Christina Reviews *O Pioneers!* by Willa Cather

       *****


         There aren’t that many books that affect me so much that I am depressed for days after finishing them.  I did kinda cheat with O Pioneers!  I skipped ahead to the end just out of curiosity and was so horrified by what I read that I was dreading the completion of the book.  And after I finished it, I couldn’t get it out of my mind for weeks.

         This is a very powerful novel with characters that get under your skin and an ending that will break your heart.  The writing is powerful.

Christina Reviews *The Night In Question* by Tobias Wolff

  *****

          I read this collection of short stories when I was in high school.  I remember really liking it.  The stories were original and thought-provoking.  Stories such as the epononymous one in which a man must choose between saving the life of his son and saving the lives of many make this collection really stand out.  My favorite stories were  “The Chain,” “The Night In Question” and “Bullet In the Brain.”   I also liked the first story in which a man writes a fake obituary for himself.

Christina Reviews *Mystic River* by Dennis Lehane

           "Dave wondered where the hell he was going to live if the frontier mentality rolled the frontier right over him (Lehane, 48)."

         Mystic River is very well-written and I'd heard that about...oh, a million and a half times before I decided to read it, knowing full well I'd despise the subject matter. I actually rather enjoyed it while reading it though there were times when it got to me. To this day it is my favorite Dennis Lehane book. This is a good book to read if you keep in mind what it's about before you pick it up. It doesn't fall into cliches of what you would expect from such a story. For example, it's no Sleepers, and I wish people would stop comparing the two. They're nothing alike for so many different reasons that I can't even begin to describe. I hated Sleepers, and when I say hate, I mean it. I'm not talking "It gave me nightmares" hated.  Anyway, don’t go into this book expecting more of what you got in the Angie and Patrick novels. It’s different. Better.

      Here's a brief summary: 

      Three friends go separate ways after one is kidnapped and molested and returns home forever changed. They grow up and the daughter of one of the now distant friends is murdered. The kidnapped friend, Dave, is a suspect for various reasons, one of which happens to be that he is a survivor of child abuse, but mostly because he was seen in the same places as the victim, at the same time, and has a poor alibi.

       The story is told from the points of view of the dead girl’s father Jimmy, the suspect and childhood kidnap victim Dave, the cop friend Sean, Dave’s wife Celeste, the dead girl’s boyfriend, and we even go into the head of the dead girl, Katie, for a few pages. I’m not going to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that the story is quite compelling, and that is in large part due to the great dialogue and the terrific characterizations.

       The dialogue in Mystic River is great, the internal dialogue as well. I've found that the series was more about sharp dialogue and twisted plots rather than anything else. There are great characters in the series but nothing like in Mystic River. The characters in this book (all of them) are fascinating. There's the central character Jimmy who's dealing with the loss of his oldest daughter, there's his second wife Annabeth who’s quite tough and is supposed to be modeled a little after Lady Macbeth, there are her brothers---the Savage brothers---who are basically like the city's mafia. Then there's Dave, "the boy who escaped from wolves."  He's scarred by his childhood and is afraid that he will turn into the very kind of person who destroyed him. Then there's the cop Sean who is the third friend. He just recently separated from his wife who calls him up and says nothing but for some reason he knows that she’s the one breathing on the other end of the line.

           Don't read this for the who-dunnit aspect because you will probably be disappointed. Read it for the characters, the gritty atmosphere, the dialogue and the prose. This book has a lot to do with karma, survivor guilt, shame, lost innocence, silence. There's a sort of religious theme too, the murder taking place on the victim's sister's First Communion. And then there's a baptismal aspect what with the river and "We bury our sins here, we wash them clean".  And it's about gentrification.

         This novel is like a dark river, with all the meaning hidden within its depths.  Does that sound pretentious and dumb?  Just read the book.

Christina Reviews *Mysterious Skin* by Scott Heim

          Mysterious Skin is told from multiple points of view.  It’s told from the point of view of Neil McCormick--- a hustler who hides a dark secret from childhood.  It’s told from the point of view of Brian Lackey--- a shy, loner who has developed an obsession with aliens after a weird black-out experience when he was only 8 years old.  It’s told from the point of view of Brian’s older sister. There are also sections told from the points of view of Neil’s two best friends.

        I saw the movie before reading the book.  And to be honest, I think I preferred the movie because it focused on the two central characters----Brian and Neil.  The other characters were only secondary, and while it was interesting to read from their points of view, I liked the way the movie condensed the story.

       Both the book and movie do a good job telling a story about the ways in which a traumatic experience in childhood affects the two characters differently.

Christina Reviews *My Year of Flops* by Nathan Rabin

          I love reading bad reviews.  I’ve noticed that good reviews are all the same, but bad reviews are critical in their own way.

         Nathan Rabin analyzes several flops and rates them on a three rating scale---- Failure, Fiasco and Secret Success.  Many of the reviews were on movies I’d never even heard of, but the reviews of the movies I saw were spot on.  All of the reviews were hilarious.  The things Rabin says are just so witty and snide.  I especially liked his so-called minute by minute analysis of Waterworld. 

        Even when he was reviewing movies I had never seen before, I could envision the movie in my mind so clearly.  He makes you feel as if you wasted those 90 to 120 minutes with him. 

Christina Reviews *My Sister's Keeper* by Jodi Picoult

          ***

          My Sister's Keeper is about a girl named Anna Fitzgerald who was genetically engineered to be a perfect match for her dying sister. From the time of her birth, she has been forced to donate parts of her body in the hopes of keeping her sister Kate alive. Kate has leukemia, and every time they fix one part of her, something else seems to go wrong. In fact, I think Kate says this exact thing at one point in the book. The central dilemma occurs when Anna is expected to donate her kidney to her sister who has now experienced renal failure. Anna finds an attorney named Campbell Alexander to plead her case. She wants to be a normal child. She's tired of being her sister's on-call organ donor.

