I have a real soft spot for middle-grade novels. Middle grade books are the books where you see readers actually coming into their own. There’s no more of the forced level reading like in grades one and two. It’s all the kids’ choice. And no one ever became a reader because they read War and Peace or Wuthering Heights. They became readers after reading The Phantom Tollbooth and Matilda. So, ignoring the suggestion of “middle grade” inherent in the title, I’ve been reading them to Tesfa since she was four because I don’t have the patience for picture books, which seems strange considering a picture book takes three minutes to read and to read a middle-grade novel aloud takes four or five hours. I like plot because, unlike, Alice, I do see the use of reading a story with no pictures in it. Hopefully I am forcing encouraging Tesfa to appreciate plot too.

So I read The Swallow: A Ghost Story aloud to Tesfa this week. It’s full of lots of little short chapters, with most chapters divided into two sub-chapters, one from each of the protagonists’ perspectives. It was Tesfa’s first experience with a book with more than one narrator and I had to explain that type of story-telling after the first chapter. But she caught on, although every now and then she would ask me to clarify whether Rose or Polly was telling the story at that point. The book has a cute Toronto setting in the 1960s, which made me think of my mum, who grew up in Toronto in the 1960s. I don’t know if it was a book really intended for reading out loud, since sometimes the sentences were repetitive when one said them (i.e. falling into step beside me as we went down the steps, emphasis mine) but if Tesfa had been old enough to read the story quietly to herself, I doubt she would have noticed. The twist at the end surprised Tesfa, but let’s just say that if you’re my age and have seen a certain movie (clicking on the link counts a spoiler), then the reveal wasn’t as shocking as it was for my six year old.

But, what is the point of reading a middle-grade novel to a middle-grade kid without getting her opinion on it? So yesterday, when we finished, I asked Tesfa a few questions and got her to tell me her thoughts on The Swallow: A Ghost Story. There are spoilers in the answers to her questions, so stop reading here if you don’t want to find out some of the plot.

What was the book about? Polly and Rose. Two girls become friends. Polly thinks Rose is the ghost at first. But Polly is actually the ghost!

Who do you think would like the book? Not Geoff! (Tesfa’s dad, who doesn’t like scary stories) People who like scary stories.

Was the book really scary? Not too scary.

What age is this book good for? Six or seven, like me.

Favourite character? Rose, because she could see ghosts.

Did you like the ending? I liked the whole story as it was.

Do you think there will be a sequel? I don’t know.

From one to five stars, how would you rank this book? One hundred stars, no one thousand!

So, it was a good book? YES!

The Swallow: A Ghost Story by Charis Cotter went on sale September 9, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Road trip!

1988: I Want to Talk with the World is, as one might guess by the previous sentence, is about a road trip. Our narrator is driving across China to pick up his friend from prison. A sex-worker comes along for the ride. He thinks about his childhood. For example, he was an eye-exercise monitor in school and if there was ever any doubt that I know so little about China it is completely encompassed in the fact that their are daily eye-exercises with monitors to ensure they are being done correctly. Also, this quote from 1988: Since leaving home, I’ve seen all sorts of strange shubbery. I don’t even know what to do with that thought.

But road trips are road trips. They stop for snacks. They get in a traffic jam. They sleep at run-down motels. The rhythm of the road trip, the random thoughts and the philosophising-as-the-scenery-rolls-past, it’s all there. The universality of the roadtrip. Although, I really wish that our narrator wasn’t a john, even if he tries to paint himself as a valiant one (i.e. if he opens the door to a sex-worker, he pays her for her services regardless of whether he thinks her to be attractive or not. Um, yeah, okay.), but then he ends up kind of adorably buffoonish. I mean, it’s hard not to root for someone who ends up tossing cremated ashes into the wind and having them blow back all over him, because, basically that’s the sort of thing that would happen to me.

