The Girl with the Louding Voice - Abi Daré

How do you rate a book that emotionally wrecks you with the pain caused to the main character? How can I say that I enjoyed it when Adunni is so harmed? Perhaps its Adunni's spirit, which takes so many hits but cannot be crushed or denied. That she gets up again and again and is determined to find a way to make her life better.

I am no longer surprised at the cruelty humans inflict on other humans. Our capacity to cause pain is unbounded. In The Girl with the Louding Voice, we can see how the various characters are driven to pain or compassion. How the cruelties inflicted upon them can cause irreparable harm that they then inflict on others. We can also see how the kindness of just one person can change the trajectory of another's life.

Adunni is the only daughter of her mother and father. With an older and younger brother, and living in a small Nigerian village, Adunni's mother is aware of how vitally important it is for Adunni to go to school and leave the village. She wants a better life for Adunni than she has had for herself. She sells street food in order to feed her family. Money wasted on drink by her husband. When her mother dies, Adunni is unprotected and falls victim to her family's poverty. Her husband is forced to sell her into marriage, at 15, to an older man with two wives already. Due to some tragic circumstances (yes more tragic than forced child marriage) - Adunni runs away and finds her way to Lagos, where she is sold to a family to work as a house servant.

The man who brings her to Lagos collects her pay every month and never visits. She is for all purposes, enslaved to this family. The wife of the house beats her and starves her. The father has an eye for her that is far from fatherly. And by chance she meets a neighbor who may prove her only way out. If the neighbor only has the courage to step forward and do something.

I think the portrayal of the neighbor was really honest. We all can look away from things that we don't want to get involved in. We can all suspect people who are asking for help may not have the best motives. But the neighbor here takes a chance and it literally saves Adunni's life. May we have the wisdom to see these opportunities when they come.

4/5 Stars. 

How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character - Paul Tough

It's telling that I'm struggling to write the review of this book I finished nine days ago, but I'm not sure what to say. It's good news that your IQ and "book smarts" aren't the only keys to success. In How Children Succeed, Paul Tough chronicles several programs aimed at assisting youth make it out of tough situations, and none of that is just tutoring. A lot of it is instilling certain character traits that will allow kids to rise above their situations and go on to live better lives. But the anecdotal presentation of the evidence left me feeling a little skeptical. 

We've been struggling with this a bit with our own kids. Our third grader continually says he's just "dumb at reading" after having a couple bad grades. But we're pushing him to have a growth mind set. The belief that hard work and determination can improve your situation. For anyone looking to work on this aspect I'd recommend the Big Life Journal.

It was interesting to read about the different programs being tried in Chicago. Obviously there is no easy answer to helping the kids in Chicago Public Schools succeed. Many programs have come and gone and graduation rates, teen pregnancy, and violence against and among students remain. But there are so many people trying to work on the problem. The number of shootings in Chicago may get the headlines, but the people working on the ground, in the neighborhoods never get any press. If it bleeds, it leads. Unfortunately.

So much of parenting is trying, and then failing like you're getting it right. So I was fairly surprised to read in How Children Succeed that I am, in fact, doing some things right. Trying to instill grit into my children will take a balancing act of trying to provide nurturing support, but also letting them fail, and reminding them that character counts along the way. 

3/5 Stars. 

Come Tumbling Down - Seanan McGuire

Jack and Jill are back! This is the third Jack and Jill centric book in the Wayward Children series and more in line with Beneath the Sugar Sky. This book is not a prequel detailing the lives of a child who ends up at Elinor West's Home for Wayward Children. Instead Come Tumbling Down follows events after Every Heart a Doorway.

Jack and Jill were gone from the scene. Jill had murdered a few people trying to get back to the Moors, trying to get back into the good graces of The Master, a vampire ruler who took Jill under his wing and taught her to be cruel. Following the gruesome murder of Jack's girlfriend, Jill and Jack departed the Moors and ended up at Elinor West's. Then went back to the Moors when Jack had killed Jillian, preventing her from becoming a vampire.

