Tomes on Tuesday--THE RAVEN BOYS by Maggie Stiefvater

There are books that draw you in.  It's a physical thing:  a stepping into a new world that you gauge with your muscles and feel in the air rushing through your lungs.  You taste what the characters taste, hear what they hear, sense what they sense and when you have to leave the story to do things like take care of your children or sleep,  you have to close the book emphatically and set it aside where you can't see it because otherwise, it won't let you go.

This is the sort of book that Maggie Stiefvater has created with THE RAVEN BOYS.

You know already that I'm a huge Ms. Stiefvater fan.  Her books are heads and shoulders above other young adult fiction because they are smart and current and she writes teenage boys in such a way that you fall in love with them just like you used to when you were a teenager yourself.  You love her boys not because they are perfect sparkly god/lovers, but because they are awkward and striving and cute and they want to be heroes even when they can't quite do that thing. You love her girls because they are like you were:  falling in love with boys who blushed with their ears and who dreamed of finding their purpose in some magical way.  THE RAVEN BOYS is like her other books in that way, but it is also something different that goes beyond simply "a good story."

It's hard to review the story without giving too much away, but the bare bones of the plot are a little like this:  Blue is a girl who lives with her psychic family in a small town.  In the small town is a select boys' boarding school, attended by a group of lads who are on a quest to find an ancient legendary Welsh war hero, Glendower, who will supposedly grant a favor to whomever finds and wakes him.  The ostensible leader of the group, the one obsessed with finding Glendower, is Gansey, who is incredibly wealthy and incredibly out of touch with "real life."  He is joined in his quest by Adam, a local boy with a violent home life; Ronan, a guy so sharpened and made bitter by his father's death that a raven makes a perfect pet for him; and Noah, a quiet, unassuming fellow with a jarring secret.  

Blue isn't a psychic, although her family uses her as a sort of magnifier for their own powers.  She's been told since she can remember that if she kisses her true love, he will die.  And she avoids the notorious Aglionby Academy boys as much as possible.  All of these things come to an awkward intersection when she spots Gansey in a procession of the soon-to-be-dead during a ritual her family participates in every year.  (I have spent the past five minutes wondering if Ms. Stiefvater's use of ley lines and the way the characters intersect in just the way they do is purposeful.  I can't imagine that it's not.)

Ms. Stiefvater reveals so much of her characters in their clothing choice or the way they shift their shoulders, but what is more interesting in this story is that in addition to individual characters, there are groups of characters that are just as important.  Blue's family has a specific role to play in the story:  her Aunt Neeve is a famous psychic with unsettling powers that are balanced by the powers of the other women in Blue's life.  Gansey's group of boys is the engine that drives the story, and the way they fit together--and shift to admit Blue--is touching and true.  The relationship between Gansey and Ronan, between Adam and Ronan, between Blue and Adam, between Blue and Noah--these relationships are intrinsic to the story moving forward.  Without the firmly drawn lines between the characters, none of the story matters.  And the wild forest in which they encounter real magic, the trees of the forest, the seasons of the year?  These are all characters in the story in a way that I'm not sure I've ever felt in a story before.  

It's like...you know that place you went when you were young?  That place where anything was possible and you just knew that if you could figure out the right way to move or speak or breathe, maybe, that the anything would be in your grasp?  You remember how that place smelled, right?  How it tasted and how the light hit it and the way your shoulders felt as you waited for whatever wonderful thing was coming to come?  That's what Blue and her boys find.  That's what Gansey and his boys find.  It is...magic.

And the best thing is?  They take you with them.  

It's not all fun and games.  There are parts of the story that are downright dark and violent.  There were times when I was truly creeped out or angry or almost queasy with tension.  But magic isn't always pretty, my friends, and the ugly parts of the story made the beautiful, funny, and true to life parts that much more endearing--and that much more real.

