Review: The Fever by Megan Abbott

The Fever
Megan Abbott
2014
Little, Brown and Company

First lines:
"The first time, you can't believe how much it hurts."
[[No, they're not talking about that, although they could have been!!]]

Quick, nonspoilery summary:
One day, during class, Deenie Nash's best friend Lise has a seizure. The next day another girl experiences a strange episode, and suddenly the rumors and speculation are flying. The novel is told from the perspective of the Nash family: Deenie, her older brother Eli (also in high school), and her father Tom (a teacher at the high school). It was inspired in part by a real outbreak in an upstate New York high school. You can find a link to that story on Megan Abbott's website.

My thoughts:
I didn't love this book, but I thought it was very interesting. The shifting viewpoint was hard to follow at times. I read an advance e-galley, so I don't know if the actual book is set up the same way, but I imagine it is pretty close.
The town and the characters and the hysteria that ensues (or hysterias really even if that's not a word) are captured well. I could believe that I was reading about real teens and a real parent. Their inner lives felt authentic to me. I even thought the town name was perfect, and the lake with its strange water was a great addition.
When I try to think about this book, there is just so much content packed in here: vaccination concerns, environmental issues, teens, sex, and attitudes towards teens and sex and girls who have sex versus boys who have sex (hello, slut-shaming!), group mind, hysteria.
There were things I didn't like. I had a hard time with Gabby's character in particular. I can't really say why, but she just felt less authentic to me, like a device in the story more than a person. Skye too.
But Deenie and Eli in particular just nailed it for me. The teen experience.
I think this would make a great book club book, especially if your book group is good at using a book discussion for launching a wider discussion about society and social issues. Plus, you all would have read the book (in theory), so you wouldn't have to tiptoe around spoilers!

Rating: Read.

If you like The Fever by Megan Abbott, you might also like Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (YA) or Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (not YA). I am strongly tempted to also recommend a couple classics here, The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne or "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or even a book by the hugely popular John Green, Looking for Alaska.

Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt
2013
Little, Brown and Company
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

First lines:
While I was still in Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I'd been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom.

Quick nonspoilery summary:
When he was thirteen, Theo Decker survives an explosion that kills his mother. Afterward, he is cast adrift. I remember in the Tournament of Books forums, coming across the term WMFUN (white male f&ck up novel) to describe books about white males that are struggling to get their sh*t together. That is Theo. Even when he appears to have it together somewhat, he doesn't.

My thoughts:
So, The Goldfinch is not a short novel. It might make a nice doorstop, if the mistreatment of books were your thing. And Tartt's writing style does not lend itself to quick reading. It is long and meandering. The first lines are a good example of this. The first sentence is relatively straightforward. The second sentence is not. Also, Theo is not exactly the everyman hero of your dreams. In fact he is pretty unlikable. Sure, I felt badly for him, but when life gave him lemons, he didn't make lemonade. He sprayed the juice in someone else's eye, then rubbed the leftover fruit on his own wounds. But yet I still found myself rooting for him. I wanted him to get the girl and hang the painting over their bed and live happily ever after even as I knew this was a fantasy.
This was my second Tartt novel, so I knew sort of what to expect. I think that The Secret History feels tighter, but I enjoyed The Goldfinch more. It was a long, slow read, however. I think that I easily could have set it aside and not picked it up again at almost any point.

Rating: Read

If you liked The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, you might also like The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert or you could check out any of these other examples of the WMFUN:   http://bookriot.com/2011/10/06/the-white-male-fck-up-novel-a-guest-post-by-john-warner/. I feel I would be remiss of me not to mention a man that I consider a master of this genre and whose public persona is almost as unlikable as his characters: Jonathan Franzen. Enjoy!

Top Ten Tuesday - Top 10 Books on My Summer TBR

Every Tuesday, The Broke and the Bookish host a popular meme called Top Ten Tuesday. Here is my entry for this week:

Of course I want to read all the books, but sadly that's impossible. (And untrue because of course there are books that I don't want to read.) When I first sat down to make this list, I cross-checked it with summer releases and looked at my shelves, and hemmed, and hawed. And what I have settled on is a list of all the books that I have started recently and not finished, but that I want to finish. I will try to come back throughout the summer and cross off any titles that I have finished or abandoned for good.







