The Taker

The Taker
Alma Katsu
Simon and Schuster- review copy from Book Expo
September 2011, $25.00 448 pages

This dark historical fiction, laced with magic, was not what I was expecting from the first scenes in a hospital in rural Maine. Not sure what I was expecting, as a young doctor meets a woman who reveals herself to be immortal. Outtakes from Highlander? A sleek, modern mystery?

The story veers from its beginnings into supernatural historical fiction, blending romance and erotica into flashbacks of the past.

The young woman, Lanny, tells her story of growing up in a rural Maine town, a Puritanical and stifling place in the 1800s. Her first love is Jonathan, a love that ends in the scandal of an unwanted child Lanny is sent away to have. And that's when the story careens into the above-mentioned erotica, as Lanny is appropriated, swept into a decadent life.

Appropriated is the only word for it. Alone and desperate, Lanny is trying to escape her fate. Enter Adair, making promises, offering decadent escape, only hinting at its price. To someone who's read a solid amount of supernatural fiction, it's easy to wonder if Adair and his crowd are vampires. The heavy decadence of Adair's house, ageless partygoers with heightened senses and easy morals in a repressive time of history, certainly seem to set up a vampire reference.

Katsu seems more interested in the psychological aspects of the mystical longevity. The way Adair and his cohorts bring Lanny in, how she reconciles her feelings for Jonathan, and the position she's in, anchored to present-day Maine and telling her story to a doctor. That's where The Taker starts to work for me best, as an exploration of the psychological factors of a vampiric-seeming life.

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For every book I read in 2011, I'm donating $1 to the New York Public Library.

A Good Indian Wife: A Good, Culture-Clashing Read

A Good Indian Wife
Anne Cherian
W.W. Norton 320 Pages


Neel likes his life in San Francisco. He's an anesthesiologist at a busy hospital. His romance with Caroline, a secretary, is kept discreet and uncomplicated. He has a few Indian friends in his social circle, but mostly he's thrown himself into an American life: eating steak, dating a blonde woman, and ignoring his parents pleas that he should marry a nice Indian girl and settle down.
But, when a visit home to see his ailing grandfather turns into a chance for his family to bully/dupe him into an arranged marriage, he's furious, and saddled with Leila, his new bride. Leila, for her part, has to deal with her own innocent romantic notions, traveling to a new country with a husband who falls very short of her romantic ideals. She's been raised to be a good wife, and to expect a good husband in return.

I was uncomfortable reading some of the start of this book. Neel's a jerk. Granted, he's forced into a situation I can't even imagine- suddenly, he's married, against all his wishes, and the life he's created for himself is thrown all askew. But reading about his anger, however justified, and the pre-existing romance he tries to conceal from his wife and family... made me both uncomfortable and furious. I don't like reading about awkwardness or deception. And the situation created plenty of both.
But-- because the author spent plenty of time establishing Neel and Leila, both, as nuanced characters, I found I could stick with the book. (After, I confess, a slow start, and yes, I peeked to the very last few pages to see if things turned out romantically okay for the couple.)

Also, I appreciated the book for its brightly colored, tasty descriptions of Leila's Indian life and culture she grew up with. Spicy, fragrant food, and brightly colored silk saris. Spiced dosas fried in oil, hot pickled mango chutneys. Yum! Written so it's easy to visualize across all the senses, a tasty sort of literary tourism. That was another reason I felt so set against Neel as a character- here is Leila, beautiful and beautifully described, coming from a family life full of wonderful things, to an unwilling union with a bachelor in his surly silences and sparse bachelor pad. From the way Leila was described, I was half ready to fall in love with her myself, and kick Neel liberally in the shins.

Shag/Marry/Cliff: Shag. (But throw Neel off a cliff, or at least dangle him over it a bit to scare him.) Possibly shag after a date for Indian food. I'll be leaving this book here in Edinburgh, because I'm pretty sure I won't be reading it again, though it was fun.

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For every book I read in 2011, I'm donating $1 to the New York Public Library.

The Taker

The Taker
Alma Katsu
Simon and Schuster- review copy from Book Expo
September 2011, $25.00 448 pages

This dark historical fiction, laced with magic, was not what I was expecting from the first scenes in a hospital in rural Maine. Not sure what I was expecting, as a young doctor meets a woman who reveals herself to be immortal. Outtakes from Highlander? A sleek, modern mystery?

The story veers from its beginnings into supernatural historical fiction, blending romance and erotica into flashbacks of the past.

The young woman, Lanny, tells her story of growing up in a rural Maine town, a Puritanical and stifling place in the 1800s. Her first love is Jonathan, a love that ends in the scandal of an unwanted child Lanny is sent away to have. And that's when the story careens into the above-mentioned erotica, as Lanny is appropriated, swept into a decadent life.

