Review: These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
Published by: Delacorte Press on October 27, 2015
Genres: Historical fiction, YA
Rating: ★★★★☆
Description: Jo Montfort is beautiful and rich, and soon—like all the girls in her class—she’ll graduate from finishing school and be married off to a wealthy bachelor. Which is the last thing she wants. Jo dreams of becoming a writer—a newspaper reporter.

Wild aspirations aside, Jo’s life seems perfect until tragedy strikes: her father is found dead. The story is that Charles Montfort shot himself while cleaning his revolver, but the more Jo hears about her father’s death, the more something feels wrong. And then she meets Eddie—a young, smart, infuriatingly handsome reporter at her father’s newspaper—and it becomes all too clear how much she stands to lose if she keeps searching for the truth. But now it might be too late to stop.
 
The past never stays buried forever. Life is dirtier than Jo Montfort could ever have imagined, and this time the truth is the dirtiest part of all.

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This book is set in New York City in the 1890s, smack in the middle of the Gilded Age. I loved the descriptions of the city and sense of context and time. Of course I have to discuss our main character Jo, the classic strong-female-character-stifled-by-her-era. The author doesn’t pull any punches in describing her caged life; the restrictions, expectations, and lack of freedom. The poor girl has to fabricate an elaborate lie that she is writing a book about Jesus Christ just to be able to leave the house on her own.

Donnelly does a great job depicting her restless longing to do something more with her life than just be a high-society uptown wife, yet also her privileged naivete about how the other half lives (she has no idea what a prostitute is, for instance). She was born into a rich life of privilege, yet she romanticizes the “common life” as one of alluring freedom.

Her romance with Eddie was extremely predictable and a little fast, but that’s expected for a YA novel. Ultimately it’s nice to see how they bridge the gap between their social classes, and thankfully the slight love triangle plays a very, very small role.

The mystery itself was complex and winding, with lots of twists and turns. Some aspects were a bit predictable, but other reveals were a total surprise! The climax is quite thrilling, and the ending ties up loose ends plot-wise while still leaving it open for the characters. It doesn’t tie everything up neatly with a bow, it’s actually a little messy, which suits the story and the characters perfectly. It’s especially perfect for Jo, and I’ll leave it at that to avoid spoilers.

Verdict: Jennifer Donnelly delivers with a gripping historical mystery that is surprisingly mature for a YA novel.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

Review: This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger

This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger
Published by: Atria Books on September 3, 2019
Genre: Historical Fiction, Coming-of-age
Rating: ★★★★★
Synopsis: 1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.

Over the course of one unforgettable summer, these four orphans will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds. With the feel of a modern classic, This Tender Land is an en­thralling, big-hearted epic that shows how the magnificent American landscape connects us all, haunts our dreams, and makes us whole.

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The tale I’m going to tell is of a summer long ago. Of killing and kidnapping and children pursued by demons of a thousand names. There will be courage in this story and cowardice. There will be love and betrayal. And, of course, there will be hope. In the end, isn’t that what every good story is about?

The characters are the glue that hold this book together. These. Children. Ugh, I just wanted to give them all hugs. “The Vagabonds” are bound by friendship and a common desire to escape their awful lives at the Lincoln School, but they also each have their own individual struggles and journeys.

Odie, the main character, is a gifted storyteller and musician, desperately searching for home. Albert, his brother, struggles with the responsibility of protecting his brother and finding his place in the world. Mose, the only Native American of the group, struggles with loss of identity; he’s grown up in an environment that stamped out his heritage, including his given name. Then there’s Emmy, a sweet, naive young girl dealing with a huge loss.

There’s a fifth main character though! And that’s the landscape.

The synopsis makes us readers a promise. It vows that this book will carry us through “the great American landscape” — speaking for myself that’s a large part of why I even picked it up — and it absolutely follows through. This book is not just a coming-of-age story; it’s a journey through a vast, rolling landscape with an iron will of its own. The rivers, lakes, and fields materialize in Krueger’s heartbreakingly beautiful prose; through his words, the American Midwest becomes a driving force of the story.

The landscape is where Odie’s physical and spiritual trials intertwine. Just look at the title of Part I: God is a Tornado. Without giving away spoilers, nature is what precipitates some of Odie’s worst losses. Yet it’s also his escape and his refuge; whenever faced with trouble, the quartet escape down the river. In learning to love the land around him, Odie comes to love the people, and comes to terms with his own grief and desperation.

