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Impossible

by Nancy Werlin

It’s a tad ironic that I picked as one of my reads for this year’s library challenge, a book that I won as a prize for finishing last year‘s challenge. Which I thought would be not quite my type- a teen romance, wrapped around an ancient family curse that nobody even realizes is hanging over their heads, until it’s almost too late. The story was inspired by that old ballad Scarborough Fair, and the seemingly impossible tasks that a man demands of a woman. When you start reading this book on the surface, it feels like an ordinary teen romance story- that goes awry pretty darn quickly when it becomes about an unexpected teen pregnancy. The main character, Lucy, is surrounded by supportive friends and family, but the hardest thing for her isn’t facing how much her life will changed, soon becoming a young mother- or even if she wants to keep the baby- but, is this all because of a curse? She finds an old diary, and some fascinating but garbled family history, and there’s a very real explanation for much of what appears to be going on- mental illness runs in her family, afflicting the women in particular. But she starts to wonder: is it madness, or is something else going on? and if it’s the curse, can she thwart it, solve the ancient riddle and perform the tasks? is doing them in a certain way cheating or not? how will she know if the curse is broken? At first she can’t tell anyone because of course they’ll just think she’s crazy, it’s the inherited schizophrenia (best guess) starting to manifest. Some of the things are too uncanny to be coincidences though, so she and her family determine to try and break the curse regardless. With a new love at her side (neighbor boy who was always just a good friend becomes something more), Lucy gives it her all.

I really thought I was going to find this story too improbable, or melodramatic, or heavy on the romance stuff. It wasn’t any of those things at all. The main characters are all so darn practical and methodical about things (but I love the family’s sense of humor) it feels like a story that could happen in a real life setting. (So I’ve labeled this on ‘speculative fiction’ because it feels more like urban fantasy than anything, but in a way that I like). It reminded me of Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin, which is also a modern telling of college-age girl who ends up trying to foil a curse laid out in an old ballad. The neighbor boy was so good-hearted, rather too perfect if you ask me, but that’s okay. The romance was sweet, and it never went too far into those kind of details- you get all the heady thoughts they have about each other, and significant looks, and the touch of hands, but the intimate stuff is off-page and only alluded to later. So that’s nice, if you’re not into steamy romances. Which I’m not. So I enjoyed this one more than I anticipated, and it really kept me turning the pages to see how they’d solve the riddle in the ballad- I had some guesses, it was nice to see the characters unravelling the same ideas, though hampered by their impending sense of doom and panic as the crucial time to solve the tasks grew closer.

There was one part that bothered me, though- a scene where Lucy goes to visit her insane mother who’s in a hospital, hoping to find out more about the curse, and to discover from the doctors there if any kind of medication which helps the mother, might help her in the future, should she also go insane as the curse implied. She finds her mother too sedated by medication to have any real conversation, and then the chapter ends, and the next one doesn’t have any follow-up! Did they ever talk to a doctor or not? I was just annoyed that that part was skipped over so abruptly, it almost felt like there were pages missing from the book (nope). Sometimes it also felt awkward the way the characters talked to each other in the story- the conversations didn’t feel real, but I was willing to gloss over that and just enjoy the puzzle of the story in this case.

Rating: 3/5

376 pages, 2008

Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

Tomorrow’s Sphinx

by Clare Bell

I was blown away by this book when I first read it long ago as a pre-teen. I still recall very distinctly how enthralled I was with the beginning storyline, the startling turn the narrative takes into new and intriguing directions, and a very physical shock I felt when a sudden tragic event occurs- I literally had to snap the book shut with a gasp, my heart leaping. It’s not often that a book affects me so strongly. I’ve read it multiple times, though it’s been decades since the last re-read. Of course the surprises no longer leap out at me, but the story was very much still engaging, I loved revisiting all the details, and I grasped much better than my younger self, the parts that took place in historical Egypt. Warning: I love this book so much I want to say a lot about it, so there’s gonna be SPOILERS, though I’ll try not to give everything away.

Well: it’s about a race of sentient cheetahs, that live in a far-distant future when humans have abandoned Earth. The planet is not in great shape- the cheetahs struggle to survive harsh conditions, with rapidly diminishing plant life and scant prey to make their living from. Kichebo is a young cheetah born into difficult circumstances, to say the least. Her mother dies in an accident when she’s very young, and she struggles with fears of abandonment for most of her life. Her aunts begrudgingly raise the orphaned cub (cheetah culture frowns on this, she was supposed to be left to die) and are first appalled, then frustrated when she starts to mature. Her adult fur coat grows in completely black, with gold tear lines and tail tip. This anomaly is a serious threat to her survival- it’s nearly impossible to hunt, when she is so visible against the pale desert scenery. She learns to manage by using ambush techniques, or sticking to crepuscular times, but longs to run freely out in the open, to be the way a cheetah is supposed to be.

