bookshelves of doom

Four-and-a-half books about the Rwandan Genocide.

Putting this list together, oddly enough, was inspired by a sweet, sad, lovely coming-of-age story about Mira Levenson, a twelve-year-old British girl of Indian and Jewish descent who's journaling the last month of her beloved grandmother's life (among many other things). 

Mira in the Present Tense (Artichoke Hearts in the UK), by Sita Brahmachari 

Although the Rwandan Genocide wasn't the primary focus of the book, it was an integral part of Mira's new, more complex understanding of the world (not to mention her crush, Jidé), her discovery and exploration of it was a huge part of her coming-of-age journey, and the scenes of her doing research made me wonder what fiction was out there. (Hence, as I said above, this list.)

In addition to all of the book's other virtues—seriously, it's so, so good—there's also a really nice thread about how her PARENTS react to and deal with Mira's maturation. On the one hand, they want to protect her from the horrors in the world, but on the other, they realize that she's growing up, and that learning about and understanding these hard things (as much as understanding is possible, anyway) is a part of that process. It's just really nicely handled.

I'm so very much looking forward to the sequel, which is out in September.

Broken Memory: A Novel of Rwanda, by Elizabeth Combres

This one is heavily based on interviews with Rwandan refugees, and chronicles the life of a young Tutsi girl who witnessed her mother's murder when she was five years old. Now fourteen, living with the Hutu woman who took her in, still wracked by nightmares, she has to decide whether or not to testify in Gacaca court. According to the reviews I've read, the prose is quite spare, but Combres doesn't pull punches about the subject matter.

Over a Thousand Hills I Walk with You, by Hanna Jansen

This fictionalized biography, translated from the original German, got multiple starred reviews as well as a Batchelder Award. It's about eight-year-old Jeanne d'Arc Umubyeyi, who was ultimately her Tutsi family's only survivor. The book doesn't only chronicle the violence, but the regular life leading up to it, and oddly enough, every review I've read has made me think of Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, because the book is narrated by a child who is experiencing all of the trauma of a horrific event, but without any real understanding of the political situation that lead up to it.

Shattered, by Eric Walters
I Learned a New Word Today... Genocide, by Elizabeth Hankins

The descriptions of these sound somewhat didactic to me (the Hankins title alone is pretty cringeworthy), but they both seem to have had decently positive receptions, so, onto the list they go. The Walters is about a fifteen-year-old boy who develops a friendship with a homeless soldier whose last mission was as a peacekeeper stationed in Rwanda; the Hankins is about a fifth grader who discovers genocide isn't just something that affects far away people—it's something that has touched people he knows. These two and the Combres were originally published in Canada.

Others?

West of the Moon -- Margi Preus

Last week, in the comments of my post about YA Stories with Roots in Norse Mythology, a couple of books were recommended. One of those books was Icefall, which I PROMISE I'll get to (it's actually in a pile of books sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME on the couch), and the other was Margi Preus' West of the Moon.

In recommending it, CC said: Not Norse mythology, but a fascinating immigration/unreliable narrator/Norse fairy tale combination: West of the Moon, by Margi Preus which I LOVED (and I think you would like too, even though it's more middle grade. The narrator is just your type.)

And she was totally right on all counts! What can I say? She knows me well.

West of the Moon opens with thirteen-year-old Astri's aunt and uncle selling her to a goat-herder:

Now I know how much I'm worth: not as much as Jesus, who I'm told was sold for thirty pieces of silver. I am worth two silver coins and a haunch of goat.

She lives with and works for the filthy and brutish Svaalberd for months—she eats better with him, but she also sleeps with a knife under her pillow to fend off possible advances—waiting and watching for an opportunity to escape. Finally, her plans can't be put off any longer: a young man passes through on his way to catch a ship to America, and Svaalberd is finally about to make good on his threat to marry her.

She has two weeks to escape, get back to her aunt and uncle's house, grab her sister and get to the docks. Not to mention figuring out what to do with Svaalberd's OTHER prisoner, finding birth certificates, scrabbling together the money for passage (as well as the huge list of supplies required for the voyage), and avoiding re-capture. Achieving a single thing on that list would be NO SMALL FEAT, but Astri has to complete them ALL. And, despite her love for fairy tales, she doesn't have magic on her side, and no prince is going to rescue her. She just has herself: her lying, stealing, cheating, canny, bright, survivor self.

So much to love here!

Astri. She is, as I've said, perfectly willing to lie, to cheat, and to steal. She's also not just willing, but UNFLINCHING, when it comes to using violence to protect not just herself, but HER STUFF. She's wonderfully contradictory: On one hand, she's a loving girl with empathy for others, but on the other, she doesn't allow that empathy to override her practicality. After months with Svaalberd, most people would have ended up submissive or even with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, but not Astri:

He doesn't reproach me or threaten me as I expect. He says, "Come summer, we will go down to the church and have the parson marry us. Then I'll take you to my bed."

"One of us will go to hell first," I mumble.

Above all, she is a GIRL OF ACTION:

"...And so shall someone rescue us, I shouldn't wonder."

That's what I tell her, but as her wheel whirs, my mind whirs along with it, and soon I've run out of golden thread with which to spin my pretty stories and I'm left with just the thin thread of truth. And that wiry, rough little thread tells me that if anyone is going to do any rescuing from this place, it's going to have to be me.

She is feisty and difficult and I have no doubt that plenty of readers won't find her at all likable, but I loved her, full stop.