The very last line of the book is so perplexing and freaky and jaw-dropping that you find yourself holding your breath and reading the acknowledgments, hoping that Ms. Stiefvater left you a clue to what in the world Ronan meant about his pet raven.  In case you were wondering, she didn't.  You'll have to wait until the next RAVEN BOYS book comes out.

Which can't happen soon enough, you understand.

Tomes on Tuesday: A GROWN-UP KIND OF PRETTY by Joshilyn Jackson

My reading pizza

What?

You don't have a reading pizza?

Sigh.  Okay, a reading pizza categorizes the books you enjoy reading.  It could just as easily be a "reading bar graph," but I dislike all those angles.  It could also just as easily be a "reading filing cabinet," but that sounds all academic, so I'm sticking with "reading pizza." 

Anywho, my reading pizza is generally divided into four parts.  This doesn't mean that I don't occasionally swerve off and take a bite out of, say, a mystery calzone or a paranormal romance bread stick, but, generally, these are the genres that are my "go tos."  My cheeses, if you will.  

Like this:  

You will note that I've helpfully added examples of my favorite authors to help you better grasp this concept.  (I'm nothing if not helpful, right?)  

Now, you know when you order a pizza (a real pizza, not a reading pizza) (in case you were unclear) that's half pepperoni and half mushroom and onion and occasionally a pepperoni will migrate over to the mushroom side, creating a delicious crossover taste?  That happens on reading pizzas, too, as you will note below:  

As you can see, the A Gracious Plenty cookbook falls under both nonfiction AND Southern Literature, as you can find recipes within of a decidedly Southern flavor, as well as quotes about food by Mark Twain and William Faulkner.

Terry Kay is a writer known both for his grasp of Southern life as well as his embrace of those things which you can't see, but sense are there.  (Uh.  Magic, y'all.)

Joshilyn Jackson is not.  

I know, I know. I just really wanted to use the reading pizza thing, mkay?  Ms. Jackson falls squarely in the "Southern literature" quadrant of my reading pizza and I love her for it.

Known for her ability to draw in readers by creating characters they know (or for her ability to translate an alien culture to folks living outside of the region), she has once again created a perfect little world in A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty.

The world is not perfect as in it's all sunshine and roses and happiness, though.  It's perfect in that the characters react to each other in real-feeling ways, the situations in which they find themselves are dramatic without feeling too "made up," and the environment in which they live is solidly built.  

The story is told in first person by three different characters.  Ginny Slocumb (known as Big) is the matriarch, a forty-five-year-old grandmother who had her own child at age fifteen.  That child is Liza.  Liza was a wild one, a free spirit who ventured into drug abuse after having her own little girl at age fifteen.  A few months prior to the opening sequence of the book, Liza suffered a debilitating stroke. 

Liza's child is Mosey, who has spent her whole life being conditioned to NOT fall victim to the Slocumb curse that seems to come along with turning fifteen.  Mosey is a good student and a sweet child, it would seem, but her fate seems less certain when the willow tree in Big's front yard is removed, revealing a long-buried secret that threatens the security of their little family.  What follows is a journey to do many things:  hold the family together, discover the secret of the bones found in the front yard, find love (in Big's case), make friends, keep friends...basically what people do every day.  (With the exception of the bones.)  

Jackson does many things well in this book, but the best things, in my opinion were:  

1. Fleshing out the secondary characters.  From the lecherous high school football coach to the icy Baptist social queen, from the poor girl living on the wrong side of town to the cuckholded (and adulterous) wife, you've met these people.  And either loved or hated them.  That Jackson can engender that love and hatred in her readers means she is a champion of characterization, which is so often missing from books today.  (MOSTLY--see below)
2. Making a far-fetched situation seem plausible.  Many of Jackson's works hinge on a mystery that must be solved or an identity that must be ascertained or a life that must be risen above.  A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty is no different.  But whereas sometimes authors seem to have to invent scenes or devices, because Jackson portrays her characters so strongly, she rarely has to do this.  (MOSTLY--see below.)
3. Making the environment a character in and of itself.  I can't speak for other regions, but in the South, we are intimate with our environment.  We have favorite trees, favorite hills, favorite winds.  It might be because we are privileged to be able to be OUT in our environs most of the time, but we think of the places and objects around us as important.  Mourning a tree (or using it as a hiding place or a way to mark sacred events) is normal for us. 
4. Picking a book cover.  Goodness me, the cover of this book is gorgeous.  Everything from the (blurry but obvious) open arms of the subject to the slight browning of the apple tucked into her belt is perfect.

