Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven

Holding Up the Universe
Jennifer Niven
projected publication date October 2016
3/5 stars

Holding Up the Universe follows outsider Libby, once known as "America's Fattest Teen", and popular Jack who is secretly suffering from prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces).  Due to a high school prank, the two find themselves in counselling together, and begin to really know each other for who they are.

The story is told from the alternating points-of-view of Jack and Libby, and this is well done. However, I think at times Niven tries too hard to sound like a teenager, and the prose didn't always run smoothly as a result.

Niven says in her letter to the reader that her message for this book is "You are wanted.  You are necessary. You are loved."  This is certainly something that teens need to hear often, and for that I applaud her, and give this book three stars.

On the other hand, Holding Up the Universe  is overdone.  Niven tries to tackle too many issues.  She includes mental illness, sexuality, obesity, and bullying.   In addition, Jack's ability to hide his prosopagnosia is simply not believable.

I think if Niven had taken one teenager or the other, and paired them with a typical teenager, the story would have been more credible and gripping.  As it is, there is just too much going on for the novel to be cohesive and meaningful.

The Uncommoners: The Crooked Sixpence by Jennifer Bell

The Uncommoners: The Crooked Sixpence 
Jennifer Bell

• Age Range: 8 - 12 years
• Grade Level: 3 - 7

projected publication date: January 2017
4/5 stars

The Uncommoners: The Crooked Sixpence is a fantasy-adventure, the first in a projected series, intended for children 8-12 years-old.  In this story, Ivy Sparrow and her brother Seb find themselves in a strange adventure after their grandmother has an accident.  While she is in the hospital, her home is ransacked and two very odd policemen chase them with a horse-drawn hearse.  Soon they find themselves in an underground city, Lundinor, where ordinary objects do unusual things and the dead walk the streets with the living.  They become immersed in a life or death mystery as they try to unravel their grandmother's forgotten past.

This is an enjoyable book, with a feisty heroine and an interesting plot.  The plot is just convoluted enough to keep a middle grade reader engaged and guessing, without being difficult to follow  It is faced paced and should hold the attention of the appropriate aged group..  Bell's descriptions of Ludinor and the explanations of that world are well-written and, while the characters aren't fully fleshed out, they are appealing.

The plot of the Crooked Sixpence relies a great deal on coincidence, and was therefore not believable to this adult reader.  I don't know that it would be a problem for the intended audience, though.

There were also several things that were reminiscent of other popular fantasy series, but I can't really hold that against Bell.  The very nature of fantasy is full of common tropes; it's impossible for a fantasy writer to be completely original.

Despite it's length (over 300 pages), I think this book is quite suitable for--and should be enjoyable for--the older end of the intended audience.

(I was given this ARC by the Amazon Vine program in exchange for an honest review.)

The Night Guest

The Night Guest
Fiona McFarlane

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber (October 1, 2013)
• 3/5 stars

I received the advanced copy of this novel from the Amazon Vine program in return for my honest review.

This begins as a gentle, charming novel about a 70-something lady dealing with aging, memory and love--as well as what she thinks is a tiger roaming her home at night. It then becomes a psychological thriller about trust, deception and abuse.

McFarlane writes well; her character are fully fleshed out and her descriptions bring the setting to life. With one notable exception, the situations are completely believable, and could easily happen. Even the magical realism of the tiger incidents are well done.

I'm not adverse to reading uncomfortable novels; in fact, Lolita is one of my favorites, due to Nabokov's exquisite skill. However, I found The Night Guest so disturbing that McFarlane's prose could not make this a "good read" for me.

One a more personal note:
I can not stress how disturbing this novel is; it made my stomach hurt and I had to skim several chapters as the end neared.  

At the risk of spoiling it for a potential reader, I have to say that it focuses around the abuse of an elderly woman by a trusted caregiver.  It is not at all what I expected from reading the blurb. McFarlane just isn't a good enough writer to take a topic like that and make it readable for me.  I've tried to understand why I can find Lolita an amazing novel, and yet be so squeamish about this one.  As my husband pointed out, it could be because that Nabakov is not graphic and the psychological abuse in The Night Guest was explicit.  All I know is that when I pulled off the pretty paper of McFarlane's writing, all that was left was gut-wrenching abuse.  When I pull off the pretty paper of Nabokov's writing, I see so much more.

