What Happened to Ivy by Kathy Stinson

"I could ask him now.  I could ask him:  Did you drown her? Did you plan it, like I planned the worms?  Did you know when you helped her into her bathing suit...what you were going to do?  Or not till you carried her into the water and made her laugh one last time?"

What Happened to Ivy is a great example of the kind of book that's not getting published as much these days, but which I think is still welcomed by many young readers--what librarians refer to as "the problem novel".  Not in that the book itself is a problem--but in that the book presents a problem, often some kind of ethical issue, as its main underpinning, and explores it deeply enough to expand the reader's understanding of the issue's  emotional and  philosophical complexities.  Such as, in this case, euthanasia.  Although What Happened to Ivy is fiction, it bears a strong resemblance to the real-life Robert and Tracy Latimer case, in which a Canadian parent was convicted of killing his disabled daughter in 1993 because of her pain management and quality-of-life issues.  This case generated huge controversy for many reasons, but I think most of all around the issue of consent;  euthanasia generally involves adults who are able to make their wishes known, but in this case the victim was a minor who had never expressed any desire to die. 

Stinson's fictionalization gives us over to the point of view of David, a young teen with an even younger sister, Ivy, who has cerebral palsy, just as Tracy Latimer did.  The first half of the book takes us through what it's like to be part of a family which includes a person with neurological disabilities.  Ivy consumes a lot of family focus, leaving David feeling frustrated and invisible sometimes--this family operates in a near-constant state of crisis, and his needs will always come in second to his sister's.  On the other hand, sometimes he's too visible, being out in public with a sister who's frankly embarrassing.  Ivy drools, she wears a diaper, she's loud, repetitive and hard to understand.  She has violent seizures and has had multiple painful surgeries. She can scare away other kids, leaving David isolated.  But Ivy can also be joyful, communicative and very loving, and when she has a seizure in a lake and drowns, despite being with their father, David is devastated.  He's even more devastated when his father admits that, instead of rescuing her,  he deliberately let Ivy go.  

Despite being a pretty easy read, this is a thought-provoking book.  Was Ivy better off dead?  Was failing to save her an act of love or an act of emotional exhaustion, and does the motivation even matter?  Was Ivy capable of making her own decisions about life?  How do we, as a society, value people with complex disabilities and how successful are we in offering their families support?  What Happened to Ivy succeeds in presenting Ivy as a person of value, whose family, both before and after her death, has no easy choices.

A Bride's Story; A Manga Series by Kaoru Mori

"Acclaimed creator Kaoru  Mori (Emma, Shirley) brings the nineteenth-century Silk Road to lavish life, chronicling the story of Amir Halgal, a young woman from a nomadic tribe betrothed to a twelve-year-old boy eight years her junior. Coping with cultural differences, blossoming feelings for her new husband, and expectations from both her adoptive and birth families, Amir strives to find her role as she settles into a new life and a new home in a society quick to define that role for her. Crafted in painstaking detail, Ms. Mori’s pen breathes life into the scenery and architecture of the period in this heartwarming slice-of-life tale that is at once both wholly exotic, yet familiar and accessible through the everyday lives of the rich characters she has created."

From Yen Press, the English-language publisher's web site.

Kaoru Mori's exquisite depiction of culture is, for me, the most compelling part of the still ongoing series A Bride's Story.  Created in Japanese, volumes 1, 2, and 3 have recently been published in English, and volume 4 is forthcoming in 2013.  A French translation is available as well.  Mori apparently specializes in historical fiction, and is most famous in the West for her award-winning series Emma, about a young maid in Victorian England.  A Bride's Story is set in an unnamed area along the  Silk Road, and in volume 3 it becomes clear that we are close to Russia.  In case you, like me, only have a fuzzy idea of where the Silk Road lies, here's what YoYo Ma's Silk Road Project has to say about it:

"The historical Silk Road comprised a series of land and sea trade  routes that crisscrossed Eurasia  from the first millenium B.C.E. through the middle of the second millennium C.E. The intersections among people from diverse cultures along the way promoted an unprecedented sharing of commodities, ideas, arts, sciences and innovations."

My husband Doug thinks the story is probably set in Mongolia or Kazakhstan, so I'll go with that.  It's a bit frustrating though--Mori seems to have done a huge amount of research, considering the intricate, almost photographic detail of the art.  Would it kill her to name the people she's depicting?

In volume 1 of A Bride's Story we meet Amir, an adult woman, and her husband Karluk, who has probably just hit puberty.  Some reviews have mentioned a discomfort with this, and I can see why, although it is clear that they have not consummated their relationship yet.  I think the difference in ages makes an interesting twist; this is obviously one of many cultures where marriages are arranged in terms of tribal alliances and not necessarily personal preference, but stories of older men and younger brides are more common.  Amir's a strong protagonist; she's an expert horsewoman, a crack shot with a bow and arrow, and is pretty resourceful with a stewpot.  The story shows a tremendous respect between her and her young groom;  although Amir and her adjustments to a new family are a focus in the series,  we also see Karluk struggling a bit to grow into his adult role as husband.

In some ways Karluk is still a child. 

Amir and Karluk relaxing together. 

Amir's amazing hunting skills. 

Looking good on a horse. 

The things we women will do to impress a man...

In volume 2 we see Amir's rather boorish male relatives arrive to take her back, hoping to ally themselves more strategically by marrying her off to another, more powerful family.  Amir refuses to go, now making a deliberate choice to remain with Karluk and his tribe, who unhesitatingly fight to keep her in one of the saga's more exciting turn of events.  (It's partly exciting because they don't look like they'd be such good fighters.) In volume 3 a western linguist and anthropologist, Mr. Smith, becomes a more major character and takes over the point of view for a time, taking us away from Amir and Karluk in his wanderings and adventures.  Some people have complained about the the meandering, picaresque storyline, but I think that's a little unfair;  we haven't read the whole story yet.  Besides, my favourite parts aren't necessarily the ones that further the action.  I think the best parts are the ones that highlight things like handing down traditional skills and crafts through the generations (woodcarving, cooking, embroidery).  We're really shown not just how intricate and meaningful the work is, but how long the skills take to master.

