favorite writers are able to give you character by describing how a character picks up a pen. Alas, this book is Tell City. For example, there is a passage where the author illustrates Sir Maurice in his study. Mann tells about about the character's relationship with the room using cliches, his "haven" and "the one place he could relax, and feel free to become himself" (though I saw no difference between himself inside or outside the study). I would rather have seen his relationship with the study through the way Sir. Maurice interacted with it (entered it, threw things, flopped, argued with his housekeeper about keeping out, etc). Telling runs rampant throughout the book. 

5) "These do indeed 'seem' for they are actions that a man might play": Mann has a tricky POV. Sometimes he is in Sir Maurice's head, and other times he is in Veronica's head (not that it really makes any difference). However, sometimes he is in 3rd person omniscient, and still his characters "seem" or "look like" they are doing things. Why the hell can't they just do them? Whose eyes are we looking through that we are guessing? I do this all the time in my own writing, so I don't have to fully commit. COMMIT! It makes the writing stronger. Don't say "seem" unless there is some doubt about the action.  

I think George Mann desperately needed a good editor. 

Please take my review with a grain of salt, as I have not finished the book (and I feel it an extreme defect in  a mystery novel if I don't care what happens). Please, if anyone has finished the book, and feel that I have misrepresented something, let me know!

REVIEW: Behemoth by Scott Westerfield

Behemoth 

by Scott Westerfield

Ah, the exciting world of altered history, where Darwinists (the Allied powers who manipulate DNA to create animal-based machines) and the Clankers (the Central powers who are all iron, steam and electricity) vie for the world in a surprisingly accurate, but steampunk-colored WWI.

We return to this fantastic series to find our plucky heroes on their way to Constantinople (or Istanbul, depending on who you ask). Alex, the son of the murdered archduke (see WWI, causes) and his mustached German entourage are, as Andrew from Buffy the Vampire Slayer would put it, "guestages" (not quite hostages, but not really allowed to leave either) on the British airship, Leviathan. Deryn/Dylan is still disguised as a boy to serve in the Royal Air Service. They are accompanying Dr. Barlow (a very important and bossy female scientist) to the east to deliver a Top Secret beastie to the Sultan. The Sultan, however, is mad at England for "borrowing" a state of the art war beast (the titular Behemoth), and Germany is cozying up to the Turks with shiny battleships and Tesla cannons. It is time for Alex to seize his destiny and try to end the war his family started, while Deryn must be awesome and badass and do really cool things.

This second book of the series turns it up a notch. Westerfield has established his world and characters in the first book and now he just winds up his Clanker and Darwinist toys and sends them wirring all over turn-of-the-century Europe. The world of Constantinople is richer and more complex than the airfields of Britain or the Swiss Alps in Leviathan. It is textured and cosmopolitan, melding myth and science with Turkey's more spiritual slant on machinery. The Turkish government models their machines off of animals (elephant walkers, etc). Each culture within the great city of Istanbul has its own special name for their machine walkers: the Jews have metal Golems, the Greeks have Minotaur, the native Turks name them after goddesses. The Sultan has a Oz-like machine of himself in the throne room which mimics his movements, emphasizing his divine power. The reader's imagination just sparks with the layered and laberynthine city in which the characters play.

Our old friends from Leviathan have grown up a bit. Alex, the Austro-Hungarian princeling, has taken the backbone he earned in book one and used it as a jumping off point for his rather reckless plotting, spying and adventuring in this book. 

Deryn is still as badass as ever, using her brain and her guts to save her airshipmates in spectacular ways. Again, her "oh deary me, I am a girl wearing boys clothing" situation is nicely underplayed. It still follows the cross-dressing formula: Act I: girl meets boy and there is some attraction (though in book one, this was fulfilled in one understated sentence), Act II: enter second girl to vie for boys heart, and cross-dressed girl can't say anything (accomplished in two hushed intimate scenes). I assume, in Act III. she will reveal her cross-dress-edness and they will have lots of final-scene-of-Twelfth-Night-ity. However, unlike most cross-dressed heroines, she does not moon over the boy. She kicks ass, and only entertains the possibility of hormones when nothing else really crucial (saving a fellow airman from a burning jellyfish hot air balloon or singlehandedly rescuing a elephant walker from saboteurs) is going on. 

