YOU DESERVE NOTHING by Alexander Maksik

The one word that comes to mind when I think back on Alexander Maksik’s You Deserve Nothing is “rubbernecking.” Reading the book gave me the sensation of being stuck in a traffic jam on a hot evening. One of those epic Long Island traffic jams, where everyone is trying to get home from Jones Beach at the same time. You can see the screaming lights of the police and fire vehicles up ahead, and you know it’s going to be bad when you finally get there – but you still want to get there, so you can go past. You don’t want to look as your car finally inches single file past the disaster. But your eyes are drawn to it, and you crane your neck to see signs of life, to assure yourself that it’s all going to be alright. Unfortunately, you’re left with the empty feeling that sometimes things are not alright after all.

It’s clear from the first pages that ex-pat superteacher William Silver isn’t what he appears to be on the surface. Serene and confident in the classroom, his inner world roils with some kind of agonizing remorse. He manages to hold himself together during the day, making ancient authors come to life for his high school students, infusing their days with idealistic lessons about social justice. He makes them believe they have the power to change society. Some of them feel like they can never measure up. Others believe societal conventions no longer apply to them.

The novel is beautifully written from alternating first-person perspectives: Will’s own, nymphet high schooler Marie’s, and that of a new student at the tony English academy in Paris where he teaches, Gilad. At first I thought the third voice was superfluous. But I realized that Gilad was there to show us the collateral damage caused when adults behave badly. Late in the novel, 17-year-old Gilad wrestles with his inability to protect his mother from his abusive father:

That night I stayed in my room. I pissed out the window into the courtyard below. I read. I walked back and forth. I held the door handle. Imagined opening it. Breaking down their door. Cross the fucking room. Dig down. Push. Go.

But I was a coward. I stayed where I was. I looked out into the night and put it all away. I looked out my window and knew that Silver, somewhere in the city, was in his apartment. He’d be reading. Listening to John Coltrane or something. Or at his desk, grading papers. Writing poems maybe. The light low, a beautiful bare-shouldered woman reading on the couch. There he was living his honorable life. I saw it clear as anything. (p. 196-197)

The novel’s conclusion is clear from a first, fateful phone call. And yet that didn’t stop me from turning the pages, because I was so interested in what the characters would do with the situation. This is a very intense novel, not at all light, but moving and well-crafted. But I would definitely say you need to be in a quiet, contemplative mood to get the most out of it. I’d recommend it for lovers of contemporary literary fiction, but I also think the strong voices of the teenagers would make it a logical choice for young adult readers. My 19-year-old daughter picked it up after me, and said she was enjoying it.

Dealing with my mother’s illness took me out of the blogging loop for a good part of the past year. So I’m finally entering the Europa Editions Reading Challenge at the Ristretto level for 2013, even though I’m hopeful I’ll finish more than 2 titles before December. I continue to be so impressed by the imprint and the fantastic authors they represent that I wouldn’t want to miss the challenge! Thanks so much to Marie of Boston Bibliophile for creating the challenge.

Enjoying the charming perils of The Graveyard Book

My plan for the RIP V (Readers Imbibing Peril) Challenge was to turn up the volume on my peril consumption gradually in the months leading up to Halloween. I started with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, a mystery I loved, but which presented more puzzles than perils. So moving up the peril ladder, I chose Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book for my second read.

This was my first Neil Gaiman title, and I didn’t know what to expect. Gaiman seems to be one of those “love-him-or-hate-him” authors. So I was pleasantly surprised at how entertaining the book was, from start to finish. While the premise might be grim – a toddler escapes the knife-wielding madman who has murdered the other members of his family by wandering into a graveyard, where he is raised by the dead (and nearly dead) occupants – the book is actually a coming of age story about taking advantage of whatever bizarre resources and unconventional talents you happen to have, and ultimately making your way in the world with what you’ve learned.

The Graveyard Book delivers both humor and humanity along with a few—but not very many – spine-tingly moments. Bod (short for Nobody Owens) grows from a little boy to a young adult, secure in the refuge of his unconventional home, surrounded by his strange but loving family. The genius of the book is that while Bod’s guardian sleeps in a crypt and his best friend was drowned and burned as a witch, it all seems completely normal. After all, whose family isn’t a bit off the wall? Who hasn’t dreaded making the acquaintance of some mildly unsavory character, only to find out you have way more in common with him than you could have believed? In that, Gaiman owes a great deal to Charles Addams, I think.

