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Review: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

09 Jul

Cover: Lets Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson(With audiobook and book club discussion notes)

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. Not as much as I love the author’s blog, but close. What comes through both places is how wacky the author is, but also how many challenges (internal and external) she has to face.

Synopsis via Goodreads:

When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father (a professional taxidermist who created dead-animal hand puppets) and a childhood of wearing winter shoes made out of used bread sacks. It did, however, open up an opportunity for Lawson to find the humor in the strange shame spiral that is her life, and we are all the better for it.

Lawson’s long-suffering husband and sweet daughter are the perfect comedic foils to her absurdities, and help her to uncover the surprising discovery that the most terribly human moments-the ones we want to pretend never happened-are the very same moments that make us the people we are today.

In talking to my book club about the book, I suspect that already knowing Jenny through her blog really helped me at the beginning of the book. I came in already invested in Jenny’s life, and I had some idea where this collection of odd anecdotes were taking me. I think I would have enjoyed them even if I didn’t, but I’ll never know for sure.

It really is when Jenny hits adulthood that the book hits its stride. I’d have to say that starts with the chapter on drugs. I have no personal experience to compare it to, but I felt like I was experiencing her very own reality.

From there, it was a bumpy but engrossing ride. I really liked the balance between the funny stories and those that showed the other dimensions of her character, the echos of the past she had left behind in the future she built for herself.  I like stories like her telling how she and her HR coworkers dealt with men who e-mail photos of a certain part of their anatomy.  I liked the look at how a person can keep going, even after completely breaking.

If swearing bothers you, avoid this book. If you aren’t sure about the humor, read a couple of her blog posts (http://thebloggess.com/). If they don’t appeal to you, give this book a miss. If they have you rolling with laughter, rush out to pick it up.

Audiobook Notes

Narrator: Jenny Lawson narrates the book herself, and it is hard to imagine it any other way.  She has an interesting voice, and brings her own personality to the reading.   She does have a very definite accent (Southern/Texan), and some interesting pronunciations, but for me, that just added to the charm.

Production: With the author as the narrator, all things are possible.  She makes minor changes (referring to “this audiobook” rather than “this book”, and works footnotes into her reading), she sings the chapter titles, and generally makes it into an almost conversational experience.  The downside is that you don’t get the photos, the proof that these things really did happen.  Luckily, the author has loaded them on-line.

Print vs. Audio? I loved Let’s Pretend This Never Happened in audio, and would strongly recommend this format for this book.

Book Club Notes

I’m the one that suggested this book for our group to discuss, even though I wasn’t sure everyone would enjoy it.  Still, I was expecting that most people would, and was quite surprised when pretty much no one had finished the book (although there were some reasons involving timing of the meeting that impacted that), and that pretty much everyone else had trouble with the first section of the reading, although several people found it improved for them once they got past the author’s childhood.

Out of the 5 of us at the meeting, one had barely started, two were less than halfway through, one was close to finishing, and I’d finished and even re-listened to parts of it.  This made discussion difficult, particularly since I think that the childhood sections are most interesting in how they influence her as an adult, and we simply didn’t have enough of us that had reached that point.

I still think this could be a good book club selection, but I can’t give any evidence to support that based on our meeting.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on July 9, 2012 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Book Club Nominations

28 Mar

Once again, it’s time to pick book club books.

Here are the books we’re choosing from.  Have you discussed any of these with a reading group? How did it go?  Have you read any on your own?  Do you think it would support a discussion?

 

 
4 Comments

Posted by on March 28, 2012 in Book Club, L

 

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Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

14 Feb

With Book Club Notes
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Summary via Veronica Roth’s website:

In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she’s chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she’s kept hidden from everyone because she’s been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves… or it might destroy her.

First and foremost, Divergent tells a darn good story! While reading it, I wasn’t worrying about potential weaknesses, I just wanted to keep going to see what happened next.

Divergent features a future society with a very rigorous structure. It’s an intriguing world, one that kept me thinking long after finishing the book.  I wanted to know how it came about, how it functioned, and where the books are going to take it.  That’s enough to set the book apart from the crowd, but not enough in and of itself to make the book compelling.

Luckily, the characters are enough.  Beatrice was a convincing as a teen needing to move from childhood to adulthood, a transition marked with a choice which cannot be undone. Beatrice chooses to break from her family to join another faction, one that demands courage above all else.

