Paper Towns

by John Green
Star Rating: 2.5 out of 4

Man. That was a hard star rating to decide. This book fell squarely into the debate I regularly hold with myself between judging something because I Don't Like It and because It's Poorly Done. After consideration, I've concluded it's not poorly done - in fact, I think it's done rather well for the most part. The problem for me is, all of the book's central characters are teenagers coming up on their high school graduation, and I find high schoolers teeth-gratingly annoying. (Perhaps this is why I haven't read much YA up until now.) So I'm giving the book my highest possible starring without implying I like it.

The central character, Quentin Jacobson, has had a crush on his neighbor Margo since they were nine years old and discovered a dead body together. She's popular at school and he's not, so they haven't communicated much for years (eye roll - if you want to talk to someone, just talk to them!), but one night she shows up at his window and convinces him to drive her around to various schoolmates' houses helping her take her revenge on them. Soon afterwards she disappears, which she's done often before. (Margo, we are to understand, is a Free Spirit.) Usually Margo leaves clues on where she can be found, so besotted Quentin sets out to try to find her this time.

Green does a great job recreating the mentality of an 18-year-old boy. (Sample dialogue: "I decided during government that I would actually, literally suck donkey balls if it meant I could skip that class for the rest of the semester.") The writing is straightforward to the point of being simplistic, often funny depending on one's sense of humor, and almost unremittingly centered around testicles. It's a quick read because of that, which isn't a bad thing - again, depending on one's perspective.

Quentin is quite likable as a character, as is his friend Radar (so nicknamed for the M*A*S*H character, only he's black and wears contacts now), but unfortunately I couldn't dredge up much sympathy for Margo. Margo pulls pranks, sets out for petty revenge, and screws with people's heads on a regular basis with impunity. The entire book is basically Margo screwing with everyone, and the ending does very little to relieve her of responsibility for that. In fact, though I hate to say it, I found the ending sadly preachy for a book so real and down-to-earth the rest of the time.

Over the course of his investigation, Quentin uses Margo's marked copy of Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" to try to discover facts about her, and in so doing he gradually teaches himself empathy, the art of putting oneself in someone else's place to see from their perspective. It's a lovely use of Whitman, though maybe laid on a little thick for the benefit of a teenaged audience. The mystery part of the story is just well-developed enough to keep Quentin running around in circles and almost unhealthily obsessed. The book contains plenty about video games, school bullies, teenaged parties, and THE PROM, but it's so much more when it's about Quentin's self-journey that at times Margo almost becomes a MacGuffin - an element that drives the plot but isn't important on its own merit.

Is this an accurate portrait of high school teenagerhood? Honestly, I have no idea, because my teenage years weren't anything like this. I was homeschooled - actually went to an online school for high school. We didn't talk like this. We didn't think like this. We didn't behave like this. Online schools have no pecking order - there was no popular clique, no band kids, no bullying, no social stratification of any kind. As I recall, many of my conversations revolved around the Nature of the Universe. We were heady teens, like mini-adults with a few extra hormones. So I think I just Do Not Get the "typical" high school experience, and unlike many other things I read about that I similarly haven't experienced, I'm not able to empathize with it. I'll have to ponder why that is. My gut reaction is to say it's because teenagers are annoying and high school popularity contests are interesting to no one but the participants, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.  ;-)

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

by Thomas French
Star Rating: 4 out of 4

If you like animals and zoos as much as I do, this book will be a treat for you. French, a Pulizter-winning journalist, spent six years researching the Tampa Lowry Park Zoo and delves deeply into its characters, both human and non, and the daily operations of a zoo, and then frames them in terms of the larger debate about the morality of holding animals in captivity. It's chock-full of fascinating tidbits about animal behavior and biology. For instance, did you know that elephant urine is so corrosive it can eat through metal? I didn't! I shared this factoid with my housemate, but he didn't seem to appreciate the addition to his knowledge... but oh well. I think that kind of thing's awesome.  :-D

The descriptions of animal intelligence were staggering to me. Orangutans, it turns out, are great tool-makers and -users, as well as engineers: "One orang used a wire to pick a lock, and another used a piece of cardboard to dislodge a security pin that held the doors of his cage closed... 'Orangutans,' Linden writes, 'have made insulating gloves out of straw in order to climb over electrified fences.'" Elephants, it turns out, are equally if not more intelligent, using one another's bodies as battering rams against electric fences. But it was this description that really got to me: more than intelligent, these animals are compassionate.