So there’s all that- this daily struggle to survive, this one cheetah in particular dealing with trying to accept her differences and find a way to fit in. I would have been totally satisfied to read an entire novel just about that. The cheetahs are so alive, their personalities very distinct, their catlike mannerisms, customs and expressions reminding you strongly that these are not anthropomorphized characters, even though they talk to each other. But then! Strange alien flying craft start to appear, and it becomes obvious they’re tracking the cheetahs, focusing on Kichebo in particular. Which makes it even harder for her to fit into cheetah society. Things happen, and she ends up fleeing to live on her own, just barely in possession of her adult skills. One day she finds an alien craft crashed in the desert, on fire. There’s a naked apelike creature trapped in the wreckage- she drags it free intending to eat it, but then doesn’t. For some strange reason she is reluctant to kill the creature, ends up letting it follow her, then eventually adopts it in a manner of speaking. It is a humanoid, somewhere in the toddler age range. The relationship that slowly develops between the lonely outcast cheetah and this little defenseless human is so believable and tender- and not without its amusing moments either. I loved the details about how Kichebo tries to communicate with the creature she ends up calling Menk, tries to teach it to speak– but finds its lack of ability to use expressive gestures, having no tail or whiskers- such a handicap that she can only get the most basic messages across. Imagine! A story in which animals pity humans for the limitations of using just verbal sounds to communicate. This story got better and better.

There’s more. Kichebo and Menk acquire another companion- an elderly cheetah who has also dealt with physical differences her whole life. They all take up residence in a place no other cheetahs are interested in claiming as territory- because it’s near an ancient human ruin. The massive remnants of buildings are impressive by their sheer size, but strange things also happen when Kichebo walks among them. She’s taken by fits (that sound like epilepsy) and makes a mental connection to another black cheetah who lived far, far in the past- in ancient Egypt during the time of Tutankhamen. So now there’s another parallel storyline, about this other black cheetah who lived among royalty, with details on how the Egyptians kept cheetahs in captivity, trained them to course game, some of their customs of worship, court intrigue surrounding the young King Tut, and much much more. I admit when I was a kid a lot of this part went over my head, even though I found it fascinating. This time around I was able to pick up on more subtleties. For her part, Kichebo is at first terrified by the experience of mind-melding (I don’t know what else to call it) with a long-extinct conspecific, then she becomes eager to learn more about herself, from the only other black cheetah she’s ever encountered. Is he real, though? Her elderly companion gently suggests that maybe Kichebo made the whole thing up, that heatstroke and her strange fits are giving her delusions.

So they travel past the ruins to a site Kichebo had learned about from her friend in the past, just to prove to herself that he really did exist. She finds far more than she expected to. Long ago this ending section of the book felt rushed and confused to me, I didn’t quite grasp all the implications. But this time around it was pretty clear. Kichebo the rare black cheetah, at last gets the answers she’s sought her whole life- why she looks so different from all the others, why she felt compelled to keep Menk as a companion instead of eat her as prey, even about some abilities she wasn’t aware she had, and where her future might lead her.

Man, if only there was a sequel or companion novel to this book! I’d snap it up in a heartbeat. Done talking now, before I tell all the things I’ve skipped over in this post. Have to leave something for other readers to discover- if you can find a copy of this novel count yourself fortunate.

Rating: 5/5

292 pages, 1986

Tags: 5/5- Loved It, Animals Fiction, Current Reads, Speculative Fiction, Young Adult

