Wonder
02 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
This young adult fiction novel is a highly recommended read for just that – young adults. As an adult
reader, something is a little missing. But this is the kind of thing you hope your children or students would read and gain a more open perspective on the differences of others.
August Pullman, our central character, has a facial deformity. It is never discussed in a great deal of detail other than these few hints:
- other children asking him if he has been burnt
- a sense of his face being misshapen, and his eyes being lower than they should be
- his ears resembling cauliflower
- an inability to read his facial expressions easily
Auggie, whilst well loved by his family and those who have known him for a long time, suffers prejudice, ridicule and resentment from most of the people he encounters. And this year, in Grade 5, he is going to school for the first time.
Over the year, this book charts Auggie’s journey, as well as those around him. The new people he meets have to come to terms with his appearance and whether or not the peer pressure to exclude Auggie will overcome their empathy and their genuine liking for this funny and gentle boy. His sister is trying to carve her own identity away from Auggie. And his parents just want him to be happy.
It’s lovely to see so many attitudes change throughout the book, and for Auggie to spread his wings and grow. This is a great book to help students develop empathy for others and to encourage them to see beyond what their eyes tell them.
The Mammoth Hunters
27 May 2012 2 Comments
I’m afraid Jean M Auel is getting a bit lost in melodrama as this series goes on, and what is in many ways an interesting exploration of the roots of humanity gets caught up in a tangled and unrealistic lover’s tiff.
In this novel, Ayla who lived alone after being expelled from the Clan of the Cave Bear, and her lover Jondalar meet up with a group of mammoth hunters, known as the Mamutoi. The Mamutoi come to appreciate Ayla’s abundant gifts – and she makes a special connection to Rydag, a half-clan boy adopted by the Mamutoi who cannot speak and suffers all the prejudice that was such as large part of the last novel. Ayla teaches Rydag and the Mamutoi the clan the sign language , improving his quality of life tremendously.
The Mamutoi offer to adopt Ayla and give her a home, which she accepts with no people to call her own. Jondalar supports this, although is jealous of a dark-skinned carver called Ranec who makes it clear that he wants to make Ayla his. When he invites Ayla to his bed, she accepts as per her clan conditioning. For the rest of the novel Jondalar is jealous and removes himself from Ayla. What is ridiculous about this is that he never speaks to her about it, and at the same times understands why she might have done it. Then he makes excuses as to why he isn’t good enough for her, and how he still has concerns about her fitting in with his people. It is maddening.
Ayla just doesn’t understand Jondalar, which pushes her further towards Ranec. Its hard to believe any two characters could both be so obtuse.
There are some interesting facts to learn about life for early man, and when Ayla finds and raises a wolf cub, about man’s relationship with dogs. But the magic of this series is wearing thin as the themes of communication breakdown from the last novel are repeated too closely in this novel as well. Of course it all works out in the end, and we have three more novels yet to come. I hope the themes of the next few are a little more varied.
Past the Shallows
23 May 2012 Leave a Comment
Past the Shallows is a brilliant and already highly applauded first novel by Favel Parrett. Immediately I was struck by the poetry of the beautifully sparse prose and the luxurious way the haunting story unwinds.
Joe, Miles and Harry are brothers in a broken family. Their mother is absent, although why this is so is not immediately apparent. Joe lives apart from the family, leaving Miles to care for young Harry, and the home that is so neglected by their alcoholic father, an abalone fisherman. Miles has been taken out of school to work in the boat, while Harry spends his days alone in the house, with little to eat and less to do.
As the narrative unfolds we learn more about the lives of Miles and Harry, and the father they live in fear of. His rage runs deep and at the end of the novel, it is something neither of them can escape.
Set in coastal Tasmania with terrific descriptions of the water and the boys’ relationship to it, even as a first-time author Parrett knows the secrets of showing and not telling that evades so many authors these days. Although classes as YA Fiction (and nominated by the CBCA for their Young Adult Fiction novel of the year), there is plenty here to engage older readers as well.
Here is a link to some short story writing of hers if you are interested. http://www.favelparrett.com.au/other_writing.html
The Dead I Know
16 May 2012 Leave a Comment
I am gradually reading my way through the CBCA award nominees this year – having found Ship Kings pretty 
entertaining, I settled in for a good read by Scot Gardner, The Dead I Know.
Ever wondered about the business of funeral directors? I don’t have to – with a relative in the funeral industry. So there was no squeamishness in this tummy reading about the main character visiting road crash sites and picking up the pieces of the victims – literally.
But Aaron Rowe seems well suited to the quite, serious business of dealing with the dead. In fact, the job is a peaceful respite from the other parts of his life. Roles are reversed with his carer Mam, who is slowly fading into dementia. Meanwhile at night Aaron is plagued by nightmares that gradually build a picture that is all too familiar, and is concerned that his sleepwalking will one day lead him somewhere dangerous. Then there is an issue with a neighbor in the caravan park where he lives that IS getting dangerous.
