The Lover's Dictionary: A Novel by David Levithan

brash, adj.
"I want you to spend the night," you said.  And it was definitely your phrasing that ensured it.  If you had said "Let's have sex," or "Let's go to my place," or even "I really want you," I'm not sure we would have gone quite as far as we did.  But I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it on you.

David Levithan is so versatile--he's the founding editor of Scholastic's PUSH imprint, has mentored many new writers, has written his own highly acclaimed fiction for teens (including the groundbreaking LGBTQ Boy Meets Boy),  and has now come out with this first book for the adult market, which I'm highlighting here because I think it will certainly cross over to his teen audience, particularly the older teens.  The Lover's Dictionary is a love story, and despite its brevity it's a very intriguing read.  Levithan constructs this relationship story out of words and their definitions,  beginning with aberrant and ending with zenith.   It's funny and romantic, yes, (no one does romantic quite like David Levithan) but also shadowed by anger,  insecurity, betrayal.  There's a lot of tenderness, but no sense of permanence.  The relationship pictured is organic and fragile.  I never lost the feeling that it was teetering on the edge of heartbreak, but the wordplay enherent in the form of the book lightens it  considerably.

exacerbate, v.
"I believe your exact words were, 'You're getting too emotional.'"

The Lover's Dictionary feels very finely crafted to me, almost poetic. Each word is carefully considered yet often has an unexpected quality.  Although Levithan is very out as a queer writer, the gender of the lovers in this story  is subtly handled.  The narrator addresses his lover as "you", and while the narrator is male, the "you" is left ambiguous.  I think this gives the story a nice sense of openness and fluidity.  In the end, it's the love that's the miracle, regardless of the lover's identities. 

sancrosanct, adj.
The nape of your neck.  Even the sound of the word nape sounds holy to me.  That and the hollow of your neck, the peek of your chest that your shirt sometimes reveals.  These are the stations of my quietest, most insistent desire.

Rich and Mad by William Nicholson

"I've decided to fall in love," said Maddy Fisher.
Cath nodded to show she was listening, but did not look up from her magazine.
"I'm seriously serious.  I'm too young to get married but I'm too old to be single.  I need love."
"And sex," said Cath.
"Well, yes.  But I'm not talking about a quick grope at a party.  I'm talking about can't-eat can't-sleep crazy in love."
"Any idea who?" said Cath.
"Not a single clue."

It's been a long time since I've had the pleasure of reading such a convincing and absorbing chronicle of that adolescent rite of passage, first love.  Nicholson's Rich and Mad is warm and thoughtful and optimistic, just like its protagonists.  It's an easy book to fall into and get lost in.  Nicholson is an established and respected fantasy writer who had a particular agenda with his first work of realistic fiction.  I think the end result is complex yet beautifully balanced.

Rich and Mad is the story of Maddy Fisher and Rich Ross, British teens who are both rather quiet and, frankly, a bit nerdy.  They're inexperienced in the field of romance and Rich, in particular, feels like a misfit.  They long for love, without really knowing anyone of the opposite sex.  Each of them, rather naively,  becomes infatuated with someone they barely know:  Rich with beautiful Grace, and Maddy with the charming and popular Joe Finnegan.  Rich and Maddy become friends in the process of trying to woo their respective crushes, and when things with Grace and Joe fall apart, they support each other and gradually deeper feelings develop between them.  They are kind to each other, and it is this kindness that engenders love.  It's innocent and sweet, but Nicholson makes it seem natural and not sentimental.

Part of what gives Rich and Mad its depth, I think, is the way that Nicholson has contextualized this relationship.  Rich and Maddy don't just experience love emotionally, they also give it a lot of thought.  As Rich's feelings for Maddy are blossoming, his beloved grandmother is dying of a stroke.  Maddy's antique dealer father has fallen in love with a woman far away in China and has come home to say goodbye to his wife and children in order to commit to this new relationship.  Maddy's older sister and her friend Grace are  struggling with abusive relationships. Rich is reading The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm and considering what it has to say.  A lot of different voices are heard and a lot of different experiences are laid out here, some of them more somber than the one Nicholson is primarily developing, and each one feels quite individual.

In the final chapter, Rich and Maddy make love.  Nicholson is quite descriptive here and the book jacket carries the warning "explicit content", I think mainly referring to this scene.  I felt almost embarrassed reading it;  I felt like I was intruding on the privacy of real people, which is not something I often feel when reading fictional accounts of sex. Nicholson captures a mood of tenderness and intimacy, and the encounter seems right and good in the context of the relationship.  Rich and Maddy may not stay together forever, but what they have now is the real thing. 

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

I'll never be able to listen to that Elton John song the same way again.  (Not that I listened to it a lot before...but now that one line has completely taken over my head...and I'm hearing it in Elton John's voice, too...oh dear lord!).  After I read Hold Me Closer, Necromancer  I googled the lyrics to Tiny Dancer and they're completely inane.  Just begging to be reimagined.

