4 Stars for Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Summary:

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love

Review:

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi is an outstanding memoir told from a child growing up in Iran when everyday freedoms were banned. Iranians couldn’t play cards, listen to rock-n-roll, or even buy a favorite boy band poster. Unfortunate, because Satrapi’s personality embraced freedom; she often found herself in trouble with her superiors. An example would be not wearing her veil correctly exposing hair. Her father, another rebellious sort believing in freedom, once told one of Satrapi’s teachers to shave her mustache since she found hair so provocative.

Now, that is humor, and in the midst of everything Satrapi endured, watching her neighbors die, seeing relatives tortured, and wearing a veil during ninety degree heat. Sweating profusely beneath the veil was a sardonic little girl embracing her individual, and she did it with humor. The child-like drawings accented this humor in a way a straight narrative could not, but at the same time they showed a darker view, one with a man cut to pieces, and knifes dripping with blood. The darker tone of Persepolis reminded me of how The Diary of Anne Frank hit me when I read it as a young girl, the fear, the gratitude for my own freedoms, and the overwhelming need to hold onto the goodness in humanity.

Despite Anne’s shortened life, her diary felt complete. This is where I felt like Persepolis fell short for me. There should have been more. I wanted to know more about her being the great-granddaughter of an Iranian Emperor, and I would have liked to see the philosophy of Marx tied into the loss of that crown. There was a deep underlying irony between a rich life of vanity, and one Marx proposed making people labor to avoid society’s alienation. I would have liked to see this two contradicting ideas explored further.

However, wanting more in the Persepolis, only meant the less given was brilliant. The simple drawings, simple questioning of a young girl, and finally the simple conclusions drawn by her in this turbulent time of her life worked to ignite passion for the little freedoms  I enjoy in my life, not wearing a veil is definitely one for me. Vainly, I love my hair, and while I move toward the age of fifty (in the short years to come) I don’t think its especially provocative, but it is mine and it is my freedom to do with it as I like. I recommend Persepolis to anyone who wants to appreciate freedom, and especially to younger people who are still searching for the freedoms designed to make them who they are as individuals.

4 Stars for My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak

Summary:

My Life with the Walter Boys centers on the prim, proper, and always perfect Jackie Howard. When her world is turned upside down by tragedy, Jackie must learn to cut loose and be part of a family again.

Jackie does not like surprises. Chaos is the enemy! The best way to get her successful, busy parents to notice her is to be perfect. The perfect look, the perfect grades-the perfect daughter. And then...

Surprise #1: Jackie's family dies in a freak car accident.

Surprise #2: Jackie has to move cross-country to live with the Walters-her new guardians.

Surprise #3: The Walters have twelve sons. (Well, eleven, but Parker acts like a boy anyway)

Now Jackie must trade in her Type A personality and New York City apartment for a Colorado ranch and all the wild Walter boys who come with it. Jackie is surrounded by the enemy-loud, dirty, annoying boys who have no concept of personal space. Okay, several of the oldest guys are flat-out gorgeous. But still annoying. She's not stuck-up or boring-no matter what they say. But proving it is another matter. How can she fit in and move on when she needs to keep her parents' memory alive by living up to the promise of perfect?

Review:

Ali Novak started My Life with the Walter Boys at the age S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders. Now, by drawing these two books together I’m not saying they are the same. I’m pointing out two very convincing reasons to read both books. One: They tell a good, clean story about love and loss. Two: They both convincingly mimic the teenage voice of their time allowing positive inward reflection. The stories have teenagers that make poor choices, but also rewarding ones. The choices of Jackie in My Life with the Walter Boys were a bit more cliché, but so were the choices of Ponyboy and Johnny in The Outsiders – with the exception of Johnny’s choice with the church fire. That was unexpected given Johnny’s character up until that point.

My Life with the Walter Boys did not have that kind of unexpected twist. A book that contains these predictable clichés should not be cast aside for that reason alone. My Life with the Walter Boys is an excellent book for teenagers. It bothers me that someone would rate this story poorly based on the amount of clichés it contains. That is shallow and unacceptable. Especially, when The Outsiders is loaded with quotes like:

“Kid, you scared the devil outa me the other day. I thought I killed you.”

“If I ever did that my mom would die of shock.”

And my favorite…

“So stood there like a bump on a log while they surrounded me.”