Relationships are key in Divergent, existing relationships and relationships that are formed in her new life. The characters (friends and otherwise) are an interesting bunch, each with their own approach, whether it be in Abnegation (her old faction) or Dauntless (her new one).

Watching her meet and evaluate the other teens looking to join this faction is full of information on Beatrice, the other newcomers, and what it means to be Dauntless.  Seeing Beatrice’s perception of her parents and their choices change as she learns more was a great way to watch Beatrice mature.

And then, there is the love interest.  He’s a worthy character, and the this aspect of the book is balanced well with everything else that is happening.

Midway into Divergent, Beatrice’s story becomes part of a much larger one, where her decisions will affect more than her own life.  The action picked up significantly at this point.  I’ll be interested to see where this goes in the next book,

I have two small caveats to my enjoyment of this book, things that I hesitate to label as flaws, at least at this time.

First, Divergent is unabashedly a YA book, written for that audience. Although it clearly made sense for the main character to be a teen, I’m not sure that’s true for some of the supporting characters, particularly those in leadership roles. More than that, as a not-so-young adult, I would have liked to see life from a different perspective, to see what it looked like from a more adult point of view. There were many aspects of the society, particularly of the logistics, that were invisible to the teen characters, where I would have liked to know more.

Related to that, there were clearly some holes in the world-building. As I said, the world is a highly intriguing one, and I’m not even sure I should mention this in a negative way. The gaps didn’t bother me at all while I was reading. It was only once I was done, and thinking over the book, that I started wondering more about why the society was structured the way it was. I actually came up with some very intriguing possibilities. If the author takes some of the clues she left and builds on them in future books, I’ll be more than satisfied with this aspect of the story.

Book Club Notes

I read Divergent for discussion with one of my book clubs, and I think it was a successful choice.  The club has a balance of people that read YA but not science fiction, those that read science fiction but not a lot of YA, those that don’t usually read either, and those of us that read from both of those genres, including where they overlap.

Everyone enjoyed the book.  Those with a background that includes more adult science fiction were bothered by the holes in the world-building, where it wasn’t an issue for others in the group.  I shared some of my speculation on why the holes may be deliberate, what I thought might be lurking behind them, but I’m not sure they were convinced.

We spent a good chunk of time on the factions– are they a complete set?  Are they sustainable?  Are the believable at all?  What were they like at the beginning, and how had they changed?  Which faction would you fall into?  Which would you like to be part of?

We also talked about violence in this book, and in YA fiction in general.  Added to some character chat, discussion of the author, and then of some material one club member found about how society is increasingly sorting itself, so that we only associate with those that are like us, and we had a very good discussion.

 
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Posted by on February 14, 2012 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Review: A Regular Guy by Mona Simpson (with book club notes)

10 Nov

A Regular GuyMy rating: 3 of 5 stars (A very low 3 stars, bordering on 2.5)

The problem for me is that I just didn’t get the point of this book.

A Regular Guy is the story of Tom Owens, who (with his good friend) successfully founded a very, very successful biotech company.

He now has more money that he knows what to do with– enough that he can afford not to think about money at all.  He’s dealing with the challenges of taking his high-tech company into its second major product–while it is being managed by someone else.

More than that, he’s taking on (or in some cases, trying to avoid) the challenges of his personal life, including relationships with multiple women and an unacknowledged 10 year old daughter.

The story is a fictionalized version of Steve Jobs life, written by his sister that he didn’t know about until he was an adult (it’s a complicated situation, as you might guess)

In A Regular Guy, the words themselves flowed well enough, and they didn’t get in the way of the story as I often fear in a literary novel. The story was coherent, and worked well enough in that sense.

I simply didn’t get insight into the life of Steve Jobs (or if I did, I just didn’t care), and the story didn’t have enough strength to stand alone.

This was true of the plot, but even more so of the characters. Tom Owens didn’t intrigue me as Steve Jobs, largely because I never saw the charisma the character was described as having, and would have needed to accomplish the things he did. Simply seen as a fictional character, he was both unbelievable and uninteresting, which is a pretty sad combination.

