Sometimes I read a book and it's really powerful. It moves me, but I don't like it and I certainly don't not like it, but I can't recommend it to anyone else. This is one of those books.
Bernice McFadden is a very brave writer. She writes the story of a family abused by a violent, drunk father for most of their broken lives. The narrator, Kenzie, unemployed and living on assistance with her mother, has recently discovered that she occasionally forgets that she hates her father. His recent illness having affected her in ways she did not foresee. She finds herself coming to his bedside even though he is unaware, and working through the memories of the havoc he caused in her life.
I knew I was in trouble on page 1. "A speck of dirt...hmm..right there, he said and smashed the hot tip of his cigarette into the soft middle of my eight-year-old palm." Page 1! It is to McFadden's credit that much of the abuse in this book is doled out over time, slowly, so that the reader almost begins to build a tolerance, but not really. It is excruciating. I found myself having to stop reading more than once and I cried a lot in while I was reading.
The book is so well written, I had to keep reading. The violence is tempered by other experiences that give the reader room to breathe. Each of the memories are laid out carefully. They are not chronological, but they are structural. Each one offering explanation of some part of the present you've just glimpsed. Combining to offer an explanation for how this family has become so very, very broken. How the various members thought they offered protection to one another, only to have it make things worse in the long run. Eventually, it seems to suggest that the hate eating away at Kenzie from the inside might in fact be worse than the external abuse suffered at the hands of her parents.
And that's the hardest thing about the book. It does such a good job of telling the story. It succeeds in giving the reader just enough that you can't write off her abusive father. He has his story too. And her mother, she has a story. It just so happens that the combination of their particular stories was so toxic and so ingrained that none of the family could escape. Kenzie the adult is just beginning to understand how those stories lead her here. Is understanding escape? Does having a reason for something make it's outcome any less painful? I don't know. I know I couldn't stop thinking about this book. It hurt to read, and I've not suggested it to anyone I know, but I'm not sorry I read it.
CBR5 - #3 The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Differnbaugh
I heard about this book on a network for kids who are aging out the foster system which the author co-created. It's awesome: https://camellianetwork.org/
This novel is about a girl who has just aged out of the foster system. Her case worker is taking her to a half way house where she has six weeks to find a job or they will kick her out. The story then moves back and forth through past and the present through Victoria's memories of how she got where and she is and what she's doing now.
Victoria has not had a positive foster experience. None of that is really her fault, but there are a few occasions where she can't seem to stay out of her own way. The novel delivers these slowly. The details are sparse and truly the horror of some foster situations is intensified because of that. If a family will deny a five year old food without batting an eye, what else will they do? If a foster parent makes you "prove" you're hungry... you get the idea.
She does at one point finally land in the home of a loving person. One who teaches her the language of flowers and it's an education that saves her life. All of the tension and drama of the novel center around this woman and Victoria's experience with her. To say anymore about it would spoil some of the more powerful moments in the novel.
This book is ultimately about triumph, which I think it had to be. Victoria is a believable character, although her circumstances post half-way house isn't always. A few things come a smidge too easily, or rather conveniently, but are necessary to propel the plot. Regardless of the circumstances though, the growth that Victoria experiences seems very real and one can only hope it's believable.
This novel is about a girl who has just aged out of the foster system. Her case worker is taking her to a half way house where she has six weeks to find a job or they will kick her out. The story then moves back and forth through past and the present through Victoria's memories of how she got where and she is and what she's doing now.
Victoria has not had a positive foster experience. None of that is really her fault, but there are a few occasions where she can't seem to stay out of her own way. The novel delivers these slowly. The details are sparse and truly the horror of some foster situations is intensified because of that. If a family will deny a five year old food without batting an eye, what else will they do? If a foster parent makes you "prove" you're hungry... you get the idea.