This device — mirroring a coming-of-age story with a physical journey through a unique landscape — is one of the oldest in literature. In Odie’s journey Krueger evokes Odysseus (in more ways than one, that’s Odie’s full name!) and Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn. It’s kind of like the Odyssey but with major Mark Twain vibes, and set in the Depression-era Midwest.

The plot took a little while to start moving, but once it did the book was hard to put down. As Odie and his friends journey down the Gilead river to the Minnesota river, dangers lurk around every corner. The story is paced well; the Vagabonds bounce from one circumstance to another, visiting all manner of colorful characters, some showing unexpected kindness and others posing major threats.

In terms of themes/motifs, this book packs in A LOT:

• The US’s horrible legacy of oppressing Native Americans and destroying their culture
• Searching for family/home
• Maintaining faith in the face of tragedy
• Evangelism and homelessness during the Great Depression
• The healing power of music

Usually I don’t like it when books try to cover so much ground; I prefer it when authors pick a theme to delve deeply into. But in this case I think it works because the scope of the plot and story itself is so sweeping, it naturally encompasses many big ideas.

If I had to point out a few nitpicks: The book is dramatic, the philosophizing parts of the narration are a bit on the nose at times, and some plot points definitely stretch credulity. Overall though, the plot and vivid descriptions tell an engaging story with a lot of heart.

Verdict: This Tender Land is a hopeful, sweeping coming-of-age story filled with vivid descriptions, meticulous historical detail, and heart-warming characters.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads

Review: Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin

Lavinia by Ursula K. LeGuin
Published by: Harcourt, Inc. on April 1, 2008
Genre: Ancient Historical Fiction, Mythology
Rating: ★★★★★
Synopsis: In The Aeneid, Vergil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life. Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers.

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A single daughter, now ripe for a man,
now of full marriageable age, kept the great household.

There’s something so fascinating about books that tackle the most ancient, iconic stories that are embedded deeply into the very fabric of Western literature, and breath new life into them.  Perhaps that’s why I loved Circe (by Madeleine Miller) and why I felt so drawn to this book — a reimagining of Virgil’s Aeneid through the eyes of Lavinia.

In the poem itself, Lavinia is an odd character. It’s as if — as LeGuin points out in Lavinia — Virgil only had room for one fleshed out romance: The tragic story of Dido, queen of Carthage. Lavinia, meanwhile, is the cause of the war that consumes the last part of the Aeneid, the impetus behind the bloodshed that the entire epic builds up to. Yet as a character, she is little more than a shadow, lingering in the background with barely any presence. The poem doesn’t even end with her marriage to Aeneas; it ends abruptly on the famous murder of Turnus (Aeneas’s rival for her hand in marriage). From a Homeric perspective, she is the Aeneid‘s Helen, yet she is a fraction of the character that Helen was; she doesn’t speak at all in the entire epic.

That’s why it’s so impressive that LeGuin centers her entire book around Lavinia, breathing life into her character and truly bringing the Aeneid to life. She builds up the Bronze-Age world of Laurentum and Latium with vivid imagery and a strong sense of place and time. From the first few chapters, it’s easy to fall into the rhythm of the book, the routines of prayer, piety, and salt-gathering the consume Lavinia’s life amongst a peaceful, rough kingdom of farmers.

LeGuin draws out Lavinia in fine detail, including her tumultuous relationship with her mother, the expectations placed on her as the daughter of a king, her deep connection to religion, and a sense of duty. Much of it comes, of course, from LeGuin’s imagination, but it doesn’t feel at odds with Virgil’s rougher sketch of Latium and its royal family.

One unique aspect of the book that was maybe more controversial — but that I liked — was Lavinia’s self-awareness as a literary creation. She meets several times with “her poet” — a ghost of Virgil, on his deathbed and regretting that his epic must be left unfinished — learning of the world he created, and reflecting how little life he gave her. This kind of character self-awareness is tricky to pull off but it works here. There’s a lot of complexity and shades to this device; Lavinia knows she owes her tenuous existence to Virgil but also operates as a character outside of the confines of his lines (at one point she points out he got the color of her hair very wrong).

Is this LeGuin’s own reflection on how literary characters start as creations of the author but ultimately take on varied shades from the readers that further color them?