         It's an interesting concept, and a true ethical dilemma. The only thing is that the situations Picoult tends to contrive are often very formulaic. And it's like watching a horror movie and seeing the zipper on the monster. You know you're being manipulated. The ending is the best example of this. I understand why Picoult ended the book the way she did. There was literally no other way to end it. It's hard to end such a story because you've pretty much given away all your tricks before the reader even reads the first page. The reader knows what this book is about the second they read the plot summary, and there's really nothing more they can learn about it by reading the pages within the book because any answers the author can give would be pat or predictable. This is the dilemma with books structured around a moral question. You can learn to care about the characters, you can get a window into what their life is like, but there's no door out, which is a huge problem when the story promises an epiphany that it can't deliver. And that's the prime reason why books should be about characters, not issues. Reading such a book as this is like finding yourself trapped in a claustrophobic little house with no door. So Picoult had to hatchet her way through the wall in order to get the reader out of the story. The shocker ending felt like a cheap shot. A little judiciously placed irony is OK, but deus ex machina (in other words, good old-fashioned plot manipulation) is another story altogether.

          Another problem I had was with the multiple points of views. I understood the story being told from the different povs of the family members. But Campbell's and Julia's subplot was just distracting. I'm sorry, but a high school romance gone wrong is not at all like a family being torn apart by cancer, and nobody can convince me otherwise. The two plotlines are not similar enough to warrant being in the same book together, unless the high school relationship involves at least one cancer patient. Maybe Picoult could have written the subplot with Campbell and Julia in a way that would have made their high school romance relevant (I don't want to completely close the door on that possibility), but the way she did write it, it felt like it was just romantic padding to an already sensationalistic story.

          I didn't think that the relationship between Julia and her twin was necessary either. We didn't need to read about yet another pair of siblings and their idiosyncratic relationship. That plotline with Julia and her sister was just not relevant to the story. Picoult should have just focused on Anna and Kate---there's enough in that relationship to fill an entire book. Seriously, use the extra pages gained by axing the irrelevant sideplots to let us know what Anna and Kate say to each other at night before they go to sleep, and do it long before we get to the ending. Don't have their private conversations be a revelation on the witness stand. I'll get to Picoult's coyness further down, though.

         I don't think Picoult has all of these excess characters in her books because she wants to enhance the story. I think she just has so many cool ideas and is not able to be discriminatory. And important plot points inevitably get pushed aside because she gets so caught up in details that aren't important. She's so in love with all aspects of her little world, and that's good, but she's in love with her fictional world to a fault. Someone really needs to tell her that not everyone who walks into a book deserves a point of view. I'm sure she knows this in her heart, and I understand that putting theory into action can be difficult when it comes to your own characters. Seriously, this is the way it is with her books. "I'm going to give little Pixie a psychiatrist to help her through her day to day problems. But wouldn't it be interesting if the psychiatrist is a stripper by night? I wonder how I can interweave that storyline within the one I'm already writing?" Maybe I'm being unfair. That's just how it comes across to me. And the worst thing is that she never lives up to her end of the bargain by truly getting into these characters' heads. She won't even reveal to us something as simple as why they happen to be walking around town with a service dog, let alone who they are as a person when all the layers of pretension are stripped away. We shouldn't be feeling like the characters are being secretive if we're in their heads.

        It often seems that Picoult is so fixated on metaphors and larger philosophical questions that she forgets that she should be telling the story. And then she gets to the end of the book, needs to cram in all the storytelling she neglected for the past hundreds of pages, and packs it into a witness stand confession.

          OK, I've been critical enough. I really loved the way Picoult showed the ways in which this family was falling apart at the seams. And her prose is usually quite beautiful. I do have to say, however, that some major editing in regards to Campbell, Julia and the ending would have been much appreciated.

        This is my opinion, though.

        I think that Picoult has the potential to write beautiful stories. She should write more books like Songs of the Humpback Whale. Of course, she won't give up the courtroom dramas, though, because that's become her thing. And all of my complaints aside, if ripped from the headline stories work for her, well then, that's what she should be doing. I'm not trying to say otherwise. I just think her novels often leave much to be desired.

Christina Reviews *Motherless Brooklyn* by Jonathan Lethem

         Motherless Brooklyn is about a detective with Tourette’s.  I liked the originality of the idea, and the dialogue was sharp.  I wasn’t that involved in the plot, but then I’m not much of a “Detective Fiction” kind of girl.  I like reading books, though, that have an interesting perspective.  And this book did.

Christina Reviews *Midnight Champagne* by A. Manette Ansay

         Midnight Champagne takes place within the span of a day, and it follows the points of view of several guests at wedding.  It’s a very simple story, but I liked that about it.  There weren’t any really dramatic plot points.  There was a section dedicated to the point of view of a ghost who haunts the hotel.  That was interesting.

        I would highly recommend this book to those who prefer subtlety and character depth over plot.

Christina Reviews *Me Talk Pretty One Day* by David Sedaris

         This book is funny.  The whole book is funny.  The title is funny.  David Sedaris is funny.

         I don’t know what else to say.

         I think my favorite chapter in this book is the first one.  It’s about how Sedaris had a lisp as a child and how he would adapt by talking in a stilted way so as to avoid words that included the letter S.  For example, his speech therapist would say, “And what do you do on December thirty-first, New Year’s Eve?”
        And he would say, “On the final day of the year we take down the pine tree in our living room and eat marine life.”

        The book's title isn’t a reference to the first chapter, but I did realize that saying, “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a great way of avoiding the minefield that is, “I will speak well someday.”

Christina Reviews *Maus 1* and *Maus II* by Art Spiegelman

         There are many books, stories, poems, movies, etc. depicting the Holocaust.  So what sets Art Spiegelman’s graphic novels apart from them? 

        Both Maus I and Maus II are written in comic book form, using mice, cats, pigs and other animals to stand for various groups of people.  The Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis by cats.  At first glance, this appears to be a bit too clichéd to work.  However, the approach is more subtle, since most of the references to these animals are through pictures.  This also gives the books an eerie feeling, almost as if they were twisted storybooks.

