33: A Separate Peace

A Separate Peace
John Knowles
2 stars

I finally finished this book. It took me 2 months. I just couldn't get all the way into it... and at the end, it fell sort of flat for me. I like what I think the author was trying to say, but I just don't think he made a slam dunk with this one. Which may be against the grain, because apparently this is a pretty popular book for high school English classes, though I never read it-- never even heard of it, actually, until this past summer.

This book is set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of WWII. Two boys, best friends (kind of?), have a tumultuous summer punctuated with a terrible accident (or was it?), and then an even more tragic autumn. They have it rough, these boys. Everyone knows they are basically being groomed to enter the military as soon as they are of age. There is this Great War hanging over their heads, but it doesn't seem real to them. They keep hearing about it, but they don't really get it. And of course they don't. They are children. War is incomprehensible to all but the few who have seen it and lived to tell. This is the aspect of the plot I could get behind. I could feel the pressure hanging over them, and the bewilderment of not really knowing what war is, what would be expected of them, even what they were being sent off to fight and possibly die for.

Gene and Phineas are presented as best friends and polar opposites. Finny is the BMOC, the jock, the uber talented, handsome daredevil. Gene is the introverted intellectual. He does what Finny says, most of the time grudgingly. Finny thinks they genuinely like each other, but the reader is (or at least I was) left wondering what was really going on. Their friendship is never very convincing to me. It feels forced-- the author says it's so, so it is, but I wish I could have believed it. The story is told from Gene's point of view and it's clear from his inner monologue that he has some serious ill feelings towards Finny that are never fully resolved. In fact, the main conflict in the book is actually an "accident" that befalls Finny that Gene causes. When it happens, it happens because Gene, always quietly simmering in anger at Finny, suffers a momentary lapse of reason. He acts without giving a thought to what the consequences could be. A really stupid whim, in other words. This action sets off a chain of events that affect everyone.

If you read this book in high school, I'd be interested to hear what you thought of it then. If you've read it since then, I'd be even more interested to hear if you liked it. For me, I could take it or leave it. 2 stars.

The Selection

The Selection is a YA novel by Kiera Cass. I think you classify it as a light dystopian novel. I will tell you now that my rating for this book is a 2. It had some potential, but it fell victim to the almost cut and copy structure of the increasingly familiar YA dystopian trilogy.

The basic story is this... America Singer is a pretty average girl. She has a strained relationship with her mother, admires her father, loves her little sister more than anything, and is secretly in love with the boy next door. But, America is risking a lot to be with Aspen because they are in different castes. Everything changes when The Selection is announced. The Selection is the country's tradition for helping the prince, Prince Maxon in this case, find his future wife. Girls submit applications and one from each district is selected to vie with the other selected girls for Maxon's love... and the crown. America hesitates to enter, but finally does to appease her mother and because Aspen tells her she should. Of course, she is selected and goes to the palace. But, before she leaves... Aspen breaks up with her. So, now she's not really sure what to do. She finds herself developing an unusual friendship with Maxon, and, as girl after girl is sent home, America finds herself wanting to stay more and more. Oh, and all of this is being broadcast to the rest of the country as something of a prime time special.

I think this story would really appeal to people who like the Bachelor. Or people who liked the Hunger Games, but wished they were actually a dating game. Or, people who like Cinderella stories and hope that the concept will be developed for reality TV. While it didn't catch me on any of those fronts, I will admit that it was a fairly fun, light read. It just disappointed me so much by being so predictable that I didn't really enjoy it. Here's what bothered me.

#1. While the setting, a caste system with fairly stringent rules, seems fairly dystopian, most of the societal issues are not addressed. For example, America's father has banned history books, which he loves to pour over with America. But... why are the books banned? What has American learned from history that will help her in the Selection?

#2. America starts off as a very relatable, interesting character. She seems strong and dedicated, and you like her. But, then she goes to the palace and starts acting totally bizarre. It was hard for me to care for a character that was acting so inconsistently.

#3. Why is this a trilogy? I once heard an author (not this one) explain that she had written a stand alone novel, but had been told by the publishers that she had to turn it into a trilogy. Does that make your head all but explode too? It's not a strategy for good writing, that's for sure. A story loses focus when it's stretched out too long, and I think that's what happened here. I got to the (abrupt) ending of the book and realized that almost nothing of note had really happened in the book. In fact, **small spoiler**, we don't even get to find out who Maxon chooses. At the end of the book, we're only down to the "elect" 6 girls. I guess I'll have to read the rest to be certain, but I have the feeling that this could have been one silly, fun book that was pretty well done instead of three books that drag a story without much depth on too long.