I also really appreciated how knowledgeable and respectful LeGuin was of Virgil’s work. There are many references to prophecies of the glory of Rome to come culminating in Emperor Augustus — and that’s important because ultimately the Aeneid is a piece of Augustan poetry (meaning it was commissioned by the Emperor Augustus, intended to reflect the glory of his reign), and that context is absolutely vital, woven into its fabric. And though Lavinia is the main character, she also takes time to make sense of Aeneas — the contradictions between the humble, pious, rational warrior and the vengeful murderer presented in the famous closing scene of the Aeneid.

A final note is that I think it’s a lot easier to follow this novel and really understand the beats of the story if you’re familiar with the Aeneid. If you want to read it, I’d recommend this translation, but if you just want a quick overview you can find summaries here, here, and here.

Verdict: The Lavinia of this novel is very different from the silent, blushing maiden that sits in the background of Virgil’s work. LeGuin gives her a more modern spirit, presenting her as a full, intelligent, compassionate character, but one that rings true with the ancient setting and context.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller
Published by: Little, Brown and Company on April 10, 2018
Genre: Ancient Historical Fiction
Rating:
Synopsis: In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child—not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power—the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love

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In general, women in Greek myths tend to play one of four roles:

• Good mother/wife
• Damsel in distress
• Evil Sorceress
• Angry goddess

There’s never an in between. Women are constantly depicted as two-dimensional, lurking at the periphery of men’s stories. And the powerful women are always cruel.

Circe is, above all, a feminist book that gives a voice to the women of Greek mythology. It is a retelling that positions complex, multi-faceted women at the center. Not just Circe but also Penelope, Medea, Pasiphae (the mother of the Minotaur). It asks, what would we learn about these characters if we considered their whole stories?

It’s satisfying on many levels. First, as far as I can tell, Circe stays true to not just the fundamental bones of Greek mythology, but also the core motifs — heroism, fate, sacrifice, vengeance. It weaves in so many different myths and Greek epics:

• Jason and the Argonauts
• Medea
• Theseus and the Minotaur
• The war between the Gods and the Titans
• Daedalus and Icarus
• Prometheus
• The Trojan War

Even Aeneas gets a shout-out!

The character development is fantastic. Traditional tellings of myths have always cast Circe as an evil sorceress. Yet Miller dives into her past. She does not whitewash Circe’s cruelty but rather forces the reader to confront the very real character behind it. She turns Circe’s story from a simple legend about a cruel witch, into a story about an outcast, tossed aside by her family, abused time after time, and who finally discovers her own power and voice. Over hundreds of years we watch her evolve from a meek child, to an abused outcast, to a powerful witch unafraid of cruelty as a tool of revenge, to a patient and loving mother, to a wiser woman who understands her own strength and has found her own voice. Through it all, she never loses her fundamental tenacity, endurance, dignity, and empathy for humans.

Another aspect that fascinated me was the perspective that Miller sheds on the Odyssey. It’s not a spoiler to note that Odysseus plays a significant role in this book — Circe’s main role in Greek mythology is of the witch that he encounters on his journey. Having been forced to read the Odyssey in high school, I was fascinated by Miller’s very specific interpretation of the character and of the ending. It forced me to rethink how I read these myths of heroes seeking glory, and how foolish it is for everyone to assume that they all find peace and happiness in the end.

The prose was beautiful; Miller is clearly a skilled writer. My only nitpick was that the plot sagged a bit in the middle, but overall I appreciated the wide narrative scope of the book.

Verdict: Circe is a beautifully-written, engaging book that gives a voice to the women of Greek Mythology, and brings the well-worn motifs of fate, cruelty, and sacrifice to life.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads

 

 

Review: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
Published by: William Morrow Paperbacks on June 6, 2017
Genre: Historical fiction
RATING: 
Synopsis: 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.

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This is one of those books that practically screamed READ ME from the library shelf. The summary alone checks off many of the boxes for my ideal historical fiction book. Dual chronology, badass female spies, and wartime friendships? Yes, please!

Suffice it to say I started this book with high expectations, and it fully exceeded them, leaving me utterly breathless by the end.

Let me break down what really worked for this book:

1. The dual chronology and perspectives

This is one of those historical fiction books that follows two women in different time periods, with the chapters alternating in perspective. In practice, I think this kind of story is very tricky to pull off. The two plots cannot just run parallel to each other, entirely separate. In order to maintain the cohesiveness of a single book, they must interweave, connecting over decades and building to their climax at the same point in the book to amplify the intensity.

