Claire Hennessy's Blog, page 29

Book-review post!

And more book reviews! Today’s mix includes The Comedy Memoir, The Moral Dilemma As Posed By Jodi Picoult, and two super YA reads.

David Mitchell – Back Story

Oh, David Mitchell. (I have a thing for David Mitchells. The novelist is also rather attractive. And clever. But I have a fondness for comedians…) Anyway. This is a memoir and also a terrible pun; Mitchell tells us about his back pain (less appealing and ‘tormented genius’ than psychiatric issues, he notes) and walking around London, alongside recollections of his childhood and his developing acting and comedy career. While the kiddie bits were rather nice, for me it really kicked off when he gets to Cambridge and discusses and analyses really getting started off in comedy with the Footlights. There are some great observations and thoughts on how comedy (both TV and live) works in Britain, alongside some very nerdy historical references. And the second-last chapter, which is about Victoria Coren, his now-wife (who is also brilliant and funny and awe-inspiring), is genuinely moving without being a gossipy tell-all bit. I really enjoyed reading this.

Amy McNamara – Lovely, Dark and Deep

This is gorgeous! Wren is still haunted by the accident that killed her very-recently-ex-boyfriend, and instead of heading off to college as planned, she retreats to her artist father’s home in the woods of Maine. She is sad and troubled and it takes a while before she starts connecting to the world again – made more difficult by the fact that one of these connections is to Cal, who’s struggling with his own demons and his recently-diagnosed MS. This is beautifully written and thoughtful and I am so very glad YA has a space for books like these.

Jodi Picoult – The Storyteller

I love Jodi Picoult, and I hate wolves, so her book last year is the only one of hers I haven’t read. So this new one carried an extra dose of excitement, and as is my way, I sped through it. The story focuses on Sage, a baker who hides from the world after a car crash and her mother’s death, and what happens when an old man she meets at her grief support group reveals his dark secret – he was in the SS as a young man. And as per Jodi Picoult regulations, there’s an ethical dilemma – he’s asked her, as a Jew (albeit a non-practising one), to kill him. Is this revenge or justice? (Cue ominous music.) The bulk of the story actually focuses on Sage’s grandmother and her experiences during World War II, and it’s really well done. (Picoult also tackles historical stuff in her novel Second Glance, and does a superb job.) And there is a twist, of course – and I am delighted to say that after, oh, twenty or so of her books, I guessed this one within the first couple of hundred pages. (I would feel smart but if you’ve read it, and seen a particular episode of a particular TV series which doesn’t quite do this but does something similar, you’ll probably have guessed it too. Is that vague enough for you all?) Well worth reading.

Brent Hartinger – The Elephant of Surprise

Russel and his friends are back again in the fourth book in the Geography Club series (the first has been made into a movie, by the by). Once again we have his conversational tone taking us through the latest adventure of himself and best friends Gunnar and Min. The trio encounter a group of ‘freegans’ (but the storyline manages to avoid being either overly-preachy or overly-judgemental of this) and also have to deal with various romantic dilemmas. Things have grown stale between Russel and Otto, but there’s a cute new guy around who seems to be interested in him… and what exactly is going on with Kevin? Meanwhile, Min’s convinced her girlfriend Leah is keeping something from her… This is a fast-paced read and a very enjoyable catch-up with a lot of familiar characters – really enjoyed it. And as ever, the books win many bonus points for their focus on gay and bisexual teen characters.

Book-review post!

And back to some good ol’ book reviews – two YA here (one contemporary, one sci-fi/thriller), and two for grown-ups (one memoir, one contemporary women’s fiction).

Cat Clarke – Undone

Really enjoyed this latest book from Cat Clarke, who I have noted previously as being excellent at handling mean teenagers – they are messy and complicated and flawed and petty and screwed-up and very authentic. This book focuses on Jem, whose best friend Kai has just committed suicide after some rather nasty bullying and gossip at school. She’s furious, and grieving, and feels there’s nothing to live for – except revenge on the popular kids she blames for Kai’s death. And once that happens, she has a plan – to join Kai. This is a dark, dark twisty book, and very readable. Highly recommended.

Julie Cross – Tempest

I liked reading this – time travel, yay! – and it was especially nifty to see the idea of parallel/alternate timelines being created because of jumps made, playing around with the notion of multiverses. The main character, Jackson, is interesting, and there’s plenty of familial angst going on there alongside the stuff with his girlfriend, Holly. I wasn’t particularly keen on the ending (the entire sequence, not just ‘how it ends up’), but imagine I’ll check out the sequel at some stage.