And this is all normal Moors stuff because there, a dead person is never really dead. So Jack will be able to resurrect her sister, save her from an undead fate, and hopefully take up with her girlfriend who will also hopefully not dead. And all this is what happened. Until, well, Jill really wanted to be a vampire and needed a never dead body. Since Jack had a nice warm body just sitting there, they performed the old-switcheroo.

Jack became Jill and Jill became Jack and Jack-in-Jill had to run for her life through a door. When she lands back in the basement at Elinor West's to find Christopher has occupied her former room, Sumi is definitely not dead, and a mermaid girl is now in the group. So again, our folks go travelling, this time to the Moors to try to put the girls back in the right bodies, and start a war for the balance of power in the Moors.

All of our friends with their various gifts become involved. And the despair of someone like Christopher, like Cade become more acute as they see their friends called back to their homes and they remain in our world.

I'm excited for the next book in this series. None of them disappoint.

4/5 Stars. 

Blended - Sharon Draper

This book ended up on my daughter's shelf. She's still a bit too young to get into this (there are no pictures) but in a couple years, she'll likely be able to read this on her own. The prose is fairly simplistic and the themes are complicated but accessible.

There are two major tween drama themes running through Blended. 1) Isabella's parents get divorced. It's traumatic for her. She doesn't feel truly at home in either house, and 2) Isabella's dad is black and her mom is white and being mixed race she gets a lot of comments from strangers that are hurtful. I felt the author dealt with these subjects well. She gets into a bit of nuance as Isabella learns to stand up for herself and her split identities.

The book does, however, spend a ridiculous amount of time on mundane details that don't add a lot to the story. Each chapter has a detailed explanation of what Isabella is having for breakfast. There are plot lines that seem to go nowhere. At one point, Isabella and her black friend are shopping at the mall and visit an upscale formal wear store where they are followed and then told to leave by the private security guard. This episode was well described and later when Isabella returned to the mall with her soon to be stepmother to pick out wedding attire, I thought this might come up again to close the loop but it did not.

And I'd be remiss not to mention that during the final 20 pages of the book there is a very traumatic episode that occurs that is really not explored at all except to be summarily disposed of in an effort to move the book to closure. It's hard not to compare this book with The Hate U Give, which is just a really masterful story told through the lens of Starr Carter. But of course, that book is intended for a more mature audience and this one is geared toward the middle school crowd.

For all its shortcomings, this is probably a very accessible book for a tween reader.

3/5 Stars.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

First things first, you should know I love Neil Gaiman. I like the way his mind works and the worlds he creates. Although my eight year old received this for Christmas, I read it before him. Devoured it in a few days. This is what Gaiman does. He creates a world you want to inhabit. Even though it is usually creepy and discomforting, it is undeniably addictive.

In the Graveyard book, a man has come to kill a family, but he underestimated the curious nature of the toddler living in the house, who escapes without knowledge of the carnage and wanders into a nearby graveyard. The ghosts in the graveyard (a game I used to play as a child) come to find the child and are visited by the ghosts of the child's parents, who beg the graveyard inhabitants to protect their child. They agree and give him the run of the graveyard. He is taken under the protection of a mysterious figure named Silas, who, although his parents are two kindly old ghosts, it is Silas who provides most of the boys education.

Together, Silas and the ghosts keep the boy fed, entertained, and most importantly safe from the person or persons invested in killing him, who continue to look for him even after his escape to the graveyard. Along the way, the boy - whose name is Nobody Owens - meets fascinating people from the graveyard and learns to fade into the background and remain unseen.

As children do, he begins to question his mentors and venture out to discover what happened to him and why. This leads to a Gaiman style show down and Nobody shows why what he's learned in the graveyard is the best education he could have received.

Things that don't appear to be connected at first all matter and become connected with time. Bittersweet goodbyes and all that are wrapped up into this beautifully crafted book. What a gift for children to get to encounter Gaiman's creativity in such an accessible novel.

5/5 Stars. 