In this case, Kate Quinn made things even more difficult for herself by choosing to write Charlie’s chapters in first person, and Eve’s in the third person. As a result, transitions between perspectives included shifts both in storyline and point of view. If this book had been written by a lesser writer, those shifts would have been extremely jarring. Yet Quinn makes the transition feel perfectly fluid, and when the two storylines ultimately merge, it feels completely natural.

I do wonder why Quinn felt the need to shift point of view, though. Part of it is probably practical: To establish a firmer divide between Charlie and Eve’s perspectives. Yet I wonder if the larger reason is to maintain more of a mystery around Eve’s character?

From the beginning of the novel, Charlie is more of an open book to the reader. We begin inside her head, experiencing every thought and feeling. Eve, on the other hand, is seen for the first time from an outside perspective (Charlie’s). The reader’s first impression is of a mysterious, out-of-control drunk. Then later, in her point-of-view chapters, the third person point-of-view means that the reader is just a bit farther removed from her than from Charlie, maintaining some of that mystery.

That’s my theory, anyway.

2. Eve’s World War I narrative

Charlie’s perspective is interesting (I was surprised by how invested I became in her search for her cousin, Rose) and she was an entertaining narrator, but Eve’s World War I story was more captivating. Eve is one of the most fierce, complex characters that I have ever read about. Her will and mental strength is simply unbreakable, and her journey and transformation over the course of the book are equal parts breathtaking and heartbreaking.

The story of the Alice Network is an incredible piece of forgotten history. I had never heard of this World War I network of female spies, but these women were simply remarkable. I can barely imagine the courage required to throw themselves into danger with such little chance of success. If you like books about unsung heroes, this is certainly one of them.

Sidenote – A few of the most prominent Alice Network characters in this book were real people. So pro tip: Don’t read the Wikipedia page first, because it will spoil some important parts of the book.

3. The villains

Rene Bordelou. Just typing out the name makes me cringe. When I began the book, I could not imagine what made Eve hate him as intensely as she did. Yet by the time I reached the ending, I too loathed every inch and aspect of him, from his unblinking eyes to his weird, pretentious obsession with Baudelaire.

The worst part is that he is not only a horrible snake of a human being but is also completely believable. I have no trouble believing that men like Rene – opportunistic, disloyal, power-hungry, greedy, and abusive – truly existed and did similarly awful things during World Wars I and II.

The second villain of the book, I think, is war itself. There is a great deal of subtle commentary about the cost war extorts from everyone involved. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but many characters – including Finn (Eve’s Scottish hand-for-hire and Charlie’s love interest), Eve, and Charlie’s brother – are left with deep post-war mental scars. Quinn does not hold back in detailing the impact of war, and the way its tendrils reach out years and years into the future.

What didn’t work for me: The romance (Charlie and Finn)

Honestly, I saw it coming from a mile away. This is one of those rather contrived romances that made me roll my eyes a bit.

To me, Finn as a character is just kind of meh. In comparison to the wonderfully fleshed out, incredible characters and relationships of Eve, Lilli, Charlie, and Violette, he faded into the background a bit. Throughout Charlie’s road trip through France, I was far more interested in the evolving friendship between Charlie and Eve than in Charlie and Finn’s budding love affair. Even right after finishing the book, I don’t remember much about his character besides his temper and his Scottish accent.

Verdict: Kate Quinn delivers with an incredible book spanning decades, filled with rich, complex characters, a fascinating historical story, and a fast-paced plot.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads.

4 Genre-Bending Books that Will Blow Your Mind

There’s this idea often voiced in the world of writing that “everything good has already been written”. It’s the depressing notion that good book ideas are so hard to find because they simply don’t exist anymore. It’s also totally false.

Maybe many of the core ideas that genres are built upon have been exhausted. Maybe it’s hard to dream up a classic epic fantasy that wasn’t written to death by J.R.R Tolkein or George R.R Martin. But all that means is that the future of innovative writing ideas lies in the spaces between genres. Nowadays the books that are truly, refreshingly original are those that cross, bend, and blur genre boundaries. The deepest, most creative stories are told by books that straddle genres and defy convention.

So if you’re like me, and you love dabbling in all manner of different genres and ideas, here are 4 of my favorite books that cross genre lines:

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This enduringly incredible book has often been shoe-horned into science-fiction. On one level that may seem right because dystopia is one of the biggest subgenres of sci-fi, and The Handmaid’s Tale is about as dystopic as it gets.