Aaron’s life is a mess. He is totally out of control and unsure about how to handle everything going on around and inside of him.
But a little kindness goes a long way, and Aaron soon finds himself befriended by the funeral director and his family. Gradually he is able to confront his nightmares and lay them to rest. While few things are fully resolved by the end of the novel – although the issue with the neighbor is a bit too swiftly taken care of – there is a sense of life being on the improve for Aaron, who has finally opened himself up to others.
This is a great book for boys – without a silly love interest or any of the attempts to be young and hip that can sometimes mar the telling of a good story. There are a lot of lessons here about what it really means to be a man, and the courage it takes to face your fears.
Blonde
11 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in Historical Fiction, Talking Books
Even 40 years after her death, we are all still spellbound by the magic and mystery that is Marilyn Monroe. Today, movies and television shows are still being made about her story. I’ve been drawn to this historical novel by Joyce Carol Oates for some time, but have only now had an opportunity to pick it up.
Oates insist that this be viewed as a fiction, but it’s the kind of mesmerizing fiction where an author takes a fascinating subject and fleshes out the facts and speculations that have survived history. All of us want to know what was behind that famous pout. Remarkably, as she explores Marilyn’s early years, her years in foster care and as a wannabe actress and bonafide star, Oates portrays an intelligent but damaged Marilyn, who manages to be both naïve and worldly at the same time. The voice is authentic and emotionally real. Marilyn’s motivations are deftly explored with psychological realism. Her fragility is both sad and beautiful.
For me, the novel opens up the mystery of Monroe even further, and begs me to 
watch her films and try to divine whatever truths I can. But the reality here will always be shrouded by our images and the gossip surrounding Monroe. We can never know, but like Oates, we can imagine.
Ship Kings: The Coming of the Whirlpool
11 May 2012 Leave a Comment
Dow Amber seems destined for the seas… despite being born in the highlands where tradition holds that he follow in the footsteps of his father and become a timber cutter.
But in one of the most engaging examples of foreshadowing I have read in a long time, McGahan lets us know that Dow Amber WILL spend his life on the seas, and we will find out all about it if only we read on.
Chance and destiny all come tied together when Dow finds out the reason behind his nautical yearnings. This – the first novel of a promised series – explains how Dow comes to leave home, learn basic sailing and join the legendary (but cruel) Ship Kings on an adventure that will take him far away from where it all began.
There is the promise of more in this novel, that begins to develop the legend of Dow Amber, but can only give us so much of the story in this installment. I will certainly pick up the next one and am keen to see the pieces of the puzzle unravel.
Andrew McGahan is better known for his politically bent adult fiction, such as the brilliantly written The White Earth which I read a number of years ago. Its interesting to see him turn his skills to something a little more fun. His mastery of suspense is not lost here. But I’m not going to come out and say it’s my pick for CBCA Young Adult Fiction book of the year just yet.
Valley of the Horses
30 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
This is the second novel in Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series, that follows the story of Ayla who is raised by mute Neanderthals after she is orphaned and lost from her people (Cro-Magnons). The clan who took her in were known as the Clan of the Cave Bear.
In the first novel, Ayla struggled to be a good clan woman despite her physical, psychological and physiological differences. But she just never quite fit in. At the end, she was expelled from the clan by the cruel new leader who had victimized her for years. She is forced to go out into the world alone, leaving her baby boy behind.
Although alone, readers return to Ayla’s story in this book finding her anything but defenceless. Although she longs to find her own people, she is unsure that they will accept her. So she makes her home in a pleasant valley and shows the reader her industriousness and resilence. She not only survives alone, but shows ingenuity in finding ways to thrive. She befriends and raises a young horse that she calls Whinney, and also eventually a Cave Lion cub known only as Baby. Both animals are her close and beloved companions, filling the void of human contact. Whinney returns to the wild for a short time, and returns to Ayla heavily pregnant after the death of her mate. Baby eventually explores the wild and finds a mate, returning occasionally to Ayla.
Interspersed with this narrative is the story of Jondalar – whois travelling up the great river with his brother Thonolan. They meet and get to know a number of tribes and their exploraations also serve to show the attitudes of these clans towards the neandertahls who raised Ayal in the previous book. The brothers have a number of sexual exploits (there is quite a bit of time devoted to sexual exploits in this novel) until Thonolan marries. Jondalar meets a beautiful woman with a son, but cannot fully commit himself to her. He wonders if he is capable of fully loving another human being. When Thonolan’s wife dies, they continue travelling although Thonolan expresses a longing to pass over into the next world with her. This wish is shortly granted when he provokes the mate of Baby. Ayla is able to intervene and rescue Jondalar who she nurses back to health.
They are immediately attracted to each other – Ayla has never seen another man before – but much of the rest of the novel is taken up with the barrier in their communication, not just verbal as Jondalar eventually teaches Ayla the language of his people, but in all the non-verbal communication that is so difficult. Jondalar also expresses some prejudices about the Clan that he needs to overcome before they can be together. This represents the prejudice Ayal feels sure she will meet if she leaves the valley.
They nearly separate a number of times until eventually they come to better understand each other and consummate their love. Over and over again. Much like a Mills and Boon novel really. Don’t get me wrong – you want to see them together and hope they can overcome the obstacles facing them, but there are plenty of moments whereby you just might blush.
Jondalar eventually decides he cannot leave Ayla, although he longs to return home to his people. He convinces her to take a tour of the surrounding areas, where they run into a group of Mamutoi hunters – the first group of Cro-Magnons Ayla has been exposed to. You feel sure that they will continue to journey to show Ayla the world she has been kept away from. Still engaging – athough I need a bit more than a love story to keep me interested.
Doppelgänger
28 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized, Young Adult Fiction
I did not particularly enjoy this young adult science fiction novel by Michael Parker, which is on our booklist this year. The writing is a bit ordinary, and the premise a bit unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good science fiction as much as anyone, but this one just didn’t quite cut it for me. I really think it would be enormously difficult to teach in the classroom.
Andrew Davies is your average kid. He works at a service station and is held up one night by a mysterious figure. After this, he begins to be pulled into a parallel version of Sydney, where youth gangs roam and control the population through a variety of drugs – the latest one is called metsin. Andrew finds his best friend Josh running a gang called to Hallboys, who are planning to take over the operations of another gang called Inner Station, led by a masked figure who calls himself Kurtz, in a direct nod to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
I struggled to get through it, although there is a reasonably interesting plot revelation about 50 pages from the end, that made me want to continue reading. The ending is somewhat vague although the main character finds himself reflecting upon the opportunities that life provides him with rather than the limitations.
There are plenty of better books out there, particularly for study in schools.
Beautiful – Katie Piper
19 Apr 2012 1 Comment
in Non-Fiction
I don’t read non-fiction often – only when the subject really interests me. And having seen a number of Katie Piper’s documentaries, I could not resist the impulse buy of this biography when I spotted it in the local bookstore in Berwick.
If you missed her shows, My Beautiful Face and My Beautiful Friends, Piper was a reasonably successful model and TV host who was attacked by the man she thought was her boyfriend. This began with a beating and rape when she refused to sleep with him, and threats to her friends and family if she told anyone. When she tried to avoid him, he had a friend throw acid in her face, scarring her for life.
Piper is an astounding role model and made an incredible transformation, from a girl whose life revolved around her looks, she began her own charity for people with disfiguring burns like hers and worked to raise awareness for people with disfigurements in general. She changed her whole outlook.
And it’s not just her face – Piper’s eyes were damaged in the attack as was her throat. Her eating is still restricted until this day.
Plainly written, I’m glad I learned more about her and the significance of her calling her autobiography Beautiful.
The Marriage Plot
15 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
In the time of the Victorian novel, it was all about the “marriage plot”. Even though Austen is not technically a Victorian, her works embody it – it was so important for women of that time to find a suitable husband that this search was a key fixture in a lot of the important literature of the time.
There is a marriage in Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, but really this is a coming-of-age story surrounding three characters in America in the 80s who have just graduated from Brown University and have to figure out life after college.
Madeleine is the central figure of the novel – a Victorian Literature student who is ashamed of being so ‘normal’. She is surrounded by passionate, opinionated and alternative classmates while she finds solace in classics. She has no real plans beyond being with her boyfriend after graduation, and feels intellectually inferior to everyone around her.
Leonard, her boyfriend, tells us the most poignant tale. A manic depressive who hid his condition from Madeleine behind a façade of indifference, when Leonard has a breakdown and struggles with his medication, and how it affects him emotionally, mentally and physically. He clings to Madeleine as the only stable figure in his life – but she has never experienced the highs and lows of his mania before and struggles to be what he needs.
Mitchell, a religious studies major, stands in the sidelines. In love with Madeleine but consistently overlooked by her, her image stays with him as he travels around the world in search of some kind of religious truth. By the end of the novel – he questions everything he once held to be true but is able to look towards the future as a fresh start.
Many have compared this novel to Eugenides’ other two unfavourably, but I found much to enjoy in this – possibly because of my age and also my interest in literary studies. While it does not cover ground-breaking territory (which his other two novels seem to) it does acknowledge that there are difficulties in every life and that just living is a constant series of challenges and self-reflection.
