Books I Read This Month - April 2014

A Wounded Name by Dot Hutchinson
This retelling of Hamlet following Ophelia and taking place in a boarding school is written with gorgeously flowery prose. The pacing, setting, and literary style are perfect. The only problem I had with the book is quite a major problem, in that the young Hamlet is violent and abusive toward Ophelia, and Ophelia simply deals with it, making excuses about his behavior. Thematically, it could be that the book is saying this behavior is unacceptable, but it might have been too subtle. Highly recommended for the writing style, as long as readers keep this in mind.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
This is definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s written in the class McCarthy style, with the characters speaking in vernacular, and solidly “showing,” not even a hint of “telling.” This technique makes it for an interesting read because McCarthy withholds judgment against the disturbing behavior of the main character. Excellent, though with extremely mature content.

Rosehead by Ksenia Anske
Dark and creepy, suspenseful and mysterious, quirky and hilarious. A little slow sometimes and requires a little extra suspension of disbelief, but perfectly delectable for children and adults alike. Lilith makes for a strong, intelligent young heroine.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
I love this author. The story starts out a little odd, in a good way, and continues on to grow more and more supernatural, with a dreamlike tone. All of Murakami’s works that I have read are written in this same spectacular manner. This one follows a teenage boy and an older man whom both are suffering from mental and emotional disturbances. Fascinating and winding, and I was completely unable to put it down. Recommended highly, though beware that it is a bit weird. But good weird.

Books I Read This Month - March 2014

The Child in Time by Ian McEwan
A children's book writer struggles with the emotional downfall of his marriage after his three-year-old daughter is kidnapped in a supermarket. While the book is slow in parts, especially when it deals with the man's serving on a political board that makes policies concerning literacy in education, it goes really deep into his psyche and details how the loss of his daughter has affected all facets of his life. The themes of childhood innocence and the social construction of adult behavior pervade. It's a tough read sometimes, but worth it for those who are able to slog through. I still love Ian McEwan after this book. He's still my favorite author of all time, even though this isn't one of my favorites of his books.

The Cold Song by Linn Ullmann
Another book where a girl goes missing, and a writer is involved, but very different from The Child in Time. The missing girl here is teenage Milla who is nannying for two young girls for a summer. The parents, a writer and a chef, are having struggles in their marriage, and a few other members of the community receive narrative focus along with this family. This digs into the pain we feel when someone we know goes missing or dies, and how this pain can separate us from those around us. The writing is gorgeous.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
A nine-year-old boy who is rather naive moves with his family to a house outside a concentration camp, because his father is a highly-ranked officer of some kind stationed there to make decisions about the camp. The boy secretly walks along the fence one day and meets another nine-year-old boy, a Jew inside the camp. Their friendship builds the core of the story and is touching, especially when the main character's naivety shows through where the reader knows what's going on and he doesn't. The ending does not seem realistic to me at all, and neither does the extent of the main character's ignorance, even though he is only nine, but the message of the story is powerful enough to make up for the places where the book stretches the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Looking for Alaska by John Green
This book affected me more than I thought it would. In the aftermath of the book, I was quite sad for a day or two. I've read The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns by John Green, and this one made me cry nearly as much as TFIOS, even though the premise is completely different. This is a bit similar to Paper Towns, though I didn't like that one nearly as much. A socially awkward boy goes to a boarding school and falls in love with a wild, passionate, self-destructive girl who only loves him back as a friend. Her character is obviously selfish and a bit bitchy, but still, as a reader, I sympathized with her and empathized with Pudge, the narrator. Halfway through the book there is a twist that turns the narrative on its head and calls for some emotional reeling. I wish I had read this book a long time ago, when I was a teenager. But I'd still highly recommend it now.

The Emissary by Marc Pietrzykowski

Set in a nursing home where ex-worker Cam Wright often visits to record the residents telling vignettes from their life stories, The Emissary follows a handful of characters as they encounter death in numbers suspiciously higher than expected for the average nursing home.

Head nurse Carol Ann DeFazio is caring but a stickler for rules; nurse Angela Padilla is a kindhearted single mother and Cam's love interest; and several of the nursing home residents, such as Tom Kinney, Magoo, and Mrs. Treadwell, all have their odd quirks and sometimes mysterious personalities. All the characters in this novel are well-rounded and offer something unique and significant to the plot of the book, even when they are simply sitting there dictating an unusual tale to Cam's voice recorder. Cam is a protagonist to root for, a typical video-game-playing loser sort with artistic talent that could one day make him rich and happy. Angela is also a sympathetic character, as are her two daughters, and when she dies (poisoned by a plate of cookies) and Cam is arrested for her murder, the suspense goes through the roof.

The plot of The Emissary is original, quirky, and unique, putting fairly normal characters into a fairly normal setting but tossing in an odd motive for the sneaky, twisted serial murderer. At the start of the book, the plain setting and characters make the reading slow, but after a chapter or two, when the deaths begin and the characters start questioning some people and defending others, the murder mystery is what drives the story forward.

Thematically, The Emissary can be hard to pin down, but author Marc Pietrzykowski certainly had some thematic intent, as evident by his often literary writing style. The plot of the story is only the surface of the text; there is obviously something deeper behind the events in the book. Reading into the story is a bit tricky occasionally, though, with references to architecture, storytelling, and the desire for death appearing often but not very concretely. Not having the thematic intent so blatantly portrayed in the text is a nice move on Pietrzykowski's part, however, because it is easier for the reader to get something out of the book themselves rather than being told what the moral of the story is.

Pietrzykowski writes with wit and a dark sense of humor that is definitely this novel's strong suit. The way the pieces of the puzzle fall together (even though you'll definitely guess the murderer pretty much from the outset of the story), the interesting and funny characters, and the humorous writing style make this book very much worth reading. I reviewed Marc Pietrzykowski's previous novel, Music Box Dancer, a while back, and it has a similar writing style, evidence that this author has developed his own, unique voice.