Story on the Brain

Harsh and wonderful book. Too often YA gives you candy-coated suburban kids with one teensy problem that seems like the end of the world. This is about one girl from a difficult background who's absolutely determined to get to college and get out, who gets a job helping another girl not much older who's infinitely worse off. This book made me want to scrub my house and stand up straight and fight for what I want, but at the same time really brought home the helpless despair that some kids are into up to their necks. If you read the author section at the back, Wolff says the inspiration came from a terrible plastic-upholstered stroller she got for her kids at the Salvation Army but just could not get clean, no matter how much she scrubbed it. Can't you picture that stroller? That nasty plastic that isn't affected by any amount of cleanser and rage? The two girls and the kids and the mom are brilliantly drawn. I was fascinated throughout by how racially non-specific i...

Well written, but the supernatural elements were just terrible and overall it's like a hate letter to the human race, so focused on how awful everyone is to each other. I disliked it the way I dislike Sinclair Lewis and all that mid-century American mainstream literature of divorce and dismay. How can someone who wrote the unspeakably gorgeous Time Traveler's Wife turn 180 degrees and hate people so much? Not recommended unless you're looking for dread and misanthropy. Though again, beautifully written! But like a brilliantly executed oil painting of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

** spoiler alert ** I loved this book. It's a twist on the Cinderella story that turns the handsome prince fait accompli inside out. Lo also manages to write fairies that I don't hate, which is a fairly large miracle. The interface between them and regular people worked really well. Honestly, if I'd known there were fairies beforehand, I wouldn't have read this book--that's how much I hate that kind of thing. But these were done in such an interesting way, like the way children see adults, or across the gender gulf, or like aliens. That's it, they were truly alien, terrifying and powerful, but distant and unknowable. Ash herself is a terrific character. Terrible things happen to her--she's the Cinderella, after all--but she never feels sorry for herself or gives up. She works hard and finds unexpected friends and makes her own choices. And those choices determine her future. I'm deeply allergic to passive heroines so I'm always nervous about the...

** spoiler alert ** This was a good teen romance/thriller, with a heroine who hit a good balance between miserable and relatable. The writing about Maine is fantastic. As it happens, I moved to Maine from L.A. right after losing my father (and boy was I miserable) so this book resonated quite a lot. The place it lost me is a crazy one. I'll swallow any amount of supernatural whatnot without a hiccup, but the author doesn't know what a railroad tie is. And railroad ties feature prominently in the resolution. A railroad tie is that heavy wooden beam under the tracks. I can't even figure out what she thinks she's talking about when she's talking about railroad ties, since she thinks they're a) metal and b) light enough for one person to move. They're neither. Does she mean tracks? A section of track would weigh hundreds of pounds. How did nobody catch this? No friend, no editor? It would take two seconds of Googling to figure this out. Well, then in the ...

** spoiler alert ** This is much darker than the previous Tiffany Aching books, all throughout. The themes aren't any darker, but the actual events are, starting with a pregnant 13 year old girl whose father beats her so badly she has a miscarriage and the baby dies. And then the father places bouquets of nettles around the poor dead baby on some straw in the barn and hangs himself. Just to start with. Jeez! Of course our Tiffany cuts him down and buries the baby and saves the girl and it all comes right in the end, but the events are infinitely darker than previous books, to the point where it's pretty shocking to someone expecting a nice friendly but supernaturally scary Tiffany Aching story. It lightened up by the second half. It's kind of hard to articulate why this was an issue for me. Obviously the subject matter is fairly common in YA fiction. But it didn't really seem so natural to this series. Mostly the difference was in tone. Normally in these books, t...

Definitely one of the best books I've read in a long time. Cindy Pon's writing style is exquisite, with a clarity and economy that's rare to find. The characters are fully realized and alive and the quest story comes off very well. The climactic scene between our heroine and the antagonist had me crawling out of my skin, as I kept getting more and more anxious as things progressed. Masterful writing. Even details like the food and the places the characters went were so vivid and clear. Ai Ling and Chen Yong are just amazing characters. Love this book! I can't wait for more books from Cindy Pon.

This is a fantastic book. I actually couldn't put it down, to the point where it seriously interfered with my plans for today. Sarah Dessen has a brilliant show-don't-tell ability and created characters who gripped me from the first page. Ruby's journey was completely compelling, and Cora and Jamie and Nate and Olivia and Gervais stole my heart. Do you know how rare it is for me to remember any of the names of any of the characters in a book? But I remember all of these, plus Laney and Harriet and Reggie and even Heather. What a gorgeous, effortless prose style Sarah has. And on a thematic level, she pulled off some of the most difficult themes beautifully: family, home, security, trust, independence, and of course allowing someone to help you. I read a library copy but I have to go buy this book. It's one of the best ones I've read in a very long time.

