What I Saw and How I Lied

What I Saw and How I Lied, by Judy Blundell

When Evie's father returns from WWII, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in post-war Austria shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him. . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two.

As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between loyalty to her parents and feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is. . . who?

I don't really need to tell you how good this book is, as it's a National Book Award winner (beating out, inter alia, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, and a new one by Laurie Halse Anderson (which I may read next, now!)). Right from the first sentence, this grabbed me:

"The match snapped, then sizzled, and I woke up fast. I heard my mother inhale as she took a long pull on a cigarette. Her lips stuck on the filter, so I knew she was still wearing lipstick. She'd been up all night."

That description is incredible. I actually re-read that first sentence about five times, because I could hear, in my mind, the snap and sizzle of the match. That depth of description never falters, either. The period details of What I Saw are faultless - as far as I can tell, having never actually been to Florida in 1947. The details are pitch-perfect, the tone of the speech, the articles of clothing, the slang and the references (the nerdy boys are 'Poindexters', one man gets out of the war through a 'bum ticker', Evie's mother is compared to Lana Turner, and Evie's just watched Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun, and listened to Amanda of Honeymoon Hill growing up) - they all work to create the atmosphere. They are obscure without being frustrating. There was actually, only one thing that irritated me about this facet of the book, and that was the (to me) over-inundation of cigarette- and smoking- related references. It felt a little like someone was hitting me over the head with them, saying, look how common it used to be to smoke. It really only bugged in one particular case, when Evie is smoking in the car with a fellow hotel guest, and "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)" is playing on the radio. Which, to be fair, was the #1 song in July, 1947. But it still feels a little like it's done more for show than realism. My mother, however, assures me that she never even noticed all the smoking references, immune as she is to them after growing up in the 60s. So maybe it's not that far off from reality. Younger readers might be similarly thrown out of the story though.

Next: the Characters! Peter and Evie and Joe, oh my! Like all good mysteries, the cast of characters is small, memorable, and secretive. Everyone is hiding something, some people are hiding more than one thing, and, unlike in the biblical days (see Matthew 10:26), not everything hidden shall be uncovered, nor every secret made known. The cast is presented with empathy, as no one is evil all the time (sort of) and each person's motivations make them more realistic and sympathetic. The problem is that each person is being backed into a corner, from which the only escape is through the destruction of someone else. So there's some good tension there. In fact, the only character that I got sick of, was Evie. Evie, Evie, Evie, with her idiotic fifteen year old naivety and truer-than-true-love mindset. As soon as Evie meets Peter, the handsome young GI, she's sunk - and so are we. Now we get to listen to pages of her inner thoughts about whether or not he likes her, how to dress to impress him, stalking him, etc. etc. The difference is palpable. For instance, before she meets Peter, she has a dark sense of humor about herself:

"But I saw their glances slide off me, like ugly was Vaseline and I was coated with it."

Hey, I thought it was funny. It's certainly a very striking image. After she meets Peter, her caliber of rational thinking takes a steep dive:

" 'I wish a lot of things,' [Peter] said, "and one of them is, I wish you were back in that house, with your battle-axe Grandma Glad."

It sounded like the most romantic thing anyone could say. As if we were falling in love, and we knew it was wrong, but we'd do it anyway. We'd follow our foolish hearts. We'd listen to the crazy moon."

Yeah, uh huh, the moon isn't the only crazy thing in this scene. I guess it's a compliment, that Evie's willful refusal to believe this isn't true love gets under my skin so much. But seriously - Evie is 15, Peter is 23, he's just been through the war, he's obviously got some weird thing going on with Joe, her father. There is no good reason for world-weary older men to find young naive (and in this case, pre-pubescent) girls attractive. Reasons for this are always bad, a la Jane Eyre or Rebecca. Do you want to go through what the second Mrs. deWinter had to go through? Do you, Evie? And that shit came out in 1938, don't tell me you didn't read it. I bet you thought it was romantic.