       The main characters in the books are Artie (the author), his father Vladek and his stepmother Mala.  Vladek is telling his son about his days before and during the Holocaust.  Artie is a cartoonist whose goal it is to write a comic strip based on his father’s experiences during the Holocaust.  He wants it to be an honest potrayal of Vladek’s earlier life, free of bias.  This is a difficult task, and Vladek doesn’t make it any easier.  Vladek seems to be somewhat of a nuisance.  He's full of complaints.  He uses guilt to get others to do things for him.  For example, he’ll claim that he is about to have a heart attack anytime he wants to have some kind of control over his wife, or he’ll call up his son in the middle of the night and tell him to fix the roof, or else he’ll do it himself, in his poor condition.  This seems to parallel the ways in which the Nazis would use fear to gain control of others.  Later on in the first book, Vladek throws away his son’s coat and supplies him with another that doesn’t fit.  This is reminiscent of the way Nazis would take the Jews’ clothing and supply them with pathetic garments, including wooden shoes, that often times were too big or too small. 

          When Spiegelman was drawing the pictures, you could tell a person’s background just from their outward appearance.  And yet with human beings, nothing is so clear-cut. 

         Vladek certainly has some characteristics of his oppressors.  This is seen through the way in which he treats his son and Mala.   It is said that if we don't learn from history, it has a way of repeating itself.   In these books, history is repeating itself, in a more subtle and less extreme way.  Artie feels guilty that he didn’t have to suffer through the Holocaust and his father did.  Yet, throughout the books, the past seems to seep into the present, in a way that mystifies Artie.

          I liked these books.  I found them to have a new perspective to offer.  Not only was it interesting to read a Nazi comic book, but it was interesting to see the life that one particular survivor made for himself after the war had ended.

Christina Reviews *The Lovely Bones* by Alice Sebold

         “It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained (Sebold, 186).”
　
         The Lovely Bones is narrated by 14 year old Susie Salmon. Susie is dead. She was raped and murdered by a neighbor on December 6, 1973. This is not a spoiler. In fact, she names her killer on the second page. This is not a whodunnit novel. It is a story about the tragedy of Susie's death and the healing process as her family moves on without her. It’s about Susie’s journey to find peace, even though she is dead and beyond mortal pain.

        The ghost narrator has been done before but what makes this book truly remarkable is the way in which it takes a horrible event --- the brutal rape and murder of a child --- and uses it as a catalyst for a story about love and the bonds of family and the resilience of the human spirit.

        I wouldn’t say that the novel was perfect. For example, there was one scene near the end of the book where Susie gets a chance to fulfill her ultimate wish, and it’s incredibly contrived and a little too out there for me.

       But overall, this was a beautiful story, despite the grim subject matter.

Christina Reviews *The Loop* by Nicholas Evans

         The Loop takes place in a town called Hope. A pack of wolves roam the community, and the villagers are eager to take them out.

         Enter biologist Helen and her partner Dan who come to the town to protect the endangered wolves from harm. Needless to say, there are those in town who aren’t too happy to see them. Heading the angry mob is brute rancher Buck Calder.

         While on her mission to save the wolves, Helen falls in love with Buck Calder‘s 18 year old son, Luke. Luke has a stuttering problem and brings constant shame to his father as a result. All Luke wants is his father’s approval. It doesn’t help that he loves the wolves and does not want to see any harm come to them. He and Helen team up, determined to do what they feel is right, no matter what the consequences.

          This is a book about man vs. beast. It’s a story about father vs. son. And it’s got a little Romeo & Juliet love story on the side.

          This was the second Nicholas Evans book I read. The first was The Horse Whisperer. I liked the book when I was 16. Helen had a feisty quality to her that appealed to me. And I wasn’t as much of a book snob back then, so I didn’t mind if the prose was clunky or if the characters were two-dimensional.

         As for the ending, I don’t know what to make of it. I think Evans may have been given a hard time for ending The Horse Whisperer the way he did, and so he decided to make the ending of this novel a little more palatable, in an ambiguous sort of way. That’s my guess at least. The ending could be taken in two different ways, and that’s all I’m going to say.

         I would give this book three stars.

Christina Reviews *The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven* by Sherman Alexie

          The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a collection of interconnected stories involving a group of characters who live on a Spokane reservation.  In some ways, it is similar to Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich.  The latter is also an interconnected short story collection involving a Native American community.  The thing with Alexie, though, is that he uses the structure of his book to show how storytelling is important to this community and the way it is, in fact, how the characters develop the mythologies that help define their lives. 

           The stories work individually;  I have seen some of them in various anthologies.  And they work as a whole. 

            I don’t really have much more to say about this book.  Sometimes you just like a book but don‘t have the words to explain why.  Sometimes you even struggle to say exactly what it is the book is about.  Sometimes you just want to write a review so that a title is out there and people can go ahead and seek it out if they feel so inclined.

          I want to add that this book was the inspiration for a movie called Smoke Signals.

Christina Reviews *Lolita* by Vladimir Nabokov

         I think most people have heard of the book Lolita.  If you haven't heard of the book, you have at least heard of the movies.  Or if you haven't heard of the movies, you have at least heard the name Lolita used as a noun for a young girl of questionable character.  What you may not have heard, though, is that the book by Vladimir Nabokov isn't about a young girl who seduces an older man.  This was the thing that shocked me most upon reading the book.  I was shocked at the utter smear campaign against the greatly misunderstood Lolita.  I suppose this is a testament to Humbert Humbert's persuasiveness.

         This novel is about a pedophile named Humbert Humbert who likes "nymphets" ages 9-14.  His excuse is that he once loved a girl when he was young himself;  it was a love story that ended tragically.  Ever since, he has been looking for the love of his life in every "nymphet" he meets. 

         But let me just say right up front that Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator of the highest degree.  So this is most likely a lie. 

