UnWholly by Neal Shusterman

Jan22

A sequel to Shusterman’s best-selling Unwind. I think publishers probably talked him into making it a trilogy in light of the success of The Hunger Games and other dystopian fiction series. It was a good move for all concerned, whoever had the idea.

UnWholly begins where Unwind left off: Connor and Risa are leaders at The Graveyard, an airplane parts yard in the Arizona desert, where teens who have escaped from the unwinding centers have taken refuge. Lev lives with his brother in an apartment under sort of probationary status, and he spends his time counseling troubled youth who are in danger of being sent by their parents to the unwind centers themselves. This new book includes:
trouble in paradise in the relationship between Risa and Connor,
evil parts pirates who sell children to the highest bidders so that their organs can be harvested,
a “storked” (abandoned) teen named Starkey who will stop at nothing to get revenge on his parents and to wrest control of The Graveyard from Connor,
a million dollar creature named Cam who is simply a conglomeration of parts from dozens, maybe hundreds, of unwound teens,
and Miracolina, a tithe (person who chooses to be unwound as an offering) who isn’t brainwashed but really, truly does want to give herself to others through unwinding.

This second book continues to bring up ethical dilemmas and give readers room to work through them in a story environment. If the idea of self-sacrifice bothers us as a society, do we have the right to force people to not give up their lives for others? When does the laudable goal of sacrificing oneself for others become the horror of suicide and self-immolation? What is real leadership, and how much responsibility should a leader take for the entire group? Does a good leader keep secrets that he thinks are too hard for the group to handle? What is the right way to deal with teenage rebellion? Do all humans need something or someone to worship? If so, should they be allowed or even encouraged to worship whomever they want as long as they are learning to become psychologically whole? What makes someone a “real person”? If you receive transplanted body parts from another person, at what point do you become not yourself, but some else?

Mr. Shusterman wrote UnWind in 2007. In the five years since that book was published, we have come closer and closer to the kind of society he describes. Already we have a “black market for body parts in Europe” and other places. Children are encouraged, sometimes forced, to become child soldiers in Africa and suicide bombers in the Middle East.

The Opposite of Hallelujah by Anna Jarzab

Jan21

A good example of what Christian fiction should be aiming for, this book dealt with religious (Christian) themes without forced resolution or unreal expectations.

Caro Mitchell considers herself practically an only child, even tells people that her sister is dead, since older sister Hannah left the family when Caro was only eight years old to become a member of an enclosed order of nuns. Caro has hardly seen Hannah since then, and she certainly doesn’t feel as if she has a real honest-to-goodness sibling. But now Hannah is leaving the convent and coming home, and Caro isn’t sure sure what to think about her family, her sister, her religion, or God.

Hannah is one of those “not very religious” people that seem to abound these days, maybe always have. I’ll admit that I don’t get it since I’ve always been fascinated by religion, both pagan and Christian, by the question of who God is and what He expects of me, by issues of sin and salvation and just theology. I don’t really understand someone who just doesn’t think much about such things. Nevertheless, I thought this book gave a good picture of a teenager who never really did think much about religion, and her own Catholic tradition in particular, until she was confronted with a sister for whom the issues of religion and God were all-consuming.

Caro and Hannah don’t really understand each other. There’s an age gap of about ten years between the two girls. There’s also an experience gap since Hannah left “the world” when she was about eighteen years old to become a nun, and Caro has been living with her parents as an only child for the past ten years. The girls also have different personalities: Hannah is fragile, indecisive, and uncertain. Caro is at first somewhat self-centered, unreliable, and focused on her own goals to the exclusion of others’ needs and wants. As the story progresses, Caro learns to care about Hannah and her parents and her friends, and she becomes a much more empathetic and mature young lady.

There’s a romance element to the novel: Caro has a boyfriend. That part, though it added dimensions to Caro’s personality, wasn’t the most interesting part of the book. It was Caro’s questions about God and about Christianity and her growing relationship with Hannah that made me keep reading to find out how and whether Caro would be able to grow outside herself and establish selfless relationships with God and others.

Recommended for those who like a YA contemporary novel with Christian discussions and themes that doesn’t preach or force the reader into predetermined conclusions.

