The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Jan18

What fun! A 2008 National Book Award FInalist and a Cybils Young Adult Fiction FInalist, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks is also just a good read. Frankie herself is an intriguing and complicated character, and I enjoyed getting to know her.

The premise is fairly simple: over the summer between her freshman and sophomore years at the exclusive prep school, Alabaster School, Frankie blossoms. As she returns to school in the fall, she attracts the attention of senior heart-throb and very rich kid, Matthew Livingston. But Matthew’s friend, Alpha, is either (1) jealous of Matthew’s attention to Frankie or (2) attracted to Frankie, too. And somewhere in the mix is a secret society called the Loyal Order of Basset Hounds that Frankie feels she must infiltrate even though it’s all-male and probably close to being defunct anyway.

This novel is a FInding Yourself story, a Coming of Age tale, a Boarding School genre entry, and an all-round good time book. Frankie is typically insecure and desirous of acceptance by her peers, and yet she finds the inner resources to break out of the mold and become someone that no one would expect her to be. The story is comedic, but it has serious undertones and themes.

Frankie is something of a feminist, without the stridency of some of that ilk, and she’s also interested in power and influence and in how those attributes are acquired and how they are wielded. She’s sharply observant, and yet vulnerable enough and young enough to be unsure for most of the novel about what she wants and what she’s willing to do to get what she wants.

Some people were annoyed by the novel’s point of view; it’s told in third person, present tense from an omniscient narrator point of view. But the real vantage point is Frankie’s. Even though the story’s narrator takes a sort of detached, long view of events, Frankie is the only one whose thoughts are related and whose motivations are explained. I liked the playfulness of the narrator’s voice explaining the changes in Frankie’s life while showing us the results of those changes in the action of the novel. Here’s a sample quotation, and you can decide how you like the way the story is told:

“Most young women when confronted with the peculiarly male nature of certain social events — usually those incorporating beer or other substances guaranteed to kill off a few brain cells, and often involving either the freezing-cold outdoors or the near suffocating heat of a filthy dorm room, but which can also, in more intellectual circles, include the watching of boring Russian films — will react in one of three ways . . . but Frankie Landau-Banks did none. Although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself that she had had a pleasant time.

It had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations.

What Frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. The drinks, the clothes, the invitations, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. She asked herself: If I were in charge, how could I have done it better?”

Frankie eventually takes charge, and, you should know, she is a fan of P.G. Wodehouse. So how could she be anything but endearingly witty and entertaining?

Brown Bear Daughter loved this one, too. I thought it was the best of the YA Cybils finalists I’ve read so far.

Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Thomas Flexner

Jan17

The book I read is a condensation and rewrite of Flexner’s four volume biographical study of the life of Washington. As he says in the preface, Flexner at first wanted to write a one volume biography, then felt he could not do justice to the man and his indispensable role in the founding of the country in less than four volumes, and then finally felt pressured to “distill what I had discovered into a single volume” that would “present in essence Washington’s character and career.”

In meeting his stated goal, Flexner was quite successful. In fifty-two chapters Flexner carries our hero, and Washington is indeed a hero in this book although not without flaws, from his youth as an obscure younger son from the backwoods of Virginia through his days as a soldier, a general, a planter, and a statesman, to his death in December of 1799. As for character, the Washington of this biography is a self-controlled man, fond of company and friends, but also temperate, quiet, a peacemaker, nevertheless at infrequent times giving way to an enormous temper.

George Washington, in this biography, truly is the indispensable man. It isn’t too much to say that without him the revolution would not have been successful, and that if it had been successful, the nation formed as a result of that revolution would have soon come apart and resolved itself into thirteen (or more) individual competing countries. Washington first holds the Continental Army together against all odds and at the expense of his own health and financial interests. Then after spending eight happy years in retirement at Mount Vernon, The Indispensable Man is called back into public life and given the responsibility of first moderating the Constitutional Convention, and then of presiding over a new, fledgling nation with deep sectional and philosophical rifts in opinion, culture and practice. If he couldn’t bring Jefferson and Hamilton and their followers together in the end, he at least managed to keep them from tearing the nation apart while they attacked each other and each other’s ideas and policies.