She does at one point finally land in the home of a loving person. One who teaches her the language of flowers and it's an education that saves her life. All of the tension and drama of the novel center around this woman and Victoria's experience with her. To say anymore about it would spoil some of the more powerful moments in the novel.
This book is ultimately about triumph, which I think it had to be. Victoria is a believable character, although her circumstances post half-way house isn't always. A few things come a smidge too easily, or rather conveniently, but are necessary to propel the plot. Regardless of the circumstances though, the growth that Victoria experiences seems very real and one can only hope it's believable.
CBR#5 - #2 every day, David Levithan
There is something about the character of the observer. We accept, often times, a certain wisdom from characters we deem as true observers. Their understanding of the world being greater than their own experience by virtue of the fact that they absorb so much from those around them. They learn to know things, to understand gestures and nuance. They see the things we don't recognize we're doing. We accept that observers on some level know more than we do. Or, I guess at least, I accept all of this.
This is very important when it comes to Levithan's every day. A, the protagonist, is only 16 years old. However, due to the unusual circumstances of his life, he is an observer in the truest sense of the word, that fact makes his wisdom believable. And he is pretty wise.
A wakes up in the body of someone different every day. It's always someone his own age, but everything else is up for grabs. He handles it pretty seamlessly at this point, although the novel alludes to his struggles earlier in life. Those allusions are somewhat sparse, probably because the logistics of explaining how A survived his first few years might prove impossible and would certainly detract from the magic of the rest of the story. We meet A as he slides into Justin's body. A guy he instantly doesn't like. A does, however, like Justin's girlfriend. And acting like a 16 year old, wise or not, he decides to break all the rules he knows about making his life work in order to be near her.
The rest of the book takes us through his daily experiences, waking in a different body each morning, and trying to figure a way to re-insert himself in Rhiannon's life. The more control he takes over the life he's in (cutting school, or making a promise, creating a memory the person may not remember the next day) the more trouble he leaves in his wake. As the book progresses, he is more and more desperate to make a life with Rhiannon and takes greater and greater risks with the bodies he has for a day.
The story is interesting enough, and one kid remembers feeling "possessed" by A and makes a lot of noise about it after A leaves him on the side of the road an hour from home and in trouble. It creates some good tension and sets A up to make some choices about what his life experience means.
The real story is in A's observations about each body and life he inhabits. The little markers he notices that allow him to immediately figure out the kid's situation. He reads behaviors and recognizes emotion etc. But most importantly his experience of have no body to which he is attached frees him from so much baggage that he has a clarity that seems so obvious when you're reading it, and yet, if it really were that obvious we'd have no bullies, no anorexia, etc. etc. etc.
This is very important when it comes to Levithan's every day. A, the protagonist, is only 16 years old. However, due to the unusual circumstances of his life, he is an observer in the truest sense of the word, that fact makes his wisdom believable. And he is pretty wise.
A wakes up in the body of someone different every day. It's always someone his own age, but everything else is up for grabs. He handles it pretty seamlessly at this point, although the novel alludes to his struggles earlier in life. Those allusions are somewhat sparse, probably because the logistics of explaining how A survived his first few years might prove impossible and would certainly detract from the magic of the rest of the story. We meet A as he slides into Justin's body. A guy he instantly doesn't like. A does, however, like Justin's girlfriend. And acting like a 16 year old, wise or not, he decides to break all the rules he knows about making his life work in order to be near her.
The rest of the book takes us through his daily experiences, waking in a different body each morning, and trying to figure a way to re-insert himself in Rhiannon's life. The more control he takes over the life he's in (cutting school, or making a promise, creating a memory the person may not remember the next day) the more trouble he leaves in his wake. As the book progresses, he is more and more desperate to make a life with Rhiannon and takes greater and greater risks with the bodies he has for a day.
The story is interesting enough, and one kid remembers feeling "possessed" by A and makes a lot of noise about it after A leaves him on the side of the road an hour from home and in trouble. It creates some good tension and sets A up to make some choices about what his life experience means.