Down Among the Sticks and Bones - Seanan McGuire

 

I just love these little Wayward Children stories. Down Among the Sticks and Bones follows the backstory of twins Jacqueline and Jillian as they find a doorway to the Moors. Children of cold distant parents, Jacq and Jill each find their way in the Moors. Jacq becomes the apprentice to Dr. Bleak. Jill becomes the child in training to The Master, a vampire who both protects and feeds off the local village.

The Moors is a hard place but both Jacq and Jill seem to find their place. Except that Jill is under the tutelage of a jealous narcissistic vampire and she's already terribly insecure. Their parents had assigned roles for them to play as children and they were not allowed to deviate. So when the Master assigns Jill her role she plays it to a T, all while basking in his supposed love. We all know from Every Heart A Doorway where this entire thing ends up, but it was still very shocking to see the twins before they ended up at the Home for Wayward Children. Little surprise their parents placed them there after their return from the Moors.

For such short books, these stories are bursting with detail and imagery. I'm already teeing up the next one to listen to.

5/5 Stars

The Vanishing Half - Brit Bennett

Stella and Desiree are twins who grow up in Mallard, Louisiana where the lightness of your skin is prized above all else. When the girls leave as teens, they shock the town who see nothing wrong with the place they live.

The book begins with Desiree returning to town with her dark child in tow. What has become of Stella we don't know but it is eventually teased out over the course of the book. Desiree rebelled against Mallard by going to DC eventually and working for the FBI as a fingerprint examiner. She married a dark man and had a dark child. But when the man ended up being violent and abusive she went back to Mallard. Preferring to live a smaller life of safety even if it meant returning to Mallard. Desiree puts no value on the lightness of her skin. And she guides her daughter through the difficulty of living in that environment.

We then find out that Stella left New Orleans without telling her sister. Passing as white and living under a cloud of shame. She can never fully relax, can never be herself truly as she knows the cost to her life if anyone were to find out her secret. She makes a life for herself and then eventually, through her daughter, finds some way to pursue the studies and qualities of herself that she has suppressed for so long. There is so much narrative tension created through all the Stella chapters. Brit Bennett does a remarkable job stretching that out for the reader.

The book then moves on to Stella and Desiree's daughters. The two could not be more different but as they learn about each other it makes them explore the ways they are similar and what their lives have meant. This book is beautifully written. Even the minor male characters are so well drawn by the pages I can see them in my mind.

The Vanishing Half is a joy to read, even as it tackles some very deep family rifts and personal traumas.

5/5 Stars. 

The Dutch House - Ann Patchett

I loved this book. I love Ann Patchett. I love siblings. This was a definite five star read for me. Danny and his sister Maeve grow up in an architectural gem of a house in suburban Philadelphia - The Dutch House. The house was purchased by their father Cyril, a real estate prospector who built a thriving business. Their mother hated the house. Hated the opulence that was associated with the house. She felt out of place and not useful to the world shut up in the house. So she leaves. And the children are bereft. Maeve is diagnosed with diabetes - a dangerous disease in the late 60s.

Everything develops a new rhythm after their mother leaves until their father begins dating a woman named Andrea. When their father eventually married Andrea, Maeve has gone off to college and two little girls move into her room. Danny is aghast at the way Andrea is obsessed with the house. He wants nothing to do with her, and she with him. But when their father dies unexpectedly, Danny finds himself at Andrea's mercy. And she has none. She kicks this 16 year old boy out on his own to fend for himself.

Luckily the love between Danny and Maeve is the strongest in the whole book and she is there for Danny. She's always been his mother figure and she remains so. Their love is also tied up in their shared childhood trauma and the vengeance they feed between themselves. The hate they have for Andrea is almost a tertiary character in the book.

I love the nuance Patchett drives into Danny and Maeve's relationship. I love the way she teases out the characters and their motivations, the ripples their childhood creates through their life. It's so well done.