        Humbert Humbert gets to know Lolita while boarding with her mother.  He had planned to live with another family, but when that fell through, he was forced to make other plans.  At first he's upset.  There was a little girl in that other household whom he was really anxious to get to know.  But then he meets Lolita, and he's not so upset anymore.  Soon after moving in, he marries Lolita's mother as a way to get close to the 12 year old girl.  Yes.  In the book she's 12 years old.  It's only a matter of time before he gets her alone.
 
          This is the set-up.  The rest you'd have to find out by reading the book yourselves.

          Nabokov is a lyrical writer.  It's a cliche to say this, but his prose practically sings.  And then there's Humbert Humbert, who is a detestable character by all accounts, only he implores you to take him seriously.  He wants you to believe that Lolita was the one who seduced him, purely by being a nymphet and doing what nymphets do.

           But Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator. Is any of what he says true?  Probably not.

          I'm not even sure if the Lolita he speaks of is entirely human.  What I mean is that I doubt the qualities she possesses in Humbert Humbert's mind are qualities she possesses in reality.  She is Humbert Humbert's dream-child.  The nymphet to end all nymphets. 

          In the hands of a lesser writer, this would be pure trash.  But Nabokov proves that it's not subject matter that makes or breaks a novel.  If you have a narrator who is so compelling that you will follow him to the brinks of hell, if necessary, then the readers can be persuaded. 

         I didn't love this book.  It's not the kind of book I would want to read again and again.  It was more than enough to read it once.  But I understand why it's a classic.

Christina Reviews *Little Children* by Tom Perrotta

          Sarah and Brad are bored with their suburban lives.  Every day it’s the same thing.  Park, snack, home.  Park, snack, home.  Sometimes they’ll go to the pool.  Sometimes Sarah forgets the snack, and that makes her “Bad Mommy.”  But other than that, their days lack variety.

        That is, until they decide to mix things up by sleeping with each other.  Then life becomes very interesting. 

        This book isn’t just about two middle-class parents having a torrid affair.  There are a few subplots in here, including a subplot involving a pedophile who has been released from prison.  His presence in the town causes all the mothers in the park to be on red alert.

       Tom Perrotta knows how to satirize suburbia.  The characters are sometimes loathsome, but always recognizably human.  I would give this 4 stars.  The movie is good too.

Christina Reviews *The Life of Pi* by Yann Martel

         I am one of the weird people who actually liked The Life of Pi.  My aunt couldn’t get into it.  She calls it The Life of Pee.

       The novel is about an Indian boy named Piscine.  He calls himself Pi for short because Piscine sounds too much like a dirty word.  It actually means "pool" in French, and what do people do in a pool?  And I don't mean swim.  

       Anyway, partway through the book, Pi boards a ship with his family and a zooful of animals.  Not long after, his whole family has drowned, and he is on a lifeboat with a few of the animal survivors.  One of the animals is a Bengal Tiger.  How will he deal with being trapped in close quarters with a Bengal Tiger, you say?  I guess you'll just have to read the book.

       This is a story about faith, apparently, and how after reading this book, you’ll finally have it.  Maybe not in the human race, though.  Probably not that.  Just wait until you read about some of the things Pi does. 

        I have to say that this book was disturbing.  But then survival stories often are.  I don’t know why I liked this story.  I guess I just liked the unreliable narrator aspect of it.  There’s a little bit of a twist near the end.

Christina Reviews *Less Than Zero* by Bret Easton Ellis

          “This is the game that moves as you play . . .”
                                         --- X (the epigraph for Less Than Zero)

          This was one of those books I was required to read for grad school.  It’s not a book I would have probably been drawn to on my own, even though it was written by an author whose work I was somewhat familiar with.  Hey, I saw American Psycho and Rules of Attraction.  They were good.

          This is one of those hedonistic, kids-on-drugs stories.  Clay is an 18 year old college student who returns home for Christmas vacation.   And from that point on, his time and money goes up his nose.

          He hangs with his friends.  He keeps tabs on his friend Julian, in particular.  Julian is into some scary crap, and I suppose Clay is concerned.  Who knows why he cares.  He doesn’t seem to care much for anyone or anything--- least of all his girlfriend Blair.  As Blair puts it at one point in the novel:  “ ‘I don’t know if any other person I’ve been with has been really there, either. . . But at least they tried (204).’”

           The novel is broken up into short scenes, and I like that.  It makes it easier for me to read.  This was a very easy book to read in that sense.  But it is not a pleasant book to read.  Not everyone will be able to stomach it.  For example, there’s a scene where Clay walks out on his friends watching a snuff film and that was tame compared to some of the other stuff in this book.  I didn’t really like the book.  It’s kind of like a train wreck.

           I saw the movie.  The only thing it had in common with the book was the main characters’ names.  Bret Easton Ellis once said that the movie didn’t have one line of dialogue from the book.  Not one.  I don’t think that a movie has to be an exact replica of a book.  But if you’re going to dilute the message so much and turn it into a story that bears so little resemblance to the source material that it might as well be St. Elmo’s Fire Part II, then call it St. Elmo’s Fire Part II.  Don’t call it Less Than Zero. 

          That’s just lame.

          I give this book three stars. 

Christina Reviews *I Know My First Name Is Steven* by Mike Echols

         This is the true story of Steven Stayner, a 7 year old boy who is abducted by a sex predator named Kenneth Parnell and held against his will for seven years.  The abductor lies to him and tells him that his parents don’t want him anymore.  The boy doesn’t dare go for help because he is afraid of what will happen to him if he tries to escape.  When Steven is fourteen, Parnell abducts another little boy named Timmy White on Valentine's Day.  Only when this new boy has been abducted does Steven realize that Kenneth Parnell lied to him.  With Timmy in tow, Steven runs away one night while Parnell is at work.   
It’s actually very similar to the case of Shawn Hornbeck and Ben Ownby --- the two Missouri boys who were rescued from a pedophile’s apartment four years ago.  Both Shawn and Steven were allowed to come and go as they pleased and make friends with other kids their age.  They were given a lot of freedom but paid for it in ways many of us can only imagine.  The Stayner kidnapping happened in the seventies.  I also read the book Invisible Chains which is about the Shawn Hornbeck kidnapping.