A young boy learns carving at the hands of a master artisan. 

A full-page close-up of a carving in progress.

The teaching process. 

A Bride's Story depicts material culture with loving attention to detail every step of the way, but it also depicts family culture with great sensitivity.  Amir's marriage literally takes her away from her birth family and into a new extended family community.  Unlike Amir's birth family, her marital family seems very warm and supportive. I enjoyed meeting all the characters, from the children to the elders.  I really loved the scene in book 3 where Tileke, a young girl who only likes embroidering hawks (embroidery is very important here, as you may have guessed by the clothing illustrations), is shown patterns associated with her maternal ancestors many generations back.  All the women gather to pass on their family heritage and inspire a member of the youngest  generation with their personal and collective memories.   There is certainly a power structure in this family, but it seems based on respect and it doesn't feel like anyone's being squashed.   This stands in contrast to some other families we see peripherally, where family power structures are used to benefit men at the expense of women.  Mori's not afraid to show us the range of experience possible in the culture she's depicting, but so far at any rate, her storyline emphasizes the positive.   I'm looking forward to following the rest of this series as it unfolds.

Amir's new family.  

Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

Quick science quiz:  who is the closest living relative to homo sapiens?

Did you guess chimpanzees?  Until recently scientists would have told you that chimps and humans share between 94% to 99% of their DNA, with lower estimates being more current.  It makes sense, then, that studying chimps will teach us about human behavior as well, and we've known for some time now that chimps are smart.  They can learn rudimentary sign language, use tools, and evolve unique behaviors within their communities to adapt to their particular circumstances.  But anyone studying chimps to find out more about human behavior will also find lots of bad news:  despite their intelligence they're a violent bunch, not just towards predators but also amongst themselves.  Rape, infanticide and murder are behaviors which have been observed in chimp communities, although there is debate over how common these behaviors are.  Nevertheless, observation of chimps has led to the argument  that violent behaviors are hard-wired into humanity, bred into our genes and waiting only for the right situations to bring them forth.

Well, surprise!  It turns out that chimps, while genetically close to us, aren't necessarily our only close relatives after all.  That distinction is now shared by the Bonobo, a cousin of the chimp who has  98.7 percent of its genetic material in common with ours, and has a vastly different behavioral repertoire from chimpanzees.   Bonobos, unlike chimps, are matriarchal and infants receive close and excellent care from their mothers and from the community.  Rape is virtually unknown; Bonobos are non-monogamous and use sex to cement social ties and group cohesion.  Although bonded, affectionate and cooperative within their group, they are shy of strangers.   Like the chimp, they are an endangered species and rapidly losing habitat.  And they live only in the Congo, one of the most violent and conflicted areas on earth.  It is this irony, of peaceful primates co-existing with warlike humans, which inspired Eliot Schrefer's new novel Endangered.  This is a book which I can picture appealing to a few different audiences--teens interested in science and animal behavior, teens interested in issues around development and social justice, and teens just wanting to read a great adventure novel.   

The plot is simple--Sophie, a teen of mixed race and nationality, flies from her home in America to spend the summer in the Congo with her mother, who runs a Bonobo sanctuary close to the capital city Kinshasa. On her way to the sanctuary, Sophie sees a young Bonobo who is close to death and being hawked by a poacher on the street.  She insists on stopping and buying the Bonobo, which puts her into immediate conflict with the rules of the sanctuary and her mother (who has been working hard to stop the trade in wild animals).  Unfazed, Sophie nurses the Bonobo back to health, becoming his surrogate mother, giving him 24 hour care and developing a strong mutual bond with the animal she has named Otto.    

The real trouble starts when Sophie's mother leaves for several weeks to facilitate the release of some of her rehabilitated Bonobos into the wild.  While she is gone, the government topples and an unruly band of militia attack the sanctuary, killing most of the women who work there.  Sophie and Otto manage to flee and hide inside the sanctuary forest, which is protected by an electric fence.  For a few weeks they live with a band of Bonobos there, but when the fence breaks down Sophie knows the soldiers will come into the forest looking for Bonobo meat.  She flees with Otto and together they make a long and very risky trek to find Sophie's mother, over the course of which they face both natural and human dangers.

There are a few things, I think, that make Endangered particularly good.  It's easy in adventure stories to let plot and suspense take over the book, but Endangered features wonderful characterization both of its humans and animals.  Each Bonobo is individually drawn, and their group dynamics are complex.   Sophie is a relentless spirit, refusing at several points to save herself when it means leaving Otto behind.  She won't prioritize her own human life over Otto's animal one, even under the most extreme circumstances. Her sense of responsibility is very personal, and is about honouring the relationship that she has developed with Otto;  whether, as a reader, you agree or disagree with her choices, you can really feel the emotion behind them.  Endangered could be a used to start deep conversations about important issues.  I think would be a great choice for teen book clubs.

Here are some videos of Eliot Schrefer a) promoting Endangered, b) giving an interview about Endangered, and c) playing with some friends in a Bonobo sanctuary:

And here's a picture of Eliot and his own Bonobo friend:

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: The Raven Cycle, Book 1

 Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood
there, wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever 
dared to dream before...
(Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven)

 I finally got a chance to read the much-anticipated Raven Boys, the first book of a projected four-book series,  by the multi-talented Maggie Stiefvater.  Stiefvater's reputation as a fantasy writer is stellar, particularly after her breakout trilogy The Wolves of Mercy Falls and last year's stand-alone blockbuster The Scorpio Races.   I kept thinking of Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising series as I was reading The Raven Boys, and also a book by Madeleine L'Engle called A Swiftly Tilting Planet--there are a lot of  thematic overlaps between these stories, as well as similarly mysterious characters and a compelling, slow-building atmosphere of suspense. 


