Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Fiction

            As a child, all Kathy H. knows is Hailsham, the boarding school where she grows up with the same people, all of whom are also students or teachers. Hailsham keeps Kathy in a bubble by physically isolating her from the outside world, but Kathy is also kept in an information bubble, oblivious to the role that she and her peers play as donors. Ishiguro paints an alternate universe of England during the 1990s, where children like Kathy and those at Hailsham are created to be a source of organs for others.  As Kathy grows up and begins to explore the outside world, she keeps on revisiting her memories at Hailsham. As Kathy gets older and the prospect of her time as a donor draws near, the more she thinks of Hailsham and the more she wishes that Hailsham will never let her go.

Ishiguro’s writing is evocative and his novel beautifully and brilliantly traverses so many different issues. Never Let Me Go is a coming-of-age novel, a love story, a cautionary tale, and a social critique.  The novel provokes difficult questions -- whether ignorance is bliss, how to create an identity when a life path has been pre-established, and whether there can ever be true autonomy in a world that is eerily similar to ours.  It was one of the best novels I’ve read all year – maybe ever – and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale  by Margaret Atwood

Fiction

Under the religious military dictatorship, the Republic of Gilead, Offred lives as a Handmaid to serve her Commander (the head male of the household). Women occupy one of five roles in society. Four of the roles available are that of wives, Aunts (teachers), Marthas (maids), and lower-class workers. Pollution and disease has made many of the Commander’s wives sterile which opens up a new position for women in society, as a Handmaid. Handmaids are required by law to have sex with their Commanders once a month in hopes of getting pregnant. The women in the Republic of Gilead are unable to read, write, wear what they want, go outside alone, and they have to obey their Commander. Through a series of flashbacks, Offred tells the story of how the Republic of Gilead slowly came to be as women’s rights were gradually stripped away. Offred laments how passively people accepted their loss of power and didn’t take action until it was too late.

Go Set a Watchman

Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Fiction

To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, so you can imagine how excited I was for Go Set a Watchman. It was hard to compare the two because the style and substance were so different. I found it easier to view Go Set a Watchman as a separate book and the flashbacks as bonus material for To Kill a Mockingbird. Familiar characters like Jem and Dill make few appearances in these flashbacks and the characters that are still around are hardly recognizable, such as Atticus. Scout even goes by a different name (Jean Louise), but she is still recognizable and the similarities between her younger self are believable.

             The voice in Go Set a Watchman was inconsistent and the story was less of a narrative than To Kill a Mockingbird. The voice in the flashbacks was entertaining, while the other parts of the book were almost boring in tone, similar to a voice-over in a documentary. This inconsistency in the book made it seem more like a first draft than a finished novel, which it likely was. I found Go Set a Watchman to be more autobiographical and less fictional than To Kill a Mockingbird, and probably closer to Lee’s actual experiences during that period. As much as the general public would like to believe, it’s unlikely that there were many people during the 1930s in the South who resembled Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. The Atticus in Go Set a Watchman was probably closer to the personality of a typical lawyer in the South for the time. From these two books, Lee gives us two versions of Atticus, one who is an ideal and a symbol of justice, and the other that is an actual person who holds the beliefs and values of his environment.

What makes To Kill a Mockingbird great literature is that Lee was able to take her observations of the South and transform them into universal themes. Go Set a Watchman is an early step in the evolution of Harper Lee’s writing, and it is best to view it as that.

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Nonfiction

The Glass Castle is a memoir about the author’s experiences growing up in a poor and peculiar family. They constantly move and uproot their lives. Her dad is an alcoholic but is still faithful to the family, and he wrote a blueprint to a glass castle that he promises to someday build. Her mom is a self-proclaimed artist who is first seen digging through a Dumpster. Because of her parents’ poor choices they live in abject poverty. Her unconventional childhood results in her siblings and Jeannette sticking close together and having to fend for themselves. The book is full of alarming tales of parenting, such as the one where Jeannette is three years old and she learns to boil hot dogs by herself in their trailer. While she is standing on a chair to reach the stove, her skirt catches on fire. She is admitted to the hospital with severe burns. Her dad is disappointed because he insists that she should have seen the local Navajo witch doctor instead. After Jeannette spends six weeks in the hospital recovering, her dad breaks into the hospital, grabs her and bolts for the door, while nurses and doctors yell at him to stop. Some of the events in The Glass Castle are so comical and unbelievable that you feel a great deal of respect for the author for being able to rise above her past.

The Walls family may be unconventional, poor, and slightly eccentric, but it is never boring.

Freaky Green Eyes

Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates

Fiction

This book is about two people. One of them is Franky Pierson who is in denial about the abuse her mom suffers from her dad. The other person is Freaky Green Eyes, a part of Franky who knows the truth and wants to save her mom.

While Franky is at a party over the summer she is almost raped, but Freaky Green Eyes gives her the strength to attack her assailant, a college student named Cameron. As Franky runs away Cameron yells, “You f-freak! You should see your eyes! Freaky green eyes! You’re crazy!” (Oates page 17). Freaky Green Eyes is the part of Franky that she fears and respects the most, and it is also the part that saves her.