The prose and story veers wildly. There are trite sentiments (That nasty thing called time was passing). There are cute and affecting memories, like the story about all the kids playing marbles. There are completely ridiculous and useless coincidences (although I couldn’t help thinking of some quote I read somewhere by someone who I don’t remember basically saying that what isn’t surprising in life is coincidences, it’s how few there are given the huge number of possibilities. Maybe it was some physicist or a self-help author?). There are his memories of him trying to find his first love before he even knew her. Still, it’s really hard to know what to expect and whether some of the randomness (seriously, shrubbery?) has more to do with cultural divides or translation.

The narrator’s a rake, but he’s rather endearing. That’s the main thing I took away from this.

1988: I Want to Talk with the World by Han Han went on sale January 13, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Near the beginning of this book, our narrator corrects a non-native-English speaker’s English (prolixity to proximity). It’s one of the few times she (the narrator) does something, rather than simply being a receptacle for the other character’s life-stories and foibles, because this is what the narrator is in this story: an urn that all the other characters, and for such a short novel, they are legion, pour themselves into. But back to the correcting of English — it’s sort of a jackass thing to do to a complete stranger who is speaking to you in a language not his own, isn’t it? Plus, since she’s able to correct him, she understood what he meant when he said it incorrectly, so why did she do it? The novel ends with her correcting his English again. I don’t know why. I think if I did know why, maybe I would understand this book better.

Outline is like a big nineteenth century pastoral novel, except for it being twenty-first century and short and set mainly in urban Athens. But it has that feeling of weightiness and heft and importance and description. Like a nineteenth century novel, especially say a melodrama like The Woman in White or The Wanderer, a sense of disbelief is required (that or the Greek education system is just churning out wonderfully adept English speakers, which it may be). Like a big nineteenth century novel, I get the impression that if I had at least a Masters in English, I would have gotten a lot more out of it than I did. I enjoyed it. I liked reading the stories of the people baring their lives to our narrator. But I just don’t know. Am I jealous that our narrator has that sort of aura or personality or welcoming face that lets others unburden themselves to her, or do I simply not believe it? Is this even a novel? It’s like a theory of a novel, or a theory of characterization, or a theory of something. Not much happens outside the strangers’ unprompted sharing. But, as I said, I think English lit people will like it. I think people who don’t like theory will hate it. How flummoxed someone would be if he were given this book and told to make a Michael Bay-esque movie of it. That thought made me laugh out loud. Others may have looked at me.

What happens in this book: nothing. But I gave it four of five stars anyway.

Outline by Rachel Cusk went on sale September 4, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really loathe the word resplendent. The Lotus and the Storm uses resplendent three times. That may be enough to tell you what I thought of the book.

There are spoilers below. Proceed warily.

The Lotus and the Storm is essentially the mirror of The Sympathizer, which I read a few months ago (also a Netgalley copy). Whereas The Sympathizer gave us the Viet-cong mole perspective, The Lotus and the Storm gives us the South Vietnamese military perspective. Okay. So we’re in and out of Vietnam, future in Virginia, back and forth. Typical immigrant/war narrative.

For me, this book had problems: Characters in the narrative seem to be talking to someone who isn’t there (one of my notes-in-the-margins is Who is he talking to?), giving lengthy explanations about background that they would already know themselves and would have no need to elaborate on for themselves. A letter detailing a death just so happens to have a lengthy and fortuitous amount of information required to advance the plot. A child uses the term “subcutaneous tissue” (although, growing up in a war zone, this might enter common parlance out of necessity). Someone is secretly a spy — revealed in as Dramatic A Way as possible.

So a whole suspension of disbelief is required from the reader throughout the entire novel. I think a lot of this story is based on the truth, but I don’t believe the story. If it’s true, if these things happened, but is written in such a way that obscures the truth, I think that’s a problem.

And the big problem (and a big spoiler here): The narrative jumps between different characters points-of-view. About two-thirds in, we are introduced to a new narrative voice, as we find out that one of the main characters has multiple personalities, and our additional narrator is one of these personalities!

Other people loved this book, the ostentatious writing style, the twists, the emotional wrenching. I did not. For me, it was a slog.

