Book Review - Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Talented musician Andi has not recovered from her younger brother Truman's death. More than a year later, she's still reeling, dependent on pills to get through every day. Her only solace is music, in all its varieties, from classical to the Decemberists to Radiohead to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  When her father comes to Brooklyn and sees the situation Andi and her mother (who relentlessly paints portraits of Truman) are in, he takes Andi with him to Paris and sends her mother away for intensive treatment. But a change of scenery doesn't take away Andi's pain, and all she wants to do is return to Brooklyn and rescue her mother.

At her father's friends' place in Paris, she comes upon the diary of Alex, a teenage girl living during the French Revolution. It's the one thing that offers her some kind of escape, someone else in the throes of unbelievable suffering and horror, whose relationship with a ten year old future king Louis-Charles very much mirror's Andi's relationship to her brother. The more Andi finds out about Alex, the more she is intrigued. And she's not sure if it's the pills she pops or something else, but there are these moments when she feels like Alex is calling out to her, begging for her story to be told, to be resolved, for the mystery of Louis-Charles to be solved.


Jennifer Donnelly's latest book is absolutely brilliant.  Clocking in at just under 500 pages, this story absolutely warrants the length of the book.  There's so much that happens as Andi and Alex's story become intertwined, never mind the economy of language. Donnelly has clearly done her research to make Andi's musical interests complex, compelling, and so real. The characters, from Andi and Alex, to Andi's parents, to Andi's friend Vijay, are well-developed and all interesting in their own right. This book will definitely be getting some worthy Printz consideration and I feel so lucky to have been able to read an advanced copy.

Definitely one of my favorite books of the year. Also, the first time I ever read a book at a baseball game. (I intended only to read in between innings but towards the end I was incapable of putting it down!)

Putting my eggs in a lot of baskets

Every time I let a query out loose into the world (or realistically, into an agent or assistant's mailbox) I acknowledge that I've done everything I can. Whatever happens happens. It's a kind of zen moment, not unlike the way, all through junior high, high school, and college, I took that deep breath as the exams were handed out. I had done all I could to prepare; whatever happens happens.

I've been realizing that for all the research I do, querying is still a complete crap shoot. Agents that were interested in my last book? Well, by and large, they aren't interested in this one. And the agents that rejected my last manuscript? Well, okay, some of them definitely rejected this one. But a good deal (at least 4) that rejected my last book off the query are now requesting my new manuscript. And with enthusiasm!

As a result, I've been keeping my basket pretty full of eggs. Every time a rejection comes in, I send off one to two queries. I have four fulls out with agents at the moment, a number that makes me feel really good... until a few days pass and I start anxiously checking my email.

Luckily, at least for the rest of today and tomorrow, I've got a fabulous book to keep me busy (at least until the top of every hour, when I check my email): Jennifer Donnelly's Revolution. I picked up an ARC at Annual and had been holding off starting it because I wanted to read it over a few days when I could really savor its 470-something pages. So far, so sooo good.

Massive Disappointment

I don't usually post negative reviews here, but I have to admit that I just read what very quickly and easily became my LEAST favorite read of 2010.  I was on my way up to Montreal for the weekend and to ensure that reading happened, I brought along only books that I had to read (i.e. Best Fiction for Young Adults nominations). And I started reading the one that looked the most exciting. Oh boy, did I make a mistake.

The book that massively disappointed me debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, so it's probably not in any danger. Also, one of its two co-authors is mega famous, which probably won't hurt matters. I'm looking at you, James Frey.

The book in question is I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (a pseudonym for James Frey and a co-author). I kind of wish the book had been written by an actual alien. Because maybe then it would have been written in a language that I am not able to read.  I Am Number Four has an interesting premise-- I'll give it that. Apparently Hollywood gave it that as well, because Michael Bay is producing the film version. The book supposes that when the planet Lorien was being invaded by Magadorians, nine young children escaped and made it to the United States, along with the Lorien guardians. But the children were bound together by a really stupid--if you want to know what I truly think--curse. They can only be killed in order (Two could not die before One, etc). When the book starts, Three has been killed.  Number Four, or known by the citizens of a small town called Paradise, Ohio, as John Smith.