I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

Jan19

As the opara (eldest son) of the family, Kingsley O. Ibe has certain responsibilities: he must make his parents proud, study hard, and become a great man. But times are hard in Nigeria and in spite of Kingsley’s degree in chemical engineering, he cannot find a job. In spite of Kingsley’s father’s great knowledge, hard work, and superior educational background, he cannot work because of his illness, diabetes. And Kingsley’s industrious and skilled mother is losing her tailoring business because of changes in technology and the time it takes to care for his father. Kingsley’s brothers and sister need school fees and books and uniforms, and his girlfriend, Ola, “the sugar in his tea,” may not be able to marry him unless he can show the ability to support a wife and family.

So slowly, inexorably, Kingsley is sucked into the business of his rich uncle, Cash Daddy. Kingsley becomes a 419-er, breaking the law and bilking foreigners so that he can do what is right: take care of his family. (The number “419” refers to the article of the Nigerian Criminal Code dealing with fraud.) It’s a sad story, and the author, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria, develops the story deftly with just the right amount of sympathy for Kingsley and his plight mixed with enough detail about the heinous scams he perpetrates to make us have mixed feelings at best about this character.

The culture of corruption that pervaded this story made it a striking companion to the nonfiction book I read just after it. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo is set in Mumbai, India, where Ms. Boo spent three years researching, interviewing and observing the residents of a Mumbai slum that has grown up near the bright, sparkling Mumbai International Airport. The full title of the book is Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. There’s not much hope in the story. The central characters in the book are a family of Muslim garbage brokers who buy scavenged garbage from their fellow slum-dwellers, sort it, and take it to recycling centers to sell again. The same culture of overwhelming, near-inescapable corruption, bribery, and governmental chaos keeps the garbage pickers of Mumbai in poverty and despair just as the fictional Kingsley Ibe in Nigeria is unable to escape or retain his integrity in an environment and governmental structure that only rewards cunning and dishonesty, not integrity or even educational attainment and hard work.

I just cannot imagine living in a country where bribery is the only way to achieve a semblance of justice, where votes are for sale, and where the poor are not only poor but forced into slavery, prostitution, and degradation. I suppose I am way too middle class American WASP, but I had to keep reminding myself while reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers that this book was nonfiction, that these were real people. And while the first book, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, was fiction, the things that happen in the book were real. 419-ers exist. People who work hard to get an education are unable to find jobs in a broken economy. People are turned away from hospitals because they cannot pay exorbitant amounts of money for simple health care. People like Kingsley turn to lives of crime and extortion because they see no other way to provide for their families or to survive.

I kept asking myself as I read Ms. Boo’s book, which reads like a novel: where are these people now? The Annawadi slum was slated for destruction/removal; has it been removed? What happened to the families that Ms. Boo writes about in her book who are dependent on trash from the airport to resell for basic necessities? Did the book itself change the lives of these people in any way? For the better? For the worse?

â€œThe Indian criminal justice system was a market like garbage, Abdul now understood. Innocence and guilt could be bought and sold like a kilo of polyurethane bags.â€

“It seemed to him that in Annawadi, fortunes derived not just from what people did, or how well they did it, but from the accidents and catastrophes they avoided. A decent life was the train that hadnâ€™t hit you, the slumlord you hadnâ€™t offended, the malaria you hadnâ€™t caught.”

I Do Not Come to You by Chance was awarded the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, first novel Africa.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo won the National Book Award in the nonfiction category for Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.

Spirit Fighter by Jerel Law

Jan19

Angels, nephilim, winged demons, kidnapping, creepy.

A not-too-compelling entry in the Christian horror-dystopia-weird creatures genre.

I dunno. If you like stories about supernatural creatures but want to keep your reading theologically borderline sound and sexually pure (those vampire/zombie stories get nasty sometimes), then this debut novel from Thomas Nelson Publishers might fit the bill. I found the idea of nephilim who are half angel/half human a bit hard to swallow. It’s based on Genesis 6, the story of how “the sons of God” married “the daughters of men” and had children who were “giants.”

The nephilim in Spirit Fighter are not giants, and they’re not all half angel, but rather some are only one quarter angel. Jonah and his sister Eliza find out that their mother is a nepilim, the daughter of a human mother and a fallen angel, at the same time that they find out that Mom has been kidnapped by fallen angels. The evil demons believe that Jonah’s mom will “come over to the dark side” and be very powerful in defeating the plans of Elohim, as they call God, because of her nephilim heritage.

