Perfect - Ellen Hopkins (Audio)

Back maybe a year ago I was persuaded (by my daughter no less) to try a book written in free verse.  This was a HUGE leap of faith for me, and all of you doubters out there, you need to hear this.  I have never "gotten" poetry, I'm resistant to it, and generally avoid it at all costs.  So to me, free verse = poetry = something awful.  


However, please trust me on this one.  Free verse is not poetry.  It is normal prose written in a pretty way on the page, with some rhythm to it, nothing more.  So drop that baggage where you stand and come walk with me for a few minutes.


Ellen Hopkins is known for her edgy YA material, written in free verse.  Since I know now that free verse is totally my thing, I made a vow to check her out this year.  This was my first stab at her work, because a whole bunch of you pointed me in this direction.


Synopsis:  "Perfect" is narrated by four individuals, all teens nearing the end of their high school years, all struggling with the pressures placed upon them by society, peers and parents. 


Cara is your classic over-achiever, with the pressure of the world's future placed on her shoulders by her parents...she must excel at her grades and get into Stanford.  She has the perfect boyfriend, she is a cheerleader.  The fact that her twin brother just attempted to kill himself and is now into a psychiatric hospital just adds to the stress.  When Cara begins to doubt who she truly is, she fears the new Cara will never be acceptable to her peers or her parents.


Kendra has the perfect face and perfect body.  Who cares about college when everyone has told her she will be on the runway someday, making millions.  But how far will she go to make this dream come true?  Starvation?  Drugs?  Surgeries?


Sean, Cara's perfect boyfriend, lives his life for two things.  His future with Cara, and to fine-tune his body so he can get a full-ride scholarship for baseball.  He knows that his mother and father, who have both passed away, would approve of his plans for the future.  But when his God-given gifts are not enough to suit him, he turns to steroids to give him that extra edge, not realizing all the repercussions that come with it.


Andre, although probably the most level-headed of the bunch, still has battles to fight.  His parents have high expectations for his future, but his passion lies in dance, something completely unacceptable and even deemed "gay" to his father. Plus, he is in love with a white girl who doesn't really share his interests.  


My thoughts:  I know this sounds like a lot of teen angst, something we get in nearly every YA book published.  But there is something special in Ellen Hopkins literary voice that makes these four interwoven stories totally compelling.  Yes, these are fairly affluent kids and could be viewed as spoiled.  But at their core, they are good kids.  They are real, they have fears and dreams and feelings.  Their voices were authentic and full of emotion.  


I understood that these were modern teens with problems that many of them face these days, and this terrifies me.  I felt like I was hiding in a high school bathroom and overhearing things I didn't want to know.  We have a regular smorgasbord of issues to pick from...eating disorders, homosexuality, drugs, depression, dysfunctional families, alcoholism, promiscuity.  I immediately could empathize with why they were feeling the way they did, and reacted the way they did.  But at the same time it's horrifying.  It was like seeing a devastating automobile accident on the highway and not being able to avert your gaze.      


As a parent, I know that it is my inherent nature to want the best for my kids.  I want them to find their passion and succeed at it.  If I set my expectations high, then they will know no other way.  Hey, I don't want them living with me when they are 40, I want them to be responsible, contributing members of society!  However, this book was a nudging reminder that parents can push it too far.  The genius is finding that middle ground.  This book really made me sit down and ponder a few things.


So about this free verse thing...


A few words about the audio production:  Free verse is invisible on audio.  Which just proves what I said at the beginning...normal prose made pretty on the page.  


There was a cast of narrators, one for each of the main characters, which is the way is should be.  Aya Cash (who I heard recently on The Dovekeepers and is wonderful), Heather Lind, Aaron Tveit and Tristan Wilds made for an incredible listening experience.  I don't know their ages, but they sounded young and embodied youth.  Every one of them held their own, and I'd eagerly listen to anything else they do.


5 out of 5 stars    

Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began - Art Spiegelman

On Tuesday, I reviewed Maus I:  My Father Bleeds History.  As I stated in that review, the ending leaves you hanging mid-air, just as the author's father and mother have finally been captured by the Germans and transported to Auschwitz.  It isn't hard to figure out what comes next, but seeing it come to life in Spiegelman's illustrations is an experience unto itself.


Synopsis:  In this sequel, Art continues to interview his elderly, crotchety old father Vladek about his experiences in the Holocaust.  Vladek and his wife Anna have spent months outrunning and outsmarting the Germans, scrapping for food and shelter, but eventually they are captured and sent to the extermination camp.