Now, I don't want to spoil the end too much, although let me say that parts of it, wonderfully, cannot be spoiled. But I would like to say that Evie is redeemed in my eyes (if still kind of ridiculously, wilfully dumb in some Peter-related areas). You're left wondering, about 3/4 of the way through, how this is possibly going to end, as every page brings fresh entangelements. But the denouement is skillfully managed. You never lose sight of the way all the little scenes from the book fit into the overall assembly, as they're given first one construction, then another. All in all, a very well done book, with an impeccable, uh, set design? It starts out a little slow, but don't lose hope - the ending is worth it.

Bones of Faerie

Bones of Faerie, by Janni Simner

The war between human and faerie devastated both sides. Or so fifteen-year-old Liza has been told. Nothing has been seen or heard from Faerie since, and Liza's world bears the scars of its encounter with magic. Corn resists being harvested; dandelions have thorns. Trees move with sinister intention, and the town Liza calls home is surrounded by a forest that threatens to harm all those who wander into it. Still, Liza feels safe. Her father is strong and has protected their town by laying down strict rules. Among them: any trace of magic must be destroyed, no matter where it is found.

Then Liza's sister is born with faerie-pale hair, clear as glass, and Liza's father leaves her on a hillside to die. When her mother disappears into the forest and Liza herself discovers she has the faerie ability to see she has no choice but to flee. Liza's quest will take her into Faerie and back again, and what she finds may be the key to healing both worlds.

This book has a lot of promise - the beginning starts off very strong, as we're introduced to this sort of post-apocalyptic world in which humans must protect themselves from magic, from the trees, which are apparently carnivorous, and from walking out at night. It's an interesting idea, and well-thought out, but it falls apart somewhat as the story progresses. Things happen very quickly in the beginning, without enough explanation (at least, without enough explanation for me, although in the interest of full disclosure, I have never guessed the correct killer in an Agatha Christie novel, so I'm certainly not going to be winning any prizes for connecting narrative dots). Because Simner's world is so unique, the reader can't fill in the gaps by falling back on their own familiarity with this "type" of world, if that makes sense. The key events in the book take place over a month long period, and the speed with which things begin to happen (Liza's sister's birth, Liza's discovery of her 'magical me') seems too close to be coincidental, but, unless I missed something, we're never given any explanation which would make it not all some huge coincidence. That oddness, taken in conjunction with the slightly one-dimensional characterizations, leaves the story a little flat. Also, Allie really annoyed me - maybe I'm too far removed from my own childhood, but why are children so freaking dumb? If I knew that the trees could eat me and that some shadow creature was following me, I sure as heck wouldn't be ignoring my parent's strictures not to go beyond the safety hedge out of some crazy idea that these two teenagers - one of whom is a werewolf - need my help. This might make me a bad person, but I couldn't help hoping that her father would get seriously injured while out looking for her, and then she'd be sorry.

Okay, back on track. I did appreciate that this was set in St. Louis, although naturally I-44 was not really recognizable anymore. I was sad about the parts which described the buildings being destroyed in the war - the riverfront is so picturesque it'd be a black day indeed if the faeries ever bombed it for real. However, living so close to the Arch has perhaps made it less mystical to me. Speaking as someone who has a small wire model of the Arch in her kitchen, the whole idea that the Arch is the gateway to Faerie is kinda laughable - ain't nothing on the other side of that but East St. Louis, yo. Or St. Louis, if you come at it from the other direction. But I digress, yet again.

So many things were never explained in the book (why are there no more mirrors, why did Liza's mother just up and leave, just how many magic traits can people get, why did Liza's mother assume she was -mysteriously- the only kid in town who wasn't magical?) and so much backstory was left unsaid that I'm sort of hoping there will be a second book to explain it all. The book is limited by whatever Liza knows, which, let's be honest, isn't much. This could easily be twice as long, with a lot more detail and build-up. But not a bad start, though not my favorite either.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

January 1946: London is emerging from the Shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she could find it in a letter from a man she'd never met, a native of Guernsey, the British island once occupied by the Nazis. He'd come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb. Perhaps she could tell him where he might find more books by this author.