Guided by a guardian angel and empowered with special gifts as a result of their own 1/4 angel heritage, Jonah and Eliza go to New York to rescue mom. This book is the first in the Son of Angels: Jonah Stone series.

Tagline: “Your mom always said you were an angel, what if she was right?”

Saturday Review of Books: January 19, 2013

Jan19

â€œI have always intensely resented it when people say, â€˜Literature is just escaping from life,â€™ and â€˜When you read youâ€™re not really getting out there and living.â€™ To me the only place to find life is in books!â€ ~Connie Willis, Locus Magazine, 2003

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1. Beth@Weavings (Jane of Lantern Hill)
2. Hope (The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins)
3. Marg (Addition by Toni Jordan)
4. Marg (Unforgettable by Elise K Ackers)
5. the Ink Slinger (Supervillain of the Day)
6. Graham @ My Book Year (Caribou Island)
7. Janet (Holy Discontent)
8. Glynn (January Justice)
9. Lucybird’s Book Blog (Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)
10. Lucybird’s Book Blog (A Possible Life)
11. Lucybird’s Book Blog (Come Back Soon)
12. Beckie @ ByTheBook (A Season for Tending)
13. Beckie @ ByTheBook (Secretly Smitten)
14. Alex @ Alex in Leeds (The Victorian Chaise-Longue)
15. Barbara H. (A Light in the Window)
16. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Fourmile)
17. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (The Lions of Little Rock)

18. Amy @ Hope Is the Word (Almost Home)
19. Word Lily (Too Far to Say Far Enough by Nancy Rue)
20. Lazygal (Stonemouth)
21. Lazygal (Now You See Me)
22. Lazygal (Heroes of Olympus)
23. Lazygal (Murder Below Montparnasse)
24. Lazygal (At Weddings and Wakes)
25. Lazygal (When Love Comes to Town)
26. Lazygal (Help Thanks Wow)
27. Colleen @Books in the City (The Tell)
28. Colleen @Books in the City (13 Little Blue Envelopes)
29. georgianne (A Godward Life)
30. Girl Detective (Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland…)
31. Girl Detective (The Blue Flower)
32. Girl Detective (The Song of Achilles)
33. Becky (Preparing for Jesus’ Return)
34. Becky (The Masqueraders)

35. Becky (Kizzy Ann Stamps)
36. Becky (Invincible Microbe)
37. Becky (Going Vintage)
38. Becky (Over the Moon, Storybook)
39. Becky (Racketty Packetty House)
40. Becky (Pollyanna)
41. Becky (Trains Go; Five Little MOnkeys Jump in Bath)
42. SuziQoregon@ Whimpulsive (Fables Vol. 2: Animal Farm)
43. SuziQoregon@ Whimpulsive (A Northern Light)
44. Alex @ Alex in Leeds (Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel)
45. Seth@Collateral Bloggage (The Rocks Don’t Lie)
46. Thoughts of Joy (Twisted)
47. Shonya@Learning How Much I Don’t Know (Charlotte’s Web)
48. Shonya@Learning How Much I Don’t Know (Unglued)
49. Create With Joy – Unglued Devotional

Horten’s Incredible Illusions by Lissa Evans

Jan18

I liked the second book better than I did the first, I think. Children who like puzzles and magic tricks would really find this book and its prequel, Horten’s Miraculous Mechanisms, quite compelling.

I just wanted more character development, more reasons to like or at least sympathize with the children in the two stories. Stuart is short, curious, and persistent. The triplets are annoying, and I had trouble telling them apart, even though I get the names attached in print. I couldn’t remember which one was which, so they all three felt annoying.

The puzzles are good and appropriate for ten and eleven year olds—which is not to say that I could have solved them myself. Sometimes it takes a child to solve a child’s puzzle. Anyway, for budding magicians and illusionists, Horten’s two books (so far) would be the perfect summer, or anytime, read.