The problem is, that’s a gross oversimplification.

Without spoiling too much, this book is set in a future totalitarian, Christian theocracy that has violently overthrown the US government. Women are completely subjugated, stripped of all rights, and the eponymous ‘handmaids’ are women who exist to bear children for their masters. If much of the premise revolves around a future society totally abandoning science and technology, can it truly be called science-fiction?

Margaret Atwood herself has argued that this book really belongs in the category of speculative fiction, which isn’t as much a genre as a collective of dystopian dramas that don’t follow sci-fi conventions and lack clear genre boundaries and definitions.

In fact, the book is rooted in history; Atwood has said that, “One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened… nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities.” In short, everything about the horrifying future society in The Handmaid’s Tale is taken directly from the past.

2. Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

Though often overshadowed by its famous predecessor Ender’s Game, in my opinion this sequel is the better book. Speaker for the Dead takes place 3,000 years after the events of Ender’s Game, focusing on the far-off planet Lusitania.

What makes Lusitania so special? It’s the first planet where humans have encountered intelligent life-forms, dubbed the “piggies”. It harbors a deadly disease, the descolada. Oh, and the piggies have an unfortunate habit of brutally murdering researchers that get too close to them.

Ender arrives to Lusitania for the funeral of a recently dead researcher, and quickly becomes embroiled in the rising tensions between the piggies and humans, the mystery of the piggies’ strange ways, and a dysfunctional family.

Unlike Ender’s Game, this book lacks the exciting space-fights and action sequences. It may center around futuristic space travel and sentient aliens, but it’s far, far more than just science-fiction. It’s a philosophical contemplation on sin, redemption, and the visceral human fear of the unknown. Above all, this book asks whether humans can truly, peacefully coexist with another species. It also draws upon history, paralleling the human-piggie dynamics with the interactions between Portuguese conquistadors and Native Americans. As if to punctuate that point, Card makes the human society on Lusitania both Spanish speaking and very Catholic.

It’s a mystery, a family drama, a space opera, and a musing on humanity’s most strongly held fears, all rolled in one amazing novel.

3. Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred was born out of a unique fusion of science-fiction and historical-fiction. It’s the story of Dana, a modern African-American woman who is thrown back in time to the Antebellum South. The main events of the book take place in the early-1800s era history. It’s full of rich, incredibly immersive descriptions of everyday plantation life, interspersed with brutally sharp accounts of everyday brutalities. It’s fascinating to read about how Dana somehow settles into her new life posing as a slave, and the uncomfortable ease with which she eventually adapts to her dire situation and accepts the institution of slavery as a reality.

Most books treat the past and present as two solidly separate entities, yet Kindred blurs their lines to the point where Dana starts to lose her grip on which reality she truly belongs in. It also doesn’t demand concrete explanations of the mechanics behind time travel (as most sci-fi books do). Instead, Kindred is content to simply speculate.

It’s a book that blurs borders often assumed to be concrete, and in doing so, effortlessly interweaves both sci-fi elements (like the causal time loops) and the main historical narrative.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

4. Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter threads so many genres together that it’s nearly impossible to identify them all, and that’s probably why it’s such an original, innovative book.

The plot is simple: Jason Dessen is captured by a masked abductor, wakes up in an alternative-universe world that he does not recognize, and struggles to find his way back home.

At its core it’s an action-packed thriller that sprints to the finish line at a breathless pace, and practically brims with suspense. Sci-fi elements drive the plot, yet they’re presented in a simple, easy-to-understand way that melts in with the quickly-moving story. The science is worked into the book, but it’s not the most significant part by any reasonable measure. In fact, romance is perhaps the most crucial element that drives the main characters and defines their relationships. Yet it’s also written with the feel of a mystery as Jason strives to uncover the reality of his situation.

The best part of Dark Matter is that because it blends so many genre hallmarks together, it’s able to be totally original while also appealing to an incredibly wide audience. It cherry-picks the best of suspense, thrillers, mysteries, romance novels, and speculative sci-fi, and mashes them up into a book that’s equal parts engaging and thought-provoking.

(If you want to read more about this book, check out my official review).

