Cal Stephanides, narrator of Middlesex, tells the story of the past three generations of his family. He begins with his grandparents' incestuous escape from war-torn Asia Minor, through his parents' all-American courtship, and then through his own childhood. Cal was born Calliope Helen Stephanides, believed by everyone to be a girl until adolescence began to reveal the truth. Cal intersperses the epic of his family's story with updates on his adult life working for the embassy in Berlin, commenting on the world's view of him, and meeting someone to whom he finally might be able to tell his secret.
I read Middlesex for school. In the past year, I have read five books for fun and eleven for school. If you follow IWMCW regularly, then you've probably noticed... But I actually enjoyed Middlesex and have had to do only a bit of work with it so far, so I haven't yet wrung it out. When I had to pick my novel for summer reading, I was down to this one and Cider House Rules by John Irving. My mom said that she thought I'd really enjoy Jeffrey Eugenides' writing style, so I got Middlesex (also, it was the slightly shorter one).
Cal Stephanides, narrator of Middlesex, tells the story of the past three generations of his family. He begins with his grandparents' incestuous escape from war-torn Asia Minor, through his parents' all-American courtship, and then through his own childhood. Cal was born Calliope Helen Stephanides, believed by everyone to be a girl until adolescence began to reveal the truth. Cal intersperses the epic of his family's story with updates on his adult life working for the embassy in Berlin, commenting on the world's view of him, and meeting someone to whom he finally might be able to tell his secret.
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I'm trying a new thing on my reviews: a read more button! From now on, you'll get to the end of my plot/subject matter description/blurb thing and see that there is no more review. To get to that, click the little teal "Read More" link on the bottom right (I'm annoyed that Weebly won't let me make it more visible...) and see the rest of the review! I'll also implement the button in my old reviews. I'm doing this to make it easier for you to find the reviews you want to see. It's so much broader than looking in tags, but doesn't force anyone to scroll through a huge, great post after determining from the blurb (how I hate that word) that they are really not interested in that particular book. It might also make my site load faster, with less text per page. Let me know in this review's comments how you feel about the button. Does it help you find what you want to see? Does the page load faster? Is it hard to find the button? Do you feel discouraged from reading further? Do let me know!
Now. Onto the book that this is actually about. Since Behemoth is the second book in a series, I'd recommend you check out Leviathan first--the review for context, and the book itself to avoid spoilers. Prince Alek and Deryn Sharp are now aboard the Leviathan together, and they are headed for the Ottoman Empire--Istanbul, specifically. This land at the edge of Asia and Europe has so far stayed out of the war, but can it last? The Clanker Ottomans are furious after a ship promised to them by the British was snatched up before delivery by a nervous Churchill. However, Dr. Barlow claims that her mysterious mission will somehow keep the Ottomans out of the war. Of course, nothing can possibly go that smoothly. From the beginning, diplomatic excursions are plagued by disasters--and there's the small matter of Alek's tutors feeling the need to escape the airship ASAP. Behemoth introduces new places, new people, and new creatures for the next installment of Deryn and Alek's adventures in an alternate WWI universe where countries fight with genetically engineered creatures or huge, moving machines. Didn't I say I was going to review A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? Well. When I have to write about a book for school, I tend to feel less inclined to review it after, I find. I'll give you my In Short anyway: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is weird. The internal monologue is insane in a great way; the character evolution is also quite wonderful. It's dense and takes a lot of thinking. It's a straight white guy book, but it's still worth it if you've got the time and energy.
But! Leviathan! I haven't read a good fantasy-ish bit since February (The Lazarus Gate does not quite qualify as "good", I'm afraid). And it hasn't been an adventure since January or so. I've enjoyed everything I've been reading lately but how I have missed this stuff! After his royal parents are killed in Sarajevo, Aleksandar finds himself piloting a mechanical walker through the forest with a small band of men who will tell him nearly nothing, trying to outrun the forces of his own country who pursue him. Meanwhile in England, Deryn Sharp vies for a place in the Air Service, hoping her disguise as a boy will fool all the boffins, middies, and bosuns and keep her in her home, the sky. War is coming to Europe, and tensions between the mechanical-engineering Clanker countries and the bioengineering Darwinist countries are worsening. But aboard the huge airship Leviathan, Darwinist Deryn and Clanker Alek are both pursued by Germans and must ally to save themselves and their countries. I've been reading Origins by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith, but I had to put it aside partway through to do my summer reading for school... So it's been a while. But here's the first of my summer books. Ordinarily I don't review books that I'm assigned, but I thought I could make an exception for this one.