Dr. Barlow, the bossypants scientist woman is still an old ironsides, but has sparkling moments of humor and vulnerability. And the introduction of a new friend, a rather perspicacious beastie, is absolutely delightful! I can't wait to see how he grows.

An excellent step up from book one. I am excited for the series' climactic third book!

If you liked this book, you may like:

Leviathan by Scott Westerfireld

Terrier by Tamora Pierce

The Artemis Fowl Series by Eoin Colfer

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Persepolis and Persepolis 2 (8/7/11)

Persepolis and Persepolis 2

by Marjane Satrapi

"In life you'll meet a lot of jerks. If they hurt you, tell yourself that it's because they're stupid. That will help keep you from reacting to their cruelty. Because there is nothing worse than bitterness and vengeance... Always keep your dignity and be true to yourself."

Persepolis is a simply, but elegantly illustrated biographical graphic novel of a young girl growing up in Iran during the revolution, the Iraq war, and the extremist regimes that controlled the country. Marjane Satrapi tells her story with humor and honesty, often in the face of terrible circumstances. She describes a beautiful personal journey to find her identity, a difficult task when at home her government oppresses her individuality, and abroad she struggles to remember her roots where she is seen as the "other." In the end, she is still seeking answers, but her trials and the love of her family have given her strength.

I hate to begin a review like this, but I liked it better than the movie. The movie tried to smush two journeys into one and left out a lot of the more interesting anecdotes and history. It seemed disjointed and unrealistic. However, the books tell the complete story at their own leisurely pace.

I find it difficult to describe her story. I was left with a strong impression of how Persia/ Iran, was once great, rich, and cultured, and due to greed and conflicting ideals, it had fallen to a 3rd world state. I was surprised that only recently the extremist regimes had enforced veils, closed universities, and tightened their grip on civil liberties. I am still rather afraid to show my ignorance on the subject.

What Marjane gives us, though, is a heroine going through the usual pains of growing up, albeit in extreme circumstances. Though many of her readers have not experienced what she has, everyone can relate to the struggles of childhood and adolescence. This way, Marjane can deliver her message to the world. While we all laugh and cry about childhood dreams and first love, we can follow her into and out of Iran to develop a greater understanding of the country and it's people and learn how to stand up to oppression and face our fears.

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Bestiary (6/16/11)

The Bestiary

by Nicholas Christopher

"If we find in the depiction of an animal an uplifting or penetrating symbol, we should not worry whether that creature really exists, or if it ever existed." - St. Augustine

Xeno Atlas was a neglected child, raised by his grandmother who told him about the animal spirits who haunt the world. So many animals die every day that the air is thick with them. Some people have animal spirits inside them, or were animals in another life.

Xeno has had glimpses of mysterious animals since he was a child, from the gargoyle from a city building that appeared at his window one night, to the fox present when his grandmother died. When he learns of an ancient book called the Caravan Bestiary, a book about the strange animals who were denied entrance to Noah's ark, he makes it his life's mission to find this book. His quest spans several decades, and several countries, and along the way he is confronted with the ubiquitous symbolic world of animals and animal imagery. In his search for the book, he finds himself and his place in the world.

This is exactly how I wish all actual memoirs were written. Each event mentioned is highly, if quietly, significant and echoes of it reverberate back and forth throughout the book. The child is abandoned when he is young, but there is less of a sense of sickly despair or resignation as an ownership and adaption. I understand that this is fiction, and the memoirs were real, so it is difficult to write about what you do not feel, but my GOD this book was refreshing.

Christopher treads the fine line between realism and fantasy. He has mystical, beautiful events that may or may not have happened, but he lets the reader judge. Xeno lives in the real world, but a world filled with wonder and mystery.