I like this book.  It probably will go on my book friends shelf.  BUT there are a few caveats:

1. Mosey uses the word "retarded" (or variations thereof) a lot.  Enough that I started wincing about it.  I understand that teenagers do fling this word around as a light-hearted insult (bleagh), but it infuriates me when they do it.  So it was hard reading it over and over again.  I THINK I know why Jackson did it (I've created an excuse in my head), but I wanted to give a heads up to those of you who are bothered by it.
2. A rather pivotal character in the climax of the novel does not behave in a way that previous clues about her make you think she would.  In fact, her behavior was rather jarring to me, not because it was awful, but because I expected it to be.  This was the lone point of characterization weakness I found, but it made me feel like the climax was a bit "made" and not "reached naturally."
3. A rather pivotal object used during the climax of the novel was found in a way that seemed odd to me.  Again, it seemed an issue of having to create a tool rather than the tool showing up naturally.  Especially given the other actions of the object's owner, I couldn't really understand why the owner would have the object in the first place.  (Consider it a point in Jackson's favor that I can't be more clear about this without giving giant plot parts away.)
4. The climax was physically powerful, but it was the weakest part of the story from a story-telling perspective, which was a bit of a let down.  Part of it, I think, was that the narrative had already given away so much that the situation itself HAD to be extreme.  Does that make sense?  It was almost as if, by figuring out the story beforehand, the climax was something the reader had to get through before the resolution could take place.  The resolution was GREAT, but the climax?  Not so much.

Those four things, for me, were not enough to detract seriously from my love of the story.  I don't think (from a literature teacher standpoint) that the climax should be something a reader feels underwhelmed by, but my love for the characters and their places far overreaches that quibble.  

If you're looking for an engrossing read with lovable (if flawed) characters who ooze Southerness, run out and read this right now.

Tomes on Tuesday: THE SCORPIO RACES by Maggie Stiefvater

I have to admit I was somewhat skeptical when I heard that Maggie Stiefvater was writing a book about water horses, the creatures from Scottish myth.  Water horses, in case you were wondering, are fairly...er...brutal beasties, with a penchant for eating people and/or jumping off cliffs with them on their backs.  They didn't strike me as very good story fodder. In a YA market saturated with vampires and werewolves and ghosts, however, I was willing to give The Scorpio Races a go, mainly because I would read the description on a roll of toilet paper if Ms. Stiefvater wrote it.

This book...this is a different book.  It doesn't plop you down in the middle of a immediately romantic tale or whisper about magic.  No, it's pretty much:  so there's this island and there are horses that love you as much as they want to eat you and this boy is really, really good with them.  And there's a girl, too, whose life is coming to a fine point because of the horses.  So the bones of the story are there for you right from the start:  bare and looming and without any question.

But, somehow, the story doesn't unravel in jarring chunks.  (That sentence made me a little queasy, how about you?)  Instead, it unfolds quietly.  The magic and horror of the water horses is commonplace; how the people in the story go about living their lives around the horses is what Stiefvater decided to show us.  Sean, the male protagonist, is quiet and steady, with a world of longing and ideas inside his head.  His position is desperate in a simple way:  he wants to be free of the wealthy man for whom he works--and he wants the water horse with which he wins the races.

The Scorpio Races of the story?  A yearly event taking place in November during which folks die--on the backs and at the teeth of the water horses.  Winning the race means you live and get a nice monetary reward.  There's a whole lot more about the races I could go into, but weirdly enough, the races seemed almost secondary to me by the end, even though they were the beginning and end of the story.