5/5 Stars

Beneath the Sugar Sky - Seanan McGuire

I really enjoy these Wayward Children books. This is my fourth in the series but definitely not my last. While the others have been prequels to the first book (Every Heart a Doorway you can read that review here), Beneath the Sugar Sky occurs after the events in the first book.

Jack and Jill have returned to The Moors following Jill's violent spree and Nancy has moved on to her own door to the Halls of the Dead. Cade has taken up Lundy's old tasks of running and managing the school as Eleanor grows older and more distracted. New girl Cora has arrived, fresh from a land where she was a mermaid. Cora has made one friend in her time at Eleanor West's and is out in the turtle pond with Nadia, who came from a land where she was a drowned girl among the turtles.

Their sojourn is interrupted by a girl falling from the sky. This girl introduces herself as Rini, a girl who has come from Confection to find her mother, Sumi. Whoops. Sumi died way back in book one. But Rini is insistent on finding her because the Queen of Cakes has returned to Confection and their whole world is in upheaval. How could Sumi, a teenager who died before marrying her true love, the candy corn farmer and fulfilling her destiny of defeating the Queen of cakes, have a daughter you ask? Well because Seanan McGuire is a genius and the lands of nonsense where a prophecy has been made don't give two hoots about whether someone is actually there to fulfill said prophecy.

Cora and Nadia get Cade and Christopher and they have to travel to a couple different worlds to get all the parts of Sumi back together again. This culminates with a showdown against the Queen of Cakes and a real revealing of the land of Confection and what it all means. I love how each of these books really explore different worlds. Book one really focused on Nancy and the Halls of the Dead, but we get to revisit it here and see the world more fully fleshed out. Book two took us to The Moors and we got to see just how Jack and Jill came to be. This book explores Confection, and the fourth, which I already read out of order, explores Lundy's time in the Goblin Market.

Each book explores so much about these hidden worlds where children who have need of it, are given exactly the world they need, that understands them. Cora is no different. She's visually overweight although she's an amazing athlete and swimmer. She goes to a world where her swimming is the most important thing about her and no one is constantly judging her outward appearance. In each book, McGuire really tackles some aspect of children that are overlooked or shamed and makes them into the unique aspect that makes that child feel at home.

Wouldn't we all be better off if we could make children feel welcome and essential in the world in which they already live?

4/5 Stars. 

Dear Edward - Ann Napolitano

When I was in undergrad and had recently changed my major from chemistry to English, I took a creative writing class where a guest speaker read a short story of her about a plane crash. It was 2002 and she noted she'd probably never get the story published given the events of 9/11. I thought about this a lot when I picked up this book for the first time. There are young adults now who were not alive on 9/11 and perhaps this type of story doesn't feel as jarring for them. But there was something about this story that was deeply sad and unsettling for me.

But that's not to say that the book wasn't well written or worth reading. It was. But wading through individual trauma through the lens of national trauma of 9/11 was uncomfortable.

Dear Edward tells the story of a plane crash. 12 yo Edward Adler and his family are moving from New York City to Los Angeles where his mother is taking on a job writing for a TV show and his father is moving to a new university to be a professor after losing his bid for tenure. Along the way they meet several other passengers going through their own minor dramas.

And then the plane crashes. And Edward is the only survivor. To say that his life is completely changed is a drastic understatement. The PTSD alone is immense. Survivor's guilt. Orphan. He goes to live with his aunt and uncle who could never have kids of their own. But he's not ready to be folded into a family. And all this makes sense. Edward's reaction to everything is detailed and nothing seems out of the question.

The book alternates between Edward's life after the crash, and the hours and minutes leading up to the crash itself. This led to some confusion on my part since I was listening to the audio book and it interrupted the flow of the story somewhat. The actual events in the cockpit were lifted from an actual crash and that somehow makes the entire thing terrifying. Eventually Edward starts to process his trauma and one of the things that helps him is finding a trove of letters written to him by family members of those on the plane. Corresponding with these people feels cathartic for him. And in a way, it's cathartic for the reader as well.

4/5 Stars. 

Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire

I really fell in love with the Wayward Children series when I picked up a "prequel" giving the backstory of Katherine Lundy in In an Absent Dream (you can read that review here). I hadn't realized it was a part of a series until halfway through but a prequel is a decent way to start a series anyway.

In Every Heart a Doorway, we are first introduced to The Home for Wayward Children and its headmistress, Eleanor West. It seems some children are special. Disappearing through doorways and down wells and into other lands and other realities where the rules are different. Sometimes there are no rules. In Lundy's case, she had gone to the Goblin Market, a place of high logic and wickedness. It seems every world that children fall into go into one of four cardinal directions - nonsense, logic, wickedness, and virtue, as they are explained to Nancy on her first day at the Home.

While In an Absent Dream was a very specific journey into the land of the Goblin Market, Every Heart a Doorway introduces many different worlds through their former inhabitants. Those former inhabitants now reside at the Home, mostly waiting, wishing to return to the worlds from which they were expelled. Having lived in a reality particularly crafted for their personalities, existing in our world, the normal existence is painful.

Lundy is a teacher there, trying to help the children cope with the reality that most of them will not be going back. Nancy refuses to believe this. She has come from the Halls of the Dead and wants very much to return. "Be sure" all the doors tell their travelers and Nancy's was no exception. But how can you be sure when you go only the one time? How can you be sure when you don't know what is lying beyond the door? The Lord of the Dead wants Nancy to be sure. So she heads home where her parents are aghast at her black clothes and bleached hair. They pack her off to the Home with a suitcase full of clothing that would make a flamingo blush.

But once she arrives at the Home, she is quickly shunned by the other students except her new roommate Sumi, Sumi's friend Cade, and the odd twins Jack and Jill. And this would be fine to bide her time while she waits for the Lord of the Dead to send another door, but... Sumi is murdered. Then another girl, and another girl. So this doesn't seem like it's going to work out very well.

So this is part fantasy and part mystery and all just very very good. Because at its core, the Wayward Children series takes those things about us that as teenagers or younger we had such a hard time defining and living with, identifying them as special and then making those traits work somewhere else where we get to really be ourselves. It shouldn't be a surprise that LGBT themes are prevalent in the books or that the characters come from diverse backgrounds. It makes the series really great. There's so much richness in the language and the visuals of the created worlds. Seanan McGuire is a treasure.

4/5 Stars. 

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed - Lori Gottlieb

Do I need therapy? Does everyone need therapy? I'm not sure but I feel like I want to go to therapy after reading Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. I suppose we are all carrying around pain and hurt in our lives. Perhaps childhood trauma or adolescent trauma or adult trauma. Maybe we're carrying around all these things and a therapist is there to help carry that load.

Now really, the author chose her poignant and successful patients here. Maybe therapy doesn't work out for everyone. But there's real heartbreak in this book and it is a heavy read at times. But also hopeful. Whether its the standoffish oaf who tries so hard to push everyone away, the elderly woman dealing with her loneliness, the terminal patient facing impending death, the lonely woman making all the wrong partner choices, or the author herself who faces a devastating breakup- all their stories author insight into the depths of our despair to where hope and growth might lie.

The book is well laid out between the author's own experience and that of her patients. Each patient grows and works along with the author to meet their goals. The cadence is well written and the patients are revealed to the reader as they become known to the author - slowly and through the building of trust.

4/5 Stars. 

Ask Again, Yes - Mary Beth Keane

Generational trauma is a heavy lift. Emotionally, the tendrils of the trauma wrap around each participant and create outcomes as different as the individuals effected. In Ask Again, Yes, Keane delves into the ripple effects of such trauma with themes of abuse, addiction, abandonment, and violence. 

Beginning with Frances and Bryan, who are trainees together for the NYPD and partners at their very first assignment. Frances, serious and cautious approaches his job with a professional air and thoughtful contemplation. Bryan appears more rash. Talks of the pregnant girlfriend he must marry and searches out ways to stop for a pint of beer while walking the beat. 

