Colleen Mondor's Blog, page 17

Andrea Barrett finds The Polar Bear Expedition & her story is amazing

As I've mentioned in a few posts here and there, I've been slowly reading an ARC of Andrea Barrett's upcoming story collection Archangel. Her fans are going to adore this; it's everything you expect from Barrett and more - a truly fabulous set of stories. I love it.

The final story is "Archangel" and includes the main character from the earlier story "The Experiment", now all grown up and fighting in WWI. It's 1919 in "Archangel" and although the war is over, for these men it continues in Russia, where they are assigned to The Polar Bear Expedition and bizarrely, stuck in the Russian Civil War. I have never heard about this force which is pretty stunning as I heavily studied US military history in college (it was the main focus of my history degree) and I've read a ton on WWI. (It seems like I'm always finding out more of history that I've missed. So frustrating!)

Barrett does amazing stuff with the setting and characters and brings alive all the confusion and fear of this war-after-a-war where nobody has any idea what is going on. Because this is Barrett there is also a second character, a woman, who is an x-ray technician. The science history of x-rays blends into military history as if they were always meant to be, and readers fall in love with these two people so far from home and so uncertain as to why they are there and what will become of them in that miserable place.

You will read "Archangel" and hate war all over again. It's sublime - brittle and sharp and slices your heart. I ripped me apart a bit, this story, and the final paragraphs were worthy of a Wilfred Owen poem.

I can't wait until you all read this book - I just can't wait.

[Post pic: En route to Archangel, a group of 339th Infantry Regiment doughboys pose with their newly issued M1891 Mosin-Nagant rifles. From the Army Sustainment Bulletin.]

Because most middle grade readers would love the idea of looking for the Lost Dutchman's Mine

I don't talk much about my son here but he's eleven years old and while he loves a good story (I read all of the Harry Potter books to him several years ago), he is not always patient enough to read them. He prefers graphic novels and shorter nonfiction and so when I caught him up in bed, reading ahead in Elise Broach's Superstition Mountain books, I knew they were something special. He loves these two books and is d-y-i-n-g for the third to come out. I felt it was my duty (*grin*) to make sure everyone knew about them.

In every possible way Treasure on Superstition Mountain and Missing on Superstition Mountain are cut from the cloth of classic middle grade adventure. You have four likeable kids - three brothers and their spunky girl neighbor - the pensive, more bookish child is the narrator, the parents are all decent admirable folks who support these curious active children (while also being busy enough to let them disappear for awhile) and there is a huge mystery - HUGE - that demands to be solved.

In this case the story is all about the Lost Dutchman's Mine, a very real Arizona legend that Broach discusses in her excellent afterwords. The kids go hiking on Superstition Mountain (a real place), and through an accident discover something sinister. In search of clues about what they've found, the kids hit the library, which adds an unexpectedly creepy character to the story, and the cemetery, which gives us a slightly unhinged character, and to the historical society - where we find a hero! Huzzah! It's all very Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys/Trixie Belden at their best and the scary is just the right amount of scary to keep readers turning the page while not terrifying. My son loves that each chapter ends with you wanting more and even though both books end without cliffhangers, the main story arc clearly continues. Broach is great at pacing and think that is a big part of why these books succeed so much.

We have both titles in hardcover for as my son says, he "NEEDS' them and can't stand the thought of them falling apart at some point. The covers catch the eye of their audience (kids in action!) and the drawings in the text are quite good - though, surprisingly, my son has not relied upon them. The story keeps him moving forward, not the pictures.

I can't wait to see how Broach ends this trilogy. There are some bad guys, and a lot of questions but mostly I'm enjoying how the characters have evolved and grown to ask more questions and think more deeply about what they are finding and learning. Plus she has managed to work a library and ghost town into the narrative - how cool is that?

Highly recommend, of course!

Angelina Jolie is amazing....