At the beginning of the book, I had some hope for Jane (Owens’ daughter) and her mother, Mary. Jane simply faded into the story (and that may have actually been the point– if so, I feel terrible for the real life model of Jane, and wonder what her relationship with her aunt the writer must be like.) Mary turned into a whiny caricature as the woman who sent her 10 year old daughter driving solo cross country to live with her father becomes resentful as that daughter chooses to spend time with her father.

The one character I found interesting was Noah, a scientist who chose to continue to follow his own path rather than work with Owens and his company. He was an intriguing secondary character, and I find it telling that I have no idea if he had a real life counterpart.

I admit, I was relieved that the rest of my book club had a similar reaction, whether they were all to familiar with the details of Jobs and his life, or relatively uninformed, at least about this chapter. Whatever the point was, it was well hidden.

Book Club Notes

We’d selected this book quite a few months back (we pick about 6 months of books at a time), but moved it up a month due to the timeliness of the tie to Steve Jobs’ death.

We actually live and meet quite near the Apple Campus in Cupertino, and have one ex-Apple employee, and at least one member has a spouse that worked there.  On the other hand, the only Apple product in my house was a gift that doesn’t get all that heavy of use.

I was really surprised that 4 of the 5 of us meeting hadn’t finished the book (which is only 384 pages, not a major chunkster).  I’m even more surprised that one of those was me (I finished after the meeting).  One member had a very good excuse (an eye injury, and the book wasn’t easily available as audio), the rest of us just found it difficult to make this book a priority.

As I mentioned above, we all had similar feelings about the book.  I did find it easier to finish reading after the meeting, perhaps because I gave up on finding a point and just made my way through!

 
2 Comments

Posted by on November 10, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro (with book club notes)

28 Sep

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dani Shapiro did an amazing job of capturing the middle-aged angst of a woman trying to figure out who she is, and that’s something I can really identify with.

For her, the search is manifested in looking for a religious and spiritual path. She isn’t comfortable with her father’s Orthodox Jewish history, but neither does she wish to leave Judaism entirely. She also looks into other traditions, finding mentors and gurus to guide her.

Ultimately, her journey was a solo one, even though the question of what she would teach her son was part of the reason she was searching. Her husband was not part of her journey, he was a surprisingly small portion of this book that went so deeply into the history of their marriage, the frighteningly serious illness of their son as a small baby, and their unsuccessful attempts to have another child.

Her parents play a larger role, but only in her looking back at her relationship with them. She seems a highly unreliable narrator when speaking of her dealing with her mother, but it is very clear this was a troubled relationship going back many years before her mother’s death.

The details of her journey have absolutely nothing in common with my path. Nonetheless, I identified strongly with her sense of searching, and with the loneliness of her journey. I don’t know that she has succeeded in her quest, but her movement along the way was inspirational to me.

Book Club Notes

I’m the one that suggested Devotion to the group, and we did vote it in, although it wasn’t a top vote getter.  Still, I was surprised that more than one person I expected to be intrigued by it admitted they’d dreaded reading it.

Luckily, the book won them over.  I think in the end, everyone appreciated the book, and there is only one person that may not have liked and enjoyed it.

We had a great discussion about her journey as compared to our own, about the parts of her story that the author chose to tell in this book, and about how her decisions did and didn’t make sense at times.  We all agreed we’d be interested in reading another book by her, possibly one of her novels.

I’d strongly recommend this book to book clubs of women of an age to be making this journey, who are willing to discuss their personal path a well as that taken in the book being discussed.  Other clubs may appreciate it as well.

I received this book for review from the publisher.  As soon as I heard about it, I knew I wanted to suggest it for my book club, so I delayed reading it until my group could do so as well.  Thank you, Harper Collins.

 
5 Comments

Posted by on September 28, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Book Club Books Selected

21 Jul

For those interested in what other book clubs are reading, I thought I’d update you on what one of my clubs has selected:

  • July: I Think I Love You by Allison Pearson
  • Aug: Devotion: A Memoir by Dani Shapiro
  • Sept: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
  • Oct: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
  • Nov: Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson
  • Dec: Divergent by Veronica Roth
  • Jan: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
  • Feb: Just Kids by Patti Smith
  • Mar: Swim Back to Me by Ann Packer

Has anyone discussed any of these with their book clubs?  How did it work out?