Fast forward to their children. Frances' youngest, Kate and Bryan's only, Peter grow up the best of friends. Living next door to each other, they never grow close because something is certainly off about Peter's mother. She's distant and abrasive. And it's clear to the reader that she has some elements of mental health crisis probably not helped by her clearly absentee or alcoholic husband. 

Bryan is only interested in an easy fix for his wife and his issues. So once a disturbing incident happens at the grocery store involving Anne, his wife, he's reassured she's on medication and it's business as usual. But of course it's not.

And everyone being willing to let these things slide in the acceptable and neighborly silence has bad consequences, of course. Violence erupts and both Kate and Peter's families are never the same. But their affection for each other, which was just beginning to blossom into young romance is left interrupted and unfulfilled. As they find their way to each other, they are willing to take whatever broken parts of themselves are left. 

I liked the way that Peter and Kate's relationship serves as a central hub in the book. I liked how smart and independent Kate was, and how unwilling she was to let anyone else dictate the course of her life's events. Maybe the book felt a little overlong, but otherwise it was a good read. 

3.75/5 Stars. 

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine - Gail Honeyman

I thought at first that this book was going to just be funny so I was not expecting feeling deeply about Eleanor and her welfare. But here we are.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine begins by letting the reader know just how fine Eleanor is. There's a total disconnect between how "fine" Eleanor is, and how not fine the reader can tell life is going for Eleanor. First, there is a odd and childish fascination with the lead singer of a rock band. Next there is some terribly hurtful things she overhears her coworkers saying about her without reaction. And then there is her mother. Wow. What a terrible person. 

And all of this would have eventually crushed Eleanor but for the simple act of kindness shown to her by Raymond, her office IT helper who happens to be walking sames ways with Eleanor after work when they witness an elderly man take a spill. Their act of helping the man connects Eleanor and Raymond and continues their acquaintance into the future. 

The friendship between Eleanor and Raymond is really quite beautiful in its simplicity and studied lack of sexual friction. It's actually quite refreshing to read a book where friendship and not attraction is deeply rooted in mutual regard and care without all the bodice ripping. What I mean to say, is that friendship can be really beautiful and I'm glad this book leaves it at that because it really allows the reader to focus on the things that Eleanor is missing out on by being so shut off. Just basic human affection and care. 

"No man is a failure who has friends." - It's a Wonderful Life

4/5 Stars. 

In An Absent Dream - Seanan McGuire

As I was looking for Own Voices writers to read for Pride month, Seanan McGuire's name came up and I thought I'd never heard of her. But turns out a couple of years ago, I devoured her Feed series (you can read my review for Feed here and Deadline here). A post-apocalyptic zombie series written under a pen name, Mira Grant. I had no idea. But since the writing in that series was so solid, I was willing to bet the same would be true for something written under her true name. And I was right. In an Absent Dream is well written. It's captivating.

While this is technically book #4 in the series, it is supposedly a prequel so I felt reading it first would be fine. I hope that's true. I suppose I'll find out when I read book #1 in the series, because I am definitely going to read more of these.

In IAD, 8 year old Katherine Lundy is friendless and lonely as the eldest daughter of the school principal. While not bullied outright, Katherine is shunned and escapes into a world of books. That is until she is walking home from school and winds up in front of a tree with a door. "Be sure" a sign above the door says. And while Katherine certainly can't be sure when she doesn't know what is behind the door, she steps through anyway into a hallway where the artwork on the walls provides the rules of the world she has just entered.

During this initial trip she is befriended by a girl with odd colored eyes named Moon, and an older woman known only as The Archivist. Since names have power, Katherine is known only as Lundy. She isn't the first Lundy to visit The Goblin Market, she's told. And in this way we learn that her father has had his own encounter there. While the Goblin Market is richly described and utterly fascinating, McGuire hides several action sequences from the reader. Depositing Lundy out of the Goblin Market and back home with just a mention of a battle against the wasp queen during which Mockery, another girl we never meet in real time, has been killed.