His quest for the Caravan Bestiary becomes incredibly academic, but still gripping, as your heart soars with each clue he discovers. I became quite jealous as he was able to devote his life to medieval academia in little flats he rented in Paris, Venice, and Greece. Seems perfect to me!

His life surrounding the quest for the Caravan Bestiary is also beautifully constructed. As his father never sees him, he creates his own family, a boy named Bruno who is a sickly biology genius hell-bent on keeping animals from extinction, and Bruno's sister, Lena, a gentle, reserved veterinarian. Occasionally, his life is shattered and he has to pick up the pieces.

The story weaves back and forth from light to dark, from heaven to hell, and the sharp contrast makes each more acutely felt. The one small thing that irked me about the book was that Christopher seemed to be foreshadowing a sinister event that never came. I wonder if anyone else had the same experience?

ARCHIVED REVIEW: Kate Remembered (12/2/10)

Kate Remembered
by A. Scott Berg

So I finished this book a while ago and have moved on to reading Harry Potter again before summer.

But this book was wonderful and engaging. It is the memoirs of a professional biographer and his long friendship with Katherine Hepburn. He felt he couldn't do a real biography because he loved her so much, he couldn't be objective.

It is incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad as we listen to Katherine reminisce to Scott about her life, her patient, quiet, and giving love of Spencer Tracy, her ups and downs, and how Scott himself remembers the slow tragedy of her death.

She was a hell of a woman. She went swimming every morning in the lake, no matter what the temperature, even into her later years. She always insisted everyone make their beds in the morning (she scolded Michael Jackson when he told her he didn't know how), and she spoke her mind at every turn. She was blunt and harsh and told the truth as she saw it, and people loved her for it. She made many flops, and she acknowledged them openly, but she also gave some of the most brilliant performances the world has ever seen (my two favorite are Lion in Winter and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).

This book is not a biography, so it may frustrate some people when Scott Berg starts talking about the other books he was writing at the time and not about Kate, but it is worth it to hear her story from her own mouth, and from one who loved her.

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Devil in the White City (10/6/10)

The Devil and the White City

by Erik Larson

The book is non-fiction and tells of the vision, brilliance and underdog tenacity that it took to bring about the Chicago World's Fair, and the serial killer who haunted its streets.

I did not think I would like this book but I loved it! It did exactly what I think history books should do: plunk you down in the middle of the noisy smoky street in Chicago in the late 1890s, next to David Burnham (the main architect for the World's Fair) as he asks you the time. In other words, history books should be a TARDIS. 

It gives you all the sights, smells, and textures of the world and the sighs, tears, chuckles and fury of its players. The reader becomes as familiar with them as with their hometown and its denizens. Sometimes this goes a little far, often putting the reader alone in a room with the serial killer as he revels in his kill, which teeters on the realm of historical fiction, but the author acknowledges those moments in the back of the book, and cites the sources by which he reconstructed the scene.

The book is an tantalizing juxtaposition of the hope and struggle of Burnham and the Chicago people to create the forefather of Disneyland, and the cold and seductive machinations of H.H. Holmes, the man who used the fair as bait.

I recommend it even if you don't like non-fiction. It is, in fact, a non-fiction gateway drug.

If you liked this, you may like:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Steampunk Fiction

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Library at Night

The Library at Night

by Alberto Manguel

Ok so I have been done with this book for a while, so I can't really remember a lot of it. I'm grasping at fleeting impressions, and using a few notes I took.

This book examines libraries through the lens of different concepts: Library as Myth, Library as Space, Library as Power, Library as Identity, etc.

I was not prepared to like this book, as the author spent most of the first chapter expounding on how awesome libraries are, his in particular. But then he got into the historical bits and I loved it!

