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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Despite having read this book for school, I haven't yet had to work on the accompanying assignment, so I've still got the energy to review it!
Ifemelu lives a frustrated life in Nigeria, her college classes constantly cancelled due to strikes. Seeing no end to the tumult, she joins her cousin in America--and discovers race. Suddenly she is black, and that fact has a total effect on her new life. It changes her relationships, her job prospects, the way she relates to her family back in Nigeria. Ifemelu's college boyfriend, Obinze, finds himself struggling to make a life in the UK where, despite his intellectual inclinations, he is forced to work for shipping company after shipping company, never able to stay in one place for long and hoping that his employers never discover his undocumented status. Fifteen years later, Ifemelu prepares to move back to Nigeria, where Obinze has long since returned to live a wealthy, superficial life among corruption and loveless relationships. Over the course of years, Adichie follows the breaking of her protagonists' connection, and the process of trying to reforge it, all amongst the twisted, centuries-old, beautiful, horrifying mess of race in America from the unique perspective of an outsider upon whom this complex burden has been forced without context. 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. Well, okay. I was at Powell's and wandering through the fiction section, and came across this book--I think not even in the right place--on a shelf. It looked interesting, and so I bought it.
Yeah, well. Interesting is one word. I really wanted to like this book. I mean, secret societies, alternate universes, and mysterious pasts? I'd like to read about that! Except it utterly flops when the person doing the writing does it badly. I read it quickly to get it over with, I think. In 1890, Captain John Hardwick is finally released after years of captivity and interrogation in Burma. He returns home to London (in a rather John-Watson style, I noticed), confused and addicted to the opium that his torturers used on him as part of their evil acts. But the hope for a quiet civilian life, possibly as the writer he never was able to become before, is squashed when John receives summons to the Apollonian, a gentleman's club. There, John is informed that the anarchist bombings that have been happening all around London for the past several months are something much more sinister--and John, with his exceptional military skills and the endurance demonstrated during his captivity, must find out the truth and stop the explosions. 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. It's got a rather horrible title and the texture of the cover is shudder-inducing (it's got some weird soft coating on it). Despite these drawbacks, If You Could Be Mine is a wonderful little book, and it was about time that I read it (been sitting around since June).
Sahar and Nasrin have been in love since they were children. They're complete opposites--Sahar is quiet, studious, and steadfast, while Nasrin is popular, dramatic, and spoiled--but their love has lasted in secret for eleven years. The girls both know what the Iranian government thinks of people like them, and so they say nothing of their relationship. But when the string of Nasrin's suitors that they think of as no more than an annoyance suddenly turns into one man--one fiancee--they cannot go on as they always have. Sahar needs a way to take back her girlfriend. She finds a solution that sounds perfect--in Iran, sex reassignment surgery is encouraged for those who feel born in the wrong body. Sahar will do anything for Nasrin, even this. 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 apologize for taking so long to both read this book and write a review for it (eek, more than two months!) but I have ben very busy discovering exactly how my high school drowns you in homework.
Anyway, I read Stone of Farewell, and now I have a bit of time to write about it. If you haven't read The Dragonbone Chair, the first book in this series, go do that. The Dragonbone Chair left Simon, Binabik, Jiriki, and Sludig on a freezing mountain, and the suriviors of Naglimund wandering the woods of northern Erkynland. Miriamele had just embarked with Cadrach on a voyage to Nabban, hoping to convince Duke Leobardis to ally with Josua, not realizing that she was already too late. When we return to Osten Ard, Williams picks up right where he left off. Binabik and Sludig are being held by the trolls under sentence of death. Simon is slowly recovering from his fight with the dragon Igjarjuk, and Jiriki's torn between speaking for his imprisoned companions and returning to his home to perform final rites for An'nai. Meanwhile, Josua's tiny kingdom of survivors flees Norns and Bukken and tries to recover from injuries with no treatment. And over it all, King Elias and Pryrates continue to do their best to destroy world order and replace it with the Ineluki's. But when Simon collapses during Binabik's trial, he receives a strange vision from Valada Geloe, and she tells him that their only hope lies in the Stone of Farewell, or Sesuad'ra, a Sithi landmark of great power and history. I actually read this one before Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which you might have gathered from the huge gap between the reviewing of a little book like Equal Rites and something I read in a day. But I reviewed Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe before The Name of the Wind since, you know, a book that one reads in a day is a book that one has a lot of enthusiasm about. I finished The Name of the Wind two weeks ago now (keep an eye out for a review of the second book of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn!), and I nearly gave up on writing a review about it. It sat around on my desk and I did not write about it. I actually put it on the shelf. But it's rare that I just don't review something (so far, that's only happened with The Help, which I'd already analyzed far too much since it was for school, and besides, you can find about eighty million reviews for it elsewhere), so here's my opinion on The Name of the Wind for you...
An obscure inn sits in a world ravaged by war and unholy creatures. Name anything, and it's "bad." But Kote, the red-haired proprietor of the Waystone, brings in a small crowd of regulars every night. The men eat, drink, tell stories, and complain about the state of the world while, behind them, Kote polishes bottles and his assistant, Bast, sweeps the floor. Even the late arrival of a regular who has been attacked by a strange, spider-like monster barely disturbs the inn's peace. But one night, a new man shows up at the Waystone. His name is Chronicler, and he claims to know who unassuming Kote really is--Kvothe, the legendary hero. Chronicler offers to take down the story of Kvothe's life, to get the real version out there and dispel the rumors that have flown around the world for years. And so we learn the truth of the humble Kote--how he was born the son of travelling actors, began his training in sympathy with an arcanist met on the road, moved on to the great University, and started to become the hero known by many names. 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. |
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August 2017
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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