Define “Normal,” by Julie Anne Peters

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Thistle

lolAntonia used to be a model student, but her troubled homelife is catching up with her and people are beginning to notice. Jazz is part of the school’s rebellious crowd of punks and goths, and she’s hiding secrets of her own. When the two are paired together for peer counseling, Antonia thinks this will never work. But slowly, the two girls begin to learn more about each other, and even more slowly, they start to form a bond.

I was very pleased to read and review this book with Darren of Bart’s Bookshelf.

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Amanda: Hi Darren! Thanks again for reading this book with me. This is my third experience with Julie Anne Peters’ work, after Between Mom and Jo and Keeping You a Secret. It’s also my first experience with a book of hers that doesn’t address GLBT issues. How did you like the book? When I started, I wasn’t sure, since it was so different from her other books, plus the characters were so much younger than what I was used to. It took me awhile to warm up to Antonia and Jazz, but once I did, I really enjoyed Define “Normal.”

Darren: Hi Amanda! This is my third experience with Julie Anne Peter’s books as well! Between Mom and Jo – which was of course your fault! 😉 and her short story collection, Grl2Grl. This one felt like a more ‘traditional’ style teenager novel than others I’ve read in recent years, not that that’s a bad thing, but it was a little adjustment I had to make. But once I had I really liked the book. I actually got on with Antonia and Jazz quite quickly, and enjoyed seeing their stories develop. I hate to bring up the ‘Issue’ word, but Julie Anne Peters brings a few to the table with this one, judging people on their appearance, clinical depression, and friendships, how do you think she wove them all together?

Amanda: I agree with you that this is very much an “Issues” book. I think she wove them together well, but I did notice them more here than in her other books, even though they also deal with issues. I think this one was less subtle about the issue treatment maybe? Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just different. Lots of things felt different for me, actually. At the start of each Peters’ book I’ve read, there’s been this immediately stomach-clench when I can just FEEL that the character’s situation is not going to go well. That was the same here, but what changed for me was the way the climax and ending panned out. All her endings are ambiguous, with some good and some bad, but I felt more hope in this one. More happiness. Unlike with her other books, Define “Normal” didn’t suck the guts out of me and leave me sobbing. I didn’t feel empty and drained when I finished. Again, not a bad thing, just different. How did this one compare, quality-wise, to your other experiences with Peters?

Darren: I tend to prefer it in novels when issues just ‘are’ if you know what I mean, it falls back to the rule of show-not-tell I think, but yeah because the focus was at least partly on the development of the friendship between the two main protagonists it made it work. As for where it falls in among the other books I’ve read by Anne Peter’s I’d say Between Mom and Jo is still by far the better book (because it really is that good) and worked better than the short story collection Grl2Grl, because we were given time to get to know and like the characters. What did you think of the friendship between Antonia and Jazz? While I was never as bookish and staid as Antonia, and my friends didn’t have nearly the attitude of Jazz, I was fairly ‘normal’ and my quite a few of my friends were Goths and dressed accordingly, so I never questioned the validity of their friendship, but it’s quite clearly designed to make the reader question their own prejudices.

Amanda: I was more like Jazz in high school, though not to that extreme, and I had friends like Antonia, also not to that extreme, so I did like that they were able to get over their prejudices and become friends. On the other hand, I thought it was a bit strange for them to have such strong prejudices in the first place. We’re talking 14 year old kids, and kids tend to have less prejudices coming into relationships than adults. It seems like Antonia saw Jazz more like adults would see Jazz, which felt slightly unrealistic to me.

Once I got used to it, and the barriers started breaking down, it was better, but at the beginning I found it a bit jarring. I also was pretty sure from the beginning that things were not the way Antonia saw them, with the whole peer counseling setup. Without spoiling anything, I was pretty sure from the beginning that I knew exactly how things would end. Did you find the book predictable?