Emma Forrest – Your Voice In My Head

This memoir explores both the loss of a trusted psychiatrist and the break-up of a relationship, and generally there is gorgeous writing and lots of angst and some really nice observations. I wanted to know more about her work alongside all the emotional trauma – the difficulties and/or successes of her writing, which is sort of casually alluded to – but I accept that this is a tad workaholicy of me. It’s an interesting read, and one which invites a lot of reflection as well as empathising.

Sarah Webb – The Memory Box

This follow-up to The Shoestring Club focuses on Pandora, Julia’s older sister. At the opening of the novel, we discover she’s been told she might have a hereditary cancer gene (their mother died of breast cancer) and the story follows her as she waits for the test results and begins to create a memory box for her daughter, Iris, all too conscious of the risks associated with a positive result on this test. On a birthday trip to Paris with her friends, she slips off to try to find Olivier, the father of her child – and the man she’s been keeping a secret, and keeping a secret from, for a decade. It doesn’t go as well as she’d hoped, to say the least. Back home, there are difficulties with her sensible boyfriend and the dramas created by his ex-wife and sulky daughter, and the Shoestring Club friendships are maintained in this book as we get more insight into Alex and her issues. This balances lighter topics with the more serious, and is a quick and engaging read.

Guilty pleasures

Today, I am loving this post a lot.

It’s been on my mind lately, the idea of ‘guilty pleasures’. It’s one of those questions that gets asked in interviews – what’s your guilty pleasure? As in, what do you take joy from but know that you shouldn’t, because it’s ‘silly’ or ‘not challenging’ or ‘just for fun’ or ‘pure entertainment’?

Guilt is a very big and serious feeling, to be reserved for things that are actually guilt-inducing. Like forgetting to feed the dog. Or the children.

Pleasure is about enjoyment, not duty, not kowtowing to what Certain People think you should be enjoying (what a strange concept).

I encounter an awful lot of people who feel like they should apologise for or criticise what they read. A lot of people who feel they need to be snarky about ‘popular’ or ‘commercial’ books to prove that they are smart and clever and insightful.

I kind of feel smart/clever/insightful people should know better.

Social media yadda yadda

Last week I facilitated a workshop for writers starting out, and there were questions at one stage about the importance of Being Active On Social Media, and one of the things that came up was the super-self-promoters on things like Twitter. “Stop following those people!” was my advice there. But there was still the worry of needing to do all these things in order to be a ‘better bet’ as a writer.

I also came across this piece from Gillian ‘Gone Girl’ Flynn’s agent talking about social media. My favourite quote from this, re: whether it’s worth investing in social media marketing and digital promotion:

…it is not always the author’s investment. There has certainly been a lot of social media chatter ABOUT Gillian’s books, although it’s true that for the most part she was not out there participating in or generating the conversation.

I love twitter, as some of you may have noticed. But I don’t think of it as a ‘self-promotion tool’ at all. It’s like going to a nice big coffee shop and yapping to people, and getting to know some of the regulars who sit near you a bit better. Sometimes you might invite people you know from somewhere else to come join you, and there’s a fair few people there you’ll see outside the coffee shop, or invite to a party.

There are great discussions and some mundane ones too, and while you do hear about people’s work and stuff that they have going on, it’s still weird and inappropriate if a stranger who’s just walked in comes up to you and starts shouting in your face ‘buy my book buy my book buy my book!’ That’s a world away from someone you’ve chatting to, whose face is familiar, going, ‘oh, I’ve something new out now’ or (even more effectively) someone you know recommending you something that’s just out.

(Along similar lines, it is weird when you’re discussing something political and a stranger comes up and shouts ‘you’re wrong and going to hell’ – there’s a big gap between open debate and being hostile to people you’ve never spoken to before in your life.)

I think social networks are pretty darn cool at least some of the time, and facilitate both new and old friendships and connections, but they’re too unfocused and messy and human to be The Best Book/Self Promotion Tool Ever. And that’s kind of a good thing. I see people get stressed out about ‘keeping up with’ all these things, like it’s about putting on a suit and going to work. It’s not. You probably want to brush your hair before going to the coffee shop, yeah, and it’s best not to stumble in drunk or in your pyjamas, but it’s okay if you’re not there all the time and it’s even okay if you decide it’s just not for you at all. There are other places out there. Really.

What do you do with a BA in anything?

I’ve talked about arts degrees before. When you have an arts degree, you are allowed be slightly mocking about it, the same way you’re allowed make fun of your own siblings.

But if you genuinely seriously suggest that an arts degree is a waste of time – that a three- or four-year course of academic study involving research and study and writing and learning is a waste of time – then. Oh. Then I get grumpy.