Mariam is a harami--a bastard child. When her father, rich city-dweller Jalil Khan, found out that his maid was pregnant with his child, he cast Mariam's mother away, to the outskirts of a nearby village. Mariam spends her childhood anxiously waiting for weekly visits from Jalil, who gives her gifts, tells her stories, and teaches her to fish. Nana, by contrast, speaks harshly to Mariam and warns her that Jalil is not the god Mariam thinks he is. But when tragedy destroys her family, teenage Mariam is shipped off to Kabul to marry Rasheed, a middle-aged, foul-tempered shoemaker. Everything changes. Laila is a well-educated Kabuli girl with friends, a crush, and two loving parents. But the absence of her two much older brothers, who went to fight for the jihad, leaves her mother bedridden and listless most days. And as the war intensifies and the fighting factions keep firing on Kabul, everyday life becomes ever more dangerous. People leave the city. Her friends all leave the city. And when disaster comes for Laila's family, she is brought together with Mariam, Rasheed's reclusive wife down the street. A Thousand Splendid Suns follows these two lives as they come together amidst war after war in Afghanistan--from the Soviet invasion in the 1970's to the bombs dropped by Bush after 9/11 and the scattering of the Taliban. Struggling to survive in intolerable circumstances--on the street and in the home--Mariam and Laila must become friends if they are to claim their right to happiness and love. Wow. Okay. I've been reading this book for a long time (like nearly two months), and so I had plenty of time to think about what I would write for this review.
I randomly picked up this book at Powell's Books in the fall. (The cover is beautiful.) I didn't get around to starting it until late February or early March, because my to-read stack is always so massive... I noticed the profusion of praise on the covers, of course, but I had no idea that Hild would be so amazing. This book isn't thick, but it's heavy--heavy not with ink and paper, I'm sure, but with the story. It's the seventh century in Britain, and a three-year old girl's childhood ends when her mother's companion, Onnen, comes into the woods where young Hild and Onnen's son Cian are playing. Onnen announces that Hild's father--Hereric, the aetheling (potential heir)--is dead. And then Hild is being groomed to be the seer of the king, Edwin, her great-uncle. For a child, she is brilliant. For a child, she has a huge amount of responsibility. One misstep, one "vision" that doesn't come true, one wrong friend, could lead to the loss of everything and everyone she loves, including her own life. Matters grow more complicated when the bishops and priests of the new Christian religion start arriving at Edwin's halls and weaving themselves in the political and religion fabric of the island. Hild is the story of the early life of Saint Hilda of Whitby, drawn from the very slim records of history and Nicola Griffith's brilliant imagination. Okay. At long last, none of the books in my to-read stack have been there for longer than three or four months. That's not too bad. I've read everything I got last Christmas, everything I got for my birthday, and everything I got over the summer. I think that's progress. I believe I got The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender in September. I ran across it on the Powell's website, thought it looked interesting, and had it put on hold for me at the City of Books. (That hyperlink on the word "Powell's" will take you to the website of the most amazing bookstore in the world. The City of Books is their largest location--an entire city block of BOOKS. Silly grin. If you don't live in or around Portland, OR it's not much good to you, but if you visit, make a stop there.)