After years of observing the species inside the park, the staff knew that elephants - unlike most animals - were aware of death and were drawn to the remains of their kin, sometimes burying them in branches and grass. Some researchers even believed that elephants could identify the fallen body of a cow or bull they had known in life. Once, after a cull in Uganda, park rangers had stored severed feet and other body parts of the fallen inside a shed. That night, other elephants pushed their way into the shed and then buried the body parts.

But the debate over zoos is inescapable. French is admirably even-handed in his attention to both sides of that debate, though he clearly feels anger and regret over humanity's contribution to the extinction of countless plant and animal species. Given the demonstrable intelligence and sophistication of many of these species, is it viable to entrap them in an artificial, enclosed environment where they won't learn or practice the skills of their species? Even with good intent, is putting them on display ethical? It's a sobering debate:

All zoos, even the most enlightened, are built upon an idea both beguiling and repellent - the notion that we can seek out the wildness of the world and behold its beauty, but that we must first contain that wildness. Zoos argue that they are fighting for the conservation of the Earth, that they educate the public and provide refuge and support for vanishing species. And they are right. Animal-rights groups argue that zoos traffic in living creatures, exploiting them for financial gain and amusement. And they are right.

French also makes a subjective point: who among us, upon visiting a zoo, hasn't felt a sense of sadness blended in with our excitement and awe? Beautiful as it is, important as conservation and education are, there's something that feels wrong about it. Yann Martel in his Life of Pi made wonderful points in favor of zoos, including that zoo animals no longer have to fear predation, drought, illness, or humans' indifference. But possibly we have something to fear - our own urge to dominate and control.

It's hard not to feel repelled by some of the descriptions of human behavior at zoos; people can be damn fools when it comes to treating animals with respect, or even taking proper care of their own interests. French relates several zoo horror stories involving human deaths because of negligence, ignorance, or outright stupidity. However, he also does a wonderful job of presenting the zoo keepers with all their love and care toward the animals. There's a hilarious division among the keepers between bunnyhuggers (the type who'll nickname and baby-talk animals) and non-bunnyhuggers (who tend to be the ones working with frogs, snakes, tarantulas, and other less cuddly charges). Some of the bunnyhuggers even go so far as to name the animals along a Star Wars theme:

One of the young howler monkeys had been christened Anakin, as in Anakin Skywalker, which was Darth Vader's name before he grew up and went to the dark side. The name made sense, because howler monkeys are born with tan fur and then turn black as they mature. It was an inside joke. A keeper thing.

As interesting as the human characters are, for me, the best part of the book dealt with the animals at the zoo. There are unforgettable characters here: Ellie, the first-time pregnant elephant; Enshalla, a beautiful but very nasty Sumatran tiger who dominates all the male tigers that're brought in to mate with her; and Herman, the alpha chimpanzee, who's kind to his fellow chimps and has a serious weakness for human blondes.

Like many of the animals at Lowry Park, most of the chimps disliked the veterinarian because they associated him with the sting of a tranquilizer dart and other indignities required for their medical care. One day, Murphy appeared in the chimp night house with a tranquilizer gun so he could attend to Herman. Murphy was a good shot and almost never missed. But this time, his aim was off. The other chimps would have run and hid. Herman just picked up the dart, walked over to the mesh, and handed it back to Murphy so he could try again.

I feel like I've quoted enough from this book to merit a copyright infringement lawsuit and still not gotten to half the good stuff! All I can say is, it's really wonderful.

The Fairy-Tale Detectives

by Michael Buckley
Star Rating: 3 out of 4
Book 1 in The Sisters Grimm series

Sabrina and Daphne Grimm are orphans who, after a failed string of foster homes, are being shuttled off to their grandmother's house in a remote village. There's only one problem: before they disappeared, their parents told them that their grandmother was dead. The woman who comes to pick them up from the train station, Granny Grimm, is cuddly-looking enough, and Daphne, who's 7, likes her immediately. But Sabrina is 11 and feels she bears the mantle of responsibility for the two sisters; after so many horrible experience with other foster families, she doesn't trust "Granny" one bit.

This suspicion doesn't dim upon seeing Granny's house - it's a sweet little nook, but it borders a dark forest and has a dozen locks on the front door. Books about the house bear strange titles like "365 Ways to Cook a Dragon", and the spaghetti noodles they're served for dinner are, well, black. After that, Sabrina has had enough of crazy and decides they'll escape that night, only to discover that the forest is inhabited by... pixies??