Generally, it is not good to use clichés, often their predictability makes reading them like a boring manual, and doesn’t give the necessary details to the reader. My favorite example for detail is the ‘Jack of all trades’ example, because it still begs the question of what Jack can do.

Again, Novak’s book is predictable, but it is also free of the unnecessary sex and cursing you find in books like The Vampire Academy. I’m not saying you can avoid the often real world of teenagers where the f-bomb is common, and sex is on the page of many restless hormonal urges. But, with  all this commonality, it is refreshing to meet a girl like Jackie, Novak’s main teenager, a virgin who intends to stay that way at least until she can figure out her own emotions. Bravo to Novak for writing something I wouldn’t mind my own teenage daughter reading, a book that says its okay to feel sexual but not to dive into the cesspool of it all. And mostly, its okay to make mistakes, because they can make you stronger.

The second reason Novak’s clichés didn’t bother me was her writing. Structurally, her sentences blended passive and active verbs moving the reader effortlessly through the text. Sentence lengths varied. None of that Melville ‘Call me Ahab’, followed my a lengthy sentence a paragraph long. And, gosh, I’m not knocking Melville, Moby Dick is a classic, for obvious reasons that explore deep philosophical reasons on our relationship to the world, to God. There are other reasons, but that is the one that made me read it. With that said, there is a reason folks put off reading it, if they do at all. Sentence and active and passive verbs balance cater to the reader, and without the reader why write.

A third reason Novak’s writing worked was showing not telling. The main character, Jackie, has a one-million-dollar reason for staying in her head, her family died. Novak could have wallowed in that. I mean, look at Bella in Twilight, a story that was published because it was an interesting twist on  Vampires. However, there was way too much time with Bella wallowing over Edward, and not near enough reasons for examining the idea of living forever. Even when Jackie was inside her own thoughts, she examined her own faults, and virtues to make sense of her place in the world.

But as said, there was not a lot of wallowing in Novak’s story, because showed, let her characters do, and moved the plot along. Novak did a fine job of this without ever forgetting Jackie lost her family.

My final thoughts are this: let your teenage daughter read My Life with the Walter Boys, not a new premise, but an old one done well, and cleanly. It started on a site called Wattpad.

Building Strong Writers

Building Strong Writers in Middle School by authors Deb and Jim Delisle is a self-examination of the adolescent. It contains twenty-four lesson plans that support core standards. In the introduction the writers say, "Self-examination is an important part of growing up, and it is the heart of this book." This book strongly urges the student to express themselves. 

For example, lesson ten - It Gives Me... ask the students what gives them hope, joy, pride and last pause in their lives. Some students responded deeply saying it gives me pause to think about the universe and my place in it. Others said it gives me pause when I lose my homework. One of the hope ones really touched me, the student said it gives me hope when my mom says "see you later." 

A second example is lesson eight: A Pyramid of Personal Qualities. Students here had to examine their self and translate that to what they want to later become. The authors say in their notes: "This activity is not meant to focus on any specific goal or goals of students, but rather on their goals in general - the person they want to become.

A third example is lesson twenty-two, I Got the English Class Blues. Hooking the students with a blues song remade by Beyonce' the web is set. Students then paired up to look up music like John Lee Hooker, Jelly Roll, and Robert Johnson and figure out what the songs mean. The next day students are reading poetry from Langston Hughes like The Weary Blues. Afterwards students are to write their own blues poem serious or whimsical. They are giving titles they can choose from like The Intolerance Blues, or The No Allowance this Week Blues. One of the student examples I really liked was Best Friend Blues starts out "My Best Friend has replaced me with someone I know." Last, I liked the extended lesson for this that invited kids to record and add music to their poem.

Basically all of the twenty-four lessons in this book invite students to self-examine, some less, and some more. I tried to include the ones that really probed at the heart of what this book was about - self-examination with core standards. 

Building Strong Writers in Middle School is loaded with creative, self-examining lessons to get the student to write better, grander, and more precisely. One of my favorite lessons, lesson eleven happened to be lesson eleven's extension. First lesson eleven invited students to tell their story of someone who was only in their life for a short time but impacted them greatly. This lesson provides a great example of a young boy named Roger who gets a big brother named Jim for about six months. Jim gives Roger the encouragement he needs at a time he really needs it. This lesson is a lot of writing, so the extension exercise pulls only parts of the student essays that are written well and post them under a topic titled: Yes, Middle School Students Write Well. 