The Raven Boys circles around a quest for the remains of Owain Glendower, legendary Welsh ruler who, like King Arthur, is said to be waiting to rise again when the time is right.  Gansey, one of the four Raven Boys in the novel (they're private school boys whose uniform has a raven on the jacket) is convinced that Glendower's remains lie somewhere in the area of Henrietta, Virginia  (that's in the USA, not Wales, but Gansey has an explanation for the geographic discrepancy) and has involved his three friends Adam, Noah and Connor in his search.   Meanwhile, Blue Sargent, a young woman born into a family of clairvoyant females, has a vivid and peculiar vision regarding Gansey and his death.  When Blue and the Raven Boys meet and begin to investigate the ley lines and other manifestations of mysterious energy in the Virginia landscape,  boundaries between the real world and the otherworldly begin to shift.

It's interesting that there are really two worlds at work here--Blue and her family, all women, all highly intuitive, private,  and  naturally attuned to the world of myth and spirit, and the Raven Boys,  living in a very masculine world of private school, grades, money, cars, and ambition.  Stiefvater is too sophisticated a writer to make this division simple, but moving back and forth between the two groups adds to the reading experience.  I really like how diverse the characters are, and how challenging some of them are to understand--I'm certain there's a lot more to find out about them.  The last line, uttered by Connor, utterly mystified me.  Stiefvater's always been great at creating atmosphere, and I would describe the atmosphere of The Raven Boys as "heightened".  By the end, I was getting chills up my spine.  Of course, I was reading in bed in the dead of night, when I should really have been sleeping...

As well as being a writer, Maggie Stiefvater is a musician and a visual artist.  Here is some art she drew for the trailer of The Raven Boys...I think it's exquisite.  Remember those 19th century illustrated novels for grown-ups, with their colour plates?  I so think Raven Boys could have been done like that. 

And here's the trailer:

Book to Film: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower came out in 1999, a thin little book that was released straight to paperback, and one with a very unassuming cover at that.  It didn't have a lot of fancy publicity, and it wasn't a smash hit like Harry Potter or Twilight.  It was a quiet book, but there was something about it that made people want to pass it on.   Librarians handed it around to each other.  Friends recommended it to friends.   It built a following, then people started talking about it as an underground classic. It's now quite easy to find quotes from the book all over the internet (frankly, they sound kind of trite  out of context).  And finally, it's become a movie.  I read the book about seven years ago, and saw the movie with my daughter last weekend.  We both loved it.  It's a great adaptation, but then again, it should be--it had Stephen Chbosky himself as screenwriter and director.

Perks was a book that really spoke to me.  First of all, it's set in the early 90s, and refers to things like making mixed tapes for your friends.  That made me all nostalgic--I had a friend who used to make the best mixed tapes for me around that time.  But it also resonated because of  how closely I could identify with Charlie, the book's main character.  He felt like me when I was a young adult.  Charlie is damaged by things he can't talk about.  He's introverted, socially awkward, clueless about setting boundaries or expressing himself (except in writing).  He reads a lot and thinks a lot, and watches people, but he's not easily noticed. He's a loner who wants to be more connected but can't seem to do it naturally.  But here's the thing--when I was growing up and going through all of that, I didn't really like myself a lot.  But Chbosky makes us just love Charlie.  I mean, just adore him.  That made the book for me right there.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is about Charlie's first year in high school.  This awkward kid manages to make a few friends, Sam and Patrick, who are seniors, much older than Charlie and seemingly much freer as well.  They have a group of buddies, dramatize The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the movies every week,  go to parties where the brownies taste a little strange, and listen to lots of music.  The story is about the ins and outs of their friendship.  Charlie's friends have their own issues, and the friendships aren't straightforward, but they are very believable.  I think Chbosky has captured both how warm and enlivening it feels to belong to a community of friends, and also how left behind you can feel when a friendship falters.

I was a bit worried about the casting before I saw the film--the characters felt real to me in my head, and I didn't want to sit there thinking "Oh look, there's Hermione Granger pretending to be Sam, and Percy Jackson's taking a break from being a demigod to be Charlie."  I kind of wanted people I had never seen before playing the roles.  But Logan Lerman absolutely disappeared into Charlie, and Ezra Miller, who was a new face for me, blew me away as Patrick.  Emma Watson was obviously the big name in this film, and although she is much more of a refined, classic beauty than I imagine Sam being, she brought a lot of warmth to the role.

Even though it's a relatively short book, Chbosky streamlines the story quite a bit for the movie.  I didn't feel it lost anything, though.  The big shock at the end of the book is much more foreshadowed in the film, but I already knew the plot, so I can't really judge what that would do for someone coming to the story fresh.  One difference I did notice;  although in the book I definitely felt that I was reading about a certain time period, the movie seemed to blur that a bit.

Here's the movie trailer:

And here's an interview with Stephen Chbosky and Emma Watson:

 

Every Day by David Levithan

It's hard to think of a teen writer today more romantic than David Levithan. From his breakthrough novel Boy Meets Boy to the recent Lover's Dictionary, he writes about love beautifully and optimistically. Every Day is about love, of course, but being David Levithan it's a little more philosophical than many teen love stories, and it uses elements of fantasy and magic realism to explore some questions that most of us aren't forced to ask.  What is it that really makes us love someone, and how important is the physical aspect of love?  I personally trust  David Levithan and I'll read whatever he cares to write, but while I found Every Day quite thought-provoking, I thought it had a few flaws in its premise that kept me from totally buying into it.

Every Day is about a person named A.  Because A is without a body, he doesn't have the normal attributes we cluster around identity--gender, race, culture, religion, family, even language change for A every day. (I'm going to refer to A as a he, just so I don't go crazy writing he/she).   A wakes up in a new body each day, lives the life of that person with the aid of memories that he can access, and then moves on to another body in a totally unconscious process that takes place each night while he sleeps.  It's been that way for A since infancy, and while A doesn't really understand why he's different, he's never told anyone.  There are a few parameters:  A ages normally (A is now 16, and so only wakes up in bodies that are also 16) and doesn't range too much geographically.  A can't choose whose body he will occupy, and  is never in the same body twice. 