The Bess Crawford series by Charles Todd

Jan17

A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd. In which we are introduced to nurse Bess Crawford as she becomes a survivor of the sinking of HMHS Britannic in the Kea Channel off the Greek island of Kea on the morning of November 21, 1916. Upon her return to England to convalesce, Bess carries a cryptic message to the family of a soldier who died while under her care. The message begins a chain of events which lead to Bess’s involvement with a man who is possibly an escaped lunatic, but also possibly a wronged man.

An Impartial Witness by Charles Todd. This second book in the series featuring World War I nurse detective Bess Crawford uses good, solid storytelling and slow, careful character development to hold readers’ interest. Upon Bess’s return to England from the trenches of France, she witnesses a tearful parting between a woman, Mrs. Evanson, and a soldier who is not her husband but possibly her lover. When Bess recognizes Mrs. Evanson from her picture that was carried by her pilot husband and when the woman is later murdered, Bess becomes enmeshed in the family’s affairs and in the resolution of the mystery of her death.

In both of these books, the mystery and the characters were intriguing and entertaining. Bess Crawford is an independent young woman, and yet she doesn’t come across as a twenty-first century feminist artificially transplanted into the soil of the World War I-era. Instead, she has a family to whom she listens and she allows herself to be protected to some extent by the men in her life, especially family friend Simon Brandon. (I think Bess and Simon are headed for romance, but at least by the end of the second book in the series, the romance is completely unrealized.) And still Bess does what Bess feels obligated or drawn to do, and she meddles in things that are not really her concern.

In fact, that would be my only complaint about these books. For the purpose of furthering the plot, the authors (a mother-son team using the Charles Todd pseudonym) have Bess ask all sorts of questions and become over-involved in the lives of strangers with very little justification for her visits and intrusions. However, I can overlook the lack of warrant for Bess’s interference in the lives of her patients and their families for the sake of a good story.

Lots of comparisons are made at Amazon and Goodreads between these books and the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I liked these two, at least, better than I liked the books about Maisie. Maybe I just liked these books set during the Great War better than those set just after.

Gray Matter by David Levy

Jan16

A Neurosurgeon Discovers the Power of Prayer . . . One Patient at a Time.

This nonfiction “blend of medical drama and spiritual insight” reminded me of one of my favorite books from 2011, Praying for Strangers by River Jordan. In Gray Matter, Dr. Levy, a neurosurgeon, tells the story of how he started offering to pray with his patients before surgery, and eventually at other critical moments in their medical journey. He writes honestly about the fears involved in this experiment of faith: how he feared losing his reputation, offending patients or fellow medical coworkers, making a fool of himself, even ruining God’s reputation if his prayers went unanswered.

But Dr. Levy also tells how he felt compelled to offer his patients the gift of faithful, simple prayer before, and often during, what was for the patient an anything-but-routine procedure. And very few of his patients refused his offer to pray for them. For those who did refuse, Dr. Levy respected their wishes and went on to do the surgery with all of the skill he had. But the book focuses on the stories of individual patients who did agree to have Dr. Levy pray for them. The author tells about how prayer became for him an integral part of the treatment process and about how those prayers and God’s presence acknowledged in the OR made a difference in the lives of both doctor and patients.

I was especially encouraged to read about the importance of forgiveness and the release of bitterness on the road to physical health. Many, many people are afflicted by diseases and ailments that are caused or exacerbated by the spiritual illness that they hold onto in the form of bitterness and resentment. As Dr. Levy began to pray for his patients, he sometimes felt led to ask about their spiritual health, especially in the area of forgiveness. And some patients he was able to lead to forgive those who had hurt them and at the same time bring themselves into a place to receive healing and forgiveness for their own sins.

It seems to me that if I really believed that God hears my prayers and that He chooses to work through prayer to work in the world and in people’s lives, I would offer to pray for people much more often and then I would do it. This story of a doctor who does believe, not without doubts and stutters, but nevertheless believes and puts into practice what God has called him to do, is inspiring.

Carrie at Reading to Know just wrote a review in which she credits her mother-in-law with inspiring her to pray more fervently and consistently:

“When a situation popped up she held my hand and simply said, “We will pray.” And I did. And I know she did. Her example and exhortation was worth more to me than a pile of pamphlets, even though they may be written by Martin Luther. . . She also prays for each member of our family. And I know that her prayers are answered. I know. Her spirit of humility and committment to follow Christ was a huge spiritual wake-up call to me.”