Darren: Yeah, but then it set its stall out quite early on, and never tried to be anything other than it was. The interest was in how we got there and I think the author did a decent job of keeping the journey fresh and interesting. Without giving too much away, did you think teacher in charge of the peer counseling programme was being manipulative or just being a good teacher, personally I tend toward him using his skills and judgement, but I can see why the two of them feel manipulated, and it did feel a realistic teenage reaction.

Amanda: Yes, I agree. The situation felt laid out and predictable, but I was still interested in where the story went and how they got to the end. The predictability factor didn’t matter. In the end, it all boiled down to the characters. And I’d agree with you about the teacher. He was smart and he knew both students well enough to know that they could get past their biases to become friends. I think both Jazz and Antonia needed a friend outside their little worlds. A friend that could be there in all ways, instead of in the limited way that, say, Jazz’s punk friends were. I have to admit, that bothered me just a little. I think some of the punk/outsider/goth stereotypes were a played up a tad too much. Maybe it’s because in high school, I was part of a similar crowd, but I get really defensive when I see authors present that stereotype. I’m just glad that Jazz’s friends came through for her (and for Antonia) eventually.

I sound like I’m doing nothing but criticizing this book! I really don’t mean to be. I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t as powerful as the other books by her that I’ve read, but I’m starting to think Peters can do no wrong! She’s a wonderful author and I’m glad I’ve been able to turn so many other bloggers on to her books!

Darren: I think a lot of the possible stereotyping stems more from Jazz’s stubbornness than anything else, and yes it was pleasing to see, them accept the people that Antonia and became (well more who they always were, but you know what I mean). Sometimes, you don’t need an emotional roller-coaster to enjoy a book, it’s just really nice to see nothing more than a friendship develop and prosper, and that is definitely what you get in this one. I really like Peter’s writing and I have to thank you for pushing Mom and Jo so much, so that I picked up a copy and discovered her.

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A Certain Slant of Light, by Laura Whitcomb

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Thistle

Certainslant-210-expHelen is Light. She died over a hundred years ago and is now only kept out of a personal hell by clinging to one host after another. Invisible to the people around her, she does nothing but watch and try to inspire each new host to do good things. Then, one day, a student in her current host’s classroom looks at her. Sees her. Speaks to her.

James was also Light, haunting a place rather than a person. Then he saw a boy, Billy Blake, and realized the body was empty. Billy’s spirit – miserable, downtrodden, drug-addled – has simply given up and left the body, so James took his place. Now in this body, he can see other spirits like Helen, and he begins to remember his past. As the two fall in love with each other, James helps Helen to take a body as well, which starts them both on a journey of self-discovery.

This is a strange book that seems to be two books in one. First, there is the story of James and Helen, why they are Light, why they aren’t moving on after death, and how they can get to where they’re supposed to go. Then there’s the story of the lives they’ve taken over. They have no memories of the people they become. James is trying to sort out what happened to Billy’s family – a father in jail, a mother in a coma, a brother who’s raising him – and Helen is dealing with a crushingly-religious household as an only child named Jenny. For awhile, the background of James and Helen’s lives take back burner, and the book addresses the oppressive lives that Billy and Jenny both live in.

Normally a two-toned book like this, changing from one story abruptly to the next and then back again near the end, doesn’t work for me, but this one did. The transitions between the stories were very natural so that I never felt like I was suddenly thrust into a new place. I absolutely loved every minute of this book and I couldn’t put it down, staying up way past my bedtime to finish. I loved both stories equally, and I was completely satisfied with the way both of them ended. Whitcomb drew me fully into this world. The writing is beautiful and the story is so much fun. I really enjoyed it.

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Protected: Sundays at Tiffany’s, by James Patterson

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Thistle

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The Untelling, by Tayari Jones

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Thistle

book_untellingBIGWhen Aria was a child, her family was ripped apart by a car accident that killed her father and baby sister. The rest of her adolescence was spent with an older sister who just wanted to get away and a disapproving mother who became progressively crazier as time passed. Now, as an adult, Aria lives in a drug-infested neighborhood in Atlanta, working in an outreach program for teen literacy. She wants nothing more than to marry and have a family. Everything seems to be headed that direction. She’s pregnant and her boyfriend has proposed. But then a revelation changes everything.

