ON SUCH A FULL SEA BY CHANG-RAE LEE

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”It couldn’t have been just Reg she had gone to search out. She had no real leads as to where he might be, or if he was even alive. So why would any sane person leave our cloister for such uncertainties? He was the impetus, yes, the veritable without which, but not the whole story. One person or thing can never comprise that, no matter how much one is cherished, no matter how much one is loved. A tale, like the universe, they tell us, expands ceaselessly each time you examine it, until there’s finally no telling exactly where it begins, or ends, or where it places you now.”


Vincent Van Gogh’s Branches with Almond Blossoms can be found on the wall of almost every B-Mor household.

Fan lives in the B-Mor colony formerly known as Baltimore. It is a high walled, safe community made up primarily of people of Chinese descent who were brought over, out of the ruins of their country, to raise fish for the Charter Communities. "It is known where we come from, but no one much cares about things like that anymore." The Charters live in elite villages that ring the labor colonies (repurposed suburbs) of the communities that grow their food. Beyond the walls of these villages lie the Open Counties of which little is known, but much is feared.

Fan is a fish tank diver. She cleans the tanks and retrieves the dead. She lives in a house of her extended family. ”...in the thinly partitioned row house back in B-Mor, her uncles and aunties and cousins pitching their nightly calls in a an unmelodious orchestration that heralded her blood” She pairs with Reg, a gangly, tall, young man not particularly good at anything, but such a beautiful soul that everyone adores him.

Reg disappears without a word, without a trace.

No ones knows where he is. Fan asks questions, but as she moves up the chain of command the answers become more and more nebulous and dismissive.

Fan has an inkling, I do believe, because she poisons the fish tanks that were her responsibility before she strikes out in search of her man. This was an act of defiance that had no precedent in the history of the community. She goes into the lawless country and leaves in her wake the beginnings of a revolution. Her odyssey becomes a fixation for her community as any story of her travels is amplified throughout the community, and added to her growing legend.

”Suddenly all the sturdy engineering and constructing, from the originals to now, feels as though it’s been resting upon an insufficient base, the same way a thoroughly elaborate and convincing dream can hinge upon an entirely impossible premise, which, once examined, exposes the rest as a mirage. The pilings are dust, the slab of matrix of silken spiderwebbing, and the very place we reside, our narrow row houses that have stood stalwartly wall-to-wall through a checkered history of caring and neglect, are but cells in a chimera, some bloodless being in whose myth we have believed too deeply and too long.”

After a cataclysmic event it would not be difficult to convince people to exchange their personal liberties for a steady supply of food, shelter, and safety. Who wouldn’t take it and actually be grateful for the opportunity? The thing is people in the future are going to be the same as people were in the past and the same as they are in the present. Eventually we are always going to reach a point where we will want more.

The Charters do allow the top 1.2% of children from the labor communities to ascend to their villages. They are adopted by Charter families and allowed to become full members of the community. Frankly, it is brilliant, you strengthen your own community and continue to deplete the people from the gene pool of the labor communities that would be most likely to take stock of their life and decide things had to change. (This reminds me of the decades old policy of the United States to steal the very best and brightest from all over the world by dangling citizenship before them, and convincing them that their contributions to society will be better rewarded in the United States. We become stronger and the communities they come from become weaker in the process.) These bright children from B-Mor and from other labor communities are assimilated and made to feel special. Their claws are pared before they can grow into something that could be used to slash.

Fan’s brother was one of those bright children who became a Charter member. She realizes that if she has any hope of finding Reg she first has to find her brother.


Chang-Rae Lee

She begins by navigating the lawless Open Counties and almost before her odyssey starts it is nearly ended as she is sideswiped by a speeding vehicle. Now fortunately for her she is hit by possibly the only person in the Open Counties that can heal her wounds. His name is Quig. He is a veterinarian by trade, a disgraced Charter citizen who now makes his living helping the sick and the wounded...for a price. His story, as it it revealed to us, is tragic.