** spoiler alert ** I've been thinking about this book a lot since I finished it. The brilliant thing about this book is that we see what the main character sees and watch the world change along with her perceptions of it. It's almost like an unreliable narrator situation, something I adore, but it's even better because the perceptions change as the book goes on and Shug begins to grow up. So the perfect family she has at the beginning (except her mother doesn't cook) gradually becomes visible as the highly dysfunctional and imperfect family it really is. Shug's childish views of things become more complex and mature. It's heartbreaking to watch Shug struggle to keep up with that shifting perspective. Jenny Han shows mastery of both the child's point of view and the adolescent's, as well as the difficult transition between them. She uses all the sensory and emotional triggers in lovely, simple ways. Look at the cherry popsicles at the begi...

** spoiler alert ** Fantastic book, but suffered from sudden left turn syndrome. It was going one way full steam ahead and then just sort of stopped. If you've read the book, you know it's about a very close friendship that ends suddenly when Sadye takes the blame for Demi breaking the rules at their drama camp. She was having a hard time at the camp anyway and got kicked out for the rule-breaking that she didn't actually do. Here's why I had problems with that: it was narratively unsatisfying, to an incredible degree. The narrative was about Sadye separating from her friend and discovering that she had the skill set for a director, not for an actor. That's an awesome story! But the author dropped the ball on it and left Sadye with absolutely nothing. She goes back to her stupid town with no friends. Demi doesn't even keep in touch. At the very end, Sadye is mysteriously living in New York and working a crap job for no pay just to be near show business, I g...

I almost got throwing across the room mad at this book around page 300, when it seemed like it was never going to question the basic premise that fat is evil and being "hot" is all that really matters in the world. And because the book started out being about a smart girl who cares about school and spent most of its time talking about cute outfits and which guy liked her. We have those books already! But! Fat Cat rose above all of that and turned in some great self-reflection and analysis of the way we judge people on their looks, or more specifically, on their weight. I could have used more of that, though. More of that throughout. Because the level of self-loathing that Cat feels for most of the book is not really overturned by her moments of epiphany near the end, where suddenly she realizes that people who like or don't like you based on your looks are not worth the time. The message you walk away with is: you have to be hot for anyone to like you, including yours...

I really liked the book despite the fact that there wasn't a plot. I mean that in a good way. The character changed and discovered a whole new world and turned into the person she was going to become, but there wasn't a plot. That would have made this book utterly fantastic. I hope the author writes a whole lot more, because she's clearly brilliant and an excellent writer. Just, you know. Add in that plot thing.

Good insights into that teenage death thing that I never understood. I loved all the dogs and Liz's relationships with them, loved the relationship with her grandma, disappointed in how scanty the friendship with Thandi was. Deeply hated the boy she liked but that's okay. Overall it was a clever, insightful read on life and death. I can't even explain why I didn't love it but only really liked it. I think it was because the main character felt superficial, not like we only saw the surface of a more complex person, but like there wasn't actually anything behind the curtain. Very favorite things: her interactions with dogs, the rock star, and Amadou Bonamy. It makes me long for another whole book about a teenage girl hating the person who put her where she is and figuring out how to forgive that person for her own good. That's often the cause of the missing fifth star, the book that doesn't exist that the book I'm reading could have been. ...

Loved this book. I loved the twisty mystery and especially the heroine. The magical elements seemed unnecessary but probably would have bothered me less if they'd been there from the beginning instead of showing up fifty pages into an otherwise excellent story about an amnesiac girl with excellent coping skills. I did wonder suddenly whether the whole book was sort of an I Am the Cheese scenario where our heroine is an increasingly delusional 13 year old runaway. When she went home to Sharon and George and nothing seemed familiar or even worked the way she knew how to make things work, that feeling was strongest. In fact you spend the whole book wondering whether she's crazy or the world is crazy. Or possibly both. Still, I came away wishing I could be that self-sufficient and self-confident, which is pretty high praise for a funky cool little book.

Ah! This book is amazing! This is one of the best books I've read in a really long time, not a misstep or a false move in it. Wonderful! I was just thinking about how so many YA books are about figuring out who you are. And then I just read Emily the Strange, which is about an amnesiac 13-year-old (though we could talk all day about whether what happens in that book really happens, or whether the heroine goes crazier and crazier all throughout, building a world out of the pieces that come to hand...) and of course I've recently read Gabrielle Zevin's Elsewhere, about the same theme. Is YA about figuring out who you are? Or becoming who you are? Maybe. I really loved how this book framed that whole question in terms of remembering who you are, rediscovering it. Figuring out who you are isn't just about knowing it but doing it, actually making it happen, letting go of the things that don't work anymore, and opening up to things that are really yours but that you...

Excellent book. All about the performance that is adolescence and after, how we create stories about ourselves and personas that suit what we want to be. The heroine's artificial persona cracks in the very best way. Things I loved: the horrible, abusive dad, the distant mom, the wonderful step-dad. I was just thinking that the parents in YA are far too patient and kind and relaxed about things, which of course says more about my childhood than it does about YA. But then we got Cameron's dad, whose type of emotional and physical abuse is far too familiar. Zarr captures that pervasive fear perfectly, the fear that stays with you forever because what should make sense in the world doesn't fit any sensible pattern. People will be suddenly vicious and cruel with no warning and everyone will pretend that they aren't. In other words, Zarr did a fantastic job recreating that helpless cautious childhood fear, but also perfectly recreated the bond between two kids. And I love...