Joyland

Stephen King has long been one of my favorite authors, so it's really no surprise to me that I enjoyed one of his latest novels, Joyland.  The variety of King's writing always stuns me: He writes horror, fantasy, sci-fi, realism, epics, true crime, and more, and all feel just as real as my everyday life.  This realism stems from what I think of as a "full color" background to each novel, instead of a plain white background.

Let me explain: Many of the novels I read have what I think of as plain white backgrounds.  The back-story of each character, of each town, of each event and each setting -- most of them are left unexplained.  The necessary details, the ones that affect the story being told, are included, but the unnecessary details, the ones that are often unique and defining, are not.  This doesn't mean that those books are poorly written or lacking (some of my favorite books use this "plain white" background style). Those books are just a tiny bit less vibrant.  What I've come to realize is that often this usually isn't even noticeable until compared with a "colored" background book, a book by a master like Stephen King.

Every one of King's books that I've enjoyed has this "colored" background (some of his books I despise, just for the record), and Joyland is no exception.  The town the novel is set in has a history, one more detailed than that college town where I went to school.  Each character, no matter how large or small, has details to make them come to life.  The grouchy old ride operator has psoriasis so badly on his hands that he must wear leather gloves all the time.  The main character's librarian housemate is practicing for a Scrabble tournament.  And Devin Jones, the main character himself, is writing from an older age, one complete with a career and family and the myriad of details that make up a life.

King has a tendency to write as a much older first person narrator, one who is looking back on the events of the novel.  I first noticed this when I read The Green Mile long ago -- which I really should re-read, now that I think about it -- and it remains a style that I enjoy in his books.  Maybe it's the perspective that those narrators can then offer to the events, or just that cozy feeling of being told this story and knowing that some things, at least, turned out okay.  In any case, I enjoy it, and I find that this style contributes to King's ability to write beautiful, vivid, and endearing characters.

I'm never totally sure if I absolutely love King's characters or if I just really, deeply admire the ability demonstrated in their creation.  Sometimes, definitely, I love the characters of a novel (see: The Dark Tower series).  Sometimes, I hate their guts (see: Flagg and his men in The Stand).  But sometimes, like here in Joyland, I like the characters but I more than anything else just admire how human they truly are.  Nothing feels stock about the characters in Joyland, and again it goes back to the details of each character.  They are real.  The heartache Devin deals with, the friendliness as he passes a family on a beach that gradually morphs into true friendship, the 'carney' people who populate Joyland's employee ranks -- everything is real.  There are just so few books I can say that about, so few books where I don't have to put it aside just once and go, "huh, that's a weird thing for them to do" or "that's really unrealistic," that I have to exalt it when I find one.

The plot of Joyland could almost be considered quiet; it's there, but it's really more in the background, surfacing occasionally to move forward.  That story -- solving the murder of a young woman within the grounds of the Joyland theme park -- is interesting and compelling and I definitely wanted to know what happened.  But the novel itself is more about the development that Devin Jones goes through, his own coming of age/growing up type of story and what happens to him as it unfolds

In a lot of ways, this is like life: you don't necessarily realize something is important to the direction of your life until it is. You don't necessarily see all the background and build up to your own life events.  Maybe if you are extraordinarily reflective, or good at putting the pieces together, or that special kind of talented where you look at chaos and see the patterns, then maybe you see how your life comes together.  The rest of us... well, life can surprise us.

And of course, like all good mystery novels, Joyland contains a pretty solid twist.  The way King inserts this twist into the novel is quite interesting: As the novel begins, the background of the murder comes out, as one character tells its chilling tale to Devin.  As I read, I started to put pieces together, and there are enough clues scattered throughout that I knew there was a twist coming, I even knew that Devin was going to figure out who the murderer was and all that.  But what was so masterful was that I didn't see the twist ITSELF coming -- I didn't put together who the murderer was and how they are/are not already embedded into Devin's life and thus the story itself.  I won't give anything away. I just want to admire the talent and, truly, the restraint on King's part not to make the twist more obvious.

Joyland also contains a slight intrusion of the psychic world, a hint of power just beyond our world, just a touch of it.  I include this because I find it an integral part of Stephen King's writing, one that seems more universal in his works than the horror he's known for.  People don't realize just how normal his writing can sometimes be, instead overshadowed by Carrie and Dreamcatcher and Cujo.  But much of what I've read (which I can't claim to be even close to all of it) has a more simple supernatural feel, one that's present but not overpowering.  That simplicity makes that psychic world seem almost possible -- if there were things like psychics and ghosts and such in our world, if all those incidences of the 'unexplained' were really indicative of something greater out there, this quietness would be how it would manifest.