”Fan looked up but in the dimness and rain could just make out the contours of his face under the dark shadow of his baseball cap’s bill. He was bearded and had a wide frame to his jaw, and his nose looked like it had been broken multiple times, and the expression in his eyes was that of someone who has seen the worst of the life and would not be disturbed to see whatever measure more.”

He will heal her, feed her, and keep her until he figures out what to do with her.

He trades her to Miss Cathy and Mister Leo, a Charter family. Now when is anything what it seems. On the surface their household seems normal, but there are strange things behind the curtain. There are seven girls of various ages living on the top floor of this house. They have all been bartered for from the Open Counties.

They have all been raped by Mister Leo.

Miss Cathy was raped as a child, and in some sick fashion the girls are all slices of her shattered self suspended in life, regardless of their age, at the point of when her trauma occurred. She is complicit in their molestation.

”Some were grown women, twice as broad as the youngest. But something was different about all of them, and not just that they had grown old. All of their eyes were huge and shaped in the same way, half-moons set on the straight side, like band shells but darkened, their pupils being brown. They were all giggling now, shoulders scrunched, their high pitch cutesy and saccharine. They crowded about Fan, bright of teeth. They smelled laundered and dryer-fresh. And now one of them was gently touching her face, others her hair, the rest clasping her arms, her hands, already vining themselves through her, snatching Fan up.”


Chang-Rae Lee

Fan is stoic, certainly courageous, through all her trials and tribulations. She is petite and quiet, a person easily overlooked. People sense something more in her that is larger than her size, something powerful. Chang-Rae Lee paints a world where on the surface you might think any one of these places is a utopia, but as you dig deeper you discover they are really all dystopias. There are benefits, despite the problems, to all three segments of this universe and I’m still not sure, if I were to find myself in this world, which scenario I would strive to call my home. Fan’s journey gives Lee the means to show us the layers of his creation, a real look at one possible future. This is the first book I’ve read by Lee, but it will most certainly not be my last. He holds a mirror up. It is our responsibility to look into our own eyes.


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It's All my Dad's Fault

The Manticore

Robertson Davies

Penguin

Reviewed by: Terry  

4 out of 5 stars

 

I wavered between demoting this to a 3 star (really 3.5) and keeping it at a 4, but I think it deserves a 4 even if it isn’t near my favourite of Davies’ work and is, I think, the weakest of the Deptford trilogy. We were first given an account of the small town of Deptford, and the players who would be the major cast of characters in the series, in Fifth Business under the guiding hand of Dunstan Ramsay. Now we see things from a different angle: David Staunton, the hard drinking criminal lawyer son of Deptford’s golden boy magnate Boyd Staunton, has come to a crisis. His father has just been found dead, possibly murdered, and this is the last straw of the many pressures on his life. After shouting out the query “Who killed Boy Staunton?!” in the theatre (at Magnus Eisengrim’s performance of the Brazen Head no less) he hurriedly bustles himself off to Zurich for psychoanalysis. From here we get his account of not only his own life but the lives of his father and Dunstan Ramsay (amongst others) as they intersected with his.

Perhaps it can be viewed as a strength, but in some ways I think Davies’ decision to couch this novel in the form of the psychoanalytical treatment undergone by David was perhaps more of a weakness. I think I prefer when his Jungian obsessions come in through the side door as it were, and this blatant explication of the Jungian method was perhaps a tad on the heavy-handed side. David is also no Dunstan Ramsay. Ramsay was certainly not always sympathetic, but David is downright unpleasant: a drunk with daddy issues whose many decisions in life seem to have all been calculated responses to the perceived slights visited upon him by others (especially his family). I’m being a bit harsh perhaps, but David certainly won’t be winning any personality contests. He is, it must be said, unwaveringly honest (with others and himself) and certainly he grows, as is the point of psychoanalysis, so he is far from an uninteresting character. Thus we are treated to a ring-side seat of David Staunton’s life. We see more of Boy Staunton than was the case in Ramsay’s reminiscences though even here he is more of an overarching shadow cast across David’s life than a fully realized person (indeed the more I think of it, the more Boy Staunton seems to hold a very special place in the Deptford trilogy: he is a central figure to the action who looms large in the lives of all of the other characters, but we never see things from his perspective or get a full picture of him as a real person as opposed to a foil for others). Ramsay is amusingly portrayed as the somewhat eccentric schoolmaster as seen by a child who may also share a deeper relationship with the child than either of them would want to admit. It is often a pleasure of serial works to be able to see the same characters and situations detailed in another work from a different perspective and that pleasure is on full display here. Characters from Deptford, both major and minor, are portrayed either with more or less detail than before, but certainly show other sides of themselves than we had previously been privy to. They in essence become more fully human, not to mention subtly transformed, from their first appearance to us.