I'm afraid this review might be too harsh. It's an okay book, but I'm finding myself very, very, very tired of the predictability of many of the YA books that are coming out right now. Hopefully this is just the awkward adolescent phase of the Young Adult genre.

Ellie's Book #11: Shakespeare Manuscript

The Shakespeare Manuscript, by Stewart Buettner

**

I picked this book up by browsing through the Kindle Top 100 selling free books list. The premise looked interesting to me—an old manuscript that appears to be an earlier draft of the Hamlet story, or more accurately, a prequel to Hamlet, shows up in a trunk of old documents and a struggling theater troupe decides to mount a production in hopes that it will bring them the boost they need. And it was interesting, and even bordered on can't-put-it-down (I really wanted to see what happened next), but ultimately it was more frustrating than anything else.

You see, one of the ground rules of writing is Show, Don't Tell. From reading the description of this book and the author's experience in writing, I don't know if he's a trained writer; I got the impression that he's something else (a theater type, maybe?) who got an idea and decided to write a book about it. I think it's also semi-self-published, which, good for him. But at any rate it seems clear that even if he is a trained writer, he missed class the day they explained Show, Don't Tell.

I'm not talking about his descriptive diction or his approach to writing individual scenes. I'm talking about plot. Put simply: too much of the action took place offstage. There were so many times in this book when MAJOR plot points were not shown; someone told us about them later in passing. I felt severely cheated in a lot of instances because even the telling tended to gloss over what I thought were important parts. One of the more egregious examples: one chapter ends with one of the major characters being rushed away from the rehearsal retreat in an ambulance. It's not until several chapters later that anyone even mentions him again and we find out what happened. And those intervening chapters are full of scenes and incidents where all the people who watched the ambulance leave are together; where it would be natural and right to explain what the resolution of that particular piece of drama is; where, in short, it feels unnatural to NOT mention it. This isn't creating an aura of mystery or suspense to serve the plot of the story; this is straight up withholding information from the reader just because you want to have a big shocking reveal later.

(It's like starting Gone With the Wind with the picnic at Tara and then skipping ahead to a scene where Scarlett, in between wondering if Rhett really loves her or that Belle Watling character, thinks in passing that he just hasn't been the same since Atlanta got burned down and everything was destroyed and I nearly starved to death in the ruins of Tara, and does he really like me or is it just in my imagination?)

Other scenes of omission (sorry; my dad is hopelessly addicted to puns and sometimes I just can't help myself) aren't as obvious, but they are just as annoying. Yes, sometimes it's a good and effective trick to show a scene through its aftermath, but you actually have to 1) explain enough of what happened in the scene that the aftermath makes sense and 2) have the aftermath actually move somewhere and have some sort of action or resolution in re: said scene. I feel like I got half of a good novel: the anguished uncertainty of love interior monologue half. There were so many words spent on what the two main viewpoint characters thought of their respective love interests that it really underscored how many words WEREN'T said about actual plot or action scenes.

Things I would love to have seen or to have had explained:

*What is up with the main character's sudden-onset agoraphobia anyway? As in, how did it get started and how is she suddenly miraculously okay enough with it to function?

*What is up with the dead brother/son that nobody ever mentions? Even when they finally get to this explanation, it isn't explained.

*What was the horrible thing the professor said to the love interest that caused the major insurmountable fight that is then surmounted in roughly two minutes of interior monologue?

*What's the backstory between main character and skeazy actor? It's mentioned so many times that there IS a backstory but we are NEVER given any details.

*Did the wife really flirt with the brother-in-law or was the husband just really drunk?

*Where the heck did that divorce come from? (Oh, wait, left field is where.)

*What happened after said divorce came out of said left field?

*Why is main character still fighting with older brother? Why does older brother put up with it? Why does he work for a politician?

*While we're at it, what's the deal with brother-in-law? Or with secretary? Or with any number of people, all of whom seem to be important cogs in this book and have important scenes that ALL HAPPEN OFFSTAGE?

*Is British bookseller actually creepy or is it just the aftereffects of crazy dad's amnesia?

*Who really wrote the manuscript? (Actually, this one I was okay with the ambiguity on—this book is more about the waves the manuscript causes than the actual manuscript itself. It's just that, with all the other stuff that got left out, I felt like maybe the author could have thrown us a small bone on this one.)

In short: just because one character gets major amnesia doesn't mean you have to make the reader feel like she also got amnesia and forgot half of the book.

