There Were Some Clogs. And Dust. And Spinning.

The cover was the best part.

I don’t read blurbs as a rule. I judge a lot of books by their covers, and covers don’t get much better than this.  I received this book free as an ARC from NetGalley. I did not receive anything in exchange for this review, not even a lousy box of MoonPies. I’ll get over it.

I have put off reviewing this one for as long as I could. I have had a hard time deciding if I didn’t like the book, or if I was just disappointed in where the author chose to take me. After much thought, I’d have to say it’s a bit of both.

I wanted to love this book. It opens with a woman, Amaranth, driving down the road as though the devil is behind her. She has taken her two daughters, Amity and Sorrow, and is escaping her abusive cult-leader of a husband. She’s making like a shepherd and getting the flock out. Good for her! Drive, woman, drive!  I like strong women.

But was she really all that strong? It bothered me that she jumped to offer certain, er, favors to the farmer who gives them sanctuary. Was she really strong and taking one for the team? Come to think of it, can the farmer be considered as offering them sanctuary in the first place if they’re sleeping on the porch and he keeps telling them he wants them to leave? These are the kinds of questions that I suppose I could discuss with a book club, but it would be a meeting where I spent the whole discussion looking like this:

A picture is worth a thousand words, people. Or 600 in my case. This photo is pretty much my review. Whole book, right here.

The book is supposed to be character driven, and Amaranth drives the book the same way she drives a car – until it’s kind of a wreck. There’s some argument among writers whether or not we should write what we know. When reading this book, I felt like the author was writing about things she had merely read about. Her descriptions of the cult were terrifying and real, but I felt like the closest she has ever gotten to Oklahoma was The Grapes of Wrath. It’s all dust and “drouth.” I can’t remember how the author spelled it, and I don’t care enough to search for it. This word may have been the final nail in the coffin for me. I had a professor who used this variation on “drought,” and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I didn’t understand Amity, and I don’t think the author did, either. Near as I can figure, she’s about thirteen. I don’t think the average thirteen year old imagines jumping the bones of a boy she just met, much less a kid who was raised in an ultra-conservative cult and isn’t allowed to talk to men. She has seen a sex act, but she certainly didn’t recognize it for what it was.

I just read the blurb on Goodreads and thought “Wow! That sounds like a book I’d like to read!” It definitely wasn’t the book I got. I give it 3.25/5 stars. It was readable. I didn’t hate picking it up, but it fell short in too many places. It’s like a bowl of jello that never sets – it tastes fine, but it’s not as solid as it should be.

“The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.”

I grew up on fairy tales. Wee-Amy grew up on magic and mystery and beautiful people. Wee-Amy, however, liked the dark side so much more: Cinderella’s evil stepmother being forced to dance to death in her red-hot iron shoes; little Kay, lost to the evil snow queen, scorning the love of his ever-faithful Gerda; the little boy being beheaded by his stepmother in “The Juniper Tree,” Snow White being tricked, over and over, by her jealous stepmother. Even at a young age, I knew sometimes the prince just doesn’t come, and sometimes evil wins, and sometimes you can’t fight off the dark.

I keep reading re-told fairy tales in the hope of finding some of that magic again. Some of them don’t have any and are just a cheap way for the author to make a quick buck. Some have a little, but don’t quite make it. It’s tough to live up to the originals.

Then sometimes…just sometimes…a book like this comes along.

I’ve read a few Catherynne M. Valente books, and she gets fairy tales. She gets them more than most. She does her research. She gets the tone. Best of all? She gets the darkness. She knows what lurks just outside of the light surrounding the happy couple. What’s in the shadows, and what long, claw-tipped fingers these things have.

This is Snow White set in the Old West. No, no. Don’t run away. I know. There are so many ways this could go wrong, and be campy, and be terrible.

It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Our narrator is nameless at the beginning of the book. She’s the daughter of a silver and jewel baron and the Native American woman he bullies into marrying him. Her father doesn’t parent her; she’s forced to parent herself until he marries again and his new wife moves into her home. Suddenly, the girl has a name, gifted to her by her ice-cold stepmother; the cruelest name of all, considering she’s too brown to pass in “polite” society: Snow White.