After years of research into her strange family's strange history, Ava Lavender is ready to share it with us. She was born with wings, wings with brown speckled feathers. Her brother Henry was unusual, too--he disliked being touched, and he didn't speak (at least not to living people) until he was a teenager. Their mother, Viviane, could put a smell to everything, including happiness and people. The boy she loved as a child and a teenager left a mark on her neck where he kissed her. Her mother, Emelienne, perceived much more of the world than most people, and took it all to mean things. Even resolving to not love people couldn't stop them from dying, it seemed. Her mother, known only as Maman, faded into a pile of blue ashes. She had lost everything. Beginning with her grandmother's childhood in France and carrying the story through to her own life in Seattle, Ava Lavender's family history involves many secrets uncovered and mysteries solved. I was laughing with delight when writing my last review because I figured out how to hyperlink in Weebly. Hint: It's the little hyperlink insignia button in the formatting menu. Duh. I should notice things that are important, instead of that the girl halfway across the room has got a Dole banana sticker on her sweater sleeve (although who knows; maybe that was really important). Anyway, I love hyperlinking because it's almost like coding because you hide something inside a different something and it looks like the different something, but it's not as hard or confusing as coding (although over the summer I did sort of figure out how to program a Turing machine--sort of). That's why I was laughing with delight. But then I got caught up in writing about Stone of Farewell, and forgot to tell the world how much I love hyperlinking and please forgive me if I mention some of my book reviews in my other book reviews just for the sake of hyperlinking to them.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with Conversion. Make me shut up. Colleen Rowley is under a lot of stress. She's about to graduate from St. Joan's high school, and she's applying to several top-level universities, and she wants to be valedictorian--meaning she's in tenth-of-a-point competition with a classmate--and her amazing history teacher has the gall to get sick, leaving an objectionable sub to manage the class. On the day that Mr. Mitchell doesn't show up, some of the high schoolers start acting strange. Clara, the most popular and well-liked girl in the school, has what appears to be a seizure in the middle of class. Her two best friends shortly follow her to the hospital, exhibiting even stranger symptoms. As panic and rumors spread, more girls fall ill. Parents, students, the school, experts, and the health department all get involved in trying to uncover the cause of the Danvers Mystery Illness. Colleen, who's been reading The Crucible for her history sub, makes a discovery that none of the officials nor experts have come close to. Could there be supernatural elements to the sickness? Meanwhile, in 1706, a young woman named Ann Putnam tells her local reverend a strange story--when she was a teenager, she and some of her friends started the Salem witch trials. And the girls were all lying. I read this book in a day. I never do that--at least not since second grade, when I begun to realize that I was too old for Magic Treehouse if I went through the books that fast. To be fair, I stayed up until 1:30 AM to finish Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, but perhaps that's even more impressive.
It is so hard to describe this book. The back cover sounds so dreadfully ordinary and dull, and I don't blame whoever wrote it. It's nearly impossible to do it justice without just going into detail about everything in the book. It cannot be summarized, let alone in the way that back covers do it--designed to entice, not describe. AaDDtSotU is made up of all its parts, which is what makes it so wonderful and unique. Summer of 1987 and Ari Mendoza is fifteen and miserable. For the past eleven years, his brother has been in prison and no one will talk about him, especially not his parents. Ari doesn't even know what Bernardo did. Ari's father fought in the Vietnam war before Ari was born, and he barely knows him, silent and inexpressive as he is. But when Ari, who can't swim, goes to the pool one day to float and listen to the older lifeguards say stupid and creepy things about girls, he meets Dante, whose voice is squeaky with allergies. Dante offers to teach him to swim, and Ari accepts. Dante seems so perfect and happy. He laughs all the time. He loves art and poetry and reading. He has a wonderful relationship with his parents. He gets along with everyone. He is almost the exact opposite of Ari, and yet they become friends. Neither one of them has ever really had a friend. As the summer goes by, Dante and Ari spend time together and get to know each other better each day. But one rainy evening, a terrible accident results in a hospital visit and a lot of confused feelings on all sides, changing Ari and Dante's relationship. In the course of a year, Ari and Dante learn much about each other, their families, and living. Like with Nobody's Prize, I had some trouble returning to the story of Himiko after a year away from it, but once I reminded myself of what was going on, I had no problem staying in the world. As I mentioned in my last review, Friesner is very good at guiding you gently back into the story without making it a madly obvious explanation. But before you continue, allow me to suggest that you read Spirit's Princess first, so that my review does not give away anything that happened in the previous book.