Simply pray. Offer to pray. Pray daily. Pray through. If I believe in Jesus’ words “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I”, I will pray for those He gives me breath to encourage in that way. And my faith will grow, and God will be glorified.

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Jan15

Impossible by Nancy Werlin. Recommended by CarrieK at Books and Movies.

Lucy Scarborough is seventeen, in her senior year of high school, with a handsome and likable date to the prom, a best friend with whom she can share all her secrets, and foster parents who love her dearly. Her life seems near-perfect. However, seventeen was the age of Lucy’s mother Miranda, when she had a baby girl and then went mad. A family curse passed down from mother to daughter in unbroken line seems far-fetched, impossible, but Lucy might have to believe in the impossible to break the curse.

I’m a Simon and Garfunkel fan from way back, so of course I enjoyed the fact that this folk tale translated into the present was based on the old folk tune, Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme (Scarborough Fair), even if the lyrics are changed up a bit from the version I knew.
Here’s a performance by Hayley Westenra of Celtic Women:

The book puts a rather dark interpretation on this old song: Lucy must perform the tasks in the song so that she can free herself and her family from the Elfin King’s curse. The penalty if she is not successful: insanity and captivity under the Elfin King’s sway.

The characters and their actions and reactions in this story were a bit off-kilter; they reminded me of some of Madeleine L’Engle’s characters and plots, not quite believable or convincing in their actions. It’s not the fantasy parts of the novel that I didn’t find probable but rather the characters’ reactions to the improbable situation in which they find themselves. Would you plow a beach with a goat’s horn, even if you did believe in an age-old curse on your family?

Still, there was something endearing about Lucy and her family and friends and their willingness to fight together against the curse. Just as the characters in L’Engle’s novels “fight against the night” in ways that stretch credibility but also enrich the imagination, Lucy makes a stand in her own way and refuses to give in to the Elfin King.

Solid Young Adult fiction for the readers of vampire tales and dark ghost stories and borderline horror.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

Jan14

The series of mysteries that begins with this novel and features almost eleven year old detective, chemist, and poison expert Flavia de Luce has been on my radar for some time now, but I finally used my Barnes and Noble gift card to buy The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and I’m determined to consume the other novels in the series as quickly as possible. The first one is just as good as the many fans have said it was.

From Mr. Bradley’s website: “Great literary crime detectives arenâ€™t always born; theyâ€™re sometimes discovered, blindfolded and tied up in a dark closet by their nasty older sisters. Eleven-year-old Flavia de Luceâ€™s bitter home life and vicious sibling war inspires her solitary diversions and â€œstrange talentsâ€ tinkering with the chemistry set in the laboratory of their inherited Victorian house, plotting sleuth-like vengeance on Ophelia (17) and Daphne (13), and delving into the forbidden past of her taciturn, widowed father, Colonel de Luce. It comes as no surprise, then, that the material for her next scientific investigation will be the mysterious corpse that she uncovers in the cucumber patch.”

I will say that Flavia is unbelievably precocious; she reminds me of my youngest, Z-baby who is intelligent, stubborn, sassy, and spoiled rotten. I say this with some chagrin, since I promised myself that my youngest would not be a pain in the you-know-what like so many other babies of of the family tend to be. And then life happened, and I find myself amazed at her maturity and giftedness and at the same time busily correcting and counteracting her sometimes tendencies to be presumptuous and impertinent.

Anyway, Flavia is a character who might exhaust you if you were her parent, but in a book she’s a delight. I can’t wait to get to know her better, and I’m also anxious to find out more about her sisters, her long-suffering but somewhat absent father, and Dogger, the loyal retainer who serves as dependable adult in Flavia’s life (even though he suffers from something like PTSD or some such ailment as a result of his war experience). The other books in the series are>

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag
A Red Herring Without Mustard
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Speaking From Among the Bones
The Dead In Their Vaulted Arches

I plan to request them from the library immediately. Mr. Bradley is a Canadian author who now lives in Malta, Sherlockian author of a book that argued that Holmes was a woman (!), and a septuagenarian.

Sweet and sassy, and the author is over seventy years old? Congratulations, Mr. Bradley!