Book Reviews

Fifteen year old Will is burning to avenge his brother’s murder, in “Long Way Down” (Simon & Schuster 2017) by Jason Reynolds. Most of the novel-in-searing verse covers about one minute of Will’s life.

Will knows the rules of the hood: “No crying. No snitching./And always get revenge.” And those rules? “They weren’t meant to be broken./ They were meant for the broken/ to follow.”

His brother Shawn was shot on the playground. Of course Will is devastated. “Couldn’t hear nothing./Ears filled up with heartbeats/ like my head was being held/ under water.”

And: “In the bathroom/ in the mirror/ my face sagged,/ like sadness/ was trying to pull/ the skin off.”

So, Will knows who killed Shawn. He’s sure of it. He finds Shawn’s gun in his drawer, tucks it in the back of his jeans: “felt the imprint/ of the piece, like/ another piece/ of me,/ an extra vertebra,/ some more/ backbone.” Will enters the elevator on the seventh floor on his way to get to the basement apartment—to the guy who did it.

On the sixth floor Buck gets on. But Buck is dead. But he’s in the elevator, smoking. It turns out Buck gave Shawn the gun. He tells Will to check to see if it’s loaded. Will discovers one bullet is missing. Shawn must have shot the gun. Will didn’t know Shawn had ever taken a shot.

On the fifth floor a really cute teenage girl gets on. She knows Will. Or knew Will. It turns out she’s the one that got killed by a stray bullet when they were about five years old and together at the playground.

On each floor another person gets on. They’re all dead people. His father, who was killed in the neighborhood, following the rules. But then the next guy was going to follow the rules. And do you always pinpoint the right murderer? The chorus of ghosts consider this.

This moral thriller is a poignant look at teenage gun violence, Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People, and on virtually all the “Best Books of 2017.”

Reynold’s author biography printed in the book is a heartfelt love letter to his readership, letting them know that he cares about them. First and foremost he is a young black author speaking to his young black readership. He addresses reluctant boy readers, saying he doesn’t like “boring” books either. He makes the point: if the books are exciting enough, boys will read them. The verse, besides driving the perfect percussive rhythm for the story, allows plenty of white space on the page and is highly accessible.

The story and the driving verse makes this a universal read.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com

 

Desi, a smart nerd and president of her senior class, has never had a boyfriend in “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” (FSG 2017) by Maurene Goo. Desi’s attempts at flirtation are so disastrous, that her two closest friends, Wes and Fiona, call them “flailures”—flirtation and failure? Get it?

Her neurosurgeon mother died when Desi was quite young. Desi lives with her auto mechanic father, Appa. Both parents came to California from Korea before Desi was born. Desi works hard to make Appa happy, but it’s hard for her to understand why he’s smitten with Korean soap operas, called K dramas. Until she realizes that here is the formula for romance. So she analyzes them for the steps to snag a boyfriend.

Goo both honors and deconstructs the romance formula via Desi’s analyzed steps. The first three of twenty-four steps, which also become the chapter titles are: “1. You are the Living Embodiment of All That is Pure and Good. 2. Have a Sad-Sack Family Story. 3. Meet the World’s Most Unattainable Guy.”

Unattainable Luca, transfers to Desi’s California high school. He’s a gorgeous graffiti artist and his social media presence reveals his fame. Desi’s heart starts a-beating. None of this would work if it weren’t so funny:

Desi asks Luca for a ride home from school.

“He cleared his throat. “Uh, well, I don’t know if we live close to each other.”

“What! We both live in Monte Vista, how freaking far could I possibly be from your house.” . . .You’d think I’d asked him to make a colonoscopy appointment.”

Desi is no shrinking violet. She’s flighty, smart, funny—and smitten. The combination makes for a charming character. Her flailures are pretty extreme. She didn’t want to look like she was coming on to him so she wears baggy sweatpants when she joins Art Club, where she figures she’ll see Luca. At the moment she asks him a favor, her sweatpants fall to the floor into a puddle at her ankles. Of course she’s humiliated. And everyone, including the reader, is laughing. Even before she begins her ridiculous pursuit, Luca is charmed by nerdy Desi.