There are no surprises here.  Humans are killed randomly and en masse.  The mentally and physically infirm die, and the strong survive.  Vladek and Anna are separated and Vladek fears for his wife's life because she is mentally fragile.  But Vladek does his thing.  He learns various trades to be of value to the Germans, he teaches the guards English, he bribes the guards for favors, all the while watching his friends die.  We learn of how Vladek and Anna are reunited against all odds after the liberation, only for Anna to commit suicide years later.
     

Meanwhile Art must cope with the success of Maus I, with the increasing frailty of his father (especially after his wife left him), and with his conflicted emotions surrounding their relationship.  


My thoughts:  I discussed this at length in my review of Maus I, but it bears mentioning again.  Spiegelman cleverly uses animals to portray the distinctions and divide between race and class...Jews are the mice, Germans are the cats, Poles are pigs.  When a character is putting forth a false front, pretending to be something they are not, they wear masks of a different animal.  It is jarring and thought-provoking when you see it.  Days could be spent discussing the implications.


This installment was no easier to stomach than the first.  The graphics are horrifying and incredibly intense, as you would expect when talking about the extermination camps.  But there are other topics in the mix here which are just as disturbing and confusing.  Vladek's hate towards blacks and homosexuals.  His cruelty towards his current wife.  The complicated relationship between father and son.  The son's difficulty in coping with the demons that originally haunted his father.


The flow of this book was not as seamless as the first.  There is some jumping around in time...at times Vladek has already passed away, other times Art is still interviewing his father, and other times it is an account of Vladek's experiences in the camps.  It isn't impossible to follow, but makes it seem jerky at times.  


Overall, however I think this set of novels is unmatched when it comes to the history of WWII from the perspective of the common Polish Jew.  I will be forever marked by it.


5 out of 5 stars

Not So Wordless Wednesday: Exiting Poland...

We will now be exiting Poland for another two years.  On our last day in the Motherland, I experienced two things that made all that lack of Internet worthwhile.  A shopping spree at a bookstore (top picture) where they had all English books on sale (!?) and a plate full of my mother-in-law's homemade pierogies (and a bit of wine on the side). 



Maus I: My Father Bleeds History - Art Spiegelman

Ever since I started dabbling in graphic novels (and maybe even before) I've been hearing about the Maus books.  I knew they were about WWII, and they were critically acclaimed.  In fact, it is the only graphic novel to receive the Pulitzer Prize.  


My husband usually pays very little attention to what I am reading, but when he saw these books sitting on the counter, he did a double-take.  Even HE had heard of them.


Synopsis:  Art Spiegelman, who has been known for his underground comics in the '60's and '70's, has always struggled with his home life.  His mother Anna committed suicide when he was a young man, and he has always had trouble connecting with his father Vladek.  To remedy this, he decides to interview his father about he and his mother's experience during the Holocaust.  Art then deftly translates this experience into illustrated drawings.  Throughout the book, in an earnest attempt to show race and class stratification, Spiegelman depicts Jews as mice, non-Jewish Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, French as frogs, and Americans as dogs.

His father begins his story telling about how he met Art's mother, and how, before the war, was a resourceful man of many talents.  Vladek was always able to make a living, learning any trade quickly.  After the Nazi's began their movement against the Jews, however, everything was taken from Vladek, his friends and family, and were forced to move from city to city, hide in cellars or attics, and scrap for food to survive.  


At the same time, Art delves into his relationship with his father, his father's idiosyncrasies.  Vladek is stubborn, emotionally needy, and insanely frugal, which drives his new wife Mala crazy.  Vladek is also a shrewd survivor.  Ironically, although Vladek has experienced the worst type of racism possible, is a racist himself, expressing hatred towards African Americans and homosexuals.


The book ends when Vladek and Anna are finally caught and transported to Auschwitz.

My thoughts: Reading about the Holocaust will never be easy.  I know this.  So why do I constantly surround myself with these books?  I like the stories of survival, and I like to hear about this survival from all perspectives.  I also feel a kinship with these stories because of my husband's family history.  


It does seem counter-intuititve, though, to think that a graphic novel filled with animals would be a hard thing to read, but it was.  I actually mentioned this when I was reviewing a graphic novel recently about the Green River Killer.  Put it in pictures and the images are forever burned into your mind.