Review: Kindred by Octavia Butler

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Published by: Doubleday in June 1979
Genre: Science-fiction, Historical-fiction, African-American literature
RATING: ★★★★★
Synopsis: Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland. After saving a drowning white boy there, she finds herself staring into the barrel of a shotgun and is transported back to the present just in time to save her life. During numerous such time-defying episodes with the same young man, she realizes the challenge she’s been given: to protect this young slaveholder until he can father her own great-grandmother.

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This novel has a simple, yet intriguing premise: A young, modern (1970s-era) African-American woman is transported back in time to the Antebellum South.

I always enjoy discussing the origins of a novel of this kind – how did the author come up with such a unique idea? – and this particular book has a very interesting background. Octavia Butler was inspired by a Black Power Movement from her college days, in which she heard a young man blaming the older African-American generations for their “humility and their acceptance of disgusting behavior.” He even declared that “I’d like to kill all these old people who have been holding us back for so long.” (A little extreme, no?)

In writing Kindred, Butler sought to counter his argument by asking a simple question: If a modern person had to deal with the challenges of their ancestors, could they survive? What kind of context would they gain, experiencing firsthand the kind of courage required simply to endure?

I think this is part of what makes Kindred feel so authentic and meaningful: It comes straight from Butler’s heart and experiences. Through Dana, she draws upon her own past working odd blue-collar jobs while struggling to launch a writing career. Tiny details – like having to heat up potatoes for meals – add so much because Butler experienced them. In Alice and Sarah, two slaves that Dana befriends, Butler channels her mother, and the sacrifices made to provide for her family.

In many ways, it’s representative of the larger truth that authors are often at their best when they use their own experiences as springboards to explore deeper, more extended ideas and insights. By drawing upon her own life and ideals Butler reaches out and connects with the past, with long-dead ancestors, on a profound level. Every detail – from the descriptions of the plantation, to the everyday brutalities suffered, to the dynamics and relationships between slaves – is so sharp and realistic, I can almost believe she experienced it all herself.

Another unique aspect is the way that Kindred straddles both science-fiction and historical-fiction, practically fusing the two genres. It combines the time-travel element with the totally immersive journeys back to the Antebellum era.

Part of the reason that this unusual genre-defying plot works is that Butler doesn’t spend too much time fleshing out the mechanics of how/why Dana is repeatedly transported into the past (and let’s face it, she would have to work really hard to come up with a half-way plausible explanation anyways). Dana reaches the conclusion that Rufus is her ancestor, and that she and he share a connection where she’s repeatedly called back to the past to ensure that he lives long enough to father the next in her familial line. And that’s that.

The book is a little vague on the finer points of the time travel, but I’ve concluded that ultimately it’s a closed/causal time loop (which you can read about here if you’re interested). This, in my opinion, is way more neat and elegant than the crazy Back-to-the-Future style time travel with alternate universes and whatnot.

In many ways, the lack of focus on the time travel itself allows the book to focus more on Dana’s actual experiences in the past, and the deeper relationships that she forges. Some of the most emotional parts of the book are where she realizes how quickly she is able to accept and internalize the institution of slavery when she is forced to live with it. It gets to the point where she has spent so much time in the past, she starts to feel out of place in her present. Which is incredibly scary.

A final thought – one of the best parts is the complexity of the relationship between Dana and Rufus. Rufus is ultimately a product of his time. Perhaps he’s not an innately evil person, nor is he the caricature monster slave-owner, but as he grows up and adopts his father’s brutal tendencies his bond with Dana grows more and more fragile. There’s an added dynamic that it’s technically his fault that Dana is chained to the past, yet she keeps feeling compelled to help him.

Verdict: Kindred is a thoughtful, immersive fusion of two seemingly separate genres. Driven by Butler’s own incredible ability to connect with the past, it doesn’t hold back at all. It offers a compelling, often brutal, look at how a modern person would survive facing their ancestors’ challenges.

Find it on Amazon and Goodreads

Review: Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen
Published by: Viking Books on March 20, 2018
Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult
RATING: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: Her name is Sarah. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, and Jewish in 1939 Germany. And her act of resistance is about to change the world.

After her mother is shot at a checkpoint, fifteen-year-old Sarah meets a mysterious man with an ambiguous accent, a suspiciously bare apartment, and a lockbox full of weapons. He’s part of the secret resistance against the Third Reich, and he needs Sarah to hide in plain sight at a school for the daughters of top Nazi brass, posing as one of them. If she can befriend the daughter of a key scientist and get invited to her house, she might be able to steal the blueprints to a bomb that could destroy the cities of Western Europe. Nothing could prepare Sarah for her cutthroat schoolmates, and soon she finds herself in a battle for survival unlike any she’d ever imagined. But anyone who underestimates this innocent-seeming girl does so at their peril. She may look sweet, but she’s the Nazis’ worst nightmare.