I really enjoyed this book. It's written for a younger audience and rather reminiscent of the first Harry Potter book in that way, only instead of creating a new magical world, Buckley reinvents the magic of folk and fairy tales. The book is chock-full of magical creatures from legend: fairies, giants, magic mirrors, flying carpets, and many, many more. Granny, who (slight spoiler!) turns out to be legit, explains to the girls that the fairy creatures call themselves Everafters and are trapped in the town by an ancient bargain with Wilhelm Grimm, a Grimm Brother and their own ancestor: as long as a Grimm lives in Ferryport Landing, all the Everafters are kept there too. Granny acts as town detective by investigating strange occurrences, and before the girls are even settled, there's a mystery a-brewing.

It's really a brilliant cast of supporting characters - I don't want to say too much for fear of revealing all the fun! - but Buckley draws from fantasy both old and new. After Granny and her sidekick Mr. Canis (three guesses as to which Everafter he is, Latin-lovers!) are captured by a rampaging giant, Sabrina and Daphne - and Granny's intelligent Great Dane, Elvis - must figure out a way to rescue them and solve the mystery. The girls are aided, and in Sabrina's case, irritated by a young rogue they meet in the woods named...can you guess?... Puck. (The girls don't recognize the name, Sabrina having only gotten to Romeo and Juliet in school.)

Both the girls are smart and courageous, though in different ways: Sabrina is tough and wary, while Daphne is open-minded and good at creating bonds. They're wonderfully realistic as sisters. I particularly loved Sabrina's character because Buckley is so sympathetic toward her:

"How was I supposed to know?" Sabrina cried. "Anybody would have thought she was crazy!"
"I didn't," Daphne said, finally breaking her silence.
"You don't count. You believe everything," Sabrina argued.
"And you don't believe in anything," the little girl snapped. "Why are we even talking? You don't care what I think, anyway."
"That's not true!" Sabrina said, but before the words had left her mouth she knew they were a lie. What Daphne thought hadn't mattered in a long, long time, at least not since their parents had deserted them. But it wasn't like Sabrina wanted it that way. She was only eleven and didn't want to have to make all the decisions for both of them. She would love to feel like a kid and not have to worry about whether they were safe. But that wasn't how things were.

Buckley's writing is often very funny, and the story moves along at a great pace. It's a treat to read, never knowing which fun character might show up on the next page, and there are clear through lines set up in this first book for the rest of the series. All in all, I thought it was fantastic, and I'll definitely be picking up the next one at the library soon!

(On a random note: what is it with orphans in children's books? I can probably list ten books off the top of my head featuring them... there should be a subset of children's lit studies devoted to orphan tales!)

The Witch of Exmoor

by Margaret Drabble
Star Rating: DNF

I'm not very good at putting books down once I've gotten into them, which is why I've begun to set myself a 100-page limit. If the book hasn't grabbed me by then I stop reading, but typically something catches before that mark (though Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn't nab me until exactly page 100). I had trouble with this book because more than not nabbing me, it was actively irritating me up until about page 92. Then I thought, ooooh, it's improving, just hang on!

Well, I made it to page 150. And now I'm done. Those pages of the book can best be summed up by one of those political cartoons: a dog has had an accident in the house and is being punished by the dog owner (Drabble) gleefully pushing the dog (the reader) toward the pile of doody, which is captioned "The Prententions of the British Middle Class."

The Witch of Exmoor is a story of a family, the Palmers, who've risen to the British middle class and are lucky enough to enjoy great privilege. The three adult children are all married and have children, and their main concern is their mother, Frieda, who's recently sold the family house in favor of a damp, ramshackle castle on the edge of the sea and moved in there with every intention of becoming a hermit. (In my mind, if the family can afford to buy a castle, they ain't middle class. But maybe it's different for Brits.) Is Frieda senile - or worse, mad?

These characters are snobbish and unpleasant. At the beginning of the book, one of them brings up the question: if you could change society while uncertain of your own role in it (meaning you could conceivably end up at the bottom of the pack), would you?

'You could decide,' continues David, 'that a small contingent of the very poor are necessary for the proper functioning of society, and that it would just be bad luck - a sort of social sacrifice - if you ended up as one of them. It would be quite hard to argue, I think, that a numerically overwhelming mass of the very poor can constitute a just society, but it certainly has been argued.'
('Not to say practised,' murmurs Emily.)