Of course, I have no way of knowing if that's true -- people do claim to see ghosts or be psychics and so on, and I am not the person to prove them wrong.  But for now, my own interactions with the supernatural are generally limited to novels like this.

I really enjoyed Joyland and I think many other Stephen King fans will as well.  Frankly, due to its murder-mystery plot, I think a lot of non-King fans would probably enjoy this novel too.

The Book Thief

I almost didn't finish this book.  I started it around Labor Day, and after about 100 pages, I got really bored with it. I wasn't drawn into this world, I wasn't into the characters or the plot or anything about it, and I even found the unique narrator boring.  So I put it down; it sat on an end table in my living room for over a month.

Finally, feeling guilty because my librarian, who is an awesome human being who does so many good things for my students, had recommended it and said it was her most favorite book on the planet, I picked it back up.  I was going to finish this book!

I still couldn't read it.  I only got about 30 more pages in before it was dropped on my desk at school, unfinished and still unimpressive.

Then one day just before Thanksgiving, in walked one of my students -- a nice kid, but kind of a slacker: she doesn't do much homework, doesn't turn in essays, and especially does not like to read.  I can get her to focus generally for about 35 mins of a 49 minute period.  She took one look at the "I am currently reading..." sign on my door, the sign that had said The Book Thief for almost two months, and said this: "OMG, The Book Thief is my favorite book OF ALL TIME. I normally don't like to read at all, and it's a really long book, but I LOVED IT."

I was hesitant.  "It's kind of boring," I told her. "I'm not really into it and I'm around page 150 of 500."

"It gets so much better," she insisted.  And that was it -- if this slacker kid who hated Language Arts could read this book and not only enjoy it but love it, I was in. I had to finish it.

And I did. While I can safely say it's not my favorite book of all time, my student was right: it did get better, and it did turn out to be quite good.

First: It's a Holocaust book, there is no getting around that.  By "a Holocaust book," I mean that it's a World War II book that's not about soldiers and involves Jewish people/the Holocaust in some way.  (In my experience, that seems to be all that defines a Holocaust book to modern culture. See: The Reader.) But The Book Thief is an important Holocaust book, much more so than The Reader (which I happen to despise, though I know I'm in the minority).

Told from the perspective of Death, this novel tells the story of a poor German family living under Hitler. This perspective gives the subject matter a somewhat-new life; the whole War gains a kind of sympathy that isn't often present from the German side.  The main character, Liesel Meminger, is a young girl of about ten whose brother died and mother left her with the Hubermann family in an attempt to give her a better life.  At the scene of her brother's death, Liesel's book-stealing antics attract the attention of Death, a surprisingly serene presence within the novel.

As the story unfolds, it gradually gains in complications and depth, though it never quite got to that "can't put it down" level for me.  Liesel's foster family is of course anti-Hitler/Nazi (her family hides a Jewish man in their basement for over a year, for example), but in the quiet way that characterizes many Holocaust stories.

Like I've said, this was not my favorite book.  But I understand why it's a popular book, why it's a valuable book.  That slightly different perspective provides a level of realism that I don't often find in these Holocaust books.  I know it sounds terrible, but not every WWII Holocaust book can be about people hiding others from the Nazis.  The Diary of Anne Frank did it first, and truly did it best because that was the truth.  The more novels that capitalize on the destruction of a people, the more it seems like just taking advantage of a tragedy. So many seem forced, seem like they're there just to cover the territory.  I don't like that, which is probably why I don't like reading that style of novel.

But this novel feels real.  The characters Zusak has created in Liesel, in her quiet foster father Hans, in her overbearing foster mother Rosa, in her devoted neighbor Rudy, all of them comes to life from this book.  The events are not particularly engaging, at least not for me, but the characters are beautifully rendered.  Each time Rudy begs Liesel for a kiss, I cheer him on. Each time Hans manages to scrounge another book from his meager wages, my heart breaks for his poor family. Every time Liesel steals another book, I bite my nails waiting to see if she gets caught.  They all take care of each other, they find ways to cheer themselves and others up, they live their lives in ways that feel so real.  There was nothing I could do to keep from falling in love with these characters.