I thought that using animals to symbolize different races and ethnicities was brilliant.  At this point, we have all seen pictures of Holocaust victims, and in order to protect our own mental stability, I think we have trained our eyes to blur out the images.  Seeing them in the form of mice is jarring.  It is something we are not used to seeing, and it forces you to view it as if it were the first time.  


When the Jews are attempting to blend into the crowd and avoid German detection, Spiegelman illustrates the mice wearing pig masks in order to look like Poles.  I was blown away by this image.  Totally blown away.  I can't explain WHY this affected me like it did.  My words aren't forthcoming.   


The story is as intense as it comes.  This is street-level survival here, and nothing is held back.  I've read it all before, over and over again, but seeing it in pictures, seeing the hangings, the beatings, the bodies...it is physically sickening to see.  


I experienced a strange reaction to Art's father Vladek.  The man was scrappy and resourceful, and a survivor to his core.  I shook my head in admiration for his ability to keep running, keep thinking of ways to outsmart the Germans.  At the same time, in old age, he was thoughtless and rude and obnoxious.  He was a bigot.  He was cruel to his new wife.  I couldn't imagine the amount of therapy the author needed to come to terms with their relationship.  


The book ends suddenly with Vladek and Anna entering Auschwitz - a cliff-hanger if you will.  I'm not sure why Spiegelman chose to handle the story in this way, but obviously one must immediately turn to Maus II to see it through.  It isn't hard to imagine what is coming next, but if I learned anything in the process of reading this book, it was that things were going to get rough.  I'll be back on Thursday to talk about it.


5 out of 5 stars

Paranormal Activities

If I know that 80% of you HATE scary movies, why do I persist?  In the last four weeks, I've posted on three different films designed to keep you awake at night.  I don't have a good answer for you, except that we here at the Nawrot household seem to be in the middle of a horror binge.  


We have always enjoyed the Paranormal Activity movies.  Actually let me rephrase that.  My daughter and I enjoy them, but my husband finds them dull.  Emma and I just recently watched the third installment on Pay Per View, so I thought I would do a little PA Roundup.


   

 For those of you who don't know, this is the premise.  Home videos and security camera videos capturing various members of the same family being terrorized by a demonic spirit.  We're not talking about just slamming doors and such, but this invisible presence drags people, invades and steals souls.  People die.  


Each PA installment goes back in time, exploring the genesis of the demonic spirit, why it is here, and to whom it is attached.  All three movies however revolve around sisters Katie and Kristi and their troubled background.   

 All the movies start out slow, the various home footage sometimes running for days without any strange occurrences.  That, by itself, builds incredible tension.  When is something going to happen?  When things DO happen, sometimes it is subtle.  It is like reading an "I Spy" book, your eyes watching for the tiniest movement or the smallest thing out of place.  (Alas, the beauty of NOT seeing this in the theater is that you can rewind and scrutinize.)  With each movie, however, I will warn you that the demonic interference is more and more alarming.  Unlike most films with sequels, these keep getting better.  


Certainly the folks that birthed this lucrative franchise didn't invent the genre.  That honor goes to the Blair Witch kids.  Still, it only cost $15,000 to make the first movie, and it grossed $9.1 million.  Yes you read that right.  An unknown cast, no big special effects, and a handheld camera filming everything inside some dude's house with dirty carpets.  After that little hat trick, the budget did go up to $3 million for the second film, but made $178 million worldwide, and the third movie is well on its way to something similar.  Not a bad investment, and I don't blame these people one bit if they just keep making more until the audience decides they've had enough. (FYI, they have announced that there WILL be a fourth.)


As a student of the horror film, I believe that less is more in this situation.  I find these movies scary and intense.  My stomach hurts by the end, my heart palpitates, but I have a big old grin on my face and I keep coming back for more.  It is my corny, guilty pleasure.

Sunday Salon: Dad's Valentines

 A happy Sunday morning to you all!  All of my weeks are busy, but I must say that this one was definitely on the less hectic end of the scale.  Oh I had things going on...my workouts, yard work, window cleaning, house cleaning, some Adult Literacy League work, blah blah.  But overall we were able to eat dinner together at a reasonable hour, and I didn't feel like I was chasing my tail.  That is sure to end in the next week when both kids start volleyball with different practice schedules.  And when my daughter and I begin to volunteer at the animal shelter, which starts next week as well.  I will once again be serving meals out of the crock pot at 8pm once all that kicks off.