The real story is in A's observations about each body and life he inhabits. The little markers he notices that allow him to immediately figure out the kid's situation. He reads behaviors and recognizes emotion etc. But most importantly his experience of have no body to which he is attached frees him from so much baggage that he has a clarity that seems so obvious when you're reading it, and yet, if it really were that obvious we'd have no bullies, no anorexia, etc. etc. etc.
CBR5 - #1 The Year of Fog, Michelle Richmond
I have to confess, I didn't select this book to read myself. It was selected by a member of my book club. I knew as soon as I read the synopsis I was in trouble. This post will be spoilery; consider yourself warned.
I don't read mysteries. Mostly because there are a lot of bad ones out there and I find that once I've read the hook at the beginning of the book, no matter how bad the writing, story, characterization, etc., I end up sticking with it to see if the end is as bad, obvious, surprising, or whatever that I anticipated it being. So, it's a whole lot of time reading something I don't like to get to end I don't care about buy have to know. I know, I have issues. I'm sure there are lots of great mysteries out there, I just can't take the risk anymore.
And so it is with this book. A 6 year old little girl in the care of her father's fiance is snatched from the beach while said fiance is distracted in the opening 10 pages of the book. The rest of the book is the fiance's experience as she doggedly searches for the little girl she let get away, even after her own father, the police, and everyone else have given up. Just, ugh.
So here are my issues in order:
There are relationships (lots of them) that with years of foundation and children together collapse under the weight of a missing child. This one is barely getting off the ground, there is nothing to suggest that the bond is any greater than any other year-old romance, and yet they muscle through 95% of the novel in a way that is totally UNBELIEVABLE. SHE LOST HIS CHILD while taking pictures on the first ever trip where he left them alone together. I could not get passed the fact that I didn't believe he would be in the same room with her let alone wanting to move on and marry her before the child was located.
All of those things aside, it's mostly a boring account of the protagonist walking the streets of San Francisco. I hate to give a book a bad review, but this book was just too much.
I don't read mysteries. Mostly because there are a lot of bad ones out there and I find that once I've read the hook at the beginning of the book, no matter how bad the writing, story, characterization, etc., I end up sticking with it to see if the end is as bad, obvious, surprising, or whatever that I anticipated it being. So, it's a whole lot of time reading something I don't like to get to end I don't care about buy have to know. I know, I have issues. I'm sure there are lots of great mysteries out there, I just can't take the risk anymore.
And so it is with this book. A 6 year old little girl in the care of her father's fiance is snatched from the beach while said fiance is distracted in the opening 10 pages of the book. The rest of the book is the fiance's experience as she doggedly searches for the little girl she let get away, even after her own father, the police, and everyone else have given up. Just, ugh.
So here are my issues in order:
- How do you get a child out of the country post 9/11 without a passport and the permission of one of her parents?
- How does an ex-addict, ex-wife, who reappears looking to reconcile when he daughter goes missing manage to hide her involvement from the police and yet still get found out by the photographer fiance?
- How does a non-parent of a missing child effectively snatch her right back in a foreign country and manage to get her back state side in a matter of hours with a few phone calls.
There are relationships (lots of them) that with years of foundation and children together collapse under the weight of a missing child. This one is barely getting off the ground, there is nothing to suggest that the bond is any greater than any other year-old romance, and yet they muscle through 95% of the novel in a way that is totally UNBELIEVABLE. SHE LOST HIS CHILD while taking pictures on the first ever trip where he left them alone together. I could not get passed the fact that I didn't believe he would be in the same room with her let alone wanting to move on and marry her before the child was located.
All of those things aside, it's mostly a boring account of the protagonist walking the streets of San Francisco. I hate to give a book a bad review, but this book was just too much.
Cannonball Read #5
I have signed up for the Cannonball Read every year. Every year, I read the books. Neveryear have I done the reviews. This year will be different! This year I will do the reviews
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