If you're thinking John Smith isn't exactly original, well, you're onto something. The whole book suffers from "isn't exactly original." While there are some truly exciting action scenes at the end around the 400 page mark, the rest is highly predictable and extremely boring. John Smith falls for the waify blonde at school and any time they speak, I felt the need to find a spoon to gag myself with. It was that bad. John Smith (Number Four) finds out that his special skill is he is essentially fireproof. So of course his girlfriend gets stuck in the basement of a house on fire.

Let it be known that I went into this book with an open mind. I wanted to be entertained on the five and a half hour drive to Montreal. I didn't think that this entertainment would come in the form my dramatic readings of many a ridiculously cliched passage. Then again, I had a niggling doubt ever since the major typo on the first page of the first chapter ("blxew" instead of "blew") that this one may not have received the editorial attention that it needed. You know, because it really should've just been a script for the movie.

This is one of those rare books where I guarantee the movie will be better the book. It cannot possibly be worse.

On surprises

I've been hesitant to write too much about my manuscript on this blog, but I think it's finally time. Yesterday was a bit of a doozy. It seems that agents are finally coming back from their summer vacations and ready to send out all those rejections. I was getting a little far away from modesty a few weeks ago, with 7 out of 10 responding agents requesting to see more (6 full manuscript requests, one partial request).

Well, this week isn't going like that at all. Yesterday I received a very nice, personalized rejection to a full request. And I guess I forget what it feels like -- especially as more time goes on and I started to wonder how things might turn out -- to be let down. It's crushing, frankly. And while there were glimmers of promise in the rejection (as in, the agent had nice things to say about my protagonist -- another agent, responding from a partial request, couldn't stop telling me how much he did not care for my protagonist!), I read the one line I dreaded. The agent mentioned that the fact that my book deals with the Iraq War would make it difficult to place with a publisher.

I guess this is the time to say it. My book is about a teenage anti-war activist finding out that her idol, her uncle, has died protesting the Iraq War. It shatters her worldview and puts her on a quest (okay, a road trip) to find out more about this man, because she's terrified at the idea that she might one day end up in his shoes. Now, based on my query letter, it's pretty obvious that the book deals with the Iraq War. Is it going to be my albatross?

I sincerely, sincerely hope not. On the one hand, it's kind of hard to believe that possibly the precise thing that catches an agents' eye (i.e. that the book has that kind of real world relevancy) would be what sinks it. I'd have to think that most agents who request the book aren't already thinking that they have no hope in finding a market for it. Otherwise, why would they have requested it?  Meanwhile, in the same week where this full rejection came in, I've also been hammered with rejections. Nine rejections in a row! I'm almost (she writes, while checking her email every ten minutes) leery of checking my email, my inbox seeming so chocked full of disappointment.

But then last night I remembered something. I was out at the Druid participating in their weekly Wednesday trivia with some friends. I love trivia, and so I was having a great time despite the fact that our team was not doing very well after the first two rounds. We just let go of it and put it all on the line in the last bonus question, in the last round. We risked 20 points (knowing we had very little chance of winning either way), hedging our bets that the license plate with a blue background and gold (eh, yellow really) lettering is Delaware's. After a tie-breaker question, the trivia announcer starts reading off where the teams finished.  With the exception of the top three teams, he reads the team names and points out in random order. One after another, a team is named, a score is announced. Our score, which I've tabulated on the handy sheet, is higher than them, still higher.  He reads third place. We're still higher. And second place. And still our team has not been named. But the tie breaker? We shoot glances at each other across the table. No freaking way. And the winner is.... SUKI!  We scream! We won?!??!