As you can imagine, A is the ultimate loner.  With no relationships to anchor him emotionally, A goes through  life mostly as an observer--the main goal being not to disrupt or interfere in the lives of his hosts, whatever they are like.  But one day A wakes up in the body of a not-very-emotionally-sophisticated 16 year old  named Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend Rhiannon. Just like that, A falls in love.

From there, the story launches into a unique courtship.  After an idyllic day at the beach, A begins to anonymously seek Rhiannon out, to meet her anew and befriend her each day. He can't bear to be without her.   A finally tells her what his life is like, and despite some initial skepticism (of course) she finally believes him.  They slowly grow more attached. They sometimes communicate by e-mail, and sometimes in person, but A's changing bodies become an issue.  You can see Rhiannon respond differently to him when A occupies the body of a handsome jock, or a really fat kid, or a severely depressed goth girl, or a transsexual.  Whether Rhiannon will hold his hand or not depends a lot on what body that hand is attached to.  It also bothers Rhiannon that there is a sense that she can't rely on A.  He doesn't know what his circumstances will be from day to day.  As she points out to him at one point, he's always going to leave her, even if he always comes back. 

There are so many interesting and unexpected things about this story and how the relationship plays out, and I thought the premise was really clever.  But something bothered me all the way through.  The way A experienced infancy and childhood, with a different family each day, should have left him not as emotionally functional and mature as Levithan makes him.  Young children do not thrive emotionally with no attachments.  Yes, there is an undertone of melancholy and poignancy around A when he thinks of  his childhood, but A is not presented as a sociopath (unlike the one other transient soul he meets toward the end).  A is a kind, moral, caring person who would probably have no trouble finding love in normal circumstances.  I can understand why Levithan set things up the way he did in terms of the storyline, but psychologically it didn't feel right to me.  Still, if you can overlook this, Every Day is an absorbing, original read. 

Here's a video of Levithan talking about Every Day:  

Soonchild by Russell Hoban, Illustrated by Alexis Deacon

[Russell Hoban was] "a maverick writer of extraordinary imaginative gifts and highly original turn of phrase;  although he was sometimes compared to Tolkien and to CS Lewis, he conformed to no obvious literary tradition...His was a unique vein of magical fantasy, taking themes...that seem too devastating for contemplation, and turning them into allegories in which humour was combined with intense imagery and narrative momentum."  
Obituary for Russell Hoban, Telegraph newspaper. 

Soonchild is a very special  treat, and we're all the more lucky to have it as it is a posthumous work.  Hoban truly shone in the field of both adult and children's literature (remember the Frances picture books,  Turtle Diary, The Mouse and His Child, or Ridley Walker?), and Soonchild is as good as his best.  Although it's not a picture book, it is generously  illustrated in black and white by Alexis Deacon, who captures the vivid, worldly-yet-otherworldly atmosphere of the book majestically.  

 

The hero of Soonchild is Sixteen-Face John, an inuit shaman. Being a shaman, he walks through the world of spirit as well as that of earth.  But the world of spirit isn't what it used to be in the time of the ancestors:

"Some of the spirits of the place have moved away, others have died.  Yes, spirits die.  They die when they're no longer taken notice of, no longer spoken to.  But there are still some who live on the best they can and answer if they're spoken to in the proper way...Spirits like a lot of attention.  They like to be admired, and the shaman has to know how to please them so they'll be friendly to his people."

Sixteen-Face John begins to hear whispering in the spirit world.  "The whispering was in his head and he heard it when he was sleeping and when he was awake.  It was the kind of sound a glacier might make as it slides toward the sea, inching in the night.  He couldn't make out any words and he was thankful for that...There was no doubt in John's mind that whoever was doing the whispering was waiting for him in one of those places where shamans have to go so he thought it would be a good idea to stay out of those places."  One problem, though--his wife, No Problem's, belly is big with a child who won't kick, won't move, won't come out.  His child doesn't believe there's a world left to come into, because she can't hear the world songs any more.  Is the problem with the world, or is the problem with John?  Because he's no longer the shaman he used to be, either...

Of course Soonchild includes a Big Dream, a mythic journey, companions, and danger.  After all, what father wouldn't face anything to bring his child into the wide world?    But it's also populated with the most amazing characters.  Here's how Hoban describes Sixteen-Face John:

Sixteen-Face John was the big fear man.  Nobody was as afraid as he was, nobody had so many faces to be afraid with.  If a thing was too much for him to face with his first face, he would go to his second one and so on down the line.  What I'm saying is that he had sixteen different faces for looking at what scared him.  I can't tell you how he did it because he himself didn't know how he did it, it was just what he did."  

Now there's an interesting hero.  Later Hoban tells us that "His number one face had the kind of smile you right away distrusted."   That's so great. And here's how we're introduced to No Problem, Soonchild's mother:

"No Problem was a big, strong woman with the kind of face that made you not want to make her angry.  She used to beat all the boys at wrestling when she was a girl but now that she was a grown woman she spent most of her time scraping hides and making kamiks and atigis and that kind of thing.  So there she was with her big belly.  When people asked her if she wanted a boy or a girl she said she wanted a girl.  'I could use some help around here,' she said."  

Hoban has a great sense of humour, too:

"People used to ask him how he got to be so scared.  He told them that he started out scared and as time went on he got a little more scared every day.  'There's so much to be afraid of.  Listen to the wind, how it's moaning with the voices of the dead, the cold and lonesome dead.  They're afraid the same as I am.'

What of?  they wanted to know.

'They're afraid the world will go away and so am I,' said John.  'Aren't you?'

No, they said, they weren't.

'Don't you feel it slipping away?' said John.  'Like your pants falling down?'

Maybe, they said, John felt that way because his pants were falling down.  He had a big belly and a small bottom so that was bound to happen, what did he expect."

