Tag: Fiction

The Piper’s Son

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Melina Marchetta
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Mar. 2010 (read May 2019)

I am getting lax in my reviews lately. I finished The Piper’s Son about a week and a half ago and I’ve been putting off writing my review about it. I just re-read Saving Francesca and I was really excited to read The Piper’s Son, which is the only Melina Marchetta book I haven’t read, save for her newest book, which just came out.

I liked but didn’t love Saving Francesca on my first read through, but loved it when I recently re-read it. I’m wondering if I might have a similar experience with The Piper’s Son. I definitely liked it, but I did struggle to get into it for most of the novel. I love Marchetta’s writing style, but sometimes her books are hard to process on the first read through because of her unique style. I feel like Marchetta never starts her story at the beginning. I feel like her characters are already fully realized when she actually starts writing them. She doesn’t waste time on introducing us to her characters and their strengths and flaws, but rather throws them at you in all of their brokenness and let’s you try and sort out the pieces. It’s an interesting style because it is very reminiscent of real life. People are hugely influenced by all of the experiences that came before you and the result that you get is an individual that is flawed in ways you can’t quite understand because you don’t know their story. Eventually those things are teased out as you get to know someone and it becomes easier to understand how they grew into the person they are, but upon first meeting, you have no context for their behaviour.

This is how I felt with Tom and Georgie. Both of them had a lot of history and were obviously broken by it, but I didn’t understand what events happened to them to get them to that point. Tom is drowning his sorrows in things that only make him hurt more and Georgie is stuck in the past. Heartbroken and unable to forgive or move forward with her new reality. Both family members are grieving.

This is exactly the kind of character-driven story that I love. We can’t rely on the plot in this book at all, only on where the characters will take us. They make mistakes, but are human. Stuck in the past and unable to forgive the family members and people who have hurt them. I did struggle with the complete lack of plot and I struggled to feel empathy for Tom or Georgie early in the novel. I did really like the story and the characters, but I think it could maybe have used a little more plot to carry the story.

One thing I still loved though was Marchetta’s unflinching commitment to friendships. I think Marchetta writes friendships better than any author I’ve read. There’s no pinpointing the moment when Marchetta’s characters become friends. They are either already presented as fast friends with a history, or she weaves a brilliant story arc in which subtle, but lasting, friendships develop between her characters. I loved seeing all the characters from Saving Francesca flit through this book and each support Tom in their own way. The way Marchetta writes friendships makes you ache for someone who knows you so well. She’s not afraid to have her characters challenge one another and do ugly things, but those things are always deeply rooted in their character and hurts. She’s not afraid to test her characters and their relationships and I love watching those friendships grow stronger as a result.

So overall I feel like this review is a whole lot of posturing about nothing. I think I may need to pick this book up in another year or so to see what I can glean from it having already gained the perspective about Tom and Georgie’s characters. I can see how this book isn’t for everyone, but it is also largely beloved, so there’s something powerful going on with these characters.

Great Small Things

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Jodi Picoult
Genres: Fiction
Pub. date: Oct. 2016 (read in May 2019)

Small Great Things has been on my TBR for a while, but I doubt I would have gotten to it if we hadn’t picked it for our May Book Club meeting. I have very mixed feelings on it – my book club meeting tonight may change that, but right now I’m feeling very middle of the road about the book. I didn’t like it, I didn’t dislike it. I’m probably firmly in the 2.5-3 star range.

Small Great Things is about labour & delivery nurse, Ruth Jefferson. She’s worked hard her entire life to overcome institutionalized racism and succeed as a black woman. She studied nursing at Yale and has been working in L&D for 20 years. She is well respected and has worked hard to give her son Edison the best start in life. For the most part, Ruth looks beyond race. It’s hard not to acknowledge the microaggressions she deals with on a daily basis, but she is not jaded by them. Until two white supremacists, who have just given birth to their first son, ask for Ruth to be removed from their son’s care due to personal prejudices, and the hospital acquiesces. A series of emergency events leave Ruth in an impossible position and before she knows it, she finds herself at the centre of a criminal investigation, making it harder to pretend that her race doesn’t matter.