Although the book is certainly not hagiographic, Washington does fare well under scrutiny in this biographical treatment. Others of our founding fathers who figure in the story of Washington’s life do not make such a favorable impression. John Adams is a jealous and bitter wanna-be vice-president who can’t wait to take center stage as soon as Washington declines a third term as president. Jefferson is a trouble maker, untrustworthy, willing to advocate things in public and in the press to advance his own long term goals and policies, words and ideas that he repudiates in private because he knows they are impracticable or impolitic. Hamilton is a better friend to Washington, but still jealous of his own reputation and zealous for more power. Madison and Monroe are portrayed as Jefferson’s sycophants, willing to do almost anything to thwart the Federalist opposition even at the expense of the U.S. national interest.

In the portrayal in this book at least, Washington stands head-and-shoulders above all the other men of his time. Even late in his second term, when the author says several times that Washington is “losing his mental powers” and becoming weak and vacillating, he remains an admirable figure, one who is trying to do his best to serve the nation that has called upon him to give his best years to its service.

From this book I formed a better appreciation for Washington and his labors in the founding of our nation. I also began to suspect the actions and motives of others of our founding fathers. We’ll see how they fare in their own biographies as I read about the other presidents. Next up: John Adams by David McCullough.

Saturday Review

Jan16

The Saturday Review is looking iffy tonight. Mr. Linky is not cooperating. I’ll get it up with the linky by midnight if I can, and if not I’ll leave a post where you can leave a comment with links to your reviews.

The Explosionist by Jenny Davidson

Jan16

It’s one of the finalists for the Cybils Fantasy and Science Fiction Award, and I can see why. Nevertheless, I thought it was . . . odd. But maybe it’s supposed to be odd. Maybe I just have a low tolerance for odd, or at least for this particular kind of odd. I didn’t dislike the book; I just wasn’t sure I liked feeling slightly off-balance for 448 pages. And then I still had lots of unanswered questions; it’s obvious from the ending that a sequel or two is meant to follow.

So first note for potential readers: if you want all your loose ends tied together and all your questions answered, wait for the sequel and read them together. From Ms. Davidson’s blog:

My big goal for January: finish writing the sequel to The Explosionist, The Snow Queen!

I’m not quite sure how the publisher’s schedule works, but I would think that if all goes as planned, the book would be published in winter or early spring of 2010 – I’ll post more details here as things develop.

Next note: the book is based on an alternative history. In the world of this story, Napoleon defeated Wellington at Waterloo. The countries of Northern Europe, Denmark, Sweden, Scotland and others formed the Hanseatic League and eventually fought a Great War against the European Federation. England fell to the Europeans and became part of the Federation. Science and technology, art and literature all took different turns, although some of the names—Alfred Nobel, Alexander Bell, WIlliam James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Faraday, and others—remained the same. This alternate history aspect of the novel was part of what served to keep me slightly disoriented as I read.

Sophie, the main character of the novel, lives in a society that is passionately dependent on science and technology and yet also permeated by a strong belief in spiritualism and communication with the dead in the spirit world. Sophie herself is interested in science, especially chemistry, but she’s also something of an unwilling spirit medium. This joining of science and superstition seemed incongruous and disturbing, but also somewhat compelling in its peculiarity.

If any of this unbalanced oddity sounds like the kind of strange that matches yours, you may want to give The Explosionist a try. I’m still not sure what I think about it. I’ll probably read The Snow Queen and get some more answers before I render a final verdict.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Jan15

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective.

Ostensibly a true-crime story of the murder of a three year old Victorian child, Saville Kent, in his own upper middle class home, Summerscale’s Mr. Whicher delves into the history of detection and detective stories, the literary influences of pioneers in the detective genre, word studies of related detective terms, and the early history Scotland Yard in particular. The author actually uses the facts of the murder of Saville Kent to explore all sorts of rabbit trails and interesting by-paths as she also explains the investigation of the murder and its aftermath.

For instance,

“The word ‘clue’ derives from ‘clew’, meaning a ball of thread or yarn. I had come to mean ‘that which points the way’ because of the Greek myth in which Theseus uses a ball of yarn, given to him by Ariadne, to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. The writers of the mid-nineteenth century still had this image in mind when they used the word.”

Now, I knew about Theseus and the escape from the labyrinth, but I didn’t know that the word ‘clue” derived from that mythological event.