         I know that there is often something trashy about true crime novels.  They tend to wallow in the details.  But occasionally, I am drawn to books about certain cases.  This was one such book.  It is also worth noting that Steven's brother Cary grew up to be the Yosemite killer.  I think there is an afterward in this book about the Yosemite murders.

        Steven died in a motorcycle accident sometime around 1989.  By that point, he was married with two young children.  It’s a tragic story in so many ways.  One can only wonder how a single family can endure so much pain.  Timmy White died more recently.  He was in his 30‘s.

       I actually prefer the TV movie to the book for two reasons.

       1.  The movie stars Corin Nemec aka Parker Lewis.

       2.  The movie isn’t as graphic as the book.  I had to skip over parts of the book because  they were too intense.

Christina Reviews *The Hotel New Hampshire*

          The Hotel New Hampshire is a saga about an eccentric family.  The narrator is John Berry.  Like the rest of his family, you could say that he is a dreamer.  He is also a weight-lifter and can crush a man to death with his bare arms.  He has five siblings.  The oldest one, Frank, is kind of the odd one out.  He is the odd duck in a family of odd ducks.  The sister Franny is a loud mouth who has little patience for her younger brother‘s penchant for whispering.  The younger sister Lilly is small for her age.  And the little brother Egg is just Egg.  The father wants to start a hotel and he uproots his family in order to pursue his dream.  Along the way, they meet a bunch people who are just as crazy and eccentric as they are.  There’s Susie the Bear who was raped by men who put a bag over her face and so, now, she hides her body in a bear costume.  There’s Screaming Annie the whore.  There’s Ronda Ray---the older woman who seduces the protagonist when he was 14 or 15 years old. 

        The story is a bit perverse.  It deals with subjects like rape and consensual incest.  It also deals with death, despair and terrorism.

        But, for the most part, I appreciated the quirkiness of The Hotel New Hampshire.  John Irving writes about characters who stay in your mind for a long time after you put the book down.  The only problem is he tends to over-explain things.  This book is full of sentences that the typical author would have edited out by the second draft.  But there are so many brilliant lines in here as well.  John Irving is a master at taking situations that are dark and disturbing and finding the humor in them. 


         I rate this an N, which means "Not for everybody".  I watched the movie first, and I liked it, mainly because it starred Rob Lowe.  The movie was just weird, and a bit sappy, whereas the book worked because it had this special Irving flair to it.

Christina Reviews *High Fidelity* by Nick Hornby

The first thing you should know about High Fidelity is that the movie was incredibly faithful to the novel, aside from the fact that the movie took place in Chicago and the book took place in England.  It’s actually quite interesting how the movie completely changed the setting and yet the tone of the novel remained almost intact.  The movie didn’t really improve on the book, but it’s a good substitute if you’re lazy.

High Fidelity is about a music snob who likes to create Top 5 lists for everything you can imagine.  He has recently broken up with his girlfriend and he ponders life and dating and music and how maybe his love life sucks because he listened to depressing music growing up.  He feels empathy for his fellow record collector.  For example, an embittered ex-wife offers to sell him her ex-husband’s record collection for an insanely low figure, but he can’t bring himself to do it.  He’s got his own sense of right and wrong, and his own sense of what’s important in life and what’s not.  For example, one of the things he feels strongly about is having girlfriends who like the same things as you do.  On page 117, he puts it like this: “…it’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.”

 He works with these two guys named Barry and Dick.  Dick is shy and intellectual.  Barry is a wisecracking, madman.  Together, the three of them make a team. 

Hornby has got the voice of the semi-insensitive, 30 something year old single guy down.  Rob doesn’t even try to pretend that he’s a sympathetic guy.  He knows he’s not going to win any awards for being the best boyfriend in the world, but he’s self-deprecating enough that you can’t help but like him.  And he grows as a character, which is always good.

To be honest, though, I didn’t care at all about the moral of this story.  I just liked the funny parts.

Christina Reviews *The Good Mother* by Sue Miller

         In The Good Mother, a husband and wife divorce.  The woman moves away with her daughter and falls in love with this new guy who’s a little eccentric.  She rushes into an intimate relationship with him.   She gets pregnant by him, then aborts the baby because he can't be bothered with a child.  The book kind of plods along while we're waiting for something truly horrible to happen.  With a title like The Good Mother, we're almost being challenged to judge the protagonist, right?  So when do I get to be judgmental?  Quit toying with me, Miller!

         And then it happens.  One day, the little daughter walks in on the boyfriend taking a shower and an inappropriate exchange occurs between the two of them.  When the father finds out about the incident, he takes the mother to court in order to get full custody of the child.  The woman finds that her parenting skills are being called into question.  The rest of the book is the woman trying to work out what it means to be a good mother and who gets to make that decision.  Or maybe I'm making the novel's point out to be more important than it is.  I don't know.

         I didn’t really like this book.  I suppose it was well-written.  I just was not invested in the central dilemma at all.  I didn't care if the woman lost her daughter.   I figured she had her turn and now the father deserved his shot at screwing up the child.  It's only fair.

         Seriously, though, maybe the protagonist wasn't the world's worst mother.  I'm sure there are mothers out there who are worse than her.  Sybil's mother was pretty bad. Maybe she wasn't as bad as Sybil's mother.  And she wasn't "Top Mother of the Year" either.  She fell somewhere in the middle where all well-meaning but flawed parents tend to end up.  I admit that I appreciate a morally ambiguous character as much as the next person.

       I just felt that the author was daring me to condemn this woman.  And I admit it was tempting to do so.  What's the point of reading a book if you can't act morally superior to the characters? And yet, somehow, the author managed to ruin that for me.

      Two stars.

Christina Reviews *Forever...* by Judy Blume

        Forever... is about Katherine's and Michael's first time.  It will make you look at sex in an open and honest way.  And it will make you realize that maybe celibacy isn't such a bad idea after all.