 
5 Comments

Posted by on July 21, 2011 in Book Club, L

 

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Review: The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (with audiobook and book club notes)

01 Jul

The Art of Racing in the RainMy rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

While this book didn’t really work for me, I can see how it would for a slightly different reader, and might have for me in different circumstances.

Summary via Goodreads.com:

Enzo knows he is different from other dogs: a philosopher with a nearly human soul (and an obsession with opposable thumbs), he has educated himself by watching television extensively, and by listening very closely to the words of his master, Denny Swift, an up-and-coming race car driver.

Through Denny, Enzo has gained tremendous insight into the human condition, and he sees that life, like racing, isn’t simply about going fast. Using the techniques needed on the race track, one can successfully navigate all of life’s ordeals.

On the eve of his death, Enzo takes stock of his life, recalling all that he and his family have been through: the sacrifices Denny has made to succeed professionally; the unexpected loss of Eve, Denny’s wife; the three-year battle over their daughter, Zoë, whose maternal grandparents pulled every string to gain custody. In the end, despite what he sees as his own limitations, Enzo comes through heroically to preserve the Swift family, holding in his heart the dream that Denny will become a racing champion with Zoë at his side. Having learned what it takes to be a compassionate and successful person, the wise canine can barely wait until his next lifetime, when he is sure he will return as a man.

OK, I never bought into the wise old dog as narrator, and I felt manipulated by the series of events that take over Denny’s life… This led to me not enjoying my reading of the book.

I’ve read other books where bad thing upon bad thing happens to the characters.  I can’t say I ever really enjoy it, but it doesn’t always bother me.  Here, I felt like the author was making the character suffer in order to pull in me, the reader.  Which he was, of course.

There were enough pieces of the book that did work for me that I suspect if I’d just connected in the beginning, my final opinion would be much higher.  If I’d been a dog lover, If IEnzo had tickled my fancy, If some of the more dog-like bits of his behaviour came earlier, If I’d read the print version rather than listened, If I’d been in a different frame of mind…

But that wasn’t what happened.

Book Club Notes

I read this book with one of my book clubs. We had 8 of use that read and discussed The Art of Racing in the Rain. I think this was as widely split as I’ve seen our book club on a book.  I liked it the least, our two dog owners liked it the most (and they really enjoyed it!).  Everyone else fell somewhere in-between.  The two of us that listened were least able to connect with the dog narrator.

We had a good discussion, which was dominated by two topics:  What aspects of the dog as narrator worked and didn’t work, and which aspects of the string of terrible events were realistic, and how did we relate to them?

In the end, there were only small pieces of the plot that we didn’t find entirely plausible.  Unfortunately, we had people in the group who had seen some of these situations play out in real life– brain cancer, legal battles after a loved one dies, false accusations, and they all felt the pieces they were familiar with rang true. They were linked together in the story in a way that allowed one bad thing to flow from the last.

We were more mixed on the dog as narrator.  We all agreed that there were some wonderfully dog-like moments.  Those that connected with with Enzo early on allowed those to carry the narration, for the rest of us, these were bright spots, but it didn’t come together.

I’d thought this would be a book we’d all enjoy but that we wouldn’t find a lot to discuss.  I was wrong on both counts!

Audiobook notes

Sound Bytes @ Devourer of Books

For more audiobook reviews, check out Sound Bytes

Narrator:  I actually think Christopher Evan Welch did a very good job with what was to me an impossible task– narrating as a dog.  Any attempt to sound animal-like would have had me deleting the book immediately and permanently.  His voice was expressive, and conveyed the intent of the words well, but in the end, it was a very human voice.

Production:  There was music at the beginning of some of the sections, and I didn’t care for it.  The balance of the narrator and the music wasn’t great either.  This didn’t happen often however.  Otherwise, the production was fine.

Print vs. Audio: I suspect listening to the audio made it harder for me to suspend disbelief about the dog telling the story.  I was listening to a human voice, after all.  On the other hand, if the dog had seemed more dog-like to me, maybe this wouldn’t have been an issue.  I’d recommend the print version on this one, but your opinion might vary.

For more audiobook reviews, check out Sound Bytes at Devourer of Books.

 
6 Comments

Posted by on July 1, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Review: The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist (with audiobook and book club notes)

13 May

The UnitMy rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

The Unit was a chilling portrait of the near future, not because it is our future, but because of what it says about our present.