Ruth is the protagonist of the story, but we also read from the perspective of Kennedy, Ruth’s white lawyer, and Turk, the white supremacist father. I was a little apprehensive going into this book because I’m never sure what to make of white author writing from the perspective of a black person and the last thing I wanted to read was a white saviour narrative. I’m glad the author included her note at the end, it provided an interesting perspective and I was glad to see her acknowledge her own personal shortcomings and privilege. I had questioned (while reading) whether she was the right person to write this book, which she also acknowledged, and I could appreciate that she decided to take the opportunity to target her white audience and get them thinking about racism.

The book has some interesting themes. I struggled with it at first because it’s an extremely heavy topic and I dreaded every time I would have to return to Turk’s chapter because I just hated reading from his perspective. This book is only 3 years old and it’s incredible how much more relatable (by which I mean, less shocking) Turk’s narrative has likely become since Trump came to power. I think this perspective may have shocked me a little more 3 years ago when neo-nazi’s and white supremacists were still mostly hiding in the shadows, but they’ve since become a lot more mainstream and it was exhausting and disgusting to read from Turk’s point of view, understanding there are people that think just like him in America right now.

My initial thought about Turk and Brit was that they were too much. I was sad to see the author take such a blatantly racist couple and make them the main antagonist. I was initially disappointed because I believe that white people need to read about subtle racism so they can better understand the ways in which they unknowingly perpetuate racism. Swinging too far in one direction makes it easy for people to condemn the racists and hide behind the “I’m not that bad” or “I’m not like them” narrative. But props to the author because it turns out she was trying to make the same point. I was really worried about Kennedy fitting into the white saviour narrative, which I think she still did to an extent, especially with her closing argument, but her character served the bigger purpose of drawing attention to the more subtle forms of racism and the way white people indirectly benefit from it.

So I do think the author did some small great things (see what I did there!) with this book, but it still had some shortcomings. Honestly, I just found the plot a little too basic, although maybe it fit just right for some of Picoult’s audience. I was looking for more from the plot and I wanted to challenge my thinking about race more than this book did. This is a great book if you’re just starting to think about race as a white person and you’ve never really questioned your privilege before. It was evident to me while reading that many of Picoult’s ideas came out of Peggy McIntosh’s essay on unpacking white privilege, which I think it a fantastic starting point, but I was hoping for something more thought-challenging. Personally, I’d recommend picking up Patrisse Khan-Cullors book When They Call You a Terrorist, or one of Phoebe Robinson’s books, Everything’s Trash, but It’s Okay or You Can’t Touch My Hair, to better understand what it’s like to be black. (other great memoirs include Trevor Noah’s, Born a Crime or Michelle Obama’s, Becoming)

Overall though, I just thought the book was too long. 500 pages is a lot and I do not feel like this plot warranted it. I wasn’t really impressed with the ending and thought some of the items were really overdone. So all of that leaves me firmly unsure of how to rate this. At the end of the day, I do hope this book challenges the perspective of Picoult’s audience, which is likely mostly white women who relate well with characters like Kennedy. I do applaud the author for taking on a topic like this, but given the choice, I would have preferred to spend my time reading a more thoughtful book written by a black author.

Saving Francesca

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Melina Marchetta
Genres: Young Adult
Pub. date: Mar. 2003 (re-read May 2019)

This was super enjoyable to read for the second time and I actually enjoyed it more on my re-read than I did the first time I read it. I’ve been dying to read her newest book, The Place on Dalhousie, but it’s not available at any bookstores in Canada or on the kindle store, so I finally broke down and ordered a copy from Book Depository. After ordering it, I discovered that it actually includes some of the same characters from Saving Francesca and The Piper’s Son.