I also learned a lot about Jonathan Whicher and the early detectives of Scotland Yard. Mostly bachelors and drawn from the lower middle or lower class, these early detectives sometimes identified more closely with the criminals they were entrusted to apprehend than with the staid denizens of middle class London and the of the countryside whom they were sworn to protect. Whicher himself, one of the eight original Scotland Yard officers, was the subject of an article in DIckens’ Household Words in 1850, and according to Summerscale was something of a model, or at least an influence, for Dickens’ Bleak House, Wilkie Collins The Woman in White and The Moonstone, and Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a popular novel of the 1860’s, was also directly influenced by the Road Hill murder, as the murder of Saville Kent came to be known. (The Woman in White and The Turn of the Screw are the only ones of these books that I’ve actually read, and I can see the influences in both.)

THe actual investigation of the Road Hill murder was a difficult case with rather unsatisfactory results: no one was actually convicted of the crime until years later when the murderer, as the result of a guilty conscience and a conversion experience, confessed. And the confession itself may have been only partially true. But the light that Summerscale sheds in her book on the origins and psychology of criminal investigation and of detective fiction is thought-provoking and revealing of a modern mindset that sees the detective and his work as a metaphor for the revelation of secrets and the desire of the public to know (and sometimes not to know) the private business of families in the interest of either justice or voyeurism.

A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce

Jan14

“The story of Rumplestiltskin is what folklorists call a ‘Name of the Helper’ tale, in which a character must defeat a mysterious helper by discovering his True Name (or Secret Name or Hidden Name). . . I’ve also found it fascinating that in Rumplestiltskin, the heroine is known only as ‘the miller’s daughter’ or ‘the queen,’ while Rumplestiltskin’s name becomes a magical talisman–an object of power in and of itself. In a story about the potency of names, the heroine is anonymous.” –From the Author’s Note at the end of the book.

Author Elizabeth Bunce gives the heroine in this retold fairy tale a name, Charlotte Miller. The other characters also have names: Rumplestiltskin becomes Jack Spinner, but of course, that’s only his everyday name. The revelation of his True Name awaits the end of the story. Charlotte’s love, and later husband, is Randall Woodstone, a stable and dependable pillar of love and faith in an otherwise precarious and unreliable world. Names and naming of both people and places in this book are very important. Note to readers: watch the names.

The setting, too, is a key to the entire story. Again, in her author’s note Bunce tells us that Charlotte’s village is not based on any real place. However, it is some combination of late eighteenth century England and New England and influenced by the woolen industries of those countries as the Industrial Revolution changes manufacturing from a village-based, home-worker centered system to a city-based, factory system. Charlotte’s world is a pagan, superstitious place, with only a veneer of Christianity symbolized by crisis prayers and an occasional blessing on official occasions. Curses and hexes and wards and magic circles are the powers that be in this setting, and Charlotte must learn to fight the shadows and the curses of the past with her own inner courage and the help of friendly villagers and family.

A Curse Dark As Gold paints a picture in story of the essential hopelessness and darkness of paganism without ever presenting much of an alternative. Charlotte finds the ability within herself to love and forgive and break the curse of the past, but I’m not sure where that power comes from. I found the entire story to be both fascinating and terrifying. If all I have to depend upon is my own inner strength, or even the kindness of friends and strangers, it’s not enough. Although some whispered and desperate prayers and some Christian symbolism underlie the final denouement of the story, I’m glad I don’t live in Charlotte’s neck of the woods. It’s a scary place.

Blogger reviews:
Miss Erin: “I wonder how many times the word “gold” or “golden” appears in the book!? Golden hair and golden fields and Gold Valley and gold gold gold . . . it was obviously a major theme in it. I love themes in books.”

The Puck in the Midden: “I loved the way that marriage is presented as imperfect, as flawed, as not the happy ending, but instead as merely the middle of someone’s story. I loved the strong female characters, Charlotte and Rosie both, and I loved their flaws. I loved the very creepy ghost story.”

Melissa at Book Nut: “It took me a while — 50 pages or so — to get the rhythm of the book, to understand what Bunce was trying to do with Charlotte (she grated on me at the beginning, but eventually I understood, and liked, her as a character), and to really enjoy what I was reading. But once I got past that point, life got put on hold.”

Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins

Jan13

I had been saving the ARC I received of Mitali Perkins’ new YA novel Secret Keeper for a treat and because I thought that a review closer to the time of publication would be more helpful to readers. In December I succumbed, and read it.

Such a powerful story! It’s something of a romance, and I so wanted everything to turn out just like the fairy tales. And yet I felt as I read that it couldn’t really have a traditional happy ending and that it couldn’t have been written in any other way. Secret Keeper is a tale of love and loss, of traditional family and of new ways and mores creeping into and disrupting the old conventions. It’s a story that bridges cultures and creates understanding and makes even WASPs like me feel a twinge of identification with the characters and their very human situations.

The main character of the novel is sixteen year old Asha, the younger of two daughters in the Gupta family. As the story opens, Asha, her sister Reet, and their mother are on a train headed for a visit of indeterminate length with their Baba’s family in Calcutta. Baba (Father) himself is in America looking for work, having lost his job as a result of the economic difficulties in India in the early 1970’s, the time period for the book. Asha is not sure how the small family will manage to fit into her uncle’s household in Calcutta even for the short amount of time she expects them to stay before Baba send for them to join him in the U.S. Asha’s grandmother lives with Asha’s uncle’s very traditional family, and the three women will be three more mouths to feed, unable to make much, if any, contribution to the welfare of the family. As events unfold, Asha depends on her diary, nicknamed Secret Keeper, to hold her thoughts and dreams and to keep her sane in a tension-filled household.

Girls, especially those who are trying to balance responsibilities to family and to themselves, will find Asha to be a sympathetic character and a role model. When she is faced with a crisis, she makes the best decision she can both for herself and for her small family, and even though her solution to the family’s problems is imperfect and open to criticism, it is the difficulty of her decision that makes the family strong again and renews their bonds, bonds that have been stretched to the breaking point.

I really think that this book is Ms. Perkins’ best book to date, an exploration of cultural norms and changing roles, of responsibility to self and to family, and of flawed but loving answers to difficult issues. I highly recommend Secret Keeper, available in bookstores and from Amazon starting today. (Click on the book cover to order from Amazon.)

Other reviewers:

Book Embargo: “It was a beautiful book.. (havenâ€™t I said that already?) But it really was. The family dynamics, with the father gone to America, the mother and two sisters left to live with relatives. The money problems, the Indian culture, it was all so beautifully written and described.”

Free Book Giveaway: Heaven

Jan12

Carrie of Mommy Brain sent me a link to this book giveaway of Randy Alcorn’s Heaven at his blog. I’ve also read some interesting posts at his blog in the past, so you may want check out both the giveaway and the blog.

Heaven by Randy Alcorn

Jan12

Part 1: A Theology of Heaven

I started reading Randy Alcorn’s book, Heaven, the January selection for my Semicolon Book Club. I hate to admit it: I found the first part a little bit . . . boring. I think I must learn better through story than through exposition. I frequently find myself skimming through books that explicate Scripture, just as I zone out during sermons sometimes whether I intend to do so or not. It seems that I’ve heard most of this first part before, and I’m hoping to get to the “good part” soon, the part that tells me what I can expect heaven to be like.

Each sub-section begins with a question. I’ll give you a list so that you can see what I mean about having heard it before, and then you can know whether you should read the first part or skim it to get to the next part.

1. Are You Looking Forward to Heaven? Yes, I am. I know that lots of people have a misguided and uninformed idea of what heaven will be like. Clouds and harps and lots of singing. I don’t exactly have that problem, but I do have a somewhat “unformed” idea of what heaven will be like. I’m pretty sure it won’t be boring, and it won’t be repetitious, and it won’t be what I expect. But what will it be?

2. Is Heaven Beyond Our Imagination? Alcorn says no. “Everything pleasurable we know about life on Earth we have experienced through our senses. So, when Heaven is portrayed as beyond the reach of our senses, it doesn’t invite us; instead, it alienates and even frightens us. Our misguided attempts to make Heaven ‘sound spiritual’ (i.e., non-physical) merely succeed in making Heaven sound unappealing.”

3. Is Heaven Our Default Destination . . . Or Is Hell? Ouch. Most people think that they and their loved ones are headed for heaven. Unfortunately, the Bible says that ALL of us are headed for hell. Only those who grab onto life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are destined for Heaven.