I must admit that I by far enjoyed the final section of the book the most where we encounter old friends and some resolutions to outstanding questions are provided. This is not to say that David’s memoir of his life, as recounted to his analyst, is without interest, but he is certainly a character who lacks the flair and je ne sais quoi of Dunstan Ramsay. This book is a good read (I haven’t yet come across a dud by Davies) but even though Davies’ books can stand alone quite well I definitely recommend that you start your journey through the streets of Deptford (and Toronto) with Fifth Business.

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Ann Patchett Should Be My BFF

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
2013
Reviewed by Diane K. M.
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars


This is a marvelous collection of essays from one of my favorite writers, most of which I had never read before. Before becoming a bestselling novelist, Patchett made a living by writing articles for various magazines, including Seventeen, Vogue, Gourmet, Outside and The New York Times Magazine. Over the years, she stacked up a significant pile of essays, and a friend recently nudged her into putting her favorites into a collection. Pieces date from the 1990s up until 2012, with topics on divorce, marriage, her dog, her grandmother, a Catholic education, opera, being a writer, censorship, solitude, bookstores (Patchett owns one), floods, Christmas, the Los Angeles Police Department, and driving a Winnebago around the American West. Something for everyone!

My favorite essay in the collection was "The Getaway Car," something every aspiring writer should read. Patchett lays down how she started writing, and gives some solid advice for anyone who wishes to be one. Another favorite was the titular essay, "This is the Story of a Happy Marriage," where she discusses why her first marriage ended in divorce and how she came to be happily married to her second husband. She has insights that any person should consider before getting married.

I struggled over which quote to share in this review, because truthfully, there are wise and beautiful sentences on every page. To pull one out of context is like plucking a rose from a flower bed -- yes, it looks pretty in a vase, but doesn't it look so much more lovely with its friends in the garden? 

I finally chose a quote from "The Bookstore Strikes Back," about how she came to open and co-own an independent bookstore in Nashville after all the others had closed. She got a lot of press when the store opened, including making the front page of The New York Times. 

"I have inadvertently become the spokesperson for independent bookstores. People still want books; I've got the numbers to prove it. I imagine they remember the bookstores of their own youth with the same tenderness that I remember mine. They are lined up outside most mornings when we open our doors because, I think, they have learned through this journey we've all been on that the lowest price is not always the best value ... Maybe we just got lucky. But my luck has made me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible. Amazon doesn't get to make all the decisions; the people can make them by how and where they spend their money. If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read the book. This is how we change the world: we grab hold of it. We change ourselves."

If you are new to Patchett, this collection is a good place to start. I would also recommend her novels "Bel Canto" and "State of Wonder" -- she's written several others but those two are my favorites -- and the wonderful memoir "Truth and Beauty." Three cheers for Ann Patchett!

Bird Lives

Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker by Chuck Haddix
2013
Reviewed by Diane K. M.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


This is a marvelous biography about legedenary jazz musician Charlie "Bird" Parker, who was born and raised in Kansas City. His nickname is a shortened version of Yardbird, which is what Charlie called chickens. He liked to eat chicken, and others picked up on the name. 