I liked the way Gaiman took creatures already in our cultural consciousness – ghouls and vampires and werewolves and witches – and expanded on them, giving them sometimes unexpected personalities and characteristics. Unfortunately, I think he was somewhat less successful with the creatures of his own imagination. Without a cultural reference, I never thought the Sleer developed in such a way that his actions could be anticipated. And the Jacks remained a mystery at the end. All the evil visited upon the toddler still seemed too enigmatic for a YA title.

Gaiman is at his best when he writes the menacing bits: “Fear is contagious. You can catch it. Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say that they’re scared for the fear to become real” (pg. 188). I definitely wouldn’t have minded had he pushed the panic button just a bit harder in a few places.

Still, this is a YA title that I would definitely recommend to people who love a good ghost and ghoul story. I am especially looking forward to reading it with my 4th grader this October – she’s at that great age where she LOVES to be scared – but just not too much. I’m envisioning a blustery night, a candlelit room, some warm apple cider, and the fun of sharing a mildly perilous tale.

You know that mildly apprehensive sensation that’s easily made better by a hug? That’s The Graveyard Book.

Audio books save the trip: Percy and the Olympians and Ellie

Faced with a ten-hour car ride to Wisconsin, and a pre-teen who was already missing her older sister (who was flying in later) and her parents (who were leaving her in Madison with her grandparents to attend a conference), I racked my brain for a way to make the trip more enjoyable. Ellie was in the middle of reading Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief, and loving it. (This is great news, as Ellie has up-to-now been the kind of kid who avoided certain titles because they looked “too long.”) So I figured we could get the audio books of both The Lightning Thief and the second book in the series, The Sea of Monsters, and make the trip a lot more fun for all of us.

For those who don’t know, Riordan’s Percy and the Olympians series chronicles the exciting and dangerous life of Perseus Jackson, a modern-day son of Poseidon with an uncanny ability to attract monsters – and mayhem – as he battles to save the world from the forces of the evil Titan Kronos. His friends include a host of other demi-gods and mythical creatures, most importantly Annabeth (a gray-eyed daughter of Athena) and Grover (the satyr who identified Percy as a demi-god, or half-blood, in the first place).

Generally, I am not a reader of Young Adult titles*, at least on my own. But I have enjoyed reading many of them with my daughters over the years, and I was excited when Ellie decided to read this series – I remember going through a phase where I couldn’t get enough Greek and Roman mythology myself. I thought it might be just the thing to push her into the next level of reading achievement. Turns out I was right.

Let me say that there is nothing groundbreaking in either of the titles. The same formula – take a seemingly regular kid and surround him/her with a collection of unusual friends in the combat of some great evil – worked in other great series, like The Wizard of Oz, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. The particular fun of Riordan’s books, however, is in the juxtaposition of archetypical Greek characters with thoroughly modern settings. Mount Olympus is found at the top of the Empire State Building. The Gray Sisters share their eye to navigate a supernatural taxi service. The entrance to Hades is – of course – in Los Angeles, with Charon reimagined as the snarky receptionist of D.O.A. Records. Hilarious! Actually, I'd say this series is a perfect choice for multi-generational listening, because there are a lot of jokes that are clearly meant for the parents.

Audio books include another factor – the reader. Both The Lightning Thief and The Sea of Monsters were read by Jesse Bernstein. His mild New York accent worked well for Manhattan-based Percy, but my daughter thought he sounded a bit too old to read Percy’s first-person narrative. Also, some of the accents he employed to differentiate the characters were simply awful, and not consistent within characters when they reappeared. But Bernstein does have a gentle voice, and it didn’t grate on me even after a long car ride, so I think his interpretation was mostly successful.

So listening to the audio books made the long car trips lots of fun. I always thought of audio books as kind of a “cheat,” but having listened to one, I now think of them as a whole different form of entertainment. Even better, Ellie’s next trip to the library netted D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, and she hasn’t had her nose out of it since. She knows a Satyr from a Centaur, and a Nereid from a Dryad. She has even chosen her costume for Halloween: Artemis. Her rationale: she’s the only goddess who doesn’t want to smooch boys all the time! I’m glad that even though her reading tastes are maturing, she isn’t growing up too fast – she is my baby after all.

*Although this summer has been an exception, I admit, with Looking for Alaska and the Percy Jacksons