.........go read her piece in the New York Times about choosing a preventative mastectomy. It's stunning and sobering and braver than anything I've read in a long long time. I'm tired of pink ribbons making us all feel better - we need to cure cancer and we need to do it now.



Breast cancer alone kills some 458,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization, mainly in low- and middle-income countries. It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live. The cost of testing for BRCA1 and BRCA2, at more than $3,000 in the United States, remains an obstacle for many women.

I choose not to keep my story private because there are many women who do not know that they might be living under the shadow of cancer. It is my hope that they, too, will be able to get gene tested, and that if they have a high risk they, too, will know that they have strong options.

On flying dreams and more...

A couple of weeks ago Alaska Dispatch ran a piece I wrote about these guys who are on this crazy madcap all-kinds-of-wonderful mission to save a B25 Mitchell bomber from a sandbar north of Fairbanks where is has been sitting for 50 years. They have founded a museum just so they can make this airplane the centerpiece of it and not only do they want to rebuild the plane, they want to fly it again.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of, folks. I find it inspiring that they can even dream this big.

Anyway, they've formed a Kickstarter to get $20,000 and if you can show them so financial or at least help spread the word, that would be excellent. It's worth clicking through to check out the video and see the plane; really wicked cool stuff.

In other Kickstarter news, these guys have developed a card game around Moby Dick that has to be seen to be believed. The Awl interviewed the creators and it's neat to see a literary obsession turned into tabletop play this way. I hope they get their funding because I'd really love to check out the game. (And take a look at those gorgeous cards!!!)

And I have a new column up at Bookslut, which includes books where someone really is out to get you. They are more adventure than horror though (well, except for the mutant bugs one - ha!). All fun, all recommended, of course.

And I have a new article up at Alaska Dispatch on the bush pilots of Wrangell St. Elias National Park that touches a bit on the bush pilot narrative and its long history (and continued impact on Alaska aviation).

What I'm working on now - reviews for July and August, and articles on the impact of sequestration on the Alaska aviation environment and a a flight school in Bethel aimed at Alaskan Native youth. And then there's some epic spring cleaning going on over here, but I image the same thing is going on in your house, too!

On my radar: Palmerino by Melissa Pritchard

There was a little chat about this one on twitter the other day and I chimed in as it was already on my radar for January. Here's what Bellevue Literary Press has to say about it:



Welcome to Villa il Palmerino, the British enclave in rural Italy where Violet Paget, known to the world by her pen name and male persona, Vernon Lee, held court. In imagining the real life of this brilliant, lesbian polymath known for her chilling supernatural stories, Pritchard creates a multilayered tale in which the dead writer inhabits the heart and mind of her lonely, modern-day biographer.

Positing the art of biography as an act of resurrection and possession, this novel brings to life a vividly detailed, subtly erotic tale about secret loves and the fascinating artists and intellectuals--Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent, Henry James, Robert Browning, Bernard Berenson--who challenged and inspired each other during an age of repression.



More of Violet's bio is at the Vernon Lee wikipedia page. (It's hard to find much about her online, part of why I'm pretty psyched about this novel.)

I didn't see this little bit of coolness coming...

Someone I do not know made a trailer for MAP and posted it on You Tube! Here it is in all of its wonderfulness - I'm mighty impressed.

A Truly American Story - "Misfit" by Adam Braver

Adam Braver's Misfit manages to be a novel that is entirely about Marilyn Monroe while appealing far beyond any crass celebrity story type moniker. I came to it primarily because it is published by Tinhouse and after being quite gobsmacked by my love for Alexis Smith's Glaciers I really want to give something else by them a try. It helps that I have a certain affection for Monroe's work and also find her a Hollywood tragedy that seems to me is far more about being a woman of her time then a victim of the rich and famous. But none of that matters really because the moment I picked Misfit up and started reading it became a novel I could not put down and am still thinking about.