I'm hardly someone who should object to parenthetical asides - I don't think I've written a single review yet that hasn't had one or two - but except for this instance in which she uses a character to comment, Drabble-as-narrator castigates her characters herself. She writes often in direct address, wanting to know whether you noticed this thing? You did? Of course you did. Yes, you're quite right in your low opinion. Here's some other tidbit of icky information. I grant that it's an effective trick; Drabble begins by describing the *type* of person each character is rather than describing the character, thereby pulling all the reader's own prejudices against that type into play. But when she's still doing it pages and pages later, it just feels like she's being a nasty gossip.

The "would you create a different society if you could?" question recurs throughout the first 150 pages. It's a fascinating question. The problem is, none of the characters ever go further than asking it. The book shifts to follow each of the characters, and each one in turn muses, "Hm, would I?" (and typically decides, "No") without any deeper reflection on the topic. The point, that they're snooty middle class folks who don't want to lose their status, is crystal clear anyway - was it necessary to have them each repeat the question over and over with no further development?

Things get even more heavyhanded when Drabble introduces the metaphor of disease and pollution for middle-class snobbery. Frieda, at her last family dinner, serves hamburgers made of mostly gristle to her family (as a symbol of their own pretentions to being something better than they are); later, when family members have been sent to assess the castle situation, this comes out:

David wondered if he could forgive Frieda for dispatching him to the abattoir and the chicken gutters. The stench and tumbled carcasses remained with him. That had been what she intended. The scrappy raw-pecked self-abusing fowl and stunned curly-headed bullocks haunted him, as did the pale girls in bloody overalls, the young men with dull eyes. The human factory farm. Pig skin, chopped gizzards, mechanically recovered meat. Cheap and nasty food for cheap people.

It's intensely unpleasant reading about characters who think things like that. And they think it, if not all the time, at least every few pages. But it's just that the metaphor is so obvious. One character even muses outright, "AIDS and leprosy, status and vanity." Truly, Ms. Drabble, we get the point. Please put the sledgehammer down.

Can I be mad that her plan worked? No - she means these characters to be repulsive, and they are. It's clear she's an excellent writer, too, if just from the quote above. I thought the book started getting better as I read past page 100, sort of similar to Muriel Spark's caustic style (though lacking her humor), but by then I was too burned out investing in characters who weren't bringing me anything in return to carry on. My problem is that all the points she's making are clumsily done. In my mind, satire and metaphor are scalpels, not bludgeons. If I wanted to read something that spelled itself out for me, I'd pick up my oven's owner manual.

Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allen Crow

by James Howe
Star Rating: 3 out of 4
Book 7 in the Bunnicula series

 The Bunnicula series for childen is utterly delightful. It combines the Gothic mystery of the Goosebumps, wonderful animal protagonists, and a zany hilarity Roald Dahl would've been proud of. I kid you not: almost every single paragraph of the book is funny. We had the first five in the series on our shelves growing up, and I reread them often because they're just so darn likable.

 Bunnicula Meets Edgar Allan Crow is, I believe, the last in the series. The books follow the adventures of the pets of the Monroe family and are narrated by Harold, a large longsuffering dog who really just wants to nap, eat, and be comfortable. Howie, a dachshund puppy, is overenthusiastic, has a vivid imagination, and is really not too bright, and of course there's Bunnicula the rabbit, who just sleeps, mostly - and then there's Chester. Chester is a cat. Worse, Chester is a cat who reads and has the bad habit of leaping to paranoid conclusions based on what he reads. He's neurotic and high-strung, and together they're all utterly hilarious:

Chester shook his head. "I fail to understand Howie's obsession with chasing birds," he said.
[Harold] sighed. "It must be part of his job."
"Well," said Chester, "one of these days his 'job' is going to get him into a heap of trouble. Crows are not to be messed with, my friend. They're nefarious. Just look at that one."
Yawning, I glanced at the crow on the envelope to see what all the fuss was about. What I saw was a crow. On an envelope. I didn't think it looked particularly nefarious. Of course, I had no idea what "nefarious" meant.

Chester usually finds something to become paranoid about and drags Harold and Howie into his conspiracy theories. Howie is eager, but Chester has to force sensible Harold into it by sitting on Harold's head and pawing his eyeballs to wake him up. Chester, as a character, is pure cat; Howe even includes the wonderful cat-trick of tail-licking in order to cover up embarrassment (cat owners will recognize this trait with a chuckle).

 In this book, one of Monroe sons, Pete, wins a competition to have his favorite mystery author come speak at his school. The author arrives at their house to stay, dressed in a sinister black cloak and accompanied by his pet, a crow.