Chuck Haddix tells lively stories about the saxophonist, who was known for his brilliant jazz compositions but also for his drug and alcohol use. Charlie would often disappear before a gig because he was trying to score heroin. One time he went into withdrawal while traveling cross-country, and he wandered off the train in the middle of the desert to try and get drugs. 

One of the saddest stories in the book happened in 1936, when Charlie was in a car accident while traveling to a gig in central Missouri. Charlie broke three ribs and fractured his spine. During his recovery, a doctor prescribed heroin to relieve Charlie's pain. But he soon became addicted and struggled with his heroin habit for the rest of his life. It makes one wonder how different his life might have been if he had never been in that crash. Yes, Charlie drank and smoke before then, but maybe he could have avoided a heroin addiction that ultimately ruined him and damaged his career.

However, that sad story is quickly followed by my favorite one in the book, which is how and where Charlie honed his craft. Back in the 1930s, a resort area in southern Missouri called the Ozarks was just starting to get booming, and club owners started bringing in musicians from Kansas City and St. Louis to satisfy the tourists from those bigger cities. At that time and in that part of the country, it wasn't considered safe for blacks to be traveling after dark, so Charlie and other musicians would often remain in the resort town for weeks at a time, until their contract was over. It was during one such stretch in the Ozarks that Charlie had time to really focus on his music and his playing. When he returned to Kansas City a few months later, everyone was blown away by how much he had improved.

"Charlie Parker, in the brief span of his life, crowded more living into it than any other human being. He was a man of tremendous physical appetites. He ate like a horse, drank like a fish, was as sexy as a rabbit. He was complete in the world, was interested in everything. He composed, painted; he loved machines, cars; he was a loving father. He liked to joke and laugh. He never slept, subsisting on little catnaps. Everyone was his friend -- delivery boys, taxicab drivers ... No one had such a love of life, and no one tried harder to kill himself."

When Parker died in in 1955, he was only 34. But his health had been so poor and his body was so abused by drugs and alcohol that the attending physician judged him to be 53.

Haddix lovingly describes Parker’s compositions and performances, inspiring me to look up and listen to several of Parker's songs. Some of my favorite details in the book were about Kansas City’s history, including where Charlie went to school and how he started playing music, or where the hopping nightclubs were in 1951. This would be a great gift for any jazz fan.

The Given Day

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Given Day is the tale of two men, Danny Coughlin and Luther Laurence, and their families, set against the backdrop of pre-prohibition Boston.

Yeah, I know that didn't really say much but it's hard to write a teaser for a 700 page historical novel.

As I understand it, this was Dennis Lehane's return to the novel world after five years of doing other things, mostly writing for The Wire. And he crammed every thought he may have had in about Boston in the early 20th Century in those five years into this book.

Danny Coughlin is a cop working hellish hours, almost 100 hours a week, with the Boston PD, following in the footsteps of his cop father. He's conflicted about his feelings for Nora, his family's housekeeper, and is something of a black sheep. When his father comes asking for help rooting out Boleshivik cells in Boston, how can he say no?

Luther Laurence, who once played an impromptu baseball game with Babe Ruth, goes from Columbus to Tulsa, and heads to Boston to escape some trouble and winds up working for Danny's father and getting under the thump of another cop, Edward McKenna, racist extraordinaire.

Danny and Luther drive the book, living through historical events like the Spanish Influenza epidemic and the Boston Molasses Explosion, while dealing with their conflicts with their respective families. For the most part, it's a pretty gripping read. The political climate of Boston circa 1920 was a spectacle to behold: downtrodden blacks, unions rising up to protest horrible pay and working conditions, communists lurking in the shadows, and the old guard struggling to hold everything together and maintain the status quo.

The supporting cast is a diverse and colorful bunch. Ed McKenna is despicable but you get the feeling he's doing what he thinks is right, which makes him that much more horrible. Danny's father and brother are also conflicted characters. I also really liked the friendship between Luther and Nora.

The entire cast goes through the meat grinder so many times they look like ham salad by the end of the book. While the ending is largely happy, it's not a happily ever after sort of thing. More like a "we're lucky to be alive" sort of thing.