The Iron King

by Julie Kagawa

Meghan has just turned sixteen and feels like she’s a nonentity. She lives in a backwater on the outskirts of town, gets mostly teased or ignored by kids at school, and her stepfather seems to always forget she even exists. She’s got one good friend- a neighbor boy she’s known for years, good-hearted and mischevious. One day everything suddenly changes, when she comes home to find her mother bleeding on the floor, her little brother standing over her with a knife. I almost stopped reading right there- scenes that feel out of a horror movie don’t appeal to me! but kept going and ended up mostly enjoying this book. Turns out the little brother was swapped for an evil changeling, the neighbor boy is really Puck, and the fey realm is real- just alongside reality, once Meghan’s eyes are opened. Because she’s half-fey herself, which is only the first of her discoveries. She gets pulled into their dark, baffling and beautiful world in search of her missing brother, pitched into a quest that soon becomes much larger than just finding Ethan. This story was full of good elements- it has a love triangle that sneaks up on you, a delightfully snarky talking cat sidekick (reminscent of the Cheshire Cat but I agree with someone who said his personality is more like the cat in The Last Unicorn). The more Meghan traipses around through faeryland, first just trying to find out where her brother is, then how to reach him, with all sorts of dangerous obstacles to overcome along the way- the further away her goal seems to get. Due to her mixed blood, she has abilities the other fey lack (withstanding the touch of iron, for one) and thus the controlling powers of both Summer and Winter courts want to use her. But she finds there’s a more dangerous entity out there than King Oberon or the others- a new type of fey risen from the obsessions of humanity with technology. This story really plays on the idea of faeries existing due to human belief, and how that can change- in a way I’d never seen before. I liked the concept, the execution of it was a bit too steampunk or urban fantasy for my taste, but that’s okay (I’m not really the target audience: this book is labeled ‘teen harlequin’ on the cover). If I’d read this some thirty years ago, maybe I’d feel compelled to continue with the series- as is, it was an engaging and entertaining read, but not quite in-depth enough to satisfy me. I did really like some of the side characters- the ones Meghan dubbed ‘packrats’ made me think of certain figures from James Christensen’s artwork, and I found that charming.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

363 pages, 2010

More opinions:
Steph Su Reads
Rhapsody in Books Weblog
Jenn’s Bookshelves
Small Review
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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi, Young Adult

A Mango-Shaped Space

by Wendy Mass

Ever since getting teased about it in third grade, Mia has hidden her special ability, afraid of being called weird or accused of lying- because she sees colors in association with numbers and letters, sometimes also with sounds and other stimuli. But eventually some things become overwhelmingly difficult- especially math, as the number/color association interferes with her ability to combine and rearrange number units logically. She finally tells her family the issue- at first her parents are disbelieving, then they take her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist. She veers between feeling that there’s something wrong with her that needs fixing, and reveling in the realization that other people have the same sensations. Meeting others with synesthesia at a conference is eye-opening. Now she’s so thrilled with her ability she finds ways to deliberately stimulate it- at the cost of paying attention to those around her, focusing on schoolwork, etc. There has to be a balance, but it takes a tragedy to shock her into finding it.

The main character’s synesthesia isn’t the only part of the plot, although of course it is her main focus. There’s other things going on in the background. Her older sister comes home from California with a new interest in healing herbs, yoga, and other things of a New Age vibe. Her brother teases her about boys, there’s ongoing ups and downs with both her best friend and other more casual friends at school, struggles with school projects, and an ongoing thread of grief. When the book opens her grandfather has just died, and she believes that part of his soul resides in her cat named Mango. Mango himself has an ongoing health issues, and at the end Mai has to face loss yet again. Yes, SPOILER the cat dies. The one detail in the family life I found a bit strange was that her dad owned a helicopter. Sure it made the ending a bit dramatic, but couldn’t they just as well have been getting ready to desperately drive somewhere in the car? I just found the helicopter thing a bit overkill when it didn’t really seem to have a reason to be in the story. And the whole thing about the acupuncturist also baffled me. I can’t imagine any kid nowadays being able to so easily arrange that kind of thing behind their parents’ backs. The results were really spectacular, though! (And according to another reviewer, a real phenomenon).

This was a really interesting book. I don’t think I ever read one about someone with synesthesia before, and I really appreciated the descriptions of what it is like, the different ways people experience it, and how they can learn to handle it (making the sensations less distracting or overwhelming). The book was written quite a while ago (apparent to me by the family computer situation, prevalence of chat sites and slow email communication, using the landline to call your friend and having a family member pick up on the line from another room- ha! I remember those days) so I do wonder if treatment or understanding of the condition is different now.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

270 pages, 2003

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Medical/Health, Young Adult

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

by Sherman Alexie

Native American kid Arnold Spirit Junior lives on a reservation in Spokane, Washington. He likes drawing comics, reading, and messing around with his best friend (skirting danger by climbing a hundred-foot-plus pine tree for example). He describes how dead-end life feels on the reservation- seeing so many people around him sunk in alcoholism and poverty, attending more than forty funerals in less than fifteen years. Decides he wants something better and transfers to an all-white high school off the reservation. He has to hitchike or walk most days to get there, since his family usually doesn’t have enough money to put gas in the car. Adjustment is tough. Kids at the new school ignore him, or tease. People back home resent him for what they see as a betrayal. He just wants more opportunity. He makes the baseketball team but then has to go up against the team he used to be on- from the rez high school. Full of guilt for trying to live one foot on each side of a fence, as it were. So much sad stuff in this book- deaths in the tribe, sister who moves away, best friend now hates him, etc. Yet there’s also great strength in the family, the traditions. And everything is treated lightly- held at arm’s length by the humor (or at least, that’s how it felt to me). I get why this book was banned in some places- the narrator is a teenage boy and he talks frankly about things like masturbation and staring at women’s breasts – it wasn’t terribly offensive. More offensive is what I learned afterwards, of the author’s behavior. I still like the book okay, but now have no interest in anything else by this writer.