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I found this book in the middle of an ARC giveaway at my local library, and the summary immediately drew me in. It’s the kind of pure YA historical fiction that I haven’t touched in a while, and I was ready to dive back in.

Orphan Monster Spy (I really love this title by the way, it fits the book so perfectly) starts en media res, and to be honest, it’s a little jumbled. From the beginning, the narration from Sarah’s POV is punctuated by echoes of her mother that she hears in her head. Even though Killeen differentiates her inner “mom’s voice” with italics, I found it a little confusing, especially since I didn’t realize that it was her mother’s voice that she was imagining/hearing for a good three pages. I’m also personally not a big fan of beginnings that throw characters into lethal situations before I’ve gotten to actually know them or care about them much. Ultimately it works because Sarah is the kind of character that shines in life-threatening situations, but it isn’t the best part of the book.

The rest of the book, however, was fantastic. I read most of it in one heart-pounding sitting, completely unable to tear my eyes from the page. The writing was totally immersive, and the ending was filled with insane twists and a thrilling climax. If you plan to read this book then get ready to pull an all-nighter, because it is NOT easy to put down.

The character development is so good. Sarah is smart, sharp, and resourceful. Yet she’s also rather violent and sometimes impulsive. She’s the survivor of a life’s worth of accumulated hardships, the victim of a heart-wrenching backstory that’s woven in throughout the book through flashbacks and her own reflections. I quickly fell in love with her knack for talking her way out of sticky situations and her sharp-witted nature. She’s a badass, but that doesn’t mean that she’s just another headstrong, overly-powerful YA teenage protagonist. Instead she’s a multifaceted character with a truly unique voice. She’s a gymnast, actress, and spy all rolled up into one awesome character.

Best of all, Killeen doesn’t give all of her to the reader at once. He doesn’t dump all of her awful past experiences and troubled relationship with her mother over the course of a few pages. He uncovers Sarah bit by bit, peeling back layer after layer in small pieces, and it works so well. He’s also consistent in Sarah’s characterization, which makes her seem all the more real. One of the most admirable (and terrifying) aspects of her character is the way that she bottles up her most horrifying memories and worst nightmares, and then uses them as fuel to get through her scariest situations. By the end of the book, this becomes hauntingly familiar.

Overall, I would say this book is surprisingly mature. A lot of YA historical fiction novels — particularly World War II books — occupy a very similar space within the genre, but this book is far more innovative and unique. The spy storyline takes it to an entirely different place from other YA novels. Rather than the usual story of a Jew on the run from Nazis, Sarah is an Aryan Jew perfectly positioned to infiltrate a boarding school filled with brainwashed daughters of Nazi officers. If other books tend to be cat-and-mouse games, this one features a mouse walking straight into a snake’s open jaw. Even better, the book alludes to the consequences Sarah would face if discovered without having to explicitly detail them (since everyone is familiar enough with WWII to have a decent idea). The constant threat of these unspoken horrors constantly looms over the story and raises the stakes even higher.

It also doesn’t shy away from the brutal reality of Sarah’s world. It’s not an overly gory book but there are parts that are chillingly violent. Killeen doesn’t pull any punches, and that’s what helps maintain the heart-gripping tension that sustains the breathless pace of the plot. The boarding school is filled with appropriately horrifying people, and the subtle nods to true historical events in the war create an ominous backdrop.

Above all, most of the supporting characters are fleshed out. I love that Killeen develops characters that are obviously brainwashed and violently bigoted without making them cardboard cutout villains, as so many other WWII books tend to do. From Elsa Schafer, to the Mouse, to Foch, the supporting cast each still have their own unique backstories, trials and tribulations, and personalities. The only character that I wished had been developed more was the Captain. But then again, he’s a spy and a liar by trade, so perhaps that was too much to wish for.

Verdict: Orphan Monster Spy is a heart-wrenching roller coaster ride, a spy thriller set against the high-pressure backdrop of Nazi Germany filled with wonderfully fleshed out characters, immersive writing, and fast-paced twists that will satisfy any suspense-loving reader.

Find it on  Amazon and Goodreads