In addition, though I won't ruin the twists or endings of this novel (as there are several), I will say this: the ends of this book are just as realistic as the characters.  The narrator (Death, remember?) hints at the end long before the reader gets there, and there are no happy endings.  There is no "we were secretly fine" ending (trust me, when you read the book, you'll know that from the beginning).

Their stories are so real, so focused on individual moments, so like the actual world, that I was indeed drawn into them.

Both the most interesting and more disappointing part of this novel is its narrator, Death.  Really, he (she? unknown) is just another character in the novel; he is one of the few first person semi-omniscient narrators I've encountered.  Most first person narrators don't see much beyond their own worlds, but offer depth into themselves -- hence the choice to have a first person narrator.  But Death is somewhat omniscient; he can see around the world, so he can see into the interactions of people and their consequences.  The only thing he cannot understand are humans, their emotions and how they interact.  He watches Liesel, the book thief, in order to learn about those things he cannot understand.

Death provides an interesting addition to this story of perspectives.  He is obsessed with colors; they trigger the deep memories he carries of all the horror humans have inflicted upon each other.  His ideas are largely questions and observations, thoughts he is playing with as he tries to make sense of the world he watches over.  And his interest in this one person, this book thief, brings a powerful serenity to the idea of death, even as Death watches Liesel's world self-destruct under World War II.

As he says at the end, Death is haunted by humans.

Perhaps I will enjoy the movie more than the book.  That's not a common occurrence for me, but a lot of people around me want to see the movie, so perhaps I will tag along.  If the movie-makers can translate the depth of the characters to the screen, if it can include the power of Death and his narration, then it will be a success.

The Magicians

I both liked and disliked The Magicians. Some elements, like the plot and the magic and the setting, I loved, while other elements, most significantly the characters, I almost hated.  Frankly, I am thoroughly confused by my reaction to this novel, and by how my reaction changes as time passes, so I will attempt to figure things out as I go.

The start of the book has an almost Harry Potter-esque feel to it: a kid, dissatisfied with his own life, finds his way into a magical academy where his hopes for a better life can come true.  However, that's about all the two have in common, and that I am thankful for. (Don't get me wrong -- I like HP just fine. I just don't want to see it re-done.)

Quentin Coldwater is an unhappy teenager -- he wants something better out of life, something more like his favorite fantasy land, Fillory.  When he stumbles onto Brakebills Academy, a magical college for talented students, he is overjoyed: not only is magic real, but he has the opportunity to study it!  The problem is that Quentin is not a particularly happy or optimistic person; instead, he's whiny, self-centered, and only occasionally pleasant.  Overall, he is not a fun character to follow through a novel, and that's where my issues with this book begin.

In addition to this character being unpleasant, the magic in the book is startlingly real.  It takes hard work, and lots of it to master the magic of this novel.  The spells are complex, each needs special meteorological and geographic circumstances along with complicated  incantations and hand motions to work, there are about a million rules and exceptions and edicts to check, and on top of that, it doesn't always work.  And to tell the truth: I love it.  This makes the magic seem so real, if that makes any sense.  The Magicians makes magic a skill, not a talent, and like all skills it must be practiced and cultivated before it's any good.  It's awesome.

Quentin does not agree.

Quentin wants life to be easy. Quentin wants magic to be magic, not work. And Quentin wants to be happy.  The problem for him is that happiness is his goal, and it eludes him the more he focuses on it.  First, he thinks studying magic will make him happy.  It's such a huge change from his average high school life before Brakebills that it must be able to make him happy.  And it works -- for a little while.  After a year or two, that happiness fades, so Quentin gets involved with his friend Alice. At first, they make a great couple, and for a while Quentin is indeed happy.  But eventually that fades too.  Quentin is desperately waiting for Alice to make him happy, rather than putting any effort into making himself happy.  Instead, it's her job.  She even calls him on it at one point, saying that she can't be responsible for his happiness.  When he finally discovers that Fillory is real, he wants to escape, to explore and never have any responsibilities and finally be happy. It never works.  The cycle repeats over and over, and never once does he stay happy.