A lot of people have written about Marilyn Monroe but you need to set all of that aside when picking up Misfit. Braver frames the book around the last weekend of her life, when she traveled with Peter Lawford and Pat Kennedy to Frank Sinatra's resort up on Lake Tahoe. It's about her attempt to get away from an enormous amount of professional and personal stress and her deeply felt desire to rest.

The facts of the trip are true, the feelings expressed by Monroe are, of course, fiction. At Sinatra's lodge she fell to pieces and because everyone by then expected nothing less of her than that, no one thought to save her. She went home and she died. Whether the Lawfords or Sinatra wished they had done something more, whether any of them could have done something more, is really irrelevant. Braver is not looking to cast blame here. What he wants is to show how complicated this woman was, how little anyone truly knew her and how desperate she was to be free of....herself. In that respect she was so much like so many woman from her era that I have known that I quite forgot I was reading about a movie star. Sinatra could have been anyone, her friends represent everyone, Monroe's position could have been anything, her spouses were just like so many other husbands of their time. Misfit is about the woman we knew so little, not the famous star and even though Clark Gable and Dean Martin and so many other famous people are here, it is the sheer normal-ness of all their actions and reactions that will strike you deep and hard.

Braver moves back and forth in time, always returning to the lodge and that last weekend. He gives readers some of Monroe's tragic childhood, her discovery on an assembly line, her marriages and her serious study of acting. A lot of the book is taken with her role in the film Misfits (with Gable) and her final role in the unfinished film Something's Got To Give (with Martin). He gives readers a full picture of a complicated person but mostly he just shows you how damn hard it could be to be a woman, let alone a famous and talented one, in the 1950s. After reading Misfit it's clear to me that Marilyn Monroe really never had a damn chance and I hate that. But wow, do I ever love how Braver made me realize that truth and how incredibly beautiful his way of imparting it was.

I love this book; can't wait to read another one (Karen Shepherd's The Celestials is due out in June) from Tinhouse.



Monroe on the set of Somethings Got To Give.

What it looks like when 100+ books arrive at Ballou High School Library

I think in this case, pictures are worth a thousand words, right? We have sold just over 100 books off the Powells wish list for Ballou Library and it is truly wonderful to see these titles unpacked with so much excitement. This is why we do the book fair - because we know how much the books are wanted and will be enjoyed.

In all honesty though, sometimes I feel as if I am nagging the entire internet with posts and tweets trying to cajole folks to spread the word and help us sellout. I wish it was easier; heck, I wish it was unnecessary. I wish that I didn't get emails from people disappointed that we were staying with the same school as years previous, that we had not found someplace "needier". I wish I did not have to explain why Ballou still needs our help and I wish I didn't get frustrated and even a little angry at how a school library in our nation's capitol that has not money for new books deserves lots of novels and science fiction and romance (even with vampires) and all of those other types of books that don't sound serious enough to some folks but are desperately wanted by teenagers everywhere.

Just look at that girl with Redshirts - pretty darn happy, don't you think?

The spring book fair formerly ended yesterday but I'm going to leave the list open for just a little while longer. I can't help but think that seeing these pictures might prompt a few folks to buy a book or two or let some folks know about the book fair who might have missed the initial Guys Lit Wire post. I do hope everyone will share these pictures far and wide though - it's pretty cool to see how excited teenagers can be about the gift of books, isn't it? They make me feel hopeful in a thousand different ways; hopeful and pretty damn happy.

"On the sixth day, God created the only animal that commits suicide."

Nick Flynn's The Reenactments is like no other book I have read. The situation is utterly unique; Flynn wrote a book (Another Bullshit Night in Suck City) about meeting his father for the first time in years when he walked into the homeless shelter where Flynn was working. He has also written book partly about his mother's suicide years earlier and his own slow fall into depression and addiction. Then, Flynn sold a screenplay based on his books and Being Flynn, starring Julianne Moore as his mother and Robert De Niro as his father, is the movie made from that screenplay. The Reenactments is Flynn's book about watching the film be made, so a memoir of a filmed memoir which sounds ridiculous and misses the point entirely.