Saving Francesca was Marchetta’s second book, published in 2003, and The Piper’s Son was published several years after that. I believe all 3 books involve some of the same characters, but could all be read as stand-alones. The Piper’s Son is the only remaining Marchetta book that I haven’t read, so I decided to take the opportunity to re-read Francesca and Piper before I read the newest book.

I liked Saving Francesca on my first re-through, but it didn’t stand out to me. I think this is because I read it right after the first time I read On the Jellicoe Road. Jellicoe Road is one of my favourite books of all time, so after reading it I was enthusiastic to try out some of Marchetta’s other books, but Francesca couldn’t really compete with Jellicoe, so I didn’t rate it as highly. I’ve probably read Jellicoe 4-5 times since the first time I read it, but this was my first time re-reading Francesca and I really liked it a lot more. Now that I’ve had the time to separate it from Jellicoe Road and view it on its own merits (rather than just comparing it to Jellicoe), it’s actually a really good book.

Saving Francesca is about 16 year old Francesca Spinelli and her family. Francesca has always had a really close relationship with her mother and then one day, her mother basically shuts down and fails to get out of bed. She suffers from depression, which is something Francesca has never really been exposed to and struggles to understand. At the same time, Francesca has just started a new school and she misses her old friends and doesn’t feel like she belongs at her new school.

Even though none of her other books have been as great as Jellicoe Road, I have always loved Marchetta’s writing style and characterization. I would absolutely classify her as one of my favourite authors and even though I’ve outgrown a lot of YA, I don’t feel like I’ll ever outgrow Marchetta’s work. I love the way she writes teenagers and friendships. I don’t know how to describe it, but when I read her books, I feel like I’m walking into a world already fully realized. She is great at Show, Don’t Tell, and I never feel like I’m being introduced to a story, so much as just becoming immersed in it.

Her characters are so vibrant and I love the way they relate to one another. Melina is the master of the “from-hate-to-love” relationships and I love how she develops friendships in her books. Saving Francesca is a coming of age story as well as a book about mental illness. I mostly liked her approach to mental illness, with the exception of the aversion to taking medication for it. There shouldn’t be any stigma associated with taking medication for mental illness and wish it would be normalized more in books. Many people suffer from many different mental illnesses and medication really helps them. Francesca’s family was pretty adverse to it in this book, which was too bad because I think drugs could have helped Mia get back on her feet a lot faster.

But I did like her other themes about being there for one another and that having good days doesn’t mean that you’re better, but that having bad days also doesn’t mean that you’re not okay. The characters gave each other space to work through their issues and I liked that Francesca understood that while there maybe wasn’t a lot that she could do for her mother, simply being there might be enough.

One thing that really makes a book a winner for me is when an author writes well developed secondary characters. I loved all the secondary characters in this book, especially the teenagers. Every single one of them was flawed, yet they all had traits that made them special and likable. I loved Tara’s spirit and Siobhan’s unapologetic approach to life and Justine’s goodness and Thomas Mackee’s nonchalance and Jimmy’s soft understanding and support. I even kind of liked Will this time around, who I definitely didn’t on my first read through. He’s a bit of a shitty character, but I was willing to forgive him for his mistakes this time around and appreciated that he was able to grow and make choices outside of the rigid plans he set for himself.

This is a short book and subtle. I liked the honest depiction of mental illness, but as usual with Marchetta’s books, what really made it stand out was the characters. I love a good character driven book and she never lets me down. Can’t wait to read The Piper’s Son and The Place on Dalhousie!

Say You Still Love Me

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Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: K.A. Tucker
Genres: Fiction, Romance, New Adult
Pub. date: Aug. 6th, 2019 (read May 2019)

Thanks to Atria Books and Netgalley for providing me with a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Simple Wild was one of my favourite books of 2018, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on K.A. Tucker’s new book. I’ll admit, this one didn’t appeal to me quite as much as The Simple Wild, but as someone who worked as a camp counselor as a teenager and also works in a male dominated field, I thought me and Piper could probably relate.