Happiness is Quentin's goal, just as it is the goal of so many Americans.  But the problem with happiness as a goal is that it is ultimately unattainable.  Sure, you can try to be happy, but if that's the only reason you're doing something, then it won't work for long.  Happiness is a byproduct of living your life -- if you do things you enjoy, if you associate with people who boost you up, if you find a job or a hobby that energizes you, you will end up happy because your choices make you happy.  And on top of that, you can simply choose to be happy -- that may be most telling: when you can choose to be happy in the face of adversity, then perhaps you are truly happy.  Quentin doesn't realize what a lot of other people don't realize: Life sucks sometimes, and the only way around it is to make the choice to be happy in spite of it.

My life isn't perfect, just like everyone else.  I am fortunate: I have a wonderful husband, a job that I enjoy, and a warm house with plenty of food and Internet access.  Supposedly, under the American Dream point of view, these things should make me happy.  Fine.  There are sucky things about my life too: my family is a little crazy, my job is incredibly stressful, and sometimes our budget runs out before the end of the month. It happens, and by the American Dream point of view, these things should make me unhappy.

But they balance each other out, in terms of my happiness, leaving me in neutral territory. From my perspective, I create my happiness. I am responsible for my own happiness. Sure, the choices I make influence that happiness, but ultimately it is up to me.  I choose to be happy every day, despite whatever setbacks I experience. Living my life makes me happy; the ability to make choices, to control my own destiny, to fill my life with both extraordinary and mundane adventures, makes me happy.

No one in my life is responsible for my happiness, a mistake that Quentin makes, a mistake that is made by so many people.  American culture is designed to spend time intent on happiness as a goal: I will do X, Y, and Z so I can be happy all the time.  But in doing that, people forget to live their lives.  Happiness is the lucky byproduct of how we conduct ourselves in our lives; the choice to be happy is the most crucial choice there is.

The misconception that happiness means being happy all the time, that being happy means there are no highs and lows, leads to some major problems within American culture.  There are so many issues that relate on some level -- divorces, drinking issues, social media's influence, etc -- that I don't want to talk about, nor do  I have the expertise to discuss.  But there are so many smaller issues that are just as important, issues like the mental health struggles that so many Americans deal with and the plagues of boredom, over-medication, unhappiness, and therapy that pervade our culture.

The article "How to Land Your Kids in Therapy" by psychologist Lori Gottlieb explains this phenomenon far better than I ever could, but her main point revolves around the plague of unhappiness that faces America.  A fellow teacher handed me this article as a resource for teaching an essay style, and it's become an article that my students and I discuss in depth; they are largely the youth that the article discusses, those kids who grow up with everything and so feel vaguely, uncertainly, unhappy in their adult lives.  This discussion often becomes something akin to therapy session with my students, one that I am happy to facilitate in an effort to show them the choice to be happy.  It is also an article that just happens to agree with my worldview, which of course inherently boosts my admiration for it. I would encourage everyone to read it (in fact I often offer it out to parents and other adults I encounter who complain about the up-and-coming generation of kids I am teaching); let it be said that the psychology of this article not only explains these kids, but also adds a layer of depth to the character of Quentin Coldwater, depth that his spoiled, unhappy personality is currently lacking.

In a way, I think this obsession with happiness that Quentin struggles with feeds into a lot of his behavior.  Within the novel, he and his friends seem to spend essentially all their time drinking; there is little time set aside for actual conversation or connection (other than sexual ones).  It's not casual, enjoying a beer, drinking -- it's hardcore, drinking to get drunk, binge drinking.  Quentin never wants to deal with his life, even when he's so close to being happy with Alice.  Instead, he drinks, and drinks a lot -- he celebrates with booze, he commiserates with booze, and so on.

I haven't done the necessary research, so I can only speculate. But I wonder if that same thing happens in American culture today.  Binge drinking remains a massive problem for high school and college age students today, and while I understand that part of this stems from kids trying to get as much alcohol into them as fast as possible, I wonder how much of it goes deeper than that.  How many people out of all the people out there who drink a lot, are drinking to deal with some other problem? Even a minor one? I don't have an answer, but I'm curious about it.  

I realize I'm making it sound like this book is all bad and that Quentin never studies or works hard or does anything at all, and that's not true.  Remember back at the beginning: I actually like this novel.  The more I think about this novel, the more depth I find it in and the more I like it.  But there are so many issues here that I feel like I can't ignore and I'm enjoying myself writing about this book.

So I'm going to make a hard left and go back into the book.

I've noticed an odd pattern in novels and romantic comedies: A couple is unhappy.  Rather than admitting it and breaking up, somebody cheats.  This naturally upsets the other partner, who then cheats with someone else to get back at the first partner. Once they both figure out what's happened, the duality brings them back together -- they still love each other! -- and they can then work out their issues -- as if this has somehow made the cheating better.  Have another pina colada, as the song says.