There are two pieces in the Irish Times today that I’ve been ranting about over on the twitters. One is about the uses of an arts degree, which has lots of statistics and figures (useful information to have, certainly), but seems to entirely leave out the question of whether liking (or even, not hating) your study and work actually matters. The other is a piece by a concerned parent of a college student who thinks her daughter, who’s doing a degree involving 15-20 contact hours, needs more structure (and, oh, that lecturers are very well paid and have lots of holidays and sure what else are they doing).

Breathe in, breathe out.

I guess I’ll start with the lecturers, first, because it’s an extension of the ‘teachers do nothing!’ attitude that so many people misguidedly have. Classroom hours, or lecture hall hours, are the result of a lot of work, and result in more work, and this work doesn’t magically disappear once the students go on their holidays. (At both levels there’s also a huge amount of admin work, often some pastoral care stuff, and your own ongoing professional development. Academics are also, of course, engaging in their own research.)

So when you go to college, you’re not sitting there being spoonfed. You’re getting an intense hour or two hours; everyone in the room should have put in additional work and/or need to do so afterwards. Yes, yes, arts students can sit around drinking coffee in between lectures if they like (and indeed I did a fair bit of this myself), but they’re also going to find themselves working late into the night or at weekends. It’s the system – there is just so much of the stuff that you have to go away and read yourself or discover for yourself or process for yourself. And it’s often less outwardly visible than being in a classroom or lab from 9-6.

I think that side of it is why there can be a lot of disdain for arts degrees (the piece in question is about a law student, but it tends to follow a similar structure – lots of independent work – even though we tend to see law as more worthwhile). No one is making you suffer (at designated times in designated places). You have both great freedom and great responsibility, to misquote Spiderman. There seems to be a mistrust – which carries over into the working world – of this, a sense that you can’t love something or find it satisfying and yet have it also be hard work. It’s an either/or situation – except it really isn’t. You can love your degree and still have it be stressful and difficult and sometimes a struggle to work at; you can love your job and still have a sense that it is work and have many aspects of it that you wouldn’t do were it ‘just’ for fun.

The piece about the uses of arts degrees really doesn’t address the issue of liking your course or even future employment; the idea seems to be that all third-level education is good for is getting you a job in an area that is looking for people at any given point. College degrees are, by and large, broader qualifications than ‘this person can do this job’, particularly at the arts and humanities end of things, and this is no bad thing – three or four years is a long time to devote to intensive study of something with only a single pathway at the end of it. But arts degrees aren’t a way of killing time, either; I do think they’re training. Training for managing your own time, meeting deadlines, working independently, getting to grips with complex new (to you) ideas, analysing and criticising texts of various sorts, engaging with what experts have said on a particular subject, arguing your case in what is hopefully an intelligent and clear fashion. They’re not an easy option, certainly not if you want your 2:1 or first. But I would argue they’re a far better option for many people than studying something simply because Corporation X or Research Lab Y has said it wants more people in this field and look they’ll give you a job!

(Not to mention the fact that despite that article’s claim about employers wanting science and engineering types, it also includes figures that indicate arts, humanities and social sciences types have lower unemployment rates than the science-y folks.)

What do you do with a BA? Well. You learn. Isn’t that what colleges are for?

Book-review post!

Mostly the YA I’ve been reading lately, with a couple of grown-uppy books thrown in for good measure.

Jennifer E Smith – The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

This is a lovely 24-hour whirlwind love story, about a girl who meets a boy in the airport and ends up sitting next to him on a trans-Atlantic flight. It’s always terrific to see thoughtful contemporary fiction doing well (and there’s some great stuff on family here, alongside the romance), and this is well worth reading.

Lara Avery – Anything But Ordinary

Twenty-two-year-old Bryce wakes up from a five-year coma and has to process the huge changes in her life – her now-rebellious-teen younger sister, the parents that have spent five years grieving, the friends and boyfriend that have graduated college and are stepping into the grown-up world. The premise is an interesting one, and there’s a sweet love interest, but the paranormal/magical elements aren’t quite explained and the ending – while fitting in some ways – wasn’t something I was particularly mad about either. I’m also not sure this works best as a teen novel – although Bryce still feels seventeen, the age she was at the time of the accident, in many ways, she is twenty-two and a lot of the interaction is with her twenty-something peers (yet toned down for a teen audience). Nifty concept, but something was missing for me.