This is the kind of story that's really timeless, but it happens to take place in the present day.  It's magical and distinctive and stirring, but also very down to earth. This is published as a teen book, I think because of a brief reference to Sixteen-Face John's bad habits (these include spending the night with various women of his acquaintance) but if you're not fussy about protecting children from  things like that it could easily be read by middle-schoolers (and really, I don't think most children would pick up on the reference). 

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: the Lunar Chronicles, Book 1

"She was 36.28 percent not human."

With Cinder, debut author Marissa Meyer re-imagines the fairy tale Cinderella as a futuristic political thriller.   Cinder is an exciting story that will appeal to female fans of dystopian fiction, steampunk, science fiction, and fairy tale reinventions.  It plays with a range of ideas (medical ethics, political compromises), but especially the question of what defines us as human.  Is it our bodies?  Our emotional capacity?  Or something else entirely, something that can't be precisely understood? 

Cinder Linh is a cyborg living in the futuristic city of New Beijing, under the control of her resentful stepmother.  She is an expert mechanic and has a booth in the marketplace where she repairs all manner of broken technology.  One day, Prince Kai approaches her booth incognito.  He has a broken android, and is willing to go to great lengths to have it repaired, although it is an obsolete model.  Why?  What Cinder doesn't know is that the Emperor, Kai's father, is lying ill with a deadly disease called letumosis, a disease without a cure which is devastating the earth.

Things quickly unravel for Cinder.  Her stepsister Peony, the only person in her small family who actually likes her, catches the disease and is sent to a holding place where she is expected to die quickly.  Since Cinder was with Peony when she became ill, Cinder's stepmother vengefully "volunteers" her for medical research--as a cyborg, she is not considered fully human, and has no rights or independence.  She expects to die as a research subject, as almost none of the cyborgs enrolled as test patients survive.  Surprisingly, she does not.  She is mysteriously immune.  Meanwhile, the Emperor dies, Prince Kai is about to become Emperor in his father's place, and the sinister Queen Levana, ruler of the Lunars (who live on the moon) arrives on earth to  manipulate him into marriage.  Cinder finds herself in a perfect storm of political intrigue, deception, and danger.

The big weakness of this book is that one of the plot points (who is Cinder, really?) is pretty easy to guess from about half-way through--the clues are a little too obvious.  Still, the story is engrossing despite that.  We may know who Cinder is before she does, but we don't know how she's going to get the prince and save the kingdom, or even escape getting squashed by Queen Levana's peculiar ability to "glamour" and control those around her.  Cinder is an interesting heroine which some cool attributes of her own (her cyborg programing allows her to see when people are lying to her, for example).  Since this is a modernized version of the old tale, she is of course conceived of as much more independent and gutsy than the Cinderellas of the past. 

Cinder is the start of a four-book series, which Meyer has stated will each be based on a different fairy tale.  Scarlet is coming out in 2013, Cress in 2014 and Winter in 2015.  Cinder's story is left unfinished, but it looks like the next book will focus on different characters.  Here's a short author interview put out by the publisher:

Num8ers: The Chaos by Rachel Ward

Although I didn't review British writer Rachel Ward's debut novel Num8ers when it came out last year, I found it intense and fascinating.  Num8ers takes place in a contemporary but dystopian England where a girl named Jem has a strange ability:  when she looks into people's eyes she sees numbers that represent the date of that person's death.  This causes a great deal of trouble for her in terms of the story, as it ultimately leads to her being mistaken for a terrorist .  I thought it was an ingenious idea, though.  Imagine the questions it raises:  is the future preordained?  If you warned someone, could you change their fate? Is there a purpose behind this ability?  What is the cost to Jem of such knowledge?  What makes Jem's situation more intriguing is that she can't see the date of her own death, since of course she can't look herself directly in the eye (mirrors don't work).

Num8ers:  The Chaos could also be called Num8ers:  The Next Generation.  We are now in the year 2026, and Jem has died of cancer.  Adam, her son, is living with his grandmother, with whom he often clashes.  Adam has inherited his mother's ability to see death in a person's eyes, but in his case the power is intensified:  he not only sees the date, he also feels the nature of the death, the emotions and the pain of the process.  Because of this disturbing ability and the isolation of being so freakish, he is a troubled, angry teen.  He's also scared, because after a flood takes down his mother's old home and his Nan insists they move to London, he can't help but notice that almost everyone he meets has the same death date:  January 1st, 2027, and that all of these deaths are traumatic.  Something terrible is going to wipe out London soon, and it's up to misfit Adam to do what he can to stop it.   

I liked this book even more than Ward's first, in part because having set up the situation already, she can now make it increasingly complex.  She adds another point of view, that of Sarah, a girl with big problems and a scary ability of her own. The goverment has grown even more distrustful and controlling, to the point where people are microchipped and can be tracked at all times.  The stakes are higher. The ending is unexpected and riveting.  But it's not only the tension and suspense that are so compelling;  Ward gives her characters a lot of depth and development.  This is a book with substance as well as thrills. Ward is planning a third book in the series, titled Num8ers:  Infinity, which will focus on Sarah's daughter Mia, so altogether the Num8ers series will span three generations.

Matched by Ally Condie

Hard on the heels of The Hunger Games comes a whole crop of scary-future-society teen fiction,  Matched being one of the more high-profile dystopian reads of the year.  To me, the cover looks more like a lighter paranormal read--I think the girl in green looks like a genie in a bottle. When you read the story you realize she's meant to be a rebel in a big-brother style society.  She doesn't break free on the cover or in the story, completely, either.  It's hard to fight city hall.

Matched is a more subdued book than Hunger Games or the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness, which I personally feel are the recent benchmarks for dystopian teen fiction.  In Hunger Games, the point of view is squarely with people who are suffering under a cruel dictatorship and are fully aware of it.  They may not feel empowered to do anything about it, necessarily, but there's no doubt in their or the reader's minds that they're being oppressed.  In Matched,we are shown an extremely controlled society from the point of view of the so-called beneficiaries (if we were in the Hunger Games world, the equivalent would be the people of the Capital).