Speaking as someone who has never cheated nor been cheated on, I have no idea if this actually plays out in such a way in real life.  I imagine it does -- that urge for revenge always seems to come up when someone wrongs you, and anger doesn't mix well with quality thinking. So the idea of cheating to get back at a cheater makes perfect sense, as does the idea of unity through shame when both partners feel shitty about what they did. That emotional combination plays out in so much of human activity that I have no doubt that it extends to sexual escapades.

But there are still confusing elements to it.  That emotional mix-up can only happen if two people still actually care about each other, like Quentin and Alice. They love each other, but they have trouble dealing with each other -- so to manage it, instead of talking, they just fuck other people.  If they actually hated each other, they'd just break up, or cheat and never once feel bad (or kill each other, if CSI is to be believed).  I also wonder if this phenomenon works primarily when the original cheater did so "accidentally," again like Quentin -- he wasn't intending to sleep with Janet, he just does out of opportunity and alcohol.  He kind of has an excuse, though not a good one.  (This does make me think of The Big Bang Theory though: "The implication being that you somehow slipped and fell into her lady parts?" as Sheldon would say. It's an accident, but a wildly avoidable one.) But he still cares about Alice, and she obviously cares about him or she wouldn't try to get back at him by sleeping with Penny.

Hm.  I'm not sure how much sense that made.

There is a sequel to The Magicians -- it's called The Magician King, and from what I can tell it picks up right where the first book leaves off.  I'm not sure yet if I'm going to read it.  I liked The Magicians, but I also kind of really disliked it.  And (SPOILER!) Grossman killed off my favorite character, so I'm not honestly sure I want to read a story without that person.  Oddly enough though, I hear that the second book is quite a bit better than the first, so perhaps I will suck it up and go read it after all.

World War Z

World War Z is a scary book.  I am honestly a little terrified by the potential for a future like the one in this novel.

First and foremost: the novel is absolutely, horrifically nightmare-inducing.  I couldn't read it within an hour or two of going to bed because I was too scared of what my dreams might turn into; I already have a vivid imagination, so I didn't need whatever severed limbs and still-hungry torsos that had been crawling around the novel coming after me in my sleep, thank you. I have to say that I did love that sensation though.  It's been a long time since I read a good, scary novel that made me afraid to close my eyes.

Along those lines, I do want to see the movie.  I'm sure it'll be terrifying -- I plan to watch it in my living room, in the middle of a sunny afternoon, possibly with a blanket over my face.  But I do still want to watch it.  I had to read the book first, of course, and now I've heard that the people who made the movie kinda went, "the hell with the book!" and did whatever they wanted -- hence the fast zombies and the storyline and all that new stuff.  I'm sure it's rated R, and it's probably supposed to be the highest R rating there can be before it goes over; the violence is unbelievable and never-ending, the gore is insane, and like I said before, the terror level is sheer nightmare fodder.  But still. I want to see the movie.

As a fan of zombie-horror, I love that Max Brooks doesn't even try to explain the science behind his zombies.  He of course takes the subject extremely seriously (more on that later), but he never once goes into the question of how, exactly, the zombies came back to life and remained functional and all those other poorly answered questions that pervade zombie lore.  Instead, he just ignores it -- which makes everything fantastically simple.  So much of what bogs down zombie movies and books is the science of what happened: it's really a rage virus that keeps their adrenaline pumping which keeps their legs moving, or as long as they still have a brain stem, the electrical charge keeps their muscles moving and their senses looking for brains, or some other theory that falls apart at the slightest, often non-scientific probing that even an English major like me can offer.

I get it. There are lots of possibilities -- 28 Days Later has zombies who can run; Left for Dead has zombies that puke (Boomers), zombies with super long tongues (Smokers), ambush zombies (Hunters), etc.; Resident Evil has the rage virus (at least at the beginning). I don't need yet another one, and thankfully Brooks didn't seem interested in providing one. Instead, he just ignores it, doesn't even gloss over it with any kind of "no one knows" speculation, nothing. It's as if none of the characters in his novel ever gave it a second thought -- which makes sense, given how fast the epidemic spread and how all-consuming it was. I should note that my husband, a zombie aficionado, was absolutely thrilled to hear that this novel didn't even try to explain it; apparently even super-nerds get sick of all the possibilities and bogus science.

