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.

 

 

 

Review: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Deciding on a rating for this book is difficult.  On one hand, I want to give the author props for her good writing.  She managed to be lyrical and stylistic, but not overdo it.  On the other hand, most everything about The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender made me want to argue.  I can't, in all honesty, say that I liked the book.

The novel is a family saga told with plentiful dollops of magical realism.  It's style and content reminded me a good deal of Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits. Actually, "Allende Lite" are the words that come to mind.  Because, while Leslye Walton's prose is up to par with Allende, there was no driving political or socioeconomic message.  Nor, I thought, was there much of a message at all.

Kiera Cass, the author of The Selection, has a blurb on the back.  She writes: "The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender explores the real-life questions of why we love and how we choose to hold on to it."  Okay.

The cover blurb states, "Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and haunting mythology of what it means to be born with a heart that is tragically, exquisitely human." Sure.

Since we're all sharing opinions, I think The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender conveys that life is random and full of tragedies, but moments of quiet beauty and joy can come from the times when we pull our heads out of our asses, move onwards and upwards, and forge meaningful and lasting human connections.

I had to think long and hard before I came up with that English-major bullshit.  My point is, that the message of Ava Lavender is unfocused and kind of generic.  I think the story could have benefitted from a stronger and more eye-catching direction.

That would have given me some bearings while wading through Walton's thick, though pleasant, prose.  The plot meandered completely unapologetically throughout the Roux-Lavender generations.  (Conveyed to us by Ava.  She tells us that the point of the story is to understand who she is and how she came to be.)

Writing this review has made me more comfortable with giving this novel three stars.  I had deep issues with the book, but I admire that Walton's work raised so many questions for me to wrestle with.