The heroine of Matched is Cassia, a young woman about to meet the spouse who is chosen for her by the Matching Department of her society.   To her surprise, her match turns out to be Xander, her longtime best friend.  While Xander is delighted with their match, Cassia becomes gradually less enthusiastic after seeing evidence that she may have had another match, her neighbour Ky, who cannot legally be partnered with anyone because of his low social status.  Cassia and Ky begin to develop a relationship based on small, subtle acts of rebellion, such as touching each other or memorizing forbidden poetry.   But even as Cassia begins to question the level of control her society exerts on her and the loss of intellectual and emotional freedom that goes with it, she is torn by the awareness that the system works well for a lot of people.  Her parents are happily married and have good jobs, and the world she lives in is safe and stable.

1984, the dystopia that spoke to me when I was a teen, features an impoverishment of the English language by the government ("newspeak") in order to prevent dissent ("thoughtcrime").  Similarly, in Cassia's world, history, culture, and knowledge are continually being pruned out of existence by government workers so that only scraps of  the past remain.  Bureaucratic committees have selected 100 officially sanctioned poems, books, paintings, historic events, and so on to represent the whole of human creativity and memory, and knowledge of all other works is forbidden.  In Matched, the poems of Dylan Thomas, particularly "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", become symbols of all that has been lost, much as the works of Shakespeare symbolize the loss of culture in Brave New World. 

But Cassia is ultimately emotionally rather than intellectually driven.  Her epiphany comes when she realizes that "...the statistics the Officials give us do not matter to me.  I know there are many people who are happy and I am glad for them.  But this is Ky.  If he is the one person who falls by the wayside while the other ninety-nine are happy and fulfilled, that is not right with me anymore."   Once Cassia has decided this, however, her path is not so clear.  How do you stand up to a society which provides so much, and is so good at hiding what it takes away?

Matched is apparently the first volume of a trilogy.  Volume 2, Crossed,  will be released in November 2011.  Until then, here's an author interview with Ally Condie. 

Nothing Like You by Lauren Strasnick

"Holly".  The way he kept saying my name over and over made me feel so totally small.  "You're not my girlfriend."  You're not my girlfriend.  You're not my girlfriend.  It echoed in my ear.  I hate you, I thought as he dragged me across the taupe-colored field to the bleachers.  We ducked underneath.  "Do we need to set some ground rules?...I like you, Holly, I do.  But I'm not going to do all this girlfriend-boyfriend bullshit with you, okay?  I already have one relationship I have to manage...What we have should be easy."
 
I remember a few years ago reading an article in one of our city newspapers about how the "friends with benefits" relationship trend is aging down to high schoolers and even middle schoolers, who apparently now don't bother with crushes,  courting, or building relationships. According to this article, arranging with an  acquaintance in one's social circle to meet for sex, rather than dating and all it entails, is now an accepted norm for some teens.  This struck me as kind of bizarre and creepy at the time, not to mention prematurely jaded.  After all, loving emotional bonds are one of the chief pleasures of life.  And  learning how to form and maintain romantic connections is widely considered to be one of the important developmental tasks of adolescence and early adulthood.  Who wants to reach adulthood knowing nothing about romance?

Nothing Like You confirms my initial impression.  This kind of relationship is indeed bizarre and creepy.  Especially if you're in denial about being in emotional crisis, and your partner is a borderline sociopath.

The book opens with Holly, our protagonist, losing her virginity to Paul in the back seat of his stale, smelly car. She wonders " if this feels any different when you love the person or when you do it lying down on a bed.".  Paul already has a girlfriend, Saskia, who is lovely and popular, and Holly knows that what she is doing with Paul isn't going to change that.  But she is emotionally numb after losing her mother to cancer,  and Paul's physicality somehow makes her feel less frozen.

Paul begins sneaking into Holly's bedroom several nights a week, while making the boundaries of their relationship very clear.  He doesn't want to talk to, touch, or acknowledge Holly at school, or anywhere they might be seen together.  No one is to know about them, especially not Saskia.  It becomes more and more of a mystery to me why Holly stays with him,  really, because he just gets colder and nastier as the story goes on.  Meanwhile, Saskia and Holly wind up getting to know each other after being partnered for a school project, and Holly's best friend Nils, seeing how troubled Holly is, tries unsuccessfully to reach out to her.

Holly makes some pretty poor decisions in this book, and although you sense that they're really all about her grief at her mother's death, that grief is never directly addressed.  There's a dingy sense of worthlessness that seems to follow her around like a cloud, and when she is outed as Paul's sexual partner and comes into school to find the word "whore" written on her locker and no one speaking to her, it simply serves to bring her outer world into correspondence with her depressing inner world.

Strasnick has written a serious book about difficult situations and complicated feelings.  She's done a good job, although sometimes I did want to give Holly a good whack upside the head.  All that self-destructive behavior gets a bit frustrating, and her continued "I don't know why I did that" attitude doesn't help.  The ending is bittersweet but hints at the beginnings of some emotional resilience and a chance for a fresh beginning. 

Me, Myself and Ike by K.L. Denman

I think what makes Me, Myself and Ike special is how, despite treating a very dark, even tragic subject, adolescent schizophrenia, seriously and well,  it manages to read so easily.  I read this book effortlessly in under three hours, but I thought about it for the rest of the day.  This book is very accessible to younger teens and tweens, but isn't at all dumbed down. I believed it utterly. 

Me, Myself and Ike follows the mental deterioration of a good kid.  Christopher, or Kit, our first person narrator, has had a happy life, with a warm family, a talent for basketball, a few good friends and a girlfriend he cares about.  But when we meet him, these good relationships are mostly memories.  The only friend in Kit's life now is Ike, a nasty person who pops around when no one else is there and whom Kit often seems afraid of.  When Kit sees a documentary on Otzi the prehistoric Iceman,  Ike somehow convinces him that the only way he can make his life worthwhile is to become a modern day iceman, allowing himself to freeze in the mountains for the benefit of future generations of scientists.  Kit quickly becomes increasingly paranoid and delusional as he prepares himself for his death. We soon realize that Ike is a product of Kit's mental illness, and fortunately Kit's plan to become the Iceman of the Future is thwarted by his brother, who manages to find and save him at the last minute.  Kit ends up hospitalized and talking to a psychiatrist.  We don't know for sure that Kit's mind can become healthy again, but we are left hoping for the best.