Rating: 3/5

230 pages, 2007

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Young Adult

The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

Sonia is struggling to get through highschool. She wants to be the first person in her family to graduate. Her parents are first-generation immigrants to the United States. Her father is always busy with two or three low-paying labor jobs, and her mother never learned to speak English. Their house is always crowded and expectations on Sonia are high- to clean up, cook meals, help her mother decipher bills, care for her new siblings (who are born halfway through the story) and so on. Family demands often keep her home from school more often than not, but sometimes she doesn’t want to be there- seeing her brothers laze around and use drugs, her drunken uncle make messes and unwanted advances towards her, a religious aunt dropping by unannounced acting super judgemental. Sonia has a plan to get ahead by doing her best at school, but her attempts always seem thwarted. More than ever when her mother sends her to Mexico to visit her grandmother for the summer- cutting short her school year- and frustrating her with lack of amenities and differences in culture she experiences in the very rural setting. But things change during her visit with relatives. She learns more about where her family has come from, starts to see things differently. Not so much resentment and criticism, a bit more compassion and understanding. Maybe upon returning to the States after this vacation, she can start to make a real difference in her life.

Things get in the way again. In particular, her nasty uncle. And there’s a boy who is fixated on becoming her novio– but she’s determined to not let that distract her from her goals. Honestly I thought the boyfriend was a little weird. I was positively surprised to realize when I was done reading, this book was written by a male author- I thought he got a female voice down very well- but the romantic phrases that boy kept repeated were just a bit too much. Absurd, at times. (Who talks like that? Is this what the author thinks girls dream of hearing??) There was one typo in the book that threw me off- I actually read the sentence three times to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood the homophone. And then there was a scene where her grandmother was killing a chicken for the family dinner, she saw the head chopped off, and made a statment that chickens don’t have eyelids. What? Um, YES THEY DO. Also disappointing was how briefly the time in Mexico was treated. For how life-changing this seemed to be, there wasn’t enough said about it. The story skipped over that part relatively quickly, which disappointed me.

Other than that, I really enjoyed this book. Made me feel happy to be reading a good book again.

Borrowed from my teenager.

Rating: 3/5

312 pages, 2008

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Young Adult

Almost American Girl

by Robin Ha

Graphic novel memoir about moving to a new country, getting used to a new culture, and finding yourself. The author (Ha Chuna, with chosen American name Robin) was a teenager when she accompanied her mother on a visit the United States- only they never went back home to Korea. She was abruptly plunged into a new life, going to regular middle school but unable to speak the language, separated from all her friends and favorite activities back home. She felt so isolated living among strangers in a sprawling suburb in Alabama. Kids at school teased or ignored her. But gradually things began to get better. As her English improved, she started to stand up for herself and make friends. Her mother enrolled her in an art class specifically for drawing comics, and she found joy in something she’d always loved- Korean and Japanese manga. Made her best friend at the comic bookstore. But the clash of Korean and American culture was still a big part of her life- even though she’d moved to a new country, her mother still experienced pressures from her new Korean family members (having by this time married a Korean-American man). Chuna hated the pressure put on her to perform piano pieces in competitions or even just in front of family members and visitors, but as she learned more of her mother’s history, she realized how much pressure her mother faced as well. How much social criticism she’d lived with back in Korea, being a single mother raising a child alone. One of the reasons they came to America. The story is just as much about the struggles her mother went through, and the strength she showed, as it is about Robin herself. And when Chuna finally goes back to Korea to visit old friends, she realizes that she doesn’t quite fit in there anymore. It’s a relief to read that at the end, she’s coming to accept her new identity as Korean-American and has found her old love (manga) in new places with new friends.

I really liked seeing the samples of the manga she drew herself as a teen, in a backdrop on some of the pages. Wish I could see the whole story of that! Side note: I also really liked how the text indicated if the characters were speaking in Korean or English, by using a different color text, or English words Chuna couldn’t understand, with undecipherable scribbles!