In not too long, Desi and Luca are a couple. Desi accompanies Luca when he illegally “tags” public property. Specifically, he adds to and deepens other taggers’ existing graffiti and the art sounds pretty amazing.

Of course Luca eventually finds Desi’s written list of steps and his high-integrity artist self freaks and drops her. Desi is devastated.

The story plays out exactly along the lines of the analyzed steps/chapter titles, but Desi is oblivious. Still, Desi has a lot of life outside the romance.

Along the way you get a contrast between Korean and American cultures—the meaning of a hug; Desi’s description of Korean class distinctions. One gripe: the gorgeous girl on the book cover is not the girl I read about. Desi has so much more going on than physical beauty.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com

“Far From the Tree” (HarperTeen 2017) by Robin Benway is a story of biological teen siblings, living separate lives, who find each other.

The book opens with Grace, 16 years old, who is giving up her own baby for adoption, just as her mother had given her up. Grace has gone through an agency and carefully chosen the family who will give Peach—as she calls the baby—a good life. Still she’s left with a painful, hollow spot in her body and psyche. Her adoptive parents to whom she’s an only child are terrific—warm and smart. Grace steels herself to return to school after the birth and is met by merciless taunts. She decides she will find her siblings, and maybe her mother.

Grace finds Maya who was adopted by parents who, classically, got pregnant once they cared for their adopted infant. So Maya has a sister, Lauren, 13 months younger than she with red hair like both her parents. Maya looks like the odd man out with black hair.

She is gay, which is a badge of honor to her liberal parents, which amazes the other siblings once they discover this. The bad news is, Maya’s parents are splitting up. In her confusion, Maya sabotages her relationship with girlfriend Claire. Maya protects herself with sarcasm, but she is also wise. “Maya had never realized how much power there was in loving someone. At first, she thought it was a source of strength, but she was realizing that, in the wrong hands, on the wrong day, that power was strong enough to destroy the very thing that had built it.”

Joaquin – the oldest at 17 has been in the foster system since his mother gave him up as a toddler. Twice he’d been adopted, but each adoption was short-lived, which of course is devastating.

When Maya reports that her parents put a rainbow sticker on their car, “Joaquin couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to swing with that kind of net waiting to catch you.” One foster mom found out Joaquin’s foster sister was gay and kicked her out. “Bio always trumps foster.” In another home the bio son decided which fosters would stay. Joaquin was out in a month.

Joaquin has good foster parents now, in fact they want to adopt him, but it’s his decision and he’s saying no. “To call Linda and Mark Mom and Dad on purpose would mean that Joaquin’s heart would form into something much more fragile, something impossible to put back together if it broke, and he could not—would not—do that to himself again.”

He breaks up with his girlfriend Birdie. She is confident, has life-plans and expects the world. And he’ll never be able to give it to her. No discussion, he just ends it. She’s furious, hurt, confused. But Joaquin is shamed by a violent act he committed years ago. We wait till the end to find out what he’d done.

This beautiful story of family and love is the National Book Award Winner for Young Readers—a wonderful read for adults as well as young adults.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com

By its name, “What Girls Are Made Of” (Carolrhoda Lab 2017) by Elana K. Arnold might be a women’s health book like “Our Body, Ourselves.” But it’s a novel. However, it could serve as a woman’s health guide. In no-nonsense prose we watch Nina with her first period, first gynecological exam, intercourse, abortion, and heartbreak.

What makes this book important? It’s a story about the erasure of women.

Nina watches her mother endure yearly miscarriages, marking each when her glass of vodka reappears on the dining table. Her mother says there’s no such thing as unconditional love—not even for mother and child. Mother is a beautiful rich iceberg, and a non-working art historian. Her father supplies his family with a luxurious (cold) house and all the trimmings. That’s his role.

Nina, 16 years old, knows that her boyfriend Seth’s love is conditional. Those conditions include: she may not call him (he’s rude) and they must have sex. Nina and her best friend have been in love with Seth since fourth grade, but Nina won him and dropped her friend to be with him.