1. The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
2. Old Filth by Jane Gardam
3. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
4. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
5. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
6. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
7. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
8. The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie
9. Casebook by Mona Simpson
10. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

What is on your list? Do you see any titles I should dump? (There were actually 3 that I have started that I took off the list to make room for these 10!)

First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intro - The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by Sea.  

Citizens, gather 'round your loudspeakers, for we bring you important updates! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors--wherever your loudspeaker is located, turn up the volume!

In local news, our Dear Leader Kim Jong Il was seen offering on-the-spot guidance to the engineers deepening the Taedong River channel. While the Dear Leader lectured to the dredge operators, many doves were seen to spontaneously flock above him, hovering to provide our Reverend General some much needed shade on a hot day. Also to report is a request from Pyongyang's Minister of Public Safety, who asks that while pigeon-snaring season is in full swing, trip wires and snatch loops be placed out of the reach of our youngest comrades. And don't forget, citizens: the ban on stargazing is still in effect.

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Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (and the Rooster in the Morning News Tournament of Books), The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson is a fictional rendering of North Korea. The novel tells the story of Pak Jun Do and the perils of everyday life in North Korea.

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What do you think? Would you read it? Have you read it?

Review: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller (audio)

The Dog Stars
Peter Heller
2012
Knopf
Read by Mark Deakins

First lines:
I keep the Beast running, I keep the 100 low lead on tap, I foresee attacks. I am young enough, I am old enough. I used to love to fish for trout more than almost anything.
My name is Hig, one name. Big Hig if you need another.

Quick nonspoilery summary:
Hig is one of the last people left after a major flu epidemic that killed everyone he knew. Nine years later, he lives at an small airport with his dog, Jasper, and a man named Bangley, whose distrust for others is matched only by his gun collection. Hig and Bangley need each other to survive. Hig hunts, fishes, farms, and patrols the perimeter in his airplane, and Bangley provides needed defense and weaponry. It is not much of a life, but it's a life. Until one day it is not enough anymore.

My thoughts:
I listened to the audio production of this title, and I really enjoyed it. The story is easy enough to follow without being boring.
I chose to listen to this book because it was available from the library at a time when the other audio titles I was interested in were not. For this, I am thankful. I did not find the dust jacket description particularly compelling. Another post-apocalyptic novel? And the main characters are a couple of men and a dog? Well, I was wrong. It is compelling. The characterizations in particular were great. I really grew to care about them. The writing was wonderful. Plain, but poetic. The landscape was well-described.
I appreciated also that there was very little of the before. Not a lot of time was spent on describing what happened, because ultimately that is not important. What is important is how you survive and at what cost to yourself and others. What is the price of your survival and is it a price worth paying?

Rating: Read+.

If you liked The Dog Stars by Peter Heller,  maybe try City of Thieves by David Benioff, which is set during the Siege of Leningrad during WWII. With D. B. Weiss, Benioff is the executive producer, showrunner, and writer for Game of Thrones on HBO, which makes it a timely choice if you have not read it yet.

Review: Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Dept. of Speculation 
Jenny Offill
2014
Alfred A. Knopf

First lines:
Antelopes have 10x vision, you said. It was the beginning or close to it. That means that on a clear night they can see the rings of Saturn.

Quick non-spoilery summary:
Dept. of Speculation tells the story of a marriage from the perspective of the wife in short scenes, some barely longer than a tweet. They are single, they meet, they fall in love, they move in together, they move, they have a child. All of their married life is encapsulated in the book in condensed form. Life in vignette.

My thoughts:
I loved this book. It was smart and witty and full of real feeling. In the beginning I kept texting my friend pictures of some of my favorite passages. The part of about new parenthood in particular is very funny. Then my texts tapered off, as I got to some less funny parts, but no less real. Sometimes I wondered how Offill had gotten in my head. The main character's struggles with the everyday-ness of life felt like mine.  
It is interesting how Offill weaves little bits of trivia throughout the text. On the surface they seem like non sequiturs, but yet they fit the narrative. The trivia becomes less frequent as the story progresses. 
In the end, it felt depressing, and it lost a little of its luster for me because of that.

"People keep telling me to do yoga, I tried it once at the place down the street. The only part I liked was the part at the end when the teacher covered you with a blanket and you got to pretend you were dead for ten minutes." (37) [on new parenthood]

If you like Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill, also try The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. If you have an elementary-age child, Offill's picture books are also worth a look. We particularly enjoyed 11 Experiments That Failed.

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