Denman approaches the character of Kit with immense empathy and respect.  Kit isn't at all alien or scary, although there are times when we are afraid for him.  I love how Denman has humanized the face of such an isolating disease, and made us relate to Kit so fully even as we see that he is not well.  For many of us, schizophrenics are those dirty people on the street, asking for change, muttering to themselves and occasionally striking out violently.  Denham shows us a person who has schizophrenia, rather than a schizophrenic who used to be a person.  Me, Myself and Ike is a great read for thoughtful people, tweens on up.

Hate List by Jennifer Brown

Reading Jennifer Brown's striking debut novel Hate List made me understand something about the way I read teen fiction.  I read it like a parent.  Even while part of me is getting in to the teen protagonist's mind and experience, another part is keeping a close eye on the parent/child dynamic and how it affects the storyline, even when that's not the primary thrust of the plot. After all, when the adults, with all of their supposed maturity and life experience, can't cope with their teen's life, what's going to save that kid from sinking?  We parents are always being told that we will only be influential with and important to our children up to a certain age, and then their peers will take over as primary influences.  But what I'm inferring from the teen fiction that I've read lately is that parents are still  foundational in teen lives. Good news for the real-life me.  Sometimes scary for the reader me. 

I must admit that the parents in Hate List have a doozy of a parenting situation on their hands.  Part of what Jennifer Brown does so spectacularly in this book is to set up an almost impossible situation, one that leaves both teens and adults reeling. She then makes the teens instrumental in hauling themselves out of the wreckage and taking the first step forward, while the older generation is still flailing.   It's slow and painful, and not all the teens can do it.   But it's compelling to watch, and Brown makes both the success and failure of it feel convincing. 

Hate List is told from the point of view of Valerie Leftman, a high school senior returning to school after being wounded by a bullet in the leg.  The bullet was fired by her boyfriend Nick in the school cafeteria, during a rampage which left a number of students and one teacher dead or critically injured.  Valerie's boyfriend shot her, perhaps by accident, as she thrust herself between him and one of his intended victims. 

Valerie and Nick were a target for school bullies.  Nick chose his shooting victims from their "Hate List", a notebook Valerie kept recording the names of everyone who had been abusive or annoying to them.  Valerie and Nick often talked about wishing these people were dead, although Valerie had no idea that Nick was serious about putting those thoughts into action.  And despite what he has done, Valerie can't think of Nick, who killed himself that day as well,  as a villain.  She mourns him and misses him desperately.  How can she do that after he killed all those people and devastated so many families?  To what extent does she share responsibility for the carnage that occured?  Is she a victim, a villain or a hero?  You can bet that everyone in this book has an opinion on the subject--and it's not always what Valerie expects.

What I liked best about Hate List was watching Valerie lurch back into that school where it seems like everyone now hates her and blames her.  I liked the wary and unexpected collaboration she forms with Jessica, the girl she took the bullet for.  I liked how brave Valerie was, and how scared, all at the same time.  And I liked how head-on Hate List tackles a big question--is it possible to eradicate hate from our lives?

Here's the moody and kinda haunting book trailer:

Love is Hell by: Melissa Marr, Scott Westerfield, Justine Larbalestier, Gabrielle Zevin, and Laurie Faria Stolarz

Doesn't that cover just scream R*O*M*A*N*C*E?

This collection of short stories by some of the most uber-cool names in teen fiction today has a bit of a misleading title.  None of the stories actually take place in H-E-double-toothpicks, as my mother used to call it.  They all, however, have a strong supernatural component (with one exception, Westerfield's story "Stupid Perfect World", which is science fiction all the way).   Short story anthologies can be a bit dodgy, but this is a really solid collection with consistently smart and entertaining writing.

I came away with two special favourites.  The first was the aforementioned "Stupid Perfect World", which takes place in a high school class the distant future.  The class is called "Scarcity Class", and it is a sort of modified history class-what life was like before modern technology.

"It wasn't a real course with grades and everything, so only the most pathetic meekers worked hard at it.  The rest of us just showed up and tried not to fall asleep.  Nobody wanted to fail, of course, because that meant repeating:  another long semester of watching all those olden-day people starving and being diseased.  At least regular History has battles;  Scarcity was just depressing."

For their term projects, everyone in the class has to pick an obsolete physical condition and live with it for two weeks.  Things like hunger, cancer, river blindness, the common cold.  Going for the unusual, our protagonist, Kieran, chooses sleep.  Real REM sleep, every single night for two whole weeks.

"When I got home, I asked Dad if I could synthesize a bed for my room.  He immediately put on his serious face and sat me down.
'Sixteen is too young to have a bed in your room, Kieran.  Remember when we talked about this, how a little bioframe tweak can make those feelings less...persistent?'
I groaned.  'This isn't about that, Dad...It's for a school project.'
He laughed too hard in a really embarassing way, actually slapping his thigh.  'Nice try, buddy.'"

So, how does sleeping four hours a night on a pile of coats in his bedroom lead Kieran to true love?  Read the book to find out!

My other favourite story was Melissa Marr's "Love Struck".  A modern selkie story where the selkie is male and his human companion, Alana, is a city-dwelling, college-bound teenager, it has an intriguing premise and an unusually unexpected and satisfying ending.  Like "Love Struck", for the most part, the stories in Love is Hell should warm reader's hearts.

Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga

"Handle you?  God, Kyra--no one can handle you!  I certainly can't.  I'm surprised anyone could!"