         I have never considered Judy Blume to be a literary genius.  But that’s not to say that she isn’t good at what she does well---and that is writing thinly-disguised sex pamphlets for young girls.

        With Forever…, Blume reaches the pinnacle of such success.  This is her Moby Dick of sex pamphlet writing, if you will.

        What are the requirements of writing a good sex pamphlet "novel"? 

         1. The characters must not have more dimension to them than that of a sheet of paper.  The more dimensions you give the characters, the less likely it is that the book will work.  After all, you don’t want anyone to take your sex pamphlet for literature.

        2.  A plot is not necessary.  A plot will just take attention away from all of the sex.

        3.  The sex scenes must be mechanical and about as erotic as an ape in heat.  After all, you’re not trying to encourage kids to have sex.  You’re just trying to tell them that if they ever so much as want to think about sex again after reading this book, God bless them.

       4. If you keep the aforementioned rules in mind, you are well on your way to writing the masterpiece of all masterpieces in sex pamphlet history.  Now all you need is an ironic title and a bittersweet ending where the young lovers are taken down a peg for even daring to think that they, alone, could beat the odds. 

       I can just imagine Judy Blume fighting the publishing house on this one.  Her editor probably said to her, “Yeah, it’s good and all.   But gee whiz, Judy, couldn’t the girl get pregnant or something?  At the very least, could she be infected with a raging case of herpes just to show that teen lust doesn't escape the wrath of an omnipotent God?”

       To which Blume probably responded, “Herpes!  My character can’t get herpes.  She went to Planned Parenthood, for crying out loud!  Remember that scene?  That was one of the major plot points in that whole damned novel!  But I'll tell you what I will do."

       Hence the scene near the end where the protagonist learns the error of her ways and the hollow echo chamber that is the word "Forever..."

       Ha ha ha.

       Censors: 0

       Judy Blume: ...

       D'oh.

       To be fair, Blume did put in those final two pages where Katherine claims that she feels no regret.   Nice to know she can go through what she did in the end and feel nothing.  I'm glad to see Judy Blume decided to keep the character consistent by refusing to give in to peer pressure and make her three-dimensional. 

        You know, I've been very hard on Judy Blume.  I'm sure this was a very important sex pamphlet for its time.  She wrote this book so that there would be a story out there where two kids have sex and neither of them have to die a horrible, painful death as a result.  And you know, I empathize with her goal.   I can appreciate the fact that Judy Blume wanted to debunk the myth that teen sex equals immediate death.  That sounds like a sensible myth to bust.

       She wrote this book because her teen daughter asked her to do so.  And you know what?  I've come to realize that, no matter what side of the fence you stand on, we all have the same goal deep down---to scare kids off of sex.  Liberal mothers like Judy Blume are just more passive agressive about it. 

         OK, honey.  You can have sex if you want.  But you'll have to go to Planned Parenthood first in order to get birth control.  And they'll make you endure this uncomfortable exam where the doctor treats you like a slab of beef.  And when you have sex for the first time, it will suck.  But this is completely normal.  And your boyfriend will probably come before he's supposed to.  And eventually it will get better and you'll start making the same kinds of noises that your mother makes.  And in the end, you'll break up with the guy and find someone else.  And you'll hear your mother's voice call out to you, "Honey.  [Insert name of new boyfriend] called."  And you'll know that your mother was right all along.   Oh, but I forgot to add that it's all right because you won't feel any regret.  Everything you went through---everything I just described to you--- was a very special experience and you'll remember it forever...  And just to show you how open-minded I really am, I will write a book about everything I just told you and I will dedicate it to you so that everyone in the world will know that I am very involved in and supportive of your potential sex life.  Have fun, honey! 

         Did Judy Blume have an ulterior motive here? Or was it a subconscious sabotage on her part?  Authorial intent can never be known.  Unless we're talking about J.K. Rowlings.

        By the way, I've noticed that Judy Blume doesn't write much anymore. Does that mean that, as a society, we've advanced beyond what she has to offer :).

        Save Planned Parenthood.  De-fund Judy Blume!

         I give this book two stars.

Christina Reviews *Flowers in the Attic* and *Petals on the Wind* by V.C. Andrews

           Flowers in the Attic

          “It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like that sun we seldom saw.” 


          Flowers in the Attic is about four siblings who are locked in an attic room by their greedy, spineless mother and their religious zealot grandmother and then neglected and tortured for almost three and a half years.  The reason they are hidden in the attic is because their evil grandfather Malcolm will never leave his money to their mother if he knows of their existence.  Their grandfather didn't approve of his daughter's and son-in-law's union for reasons that are explained in the book.

        The youngest siblings wither away from lack of sunlight and the older two end up in an unhealthy relationship due to their lack of human contact with anyone outside of each other.  It’s a dark, twisted fairy tale with purple prose and larger than life characters, but it’s actually an engaging story, even if it is depressing and perverse.  Then again, many fairy tales are engaging in a perverse sort of way, even if they aren’t always this perverse.   But the novel is written in a way where the reader can’t help but feel sympathy for the main characters. 

         I read the book for the first time when I was fourteen, but I see the characters differently now than I did when I was a teenager, and that’s in part because I understand the issues the book deals with a little better as an adult.  The novel is, after all, told by an unreliable narrator of sorts so you can’t take Cathy’s words at face value.  What makes this story so heart-breaking, and the reason why I think the story sticks in so many reader’s minds, is not just what is said on the page but what lurks behind the lines.  Watching the optimistic older brother Chris morph into a haunted and disturbed teenager as his protective layers are slowly stripped away is just one example of the tragedy of this story.  And I think that’s why the book is so much more powerful than the movie. In the movie, the children are acted upon and take a very passive role in their circumstances.  In the book, they evolve and become more vulnerable, and savage, versions of themselves. 

          I would give this book three and a half stars. 