Anyway, vying for the reward is Puck, the female protagonist of the story (Stiefvater once again uses a two-person narrative.)  Orphaned by the horses and trying to keep her family together and on the island she loves, she decides to enter the races on her "real" horse.

You've counted two protagonists, right?  But I'm going to step in and say that there are actually four.  Ish.  Collectively or so.  There are Sean and Puck, but there are also the water horses and...weirdly...the island of Thisby on which everybody lives.   A cold, rocky, sandy place, it's a mixture of warm small-village life and fear of the horses and need of tourists.  It reminds me of the island of Skua from Witch's Daughter by Nina Bawden, a book from my childhood that you need to read after you read The Scorpio Races.  Stiefvater really outdoes herself with the imagery here; the island feels like a real place where you can go to drink tea and eat bread and watch (from a safe distance) the capall uisce.

The water horses--now THESE are some freaky creatures.  You thought werewolves and vampires were creepy?  The water horses blow them away...because they are versions of, you know, real horses.  The kind that you love and ride on and watch gallop across a pasture.  All of that is there in The Scorpio Races, but there's also a good jolt of horror; the water horses drink blood and stalk people and are fully and completely of a kind of magic that we simply haven't seen much in literature.  It is old, wild, untouchable magic.

Understand:  this isn't a particularly fast read.  It doesn't make you feel like you're rushing headlong down a path like some of Stiefvater's other stories have.  (Except, maybe, the parts with Puck, who's a rushy little heroine.  I love her; she's so tough and real and awkward.)  The story develops slowly and takes time to really let you KNOW the characters and UNDERSTAND the folks on the island and their circumstances.

This also isn't the sort of book that you close and say, "Yay!  I loved it!  Woohoo!"  It's the sort of book you put down and say, "Hmmm..."

And then you make a pot of tea and you sip it and say "Hmmm" some more.  And then you go put on warm socks because you feel chilly inside.  And then you look at the cover (the book is GORGEOUS--Stiefvater's publisher gifts her with beautifully crafted books) and you tap it with your fingers and go outside in the sunshine and ponder myth.

And you realize that the book makes you think of Witch's Daughter and  National Velvet  and The Secret of Roan Inish and yet it is so totally different from those stories that you love it just for itself.

Yes, I loved this book.  I'm glad I read it and I'm glad Stiefvater reached inside herself to write it.  Go read it with a cup of tea and a plate of thick, chewy oatmeal cookies.

Tomes on Tuesday: Green Boy by Susan Cooper and Assorted Rantings About Books To Movies

Okay, I love Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series.  Love.  I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but  reading The Dark is Rising (the book, not the series) during a Newbury Award book-reading contest cemented in my head the idea that fantasy had to be smart and grounded in mythology to be good.  (I'm not saying this is a Truth, I'm saying that it's MY Truth.)  I'm not really down with sword and sorcery unless it's smart sword and sorcery and if you're going to tempt me with fantasy, it needs to have a thick line of well-researched myth for me to be happy with it.

I just started reading Over Sea, Under Stone (the first book in the series) to Jeffrey, and while I love it, it's a bit slow-going.  It makes me wonder if I've read too much "Hi, I'm Harry Potter and oooh, look, my hair grows at an enormous rate"-type children's fantasy lately.  Or it could be that this story lacks a great deal of the overt magic in the series.  Anyway, I'm reading it to the Bug and we're slogging through, because good things happen in this series.

(Pardon me while I make a giant, ungraceful leap over to a newish topic.)

Good things also happen in The Green Boy, by Ms. Cooper, although the story-telling is occasionally heavy-handed and, to be honest, I thought waaaay too much about some plot points that weren't maybe that important.  (Please note, this is NOT a new book, but is instead one that I found on the shelf that I hadn't read yet and I thought, Yay!  New Cooper!)