In The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, Barry Lyga first introduced us to the prickly Goth Girl, a heroine who managed to be both kick-ass and damaged at the same time--sort of like Xena, Warrior Princess would be if she had childhood traumas and a stormy family life.  (Actually, maybe she did--I never watched her show.)  Goth Girl Rising continues Kyra's story, beginning from her release from the psychiatric hospital that her father committed her to because she was suicidal.  I'm so glad Lyga wrote this sequel because, well, unresolved endings are sophisticated and all, but sometimes you just love the characters so much you don't want to let them go until you know they've got what it takes to get through life.  For me, Goth Girl is like that.  I want to know that she's going to be okay, because Lyga wrote her so well I'm half-convinced she's real. 

I'm fascinated by Goth Girl's anger.  She is a young woman truly full of rage--rage at her mother for dying, at her father for living, at Fanboy for going incommunicado while she was hospitalized, and at her friend Jecca for making out with her in private but never in public.  She loves her rage.  She feeds it and strokes it and credits it for keeping her strong in the face of her mother's death and the subsequent unravelling of her life and family.  Goth Girl is so gutsy and outspoken that she'll say just about anything to just about anyone, and when she's revved up on rage, it's like fights on the old Batman TV show. KAPOW!  BAM!  ZOWIE!  She's not one to repress, that's for sure. She's not one to forgive, either. It's a strange kind of thrill to see grown adults--particularly her teachers and principal-crumple up as she rolls all over them.  And to wonder, incredulously, just how far she will go to get the revenge she thinks Fanboy deserves.  Her father, I just felt sorry for.

Goth Girl Rising is so satisfying, of course, because Lyga finally takes her beyond that rage and into understanding.  He needs to, really, because the truth is that Kyra is still suicidal sometimes, that with all of her anger she's alienated and in deep pain.  Her anger is a double-edged sword, bolstering her sense of purpose and direction but blocking her ability to heal.   When Kyra drops her constant anger, in a funny way she seems more emotionally honest.  Not that the anger was dishonest--it was real enough--but it wasn't letting anything else through.  It's a sign of Lyga's excellence as a writer that we care so much about such an angry kid.  Lyga never treats Goth Girl with anything less than complete respect.   

Here's a link to a Goth Girl interview with Barry Lyga.  I like his answer to the question of how he manages, as a man, to write the character of a teen girl so convincingly.  Does he have an inner Goth Girl?  No, apparently, he just has a lot of women friends, "and when they talk to me, I listen to them." Right on, Barry!

Hamlet and Ophelia: A Novel by John Marsden

"What the fuck do you want?"

(Hamlet)

Australian teen writer John Marsden gives us a masterfully in-your-face prose retelling of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I haven't read the original version for a few decades now, so I can't comment on how precisely Marsden's version follows it, but all the main plot points are certainly represented (murder, ghost, procrastination, madness, and a surfeit of gruesome deaths). Marsden's retelling is very accessible, but he's also made this story hot. This is a Hamlet who prowls around the castle at twilight watching women undress, and an Ophelia who imagines what Hamlet looks like naked, and moans and writhes in her bed at night. Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia is highly sexually charged, but also highly frustrated (something many teen readers will no doubt sympathize with).

And yes, something is still rotten in the state of Denmark. Treachery, corruption, and decay abound. Marsden captures the right brooding, moody atmosphere, seething with undercurrents of repressed emotion. He closely adapts much of Shakespeare's original wordplay, which adds richness to the reading experience. The juxtapositioning of these passages with Marsden's own highly contemporary style jolts the reader and adds to the story's edgy quality.

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio, or in mine, but somehow we are expected to make it all intelligible, to carve statues from air and books from bark. It is too much. This is the proper work of gods and we are not gods, indeed all of our human errors come from the vain belief that we are."

"Here's your ball," Horatio said.

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

"See that guy?" Anne pointed out a schlub sporting a cardigan and shaggy sideburns. At his side stood a surprisingly perky brunette. "That's Clayton. He's the head of the Neurobiology department. His wife is a bed stylist."...

"What's a bed stylist?" I asked.

"She works for homewares, when they shoot their catalogues," Anne said. "Her whole, entire career consists of arranging the beds so they're artfully crumpled in the pictures. Like someone just had great sex in them."

"That's her job?"

"Yeah."

"For real."

"Yeah."

We snickered...

Well, I just want to know why no one told me this job existed when I was thinking about my career options!

Actually, the bed stylist is pretty typical of the characters we meet in How to Say Goodbye in Robot. "Quirky" is a word that comes up a lot when people are describing this book. I mean, look at the telephone on the cover. What teen in their right minds would be using a phone like that? Oddball teens, that's who. Teens who don't fit in with the crowd. Loners who are disparaged by their families and peers with names like "ghost boy" and "robot girl". Unlikely friends who communicate with each other partly via a late-night talk radio show on an oldies station. Where we, incidentally, get to know plenty of quirky old folks too.

It's Myrna. I believe in ghosts, Herb. I swear to God, one night when my late husband was in the hospital, not recuperating from his third and fatal heart attack, I was lying alone in my bed, and the ghost of Elvis came to comfort me. I use the word comfort as a euphemism, Herb. I'm sure all the ladies out there know what I'm talking about...

But I digress.

What makes How to Say Goodbye in Robot so real and good is that layered under its quirks and irony is an understated sadness. The story captures the complicated friendship of high school students Beatrice (robot girl) and Jonah (ghost boy). These two aren't very experienced at having friends; Jonah in particular hasn't made a new friend since third grade when his mother and twin brother were killed in a car accident and he withdrew from the world in grief. Somehow, Bea and Jonah find sympathetic spirits in each other. Ultimately, though, their closeness isn't nearly enough to save Jonah when he undergoes another devastating loss. In the end he simply disappears, leaving robot girl haunted by his absence.

I must admit the ending made me cry.

Standiford writes just beautifully here. The helplessness of loss is evoked so well. The family dynamics are heartbreaking. Relationships are broken; some heal, others don't. Even treasured friendships can be fragile.

Someday, I tell myself, the memories will fade away. Catso will just be a toy. A lock of white hair won't make me jump. I'll stare at the picture of the boy in the Casper mask, struggling to remember why I loved him.

That's how I imagine it, anyway.