For example, there were public libraries dating back to ancient Rome. People would read aloud to themselves, before the idea of silent reading caught on, the Warburg library was cataloged more by the movement of the world soul than by logic. And that ancient libraries were very like our own:

“May Ishtar bless the reader who will not alter this tablet nor place it elsewhere in the library and may she denounce in anger he who dares withdraw it from the building.” – Mesopotamian tablet 7th cent B.C.

I also found it rather uncanny that when I was having difficulty cataloging the Luce, the book would talk about the difficulties of cataloging, and when I was running out of space, it would talk about the problems of fitting your books where they need to be.

And it had great quotes and ideas:

“If an image of the cosmos can be assembled and preserved under a single roof (as King Ptolemy must have thought) then every detail of that image – a grain of sand, a drop of water, the king himself – will have a place there, recorded in words by a poet, a storyteller, a historian, forever, or at least as long as there are readers who may one day open the appointed page. There is a line of poetry, a sentence in a fable, a word in an essay, why which my existence is justified; find that line and my immortality is assured.”

“According to an early hadith, or Islamic tradition, “one scholar is more powerful against the Devil than a thousand worshipers.”

“A library’s value was determined only by its contents and the use readers made of that contents, not by the rarity of its treasures.”

“There is an unbridgeable chasm between the book that tradition has declared a classic and the book (the same book) that we have made ourselves through instinct, emotion and understanding: suffered through it, rejoiced in it, translated it into our experience and (notwithstanding the layers of readings with which a new book comes into our hands) essentially become its first discoverers, an experience as astonishing as finding Friday’s footprints in the sand.”

ARCHIVED REVIEW: The Letters of John and Abigail Adams (6/2/10)

The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

"My bursting heart must find vent at my pen." — Abigail Adams

This book is a selection of letters between John and Abigail Adams, the couple who shaped and experienced the birth of the United States of America.

First let me say that I have always had a huge historical crush on John Adams ever since I saw 1776. Because of this, I see John Adams through William-Daniels-colored glasses.

I loved this book because of who was writing, and the small kernels of love and knowledge and wisdom that spoke to me. It is the style I had difficulty with.

You would think that an epistolary book would be easy to compile, and easy to read; one person writes, the other person responds. Not true. One person writes 5 letters and waits for a friend who is traveling in that direction to take them. They tie them all in a packet, and it takes weeks to get to the destination. In the mean time, the responder has done exactly the same thing. So you have 5 letters that have nothing to do with each other, all written at during the same month or so. And then you have the responses to all of the letters at once in another letter, followed by several more.

And that is not to mention the letters that were tossed overboard or stolen by spies.

So it is not exactly a linear conversation.

A good 50% of the conversation is "I miss you so much, write me more letters." Another 40% is recounting raids and skirmishes in Boston.

But the last 10% is filled with beautiful moments, and passions I want to hug them for.

Like John's insistence that education, exercise, simplicity, and virtue are the keys to a well-lived life. And how while changing history, all he wants to do is go home to his farm and his family. Or the comical descriptions he gives of his barber (he is not allowed to tell anything about the Continental Congress, which is hugely disappointing, as I would have loved to have this detailed of a character study for them.)

I love when she gets impassioned about the rights of women. Everyone knows the famous "remember the ladies" letter, but I think the better one is in regards to female education. It is the first time I can tell she is angry.

In response to John's rant about the deficiency of education of men in the country, she writes:

"If you complain of neglect of education in sons, what shall I say with regard to daughters, who every day experience the want of it? With regard to the education of my own children, I find myself soon out of my depth, destitute and deficient in every part of education.

I most sincerely wish that some more liberal plan might be laid and executed for the benefit of the rising generation, and that our new Constitution may be distinguished for encouraging leading and virtue. If we mean to have heroes, statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women. The world perhaps will laugh at me and accuse me of vanity, but you, I know, have a mind too enlarged and liberal to disregard the sentiment. If much depends, as is allowed, on the early education of youth, and the first principles which are instilled take the deepest root, great benefit must arise from literary accomplishments in women."

All in all a difficult book, because it was not in narrative form, but it gave me joy to hear the words of my heroes.