However, despite my admiration of Brooks' handling of the science, I did find his attitude toward the topic itself a little strange.  And here's why: Brooks treats this novel and its events as if they are 100% true, as if this is guaranteed to be the future of our world.

I realize this is an odd complaint -- the novel is fiction, of course, and all good novels treat their topics as real because otherwise the story just won't work.  But there is something about the tone of this book, something so serious and real and terrifying that I just have to point it out.  There is not a shred of information to suggest that this story is made up, and frankly, if you didn't know better, you might actually think it could be true.  (Brooks' other book, The Zombie Survival Guide, is just like this as well -- complete with multiple accounts of zombie attacks throughout history.) I find myself wondering what inspires that kind of attitude toward your work -- is this Brooks' desire to make this story feel real? Is he trying to build hype? I have no idea, but I find it both awesome and unsettling.

This novel also highlights how Americans are viewed worldwide, a perspective I both enjoyed and found extremely disheartening.  Since the novel is a conglomeration of stories from people around the world, there are many stories that aren't from an American perspective; in fact, the majority are not.  This style makes the most sense for this story: we as readers get a truly global perspective about what was happening at the same time around the world.  And since it recounts a worldwide epidemic that affected parts of the globe very differently, the style brings the novel to life much more effectively than any other narration style could.  A doctor recounts his experiences with Patient Zero. A government official describes the only plan that works to keep zombies out of his country. A soldier relives how she escaped from the Louisiana bayou. A woman tells of her harrowing escape through an about-to-be-blown-up Himalayan mountain pass.  And there are dozens more -- some storytellers repeat, some are one-time additions to the tale.

Yet almost every time someone else talks about Americans, they are described as cocky, rude, high-minded, jingoistic assholes.  Frankly, this bothers me. I mean, I get it: the worldwide opinion of Americans is not necessarily high and it varies a lot depending on where in the world one goes.  Americans are not good at censoring themselves, nor are they good at being humble about their own or their country's accomplishments.  But the way we come across is in the novel is so horrific, so rude and "boy we rock, everyone else sucks," so self-obsessed, that I had to step back to say to myself, "my god, is THIS how we actually come across??"  I was horrified.

By the end of the novel, this attitude has changed a little -- for example, the American president is the first government official to suggest going on the offensive against the zombies to take back his country, a move that is heralded by others in the novel as bold and incredibly dangerous but not as stupid.  For the first time in the novel, others recognize the guts of the Americans, a quality that has been admirable since day one. So it's not all bad, but it does leave me concerned: is this the legacy that current American culture and politics are leaving the future?

All the stills from this movie are really cool -- I like the posters and the moments captured as advertisements for the film. It seems accurate to what was happening in my mind, even though I know the movie isn't even close to the book. 

I hope it is not.  I hope the true legacy America is leaving behind is one of a willingness to help others, a force for good in the world, an attempt at making our earth a better place than before.  But I don't know.  There is so much going on in the world, and so many different perspectives, that I don't think we'll ever had a true answer to that question, or at least not a truly unbiased answer.

All I can do is work toward leaving behind my own positive legacy, one that is worthy of my being lucky enough to be born an American, with all the opportunities and privileges and responsibilities that come along with it. Other than that, I don't have much influence over the legacy of America as a whole.

I'll update with a less sappy end to this post once I see the movie :)

The Fault in Our Stars

This may be the only novel I've ever read where one of the main characters die and the story still has a truly happy ending. Sure, there are novels where someone dies and there is still a happy element to the end of the story, but nothing like this.

I must say this first, however:

There is simply no way to talk about a novel like The Fault in Our Stars, where all of the main characters have cancer and are dying, even slowly, without giving something away (even accidentally).  Since I had never read a John Green novel before this one, and since I had only heard great things about his work, I really wanted to read this book.  If you are at all like me, if you are interested in reading his work, don't read this post.  There is so much depth to this novel and I really don't want to spoil the surprise unless you already know it.

What immediately popped into my head as I wrote that last paragraph was this: If I really don't want to spoil this book, and I really don't, then why am I going to?  It's a tough question to answer, especially since there is so much about this book I'm not sure I can articulate. But I want to write about it.  I want to dig into its depths and examine the life force I find within its pages, a force that sinks into my core and pulls at my heart.
So if you as a reader don't want things spoiled, stop now.