Lundy returns to the market at age 10 and the tension builds as she further learns the rules of the market under which she is to live. Lundy has a choice to make at age 18, to choose the market or forever be banished. She incurs debts within The Market, which insists its citizens pay "fair value" for everything they obtain. Those who fail to pay fair value slowly turn into birds unless their debts are paid off. It's a complicated system, but one that is so deftly explained by McGuire that its richness is enhanced by its mystery.

Will Lundy return and stay at the Goblin Market? That's a spoiler I do not want to give up because I did not see the ending coming at all in this one and it was not what I was expecting. I'm hoping some of the details of what happens after IAD is covered in the other books since it was a prequel. Will Lundy appear in any of the future books? I certainly hope so.

4/5 Stars. 

Hunger - Roxane Gay

It took one round of mowing the grass and one road trip to finish up this brief but necessary read. I really like Roxane Gay. In Hunger, I love how straightforwardly she talks about the burdens of her body. I have had many of the same thoughts she voices regarding body image and none of the violet criticism she's received from being a fat person in a public space.

Also, WTF is wrong with people? From comments she receives to strangers pulling food from her grocery cart, why do humans believe it's appropriate to comment on other bodies. (Also me looking through magazines: hmmm look at those abs - I get it, our culture is sick with objectification of bodies, all bodies). I've been able to quiet the external voice but my internal voice is still a struggle. Because I've internalized all the same things Roxane talks about regarding body image. I know that society values thin people more than fat. I know that being fat leads to shame and judgment - it's part of why three times a week, I force myself outside to run. See how this memoir about her body turned into an internal debate about my own? She's so honest about herself it asks the reader to be honest too. That her size is tied up in her trauma is heartbreaking (because of the trauma) and must have come as a deep revelation to her family who only learned about it after the publication of Bad Feminist (you can read my review of that book here). I can't imagine carrying around that kind of hurt silently.

4.5/5 Stars. 

I read Bad Feminist last year and really liked Roxane's voice in that piece as well. I was happy to connect with her again on a work that feels important because it shouldn't be "groundbreaking" or "brave." It makes me think of all the times you read in a magazine about someone "showing off their beach body" when it's really just a celebrity who is going to a beach in the only body they have. That's not showing off, it's just living. So let's agree to stop clicking on those types of headlines.

We get one body for our whole lives. And it is OUR body. FU to anyone who wants to violate it, comment on it, or co-opt it for a clickable headline (including People Mag

The Last Romantics - Tara Conklin

I really enjoyed portions of The Last Romantics. In the end, it felt a little bit too long, but I really did enjoy this story of four siblings making their way through a world in which their father dies young and their mother, unable to handle the strain of living as a widow responsible for the lives of four children, who shuts down and puts a "pause" on their mothering. I love sibling stories. Sibling relationships contain so many multitudes of depth and understanding.

I only have one sister. And our relationship has lasted through rivalry, separation, and now a close bond of friendship, mutual admiration and respect, and shared lifestyles. It's sometimes hard for me to imagine having similar experiences with two additional people.

Renee, Caroline, Joe, and Fiona are each individually shaped by their experiences during "the pause" and it carries them into adulthood in varied ways. Never able to fully unload their baggage, they go through periods of self denial. Joe perhaps the worst, because he has been coddled and protected from his choices until he also dies an early death, which leaves each of the sisters grieving in their own destructive ways.

The story is told in flashbacks with Fiona giving an author talk at some point over the age of 100. I didn't quite understand the need for this narrative voice as I found it a distraction that teetered on the edge of unbelievability. Will modern medicine improve our lives and outcomes, extending out life spans to well past 100? Perhaps, but the contemplation of this question added nothing to the story except a hint at the secret hiding in the middle.

On the whole, this was a well crafted novel about the complicated relationships between siblings, needlessly complicated by a contemplated future in which we experience extended lifespans and unnamed security crises.

3/5 Stars. 

The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead

I shouldn't be, but am surprised continually about the cruelty inflicted upon children by the adults into whose care those children are entrusted, whether that is through institutions and governments or by birth. It's so painful to see young hearts and minds wounded by cruelty and neglect. And in The Nickel Boys, Whitehead delivers cruelty and neglect in spades.

Based upon real events at the Dozier School in Florida's panhandle in the 50s through 70s, The Nickel Boys follows Elwood Curtis, a curious and sensitive boy, through his early childhood and into the injustice which puts him at the mercy of The Nickel School and its sadistic administrators.

You see, Elwood has a touch of the principle in him. He's idealistic. He believes in righteousness and fairness. He's been inspired by the speeches of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Unjustly sentenced as he is, he has no survival skills for a place like Nickel. Taken under the wing of a savvy boy named Turner, Elwood tries, and fails, to overlook the gross incompetence and flagrant corruption that keeps Nickel's leadership flush with pocket money and influence in the community.

That Elwood does not belong there is so obvious, and the atmosphere around every page that Elwood inhabits is so full of anxiety for his safety, that this book's short length is a gift because the pain in contains is immense.

I don't want to give too much else away except to say that survivors of the Dozier School, like their fictional counterparts at Nickel, have formed a support group and the shared trauma of their experience is something no one should have to suffer. Perhaps how a society treats its vulnerable children is telling more about the society than the children caught up in its disciplinary systems.

The Nickel Boys is a hard read emotionally, but for the understanding and empathy it encourages, it is an important one too.

4/5 Stars. 

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life - Henry Cloud and John Townsend

I struggle with boundaries. There I said it. I'm not sure why except to say that I don't like rocking the boat, and therefore not maintaining boundaries seems like the better option. As I've gotten older I have realized this is not the case. And now that I have kids of my own, the consequences of not setting boundaries is a constant and very annoying reminder.

In Boundaries, Cloud and Townsend, reiterate the importance of boundaries and the far reaching effects of not setting them. While I wholeheartedly agree, I found the book repetitive in parts and long on rhetoric but short on practical application, which is what I was really after in the first place. I didn't need to be sold on the benefits, I needed strategies to implement.

I did really appreciate a couple of beneficial nuggets, including not making my children responsible for my emotional reactions and that we are not meant to overcome problems by our will alone, that's why we have Christ. But I also noted that the biblical references seemed to be shoe-horned in without much thought to nuance and context.

So I had a bit of mixed reaction to reading the book, but overall I thought I benefited from reading it.

3/5 Stars. 

Black and Blue - Anna Quindlen

October is apparently Domestic Violence Awareness Month. I was unaware, but I'm glad I did read this book and the light it shines on issues of domestic violence. I think Anna Quindlen used a soft hand in presenting Fran Benedetto and the issue of domestic violence in that she never appears to judge Fran or her reasons for staying. She details Fran's decision to stay with her abusive husband in numerous ways letting the conclusions fall where they may. And it presents a pretty bleak picture of the options for women in that situation.

When I was younger and thought myself much smarter, I would have been one to ask why a woman would stay with an abusive husband. Now that I'm older and have children of my own, I can see what would leave a woman feeling she had no options. And I appreciate Quindlen's slow evolution of those facts over the life of the novel.

Once Fran and her son, Robert are safely aware from Bobby and living in Florida under assumed names, the narrative started to drag a little but there was always a sinister undercurrent of when would Bobby catch up with them, because I never had any doubt this would occur. But what made the novel fall a little flat for me was the ending and how it seemed to all happen due to some decisions made by Fran which she felt were empowering, but really led to placing herself and her son in danger. Would Bobby ever hurt Robert - no I don't think so. But would Bobby's influence over Robert be equally destructive? Yes.

Additionally, I know I'm not supposed to feel sympathy for the abuser, and I do not, but he's painted as a clear psychopath in the book despite a supposed evolution into violence over time.

A chilling read that really delves into the nuances of domestic violence and its aftermath, Black and Blue was a well written, if somewhat flat story.

3/5 Stars.