I did give it three stars, though, because McFarlane does write well. It does have 38% of the reviews as five stars, so maybe I just wasn't a good fit for it.

Married to Bhutan: How One Woman Got Lost, Said "I Do," and Found Bliss

Married to Bhutan: How One Woman Got Lost, Said "I Do," and Found Bliss
Linda Leaming
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Hay House (April 1, 2011)
read and reviewed ARC, courtesy of Amazon Vine Program
4.5/5 stars

In Married to Bhutan, Leaming tells of how she visited Bhutan, fell in love with the country, and sold everything she had to move there. She became a volunteer English teacher at an art school, striving to become part of the community and always finding new reasons to love Bhutan. Then, something unexpected happened: she and an artist at the school fell in love with each other and begin a traditional Bhutanese courtship that culminated in marriage. Leaming's love for Bhutan and her love for her new husband, Phurba, compliment each other and give her the emotional strength she needed as she continued to adjust to her new country.

Leaming writes about Bhutan as one writes of their beloved; it so obvious from her prose how deeply affected she is by the people, terrain and culture around her. She weaves this love into the history and stories she tells, and her love for Phurba adds to the depth of what she shares.

She often compares Bhutan to the U.S., but never in a condescending way, Instead of making a judgment on one way or the other, she simply presents the two ways and leaves it to the reader to form any opinions.

Married to Bhutan is a gentle book, and one that makes the reader laugh, cry and think. Most of all, though, the reader walks away feeling glad to have witnessed such a beautiful love story.

In the Garden of Beasts

In the Garden of Beasts
Erik Larson 
Hardcover: 464 pages 
Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (May 10, 2011)
reviewing ARC, courtesy of Amazon Vine
5/5 stars

In the Garden of Beasts is an amazing book.  It is a nonfiction account that reads with the ease and entertainment of a good novel.  When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it.  When I was reading it, I was engrossed.

Larson uses letters, journals and papers to tell the story of William Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany in the thirties, of his daughter (Martha), and of Hitler's rise viewed through their eyes.  Martha, socialite and party to many romantic escapades, found herself in a position to garner information that the Ambassador couldn't know and become the center of several intrigues herself.  As for Ambassador Dodd, as he became more disillusioned with (and ultimately more fully aware of) Hitler's Germany, he became more of an outcast with the "in crowd" of the State Department, creating an entirely different, but important, conspiracy of sorts.

Despite knowing the ultimate outcome of the Dodds' adventure, In the Garden of Beasts is still a page turner and thoroughly fascinating.  It was with reluctance that I turned the last page, and said good bye to these people that had consumed my mind so completely.

Larson's apparently has the ability to write a biographical account in such a way that makes it more enjoyable than most fiction.  (I've not read The Devil in the White City*, but that has been moved to the top of my to-read list.)  I can not recommend this enough, regardless of your interest in the subject.  My initial interest was not high, but I came away with new understanding and knowledge of the time period, US and German politics, and ultimately, human nature. In the Garden of Beasts is a must read.

*I did read The Devil in the White City and it was a five star read!

Juniper Berry

Juniper Berry
M. P. Kozlowsky
Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 240 pages
Publisher: Walden Pond Press (April 26, 2011)
Amazon Vine ARC reviewed.
4/5 stars

Subtitled "a tale of terror and temptation", Juniper Berry is a modern day fairy tale.  Our heroine is the brave preteen, Juniper Berry.  Juniper is the daughter of film actors, who have become very famous over the course of the past few years.  The more famous they have become, the more odd they have acted and the more they have distanced themselves from her.  She is sad and lonely and would willingly give up everything to have her old life back.

One day she spots a boy about her age, trespassing in her woods.  Over the course of conversation with her new friend, she discovers that his parents, too, are famous and distant.  Even worse: Giles has seen them doing something very odd in Juniper's woods.