Like I said, it was a really good read but I felt like LeHane was trying to take on too much at times. There was a little too much going on and also it felt like LeHane did a ton of research and was trying to get the most of out his nickel with it. Cutting 100 pages out of this beast wouldn't have hurt it. Also, apart from the initial baseball game with Luther, I thought the Babe Ruth parts were pretty unnecessary.

This one is right on the 3/4 line. I guess I'm going to call it a 3.5.


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We're in Big Trouble Now...

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four our of five stars


This book has the most intriguing premise of any that I've read in a long while. Set in the not-too-far-distant future, it features Hank Palace as a fledgling detective in Concord, New Hampshire. One night, Hank is called to the scene of a suspicious death in the restroom of a McDonald's restaurant. An insurance man named Peter Zell is lying on the floor with an expensive leather belt wrapped around his neck. The other end of the belt is tied to the handicap grip bar next to the toilet, and the officer who discovered the body has called it in as a 10-54S, that is, a suicide by hanging.

Sad to say, there's a lot of that going around these days, ever since astronomers discovered that a giant asteroid, designated 2011GV, is swinging around the sun in preparation for slamming into the earth at about a billion miles an hour six months hence.

The damned thing just came out of nowhere, one of those giant rocks that occasionally passes "near" to Earth but not close enough to be a concern. When 2011GV first appeared in distant space, all the "experts" insisted that it too would pass by harmlessly and that there was no need for concern. Turns out there was, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The friggin' planet is about to be destroyed.

As one might imagine, a lot of people are upset about this and some changes have occurred in the wake of the news. The world economy has collapsed; there's a lot of turmoil everywhere; governments have assumed emergency powers, and so forth.

Lots of people are killing themselves; a lot of others have quite their jobs and are devoting their last six months to fulfilling life-long dreams. Then there's Detective Hank Palace, who's doggedly determined to keep doing the job he always wanted for as long as he possibly can.

The truth is that, at this point in time, no one really gives a rip what happened to Peter Zell and how he wound up dead in the McDonald's restroom. But Hank does. The death looks suspicious to him and he is determined to investigate it as a murder until proven otherwise. the book details his investigation which is, as you might imagine, a little out of the norm for a police procedural, given the death sentence hanging over everyone on the planet.

It's interesting to watch Hank work, and one admires his determination. Either that, or you question his sanity. It's also intriguing to watch how the rest of Winters' cast reacts to the coming of the end of the world. Any fan of police procedurals and looming apocalyptic novels will probably enjoy this book.

[SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW THE BOOK ENDS!]

(view spoiler) I do have one complaint about this book. I am compulsive about never reading a book's tease before beginning the book. I don't want to know anything about the plot until it unfolds in the course of the story. As I approached the end of the book, I was very anxious to see how the author would treat the final moments before the big collision between the asteroid and the Earth.

Except that he didn't. The book ends with several months still to go before the big event, and only then did I read the back cover and realize that this is only the first volume in a projected trilogy. I was hugely disappointed to learn that I would have to wait two more books before getting to the moment I was anticipating, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to do that, in large part because, although the premise is very intriguing, I'm not sure that it can be sustained over the course of three books rather than the one I was expecting. Also, I'm not sure I was enamored enough of Hank Palace to want to read two more books with him as the central character. This is a case where I'll probably wait to read reviews of the next two before deciding if I want to continue with the series.

No Need To Imagine, Here's The Goods

John by Cynthia Lennon
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear John,

You were kind of a jerk to me when we were kids first going out. I mean, you really scared the shit out of me. I understand all the problems you had growing up in a broken family and all. It was definitely hard on you. So I stuck it out and stayed with you, even when the Beatles were forming and getting big. That wasn't easy, you and the boys always being torn away in different directions. I didn't know where you were from one minute to the next. But again, I stayed by your side and how'd you repay me? By shacking up with that Asian slut!…sorry. I'm sorry. I promised I wasn't going to do that. I'm above it, I've moved on, and so have you, obviously. If I'm being honest, I guess I don't fully understand what you saw in her. I'm not going to say anything against her, I don't even really know her. But whatever, it happened. I wish it hadn't, but that's life. Btw, our son is doing fine, if you care.