Some of these pulled-out sentences were beautifully, and thoughtfully written, and together made a huge impact.

These were some of them:

• I never told anyone the following story, except God in my good-night prayers.

• The turn, the evil turn i had been anticipating, had arrived.

And last, my favorite:

• I will never return to my old, gray, lethargic lifestyle because I have gained so much by living a life filled with color.

First, that last one is so not J. Alfred Prufrock, and second, a middle school student knowing the word lethargic, and using it correctly. And last, the beautiful contrast in a perfect parallel of adjectives. This is amazing! This book made me want to listen to the words and voices of students. Reading student examples was my favorite part of reading this book. 

Another student example that amazed me wasn't because it was fabulously well-written, but because of the distinct beat of a heart-felt response. It was from lesson thirteen: Help, Hope, Hurray. This student was one of hope where he wrote to someone with Asperger's.

"Dear Nick,

We'd like to thank you very much for speaking to our class last Wednesday. For that 30-minute period, you brought us into your life and taught us about Asperger's Syndrome in a way no textbook or teacher could ever do. You brought upon us a new wave of understanding, and we thank you."

In short, there were other great student examples, but these were some of my favorites.

4 Stars for The Prettiest One by James Hankins

Summary:

When Caitlin Sommers finds herself alone in a deserted parking lot with blood on her clothes and no memory of the past few months, it seems like one of the nightmares that have tormented her for years…but it’s all too real. Desperate to learn the truth about where she’s been and what has happened to her but terrified of what she may find, Caitlin embarks on a search for answers. Her journey takes her from the safe suburban world she knows to a seedy town she’s never heard of, where a terrible truth from her past lies hidden—a truth she can’t quite remember yet can’t completely forget.

Review:

Note: Spoiler Alert, hidden plot material is hinted upon.

The Prettiest One is a gracious gift given to me FREE, by James Hankins for an honest review. Honestly, I’m a huge fan of Hankins. His writing is smooth, editing is well-done, and maybe the most important factor is that he doesn’t try and impress the reader with crude language, unnecessary sex, and brutal violence. Out of the books I’ve read by him, Shady Cross is still my favorite. In it an ex-con named Stokes finds a lot of money and has to decide whether to keep it, or let a young girl die. The book’s psychology showed an inner good in humanity, a direct contrast to A Simple Plan by Scott Smith. Smith probes at the darkness in us with a lot of unexpected, exciting twists leading the good man down a black hole inside his own soul. I very much liked that book.

But, at my core I’m an optimist and leaving the good in humanity is another reason why I like Hankins. Caitlin, his main character in his new novel, The Prettiest One has to struggle with the idea she may have taken a life. Note the premise: Caitlin doesn’t remember, but what she does remember is who she is inside and that person doesn’t want to be a killer. This was the main reason I liked Caitlin. I also liked her strength, despite the horrible ordeal she went through as a young girl, then as a woman. She never fell apart and she kept looking for answers, even if they challenged everything she’d thought herself to be.

Still, in looking, she often made foolish choices, choices that put her and the men that loved her at risk. If she could have remembered even a speck of her past, perhaps she wouldn’t have made them.

Helping Caitlin find her memory was a boyfriend (Bix) and husband (Josh). The soap opera dilemma between these two and their love for Caitlin was the reason I didn’t give this book a five star rating. Their incessant bickering became large tea scenes that dragged the plot. Donald Mass talks about tea scenes in his book Writing the Breakout Novel. Tea scenes scream Low Tension Alert.

But even with the Low Tension Alert noted, Hankins pulled off another terrific novel that I highly recommend. He did his homework on memory loss and weaved that into a fine plot that had no loose ends. There were some things I would have liked to know more about, but none of these affected a well done ending. For example, I would have liked to seen Caitlin meet at least one of the girls from her childhood, and I hoped desperately to see the missing one - alive. I was hoping the perspective of the detective, Charlotte Hunnsaker would add insight to this, otherwise Hunnsaker didn’t really add anything useful for me, maybe if she’d had her own interesting inner conflict driving her to find Caitlin’s answers, but she didn’t.

Even though Hunnsaker’s character didn’t add to the plot, the bad guys in this novel well made up for it. The Bookerman’s were truly Boogy Men as in Caitlin’s nightmares from her childhood. Again, I would highly recommend this novel, if only to take down the bad guys and shed some light into the heart of darkness.