As the titular pun demonstrates, this book is a little twisted.   It's very funny, in a dry, scary, pull-no-punches sort of way.  It's not afraid to go way past weird and embrace the downright bizarre,  while somehow maintaining enough of a framework of normalcy (well, normalcy within the conventions of supernatural fiction--it does feature necromancers, witches, werewolves and a harbinger of death) to keep it grounded.  Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is maybe not for everyone, but I sure got a kick out of it.

The story's beat-up hero is Sam (short for Samhain), a young university dropout who's eking out a living in Seattle at a burger joint with the enticing name of Plumpy's.  Due to an unfortunately timed game of potato hockey (don't ask), Sam comes to the attention of  a creepy alpha-necromancer named Douglas who  isn't pleased to have an unknown necromancer (Sam) on his turf, even though Sam is apparently pretty low-voltage, powerwise.  Sam, understandably, thinks that Douglas is a freaky madman, until Douglas sends Sam a message he can't ignore (this is where the bizarre-o-meter goes into hyperdrive).  Now Sam and his motley pack of friends are racing to find out who Sam really is, what his powers are, and why he can't make them work.   And when Douglas kidnaps Sam and throws him in an iron cage in a science-lab dungeon with an irate kidnapped werewolf girl, the stakes get really high.

What really makes this book work is the sharp way that McBride controls the tone, a sort of mashed-up gritty supernatural comedy noir.  Sam's a great portrait of a teen drifter with a good heart, a guy who feels like a loser but ends up becoming one of the good guys as he comes into his power.  If McBride writes a sequel, I'll read it in one hot second.

Now if only I could get that song out of my head...

Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

"Could it be that after eighteen years Dad saw me that way--a poor girl struggling to be understood, who achieved self-sufficiency only by virtue of others' help?"

See, the title is kind of a joke. Dumb is the name of a hard-rock band in Anthony John's debut novel, and here the "dumb" refers to the IQ type of dumb, not the silent, uncommunicative type of dumb.  (The "five flavors" refers to the bands five members.) However,  Piper, the protagonist and narrator of Five Flavors, is deaf.  Since her deafness developed at age 6, she can speak and lip-read, which allows her to function in the hearing world to a certain extent--she attends her neighbourhood high school, where she gets good grades and  kicks the pants off the other chess club members without particularly trying.  But although Piper is neither type of dumb, she is struggling with uncertainty about her future.  For years her dream has been to attend  Gallaudet University, a liberal-arts college for deaf students, "a place where I'd automatically fit in, instead of standing out in all the wrong ways."   When her parents spend the college fund her grandparents left to her on a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister Grace without even telling her, Piper is left with complicated feelings of frustration and powerlessness.

Wanting to stretch herself in new directions, Piper signs on as Dumb's manager, even though she can't hear a note they play.  And this, for me, was when the book really came alive.  Piper develops a lot of inner power on the road to shaping Dumb into a decent band--some of her challenges include the fact that the band can't play in synch, is the only hard rock band in the world with no drummer,  and has no original songs.  One of the guitarists is still learning to play guitar?  The band spends  more time arguing than practicing?  The talk show host who has booked Dumb on her show is expecting an easy listening number?   Piper takes it all on, and more, on the road to finding Dumb a place in garage-band rock history.

I'm sure there will be an audience for Dumb because of the deaf-heroine angle or the rock music angle, but I actually appreciated Piper's ferocious business smarts the most.  John presents us with a heroine who is decisive, thinks strategically, and makes herself heard.   I liked Piper a lot, and would recommend Five Flavors of Dumb  to any girl thinking of engaging with the business world--it's never too soon to find yourself some inspiration!

Five Flavors of Dumb doesn't seem to have an official trailer, but I like this unofficial one, put together by the Arlington Public Library teen librarians:

Bink and Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alison McGhee

Now, who could resist a cover like that?  So fun.  And fun is what this story's all about--Bink and Gollie, best buddies and partners in adventure and roller-skating.

Bink and Gollie has the look of an easy reader, with short chapters, lots of white space and illustrations on every page, but it's actually quite a vocabulary-stretcher, so in my household it worked best as a read-aloud.  Kate DiCamillo is such an elegant writer, and her words just roll off the tongue.  As evidenced by the cover portraits, Bink is kinda informal and very bouncy, while Gollie is considerably more calm and sophisticated, and their language certainly reflects that.  Take this little exchange between the two, which takes place in a store selling  multihued socks:

' "It's a sock bonanza!"  said Bink.
"Indeed it is," said Gollie.  "An extremely bright sock bonanza."
"I'll take this pair,"  said Bink.
"Bink," said Gollie, "the brightness of those socks pains me.  I beg you not to purchase them."
"I can't wait to put them on," said Bink.' 