Sincerely,

Cynth

PS: I am truly sorry you got shot to death.

War And Peace And Love

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Love

That was the one thing I thought was missing from Leo Tolstoy's title, War and Peace. I was wrong. Love is in the title, you just have to look for it.

Certainly there is love in peace. It is the time of children, serenity, growth. The mother peacefully raising her children. The farmer lovingly tending his fields. The elderly passing their final days in comfort surrounded by family.

But there is love in war as well. The love for one's country. Such is a person's violent attachment to their motherland that they will die for it. To give up your own life so another should live, that is love indeed.

What is this preoccupation with love? Well, the Leo Tolstoy I've read is incomplete without this aspect within his writing. I knew this book would be about war, specifically Russia's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars, but I didn't right off see where the love would come in. It arrived in spades. There are peace-loving characters and there are those who are uber patriotic. Then there is man's love for the good he sees in another man's actions. And then there is the love that weds a couple for life.

Tolstoy's genius as a writer lies in his ability to dash his pen across all this with the same level of integrity regardless of whether his subject is a gallant officer in love with death or the daisy-fresh, springy step of a blossoming girl smitten by good looks and dash. Tolstoy transcends himself to become these hearty or hapless creatures. Then he marries them to our soul. Over these seemingly effortless hundreds upon hundreds of pages, these characters become family to us. We love them like brothers. We root for them. We are annoyed by them. We hate a few of them, but after all, they are family and therefore we must abide by them at least to a certain degree.

And when you step back from the book and see your attachment to these characters, it amazes you…and then it disheartens you, for you realize they are nothing but Tolstoy's puppets used in a grand way so that he may slash and burn the icon of his hatred, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Tolstoy seethes with loathing for this man. In large spurts through out, he devotes half the book to lampooning the man and his military deeds, and then as if that weren't enough, he piles on an average-sized book's worth of epilogue on essentially the same topic. In an effort to portray fairness, he also fillets his own. The Russian military leaders of the day come in for their share of condemnation. At times Tolstoy pours so much vitriol upon his own that you have to stop to recall who "the enemy" is.

Why is this a 5 star book? After all, it's not perfect, being neither fully a novel nor a military treatise, but rather both and not always successfully joined. For all its many pages, there was only a small handful of moments where I felt my heart fly or crash. Perhaps it is the vast scope of it all and the effortless way in which it is carried off. So much happens. Tolstoy gives us many rare experiences, puts us in battle after battle - whether it's upon the field amidst cannon and rifle fire, within the home during a dangerous pregnancy, or between an embattled couple bereft of love. Each of these scenes rings true, ringing to their own tune and yet all combining into one beautiful symphony.


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The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin.

 

Reviewed by carol

Recommended for: you, if you want an unusual fantasy read

Read on August 17, 2012

★★★★★

 

 

Every now and then, something special brings a new flavor, a blending of colors, an amazing moment, that just leaves me saying ‘wow.’ Jemisin did that for me in The Killing Moon. An unusual story line, an interesting fantasy world, multi-culti characters, and theological sophistication while being oh-so-readable made for an engrossing, delicious read. I sat down today and read until it was finished, breaking only for dinner and to follow the sun as it shifted around the yard.

The story takes place in a low-tech, stratified society roughly based on ancient Egypt. It’s a desert setting, prone to annual flooding; transport is by camels, horses and the occasional ship. Where Jemisin has made in roads into the unusual is in one of the main religions, the worship of the female deity Hananja, that crosses national boundaries. The priest-sect, the Hetawa, use magic taken from dreams to heal and to ease pain, but easing pain is a double-edged sword as they also gently usher people into the next life. Those whose souls are ‘gathered’ are usually those whose time has come, or who have been judged and found guilty of corruption. Jemisin does an astounding job at showing the beauty of what we in hospice like to call a ‘good death.’ The caveat being that it takes place in the night, during sleep and the cultural traditions around it mean it is a solitary experience. But in the end, isn’t it always? The people who hold vigil most likely do it for themselves, although I will say that I feel it is a mark of humanity to bear witness.