Although Valentines Day was on Tuesday, we chose to celebrate on Wednesday because my daughter had horseback riding lessons on V-Day.  My dad offered to take the whole family out to dinner, and we chose Le Coq Au Vin, a little local mom and pop French place right up the road where the food is DIVINE!  Even in my dietary mode, I left there euphoric.


But that wasn't it for dad.  He also bestowed Valentines gifts on us.  He gave me a heart-shaped necklace that has an inscription on the back that says "My little girl yesterday, my friend today, my daughter forever".  How precious is that?  And my dad is not a shopper, he is a simple farmer.  I was touched.  He also built me this Adirondack chair for my front porch:

I even got a chance to SIT in it for awhile this week and read!

Speaking of reading...I did finish River Jordan's "Praying For Strangers" this week, and it made such a big impact on me.  In fact, I approached a number of women in a prayer group at school and demanded they read it.  I just did start Sarah Pekkanen's "Opposite of Me" to complete my Pekkanen binge until her new book is released.  

On audio, I finished the delightful "A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty" by Joshilyn Jackson, and readers, it is GOOD.  Maybe not quite as perfect as "Gods in Alabama" but darned close.  Then I dug in and am attempting to finish "The Dovekeepers" by Alice Hoffman.  I didn't share this with you originally, but our Skype book club is discussing this one at the end of the month, and the only audio format available at the library was MP3.  So I attempted to just listen to it in the car, but I ran out of time before it had to go back.  This is such an arduous listen.  My library then picked it up on regular audio discs, so I'm back on the case and working my way through it.  Jury is out on my opinion.  It is interesting, and the writing is beautiful, I can say that.

I just signed my daughter up for high school.  OMG help me.  I just had to get that off my chest.  

We have little planned for today, except for horse.  The kids actually have Friday and Monday off, so the kids and I may take in a movie tomorrow.  I'm hoping to do a little reading and get caught up on some reviews.  Anything exciting happening in your world?

This Beautiful Life - Helen Schulman (Audio)

In choosing a book for Books, Babes and Bordeaux for February, we had two goals:  a discussable topic, and short in length.  We have several members with babies, and they are finding it challenging to get through anything longer than a couple hundred pages.  One of our members came up with this:  the negative consequences of sexting, and 240 pages (6 discs).  Bingo.


Synopsis:  The Bergamots are living the good life.  Richard is the golden guy, a superstar executive at a large university, and his wife is an attractive, hip stay-at-home mom.  They recently moved their family, 15 year- old Jake and 5 year-old Coco (who they adopted from China) from rural Ithica NY to New York City for Richard's job.  Their days are spent rubbing elbows with the affluent, the botoxed, and the martinied.  


But when Jake attends an unsupervised party one night at a (rich) 13 year-old girl's house, Jake becomes the object of this misguided girl's attention.  She makes an explicit video showing him that she isn't too young for him, sends it to him, and with the click of the forward button, the video becomes viral.  And the Bergamots' life implodes, with far-reaching implications.


My thoughts:  The story starts out engaging and in some ways familiar.  The busy dad, the chauffeur mom, the private school, the over-indulgent birthday parties of the prosperous.  The oldest son who can do no wrong, and the slightly spoiled younger daughter.  


Even the graphic sex video.  If you have teenagers, I don't need to tell you that this stuff happens.  The description of said video turned a few of my hairs white, but I've a number of friends whose sons have received things like this, or at least the picture version.  Cell phones are the perfect tool for the ill-behaved passive-aggressive.  


I began to have issues, however, with the implications of the video on the Bergamots' life.  Don't get me wrong.  I think that there were many victims in this story, and it was all stomach-turning.  I won't go into the details, but this family completely falls apart.  I didn't like these people, I thought they were all completely detached from reality and spoiled rotten, all of them.  Some, who shall remain nameless here, had serious problems that were uncovered, if you will, because of the difficulties brought on by the video.  I finished the last half hour of the story disgusted by it all, and not really caring much about any of the characters.


It WILL offer some good discussion for our book club though.  And, in its own misguided way, is a cautionary tale.  I did have a discussion with my kids about the dangers of forwarding inappropriate pictures and videos (they were both giving me their best gross-out faces). So there is that.


A word about the audio production:  Our narrator Hillary Huber did an excellent job of channeling the self-absorbed.  I've never heard her before, probably because she seems to have done quite a bit of work on a vampire romance series, which is not something I would read.  But I would listen to her again.  She was easy on the ears, and probably the main reason why I was able to get through this book.


2 out of 5 stars