4. Can You Know You’re Going To Heaven? Yes. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” What a wonderful, life-giving promise!

5. What is the Nature of the Present Heaven? Alcorn distinguishes between what he calls “the Present Heaven.” the place where those who trust in Christ go as soon as they die, and the Future Heaven/New Earth, the place that God is preparing for all for his saints to live after the return of Christ. Alcorn’s Present Heaven sounds a lot like purgatory to me, but I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate that identification.

6. Is the Present Heaven a Physical Place? Alcorn says yes. We are physical beings, with physical bodies, made to live in a physical place.

7. What Is Life Like in the Present Heaven? Based on Revelation 6:9-11, Alcorn says that the saints who have died have gone to a place where they remember their lives on earth, where they know what is happening on earth now, where they pray for those of us who are still on earth, and where they learn and have fellowship with God. It’s as if they’re on the outskirts of Heaven, and in C.S. Lewis’s image headed “further up and further in.”

The first two sections of Heaven give much more detailed answers to the above seven questions. The next section is about redemption in a cosmic, eschatological sense. I’ll write some more after I’ve read that part. In the meantime, what does your imagination conjure up when you hear the word “heaven”? What do you know to be true, or think to be true, about heaven?

Sunday Salon: Gleaned from the Saturday Review

Jan11

I try to go through the book review links posted at the Saturday Review each week, but with nearly 200 links posted this week, time is the enemy of thoroughness. I did glance over most of the reviews, and these are the books and other thoughts I found of interest to me:

A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century by Oliver Van deMille. Suzanne used some categories from this book to talk about another book she was reviewing. I’ve heard of the Jefferson Education book, and I’ve been meaning to look for it. I am reminded.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa. Recommended by 3M at 1 More Chapter. This one is a translation from the Japanese and includes a lot of mathematical references, bleeding over into philosophy I deduce. I thought it sounded like a good risk.

Strand: An Odyssey of Pacific Ocean Debris by Bonnie Henderson. Recommended by Carrie at 5 Minutes for Books. The story of a self-described “forensic coastwatcher,” this book is not the sort of thing I would pick off the shelf without a recommendation from someone else, but when Carrie describes it, I am intrigued. I need to read more nonfiction, especially more about nature and science. But it has to be nontechnical and concentrated on story or you’ll lose me.

Counter Clockwise by Jason Cockcroft. Recommended by gautami tripathy. This fantasy time travel title comes out in February, and I think I’ll look it up then. It’s a children’s book, but it sounds like something I might enjoy and then pass on to the urchins.

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen. Recommended by Melanie at Deliciously Clean Reads. Because of where its recommended and because the premise sounds interesting, I think I might want to check out this YA novel both for myself and for Brown Bear Daughter who’s into YA realistic fiction.

Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon. Recommended by Girl Detective. Computer Guru Son is a Michael Chabon fan, but I’ve never read any of his books. I think a book of essays like this one would interest me more than Chabon’s fiction; it might even lead me to try some of his fiction.

Devil’s Brood by Sharon Kay Penman. Recommended by The Tome Traveller. I read When Christ and His Saints Slept by this author a couple of years ago, and I promised my self that I would pick up the next book in the series, Time and Chance, soon after. I never did. And now there’s a third historical novel about the life and times of Henry II and his wife Eleanor called Devil’s Brood. SInce each one of these novels weighs in at 700+ pages, I must get cracking soon. also, we’re studying the Middle Ages in achool, so this would be a good time to read the other two books in Ms. Penman’s story of Henry, Eleanor and their (in)famous children.

The End of the Alphabet by C.S. Richardson. Recommended by She Is Too Fond of Books. This one sounds fun and short, a nice counter-balance to all the heavy tomes on the TBR list.

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Recommended at She Is Too Fond of Books. Also by Wendy at Caribousmom. I’ve been resisting this one because I don’t like short stories, but I’ve also been inclined to try it since it’s gotten lots of good reviews and since I liked Strout’s Abide With Me when I read it. So I’ve reached the tipping point and onto the list it goes.

I have, in fact added all of these books to my ridiculously unwieldy list of books that I want to read. I may decide someday that I’ve reached the “tipping point” on that list and stop adding books, only endeavoring to finish the list before I die. Maybe when I’m about eighty year old?