Piecing together the unthinkable, Juniper and Giles set out to save their parents from whatever influence is causing this behavior.  What they discover changes them both, and Juniper faces tough choices, terrible temptation, but comes through a true fairy tale heroine.

Juniper Berry  is told from an omniscient narrator and occasionally uses words that I feel are probably not in the vocabulary of a 9-12 year old.  This happens early in the book, though, and the narration evens out as the story builds.  It has a good pace, and the story unfolds smoothly.  The characters of Juniper and Giles are particularly appealing, making their weaknesses seem all the more vulnerable and believable.   Juniper's parents are truly horrible, and the reader is able to feel Juniper's mix of hurt and confusion, making the redemption of said parents even sweeter.

Like most fairy tales, Juniper Berry has a moral, and it is spelled out very plainly at the end by the wood chopper (yes, there IS a wood chopper, told you this is a fairy tale!), Dmitri:

"There will always be temptation, wherever we go in life, with whatever we do.  There will always be an easier way out.  But there's nothing to gain from that.  We have to overcome such urges; we have to be stronger.  I fought hard and won."

While the moral of this story is a good one, it came across a bit preachy to me.  I felt like this moral of resisting temptation and winning as a result was obvious from Juniper's actions and didn't need to be spelled out.  However, I am not one of the targeted age-group; I am an adult reader.

This was Kozlowsky's first novel, and overall he did well.  There are a few things (namely vocabulary and blatant moralizing) that I think could be improved, and I expect will be improved with his next publication.  I hope he is published again soon, and would look forward to reading another of his fairy tales.

~~Read for the "fairy tale" category of the Once Upon a Time Challenge~~
I felt that Juniper Berry was a solid choice for the fairy tale category, as it contained many of the traditional elements of a fairy tale.  There is an unusually brave and selfless heroine, elements of the supernatural, an animal that can communicate with people and an unspeakably evil villain.  The ending is a happy one, with a universal moral.

It does differ from many of standard fairy tales, as it is set in modern day, and there is no magic for our heroine to use, not everyone involved does live happily ever after, and there is no under privileged person gaining what s/he deserves as a result. 

In addition, Juniper Berry feels like a fairy tale.  It's not obvious at first, but once the action starts happening, one realizes that this is a layered fairy tale, that there will be a moral, that it's not just a fantasy.  I think it's the temptation element that does it.  It seems to me that many fairy tale heroes have to resist a temptation that seems really great on the outside, but will ruin them if they take it.

Yes, on the whole, Juniper Berry follows the fairy tale template more so than not, and quite successfully so, to my mind.

How Shakespeare Changed Everything

How Shakespeare Changed Everything
Stephen Marche
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Harper (May 10, 2011)
ARC reviewed courtesy of Amazon Vine program.
1/5 stars

I expectedHow Shakespeare Changed Everythingto be a lighthearted look at various ways that Shakespeare's influence can be found in the world today. What I did not expect was a near fanatical, quite serious, series of essays about, well, how Shakespeare changed everything.

The first line of Marche's introduction sets his tone: "William Shakespeare was the most influential person who ever lived."

Well, all right. . .

In his first essay, "the Fortunes of the Moor", Marche gives Shakespeare credit for the election of the first African American President. According to Marche, because Shakespeare wrote Othello, and because Paul Robeson acted the part in the 1940's, the United States has it's first African American President. I am not simplifying his argument. I suppose, for Marche, the entire Civil Rights Movement was unimportant?

In another essay, "Words, Words, Words", he credits Shakespeare with creating more words than any other author--any word not previously recorded prior to Shakespeare's writing it down is, according to Marche, a Shakespeare invention.  Marche seems to forget that Shakespeare was a man of the streets, and what he was writing down was slang.  Did the first journalist (or script writer) to use the word "noob" invent it?  No.  Did Shakespeare invent the words he wrote?  No.  Shakespeare was a writer of popular, low brow entrainment, the equivalent of a sitcom or soap opera writer today.  He was writing for his audience, using their words.  Bravo for Shakespeare for recording so many, but only a history-ignorant hero-worshiper could think that he invented them all.