Nick Flynn's mother tried more than once to kill herself and then, sitting in a dining table chair and using her handgun, she got the job done. Here's Flynn on the chair and other objects from her final moments he can not let go:

A white wooden chair with its back blown out, the last piece of furniture my mother's body would touch. I never fix the chair, I can't, it becomes a stool, I carry it with me from apartment to apartment, for ten years. It ends up holding a jade plant my mother had given me in high school-what have I done, what have I ever done but make these images mine?

This is not a work of grief however, it's about the surreal nature of seeing some of the worst parts of your life portrayed in front of you by other people. It's about Flynn's ongoing struggle to accept who his father is and the many ways in which he failed his family. It's also about his mother and how he can not let her go even though she chose to leave him. It's about memory, and learning to keep your memories close while also not letting them crush you.

The Reenactments is about survival but not in a manufactured way. It's not about challenging yourself to survive some climb or hike or swim or race. It's about walking home and there she is and she's dead. Or sitting at work and looking up and there he is and he's homeless. It's about surviving your family; surviving who you are. It's really like nothing else I've ever read and I can't help but wonder if writing this book helped Flynn, or if it is just what he has to do now; if the writing is the only way he can survive.

I should note that the structure is unusual - short chapters split into single page entries that forms a chronology. It moves easily back and forth in time but focuses primarily on the movie making and interactions with his father. Flynn was at work on a book (or article) about the Glass Flowers at Harvard and their creation weaves in and out of narrative as well. Having seen them (amazing) I can attest to what he says here - you don't believe they are real the first time you pore over the cases; you can't imagine something like them could truly be man-made. I love what he writes about the flowers.

I have not read any of Flynn's poetry yet but I plan to now. He cuts to the heart of the matter so effectively; I'm sure even when he is not this personal his words are still intense and beautiful.

SF Gate review of The Reenactments

Mermaids, mountain naming, bright lights/big cities, Kiki & more

What I'm Reading:

Still reading Pain, Parties, Work: Syliva Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder. I had to set it aside while I'm researching some articles on aviation topics as this is for a fall column (like Sept). But I'm hoping to get back to it this weekend.

A Box of Photographs by Roger Grenier. A short NF title on the author's own family photographs as well as the cultural history of photography. It's rather compulsively readable for me as I continue to go through thousands (!) of family photos. Plus, the pics inside are really quite charming.

Kiki Strike: The Darkness Dweller by Kirsten Miller. I was thinking of this for July but I think it will fit better in August as an adventure-type column. It's Kiki and crew and it's all the goodness of girl detectives with BONUS international intrigue this time. Just fun for MG readers.

The End of Night by Paul Bogard. For Booklist - a cultural history of artificial city lights which sounds dull but is really quite interesting. I'm learning a lot!

What I'm Reviewing:

September Girls by Bennett Madison. More on this in the next month or so, but it is one of my favorite reads thus far this year. A modern and dark/brittle take on the mermaid legend. It's for older teens (lots of cussing) and it's perfectly for older teens - exactly as a 17 year old boy would think as romance looms large and his family seems to be teetering on the brink and nothing - nothing at all - makes sense. The family bits really impressed me; there is a lot more coming-of-age going on here than any paranormal romance. Fantastic.

What I'm writing:

A bunch of stuff going up at Alaska Dispatch in coming days. I'm writing an article over the next few days about some guys recovering a B-25 off a sandbar outside of Fairbanks and a couple of other shortish pieces about some fly-ins this spring and summer. I've got some long pieces in the early planning stages - and I found a killer copy of American Alpine Journal from 1959 (!!!) with a history of the naming of several of Alaska's most famous peaks. It is so perfect to an article I am working on about the first climber to die on Denali which is also for my next book (much expanded). What a score. I do love well organized used bookstores!