But I digress. Ehiru, one of the most experienced Gatherers, makes a mistake during a soul-gathering, causing a crisis of conscience. Unfortunately, one of the trainees is just to the point where he is assigned a mentor, and Nijiri most assuredly knows he wants Ehiru in that role. We get hints of a backstory to their meeting, but it isn’t until much later that we understand how layered their relationship is. Alongside this is the story of the Prince of the country, and Sunandi, a female ambassador from a neighboring country. Her mentor has been killed, most likely assassinated, and she’s left to piece together the puzzle of his research. One of the greatest perversions of the Hetawa is occurring for political means, and she is looking for proof.I won’t go father in plot summary except to say it was both unusual, suspenseful and a pleasure.

Character creation was phenomenal, with very dimensional leads that struggled with ethics, their histories, intended actions, sexuality–truly, all encompassing portrayals. Even the villains were more than cut-out, and their motivations were more sophisticated than plain evil. Also a pleasure was the multi-culti aspects of the book–although the caste system is not specifically spelled out, it appears that the darker the skin, the more likely the caste is high. The women are people, not tropes, with insights, prejudices and determination. There’s a very delicate and understated exploration of sexuality in the acolyte that impressed me.

If there’s any complaint I can find at the moment, it’s that very little is explained up front, which more than likely accounts for some of the less enthusiastic reviews. It takes a little time to show us, since Jemisin avoids the dreaded info-dump, so the beginning required a great deal of concentration to focus on names, cultural terms and places–this was not an old, familiar world that one could slip into like a pair of worn shoes. This is, however, a pair that will pay off in wow-value if you can get past the initial break-in.Truly a remarkable work with sophisticated themes, world-building and characters. Highly recommended for fantasy lovers.

The World of Normal Boys

K.M. Soehnlein
Kensington
Reviewed by: Nancy
5 out of 5 stars

Overview

K.M. Soehnlein's trenchant, emotionally honest debut novel unfailingly captures the spirit of a generation and an era. "The World of Normal Boys" is told in the haunting voice of thirteen-year-old Robin MacKenzie, a modern-day Holden Caulfield, whose struggle for a place in the world is as ferocious as it is real.It is the late 1970s in suburban New Jersey, and while "normal boys" are into cars, sports, and bullying their classmates, Robin Mackenzie enjoys day trips to New York City with his elegant mother. He dutifully plays the role of the good son for his meat-and-potatoes father, even as his own mind is a jumble of sexual confusion and self-doubt. But everything changes in one, horrifying instant when a tragic accident wakes his family from their middle-American dream and plunges them into a spiral of slow destruction. As the MacKenzie family falls apart, Robin embarks on an explosive odyssey of sexual self-discovery that will take him into a complex future, beyond the world of normal boys.

My Review

I've read lots of coming-of-age stories, but none have dredged up as many sweet and painful memories as this one has. The author has done an amazing job bringing the 70's to life and creating a character that is so believable and so easy to identify and connect with.

Robin MacKenzie is 13 years old and living in a New Jersey suburb with his parents, brother and sister. In many ways he is a typical teenager, wanting to make friends, fit in, and be “cool”. Though Robin is gay, this is a truly universal story about growing up, discovering one’s sexuality, and finding one’s way in the world. It is about friendship, family relationships, grief, guilt, and coping with loss.

There are a variety of well-drawn and dynamic secondary characters with their own baggage that make Robin’s life difficult and help contribute to his growth. This is a wonderful, thought-provoking, rich and compelling story that very accurately portrays the life of a confused and troubled teen.

I am looking forward to the sequel. 

Also posted at Goodreads.