In "Not Marbles, nor the Gilded Monuments", Marche states "the greater the artist, the more he or she was influenced by Shakespeare".  For blind fanaticism, this is a great line.  For truth about literary greatness, it doesn't even deserve a response.

One of Marche's arguments is that the introduction of Starlings to NYC came from Eugene Schieffelin's attempt to introduce all the birds of Shakespeare to the United States.  I was fascinated by this, actually giving Marche his due for a way that Shakespeare really did change the world, until I looked it up myself.  While it may be true, there is no factual evidence to prove that the given reason is more than the equivalent of an urban legend.

Marche, with the zeal of a school boy writing his first opinion essay, finds Shakespeare as the source for everything from the sexual revolution to the assassination of Lincoln, to the idea of teenagers to the use of skulls as decoration.  He often proved himself wrong with the few contrary facts he allows into his essays. An easy bit of research will show contrary views and facts for those that don't find his obsessive devotion easy to swallow.

Marche's mediocre writing does nothing to help his case.  Despite being a novelist and regular magazine contributor, his prose in How Shakespeare Changed Everything is juvenile, dull and overtly slanted.

I was unconvinced and thoroughly disappointed.  I had expected a lively, entertaining book and instead found a series of essays that might have been written for a high school English class.

Note: This is my opinion.  It does have a 3.6/5 star rating on Amazon.

Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India

Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India
Miranda Kennedy
Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Random House (April 26, 2011)
Reviewed ARC courtesy of Amazon Vine.
2/5 stars

Miranda Kennedy quits her NPR job and moves from NYC to Delhi to be a freelance reporter, expecting a grand adventure in the footsteps of her parents and great-aunt. She isn't expecting to find that certain things, taken for granted in the U.S., will be difficult for a single woman. Sideways on a Scooter is Kennedy's recounting of those difficulties, as well as the difficulties she sees women native to India experience. She tells of close friendships she makes, of her observations of the dating and marriage experiences of her friends, of the life experiences of her servants and of some of the things she learned as a result of living in India.

Sideways on a Scooter sounds wonderful when put briefly like that, and it should have been a excellent book, as all the elements of a fantastic memoir were present. Unfortunately, Kennedy's narrative style failed her and the story is instead chapters comprised of a messy conglomeration of her surprisingly intolerant opinions, rambling retellings of India's history and her anecdotes, the three of which rarely seem to connect together. When writing about her experiences she has an unsettling way of crossing from the first person point of view into an omnipotent story teller as she tells parts of her story that she really couldn't have known at that time. I gathered, at the end of the book, that perhaps she went back later and interviewed the people in question as to what they were thinking and feeling at the time. This is mere speculation on my part, though, and even if that were certain knowledge, it would do little to alleviate the awkward storytelling style.

In addition, she tended to flip-flop between various time periods in her life in Delhi within a chapter, making for confusion to the reader. Again, as with the history and opinions, these various episodes rarely tied-in together by the end of the chapter, so the point of it is uncertain.

Despite the unprofessional writing style, Kennedy's experiences were very interesting, and I did want to read them, did want to know what happened to her various friends and acquaintances. It's for that reason I give this book two stars. This book would have been unimaginably better had Kennedy stuck to only her experiences there and left out her attempts at history, current events and op-eds, which only made her appear like a spoiled American complaining about a country that is different from her own. Kennedy would have benefited from a reliable editor or pre-reader with the honesty to point out these things. As it stands, Sideways on a Scooter is a poorly written memoir and I would advise fellow readers to give it a miss.


Note: This is my opinion; on Amazon, 43% of the reviews were 5 stars.

Something Different About Dad

Something Different About Dad 
Kirsti Evans, author
John Swogger, illustrator
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Pub; 1 edition (January 15, 2011)
Review based on ARC from Amazon Vine.
5/5 stars

Something Different About Dad is a both a nonfiction and fiction illustrated resource with an intended audience of children aged 7 to 15 that have an adult in their life with Asperger Syndrome. It is designed in a style similar to the graphic novel, with friendly monochrome illustrations and a handwritten type of font.