This book was so beautiful. I didn’t know much about it going in, and I wasn’t sure how much I’d like reading a book that has morning sickness and a neighborhood full of crackheads. Drugs and vomiting…two of my phobias all wrapped up together in the same book. I’m glad I persevered, though. Jones handles both subjects with more tact that I’m used to, and as I got past my fears, I was drawn into Aria’s world.

Having myself grown up in a world where drugs, violence, robbery, teen pregnancy, and school dropouts were the norm, I could really relate to Aria and the people around her. I understood the girls she was teaching, even though their experiences were not my own. It was so genuine, and that sort of voice is, in my experience, very difficult to capture. Often when I read books that deal with this sort of neighborhood, I find them unbelievable, forced, or inaccurate. That really grates on me. The Untelling was nothing like that. It was perfect down to the last detail.

There are many different themes that ride through this book, but the one that touched me the most was the importance of honesty. Lies – no matter how big or small – do nothing but make a situation worse. When the first lie tumbled out of Aria’s lips, I wanted to scream “NO NO NO” at her. I knew, I could see, I could feel, exactly where this was going to go. In children’s books, a series of progressive lies ends with the liar learning why he/she shouldn’t have lied. In the end, everyone forgives him/her. But in the real world, a series of lies ends in pain, the breakup of relationships, and the end of trust. In the real world, lies create a mess that can’t be easily cleaned up.

On a completely different note, The Untelling brought home just how close to my life legalized segregation was. Like most people, I know about segregated schools, theatres, buses, etc. But I was born in 1979 and I never had to live through legal segregation. I spent the first half of my childhood in urban Columbia, SC, where 90% of my classmates were black. I spent the second half of my childhood in west-side San Antonio, were 90% of my classmates were Hispanic. Growing up, I couldn’t even imagine being in a majority-white area, and indeed when I moved to Wisconsin as an adult, I was very uncomfortable with the all-white surroundings. I never felt like I fit in. That makes it hard for me, when I hear about racial discrimination, to take it all in. I think of legal segregation as something dreadful that happened a long, long time ago. It seems too long ago to see it as something more than an abstract horror in our country’s past.

Hearing Aria talk about her parents’ first date in 1962, where they had to sit at the back of the bus and on the balcony at the movie theatre, really brought segregation alive to me in a way no other book, movie, history lesson, etc ever did. 1962. Only 17 years before I was born. I’ve never been good with history. I think of things happening at wildly incorrect times and dates mean very little to me unless they are put in context with things I understand. Hearing about this date from 1962 made me realize just how close segregation came to touching my life, and how much it touched the lives of people only a few years older than me. I’m grateful to understand this better.

One final note about The Untelling. I loved the way Jones handled the subject of gay relationships. There are several gay couples in the book, but the one most prominent is Aria’s boss, Lawrence, and his partner Eric. While Aria accepts them and their love for each other, other characters are not so forgiving and treat them with a contempt that is disgusting, but realistic. What I loved particularly was the fact that the GLBT elements were not a big issue in the book, but they still existed in Aria’s world. Because in truth, there are people who are gay all around us, becoming more and more visible every day. Different people react differently to this, and The Untelling shows all those reactions without judging anyone. Just like the rest of the book, it’s real, it’s accurate, it’s life.

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An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Thistle

imagesBecause I was so sad that The Importance of Being Earnest ended so quickly, I dove right into a second play of Wilde’s that I hadn’t even planned to read right away. An Ideal Husband was different. It had less comedy and more intrigue – insider trading, blackmail, that sort of thing. While it still had its funny moments and some romance, it seemed altogether a more serious play.

I also saw this as a movie and barely remembered it, right around the same time I saw the movie adaptation of Earnest. Again, this is one I’d like to see live. Wilde does an excellent job of tackling a serious subject with just enough lightness to make it fun as well as interesting.