As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the Germans.

Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the Society's charming, deeply human members, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all. Through their letters she learns about their island, their taste in books, and the powerful, transformative impact the German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds there will change her forever.

Any book about people who love to read, will generally be well accepted by, well, people who love to read. This is no exception. The story is gently told through letters, which is probably the only way such a book could have been told. The story is really a story within a story - Juliet is a writer (of articles and books, in addition to her letters) who discovers an veritable wealth of material of the German occupation of Guernsey. In both the GL&PPPS as well as the fictional book Juliet is writing, the heart of the anecdotes is a vibrant young woman named Elizabeth McKenna. It's true that in the fictional book (as well as the fiction book) without this character, the story would have just a jumbled collection of stories. As it is, those few stories told to Juliet about the occupation before the book really gets momentum feel oddly forced, a little bit unasked-for or unprompted. Once the book picks up speed, the stories feel more natural, but then falls into a second trap - Elizabeth McKenna is such a paragon that the two authors have to work very hard in order to make her more human. There is a conversation in which the other characters speculate on the difficulties that she must have gone through, but in all the tales of her, we see her only at her most noble, without despair or doubt. It's only a slight misstep, but it does somewhat divorce the reader from feeling more empathy or sympathy. In fact, the incident that struck me most keenly was one involving Remy, a concentration camp survivor, who comes face to face with some terrible memories, and I doubt very much that the authors intended Remy to be their most compelling character (though perhaps they did - if so, they certainly succeeded).

The rest of the characters suffer from the same disease that the mythical Elizabeth does: too much goodness. Since we're granted a closer look at their foibles than Elizabeth's though, they come off the better. There is nothing subtle about the book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Every plot point is telegraphed well in advance, which certainly makes reading the book a very cozy experience. Despite the horrific stories related in the book (and I have no doubt that each incident was real, for someone - I read somewhere that this is the result of years of research, in which case the authors must have had strong stomachs) there is really nothing awful hiding around a corner, no unexpected tragedies or awful misfortunes. The tone suits the material of the book - without such a light touch, the reader could easily be bogged down in the misery of the past.

The GL&PPPS definitely succeeded in at least one area: it makes you want to know more about the German occupation. The mishmash of stories doesn't really satisfy the mind (though their briefness does preserve the heart) and at the end I was left with an aching curiosity about the real people of Guernsey. It's clearly the intention of the authors to keep this a light little epistolatory romance, but the absence of any sources for further reference in the back was a let down. So I can understand the criticism of some readers, who think that the book is too light and fluffy, not memorable like other war books, but it is not the nature of this particular book to mine the depths of humanity - only to provide a story about love and moving on, and to remind us that even in wartime, people can still be selfless and kind. All in all, a very sweet book, like a candy melting on the tongue. And as one last note, although the characters are not always very clear (when I was reading, I apparently merged two people - Sophie and Susan - into one, without any loss in the story. There are far too many "s" names in this book) the important ones have well defined voices in their letters, possibly as a result of the two authors. It is no mean feat to do so, which is another delight of the book.

Need

Need, by Carrie Jones

Zara's stepfather has died, her mother isn't capable of caring for her, and she has been sent to live with her grandmother in a small remote town in Maine. When her car spins out of control, she's rescued by sexy Nick (who turns out to be a werewolf), and something might be cooking with her overachieving classmate Ian. Too bad she's being followed by someone dark and dangerous—a pixie king. This pixie is no harmless sprite: when not mated with a queen for an unspecified amount of time, Zara learns, the pixie kings will demand young human men, who they kill after using them for their blood-hungry pleasures. Will Zara sacrifice herself to this vampire stand-in or let him destroy everything she loves?

I wanted to read this book for awhile - I put it on my to-read list, although I didn't go so far as to order it off Amazon when the library came up short. Luckily I got a free copy, because otherwise I would have been making a return trip to the store. If it hadn't been a kids book and only 300 pages long, I would have been skimming the heck out of the last two-thirds. Which is sad - this has a lot of potential, but it lost me early, and never really got it together enough to get me back by the end.