The Lotus and the Storm by Lan Cao went on sale August 14, 2014.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, 88% done Day’s End by H. E. Bates (the preciseness of the percent via my kobo), I thought of an adjective that described the book perfectly. I leaned over towards my kobo, but then thought By the time I turn it on the kobo …. Then I kind of hit around to see if there was a pencil. There wasn’t. Now I don’t remember what the adjective was. I think it begin with an S.

This haziness with my adjectives actually ties back to the book. I’m pretty hazy on Day’s End. The book isn’t long, and it’s full of hodge-podge English pastoral where your mind goes to cozy country cottages with pink and lilac bushes out front and thatched roofs and rolling hills and then thinking of all these things, the stories themselves kind of fade away. Even calling them stories is rather generous; most are scenes detailing the small agonies of the underclass. A waitress being stood up on a date, a shepherd searches out a doctor to attend to his pregnant wife, a man with disabilities is mocked by children in church. It’s like a Vanitas painting (I had to look up the term): at first glance everything is bountiful and lively, but a second glance and it’s really a painting of fruit rotting and flowers drooping. Transient.

I’m not sure exactly why Day’s End‘s stories are collected together just now. The little blurb at the start of the book tells me that Bates died in 1974, so maybe the older stories have reached the public domain to be reissued perhaps? There’s no information as to when most of the stories were written, but a note is made that some come from the 1920s and 1930s. They don’t feel, in style, like the 1920s though, the way, for example, listening to Gershwin feels like the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe because there’s no slang. Maybe because adjectives and adverbs are used judiciously. Maybe because there’s a core of universality that runs through the stories. But even that can’t overcome the haziness. The stories feel like waves washing the seashore; they come and go and lulled me into drowsiness without making that much of an impression. The sea is still the sea. The sand is still the sand. Proust makes me feel that way too, so at least Bates is in good company.

These are stories for reading in a hammock on a lazy summer day.

Day’s End by H. E. Bates went on sale May 14, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Yes, I am behind in my reviews. Waaaaaay behind. I’m trying to catch up. My goal is two reviews a week until the end of the summer, and then we’ll see whether I’m any better situated.

Is there currently a glut of seniors wandering off books right now? Granted, I can only think of three, including this one (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The 100 Year Old Man …), so glut might be a bit strong, but I can’t help thinking that we are currently obsessed with old people who simply get up and walk away, because, yes, in Etta and Otto and Russell and James, we have a senior, Etta, who gets up and walks away.

We’re in Canada, walking with Etta from Saskatchewan as she attempts to get to Halifax. She makes a coyote friend. The unrequited lover follows her. The husband waits. It’s three hundred pages but there is a lot of blank space. Negative space? Non-space? Amidst the blank lines, we have the beginning, a typical 1930s, 1940s prairie tale of one room schoolhouses and tractor accidents and dust and men going off to war and flat fields with red sunrises. It’s somewhat of a disservice to call this past-part a paint-by-numbers prairie novel, but it’s a paint-by-numbers prairie novel. Of course, that doesn’t mean the book isn’t genuinely affecting, but it’s sort of like a mild soap of a book. Unobjectionable. Less jaded people would use the word heartwarming.

Interspersed with then, the book has now, with Etta walking. She walks. I don’t know what else to say about that.

But the in-between is missing, obscured by the blank lines. There is the beginning, there is the end, but the middle? What happened between 1945 and now? Nothing Hooper felt worth noting as there is nary a mention of it. As I slide into middle age myself, I worry if that’s all I have to look forward to until I turn eighty? Just blankness, not even worth remembering? How sad.

There’s a metaphysical ending. Not a fan of those, but I know other people like the uncertainty, the non-requirement of closure. I think a lot of literary first novels, of which Etta and Otto and Russell and James is one, have endings like this. Maybe it’s writers still finding their way. I wished the ending was more solid and less ethereal though. And I wanted more about Owen, who was far more interesting than Otto ever was. Otto doesn’t even go after his wife. Sort of a lump.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper went on sale January 20, 2015.

I kind of received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, in that they approved my request after the title was archived, so I couldn’t actually download it. Instead, I took a copy out of the library. I emailed Netgalley to ask what was up with that, but they never replied, so I don’t know.