           Petals on the Wind

          "Love that clung and killed"

           Cathy is still the narrator in this sequel, which is not as grim as its predecessor, but has ten times the amount of sex.

          Petals on the Wind picks up where FitA left off. The three remaining children are running for their lives. They're taken in by a kind (but lecherous) man who does everything he can to help them fulfill their wildest dreams. Cathy takes ballet lessons, Chris goes to medical school. It's almost perfect! Everything would be perfect, except for the fact that the past still haunts them. To personalize a cheesy cliché, you can take the kids out of the attic but you can't take the attic out of the kids.

         Cathy blames her mother for her miserable life and sleeps with the one and only adult who has shown her any kindness since the death of her father. This man is Dr. Paul Sheffield who has taken in the orphans, perhaps with the hope that Cathy will one day repay him by means not involving money, though he denies this a little too emphatically. Their "benefactor" is a very lonely man. He was once married to a woman named Julia, and the horror story with Julia could fill an entire book of its own.

        With Paul’s help, Cathy is given the opportunity to audition for the Rosencoff School of Ballet. She is accepted. This is where she meets another danseur, Julian Marquet, who does appear sophisticated at first, and very much resembles the dark-haired imaginary man she used to dance with in the attic. It is not long before she finds out that not only is he the son of Madame Marisha and Georges Rosencoff--- the owners of the ballet school (he changed his name to Marquet as a way to strike back at the father who sees him as nothing more than an extension of himself)--- but he is also too arrogant for her liking. Julian is very much like Cathy, both in ambition and in the need to prove himself to his parent of the same sex, so she decides to date him. Needless to say, Julian doesn't measure up to Chris's standards of who should date his sister.

        Throughout the course of the book, Cathy hops from one man to the next. Three men in particular catch her eye and make it into her fantasies---her much older guardian, the abusive danseur Julian and her mother's husband Bart.

        Cathy is not exactly a player. She has a few lovers but not an exorbitant amount. The thing about Cathy's sexual life is that it is just so damned inappropriate.  For example, right off the bat, she decides it would be interesting to seduce her (lecherous) guardian. And it only goes downhill from there. For many, this will be very off-putting. She's not as sympathetic as she was in FitA. But she's hurting and she's traumatized, so, at times, I couldn't help but feel pity for her, despite her foolish, even downright cruel, ways.

         There is a lot of sex in the book. It is written in a way that gives the novel a trashy feel. Cathy is out to cause her mother pain and suffering, and one way she does this, in particular, is so incredibly sick and wrong that it makes one want to smack her. Many of the other characters are extraordinarily selfish and abusive as well, and yet still, Cathy comes across as a manipulative, abrasive, extremely vindictive woman who does what she wants at any cost to her self and to others. It makes for a tense and interesting plotline (and maybe that's why so many fans seem to like this book). I certainly don't think it's ever boring.  I think it's a decent sequel, so long as you know what to expect.

         So read this book if you were frustrated by the end of FitA and want to see the grandmother and mother pay for their horrible crimes against defenseless little children. I don't think the conclusion is completely satisfying but it's a decent revenge story. Read this book if you want to know more about Cathy and Chris and their day to day lives and struggles---though keep in mind that the incest doesn't go away but only becomes worse. The book does feel a bit like a soap opera with all that's going on, but if you're just looking to be entertained, give it a try. I think that, chances are, if you loved FitA, you'll at least enjoy PotW. But keep in mind that Cathy's changed. She's not the responsible little 12 year old anymore. Everything that was once good about her has gone out the window. She's an emotional wreck. And she's out there in the world now, intent on getting back all that was denied her. And she's hungry for blood!


        I give the book three stars.

Christina Reviews *Ellen Foster* by Kaye Gibbons

         Ellen Foster tells the story of spunky pre-teen girl who is shuffled back and forth from one home to another after the death of her mother.  Her father is a nasty drunk who dies not long after she is taken away from him.  In the movie adaptation of the novel, Ellen is little more than an eternally grateful child who can be quite stubborn and has righteous anger against those who wronged her.  The movie ends when Ellen’s quest for a home is complete.  The book, on the other hand, is more about Ellen’s inner journey.

        The dialect is a little distracting, but it lends authenticity to the story so I wouldn’t say that I didn’t appreciate it.  Ellen’s voice is strong and she is a likeable character.  She dubs herself Ellen “Foster” because when she heard about a foster family nearby, she assumed that their last name was “Foster”.  There is an innocence about her that is endearing.  And, at the same time, she understands things that the adults around her don’t.  She has a friend named Starletta who is black, and the compassion she has for Starletta is far beyond what one would expect of a girl her age.  It’s not abnormal for children to be more tolerant than adults, but the wisdom in the final paragraph of this novel is what makes this character stand out as someone exceptional, in my opinion, and I think that is the true difference between the book and the movie.  The book Ellen is an extraordinary character whereas the movie Ellen is flat and two-dimensional, though Jena Malone certainly does the best she can with the script she was given to work with.

           I would strongly recommend this book.  And I would recommend the movie for Jena Malone’s acting alone.

           Four and a half stars.

Christina Reviews *The Education of Little Tree*

          Little Tree is a Native American boy who goes to live with his grandparents after the death of his parents.  The grandparents take it upon themselves to raise him up right and to help him appreciate the Cherokee way of living.  While living with the grandparents, the boy learns heartfelt lessons such as the dangers of trading with a Christian and the virtues and vices of the whiskey-making business.  When he is sent to live in an Indian Boarding School, he also learns what it’s like out there in the world for Native American children.

          I know that it’s a bit of an oxymoron to say that I liked a book that was assigned reading in high school, but I thoroughly enjoyed this story.  I liked it so much that, ten years later, I went out and bought it. 

          I saw the movie, but I don’t remember it being nearly as funny as the book.  Maybe that’s because I could picture the characters so clearly in my mind and seeing them onscreen ruined it for me.  The characters are so vivid and colorful that no actor could possibly do any of them justice.