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

236 pages, 2020

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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Bios / Memoirs, Current Reads, Graphic Novels, Young Adult

Komi Can’t Communicate

by Tomohito Oda

I don’t remember how this book came to my attention. Gave it a try last night, read most of it and skimmed the last fourth. I liked the premise but it was a bit hard to focus on (maybe I’m just not fully recovered yet) and I was baffled by some of the characters’ reactions to things. Not sure if this is due to something lost in translation, a Japanese sense of humor I don’t quite get, or that I’m simply not a high school student anymore. There are two main characters: Tadano and Komi. Tadano is a very ordinary guy who just wants to avoid attention and blend in, after a bad experience in his previous school where he was bullied. He soon notices Komi, whom everyone admires. Komi is beautiful and aloof- but Tadano realizes she’s actually not snobby, she just has extreme social anxiety, so she never talks. She literally freezes up in social situations, and can’t get any words out. There’s a nice scene where Tadano and Kmoi start a conversation by writing all over a classroom chalkboard. Tadano makes it his goal to help Komi make friends.

I thought this was all pretty intriguing, but the presentation just didn’t work for me. The chapters are very short, the jokes didn’t make me laugh, the different character’s attributes were exaggerated in a way that made it seem that was the only thing about them. Another girl who’s very nervous, that’s all you ever see of her- having the jitters. Another character is gender fluid, but the way this was presented made think the author thought it was a joke? I really didn’t get it. Oh well. This is one I don’t think I’ll be continuing. It’s a series with twenty-five volumes! I wonder if it gets better further on. Or if I’d get used to the tiny panels and comic facial expressions.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 2/5

190 pages, 2016

Tags: Current Reads, Graphic Novels, Young Adult

Loveless

by Alice Oseman

A book off my pre-teen’s stack. She asked me if it would be “okay” for her, so I agreed to read some of it first, curious myself as I’ve never read a book with an asexual character before. Having started, I kept reading to the end, even though it was rather long. The short chapters (some only a page or two!) were just right for my abbreviated attention span right now (still recovering from the car accident). I suggested my daughter read it when she’s older- there’s plenty of frank discussion on sexuality. (Nothing shocking or offensive, but I think it would make her uncomfortable right now for sure).

The main character is Georgia, who at the end of high school is somewhat dismayed to have never kissed anyone. She loves the idea of romance, but when it comes to experiencing it, nothing works for her. Has she just never met the right person yet? She’s determined to find love while at college, in spite of never having had feelings for anyone before- male or female. Her two best friends are at the same college, and she gets assigned a roommate; soon the four of them are often together, attempting to put on a Shakespeare play. Things get messy and complicated when Georgia rather unwisely decides to use her friends to experiment with her ability to feel attraction. Her roommate and her friend Pip seem to hate each other at first, but just can’t admit they really like each other. It’s not until Georgia comes across a group of LGBTQIA students that she starts to realize that not feeling attracted to anyone might simply be who she is. And that it doesn’t at all mean a diminished life, or one devoid of love, because her friendships can be just as strong and supportive as any romance.

It’s a good story with some nice points about relationships and being considerate of other people feelings (by showing how badly it goes when you’re not). But it kind of dragged on for me. Several parts where other characters explained things to Georgia, felt like an info dump. I didn’t mind too much though. The incredibly short chapters made it easy to dip in and out of this book, which was just what I needed right now.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

426 pages, 2021

More opinions: Good Books and Good Wine
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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Current Reads, Young Adult

Lighter than My Shadow

by Katie Green

Such a hard book to read- but I couldn’t put it down. One sitting, last night. It’s a graphic novel memoir about eating disorders and sexual abuse (from a trusted adult who was supposed to be helping the girl). The artwork is simple yet poignant, the story very expressive and honest about mental health issues. I can only imagine how difficult -and perhaps cathartic- this book must have been to write. She girl had so much to deal with. Body image issues. Skewed thinking. Obsessiveness over rules and restrictions. Hurting family that wanted to help but their efforts weren’t always helpful. Muddling through years of therapy until things finally start to get better- but even when she feels like she’s recovered, old habits and thought patterns recur- again and again. Flashbacks from the trauma. Is it ever really over? I was afraid that when she went off to college the story would take a bad turn, but she had good friends even if they didn’t always know what was really going on, or what she’d been through- and she had to find her way to be healthy. Then there’s the whole issue of this alternate “healer” guy who took advantage of her- just awful. That was another thing to overcome, to let time pass so she could feel distant from it and whole again. Painful story, but hopeful at the end and important to be told.

Brought to mind some other graphic novel memoirs I’ve read: Spinning, Stitches, Hey Kiddo and Blankets, also the book Wasted. Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5

510 pages, 2013

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Bios / Memoirs, Graphic Novels, Medical/Health, Young Adult

Tag: Young Adult

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