Appropriated is the only word for it. Alone and desperate, Lanny is trying to escape her fate. Enter Adair, making promises, offering decadent escape, only hinting at its price. To someone who's read a solid amount of supernatural fiction, it's easy to wonder if Adair and his crowd are vampires. The heavy decadence of Adair's house, ageless partygoers with heightened senses and easy morals in a repressive time of history, certainly seem to set up a vampire reference.

Katsu seems more interested in the psychological aspects of the mystical longevity. The way Adair and his cohorts bring Lanny in, how she reconciles her feelings for Jonathan, and the position she's in, anchored to present-day Maine and telling her story to a doctor. That's where The Taker starts to work for me best, as an exploration of the psychological factors of a vampiric-seeming life.

The Night Circus: Review

The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Doubleday Publishing, September 2011
384 pages, $26.95

I loved The Night Circus even more than I expected I would. And my expectations were set pretty high, when The Night Circus was featured at a Book Expo editors' buzz panel.

The circus appears in a town without warning, and opens only at night: black and white tents, full of wondrous things: trained cats, an ice forest, a menagerie of paper creatures. It's almost frustrating to read such beautiful, dreamlike descriptions. Knowing that I'll never be able to wander between the black and white striped tents, sipping spiced cocoa or eating caramel popcorn.

With such enticing scenes of the circus itself, it's tempting to say the plot doesn't matter- give me any story, any characters, just show me the inside of these tents. But, the story is as carefully crafted, as invested in magic-dream-logic, as the exhibitions inside the tents. I appreciate the way magic works in this world- it's part of what holds the circus together, understandably. And different interpretations of magic and its uses, drive some of the plot. There's a romance, but it feels neither overwrought nor invasive, but woven carefully into the story.

I hear that the script is already going to be turned into a movie. After reading such well-crafted, visually immersive prose, I'm of two minds. I'd love a chance to see the scenes I've been imagining. But I'm dubious of books translated into film. If this works.. it will be glorious. I'd also love to see it as a graphic novel, illustrated by someone like Dave McKean. Which gives you a sense of the aesthetic- dark and dreamy and baroque.

Not to gush... but anything I say about this book won't do it justice. So call this my rave (or Rêves) review.
Pre-order it. Seriously.
I'll be reading it again.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer: A well-crafted scare

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Michelle Hodkin
Simon and Schuster YA
On Sale Date September 2011 $16.99 450 pages

Thank you very much to Simon and Schuster for sending me a review copy of this book. I had been wanting to read it, because it's in a sweet spot for me, of creatively spooky supernatural YA. And because Michelle Hodkin is really nice to book bloggers.

There's been a lot of buzz about this book. At Book Expo America, there was something like a feeding frenzy for free copies.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer is excellently chilling throughout. It's at its scariest, I think, during the less supernatural moments. It's entirely possible that other readers will be less terrified than I was of the opening scenes of the book. Mara wakes up in a hospital bed, a scene described in excruciating detail, so that I can practically smell the antiseptic and hear the beeping machines. Eeek. I'll give Michelle Hodkin credit, here, and elsewhere through the book, for her evocatively scary descriptions, of the ordinary as well as the paranormal.

Of course, the more intentional frights that build as the story progresses deliver excellent chills too. Dealing with PTSD after her accident, Mara loses hours at a time, and has gruesome hallucinations while mourning her friends. So much so, that her entire family uproots itself to start over in Florida. Mara's sinister visions are compounded and expanded by the stress of starting a new high school right before midterms. Add a love-hate-intrigue crush on a new classmate, and it only magnifies the stress on Mara's brittle sense of healing.

The thing is, this book works so chillingly well as a psychological thriller, I almost didn't need the supernatural element. Reading the story of Mara's meltdown, and attempts to grieve and move beyond crippling hallucinations, as a straight psychological exercise gives the horror a deliciously nasty immediacy. The idea of some malicious, but ordinary person working to orchestrate the events that trigger Mara's walking nightmare is the most scared I've been reading a book in recent memory.

The supernatural elements are inventive and richly detailed enough to fit the story. (Also worth noting, probably ready for a sequel... there are unfinished story threads that leave an urgent need to know more!) I just wonder about the way the horror could have played out if it were a case of one person acting to sabotage Mara's sanity. I remember thinking along the same lines when I read Relentlesss,  by Dean Koontz.

This is an entirely solid YA fantasy, well imagined, and honestly worth all the advance buzz. I'll be curious to read what Michelle Hodkin writes next!

Wednesday 5: Ideal Bookshelf

A recent find:

Ideal Bookshelf

Artist Jane Mount paints your ideal bookshelf: the spines of books you love, or books that identify you, or... however you choose them, the books that would be on Your Ideal Bookshelf.