I'm a high school teacher.  I deal with teenagers all day long.  And in doing do, I hear far more about their lives than I ever wanted to know. I listen to stories about new boyfriends and girlfriends, I occasionally evaluate prom plans, I comfort during breakups, and I accidentally overhear the gross, non-school-appropriate stories that I desperately wish I could un-hear.  (From what my friends tell me, this is normal for teachers to witness, gross or otherwise.)

What I've learned from all these conversations is this: for the most part, teenagers don't have a great handle on love. Occasionally they might -- my brother and I are both married to our high school sweethearts, my in-laws are high school sweethearts too (and they've been married for 35+ years!) -- so I do know it's possible for teenagers in love to work things out well.  But the vast majority of teenage romances won't -- and don't -- make it. They can't: they're teenagers. Their emotions aren't mature enough, their hormones are overactive, and their brains have not yet fully developed the capacity for good judgment and risk analysis. (I'm not saying that I am any better (or that my brother is, or my in-laws are); I'm not. Something about the way my husband and I grew up together worked. I suspect it was more chance and our joint capacity to forgive f*ck-ups than any sort of actual maturity on our part at the time. But that's beside my point.)

I cannot claim ownership of this image; I merely supplanted it from a Google Image Search. I would insert an owner if I could, as this is a perfect imagining of one of the main characters of this novel (combined with a quote) and I am quite jealous of his/her artistic abilities.

The diversion from this teenage inability to deal with love is what stands out about The Fault in Our Stars.  The two many characters, Hazel and Augustus, know they are doomed. They know, going in, that there is no hope, that there is no happy ending for the two of them where their cancers miraculously heal and they get to grow old together. Instead, they face cancer and pain and the kind of death that few should have to face, let alone a teenager. And despite all of this, they do experience love, love that is recognizable to those of us who have grown beyond teenage lust and infatuation and toward the maturity that is required for real love. It makes this novel amazing.

I was suspicious when the love story of the novel started to develop.  After all, the novel has an adult author; there is always the possibility that Green is projecting a level of maturity to his teen characters.  But the story, the characters, they all feel so real that I had no choice but to look past that.

Hazel and Augustus, as you have likely already gathered, are two teenagers whose lives have been 'touched' by cancer. Augustus is currently cancer-free, though minus a leg, and Hazel has a dangerous, spreading form of cancer held at bay by an imaginary drug described by John Green in the afterword as "one that doesn't exist, but he wishes it did" (I'm paraphrasing).  They meet at a support group and quickly bond over a favorite novel, and soon their lives mesh together, two kids who are trying to navigate lives filled with disease and exploration and love
.

Like any other couple, Hazel and Augustus plan their lives together -- they discuss their futures, they talk about their dreams and careers, they go on a trip to chase down their favorite author.  Unlike any other young couple, they discuss their funerals, what they want said in their eulogies, what they want done with their bodies.  They don't shy away from the painful topics (topics that sometimes even veteran couples haven't discussed), instead accepting them as inevitable and too-close-for-comfort.  The complication comes when Augustus' cancer returns, a surprise that I saw hinted at but didn't want to admit was coming. As Hazel watches him die -- a fate she knows she too can expect -- she reflects on how unfair it is that their stars are so faulted: that a love like theirs must be cut short. There's nothing cliche about this moment; there's no hint of a whiny teenager bitching about how life isn't fair. Instead, there is mourning, mourning for a happiness that must be tempered by death.

 John Green's ability to look that roadblock in the face and keep writing elevates this novel to the level of Young Adult Classic, in my opinion.

And as I said at the beginning of this post, this remains one of the only novels where a main character dies and there is still a happy ending.  As Augustus dies, a part of Hazel dies with him, even as her own cancer remains in stasis. And incredibly, she misses the moment of his passing, a choice on Green's part that I did not expect. I expected a beautiful bedside moment between the two of them, but like I said, there is nothing cliche about this novel.

Again, I can't take credit for it, but it's a beautiful image of Hazel and Augustus.

After the funeral, Hazel gets a letter from the author she and Augustus visited. Augustus has written to him, asking him to write Hazel the eulogy she deserved and that Augustus felt he could not deliver.  The author, however, felt that Augustus's letter to him would be the perfect eulogy and thus sends it to Hazel.