I can only give this book two stars, which really makes me sad, because I wanted so badly to like it and because it really was gripping enough that I read it straight through in a fever of wanting to know what happens next. But if a book refuses to tell you what happened before, what's happening now or what happens next, the best premise in the world can't save it. Two stars.

Life's Lessons Learned

This is Dallin H. Oaks' newest publication. It is a very quick read. All of the chapters are brief, self-contained chapters that are each only a few pages long. I think I give the book two stars. For some reason I was kind of disappointed. I love hearing Elder Oaks speak in conference, and so I had really high expectations. The chapters were so short that he doesn't go into as much detail as I would hope or like.

For example, the first chapter is about his father's death and how he learned that no matter how faithful and righteous the prayers of the faithful, nothing can change the will of God with some matters. He describes how his father got multiple priesthood blessings, some from high leadership in the Church, that said he would be healed, but he ended up dying anyway. This is an important and interesting principle, but what it did for me is raise more questions. Why, then, do all of those super righteous people not express God's will in their blessings, but their own? How can a person know if a blessing or prayer offered is the will and desire of the person giving it, or of God?

His mother, particularly, experienced great pain and internal conflict because of all those blessings offered. But he doesn't get into these latter questions, and I wish he would have.

There are lots of interesting tidbits about his life, because he uses a life experience to illustrate how he learned a certain principle. So, each chapter contains an experience from his life to connect to the principle. It was fun to learn new things about him.

Mostly, I wish the book and chapters were longer and more detailed. Simplicity can be good, but I thought this was way too simplified.

Middlesex-- Book #4

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2003. I have been trying to formulate a review... and have experienced great writer's block. This book is... so many things.

Take the opening line, for example:

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.  

If it's not altogether clear from that cleverly written opening, along with the title of the book, I promise it's not a spoiler for me to tell you that the omniscient narrator and protagonist, Calliope Stephanides, is a hermaphrodite man. Cal, as he later becomes known, is of Greek descent, the grandson of a Greek couple who immigrated to the United States in the 1920s-- oh, and who also happened to be brother and sister. One of the children of this couple ended up marrying a cousin, and they had two kids. Chapter Eleven, a son, whose name is never explained-- one of my irritations with this book; and Calliope, at first a daughter, and the grand prize winner of a mutated gene that resulted in 5-alpha-reductase deficiency.

The first half of the book is about Cal's family-- starting way back when with Desdemona and Lefty, the incestuous immigrants. The latter half of the novel describes Cal's childhood, which he spent entirely as a girl; his adolescence, which was mostly spent in a state of confusion and disappointment at his failure to develop like his classmates; and his ultimate understanding and acceptance of his gender identity.

Eugenides based much of the story off of his own life-- though he is not a hermaphrodite. He is of Greek descent and lived in Detroit, and a lot of the other details of Cal's life were taken from his own.

The book is written in the form of a memoir, though Cal's narration is omniscient and thus describes things he couldn't possibly know. Major themes include rebirth, the American Dream, race relations, ethnic identity, Greek mythology, nature versus nurture, incest and intersex, and gender identity (naturally).

Now... to review it. Sometimes this is the hardest part. I honestly have very mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, there's no denying it's well written. There's some great humor in it. Additionally, I think Eugenides did a remarkable job of describing the reality of an intersex teenager and adult, and the challenges and confusion that can pervade such an existence. I obviously can't know whether his descriptions were true to reality, but they seemed authentic.

On the other hand, a lot of the story was just weird and uncomfortable. I didn't like reading about Desdemona and Lefty's incestuous marriage. There's a reason incest is illegal. And despite the fact that I know there are many people in the world like Cal, it's not what I'd call super fun to read about much of what they go through. I think I understand it better, and I have a greater appreciation for the serious struggle that it really is, but I'm not convinced that this book was the best way to go about getting that understanding. Eugenides was pretty tasteful in what he chose to include-- there weren't any graphic sex scenes-- but Cal is definitely confused and experiments in various ways before he finds some answers. Cal also ends up working at a strip club/peep show in San Francisco, and that's a section of the book I could have done without. The part where he finally sees a specialist in New York and gets some real answers about his condition was a breath of fresh air for me. I think I am more suited to reading the technical, clinical side of issues like this.

Basically, I think I finished the book more because it was like a car wreck-- and I couldn't look away-- than out of true enjoyment. Unlike The Thirteenth Tale, I don't plan on reading this again. Taking all of this into consideration, I'm giving this book 2 stars.

Title: Middlesex
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Published: 2002
529 pages