Chester's eyes met mine. "The crow is coming," he murmured. "The crow is coming, Harold. Do you know what that means?"
"Um, it means... we'll be having corn for dinner?"
"No, Harold. It does not mean we'll be having corn for dinner. It means we're doomed. That's what it means."
"Oh," I said. "Well, that's a relief. Corn gets stuck in my teeth."

(One can hardly blame poor Harold for not keeping up with Chester 100% of the time. He's a dog, after all, and therefore the last to spot a conspiracy. But he's the first to scent out bacon.)

 Chester becomes convinced that the author and his "evil" crow are out to steal Bunnicula. At one point, Chester even surmises that they may try to turn Bunnicula into a bat. (Chester really reads too much.) Harold is properly skeptical - until both Edgar Allan Crow and Bunnicula disappear the next morning. I won't reveal any more of the plot, except to say that it's right in keeping with what I expected and a perfectly satisfactory addition to the Bunnicula ranks.

 The Bunnicula books are wonderfully engaging fluff, and they aren't long at all - this one took me maybe an hour to read. I guarantee it'll be an hour of hearty amusement.

"And what about that crow of his?" [Chester] ranted. "Do we think it's a coincidence that he's named for Edgar Allan Poe?"
"Who?" I asked.
"Edgar Allan Poe, the greatest writer of horror fiction of all time. Poe also wrote poems. Surely you have heard of his poem 'The Raven.'"
Before I could ask him why he was calling me Shirley, Chester narrowed his eyes and launched into a throaty recitation...
"I like the part about napping," I told him. "And the tapping part reminds me of a certain someone who has a problem with a certain other someone getting his minimum daily requirement of sleep. But I can't say I really see your point."
"My point," Chester snapped, "is that in the poem the visitor on the other side of the door is a raven, Harold! Which is more or less a crow. And the raven has only one thing to say."
"Corn?" I conjectured.

The Killer Angels

by Michael Shaara
Star Rating: 3 out of 4

This book justifies that wonderfully cliched old reviewing phrase - compulsively readable.

The Killer Angels is the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelization of the greatest battle of the Civil War: Gettysburg. The novel follows the stories of several generals and colonels on both sides; in my edition, the ranks and relationships of the primary characters were summarized at the beginning, which was very helpful to refer to until I'd gotten them all straight in my head. The book begins with the armies moving around each other only to eventually converge on Gettysburg, until then a small Pennsylvania town of no consequence, for the three days of battle. It's an excellent look at tactics (or lack thereof), the stress of command, and the mentalities of the men who lived at that time. Knowing the outcome from history classes doesn't diminish the force of the conclusion; my heart ached for my favorite characters and I found myself almost wishing things had turned out differently for them.

My favorites of the bunch were the Confederate General Longstreet, who was Robert E. Lee's second in command, and Union Colonel Chamberlain, who was the first on the scene at Gettysburg and secured the high ground (and thus the advantage) for the North. Longstreet spends much of the novel advising Lee to pursue a defensive strategy by circling behind the Union army; his recommendations are heard but dismissed for more offensive attacks. It's impossible not to imagine how Gettysburg might have ended differently had Longstreet been in charge; still, Lee is endlessly sympathetic in the book, being ill and exhausted and yet so quietly reassuring to his men. Chamberlain, on the other side, has the unenviable position of holding the high ground against the first attack until reinforcements arrive, holding the leftmost flank against a charge wherein he is outnumbered at least ten to one, and, on being relieved of the left flank as a reward, ends up smack dab in the middle of the final Rebel assault. Seriously. This poor dude.

Though I appreciated that the novel paid particular attention to strategy and deployments - the novel is interspersed with dead-useful maps detailing troop positions and movements at various times during the three days - at a certain point I began to think that telling the novel solely through the eyes of command staff was limiting. The commanders typically issued orders to their troops and sat back to watch the result, which means for the first half of the book, there's no one to really express the horror of the battlefield or the gravity of losses on both sides. The generals think in terms of regiments, not lives; there was no perspective from ON the battlefield. It just didn't have the gristle I was wanting, nor the immediacy. But then the second half of the book happened, and I changed my mind.  ;)

As it went on, I thought the book did a better job of weaving in the experience of the common soldier. In this quote, Colonel Chamberlain is walking among his men before a battle:

Jim and Bill Merrill, two brothers, were standing next to a sapling. Chamberlain frowned.
"Boys, why aren't you dug in?"
Jim, the older, grinned widely, tightly, scared but proud.
"Sir, I can't shoot worth a damn lying down. Never could. Nor Bill either. Like to fight standin', with the Colonel's permission."
"Then I suggest you find a thicker tree."
He moved on. Private George Washington Buck, former sergeant, had a place to himself, wedged between two rocks. His face was cold and grey. Chamberlain asked him how it was going. Buck said, "Keep an eye on me, sir. I'm about to get them stripes back."