Zara comes to Maine, a snowy desolate state, and immediately makes friends, has two hot guys hitting on her, and has a pixie following her. It's not really the plot that fails (although it certainly doesn't help) but the supporting characters. As soon as we meet Issie - "Is" - I began to hate this book. Issie (I refuse to use "Is" because it's just too precious for words) is such a caricature of a person, such a complete fabrication, that I was irritated by the mere mention of her, let alone her actual presence on the page. Devyn, one of Zara's early friends, gloms onto the idea of pixies so quickly it's incredible. And admittedly, he himself is an otherworldly creature, so it might have been believable that he would know more about pixies than the normal person, but that's not the way that it's explained. Apparently, he just went online and found a page about pixies - and what? Some kid disappears in Maine and there's some weird guy wandering around and your first thought is, let's do a google search? It's just so bizarre. Bedford, Maine is apparently filthy with pixies and were-things and it hasn't occured to anyone's parents to tell their children, "Hey, the pixie king hasn't had sex in a while, you shouldn't wander around the woods (unless your coat's inside out)."? It boggles the mind. And not in a good way. The book felt simultaneously too long and not long enough. Too long, because when I have to work this hard to suspend both my disbelief and my personal hatred towards characters 300 pages is much too much, and not long enough, because there's very little set-up, very little character development. The pace is very arrival-mysterious stranger-!pixies!-plan to kick ass. Zara swallows the pixie thing pretty easily, but bizarrely takes like, twenty pages to figure out that the "dog" that magically appeared after Nick disappears is Nick himself. Because he is a werewolf. Something she literally just read was the mortal enemy of the pixie. Because sure, if there's gold dust on someone's jacket, that must mean that pixies are real, but werewolves? Whole 'nother matter. What a crock. I will allow that however much I personally find the whole idea that pixies and werewolves are mortal enemies to be so very retarded, in terms of that aspect of the plot, the book doesn't have any major issues - if only it were better done, I might have bought it. In Need, it merely adds insult to injury. Other things I'm not discussing, because I like low blood pressure: the hitting us over the head with the title of the book, because the pixie king needs these young boys, the whole let's-substitute-young-boys-for-raping-girls in the first place, and so much more.

If you manage to struggle through the immense plot holes and giant anvils in the beginning, the end isn't wholly awful. It's not good, to be sure, but it doesn't insult the readers overmuch. The ending is obviously poised for a sequel, which if I read, will be only for sheer morbid curiousity. The climax of the book contains a lot of action, but not a lot of sense. I can't really describe it, since my ability to think and express myself coherently about Need is rapidly dwindling, but rest assured it delivers on every crazy promise made in the rest of the book. I'm just so disappointed! It may be making my review harsher than it should be (probably not, though) but I just had such high hopes of this from the description. It has a mad pixie! I mean, come on, a mad pixie. How could things go so wrong, so quickly? Oh well, I wash my hands of it. I don't say this lightly, but even Twilight was better. I am so ashamed that I had to say that.


In case you were wondering, that blurb is accurate: it truly says, in the book, that when not mated for an unspecified amount of time, he needs to suck the life out of young boys. An unspecified amount of time. An unspecified amount of time. Why, may I ask, is it unspecified? Why not just say twenty years, or even just "too long"? But NO. It is AN UNSPECIFIED AMOUNT OF TIME, dammit! That may actually sum up, in five words, everything I hated about this book.

Jesus Land

Jesus Land, by Julia Scheeres

Journalist Scheeres offers a frank and compelling portrait of growing up as a white girl with two adopted black brothers in 1970s rural Indiana, and of her later stay with one of them at a Christian reform school in the Dominican Republic. The book takes its title from a homemade sign that Scheeres and the brother closest to her in age and temperament, David, spot one day on a road in the Hoosier countryside, proclaiming, "This here is: JESUS LAND." And while religion is omnipresent both at their school and in the home of their devout parents, the two rarely find themselves the beneficiaries of anything resembling Christian love.