The fairy tales. As her journey goes on, Astri comments on the parallels between her story and various Norwegian fairy tales, spinning the two together into a cohesive whole. For another character, it would be a coping mechanism, a distancing one, but Astri uses them to understand her own situation more clearly. She's always up-front about how the stories differ from each other, and unlike in the folktales, in her story, the actions she takes actually have consequences for herself and for other people. The villains, too—her aunt and uncle, Svaalberd—aren't demonized, they aren't simply flat-out monsters. They DO act monstrously, but Astri has an impressively fair-minded perspective of them, in that she considers their situations, their motivations, their outlooks.

The history. Beyond the fairy tales, beyond the adventure, West of the Moon is an AWESOME work of historical fiction about family, immigration, about trying to better your situation, and again, about becoming your own rescuer. Preus works in a TON of details about the period, the place, and the culture—I especially loved all of the commentary about the shift/clash between folk beliefs and church beliefs—but she does it so organically that I didn't even pick up on most of them until I read her (fantastically extensive) Author's Note and Bibliography. 

TL;DR: OMG SO GOOD, LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE.

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Book source: Netgalley.

Related articles

Shadow on the Mountain -- Margi Preus

The finalists for the 2013 Minnesota Book Awards have been announced.

YA Tickles the Ivories: Seven Stories about Piano Prodigies.

By the catalog: Abrams, Spring 2014.

The 2014 North Carolina Young Adult Book Award winner...

...has been announced.

The prize went to The Madman's Daughter, by Megan Shepherd.

Which I LOOOOOOVED:

I really, really enjoyed this one: it works as historical fiction, as science fiction, as a horror story, a romance, a coming of age, and as a retelling of H.G. Wells' original. The changes that Shepherd makes, the twists she introduces, they all feel organic and they play off the original and change it, but in ways that complement the Wells, if that makes sense. It changes it without trying to replace it or diminish it, maybe? Whatever it is I'm trying to say (YEESH), it's TOTALLY engrossing, and I TOTALLY DUG IT.

Click on through for the middle grade winner, both full lists of nominees, AND a list of the 2014-15 contenders (<--you'll have to scroll down at that last link).

See also: Madness, Tortured Romance, and a Heck of a Lot of Castles: Megan Shepherd's Love Affair with Gothic Literature; Or, Megan Shepherd's Eight Favorite Gothics.

May 12: International Nurses' Day.

Due to a weekend that was exhausting in every way, I'm not in reading mode today.

So, as it's International Nurses' Day, here are a three books about nurses that I'd LIKE to read at some point:

The Road Home, by Ellen Emerson White

This is part of White's Echo Company series, and while it looks like 'Tis the Season also features Lieutenant Rebecca Phillips, The Road Home seems like it's more up my alley, as it's about her return back to the United States from Vietnam, and about the post-war healing process. I have to say, though, while I'm not usually drawn to war stories, I've been meaning to read the Echo Company books for ages: Ellen Emerson White is a treasure.

The Foreshadowing, by Marcus Sedgwick

A seventeen-year-old girl with precognitive powers—she sees the impending deaths of loved ones, but no one believes her, making her a WWI-era Cassandra—joins a volunteer nursing corps and heads off to France in an attempt to save the life of her one remaining brother. Love Sedgwick, so I'm a little bit horrified that I haven't gotten around to this one yet.

In the Shadow of the Lamp, by Susanne Dunlap

The Crimean War! Florence Nightingale! Romance! That's all I really need to know.

Teaser trailer: Outlander.

Twelve Minutes to Midnight -- Christopher Edge

I love this cover art. Very Gorey-esque, no?

London, 1899.

Bedlam Hospital has a disturbing problem: every night, at precisely Twelve Minutes to Midnight, the inmates begin feverishly writing gibberish—on paper, on the walls, on themselves; in pencil, in ink, in blood. In the morning, none of the inmates have any memory of their actions, and every night, the madness spreads further. Having exhausted every medical avenue*, the authorities turn to Montgomery Flinch, an author who has recently taken England by storm with his macabre tales of terror published in the Penny Dreadful.

Little do they know, Montgomery Flinch doesn't exist. The stories are actually written by thirteen-year-old Penelope Treadwell, the orphaned heiress who owns the Penny Dreadful.

But Penelope isn't going to let a trifling detail like THAT prevent her from investigating...

Pros:

• Loads of atmosphere, action, and tense moments.
• Details like the secret door leading to the SPOILER, and the mysterious, beautiful widow are nice nods to the genre and suggest a real affection for it.
• Edge doesn't condescend to his audience: he doesn't over-explain plot points, and he never actually spills the beans about the specific events the prisoners are writing about. Deciphering those texts isn't necessary to enjoy the story, but they'll make a nice Easter Egg for any readers with a basic knowledge of twentieth-century history.

Cons:

• I got the impression that Edge was shooting for Late Nineteenth-Century Verbose and Flowery, but there's a distinct lack of rhythm in the prose. For example: "Behind him, Alfie failed to hide the smirk on his face as he took a sip from one of Monty's discarded glasses before grimacing in sudden disgust." In other words, much of the book feels like one big run-on sentence.
• There's nothing in the way of character arc or growth: at the end of the story, the main characters are exactly who they were at the beginning. (I suppose that could be chalked up as a nod to the conventions of the genre, but as always, I don't like that as an argument, as it suggests that genre fiction is somehow 'lesser' than 'literary' fiction. Anyway.)
• For a smart girl, Penelope is amazingly slow to put two and two together. Also, three-quarters of the way in, a plot point requires her to suddenly possess Crazy Science Skills which she explains away by saying that she's 'always' had a strong interest in science. It was so out of left field that I wrote NANCY DREW MOMENT in my notes.

Nutshell: Plenty of atmosphere and action, but no character development or emotional depth.

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*I think? Hopefully this wasn't their first choice of solution?

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

The 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winners...

...have been announced.

The YA winner is: Boxers & Saints, by Gene Luen Yang.

Click on through for the other winners and finalists.