Summary via Audible.com:

When Dorrit Wegner turned fifty, the government transferred her to a state-of-the-art facility where she can live out her days in comfort. Her apartment is furnished to her tastes, her meals expertly served, and all at the very reasonable non-negotiable price of one cardiopulmonary system. Once an outsider without family, derided by a society bent on productivity, Dorrit finds within The Unit the company of kindred spirits and a dignity conferred by ‘use’ in medical tests. But when Dorrit also finds love, her peaceful submission is blown apart and she must fight to escape before her ‘final donation’.

The strength of this book is absolutely in the world it builds– the details of how people were selected as being “dispensable”, their bodies sacrificed for the good of others who are needed, and the picture of a society that allows this to happen.

All that is shown directly is the world of The Unit, as the the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material is known to those that reside within. Life here is easy, for the most part, unless a drug being studied has particularly unpleasant side effects, and the residents are content, with time available to spend on the activities they had neglected in their life before.

It is clear that life in this Unit isn’t representative of the world as a whole, and probably not of the other Reserve Bank Units (I’m guessing there are is at least one designated for those citizens that do not go along with the plan quite so quietly. I’m guessing their stay is much less pleasant, and significantly shorter.). Through the characters in the Unit, and the stories from their past lives, we learn about the world that put them there.

I really enjoyed the characters. They were people I would have liked and enjoyed time with. Except the small detail that I’m married with a child, I’d fit in well with these people when I hit 50 in not that many more years.  I’d probably even go quietly, given the incentives they had, if it wasn’t for my immediate family ties.  This is a sobering thought.

More than that, they worked well to build an intriguing, believable world, and a compelling story that I cared about.

In the beginning, I had occasional issues with the language of the book (due to it being a translation, I suspect), with written constructs that didn’t quite flow for me. Either I got used to them or the issue cleared up fairly quickly.

I read this with one of my book clubs, and we had a fantastic discussion of it. I’d recommend reading The Unit, on your own or with a group.

Audio Notes

Narrator: I enjoyed Suzanne Toren’s narration.  She was a good match for the character of Dorrit.

Production: I had no issues with the production– I found listening to be entirely natural.

Print vs. Audio: The Unit lent itself well to audio, but I don’t think that listening added to my appreciation of it. (In fact, due to an error of my own, listening detracted to my enjoyment.  I had thought that the book from Audible was two parts long, about 8 hours each, and was setting my expectations of the arc of the story accordingly.  I thought I was about 40% in when the story took a very major turn, and I felt manipulated by this happening with over half the book to go.  Then I thought I was halfway through, and wondering where on earth the book could go from here, and then I realized the book was over).

I’d say whatever format is most convenient for you will be fine.

 Book Club Notes

In general, our book club meetings are 2 hours long.  If we have 1 solid hour of book discussion, I consider the book to be a success.  The Unit kept us going for pretty much the entire time.  We had different interpretations of events, we all had thoughts about the plausibility and sustainability of the world as represented.  We talked about our feelings of being dispensable in society now, even if we don’t meet the criteria outlined there.  We talked about the impact of the book having been written in another country– both translation issues and differences in societal attitudes.  And so on.

I’d highly recommend The Unit for book club discussion.

 
5 Comments

Posted by on May 13, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Review: Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel (with book club notes)

23 Mar

Stiltsville: A Novel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars (before the book club meeting)
4.5 of 5 stars (after the book club meeting)

A look at the life of a very normal woman, with normal challenges, over the course of many years. A quick, enjoyable read.

Summary via the author’s website:

One sunny morning in 1969, Frances Ellerby finds herself in a place called Stiltsville, a community of houses built on pilings in the middle of Biscayne Bay. It’s the first time the Atlanta native has been out on the open water, and she’s captivated. On the dock of a stilt house, with the dazzling Miami skyline in the distance, she meets the house’s owner, Dennis DuVal—and a new future reveals itself.

Turning away from her quiet, predictable life back home, Frances moves to Miami to be with Dennis. Over time, she earns the confidence of his wild-at-heart sister and the approval of his oldest friend. Frances and Dennis marry and have a child—but rather than growing complacent about their good fortune, they continue to face the challenges of intimacy in the complicated city they call home.

I really liked this book while reading it, and I’m having a hard time pinpointing what made it work so well.