As soon as I read about it... I was pretty sure I knew mine:

1. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. This cover, in particular.

2. Speaker for The Dead- Orson Scott Card. Was pretty much the reason I majored in anthropology.

3. Beauty- Robin McKinley. My favorite retelling of my favorite fairy tale. And an ode to bookish girls everywhere.

4. Poetry's tougher- so many that I love have these skinny spines, hard to paint, I imagine. So... either Omeros, by Derek Walcott, or The Dream Songs, by John Berryman. Both ideal because I love the language, and because of the people who gave them to me.

5. A cookbook.  Jane Brody's Good Food Book. It may not be sexy, but these are my go-to recipes, many I grew up with.

Of course, having made this list... there would be a few others I feel weird having left out. So... use them as bookends?

All Creatures Great and Small- James Herriot. I love these books. If audiobooks count as reading, I've read this almost as many times as I've read The Westing Game, by now.

Gentlemen of the Road- Michael Chabon. The first book I reviewed for the Ledger. Without which, this blog wouldn't be here!

Short Reviews: YA edition

Throne of Fire: (Kane Chronicles #2)

Rick Riordan, and this book, were the jump-up-and-down-excited centerpiece of the Book Expo for me this year. I got this one signed on my birthday! Birthday wishes from Rick Riordan, too! Best birthday EVER! Definitely fun to read, and definitely a sequel. The series continues beyond this book, too. Write faster, Rick Riordan! Please?
Inventive characterizations of Egyptian gods, great magic system. I read this after listening to the prequel as a terrific audiobook, so I still heard the two readers' voices in my head, alternating Sadie and Carter chapters to continue the action.
Definitely works well in both audiobook and text formats. A fast, fun read, for kids,, and enough creative adventure to have adult appeal too I think. Maybe, it even scratches the Harry Potter itch, now that we live in a world with no new Harry Potter anything! (So weird!)

When the Stars Go Blue
Caridad Ferrer
Thomas Dunne Fiction 2010 $9.99 paperback
Another BEA grab. I'm a sucker for well written YA, and good adaptations of classical stories, also a sucker for dance narrative.
This book does a terrific job of hitting my sweet spot. Soledad Reyes, a strong, authentic narrator loves to dance, is close to her grandmother, and it's important to her to stay true to her Hispanic heritage.  After years of training as a dancer,  in ballet and other forms, including flamenco, Soledad gets the chance to be part of an extravagant band performance/competition. They're using her experience doing flamenco dancing and ballet, and her exotic look, to use her as the centerpiece of the performance, and the only girl in the band, really. Reading this, I could almost picture the performance, and I wish I could see more. Maybe this could turn into a movie?

A love triangle between Soledad, and two boys- one an all-American band guy, one a Spanish soccer player builds a reinterpretation of Carmen into character development and obsession/passion along interesting lines.

Stupid Fast
Geoff Herbach
YA fiction, 311 pages.
Sourcebooks

Stupid Fast captures the thoughts and voice of Felton Reinstein, a teenager whose sudden growth spurt catapults him from the dork everyone teased and called Squirrel Nut, to a jock, with a suddenly popular crowd of friends. The most fun part of reading this is seeing so completely inside his head- his scathing observations about his small town, self-deprecating humor about suddenly having hair growing everywhere, even a shy first romance. Well-written supporting characters, like his goofy kid brother, his new football friends, and even his mother, flesh the story out. Told in Felton's wry voice, the mental issues his mom deals with get their due seriousness, without turning into movie-of-the-week mawkish drama.

Delirium- Lauren Oliver
Set in an alternate (future?) America, this dystopian fiction sets up the idea that love is a disease, amor deliria, and it is eradicated completely and scientifically. Teenagers have "the procedure" and then go on to lead placid lives, paired with their ideal mate, peacefully, in a world free of crime... and a world free of passion. There's a definite whiff of The Handmaid's Tale going on here, in the dystopian setting that curtails everything about desire and love as "unnatural." But... it's not as skewed towards stifling women, maybe. Since both genders get the procedure.
It also reminded me of a short scifi story I'd been trying to remember: "A Defense of Social Contracts" by Martha Soukoup. I read it in Nebula Awards 30, ages ago.
Though she's trying to behave and wait for her procedure when everything will be okay, Lena (short for Magdalena, a nice touch) knows that her mother's procedure didn't work... so she's grown up under scrutiny, in case she turns out as "crazy" or rebellious as her mother.
The driving force of the book is, of course, things Not Going As Planned By The Carefully Ordered Society, and Lena finding herself in the center of the upheaval. As well-plotted as this adventure was-- I'm having trouble imagining what will show up in the sequel, which I understand is forthcoming.