Seth calls the shots—what they’ll do, where they’ll do it, and the music they’ll listen to. The reader knows that Seth is a jerk and Nina has a self-esteem issue.

Is the issue Nina’s background? Her not being unconditionally loved? But there are plenty of teenaged girls who are unconditionally loved by a parent, and yet their major job is pleasing boys. After all these years, how can this be true?

The very fact that this title has been short-listed for the National Book Award says this is an important work—a necessary read.

Before high school, when her parents attempted to break-up, her mother took Nina to Italy—a trip meant for the parents. Mother and daughter visited endless museums in Rome, Florence, and small villages. They viewed thousands of tortured virgin saints—her mother’s specialty. Nina sees paintings of women on the rack and suffering the pear. (Read the book). Nina sees sculpted virgins in a state of ecstasy visited by Angels.

Her mother says. “When people don’t have words to describe what they’re experiencing, they think it’s magic. Or mystical. Or God.” She explains, in this case, “It’s an orgasm.”

All of the Renaissance and medieval art is executed by men, of course.

It would be difficult for me to like Nina if it weren’t for her wildly imagined—though dark—stories. In one, a bird-girl lived in a nest. She “pulled a feather from her side . . .dipped its quill end in ink, and . . . began to write.” This marks the beginning of Nina’s path to empowerment.

It helps that Nina works in a dog rescue center, doing service that was once penance for a cruel school misdeed that we don’t discover until the end of the story. But that is depressing, too, as it is a high-kill shelter. A lot of realism here.

Give this book to the girl who needs to be empowered. Is that all girls?

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com

 

 

Starting with the matriarch, Ranee Das in the 1960s, we experience three generations of Bengali women as they assimilate, having moved from India to Ghana to London to New York and beyond, in Mitali Perkins’ “You Bring the Distant Near” (2017). The novel includes fathers and spouses, but the story centers on each of the five complex, flawed, interesting women and her narration. Sister love is a strong component, but there’s also mother/daughter relationships, father/daughter relationships, and romances.

At the outset, we meet Ranee’s teenaged daughters, Tara and Sonia. In 1970s London Tara samples identities, first as the super model Twiggy, but when the family moves to New York she chooses an American persona. Sonia who craves reading and writing, becomes a feminist. It’s beautiful the way the sisters, who are so different from one another, act as a team as they navigate a new world together. We see each grow to womanhood and find a spouse. Their choices are vastly different leading to vastly different lives. Sonia falls in love with African American, Louis—another great character.

Tara’s marriage is a surprise to the reader, but I won’t spoil it here. Tara and Sonia each has a daughter which brings us to the present day. Marriages for the five happen outside and inside their culture, giving special views into Bengali and Bengali/American customs and food.

The situations and personalities feel so authentic you wonder how autobiographical the novel is. It turns out—pretty autobiographical. The author calls it a “memoir on steroids, with freedom to fabricate.” I’m pretty sure she’s Sonia in the novel.

In the story, Sonia has a daughter, Chantal, with Louis. Chantal is smart and athletic. Tara has a daughter, Anna, who is somewhat threatened by her older cousin, but as Anna comes into her own, the cousin relationship becomes a warm supportive sister-like relationship.

Fortunately we readers can refer to the family tree drawn in the opening pages, to ground ourselves as we read about the five “hyphenated” Americans.

Each character struggles with how she fits into the framework of assimilating from one culture to another; or Chantal’s experience of being bi-racial and of mixed cultures. Always the strength of the family serves as solid ground for the individual issues that each woman experiences. There is much more peace and harmony than conflict in this story, yet I was drawn to find out how things unfold, rather than what unfolds.

The character most transformed from beginning to end is the matriarch, Ranee Das. She is one of five great characters, but the secondary characters are also deftly drawn. I’d particularly liked to have known Baba, Sonia and Tara’s father and Ranee’s husband.

 

Patricia Hruby Powell is author of the young adult documentary novel Loving vs. Virginia and Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker   talesforallages.com