I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than this. The book is poetic in the best possible way. Some of the lines were so gorgeous I had to stop and catch my breath. The cast of characters were magical and fantastical but not in any way unrealistic. Everything you need from the story is there: you’ve got the mirror, the seven dwarves, the stepmother with her glamours and poisoned apple, the glass coffin, the hunter coming for Snow White’s juicy little heart. But you’ve got it all in a way you’ve never seen before. You’ve got it in the gritty prose of a western novel, but a western novel with poetry. You’ve got the darker side; the desire for connection, the need for a mother, how running away is never a solution, because your past always finds you in the end.

You need to read this book. You need to read this book in the dark, wanting just one more chapter and one more and maybe just one more; you need to read it under a tree smelling the spring all around you and feeling the sun on your face and the grass springing under you; you need to read this book on a bus, mouthing the words and glowing with the beauty of it while people watch you out of the corner of their eyes wondering what, exactly, you’re reading that makes you shine like you have the best secret you’ve ever kept in your heart.

You need to read this book and have the dust in your eyes and feel a horse under you and a pistol in your hand and you need to ride with a girl with no name but the one she was given as a twist in her side by a jealously cruel woman with a fist for a heart and a mirror for a soul.

You need to read this book.

Review Haiku for Those with Short Attention Spans

I have been slaaaaaaaaaaacking on reviewing again, sorry about that.  Too many books (106 so far this year!) and if I reviewed them all, I’d have no time to read. SO!  You get a bunch of review haiku, this time without mini-reviews.  Because I’m feeling super lazy tonight.  SORRY!

Etgar Keret’s The Nimrod Flipout

Shortest shorts of all
Stories, I mean – not Nair legs
Fun funny sad weird

Philip K Dick’s In Milton Lumky Territory

PKD litfic
No aliens or mindfucks
ZEE OH EM GEE, RIGHT?

Harambee K Grey-Sun’s Broken Angels

Blah blah blah blah STOP
I actually rage quit
This book was so bad

Kim Harrison’s Ever After

It’s too late now, but
I’m going down with my ship
(Hint: It isn’t Trent)

Dakota Cassidy’s Accidentally Dead

Nine of ten women
Agreed that the word “vulva”
Does not get them hot.

Charlaine Harris’ Dead Ever After

You’re right, Ms Harris -
We all NEEDED to know what
Sookie had for lunch.

…aaaaaaaaaand, that’s all I can see unreviewed that I wasn’t planning on talking about in more depth at some point.

Don’t forget that the Order of the Phoenix drinkalong is coming up on Friday – Same BatTime, Same BatHashtag!  See you then!

“Words fell out of his mouth like cold pebbles.”

Sometimes, a book just screams, “AMY! PICK ME UP AND READ ME!”

This was one of those books. YA fantasy! Theater people! A fairy-tale aspect! Award-winning! Magic!

Sometimes, the books that have a long pedigree and sound absolutely perfect just leave me cold. It is a sad fact of life. Like pretty shoes that pinch, or cute puppies that bite your fingers.

Goblin Secrets (which won the National Book Award, so maybe it’s me that’s broken, I don’t know) is about an orphan named Rownie. He lives with a witch named Graba, who takes in orphans and uses them for her own twisted schemes. Graba has clockwork chicken-legs and can pick up her house and move it elsewhere when the need arises. (I was so pleased to see a Baba Yaga homage, as I certainly do love Baba Yaga stories.) Rownie is constantly on the lookout for his older brother, Rowan (Rownie doesn’t know his own name – his name is a diminutive of his brother’s) who was an actor in their town, Zombay, and has gone missing. See, in Zombay, acting is forbidden. Pretending to be someone other than who you are is not allowed.

One day, a troupe of goblin actors come to town, and Rownie is completely charmed by them – so much so that he joins their troupe. Only there are, as the title implies, goblin secrets. The goblins know more about Zombay than they’re letting on, and acting is more than just the putting on of masks. Why else would it be forbidden? And how much do the goblins know about Rowan? And will Graba just let Rownie go?

Sounds kind of…I don’t know, good, right? Compelling? Interesting?

And it was. Kind of. But only kind of.

It never made the leap from kind of to all-the-way. It was teetering on the edge of being awesome, on the edge of being something great, and it never quite made it. And I’m an easy sell! I’m completely the target market for things like this! I should have eaten this up with a spoon and a scoop of whipped cream on top, Alexander, so what happened?

In steampunk terminology, because this book, like so many others lately, felt the need to jump on the steampunk bandwagon – this book was a clockwork man, strutting around, looking really good on the outside, but without a heart. And without a heart, a clockwork man is all hollow inside. It’s all style and substance and no soul. And that’s sad, because it COULD have been great. The BONES of greatness were there. It just didn’t make it. And that’s why it’s sad, because lost potential is always sad, right? Having the ability to get there and then not quite make it? Depressing.

This is the first in a series, and I have no interest in continuing with the series, award-winning or not. The world is full of good books that live up to their potential, and I’ll keep reading until I find those, thanks.

“She Remembers the Screaming Trees…”

I need to start out with a caveat. The Liars’ Gospel  is not for everyone. I don’t recommend it if:

A) You can’t sit through the movie adaptation of a book without saying “Wait, that never happened. And they left out…”

B) You are a new Christian with a limited knowledge of the New Testament.

I received The Liars’ Gospel for free as an auto-approve from Net Galley. I have not been paid for this review, nor have I received in kind goods or services. Which is too bad because my back itches, and I really wish they had at least offered to scratch it. Or sent me some lotion. But I’m not in this for personal gain, so I press forward.

Let me give you some background about me. I’m a believer.  For those who haven’t clicked out of this window and run screaming down the road, I’ll clarify. I’m for this one:

Not this one:

Believer, not Beleiber. With me? Good. It will become important later.

The Liars’ Gospel is the fictional account of Jesus told from the perspectives of four people who encountered him. Allow me to be very clear here. This is not a Christian book. It is the story of Jesus, not the story of Christ. No one in this book, including the author, believes in the divinity of the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Someone new to the Christian faith could easily be knocked off track. Alderman does her research so thoroughly that it is easy to forget this is a work of fiction. She knows the New Testament very well, but she plays with it. She relays stories straight from scripture, but then she takes a bit of artistic license;  maybe she ends the story differently, or skips over what happened next completely. It’s scripturally based, but this book should never, ever be confused with scripture. The author clearly does not believe in the divinity of Jesus and does what she can to lead the reader to question it, as well.

And yet, The Liars’ Gospel is the best work of fiction I have read in 2013. I started reading it, and I could not put it down. The prose is haunting and cuts straight to the heart without sentimentality.  It is ironic that the two books that have most captured the cruelty and horror of Christ’s crucifixion are both secular works. The other one is Lamb by Christopher Moore. I won’t get off-topic here, but I may review it later.

Names of characters are written in their original Hebrew gives the book a ring of authenticity. Alderman has done her research on life in Jerusalem under Roman rule. The book is brutal, at times graphic, but never without reason. There’s nothing gratuitous in the descriptions of the capricious violence of soldiers and rebels alike. That’s how it was. The Romans invented the gladiator games, after all. They weren’t there to play a game of hopscotch with the Jews. Life was ugly. It was bloody. This story captures the terror and the rage, the heartache and loss. The author pulls no punches. And I am glad of it.

My one frustration as I read was that I kept looking for the author’s point, her real one, waited for her to tie it all together. I wondered if she would. The four sections seemed to stand alone with very little connection to one another except that they each related to the death of Jesus. I waited. And waited. I was preparing to put this book aside with a “Well, that’s a nice little collection of short stories,” and a shrug. Until the last page, a gut punch  that hit deep. Yeah, there’s a connection. I hated it. I am haunted by it. Storytelling doesn’t get much better than this. For me, that’s all it is; a story. But a powerful one. It made me think.

I don’t even need a rubric to know that this book is a solid 5/5 stars. Because I can’t stop talking about it. Because I can’t stop thinking about it.