Megan Crane – Once More With Feeling

I adore Megan Crane’s novels, and her latest is terrific. Sarah’s husband cheats on her with her older sister, and shortly after has a car accident that leaves him in a coma. This chain of events has the potential for melodrama, but Crane does a superb job at making it utterly authentic. She’s exceptionally good at writing realistic frustrating characters and dynamics – Sarah’s sister is indulged by her parents and most others, with selfish behaviour excused and justified in a way that will make you want to smack her (but also feel authentic). And Sarah herself isn’t perfect – like most of Crane’s novels, this is a story about identity and self-discovery as much as it is about the love interests (although they are delightful, too). I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Ally Condie – Crossed

Finally catching up on the world of Cassia, Ky and Xander. This is the second book in the trilogy, and although there are some nifty reveals and new characters are introduced, it’s my least favourite of the three.

Caitlin Moran – Moranthology

I’d been reading this on-and-off since its release. It’s a collection of Moran’s columns from the last number of years, covering a wide range of topics, so inevitably there were some subjects more interesting than others. I liked it less than How To Be A Woman, but there’s plenty of hilarity and good-point-making in this.

Gillian Flynn – Gone Girl

Delightfully twisty story about a man whose wife disappears on their five-year anniversary. This turned up on a lot of ‘best of’ lists last year, and with good reason – it’s incredibly compelling but also gorgeously written. The two narrators – Amy and Nick – are not quite what they seem, and even though the ending is unsettling, it also makes a twisted kind of sense. Definitely worth checking out.

Ally Condie – Reached

Now this – the third book in Condie’s Matched trilogy – was most enjoyable. I adored how the resistance played out here – without getting too spoilery, it’s always fun to see that there are pros and cons to any political movements, especially in YA dystopia, and it’s done really well here. There’s also a lot of cool stuff involving diseases and immunisations, and the growing creative movement spearheaded by Cassia. A solid conclusion to the trilogy.

Based on a true story (ish)

Oh, Captain Von Trapp. Look at you with your whistle and your stern authoritarian ways, your children who just need love and music and a singing nun! And later you will also need a secret crafty plan to escape from the Nazis. Oh the drama!

Over the Christmas period, with ‘Do-Re-Mi’ and ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ and ‘Something Good’ echoing in my head as The Sound of Music turned up on various channels, I went a-looking at the historical accuracy, or rather inaccuracy, of the film. I’d always had a vague sense that it had probably been amped up a little bit from the tale of the Von Trapp Family Singers, but I hadn’t quite realised:

Maria didn’t really love the Captain!
They went into singing for cash!

You can’t get to Switzerland that way!

Next thing you’ll be telling me Christopher Plummer has sometimes said rather grouchy things about his role in the fi – oh, wait.

The thing is, even very cool stories need things tightened up and twisted and improved for the purposes of story. It works better if the Captain is super-strict rather than just a normal father, if he’s rich and distant instead of struggling financially; it works better if Maria connects with all the children rather than just one; it works better if they’re just married at the time of the Anschluss; it works better if they perform a rousing super-Austrian song in front of an audience and then sneakily escape over the mountains rather than hop on a train in broad daylight.

When you’re creating a story, even if it’s based on real-life stuff, you need to think about what works better instead of what really happened. If the story of a singing ‘n’ dancing family, with an almost-nun as the maternal figure, emigrating to America to avoid the Nazi regime, needs some tweaking, it is probably safe to say most real-life events might benefit from that ‘artistic license’ thing.

High Stakes

Something I was pondering recently was the idea of ‘high stakes’ in books I have been reading – the ‘oh also the WORLD is at risk!’ element that can be thrown into certain books, particularly if there are sequels planned, in stories where there is already a personal quest of sorts going on.

I won’t mention any specific titles, because I think it is a very much your-mileage-may-vary situation, but at times I did feel as though this extra ‘aha, this is BIG!’ dimension felt superfluous. Because so much of story is the character and high stakes for them – rather than the world or the community or whatever it might be. And that’s what I’m most interested in – what many of us care most about, I think.

I mentioned this to Flatmate Of Joy, who said, ‘ah, yes, but what about Buffy?’

Well. Indeed. Which I had been musing upon. And I thought about ‘Becoming’, which I tend not to rewatch too often because oh good grief any time David Boreanaz attempts an Irish accent is painful, but we don’t actually care that the world’s ending. We care that Buffy has to send her boyfriend to hell in order to save it.

‘Becoming’ aired in 1998, which is making me feel a little ancient here, but apart from some dodgy special-effects for the hell-vortex, it holds up well. It’s BIG, it’s the world being potentially sucked into a hell-dimension, but that’s all just to facilitate buckletloads of emotional torment for the heroine. Cue the Sarah McLachlan.