         If you like this book, I would also recommend the book Northern Borders by Howard Frank Mosher which is also about a young boy who goes to live with his wise-cracking grandparents.  It is another coming of age story that is both hilarious, and at times, poignant. 

           Five stars.

Christina Reviews *Early From the Dance* by David Payne

         Early From the Dance is about a 30 something year old guy who reconnects with the love of his life, several years after they parted company. The love of his life was originally the love of his best friend's life, you see. When they were all 18, Adam stole his best friend Cary's girl (Jane). This led to lots of heartache. A few years later, Cary killed himself. Adam and Jane parted ways shortly after they decided their love was so grand it was worth risking Adam's friendship with Cary for it. And now, about fifteen years later, the two lovers meet up again. The point of view alternates back and forth between Adam and Jane.

         I could not stand this book. I disliked the characters, particularly Adam and Jane. Cary was the only one who interested me in the slightest. Of course, he had to be the one to kill himself.

         It also annoyed me the way the dialogue all ran together. It was like this: I said "Great!" and then she said "Fine!" and then I said "I'm happy you feel that way," and then she said "So that's that," and then I said, "I guess so," and then she said, "Well all righty then," and then I said, "OK," and then she said, "I'll be going then," and then I said...  It was really aggravating. I understand that the author must have done this on purpose. I don't know what his intention was, but it only got on my nerves. I have such a hard time with long sentences and paragraphs. I like to be able to stop every now and then and rest. It was hard enough with the small text. The run on sentences and paragraphs were just too much. As a result, it took me forever to read the book. I was supposed to have read it for grad school so I felt obligated to finish it.

          I admit, there were parts of this book I enjoyed. The prose was great. I liked the sections with Cary. I liked reading about the male characters' relationships with their fathers. I remember the characters having some interesting discussions about life and stuff.
 
         At the end of the day, though, it`s still just another love triangle story. Maybe if the two point of view characters had had more depth to them, it could have been more, but as it was, they just didn't get under my skin. I did not understand why Adam was so in love with Jane. I didn't understand what the two of them saw in each other. Maybe I missed the point of the story, but I kind of got the impression that the book was a long-winded explanation of why it's OK to cheat with your best friend's girl and why it's your friend's problem if he can't deal with it.  If only I could have felt the love between Jane and Adam, I could have cared a little bit more. But I just didn't understand how it came about. And, you know, maybe that had something to do with the fact that it took me forever to read the book and the fact that, after a period of time, I just resorted to skimming it.  Still, I don't think Adam and Jane knew each other all that well before he was falling head over heels in love with her. How was this girl so special that he was willing to risk Cary's friendship for her? That's what bothered me most. It wasn't so much that he stole Cary's girl. Jane had been trying to tell Cary, for a while, that it was over. The real betrayal, on Adam's part, was that he knew this would likely hurt Cary, and that was a risk he was willing to take. And to what gain? So he could win over a girl who Payne ultimately failed to convince me was anything special? 

          Anyway, on top of everything else, when Adam and Jane weren't being totally boring, they just had this sort of condescending air about them, as if they were better than everyone else. It was very off-putting.

         But if you like love triangle stories and you don't mind selfish, narcissistic characters who overanalyze everything, by all means, check this book out.

Christina Reviews *The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime*

           “This will not be a funny book.  I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them (Haddon, 8).”


          Every once in a while, I will come across a book that is told from a very interesting perspective.  The Lovely Bones was such a book.  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime is another.

       The Curious Incident is about a 15 year old boy's amateurish investigation into the murder of a neighbor’s dog, but what makes this book interesting is that the boy is autistic (or maybe he has Asperger's), and so the book ends up being more about his day to day life and the things he thinks about on a regular basis.  It was a real risk that the author took, but I think that, for the most part, it paid off. 

      This is not a book that has much of a plot.  Most of the sections go off on tangents about random things that are happening in Christopher John Boone's life, and the second half of the book veers off into a completely different investigation altogether.  I didn't like the second half of the book as much as the first half.  And I think that’s because, as brilliant an idea as this was, it’s a concept that works in small doses but not as a novel-length book.  It starts to feel like a gimmick.  It’s kind of like turning a Jim Carrey skit into a feature length movie.  And this is because you need more than a clever idea to make a really great story. 

          But maybe I'm being a little harsh because, overall, I loved the quirkiness of the book and would recommend it.  I wouldn’t say that it makes one understand what it’s like to have Autism or Asperger’s Syndrome, but it certainly does make for a compelling read.  And despite the fact that the protagonist promises in the opening pages that it will not be a funny book, it actually is kind of humorous at times.  The story feels very authentic and true to life.  And life is sometimes funny.

Christina Reviews *Cold Mountain* by Charles Frazier

           Cold Mountain takes place during the Civil War.  It is about an outlier named Inman who deserts the war in order to return home to Ada---the one true love of his life.

            I loved the character of Inman.  There was just this cold, efficiency to him.  He would just as soon cut your throat if it meant an extra hour of life for him.  He killed animals because he needed their flesh for sustenance.  Those were hard times, and there wasn't the luxury of being a vegetarian back then.

           Yeah, Inman was a tough one.  And yet he had a sympathetic goal---to make it home to his woman.  And did he ever go through hell in the pursuit of this single-minded goal.  I’m telling you.  It makes me think of the Edwin Starr song “Walk On”.  Not to mention the Edwin Starr song “War”.  Oh yeah, and there’s a touch of Odyssey in there too.  You could say that.

            I read Frazier’s book when I was a sophomore.  Several of my classmates hated the ending.  In fact, one of my friends stuck the book in the freezer as a way to punish it for not living up to her expectations.  I actually liked it.  Yeah, the ending was sad.  But it had to end that way.  It was meant to be.

           I wasn’t all that pleased with the movie, though.  I was very disappointed in the fact that Ruby was played by Renee Zellweger.  My sophomore year, Ruby from Cold Mountain and Ellen Gulden from One True Thing were two of my favorite female characters ever.  Damn it, Zellweger.  Stop playing my favorite characters!