Franky lives in Seattle, Washington where it is perpetually cloudy, but the weather isn’t the only thing clouding her vision. Her dad, Reid Pierson, a famous sportscaster, makes a living by using his good appearance and confidence to belie his abusive personality. Franky believes her dad when he says that he loves her, her mom betrayed them, and he doesn’t know anything about her mom’s disappearance. It is much easier for Franky to believe what he tells her than the alternative, but Freaky knows better.

Oates renders a realistic portrayal of an abusive parent which helps the reader better comprehend the internal struggles Franky faces. If she reports her dad’s abuse she would be going against what a part of her wants to believe and in a way does. She is split between her mom and her dad, the truth and her dad’s lies, what she wants to believe and what she knows to be true, between Freaky and Franky. 

To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird  By Harper Lee

Fiction

I feel that I don’t have to summarize the plot of To Kill a Mockingbird because everyone knows it, but my obligation is stronger than the novel’s ubiquity. Scout, a seven year old girl and the narrator, provides an innocent and naïve view of what happens in her southern town of Maycomb, Alabama. One of the major events she observes involves the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, who has been falsely accused of raping a white woman.  The evidence supports Tom’s case, but the jury of all white men vote to convict him. Later, prison guards shoot Tom seventeen times as he tries to escape. This fictional event has become infamous both because it was shocking, but also because it raises the question of whether the justice system is still biased. We Americans like to believe that our justice system treats all people equally, which is why what happens to Robinson is so shocking.  Furthermore, Robinson’s fate makes the reader wonder whether it is possible to achieve justice in a society with differences in power even today. People at the time the book was published believed that these differences were unfair, and they still do today, which is one of the reasons Harper Lee’s writing still resonates.

                Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird has echoed powerfully over the years because it addresses issues which transcend time. The book forces the reader to question the meaning of justice and the possibility of achieving it. Lee’s writing is timeless because the events that occur in her book are not restricted to a certain time period. The Tom Robinson case could happen today. Nearly 55 years after its publication, To Kill a Mockingbird still moves readers with its story of injustice and the loss of innocence.

Sold

Sold by Patricia McCormick
Fiction

           Lakshmi lives in a small poor town in Nepal. She witnesses her step-father gamble away what little money they have and disrespect her mother. One day, she asks her mother “Why must women suffer so?” Her mother replies, “This has always been our fate. Simply to endure is to triumph.” When she is offered a job from a stranger to work in India to earn money and, being the obedient, innocent, and naïve girl she is, she immediately says yes, and then realizes the terrible truth. She has been sold to a cruel woman named Mumtaz and into sex slavery. Time after time Lakshmi is beaten down, but she gets up again and again. When Lakshmi is in India she is still obedient, but she doesn’t openly act out and endures until she triumphs. At the end of the book, she is no longer the scared naïve girl from the beginning. She is strong and resilient.

Calling the Gods

Calling the Gods  by Jack Lasenby

Fiction

            The story begins with the main character, Selene’s, banishment, which gives the impression that this book will be similar to other recent novels  set in the dystopian future, but this turns out not to be the case. Lasenby’s style differs from the writing styles of other authors of teen fiction because his sophisticated choice of words gives the impression that he is writing for a more mature audience. Despite the good writing, some parts dragged and felt unnecessary.

               When Selene sneaks back into her village after her banishment, she finds it destroyed, with only a few survivors. From there, she and the lucky survivors travel great lengths to start over. There, they are joined by survivors from different communities. Together, they seek to create a village free of the hardships they previously experienced, until their new community is jeopardized by one of their own residents. The point of view of the story also switches, the beginning is told from Selene’s point of view, but in the middle and the end, it switches from her to the point of view of an old man, who could be from before Selene’s time, or after. The old man hears and sees the villagers, but can’t be heard or seen by them. He watches the village and is able to sense when something bad is going to happen, but is not able to intervene.

The plot alone gives the novel the potential to be intriguing, but parts of the storyline were overemphasized. The events leading to the climax of the novel weren’t as suspenseful or dramatic as they should have been, although they were described well. 

What I thought was the most interesting part of the story was that the old man didn’t dismiss the thought that he could be from a time before Selene’s--and not just the future-- even though he comes from a much more advanced society. Another thing that I thought was interesting was how the destruction in the villages was always the fault of the villagers, not any outside forces. The same mistakes were made over and over by the villagers, resulting in their ruin again and again.  I think that Calling the Gods did an excellent job of illustrating the reason why mistakes need to be learned from, but not as great of a job showing the story of a girl struggling to survive.

Revolution is not a Dinner Party

Revolution is not a Dinner Party  By Ying Chang Compestine

***** 4/5 stars  Historical Fiction

The first sentence of this book is, "The summer of 1972, before I turned nine, danger began knocking on doors all over China." That sentence describes the whole book pretty well. Ling lives in China during the Cultural Revolution. The Revolution threatens Ling and her family's lives but they try to survive and avoid danger under the harsh rule of Chairman Mao.

            This book reminds me of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas , a story about a very naive boy growing up in World War II. Ling is very naive and isn't sure what is going on in parts of the book. This book also reminds me of North Korea. During the Cultural Revolution, China was very similar to North Korea in many ways.  They respected their leader in the same way, a lot of the people were starving, and the police could barge into someone's house at any time.

            Throughout this book, Ling overcomes challenges and hardships. She surprises the reader with strength that is unexpected in someone so small.