Ewan and I had some hilarity with the lines:
'"Bink, I implore you, do not knock."
"What does implore mean?"  asked Bink.'

(This is funniest if you give a lot of dramatic emphasis to the word "implore'.) 

As usual with Candlewick, the book itself is beautifully put together, with thick glossy pages and bright expressive illustration, courtesy of Tony Fucile. Candlewick has even given it its own web site and book trailer!  Bink and Gollie is the winner of the ALA's 2011 Theodore Seuss Geisel Award for most distinguished beginning reader book.  Well deserved, I think.   

Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys by Bob Raczka, Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

"If this puddle could
talk, I think it would tell me
to splash my sister."

The haiku is one of my favourite forms of poetry--I like how it captures and illuminates small moments.  And Peter H. Reynolds is one of my favourite picture book creators--he hooked me with The Dot and I've loved him ever since.  So you can imagine how quickly I grabbed Guyku off the new book shelf.  I was not disappointed. 

In his afterword, poet Bob Raczka explains why he thinks haiku is a great choice for budding young guy poets.  Firstly, "a haiku is an observation of nature, and nature is a place where guys love to be."   And secondly, haiku is always in the present tense, so "whatever happens in a haiku, it's happening right now.  From my experience, guys are always interested in what's happening right now."   I think Raczka has hit the mark with these lively and funny poems.

The Guyku website is also well worth a visit, and Raczka and Reynolds assure us that a Galku (or maybe Herku?) book will be along shortly.  Can't wait!

                                

A Few Chicklit Treats: Mostly Good Girls and Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

                                       
My two favourite girl books this month have a lot in common.  They're both smart, fun, and captivating.  They feature girls born to wealth and privilege, girls who are savvy, well-educated and have high aspirations.  But just because they're well-dressed and ace their SATs doesn't mean we're not rooting for them--they're all strong, involving protagonists.  There isn't a whiff of the typical rich girl/mean girl caricature lots of teen chick-lit indulges in here. If you're in the mood to read about girls who like and support each other despite their growing pains, you're in the right place.  

Mostly Good Girls is narrated by Violet Tunis, a junior at Westfield School (an exclusive, private girl's academy) and longtime best friends with Katie Cabot. Violet is very goal-oriented and works hard to maintain her never- -quite-perfect grades.  She edits the school literary magazine to boost her chances of getting into a good university.  She's a straight-and-narrow kind of girl, and one of the things that draws her to Katie is Katie's slightly wild streak--Katie's into doing "projects" that seem like a good idea at the time, but end up getting them into hot water (like her plan for Violet and Katie to get rich by becoming pool sharks rather than babysitting, or her plan to offer new students a spooked-out "Harry Potter Tour" of their uptight private school).  Over the course of the book, Katie starts to rebel against her over-privileged life, and Violet becomes more and more bewildered as her best friend starts to seem like a stranger.

Although the theme isn't particularly uproarious, what I found made Mostly Good Girls stand out for me was the humour. Sales fashions her book out of  short, anecdotal chapters and gives Violet a wry, funny voice that kept me turning pages ("Awesome speeches, guys," I said in my last official lie as editor in chief.").    One of my favourite chapters takes place at an editorial meeting for The Wisdom, the school literary magazine, where a truly awful poem about anorexia is being considered for publication.  (I want to be thin/Because that means I win/...Hunger is a sin/As bad for you as a shark's fin/I would laugh and grin/If only I were thin") Violet attempts to hint that the poem, let's be honest, *totally sucks* while trying to maintain an air of impartiality.  Meanwhile her staff offer kindly but obtuse critiques such as "I like the way she rhymed every line."  Sales had me snorting with laughter as Violet becomes increasingly pointed about the obvious badness of the poem, which of course ends up being unanimously selected for publication.  The whole scene is wickedly, deliciously funny. Mostly Good Girls is full of little scenes like this which add so much richness and personality to this story of a struggling but ultimately strong friendship. 

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters I liked for so many reasons.  The plot is intricate and ingenious, and involves the matriarch of the Sullivan family (known as Almighty to her children and grandchildren) announcing that she will cut the family out of her will unless the family member who has mysteriously displeased her delivers a confession and apology in writing by New Year's Day.  Norrie, Jane and Sassy each suspect that they may have aroused Almighty's displeasure (Norrie by standing up the handsome date Almighty has selected for her Cotillion and running off for a rebellious  weekend in New York with her true love instead,  Jane by publishing a tell-all blog called myevilfamily.com,  and Sassy by killing Almighty's husband).  Each writes a detailed confession in which it becomes clear that  their sins are as complex as they are themselves.  I'd love to have any one of these sisters as my real-life friends, which is, I think, a sign of a successful chick-lit story.

Here's a fun trailer for Mostly Good Girls: