Book Buzz

LAURIE SANDELL

This graphic memoir deals with a completely dysfunctional family and one daughter’s search for truth, understanding and meaning.  Laurie grew up worshiping her father. The dad was a great storyteller. They were all about what a great warrior and savior he was. Saving General Westmoreland in Vietnam and befriending the Pope were among his anecdotes.  But as she grew older she realized that these great narratives could not all be true. Then she found out that he had photocopied her diary. When she applied for a credit card she was refused by because other cards in her name had been in arrears.

Heal was a long and painful process. An interesting theme to find in graphic format.

I enjoy graphic books for their brief and concise story telling.

MEG WOLITZER

The Position is about family relationships and dysfunction. The parents write a Joy of Sex type book, Pleasuring: One Couples Journey to Fulfillment which included explicit drawings of them ”engaged in sexual practices both common and obscure, Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, freehand and apparatus-aided.” The book was an instant best seller. The parents were hot on talk show,  interviews and book signings. The children were horrified and felt that this would scar them for life. ”Once we’ve seen it,” Holly, the oldest, cautions, ”then we can never unsee it. It will stay in our minds.”

Most of the book takes place thirty years later. The publishing house wants to rerelease a celebratory anniversary edition. The children have matured into variously maladjusted adults. Michael, a brilliant and worry-prone do-gooder dot-commer, is on antidepressants that have made him anorgasmic, he can no longer climax during sex. His sister Holly is ”a strange hologram” of a person, out in California with her doctor husband, opting for an isolation from her parents and siblings that’s ”almost religious.” The doctor and their son have finally given her a reason to clean up and become drug free. Claudia, a film student who lives alone in the East Village, thinks her body looks ”like a garbage bag full of leaves.” Dashiell, a political speechwriter, suffers from a liberal family’s most severe pathology: gay Republicanism. Clearly, each son and daughter has a burden, and they’re certainly all victims of the once-sexy excesses of the 70’s.

A must read! I think I will seek out some of her other books.

CHRIS RUTCHER

Concept: 18 year old boy is given less than a year to live. Does he spend it puking sick taking chemo and radiation? Not Ben Wolf. He threatened his doctor with legal action if he broke confidentiality. Ben is 18 and in the last year of high school.  He wants to go out in a blaze of glory. He joined the foot ball team that his younger but bigger brother quarterbacks. And does score some winning touchdowns. The first person he tells is the coach a family friend. The book reaches far beyond the main theme into the need for  education reform, sexual abuse of children from the point of view of an abuser as well as a young person who was abused, racism and more.

DEADLINES raises many questions. Well worth the read for youth and adults. Great start for discussions.

PATRICK NESS

The New World is a harsh and dangerous place. We don’t know why people left the old world but the first settlers were religious people seeking a simple life. They came to create a utopian society but what they formed if far from perfect. On the New World men’s thoughts are open and broadcast for all to see. They call it Noise. But women’s thoughts are quiet. It makes for interesting and bizarre sexual politics.

“The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say ” is the first sentence. Highly engaging. The narrator comes from an isolated town where there is no women. They all perished in a plague. He  is the youngest in the community, soon to become an adult. But his “parents” tell him he has to flee days before his adulthood.  They can’t tell him why because then his noise would draw too much attention.

KNIFE is an excellent book; it’s a page turner. But is does have a couple of drawbacks. Length: it did not have to be 500 pages. Ending: books need a definitive ending rather than setting up for the next book in the series.

NANCY WERLIN

SURVIVAL is the story of three siblings and their trials to survive their crazily abusive mother Nikki. The father of Matt and Callie, the two oldest, is unable to stand up against his ex-wife and protect his children. Matt dreams for a superhero who will take them out of their situation. The story is a letter written to Emmy the baby of the family. He wants her to know the true story so that if Nikki turns up again she will know to stay clear.

It is a well written and well thought out novel for young adults. A touching read that won’t be forgotten easily.