The preface introduces the author and illustrator as guides to the story, and gives a brief explanation of what the book will be about:

Whether or not you know for sure that the person you are thinking of has Asperger Syndrome, we hope this book will help. We hope it will help you answer some of the questions you might have and give you some ideas about how to deal with parents or other adults with Asperger Syndrome.

Something Different About Dad certainly lives up to this expectation.

It is essentially a story told by a preteen named Sophie, whose father (Mark) has Asperger Syndrome ("AS"). Each chapter begins with Sophie describing an incident in their family life that has led to difficulties for Mark, and as a result, to embarrassment, emotional pain and misunderstanding for the family. After the incident is recounted by Sophie, with illustrations that do a fantastic job of showing the emotions that each person is experiencing, Kirsti and John appear in the chapter to explain what caused Mark to act as he did.

Ms. Evans, whose experience with Autism and AS is obviously not in name only, does a wonderful job of explaining just what AS is, the four main areas that difficulties occur for persons with AS, and what can trigger the socially unacceptable behavior. It is explained with clarity and in detail, and yet is not overwhelming with all the factual information.

After picking apart the situation to find the antecedent to Mark's behavior, Kirsti and John then speak to the various family members, giving advice on how to lessen the frustration of a situation for Mark. The family then talks about what changes they have made and how these changes have reduced that type of behavior from Mark.

Despite addressing such serious issues as anger toward the parent with AS, having one's feelings hurt deeply by the parent with AS and frustration at having to arrange schedules around that parent instead of oneself, the book ends on a very positive and hopeful note.

My only complaint about the book was that Mark was not generally held accountable for his behavior or asked to work on reducing his reactions. After I pondered on this, however, I realized that the book is geared for children who would not have the right to ask for such changes from an adult, who would only be able to make changes in their own life to help, and therefore showing such a situation would not be appropriate.

Swooger's illustrations fit the story and the information very well. I not only work with young children that have Autism and AS, but have AS myself, and I thought his he caught the expressions of situations very well. I was particularly impressed with the way he showed conversations going on around Mark, and how overwhelming it was to have some much going on. I found it interesting that he drew Mark with blank eyes, different from everyone else; I'm not sure if it was meant to simply show a difference in how Mark looked at the world, but I rather uncomfortably interpreted it to be a blank stare and didn't find that to be as appropriate as the rest of the illustrations.

I think this book would be an excellent resource for children with adults, or even other children, in their life with AS. Regardless of the book's language being geared toward a younger age group, it is also an excellent resource for adults who are experiencing the effects of AS in their life.

Tiger Hills

Tiger Hills 
Sarita Mandanna
Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group, (January 2011)
Read ARC copy from Amazon Vine.
3/5 stars

Ever since I read the stunning novel The Toss of a Lemon, I have actively sought out stories that take place anywhere in India. I have wanted to immerse myself as much as possible in the varied, rich cultures of that lovely country. So, naturally, when I saw Tiger Hills  offered as an ARC, I snatched it up.

Tiger Hills  takes place during British Colonial rule in the Coorg district (now Kodagu in Karnataka State) in southern India. It follows the lives of Devi and Devanna, and later Muthi, and their relationships with each other.

Devi, the much beloved first female child of several generations, is a headstrong girl from the beginning, wrapping her family around her finger and well aware of that power. She befriends the younger Deanna, and after he is orphaned he comes to live in her home. They grow up as siblings and the best of friends, but Devanna always expects that someday they will marry.

When a ten year old Devi sees Muthi at a "tiger wedding", she becomes immediately smitten with the 21 year old hunter and declares that she will marry him and only him. Her determination is not lost as the years pass, and leads to many complications and sorrows in the lives of all three.

Mandanna uses wonderful descriptive phrases to paint a sensory experience of the Coorg district. The colors and smells and sounds are vivid and, Mandanna's skill in filling the reader's senses is the strongest point of the novel.

The plot begins very slow, and when it does pick up it is to spiral the characters toward unpleasant events or unfortunate choices, none of which come as a surprise to the reader. Granted, a novel does not have to have a happy or pleasing plot to be an excellent novel, if it is well written--take Nabokov's Lolita, for example, which is one of the finest novels ever written. The prose of Tiger Hills , though, is not very striking (with the exception of the location descriptions), and I had to make myself continue to read. When Mandanna's plot planning and general writing match her descriptive ability, she will produce exceptional novels.