The BIG stuff still needs to matter to the characters. It’s not going to be important to the reader or the viewer just because it’s the world – or, at least, it’s not going to have the same emotional impact. And yet because it’s BIG, it doesn’t work to introduce it and then let it play second or third fiddle to everything already established.

It’s a tricky thing to handle and honestly, it’s something I’ve mostly stayed away from – I’m not an action/thriller type gal. But I’d love to know your own favourite ‘character saves the world for personal reasons’ moments from books/movies/TV/comics etc – do tell.

Also, as an apology for using ‘high stakes’ as a title for a blog post about vampire slaying, have a picture of Spike reading the newspaper.

Book-review post!

After various lists, back to the actual thoughts on books! Mostly YA, plus the latest Wimpy Kid.

Jeff Kinney – Diary of a Wimpy Kid #7: The Third Wheel

The seventh Wimpy Kid book sees Greg as scheming and yet sort-of endearing as ever, this time in a series of events leading up to a school dance. Things don’t go quite as planned (when do they ever?) but as always, the humour of both the text and illustrations here keep you reading all the way through.

Ilsa J Bick – Drowning Instinct

I knew I would love this from very early on. It’s about two very damaged people – our narrator, a sixteen-year-old girl from a messed-up family, and her new chemistry teacher, who is haunted by his own demons – and what happens when they connect. It’s the kind of book that has the potential to be very cliched or hopelessly melodramatic, but in Bick’s hands it’s shaped into a very satisfying story that resists easy categorisation and finger-pointing. It is pretty darn dysfunctional, and one of the best YA books I’ve read this year.

Caragh M O’Brien – Promised (Birthmarked #3)

The final book in the Birthmarked trilogy sees Gaia, Leon and a number of inhabitants of Sylum set off towards the Enclave, looking to set up their own town of New Sylum. In order to do this, though, they need to strike a deal with the Enclave and its rulers. Things have changed since Gaia left, however, and a new ‘baby factory’ set-up and compulsory genetic testing for the anti-haemophilia gene mean that issues of female reproductivity are at stake alongside the quest to share water and other resources. This is like The Handmaid’s Tale for a YA audience, in some ways, although it’s not at all sugar-coated. The society is plausible, the stakes are high, and the characterisation is just gorgeous. Both Gaia and Leon are flawed in all kinds of ways, but they’re fascinating to read about. A really strong finish to a great trilogy.

Gareth Russell – The Immaculate Deception

This sequel to Popular is immensely, immensely entertaining. Focusing on the scheming, twisted plots of the in-crowd at Mount Olivet, it’s chock-full of delicious pop-culture, social, historical, and religious references (JMJ, you guys). At one point Meredith (the Queen Bee) and Mark (self-appointed knight in shining armour – except in situations where his own heterosexuality might come under question) are discussing ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, and it is a delightfully apt comparison to the tangles these teenagers find themselves in (or create). As with the first book, I adored Imogen an awful lot, and Peter also wins a lot of points for being the best bromantic hero ever. This is Gossip Girl for the Northern Irish set – crazy and glamorous and witty and compelling.

Favourite YA Books of 2012

That time of year again… my favourite YA books of 2012.

The list

(in no particular order)

John Green – The Fault In Our Stars

Sarah Ockler – Bittersweet

Sarra Manning – Adorkable

Beth Revis – A Million Suns

Andy Robb – Geekhood

Laura Jarratt – Skin Deep

Ilsa J Bick – Drowning Instinct

Caragh M O’Brien – Promised

The breakdown

Dystopian/sci-fi: 2

Contemporary/realistic: 6

Authors I’d read before: 4

Authors new to me: 4

The trends

- where is the paranormal/fantasy this year? I think I read slightly less of it this year than previously, which may explain its absence.

- there is a lot of contemporary fiction on this list, and a little bit of sci-fi; I think this probably represents my reading tastes quite accurately.

- I mentioned last year I expected more UK lit; there are three UK writers there this year which is not doing too badly, although it wasn’t a conscious reading decision this year.

- there are more stand-alone titles there, only two in a series (the two sci-fi/dystopian ones, actually).

- this is a shorter list than I’ve ever had before; I read a lot of great YA fiction this year but these are my absolute favourites. Mostly I knew when reading them that they would be favourites; they were just immensely enjoyable or satisfying (even if heartbreaking or distressing – John Green and Ilsa J Bick, looking at you guys).

Bonus mentions

- read in 2012, but originally published in 2011: Sara Zarr’s How To Save A Life and Stephanie Perkins’s Lola and the Boy Next Door. Both great.

Past years

2011

2010