New FREE contest for writers of thriller and mystery

 New FREE contest for writers of thriller / mystery / 
suspense http://tinyurl.com/nk2pk9e Judged by agent @michrichter1, via @chucksambuchino

4 Stars for Swimming Home Ruth Mancini

Summary:

Lizzie’s life hasn’t exactly gone to plan. Eighteen years ago, she made the difficult decision to leave London for Paris to escape her best friend’s fiancé, the man who’d attacked her and turned her world upside down. Secure in the belief that she and her daughter, Helena, are now safe from harm, Lizzie contemplates her future. But is the nightmare really over?

When the captivating Sky Donoghue comes along, pulling Helena into dangerous waters, Lizzie’s strength and judgment are put to the test. Just how far should she go to save her daughter? How far will she go to save hers?

Review:

Usually I pick a book because the concept is unusual, or for shallow reasoning like the cover speaks to me, and the title is clever. Swimming Home by Ruth Mancini did none of this. I chose Mancini’s book because I’m a protective mother to my own daughter. In the story, Lizzie and her daughter, Helena, which by the way is my daughter’s name, have lived a happy life together with Lizzie as a single mom struggling to give Helena the things she needs and desires. Lizzie, is a strong character that is easily admired from the very beginning. The story spends a lot of time in Lizzie’s head which is often repetitive and drawn-out. This is the only reason I gave it a four star rating. Everything else worked.

            The plot twists and turns felt like ‘Winter’ in Antonio Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and ending in his ‘Spring’. The foreshadowing in the beginning of this story paralleled an icy rain outside a house constructed in glass, that feeling is how I feel when I listen to Winter by Vivaldi. It traps me, keeping me inside my own fear and unable to act. This was Lizzie, so afraid the horror that happened to her would also happen to her Helena. Mancini did a fantastic job of filling the reader with this ominous tone. It’s why I kept reading, rooting for Lizzie.

As I said, she was a great character, well-developed with other characters that highlighted her through love and friendship in a real way I found enriching. Lizzie’s friends were flawed like herself, accepting and understanding her through their own narrow flawed view points. Lizzie’s romantic interest(s) felt the same way, but geared itself towards larger trepidation and guilt. All of these, plot, characters, lastly the intense literary device of foreshadowing worked splendidly for me. I read it in two days. I highly recommend this book, a thrilling romance.

 I 

The novel, not the movie, A Simple Plan is an excellent debut novel by Scott Smith. I read his later book, The Ruins, and it paled in comparison to this one. A Simple Plan is ambitious in its plot making inspired by what I can only compare to Shakespeare's Macbeth. And with that being said, I can easily see how some folks might see this book suffering from a certain moral didacticism which is shallow and unwieldy. Scott Smith is not Shakespeare and I don't think he pretends to be. His writing is aggressively active using simple sentences, compound complex ones, and never fails to use ones with too much punctuation. 

He doesn't try the pretenses of writing you see in books. For example, Gone Girl is a book I've never been able to finish. It has the unnecessary details that scream look at me I'm writing and I'm trying to be great. Just write, and tell your story. It's one of the things I appreciate from Smith. Again, he's not Shakespeare, nor does he pretend to be. 

 If I hadn't read his book, The Ruins before this I wouldn't understand his honesty. He creates characters operate from a moral didacticism just like Macbeth, except Smith doesn't drag this out, probably because today's audience wouldn't read it. Further, these are characters we can relate to from the time we live in and the situation is one we can all see: What would we do if we found four million in cash? verses What would you do to be king? How many people would you kill to keep your money? 

The protagonist, in this story starts out with a simple plan: keep the money and then everything spirals out of control from there, his choices and those of the two men in the agreement with him do as well. Smith pounds you with plot twist keeping you guessing until the surprising end. He does a great job of developing his characters to the extend to gain my sympathy, and then makes me hate them. This is a skill to twist a reader's feelings to such an extreme. One particular character found his way into my heart, because he was the only one who dreamed small, loved and trusted despite the betrayal. I'll reveal one of the plot twists should I say more, so I'll stop here. Please read this book, it was published years ago, but it still wakes up the bad in us all makes us question our own moral dilemmas and definitely makes me trade in my coffee for veggie juice.