I love his satire. Every line in both of these plays was so perfect and poised. I loved all the banter about men, women, work, class, dress, etc. All I can say is that Wilde richly deserves the praise that’s been heaped on him! While I didn’t like An Ideal Husband as much as Earnest, it was still a fun read and I can’t wait to read more from Wilde. I’m putting my collection aside for now so I can save some for later – don’t want to read up his entire works at once! I have definitely found another favorite author to add to my list!

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The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Thistle

oscar1I’m not even going to try to describe the plot of this play. It’s a three-act comedy full of mix-ups, mistaken identities, and romance. Absolutely delightful. I laughed and smiled all through it.

The only Oscar Wilde I’ve ever read before is The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I’ve read now three times. I loved it and I’m not sure why I never went out and read his plays! Recently, though, I got a hold of an edition of the complete works of Wilde, including all his stories, poetry, essays, and plays. My book club will be reading The Importance of Being Earnest for June, so I wanted to read it well in advance, to prepare.

I’d heard Wilde was funny, but I didn’t expect to be laughing out loud the whole time. He was hysterical! I absolutely loved this play. It was brilliant. I hope one day I get to see it performed live. I saw the movie years ago and barely remembered it, but the play is so wonderful. I wish it hadn’t been so short! I wanted it to just keep going. This is one I’d highly recommend to anyone!

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Artichoke’s Heart, by Suzanne Supplee

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Thistle

ArtichokesHeartWhen you’re normal-sized, no one cares what you eat; when you’re fat, it’s everybody’s business.

Rosemary Goode is fifteen, five-foot six inches, and almost 200 lbs. Food is her comfort and she eats lots of it, especially the chocolate variety. Exercise is a dirty word to her vocabulary. At school, people bully her. At home, her mother and aunt are as bad as her peers, if not worse in some ways. Rosemary wishes she could lose weight for her health and for looks, but when food is her only friend, she doesn’t know how.

So many of us have struggled with our weight and can understand Rosemary’s struggle. While my personal struggle has been due to infections and medication rather than junk food and overeating, I could still relate to Rosemary and the things she goes through. I understand her fear of mirrors. I can relate to feeling like no one could ever like me or find me attractive. I know what it feels like to have people looking at me when I’m eating as if I don’t deserve to eat because of my weight. Being fat can be embarrassing and demoralizing, especially if people feel the need to point it out to you or give you advice on how to become thinner.

Our culture is so focused on looks, especially with regards to women. Models are starved to ridiculous weights and then airbrushed even smaller in magazines. TV feeds us a standard of beauty that looks like a cross between “third world dying of hunger” and “pre-pubescent girl.” Standing in line at the grocery store, we can see a whole myriad of magazines that tell us how to look thinner, firmer, younger, better. There is no attempt to help us to feel better about ourselves the way we are. Our country suffers from a neurosis that tells us that the only way to be beautiful is to develop an eating disorder. I’m sorry, but unless you have a very specific body type – and few people do – a size 2 on a woman who’s 5ft 6in looks sickly and underfed, not beautiful. And yet, a 5ft 6in model at size 2 is considered almost overweight.

I love books like this. I love books that teach the message that you must learn to love yourself. Sure, Rosemary’s weight and eating habits weren’t at all healthy. She needed to lose weight and learn how to exercise and eat in moderation. But she also needed to learn that just because she was 200 lbs, doesn’t mean no one will ever love her or that she’s a bad person. It’s what’s inside her that counts. I love what a character named Kyle tells her: “When you look at a person’s eyes or her smile, you can’t tell how much she weighs.”

Rosemary’s journey is not the perfect road to self-confidence. The methods she chooses to lose weight range from good (starting an exercise routine) to bad (basically a fiction-world counterpart to Slim Fast) to horrible (self-induced food poisoning). Her reasons for losing weight are not always healthy either – doing it for others instead of herself. But all this stuff is realistic rather than idealistic, which is important to me. This stuff does happen in real life. Look at fad diets out there! Rosemary goes through a mental journey as well as a physical one and eventually learns to curtail bad thinking as well as bad dieting and bad eating. It’s a coming of age story both in mind and body, and I liked that.