I do have a quibble with the writing style, however, and it was irksome enough to me to bring the book's rating from a 3.5 down to the 3. Shaara doesn't distinguish between the inner thought patterns of his characters, and thus they all sound the same. This mightn't be a problem for me, except they're all so distinctly and annoyingly similar (this is Chamberlain, but could be any of them):

Don't like to wait. Let's get on, get on. But his mind said cheerily, coldly: Be patient, friend, be patient. You are not leaving here... My, how the mind does chatter at times like this. Stop thinking. Depart in a chariot of fire. I suppose it's possible. That He is waiting. Well. May well find out.

It makes. It sound. Like all the generals. Are suffering. From sunstroke.

Despite this, even if you're not interested in the military or war novels, this book is worth the read. I emerged from it with a much better picture in my mind of how the Civil War was perceived at the time by both sides (it's amusing to switch from one side to the other: the Rebels are constantly pouting that the North is making a war over states' rights into a conflict over slavery, while the Union are all over there not really thinking about slavery at all. Oops). I found all the main characters interesting and sympathetic, and the final section of the book, in which Shaara writes up short summaries of what happened to each officer after Gettysburg, was very welcome, and even heartwarming. I'll leave it at that with one final quotation:

Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley
Star Rating: 2 out of 4

I feel kind of bad that I didn't much like this book. My mom recommended it to me because she really loved the main character and the use of chemistry. Now, I am not a chemistry person. I'm not even generally a mystery person; the only series I'll pick up voluntarily are Simenon's Maigrets and Peters' Brother Cadfaels. I've read several Agatha Christies and don't feel much compelled to read any more, and I struck out terribly on Lord Peter Wimsey, though I'm determined to give him another try someday. So I think this book simply wasn't my cup of java.

The main character is 11-year-old Flavia de Luce (in passing - what a name! It rivals Benedict Cumberbatch for pure naminess), a curious and precocious young lady with a great talent and fascination for chemistry. She lives with her two older sisters (Ophelia and Daphne...ouch) and her father, the former of whom tie Flavia up and lock her in closets for fun. (Being the youngest of three daughters myself, I can slightly empathize with Flavia's daily hardships, though I was only ever tied to a pole in the basement and burned at the stake, and it was all in good fun.) Things begin to accelerate when a dead bird with a stamp in its mouth is left on the front doorstep and the next day a dead body is discovered in the garden. Flavia's father is arrested on suspicion of murder, and Flavia, being Flavia and therefore almost impossibly precocious, decides to solve things.

Making an 11-year-old your main character clearly has its pitfalls. Flavia is alternately brilliant or dense as the story requires, and while that's probably reasonable... maybe... it's never clear to me whether this is all done by design or whether the author simply needed the innocence of a child to cover up his deficiencies at creating a compelling mystery. Was I the only one who guessed the murderer the same page that s/he appeared? I can't have been. It was too obvious. And yes, I do realize that just about every mystery plot has been exhausted by now... but simple Economy of Characters makes it clear. Couldn't Bradley have thrown in one or two skulky bystanders with scars and limps to broaden the field?

The only unpredictability as far as I could see was the chemistry element, but even that employed the old Sherlock Holmes trick, where of course Holmes will solve it when you can't because Holmes has some sneaky bit of esoteric knowledge to whip out of his deerstalker. Flavia smells a particular scent on the murdered man's breath just before he passes to the great beyond (he also utters the Latin word "Vale," which seems a rather natural thing to say upon dying to me if you, um, know Latin), but of course she doesn't identify it until late in the book. We poor suckers aren't even told what it smelled like in order to do a surreptitious Google search. Pooh, I say.

The thing is, I didn't find Flavia very interesting to spend time with. For a girl so imaginative when it comes to thinking up revenges against her nasty sisters, I found her thinking style (and hence the writing) awfully dull. She's very lively when it comes to interactions with other characters though, especially the police inspector in charge of the case, who's wonderfully world-weary and an excellent balance for Flavia's exuberance. Still, by the end of the book I was so annoyed with her that I started skipping paragraphs until the action started up again; my conscience smote me after a day or two and I went back and read them, only to discover I'd missed absolutely nothing. My favorite portion of the novel comes around the middle, where Flavia bikes to the prison where her father is being held and he tells her his story, mostly because a) the story is interesting, and b) it's not Flavia.

