These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly » Book Review

I am in awe of how this book made me feel. Ellen believes that it doesn't compare to Donnelly's A Northern Light, so I'm very excited to pick that one up soon and see how These Shallow Graves will measure up against Donnelly's most critically-acclaimed work.

At first glance, I expected it to be a run-of-the-mill mystery with a throwaway romance. In fact, as I was reading, I had picked out a quote that I thought would impeccably sum up the cheesiness of the romance.

"He can only break my ribs, Jo, not my heart."

Nauseating... am I right??

But I was forced to eat my words. As I accompanied Jo on her various jaunts through the city and witnessed her life through her eyes, I realized how similar she and I are (or were). I mentioned briefly in my introduction post about living in a rural part of India during some of my teen years. I lived with my grandmother, mother, baby sister and our maid under strict lock-and-key. Young girls were not to be out and about unaccompanied, let alone be out past twilight. There were rules about proper behavior, who I was allowed and not allowed to socialize with. And by god, I was not to tarnish the family's reputation. Her struggles, were my struggles.

“Why is it, she wondered now, that boys get to do things and be things and girls only get to watch?”

I loved Jo, because she is a realistic character. Even the romance (which I initially scoffed at), and the love triangle (which as a rule, I utterly detest) didn't drive her story. It just happened to be her life. As a young heiress, she was expected to wed, and wed well. It is her love for her father, and her noble notion of justice that drives her story of personal growth. While she made romantic decisions that I thought were hasty or foolish, they remained true to who she is. And above all, there were realistic consequences for her decisions. Her poor choices and in turn, the reactions of the characters around her helped her evolve and understand herself better, and in turn, make better decisions for herself in the future.

“You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that.”

“That was what people did when they wanted to stop a girl from doing something—they shamed her.”

I also was very pleased with Nellie Bly as an inspirational figure to Jo. Nellie Bly is a reporter that Jo admires both for her accomplishments in a male-dominated field of journalism as well as her compassion for the 'invisible' people that pass through New York City. It hits me close to home because THIS is why it is so important to have women and minorities (of any kind, whether it is race or gender or sexual orientation) have such important roles in society. They inspire current and future generations to follow their path and further their path. Nellie Bly is the reason that Jo developed her strong sense of ethics, which I greatly admired.

“Headstrong is just a word, Katie - a word others call you when you don't do what they want.”

I'm sure some of you are curious about why I am gushing so much about this book since I didn't give it a full 5 or even 4.5 stars. That had to do with the mystery element and the pacing of it. Perhaps I have simply watched too many crime shows and read too many books and hence can spot a red herring a mile away. I figured out who the villain was within the first third of the book. I had guessed everything, except for one important surprise. However, I still enjoyed Jo's and Eddie's adventures mainly because they took me all around New York and it was fascinating to be there. My favorite scene occurred when Jo was walking along a bridge (maybe the Brooklyn bridge..?) with a friend, and I could just picture how exhilarating that must have been. I think that's the wonderful thing about historical fiction for me, when compared to fantasy. It's easier for me to picture and imagine that this actually happened. The next time I go to New York, I will walk alongside a bridge and smile to myself as I picture Fay and Jo Montfort.

“We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither. Yet how can we help them if we don't even know about them? And how can we know about them if no one writes about them? Is it so wrong to want to know things?”

Bone Gap Review

So, Bone Gap. I picked up this book because I've been making an effort to read more critically-applauded YA titles.  I believe that the Young Adult genre, which can be tremendously fun, also has more to offer than juicy hooks and romantic drama.  There's important stuff out there being written.  I just need to read more of it! Bone Gap popped up on my radar as such a book to read, but I wound up being largely unimpressed.  I give this book three stars, because it's well-written, but overall it failed to make an impact. Here's why.

Bone Gap dips its fingers into magical realism, a genre I remember studying in high school when reading Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. Magical realism, also known as marvelous realism or fabulism, is characterized by a realistic setting being pervaded with strange, unnatural occurances — often introduced with a nonchalant attitude, as if it's perfectly normal for magic to invade real life.

Latin America is responsible for introducing magical realism into literature, and the style was immediately understood as something important. In the regions where the genre was born, harsh governments prohibited criticism from being written openly. In disguise, magical realism questioned and attacked established political and social systems.

In recent years, we've seen a surge of magical realism in YA books.  For the most part, I have not been a fan of the trend.  It seems to me that these books are masquerading as literary.  They ape the style of an important literary genre, but fail to use the techniques as a means of social critique — or in any way deeper than window dressing.  (For more of my complaints on this issue, see my review of The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender.)

This is my main issue with Bone Gap — that for the most part, it's purposeless. There is a strong theme that runs throughout the book that argues for the unimportance of physical appearance, which is good.  Mostly, though, the threads of Bone Gap's narrative are willy-nilly.  It's hard to understand how the book works as a whole, because the story is random, spinning it's stylistic wheels with little direction.

The story takes place in the fictional Illinois town of Bone Gap.  As one of the characters notes, there are no mountain gaps in Illinois — the town got its name for the gaps in the bones of the world.  Roza, a mysterious Polish exchange student who was taken in by two brothers, Finn and Sean, is kidnapped and dragged into one of these gaps by a creepy, nightmarish entity.  Finn, a young man known for his spaciness, is unable to describe Roza's kidnapper to the police, earning him the disdain and ire of the townspeople of Bone Gap.

The narrative perspective flits among various characters, but mostly focuses on Roza and Finn.  I got to be fatigued by their storyline-heavy sections, instead looking forward to those chapters that focused on the stolid, yet passionate Sean, and the independent, individualistic Petey — Bone Gap really shines when it focuses on its characters, instead of its bizzare plot.

Despite its nice moments, however, Bone Gap will not be a story I revisit.  Instead, I'll mentally shelve it with other YA books that tried to hit a higher literary mark and missed.

 

 

 

Book Review: When

It's really rare that I buy a book without having read it first, but I made an exception for When, since I was on vacation.  I wish I'd saved the ten bucks.

When has an interesting premise, albeit one that is very similar to Rachel Ward's Numbers.  Maddie Flynn knows the deathdate of every person she sees.  She has a reasonably lucrative business running with her momager, reading deathdates for a price.  But, when she correctly predicts the date that a young boy is murdered, she lands herself in a world of trouble.

The book begins strongly, I felt.  It's nothing new under the sun, for sure, but it was pleasant in the sense that it's classic YA pulp.  It reminded me of the good old days of my teenage years, reading battered paperback "Jenny Carrol" (AKA Meg Cabot) books. However, my enjoyment of When started to deteriorate sharply as the pages kept turning.

My main complaint was the pacing.  The plot starts grinding quickly enough, but then it stalls.  Maddie, our protagonist, falls apart and reacts passively to all her troubles, making for a boring, frustrating reading experience.  I mean, I fall apart and react passively enough in my own life.  I don't want to deal with that nonsense in a pulpy, escapist fiction!  In fact, I made a note on my kindle at the exact moment that Maddie takes initiative.  It was at the 72% mark.

By the time that Maddie takes the bull by the horns, she's was beyond redemption.  Compounding the situation were other issues.  Laurie, our author, attempted to draw out her mystery by keeping Maddie oblivious to certain clues and preventing her from making simple inferences and connections.  As a result, Maddie came across as dumb.  Dumb as a bag of hammers.

So, what could buoy a book with a turgid plot and a poorly drawn protagonist? Supporting characters? Blah.  They were unimpressive.  Romance?  Dead On Arrival.  Beautiful prose?  Not hardly.

I strongly recommend that you pass on this one.