The book isn’t perfect. There are way too many vomiting scenes (again), and some of the characters seem almost like caricatures. Most of them grow into real people by the end of the book, though some don’t, like Rosemary’s Aunt Mary. There are also some unrealistic things that Rosemary goes through (like losing 13 lbs in 3 days after the self-induced food poisoning). But for the most part, I really enjoyed Artichoke’s Heart. I really appreciate stories that go against what culture says about beauty and that try to teach women to value themselves instead of their looks.

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The Explorer, by William Somerset Maugham

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Thistle

explorerLucy Allerton alone knows that her father’s ridiculousness is leading her family to lose everything they own. Her mother died when she was fifteen, and there is only Lucy, her father, and her younger brother George left to the Allertons. When Mr. Allerton is convicted of fraud and imprisoned, all honor left to their family name is lost. In desperation, Lucy refuses a proposal from her lover, Alec, and asks him instead to take her brother back to Africa on his next mission. Alec is an acclaimed explorer trying to end the slave trade and claim land for the British Empire. The hope is that George can overcome the bad nature that may have been passed down from his father and regain honor for their family.

First off, I must say that I absolutely love William Somerset Maugham. He’s one of my very favorite authors. He is the reason I began reading again after almost a decade thinking there was nothing out there that I liked. I read Mrs. Craddock the first week of 2001, and I was hooked. I’ve now read almost 15 of his novels and have only really disliked one (The Magician). The Explorer is his ninth published novel according to the bibliography on Wikipedia. It is one of his romances rather than one of his tragedies.

I can see why this was not Maugham’s most popular work and why it is more difficult to come by these days. The man wrote tons of books and this is definitely not on the list of ones most often looked at. The first 50 or so pages alternate between normal Maugham prose and very, very dry telling-not-showing backstory. Both the section about the history of the Allertons and the section about all the amazing stuff Alec did in Africa prior to the beginning of the book are long, long, long, and boring. I skimmed a lot of it. But I didn’t give up. No. I trust Maugham wholeheartedly. I knew, eventually, he would get past the dry parts and dive into the characters and their turmoils. Once it did, the book flew along and I couldn’t put it down, just like I’ve experienced in the past with Maugham.

The book was anything but typical for him, though. It almost felt as if he was experimenting with different forms of writing. One character, Dick Lomas, felt so much like Lord Henry from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde that I couldn’t help laughing at the similarity. Then, Mr. Lomas and an American woman named Julia Crowley are like a combination of the “comic relief” and “perfect couple” characters that are always in Jane Austen romances. Much of the romance seemed to be modeled off of Austen’s tension build-up techniques, actually. So reading The Explorer was like reading a combination of authors. A very strange experience, and again, definitely not the best Maugham I’ve ever read. That didn’t prevent me from loving it, though! It actually made Maugham so much more endearing to me. He was still learning as he wrote this, and that makes me smile.

I would only recommend this book to people who are already fans of Maugham’s works. As a first try, this is not a good book. If it had been the first book I read, I would have given up by page 50 and written Maugham off as dry and boring. He is anything but dry and boring. In fact, because he used straightforward prose and very simple plot devices and language, he was looked down upon as a pop-writer in his day. His books are usually very easy to read, fast, and engaging. I wish everyone would read something by him. In particular, I recommend Mrs. Craddock, The Painted Veil, Theatre, or The Razor’s Edge. Many people consider Of Human Bondage his best work and it IS good, but it’s also longer and more meandering than his others and some people find it very tedious. It doesn’t read quite like many of Maugham’s works. I really liked it, but I think I liked it more having read others first.

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A Cool Moonlight, by Angela Johnson

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Thistle

coolmoonlightLila is an eight year old girl with a very rare allergy – she’s allergic to sunlight. She spends most of her days sleeping, and does her playing, schoolwork, and chores at night. Even though she’s different, she has a few very special friends who help her to feel normal.