I am judgmental. I hang my head. I have to make great effort to differentiate between when I don't like a book and when the book's actually bad, and because I'm thinking it's the former, I'm giving Sweetness 2 out of 4 out of fairness. I don't think it's a bad book, but neither Flavia nor the mystery worked for me.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret

by Judy Blume
Star Rating: 0 out of 4

I LOATHE THIS BOOK.

A while ago I went on a children/YA book kick, trying to catch up on all the well-known and -loved stories I'd somehow missed. Overall, it was a positive experience; I read some I loved, some I liked, and some I was nyeh on but appreciated that they were surely wonderful in their time. But none that I actually hated. That is, until this one. Because as I was settling into bed early that night, I picked up Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret. I'd only meant to read a few chapters before slipping away into snoozeland, but once the horror began I couldn't stop until I'd seen it to the gory end.

This book is about three things. They are, in order of importance:

1) Religion,
2) Puberty, and
3) Peer pressure.

Plot synopsis: girl moves to new town and immediately is made a member of a "secret club" with 3 other girls who go to her new school. The function of this club is to chat about growing breasts, starting periods, and cute boys, because clearly 12-year-old girls have nothing more interesting to talk about. Don't get me wrong - I'm sure I talked about these things when I was 12 too - but I also talked about books and movies and nature and future plans, and so did all of my friends. There's absolutely no reason to paint so narrow a picture of tweenhood, unless...

a) You actually subscribe to the ridiculous idea that this IS all 12-year-old girls think/talk about -- in which case, you should not be writing a book for 12-year-old girls, because we don't want them similarly deluded
OR
b) you are writing a MESSAGE book and this is part of the important MESSAGE -- in which case, barf.

This secret club also exerts a good deal of peer pressure on our young, stupid heroine, but by the end of the book she comes to realize that you can't believe everything you hear. How does she realize this? Because she insults the girl in class who's already developed breasts - clearly a heinous offense, despite all four of the other girls yearning after their own - and learns from Boob-Girl's reaction that she may have been wrong all along to judge her based on her rack. What a poignant lesson. What tolerance. I'm drowning in obvious here. But the entire book is this way - painfully obvious, preachy, and patronizing to the intelligence of YA readers everywhere. Maybe it could've been saved with a strong central character, but Margaret isn't sympathetic. She's whiny and trite and - I'll say it - plain dumb.

Then there's the religion. The girl's father was raised Jewish and the mother Christian, and both of them no longer subscribe to their religions, so they've decided to raise little Margaret without one. Yet she has to do a year-long project for school, so she decides to research religion as her theme. She goes around to alllllll the synagogues and churches she can find, only she's so unbelievably obtuse she can't perceive any difference between all of them, but the music sure is pretty. Enter Theme: All Religions Are Really The Same At Heart, So Why Can't We All Get Along? (This goes right along with the theme of Don't Judge People For Their Boobs.)

And anyway, Margaret prefers to pray to God her own way, by sending up pitiful little missives for him to pretty-please-with-syrup-on-top make her iddle-widdle breasts grow big and strong. The book culminates with a showdown with both sets of grandparents showing up and ruining Margaret's life by trying to force her into their particular religion. Finally, she can stand it no more -- she shouts that she just won't be ANY religion. Oh, the humanity. The wailing and tearing of hair. Observe my sobs.

The worst part of it is, when I railed to my housemate about it the next morning, he shrugged at me and opined that the book probably wasn't so far off the "normal" 12-year-old experience. I, he reminded me, cannot look to my own upbringing as an example of what most kids go through. And he's right, I can't. (I was homeschooled.) But what BS! What if some poor kid takes it as how things are supposed to be, that this is the right of it all, and so ladens herself with all these idiotic pressures and perspectives about what's "normal"? What's "normal" is NOT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT CRAP YOU DON'T HAVE ANY CONTROL OVER LIKE BOOBS AND PERIODS, YOU STUPID LITTLE TWIT. How about THAT?

Hiss. Spit.