There were so many silly things we got wrong or didn't wager smartly on (Charlottetown is in Prince Edward Island, not Nova Scotia --- clearly, despite all of my Anne of Green Gables knowledge, that was a major gaffe on my part; also, paramecium, John Grisham, etc, etc.). But we didn't give up. We stuck around, we scored 39 points in the last round. We won.  We've been to two trivia nights there now, and we won both times (albeit in very different fashions).

And so I guess this is what I come away with, thinking about rejection, about winning and losing, about sheer surprises. You do it because you love it (writing, trivia). And you keep putting yourself out there. I really believe in miraculous surprises. And I believe in my book. And I'm nowhere near done querying.

Book Review - The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez

Lucia has been looking forward to her first dance forever. So it's a huge relief when her mom actually lets her attend it, especially given everything that's been going on lately.  It's 1961, two years after the communist revolution in Cuba, and Lucia and her family are finally seeing the changes in their neighborhood: so many soldiers that Lucia's mom won't let her and her younger brother leave the house alone and their doctor, murdered and hung on a tree in the park as an "example." But even the dance becomes a disaster, as everyone from her crush Manuel to her best friend Ivette is so gung-ho about the revolution. When someone betrays Lucia's parents, they find they have no other choice for their children but to send them to the United States, hoping to follow soon after with exit visas of their own.

Debut author Christina Diaz Gonzalez has crafted a harrowing story, based on true events during what became known as Operation Pedro Pan, which brought over 14,000 unaccompanied minors from Cuba to the United States. Lucia's struggles are so real, from the anxieties of leaving everything she knows behind, adjusting to life in an extremely foreign place (Nebraska), and watching her closest friendship slip away. This was the perfect read for the bum mood I found myself in yesterday. It absolutely transported me to another time and place, with the vivid descriptions of Cuba and spot-on 1960's dialogue.  Gonzalez is an author to watch!

Grownups reading kids' books? No way!

It seems like everybody and their mother has tweeted or blogged their response to Pamela Paul's essay in last week's New York Times Book Review. While I can't say I'm totally surprised, and agree with Gayle Forman that the NYTimes is a little behind on realizing that adults are reading YA and children's books -- I mean, seriously, who hasn't spied many a subway reader reading Twilight or The Hunger Games -- I guess my initial reaction is that Paul needed to have her interest in YA validated by the literary establishment. Or maybe it's just what the New York Times needed? I don't know.

At the Homewood Library, we recognized this trend and started a Cross Overs book discussion group, where we discussed YA titles with all ages (well, we opened it up to ages 11 to 111). Adults from all backgrounds have been drawn to YA for precisely the reasons that are pointed out in the article, from the books' raw emotion and the "immediacy of the prose," to the fact that, frankly, there's a lot of excellent storytelling going on in YA right now. As someone who is completely absorbed in reading and trying to parcel out my time for worthy books, I've found that I can no longer get through many adult books, even the ones with stellar reviews that appeal to my taste. Compared to most YA, it takes so long for the story to get started in these literary adult books that I flat out lose interest. Despite the fact that I used to get through an adult book a week before serving on the Best Fiction for Young Adults Committee, I've found that now, I can't even check adult books out from the library. I just can't seem to read them before their due dates arrive.

While it's great to read that Lev Grossman and Caitlin Macy are discussing and enjoying YA, it's kind of amusing to think that they've only been doing this since 2008. They've got a lot of catching up to do.

Track my reading

Now that I've got my trusty new iPhone 4, I've joined GoodReads. I'm hoping that with a reliable iPhone--i.e. one that does not mysteriously run out of power whenever it feels like it--I will post lots of updates to GoodReads from their mobile app. You can find me by clicking on the widget to the right.  Now, back to updating my reading log from 2010. 

With 203 titles, this might take a little while. I guess it's something to keep me occupied during this weekend's Red Sox-Yankees series. Something tells me this series can go one of two ways. One, the Red Sox sweep despite all their injuries and become a force to be reckoned with. Or we go out there and showcase all our weaknesses and it's basically the end of the season, turning the rest of August and September into a major league tryout session for the AAA team. It wouldn't be the end of the world; I just didn't realize that when I first said this season was starting to feel like 2006, that it would actually turn into something worse than 2006.