Overall, I liked this book and it kept me engaged throughout, but it definitely couldn’t hold a candle to The Simple Wild. I was looking forward to a slow burn romance, which I got to a certain extent, but mostly this book just left me scratching my head about who the intended audience is.

Say You Still Love Me is about 29 year old Piper Calloway, a senior VP at her Dad’s billion dollar development firm, Calloway Group. Piper is slated to take over the company when her father retires, but as a young woman, she struggles to be taken seriously in this male-dominated environment. Piper is thrown further off guard by the arrival of her first love, Kyle, who takes a job as a security guard in her building. Piper and Kyle fell in love 13 years ago at Camp Wawa when they were counselors at 16. The relationship ended suddenly and PIper always wondered what happened to Kyle and his sudden reappearance forces her to confront questions that have been buried in the past.

The story is told in alternating timelines between 2006 and 2019. The 2006 timeline is a whirlwind camp romance, while the 2019 timeline is more of the slow burn romance I was looking for. 16 year old Piper is totally head over heels for Kyle and acts how you might expect a dopey teenager in love to act. Whereas 29 year old PIper is a high-powered executive who’s trying to figure out her love life while also running a billion dollar company.

Which is why I questioned who the intended audience is. As a 28 year old, I was thrilled to read a new adult book about a successful young woman in her late twenties. I was less interested in reading about a gushy teenager having her first romantic and sexual experiences.

I really think this book is intended for young professionals rather than young adults (teenagers), and no offense, but as a 28 year old, I don’t want to read about Piper’s first fumbling experiences with sex. I’m not a prude, but I don’t really think this book is appropriate for 16 year olds, which begs the question, who is it appropriate for? I don’t have a problem with sex scenes in young adult books because we all know teenagers are having sex, but I’m more a fan of the less-explicit, cutesy love scenes. These are definitely explicit adult sex scenes and as an adult I don’t want to read about two 16 year olds experimenting with blow jobs.

So a lot of the romance made me uncomfortable because I felt too old to be reading it, even though I think I was the intended audience for the book. I also struggled to buy into Kyle and Piper’s romance 13 years later. I do think that your first love holds a bit of a special place in your heart, but these two dated for 6 weeks and then never saw each other for 13 years. I did believe that they would still be attracted to each other and maybe pursue something, but I didn’t buy into the whole no-one-else-measures-up-to-you, I’ve-been-missing-you-for-13-years bit. Mostly because it’s kind of sad. I had to agree with Kyle that he and Piper came from such different backgrounds, it was never going to work between them. Everyone changes and grows an inordinate amount between the ages of 16 and 29 and I thought it was a bit disingenuous to pretend like they were still the same people.

So as a romance, this didn’t really work for me. But part of what made the Simple Wild so great was that it wasn’t just a romance. It was a book about family relationships and choices. If you removed the romance from The Simple Wild, it still had a lot to offer. That’s what I was hoping for from this book and like I said, I was excited to read about an ambitious 29 year old woman trying to make it in real estate development and construction.

Piper was pretty baller as a VP, but unfortunately I didn’t love this story line either. I was thrilled to see a young woman in a position of power, but I was disappointed by how she got there. Was she deserving of a senior partner role? Potentially – I think she had the skills to get there some day, but I’m sorry, as a 29 year old, she was definitely only there because of her father. I was angry about how a lot of the men treated her, but I couldn’t help but agree that it was nepotism that put her there and that’s not the kind of role model I’m looking for. I felt like I was supposed to believe that she got to her position by her own merits, but she so obviously didn’t. It’s so hard for women to get senior management positions and it was irksome to see someone who only made it there because of her father. It was uninspiring.