I think I just really liked that it was a book that was about an ordinary life– 25 years of one. I recognized some of the situations Frances found herself in, others will never happen to me, but might to other people I know. Some things could have had an entire book written exploring the ins and outs of that particular situation, but here, they all are part of the ebbs and flows of life moving along.

The book focuses on the relationship between Frances and Dennis, starting when they meet for the first time (at the house in Stiltsville), and continuing as they marry, have a child, and continue their lives together.

I was going to say that time wasn’t wasted on minutia, but that isn’t quite right. It’s just that the minutia that comes up is somehow important, whether because it reflects on the characters (when Frances and her best friend swap dresses at a wedding, and find they are both happier), or because it reflects more deeply into what is happening (Frances taking her daughter Margo to get her ears pierced marks a coming of age for Margo, but also highlights the the relationship between Margo and her parents, and not in the obvious way).

And that’s life. The details make up the whole.

Book Club Notes

I read this book with one of my book clubs.  This was one of the books my friend Ruth won in an on-line giveaway. (10 copies of 12 different books!  Although we never did get all of them.  This is the 4th one we’ve read and discussed).

I was a little worried about how the discussion would go, since I was having trouble articulating what made the book work for me.  I felt more secure once I had the discussion questions from Susanna Daniel’s website.  As it turns out, we didn’t really need them.

I wasn’t alone in finding it difficult to capture my thoughts on the book– several people said that while they were reading it, they really liked it, but when they were done, they stopped and asked “Why?”.  Each of us was able to identify a different aspect of the book that we appreciated, and talk about the questions that popped up for some club members.

In the end, my opinion of the book was strengthened by the meeting.  I was able to recognize the range of characters, all of which were balanced in their strengths and weaknesses.  I grew to understand more what did (or didn’t) drive Dennis and Frances.  I appreciated the choice of moments that made up the book as a whole. And more than any of that, I appreciated having a book club that could help me love a book even more than I had before.

 
7 Comments

Posted by on March 23, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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Review: North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley (with book club notes)

15 Mar

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

North of Beautiful is the story of a teen girl’s journey to figure out who she is.

Terra has talent as an artist, but her father belittles her work, and refuses to support her plans to go to the college of her choice.  Her friend tells her how lucky she is to have a cool boyfriend, frequently implying that her physical imperfection makes her less worthwhile.  Terra’s only defense is to plan to graduate a year early and escape, somehow.

Then Terra runs into Jacob.  Her car hits his, and Jacob and his mother are the catalysts for Terra and her mom to expand the boundaries of their world, a world that had been narrowed to a very small area by Terra’s port wine stain on her face, by her mother’s weight, and most particularly by her father’s verbal abuse.

I particularly love the middle section of this book, as Terra and her mother explore China, but more so explore themselves.

I liked Terra. She seemed like a real teen– self centered, a little too willing to go along with what others suggest.  She doesn’t always do the right thing, but she’s starting to take some responsibility for her own life.

I identified more with her mother , and I suspect she was a bigger part of the novel for me than for many other readers, particularly those in the the YA category.

Jacob is one of the more interesting male characters I’ve come across recently, which may say more about the other books I’ve been reading than this one. Still, he’s funny, interesting, perceptive and a nice guy, bordering on slightly too perfect.

Beyond the characters and the journey, I also appreciated the reflections on beauty and what it means to be beautiful.  The continual interweaving of map language and imagery also contributed to my enjoyment of the book.

All in all, it was a satisfying read.

Book Club Notes

I read this book with one of my book clubs.

Of the 5 of us at the meeting, four of us really enjoyed the book, one thought it was just OK.   She objected to the exaggerated nature of the characters (the rest of us agreed they were, but didn’t have a problem with it).  She also ran into an inconsistency with the listed ages of the characters (no one else noticed).

The rest of us appreciated the language, the journey Terra took, the journey her mother made, the language, and the perspective on beauty.

That said, we had a good but not great conversation about the book.  I think it may have been more about us than about the book, and I think some thoughtful discussion questions might have helped us.

I’m disappointed that our one male member ran into schedule problems, and elected not to finish the book, since the first section didn’t grab his interest.  I would have been interested in his perspective.

 
3 Comments

Posted by on March 15, 2011 in Book Club, books, L, reviews

 

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