Stars

I just realized I forgot to mention how I'm doing my rating system! Without further ado:

4 stars - LOVE LOVE LOVE wheeeee wheeeeee SUPERB jumping jacks calloo callay AWESOME.
3 - 3.5 stars - The writing and characterization are good going on excellent, the book does what it means to, it has a compelling plot, and I liked it with maybe one or two reservations.
2 - 2.5 stars - The writing/characterization are medium-well to good, the book may miss a mark but overall knows what it's doing, the plot may be a little predictable but still enjoyable, and I have mixed to generally pleased feelings.
1 - 1.5 stars - The writing/characterization are fair, the book is uneven in terms of tone or pacing, the plot is nothin' to write home about, and I have negative feelings.
0 - 0.5 stars - I f***ing hated this book and hope the author's armpits are infested with the fleas of a thousand smelly camels.

Alias Grace

by Margaret Atwood
Star Rating: 3.5 out of 4

I loooooooove unreliable narrators! They're so delightfully slippery even when they seem like they're being upfront, and they may even think they're being honest *themselves*. So amazing. So awesome. My favorite Unreliable Narrator Book is unquestionably The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, and it retains its title in my pantheon, but I'll say this: Alias Grace sure has more of them! This is evidenced by the fact that the title is Alias Grace even though "Grace" is the character's real name. It's enough to bring out cackles and gleeful handrubbing.

Alias Grace stars a convicted murderess, Grace, who's been locked up in asylums and penitentiaries for ten years for the murder of her employer and his housekeeper, and a young doctor, Simon Jordan, trying to puzzle out her story in order to advance his psychological career. The early part of the book contains letters, newspaper clippings, secondhand reports... in short, all sorts of perceptions and stories about Grace from external, and not necessarily unbiased, sources. It's like that wonderful trick at the beginning of Citizen Kane where they show a newsreel bio of Kane's life: it informs the audience and familiarizes them with the events about to come so they can free up their attention for the details. But these outside resources aren't very helpful, because opinion is sharply divided over Grace, who claims to have no memory of the murders: did she do it? Or was she forced into an accomplice role by James McDermott, who was also convicted and then hanged for his offence, and who pointed the finger at Grace to the last?

The doctor sets to work with great energy; in an amusing attempt to get Grace to recall the muders, he brings a different vegetable to each session, hoping she'll connect the veggie's growth underneath the earth with the cellar where the bodies were found. After a while, the bulk of the narrative is taken up by Grace telling Simon her life history. But it's clear that Grace is constructing her story, and it may not be entirely truthful. She has a very straightforward narrative voice that I found engaging, but is it real honesty, or the lack of emotion befitting a cold-blooded killer?

I found this narrative section is doubly effective, because in addition to being great storytelling it's a very interesting history of what life was like for a woman and maid in the mid-1800s: Grace is constantly defending herself from crude, handsy brutes on the lookout for an easy target. Other period elements faithfully represented in the book include gender relations among all classes, attitudes toward criminality and madness, the craze around spiritualism, and rudimentary psychology. At one point I was deathly afraid that Atwood was copping out with psychobabble, but she steered neatly away from the cliched multiple personalities schtick so owwie to my psych-trained brain.

Something fascinating to me was how predatory everyone in the book was. Grace is treated as an object of curiosity by everyone, even Simon, who, though very kind and interested in her story, is using her for his career's benefit. Simon, in turn, is preyed upon by his landlady (and his mother...geez), and other characters' indiscretions are abundant, notwithstanding the veneer of social respectability. Atwood does a really good job of displaying issues between the sexes at that time, and though it's clear it was harder to be female than male then, occasionally it's difficult to discern which party is predator and which prey. Especially when it comes to Grace.

Because most of the action took place ten years ago, the book unfolds slowly and seems, maybe, muted? But that seems appropriate for a narrative where so much goes on only underneath the surface, and what is said may not be the whole truth, or truth at all. On an interesting note, during the part of the story where Grace is recounting the murders, the narrative shifts from its typical pattern. The rest of Grace's narrative has been done in first-person, but here it changes to the third-person, only used previously when following the doctor's side of the story. It's a neat little trick to ensure that readers have the same distance from the story (and the truth) of the murders as Simon.

The issue of Grace's innocence or guilt is left as a matter of opinion throughout the book. There's evidence on both sides, though I will say I think Atwood tilts the balance toward one side of the scale in the closing chapters. (I won't say which.) I suppose the challenge to the reader is whether to pigeonhole her as innocent or guilty, as all the other characters try to do, or consider her as a complete person in her own right. Either way you go, it's a fascinating trip to your conclusion. This was my very first Atwood, and I'll definitely be seeking out more - maybe The Blind Assassin next?

Nitpick: when Grace is young she does a divining trick with her friend Mary that tells her the man she marries will have a name starting with "J" - so of course almost every blasted male character in the book has a "J" name. Eye roll.