Unable to remain in her own clan where her chieftain father would not recognize her as a shaman, Himiko of the Matsu (pine) people ran away from her village to stay with the Shika (deer) clan, where her best friend Kaya lives. But after sickness claimed her brother's secret Shika wife, Himiko prepared to return, only to learn that the war-loving Ookami had attacked her clan. At the start of Spirit's Chosen, Himiko and Kaya walk into the conquered Matsu village. Many of the clan's warriors are dead or dying of their injuries, and every survivor is like a ghost. Himiko's family has not remained untouched--her father and two of her brothers are dead, and her younger brother, one of her stepmothers, and one of her half-brothers have been taken away and enslaved to the Ookami (wolves). But even the remaining members of her family--her brother Masa, her stepmother Yukari, her half-brother Takehiko, and her mother--aren't totally well. When her young son Noboru was taken from her, Himiko's mother snapped. She terrorizes Takehiko because she thinks that he's Noboru, and behaves possessively towards him. When Yukari and Takehiko try to flee, she is inconsolable. Himiko ends up receiving a less-than-happy welcome home. Her mother's madness mounts, and finally, a near-tragedy turns the whole Matsu village against the hapless woman. She is sentenced to death for attempted murder, despite the clear evidence that she has no way of knowing what she was doing, and Himiko knows that the only cure for her is to return Noboru. With Kaya ("Lady Badger") at her side, Himiko sets off to spirit Noboru away from the Ookami settlement, but of course many things are more easily said than done. It's been at least a year since I read Nobody's Princess, so I did have some trouble remembering exactly who these characters were and why they were doing what they were doing. Fortunately, Esther Friesner is quite good at reminding you where you left off without making an absolute mess of it. Here's an absolute mess: "So-and-so had gone to This City because he was looking for his little sister Blah, who had been kidnapped by a man named Mr. Whatever." Then, even if you have forgotten what's going on anyway, you feel utterly stupid. Here's a more subtle way: "So-and-so shuddered at the memory of Mr. Whatever's cruel expression as he snatched little Blah from the armchair. So-and-so now found himself in This City, not knowing where to look for the evil Whatever and sweet Blah." Better? I hope so. In the first version, you feel a bit like a five-year-old who has just missed some important family discussion and is now having the details explained painstakingly and way too clearly to you. In the second version, you feel more like you're (gasp) reading a book--and not only that, but like the book was written by an author who can actually write.
In my previous review for Deception's Princess, I did mention Frienser's writing's lack of completely amazing qualities, but I have returned to finish off the story of Helen of Sparta! You might wish to read Nobody's Princess before proceeding to read this review. Helen, hearing of Prince Jason's voyage to seek the legendary Golden Fleece, has disguised herself as a boy named Glaucus, and she and her friend Milo, a former slave, are sailing to Iolkos, where the Argo is supposed to be setting off from. They get work as weapons-bearers for a hero named Iolaus, and soon begin their adventure. But it's not nearly as easy as they had hoped--Helen has to avoid her older brothers, Castor and Polydeucus, lest they should get a good look in and recognize her for who she really is. On top of that, Helen's growing up, and passing as a boy becomes harder and harder with each day. As if that wasn't bad enough, she gets caught up in a horrible love triangle--she has fallen for a beautiful weapons-bearer named Hylas, who loves his master Herakles, who loves Helen's boy identity. More and more people are taken into Helen and Milo's confidence, and the secret is bound to come out soon. Some characters from Nobody's Princess reappear, such as the hero Iolaus and the famous Athenian king Theseus, along with Helen's family, and new characters are introduced, including the Argonauts, mad Princess Medea of Colchis, and the unfortunate Athenian guard Telys--and of course Menelaus, the man who will become Helen's husband, enters the picture near the end. |
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AuthorI am Fiona, a 16-year-old person. I write reviews of books that I read. I love reading, writing, spoonerisms, word jokes, accents, In Which chapters, parentheses, long dashes, et ceteras, and acronyms. Categories
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