In a departure from her usual settings, the story takes place on a fictional Bahamian island, and centers around two Bahamian boys, Trey and Lou.  Lou can't speak, but is really in tune with Nature.  It's all a bit complicated, but developers are seeking to turn the island into a resort and Trey and Lou are horrified, as is their grandfather.  (Mom works in another city and dad is splitsville, although he does show up in an unpleasant way.) The boys discover that their island is actually a portal to another world (or maybe Lou is...) and travel to this world, which has been stripped of wildlife except for some unpleasant areas where the genetic mutations bred by scientists live.  Okay.  Now, up until this point, the story reminded me heavily of A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, which is not all bad.  I'm down with that.  Oooh, look, I thought.  A new dystopia.  But...no.

Instead, the book took a sharp mythological turn that made Lou synonymous in some way with Lugh, the Indo-European light-bringer.  Oh, dear.  This might sound small-minded of me, but it was jarring for me to have two native Bahamians become agents of an Indo-European myth, particularly when a disgorging Green Man made an appearance late in the book.  (Hang on, I'm about to get nerdly.)   The majority of folks (including Trey and Lou) in the Bahamas are the descendents of African slaves, and while I am not knowledgeable enough in African myth to be certain, I assume that there exists in the canon some kind of resurrection or light-bringing or nature-tending that could be utilized here.

Because, ultimately, that is what this book is about:  the importance of man's connection to and reverence of Nature.  The message is occasionally heavy-handed, but it IS a children's book, where sometimes subtlety can be lost.  (This is also probably the reason why the Lugh thing tripped me up--it's actually a decent way to get kids interested in Irish and Celtic mythology, but maybe if you KNOW that stuff already, it feels all wrong.)

I would certainly recommend this as an easy, interesting read for children up to high school age, but if you're an adult fan of Cooper, you might want to skip it (or at least go into it with the knowledge that this is NOT The Dark is Rising.)

In a not very related topic, well...sort of.  Sigh.  Have I mentioned it's hot?  Anyway, the other evening a friend and I were discussing the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games.  I have been, for the most part, appalled at the casting (Lenny Kravitz as Cinna.  Lenny KRAVITZ as Cinna?  Lenny.  Kravitz.  As.  Cinna.  I love me some Lenny and I would most definitely go his way should he strut past, BUT CINNA?  No.) and am concerned about how in the world Hollywood will take a book that is an intensely personal story of a heroine's inner struggle and turn it into a movie that is in any way in keeping with the book.

Hollywood, by and large, sucks when it comes to adapting my favorite books, particularly the children's books.  I don't even want to get into what was done to The Grinch Who Stole Christmas or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (both versions, frankly, although at least the Gene Wilder version didn't feature a fricking dentist daddy issue storyline.)  When Hollywood announced it was going to do The Dark is Rising, I wavered between happiness and sheer horror, and it turns out the latter was the correct emotion, because Walden Studios totally removed any bit of subtlety or Arthurian legend or Celtic myth or dark magic and instead turned the movie into a giant wad of crap, filled with explosions and young love and Americanisms that made me want to barf.  Susan Cooper requested the script be changed because it was so blech, but apparently, that was a no go.  If you go read that link, be sure to read where the writer knew the book had to be changed to adapt to film, because it was "... it was written in this quite lyrical, poetic, kaleidoscopic fashion."  Yes, children just HATE that kind of thing.  (Bangs head on desk.) 

My fear for the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games is that the makers will see it as "ooh, look, there's explosions and death and kissing and mutants!  With explosions!" when it's reality is a little more like "teenagers are capable of great emotional depth and the world is a fragile place, so cling to the things that keep you safe while embracing a different way of looking at your environment.  Also, dystopias suck."

There is a difference there that is so, you know, subtle (CUE IRONIC SNORT) that I'm not sure if Hollywood understands.  And if it doesn't don't...well, I'm not sure Lenny's hotness can save the movie, y'all.

I mean, even hotness of that magnitude has its limits.