I think I must have been in the wrong headspace when I read this book because I didn’t get as much out of it as I wanted to. The concept is so interesting. I had no idea people could be allergic to sunlight! It’s a little scary to think about needing to be wrapped up in layers, sunscreen, and sunglasses even in the middle of the night, and having to be careful which kinds of artificial light you can be exposed to as well. The things Lila’s family had to adjust to must have been very difficult for them, but that’s not the focus of the book. I sort of wish it had been. I think I would have connected with it more from an adult point of view instead of Lila’s.

Not that Lila’s voice wasn’t well done. She sounded like a very genuine eight year old and her thought processes work in ways I recognize from my own children (who are near her age). It’s just…well maybe it’s partially because I have children that age and sometimes I feel a little caged in by that. I’ve read a lot of juvenile/children’s lit this year and I think I’ve grown a little tired of it. This is one I think I’d like to revisit when I’m in a different mood.

The book itself was wonderfully written and very beautiful. There’s a secret woven through it that I’m not sure when people are supposed to guess, so I’m not going to include it in case it’s a spoiler. I guessed pretty early on, though, and generally I’m bad at figuring such things out, so it’s possible Johnson wanted the reader to know pretty quickly. The transformation in Lila’s world that takes place throughout the book is gradual and natural, which is how I would imagine such transformations happen in real life (though I never went through one myself). Those who have read the book will understand what I’m talking about…sorry to be so cryptic!!

I don’t want to turn anyone away from this book with my blahness. I just wasn’t in the right mood to feel this one properly. I’m keeping it around both for my kids to read and for me to read again when I’m in a better place to take it all in. Hmm, this review is kind of pointless…

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The Invention of Hugo Cabret, by Brian Selznick (audio)

Posted on April 28, 2010 by Thistle

0545003873I read, loved, and reviewed The Invention of Hugo Cabret earlier this month. I’m not going to talk about the book itself again here. Instead, I want to talk about the audio production of Hugo Cabret. For those who have read it, the idea of an audio production might seem strange – the book is half pictures! How does one change pictures into audio format? But indeed an audio version exists. Shelley first mentioned it to me and told me a little about it. Then Aarti sent me a link to a youtube video where Brian Selznick explains how they translated the artwork to audio.

According to the youtube video, picture sequences were converted into sound, so that a listener could follow the story that way. The sounds created the pictures in your mind, the way they might have in an old radio program. That sounded fascinating, so I knew I had to try it out. I checked the audiobook out from the library and listened to it over a couple days. I listened to Part I while looking at the book, and to Part II without looking.

It was an interesting experience. Most of the sequences of pictures were converted to sound. The sound was easy to follow and understand. Even if I hadn’t read the book before, I would have known exactly what was going on. Some pictures were understandably skipped. For instance, some pictures just show a character for one page, and then the text continues. There’s no actual story or movement to the picture, so no sounds were associated with them. In some cases, whole series of pictures were skipped, though. For example, when Hugo looks around the bookstore and finds the magic book, instead of having sound (what sounds would work there??), a few words are added to sum up what Hugo did in those pictures. Same thing when we meet Etienne for the first time – he’s described as “a boy with an eyepatch” rather than just “a boy.”

There were a lot of interesting vocal and sound tricks too. Whenever someone would enter the bookstore, a bell would ring. When they’re at the ceremony at the end of the book, the announcer’s voice is magnified and distorted as though talking through a microphone in a large room. In a way, the sounds really enhanced the audiobook and made it more than just an audiobook, the way the pictures made the book more than just a book.

The reader, Jeff Woodman, did a good job reading. Each of the characters was distinguishable by voice and vocal mannerisms, so I never got confused who was speaking, and the inflections indicated emotion well.

On the whole, I have to say I prefer the book to the audiobook, simply because I love the visual quality of it and I prefer books to audio in general. I’m impressed, though, with the way this unique book was handled, the way it became a very unique audio production as well.

Posted in 2010, Children's, Visual | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment