bookshelves of doom

A Monster Calls -- Patrick Ness Illustrated by Jim Kay From an original idea by Siobhan Dowd

Ever since his mother got sick, Conor has been dreaming about a monster. The same nightmare, night after night.

And then, one night, a different monster comes to him.

While he's still awake.

The monster is going to tell Conor three stories.

And then, whether he wants to or not, Conor is going to tell the monster a fourth story. Not just any story, but the truth. His truth.

Oh, Patrick Ness. You jerk.

I don't really mean that, of course.

But I have the flu. So I already feel terrible.

And then I read A Monster Calls and it made me cry so hard that I got a bloody nose.

Yes, literally.

I knew I was in trouble when I teared up just opening it: my last Siobhan Dowd book, and only partly hers, at that.

I knew I was in trouble when I was in tears after reading the Author's Note:

I felt — and feel — as if I've been handed a baton like a particularly fine writer had given me her story and said, "Go. Run with it. Make trouble." So that's what I tried to do. Along the way, I had only a single guideline: to write a book I think Siobhan would have liked. No other criteria could really matter.

I knew I was in trouble when seeing the dedication — For Siobhan — set me off again.

But that was nothing.

Because I hadn't even hit the actual story yet.

Every line of Patrick Ness' beautiful, deceptively simple prose Tells The Truth. The truth about the isolation of grief, about the anger that comes out of loss, the truth about guilt, and about how knowledge and logic have absolutely nothing to do with emotion.

A Monster Calls isn't a fable that features Everyman Characters To Make A Point: It's a story about people. Conor isn't just a stand-in for any random person experiencing heartbreak. He's a real, three-dimensional boy, with a real, three-dimensional life. His grandmother is a real person, as is his mother and his mostly-absent father and the people at school and everyone else in the book.

And, for that matter, the monster isn't just a mechanism for passing on platitudes: It's a true Wild Thing. Inhuman and eternal, but empathetic, like Marcus Zusak's Death.

Then there are the illustrations by Jim Kay, which are... well:

Fittingly untamed. There are more at his website.

Yes, it made me sob. Yes, it's beyond sad.

But it also made me laugh. Because sometimes, it's funny. And sometimes it's a bit scary. And like life, it's both predictable and unpredictable.

Beautifully written, gorgeously illustrated, a lovely design: It's easy to tell that the people behind the book love it just as much as it deserves to be loved.

Seriously, seriously, this is very much not one to be missed.

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There's a blog tour going on right now for this book which I'm not technically a part of, but here's the list of links:

• 9/26 at Educating Alice
• 9/27 at I Read Banned Books
• 9/27 at Charlotte’s Library
• 9/28 at Cynsations
• 9/29 at the Ya Ya Yas
• 9/30 at YA Bibliophile
• 10/3 at Lisa the Nerd
• 10/4 at Milk and Cookies
• 10/5 at Waking Brain Cells

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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.

Alternate endings...

...for one of the most depressing stories in history: Nick Abadzis played What If? with Laika the dog.

The Reapers are the Angels -- Alden Bell

15-year-old Temple keeps herself to herself. The zombies rose before she was born, and so this life -- wandering a ruined world -- is all she's ever known.

Well, almost all. Years ago, there was a man who taught her how to survive, and there was a boy she travelled with, but she's alone now. And she's content in her self-imposed exile. Or as content as it's possible for her to be.

Circumstances require that she leave her island haven, though, and while she's back in the world, she runs afoul of tracker Moses Todd:

You know what I think? she says.
What do I think?
She points through the hole into the dark throat of the diseased landscape.
I think you're more dangerous than what's out there.
Well, little girl, he says, that's a funny thing you just uttered. Because I was just now thinkin the same thing about you.

Holy cow, guys. I'd heard (you know, around the online water cooler or wherever) that The Reapers are the Angels was good, but I hadn't realized to what degree of good. It's seriously, seriously... well, it's not your average zombie novel. (And I know of what I speak, as I've read a lot of average -- as in mediocre AND/OR generic -- zombie novels.)

As I read it, I kept thinking of Flannery O'Connor. And of Faulkner. Not just because of the Southern Gothic feel, but because Alden Bell captures that same beauty-in-the-midst-of-horror and resignation-to-tragedy-beyond-our-definition-of-tragedy that I think of when I think of Faulkner and O'Connor.

The dialect is flawless, the stylistic choices feel natural and unpretentious and satisfying, and in general, it's gorgeously, impeccably written:

Inside, the house looks like something she's seen in movies--metalwork frilly like lace, the whole place kingly and oblivious.

I love that, 'kingly and oblivious'. The worldbuilding is extremely well done: it isn't an epic, sweeping sort of worldbuilding, because that isn't the focus of the book, but it's the little details that just makeit. For instance, Temple's versions of well-known old-timey songs sound like she's learned them via a game of Telephone that's gone on for years -- which, really, is exactly how she would have learned them.

Word of warning: After finishing it, I tweeted:

So there's that. It's a heartbreaker of a book -- it put a lump in my throat for a good 200 pages and made me cry buckets when I'd finished -- and it's a special one. Temple herself -- deep-thinking, angry, broken-and-unbroken at the same time -- is a character I won't forget for a long, long time. I'll leave you with her:

And sometimes, she says, sometimes you just get tired of pokin at the issue. Those are the times you just do something because you're tired of thinkin on it. And that's when the devil better get his pencil ready to tally up a score, cause the time for nuances is gone. And you think, that's it for me on this world. You think, all right then, hell is my home.

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Book source: ILLed through my library.

Too true. And I'm not even a big Dobby fan.

SPOILER ABOUT HP* BELOW!

From Dear Blank Please Blank:

Dear Death, 
        We'll trade Dobby for Justin Bieber. 
                Sincerely, the world.

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*I don't really feel that a spoiler warning is necessary, but you know if I didn't put it there, someone, somewhere, would freak out.

How It Ends -- Laura Wiess

15-year-old Hanna wants Seth, and she wants him above all things.  He always seems to have a girlfriend, but she hopes that sooner or later, his eye will fall on her.

Being so preoccupied with her heartache, she hasn't been spending much time with her adopted grandparents.  Who aren't getting any younger.  And who have dealt with -- and are still dealing with -- their own head and heartaches.  Grandma Helen, especially, knows that there are things she needs to tell Hanna, and she needs to do it while she still can.

How It Ends is made up of Hanna and Helen's alternating narratives, as well as a transcription of the audiobook they listen to together.  It's a coming of age story and a romance -- multiple romances, really -- a story about family, about aging, loss, death and dying, about obsessive love, and about strength, hardship and about how the connections we make with other people can carry us through fire*.  With, you know, bonus Gothic elements.

It's one that won't be for everyone -- many adult readers, especially, will have a hard time with Hanna's bad choices and inability to see much of anything beyond her own situation, and some might feel that the beginning of the book is slow-going -- but it'll hit some people hard.

Like me.

Hoo boy.  I haven't cried so hard since I read The Subtle Knife.  We're not talking Book Thief tears pouring down the face.  We're talking red-faced-mouth-open-can't-breathe-no-holds-barred crying so hard that I was worried Mrs. Across The Street would hear me and come nosing around because she was "concerned". 

I do think that my response was, in part, intensely personal:  How It Ends deals with some of my greatest fears, and there are many parallels between Helen's lifestyle and my own.  So it resonated.  But setting my personal reaction aside, I think it's an extremely strong book on its own -- Hanna's behavior, while maddening to those of us with more life experience, is quite realistic, and the slow beginning is necessary to allow the reader to actually get to know and care about the characters BEFORE the big payoff.

It's one, I think, that could benefit from cross-promoting -- definitely, definitely a good pick for adult readers of the YA.

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*Sorry if I got a little overly dramatic there.  I'm still fighting back tears about this one (even though I finished it days ago), and also we re-watched Babylon 5 recently, so I currently have Jeff Conaway's voice on loop in my head:  "It was the YEAR of fire..."  Plus, you know Delenn or Sheridan probably said something or other about carrying one another through fire.  I mean, it SOUNDS like something one of them would say.  Okay.  I've distracted myself away from another crying jag.  Back to it.

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Book source/other info:  Review copy from the publisher; Cybils nominee.

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I'm part of the Amazon Affiliate program.  Which I'd assume would be apparent by the ad in the sidebar, but assuming that you're bright enough to understand that is not enough for the FTC.  So, I will spell it out:  if you click through to Amazon and buy something, I get money.

The Wild Girls -- Pat Murphy Read for the 4th Annual 48-Hour Book Challenge.

I've been meaning to read Wild Girls since it came out -- I remember that People I Trust loved it, and that there was a minor kerfuffle about a mediocre review somewhere and I remember putting it on my list.  Then my library never bought it and I promptly forgot about it.  (The dangers of a much-too-long TBR list.)

Yesterday, as I was checking an ILL in, I realized that I held it in my hands.  It was already overdue, but the ILL delivery had already gone out, so the earliest it could go back would be on Tuesday, so OBVIOUSLY it was meant to be. 

None of that has anything to do with the book.  But Wild Girls kind of messed me up, so I'm postponing what I suspect will be a big ramble by, um, rambling.

It's about two girls.  It begins:

I met the Queen of the Foxes in 1972, when my family moved from Connecticut to California.

The narrator is Joan.  The Queen of the Foxes is Sarah, or as she calls herself, Fox.  It's set in 1972, as you may have deduced, and while there aren't a bunch of unnecessary details To Let The Reader Know It's The 70s, it feels very seventies.  Which is cool.

For some reason, I can't really do the synopsis thing here.  I think it's because, as I said, it messed me up.  In terms of actual plot, actual happenings, it's a very simple story, and Pat Murphy uses very clear and simple language to tell it. 

Beyond and beneath that simple plot, it's also a story about families falling apart, about families tearing themselves apart, about people losing themselves and finding themselves again, about finding ways of figuring life out and creating family.  It's about, as Joan would say, the subtext.  And it's about writing.  And the whole book rings clear and true.  Regardless of whether it's fiction or not, it's one that rings so true that I'm getting all choked up again.  I believed in the girls, and I believed in the parents, and while Joan and Fox were the focus, the adult characters were so real that this book could have been about them instead. 

It's one I wish I'd had in fifth grade.

Heck, I wish I'd had it in college.

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Previous Challenge Books:

The Name of the Game Was Murder
Bloody Jack

Well, now I don't just want to read it... I need to read it.

There's a really nice post about Just Henry up at the Guardian.

And according to the commenters on my Costa winners post, there are a bunch more Magorian books I should read as well.  I'd better get to it.