I also struggled to like Piper. She was a spoiled rich girl. I like that Tucker’s heroines are flawed – Calla definitely got on my nerves sometimes, but at the end of the day, she really grew as a person and I loved watching that process. Piper answered all of her problems with money. She really doesn’t understand how people like Kyle live and her privilege and wealthy father provided her the opportunity to basically live in ignorance. I saw the ending coming a mile away and I was disappointed in Piper for never checking in on her friends after camp or following up on the “incident” that we wait the whole book to find out about.

Kyle talks about how grounded Piper is being nice to her assistant and talking to the old security guard every day and letting her friends live in her penthouse, but I thought those were all just signs of being a normal, nice human being, nothing extraordinary. Piper was a total Daddy’s girl and I always find those kinds of father-daughter relationships creepy. Like she’s your daughter Kieran, she’s not your possession. You have no right to make decisions for her or keep things from her. But I think a lot of girls will still probably like this because America romanticizes the father-daughter relationship and creepy, overprotective, possessive behaviours. It was just not for me.

Unfortunately the writing of this review is diminishing my opinion of this book and I’m struggling to find what I did like about it. I didn’t like Piper’s dad, who demonstrates textbook signs of emotional abuse, I didn’t like how entitled Piper was, and I didn’t like how easily she forgave some pretty sketchy things that Kyle and her Dad did. Even her friends were a bit of a mystery to me. I understand why she stayed friends with Ashley, but I never really understood Christa or how they ended up being friends. They seemed to have nothing in common.

Overall, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief for this book. I know romances are sometimes over the top, but I prefer ones that are more grounded in reality. I didn’t think this book had a whole lot going for it outside the romance and since that didn’t cut it for me, it didn’t have a lot to offer. The writing is still good though – I didn’t struggle to read this – even though I didn’t enjoy the subject matter. Tucker is good at writing witty dialogue and I thought that held true in this book, it just wasn’t as good coming from two lovestruck teenagers.

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry

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Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Genres: Fiction
Pub date: Apr. 2014 (read Apr. 2019)

I really put off writing my review for this book, so it’s probably going to be a bit short since the book is no longer fresh in my mind.

Overall The Storied Life of AJ Fikry was a little disappointing for me. Not because it wasn’t good or I didn’t like, but because so many of my goodreads friends have rated the book so high that I went into it with really high expectations, and the story just didn’t quite live up to those expectations. I definitely liked the book, hence the 3 star rating, but it’s not going to make my favourites list.

Gabrielle Zevin has an interesting writing style – I do have an unread copy of one of her other books, Young Jane Young, on my shelf, so I would like to pick that one up soon. This one reminded me a little bit of A Man Called Ove. I wasn’t sure what to think of a lot of the characters initially, but ended up growing to appreciate them all, minor characters included.

It is an interesting book. It’s definitely more of a character driven book than a plot driven book, which I generally prefer, and it was sometimes hard to know where the story was going. I like books that can take the mundane from everyday life and make it fascinating. I really liked AJ Fikry’s character. He’s suffering from the loss of his wife and then loses his fortune, so things are really not looking great for him, but I loved his no nonsense approach to life and the logic through which he ended up welcoming Maya into his life. So I liked that I never really knew where the story was going and that it never really followed any predictable narratives. For example, when Maya showed up, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be a Fredrik Backman type book where Maya opens AJ up to love again”, which she did, but it was never really the focus of the book and the plot went to some places I wasn’t expecting.

As a book lover, it’s hard not to like a story about other book lovers and I liked the way that AJs bookstore became a sort of community centre for the people living on the island. The bookstore wasn’t really doing well after the death of AJ’s wife because people’s pity for AJ kept them out of the store, but after he adopts Maya, I guess the community felt that AJ might need their support and his bookstore became more of a community space as his customers starting joining book clubs.

To conclude, it was a nice story about community and how sometimes misfortune and the mundane can actually end up changing your life.