Note: This is my opinion; on Amazon, 58% of the reviews were 5 stars.

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale
Carolyn Turgeon
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Broadway (March 1, 2011)
(ARC courtesy of Amazon Vine program.)
2/5 stars

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale is touted as a dark, gothic retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale, The Little Mermaid. It centers around the mermaid princess, Lenia, and the prince of the Southern Kingdom (Christopher) that she rescued, and the princess of the Northern Kingdom (Margrethe) who found the rescued prince. Lenia falls in love with Christopher immediately, and Margrethe feels that Christopher was brought to her for a reason, namely to bring peace to their warring kingdoms.

Neither particularly dark or gothic, Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale is a quick and somewhat light read. It's less cheerful than most light reads, as it sticks rather close to Anderson's sad tale, but the overall "everyone gets a good finish" ending keeps it from reading like a gothic novel.

I wasn't particularly impressed with this novel. The characters were rather two dimensional and their actions easy to predict (even in instances that didn't mirror the fairy tale). Conversations between characters were also often flat.

While I found the setting interesting, and several of the few descriptions given were quite lovely (the mermaid castle for instance), on the whole descriptions of the place and time were rare, leaving the novel feeling sparse and drab.

Unoriginality bordered on the bizarrely mundane: the kingdoms were called the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom, for goodness sake. Given this and the lack of details, I wondered if the novel had been rushed at the end and only the outline published.

The element of time was another problem issue: a mermaid year (between Lenia's birthday) passed abnormally fast; also, she was supposedly completely human and yet gestated a human infant within a few months. The need to make the novel hurry, with few descriptions and conversations and cheats on time, was to the detriment. It's rare that I say a novel would have been better longer, but if more attention had been paid to fleshing out details, this one could have been quite good.

I'm giving it two stars instead of one for the few original ideas and descriptions, but I simply can't recommend this novel, for adults or young adults, as I don't feel it is quality work, even for a light read.

Note: This is my opinion; on Amazon, this book received a 5 star rating 39% of the time.

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady

The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady
Elizabeth Stuckey-French
Publisher: Doubleday (February 8, 2011)
4/5 stars
(Review based on reading of ARC from Amazon Vine Program.)

In the 1950's, Marylou Ahearn was the unwitting guinea pig in a radiation experiment that had a fatal outcome for her family. The project came to light during the Clinton Administration and now, at age 77, Marylou has decided to exact her revenge on the doctor in charge of the horrible project. She is, in fact, going to murder Dr. Wilson Spriggs.

It took her several years to finally track down Dr. Spriggs, but thanks to the miracle of the internet, she has found him living with his daughter and her family in Tallahassee, FL. So, to Tallahassee she goes, with murder on her mind, and cons her way into the very fabric of his family, with sometimes disastrous consequences and never with quite the results she imagined.

On the surface, The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is a darkly humorous tale, but it goes much deeper than that. The author uses Marylou and her desire for revenge as a vehicle to explore the family of Dr. Spriggs--one which on the outside seems so perfectly typical, but on the inside, where none but the family can see. . . Well, it's really typical there too--full of miss-communication, heartbreak, love, adversity, disorder, and triumph, both small and earth-shatteringly large. In a word, they are EVERY family.

The novel itself is quite well written, with each chapter continuing on the story from the viewpoint of another character, either Marylou or a member of Dr. Spriggs' family. The characters are fresh, real and engaging. In Marylou, for example, Ms. Stuckey-French has created an appealing character, torn between her better nature and her desire for revenge. With Ava and Otis, as another example, she shows two different, yet similar, sides of Asperger's Syndrome with painful and amusing truthfulness. (As one intimately familiar with Asperger's Syndrome, I found her treatment refreshing: not sappy, not overly optimistic, just quite realistic.)

Overall, though it is touted as a "dark comedy" (and rightfully so), it is so much more than that. The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady is the tale of family triumph, and of how things never quite work out how we have them planned, and of how life is good--despite it all, life is good.