I read this while on spring break, which wasn't a bad way to do it, boiling in the tropical heat of Mexico, reading about the tropical heat of the Dominican Republic. After finishing it, the woman who lent it to me asked if I could believe that places like the religious camp detailed in the book really existed, and about that, I didn't have a moment of doubt. Crazy religious camps are one of the more believable things in the memoir, which is perhaps why I it didn't affect me overmuch. The entire first half of Jesus Land takes place in somewhat rural Indiana, where the racism is as direct as it is pervasive. Scheeres' parents adopted two black boys in order to prove the strength of their faith, rather than from any real desire to love or help some unwanted kids. Scheeres' descriptions of the reluctance of anyone in the family to step out and shield the two children from the racism of outsiders attempts to condemn as well as atone for her own admitted unwillingness to stick her neck out. That section, as she relates the way in which she turned away from her brother David in order not to provoke violence on herself as well, seemed almost too pat. I don't doubt it, but it seemed too much like a public penance, done more out of a sense of martyrdom than real feeling. It could have just come across that way because Scheeres was constrained by the point of view from her seventeen year old self. The parts of the Indiana section which don't relate directly to David are the weak points of Jesus Land. Scheeres' behavior as a teen kind of boggles the mind, not in a holy cow! way, but more of a too-dumb-to-be-true way. There's a note at the beginning that says that while all the events happened, the timeline has been compressed in order to make the story more coherent and cohesive. Perhaps my dislike of these parts come from this compression, but whatever the origin, my distaste for just about every person in the book, including Scheeres, made reading the book more of a chore than it should rightly be.

The events of the book are unbelievable, but the events in the first half (most of them) are unbelievable in a Homer Simpson kind of way, whereas the events of the second half are unbelievable in an oh-the-humanity kind of way, which I suspect is more of what the author was going for. In my opinion, the second half of the book, set in the Dominican Republic after Scheeres chooses reform camp rather than juvie, could (and should) have been the entire book itself. It is a much stronger story than the Indiana half, and doesn't contain the melodramatic idiocy that the first half does. There is more tension, more at stake, in this section, and it makes Scheeres sympathetic, without absolving her. This section also allows us to really get invested in her relationship with David, which is crucial to your enjoyment of the memoir. David, as seen through Scheeres' eyes, is the only innocent here, the one who keeps the dream of family alive despite the evidence of his own eyes. In the end of the book, it's revealed that ***SPOILER****SPOILER****SPOILER*** David dies, and that much of the material for the book was taken from his journals. In that light, the book makes more sense, and is more moving. As a memorial to David, it works well, a sort of marble angel in written form. It would be a compelling story either way, but since David was the only person about whom I gave a damn, his death gives more meaning to the act of writing. Without that conclusion, it would have been too distant from him, it would have become more about Scheeres growing up and growing wiser.

The religion in the book is, of course, appalling, disgusting, etc. etc. The manifestation of faith in many circumstances illustrates the depth of hypocrisy and possibilities for abuse. Organized religion (as opposed to disorganized? In the Venn diagram of life, can it really be called a religion if it's not organized? And no, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is not a religion) has been responsible for a lot of terrible things. Missionaries (and the reasoning behind them) have been responsible for a lot of terrible things. That these thigs happen says more about the believers than the religion itself. One of the mistakes of the book lies in the point-of-view. The restrictions of a adolescent girl's mind prohibits very thoughtful insight about this facet of the events. Scheeres' own opinion about religion is not discussed, and in a way, it's not relevant - religious fervor comes in many flavors and often has more to do with power than religion - but to leave it (and other discussions about belief) out entirely, when the book is called Jesus Land, is a miscalculation. All in all, a good book, good beach reading, and it sticks in your mind, even though I have no desire to read it again. I've read more powerful memoirs, but as a memorial, it works.