I leave you with Youkilis, who has plenty of time to sit around reading, with his non-injured hand.

Book Review - Amy and Roger's Epic Detour

I laughed, I cried, I... wanted to go on a road trip?

If you don't have those reactions to Morgan Matson's excellent debut novel Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, I just might wonder if we actually read the same book.

Amy's life is irrevocably changed in the aftermath of her father's death in a car accident back in March.  The book begins just after the school year ends. Amy's mother is uprooting what is left of her family (17 year old Amy and her twin brother Charlie) and moving them all the way across the country from Orange County, CA, to Connecticut. She's already made the move out there and now she needs Amy to drive their car across the country. The problem is that Amy hasn't driven since the accident, so her mom has enlisted Roger, a rising college sophomore, to drive Amy out there.  Amy hasn't seen Roger since he was a kid, but once she sees him... well, let's just say things start looking the littlest bit better (read: Roger is a hottie).

Once Amy and Roger set off on the road trip, one that has been meticulously planned by Amy's mother, they decide to take one detour, and then another. Pretty soon they've taken control of the road trip, leading them to much more exciting places than Akron, Ohio and Terre Haute, Indiana (Amy's mom's projected resting points).

Matson has a way of writing these characters--not just Roger and Amy, but the supporting cast that gets fleshed out during the detours--so that they feel absolutely, breathing-life real. I couldn't help falling for Roger, with his boyish obsession with explorers and understandable fixation on his recent ex, and I wanted so badly for Amy to come to terms with her father's accidental death and reconcile with her family. And I loved Roger's playlists, as well as the receipts, snapshots, and other road trip ephemera interspersed throughout the book.  They made me feel like I went on the road trip too!

This trip is so worth the ride. Read if you like Sarah Dessen, Deb Caletti, Sara Zarr, etc. I think this one's going to find a LOT fans.

Book Review - A Little Wanting Song by Cath Crowley

I could not get enough of the Australian YA books last week, apparently, going from reading Jaclyn Moriarty's Ghosts of Ashbury High to Cath Crowley's A Little Wanting Song.

It's summer in Australia, which means Charlie is heading to her grandparents' place for Christmas. But it won't be the same, because now, in addition to Charlie's mother being gone, Gran is gone as well. And the ghosts are everywhere.  Charlie still carries on conversations with her mother and Gran, despite their physical absence from her life. She is coming off a terribly embarrassing situation--losing her bikini top at a party filled with her peers--and she feels her closest friendship slipping away from her. So she turns to music, to her guitar, to writing, playing, and singing her own songs. But not in public.

Then there's Rose, who is desperate to leave her small town, frightened to death of following in her mother's footstep, and being stuck there. She's seen Charlie, her neighbor's granddaughter, year after year, but they've never been friendly. But this year she sees Charlie in a new light. Rose sneakily applied to (and was accepted at) a private school in Melbourne, but there's no way her mother would let her head out there on her own. What if she befriended Charlie and went back with her at the summer's end?

Cath Crowley's beautiful but quiet novel is no ordinary take on one friend taking advantage of another. It's so much more than that. It's the story of a girl coming into her own, finding a way to push through her grief and get the attention of her father who's still so consumed with his own, and using music to do all of these things. This story is told in alternating perspectives from Rose and Charlie, but it also has a quiet power in its song lyrics, scattered throughout the text. Cath Crowley has accomplished a rare achievement: absolutely believable song lyrics. I could really hear these songs and the way that Charlie might sing them. They weren't cheesy or silly or cliche.  In fact, they reminded me so much of the kind of lyrics in the soundtrack to Once that I couldn't help but hear them in Marketa Irglova's voice.

This book is a must-read for any aspiring musician, or really, anyone who finds music moving and inspiring.