I think I could probably find the entire letter online somewhere, but I don't want to ruin that too -- it's a beautiful way to end the novel. But what stands out the most to me is this quote from Augustus (post-posthumously) to Hazel:

He ends his letter with this quote, saying that he is okay with giving Hazel the chance to hurt him. The letter then says that he hopes that Hazel is okay with who she's let hurt her, the primary suspect of course being him.  Hazel responds with the last lines of the novel: "I do, Augustus. I do."

There words of course bring to mind the language of marriage, that culmination of love, an experience that they have been denied.  My impression is one of happiness despite the obstacle of death: the language is deeply joyful and mourning.  I am left thinking of Hazel as being happy with the chance she and Augustus had to be together, grateful for what they got.  Their love felt so real, and her struggle to reconcile with what happened seems so real, and yet I overwhelmingly see how grateful she is for her experiences.  The extension of love beyond death is a powerful, amazing possibility.

The class I took last summer (where I first read this novel), suggested a deeper potential in leaving the novel at this moment: this letter may be Hazel's actual eulogy. Perhaps, my classmates suggested, she too has lost her battle with cancer. I see this possibility, but honestly I think that minimizes the emotions that Hazel experiences.  Hazel offers so much for all audiences, for anyone who believes in love, that I have to believe she is still alive at the end to keep that message going.  I was left thinking she is alive but happy with her choices, happy even when knowing that she is next to pass, happy because she understands what her stars have offered her.

Fun Home

Sometimes you have to explain why you don't like something, whether someone else is questioning you or not. That's how I feel about Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, a graphic novel chronicling she and her father's tumultuous relationship and how she put his life back together after his death.  A description like that doesn't sound unique, doesn't sound worthy of being dissected, and I'm not totally sure that it is. However, what is unique about Bechdel's story is that both she and her father are gay -- he secretly harbored the secret for years, while she came out to her family when she was roughly 19.  They never have anything really like a falling out, nor do they have something as major as a reconciliation; instead, their quiet conflict pervades much of Bechdel's life, and her memories of her father reflect on the odd legacy he left behind.

The graphic novel set-up, which took Bechdel over 8 years to create (watch an interview about her process here), intermingles classic literature with Bechdel's story, a style that makes sense in the context of her life and relationships.  Her father was an English teacher, and she an avid English student; the inclusion of the stories of Daedalus and Icarus, along with multiple references to the works of James Joyce, serve to create a massive metaphor that extends throughout the entire novel.  Daedalus is the Cretan inventor who constructed the Minoan labyrinth, the home of the Minotaur; he was later imprisoned by the King of Minos to keep the secrets of the labyrinth safe.  Daedalus then built two sets of wings for himself and his son, Icarus, so they could escape.  The wings were sealed with wax, which meant that both father and son had to fly steady and even to keep the sun from melting the way or the waves of the ocean from destroying the feathers. Icarus, however, got cocky, flew too high, and the wax melted -- Icarus plummeted to his death.  Eventually, James Joyce came around and, inspired by this tale, named his main character in both Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses Stephen Daedalus, drawing a not-so-subtle parallel between the genius of the inventor and the genius of Joyce's autobiographical character.

However, the graphic novel's comparisons sometimes seem forced.  Bechdel will occasionally use page after page of explanation in order to get this metaphor to make sense, and even then it still might not make sense.  At various points in the novel, both she and her father are supposed to be both Daedalus and Icarus -- if that's not a strained comparison, I'm not sure what is.  I get her point: both she and her father are human, they both have flaws, and they both have reached high for their arts and suffered setbacks.  But the method she employs to bring this metaphor to life takes too much effort to put back together.  It fits what she wants, I supposed, but it doesn't read well.

The only time it makes any sense (any easy sense, perhaps) is on the last page of the novel.

So, potential 

It's not much of a spoiler, since I'm not going to explain how the novel gets to its ending, but still: just in case.

The last page talks about how when Alison Bechdel really needed her father to be there, he was -- the line is something like "he was there to catch me when I flew," but I don't have the book in front of me as I write.  Here, the comparisons between Daedalus and Icarus make sense -- Bechdel is both in that she is ambitious and she is trying, and she is Icarus in that she is overly confident in where she's going when in reality she has no idea what will happen.  Her father is Icarus in that he is disconnected, he is pushing the limits of his life too far, and he is cruel in his own way, and he is Daedalus in that he is there for her without meaning to be, he is smart and clever and inventive and hiding, and he is her father.  He let her explore but stayed her protector, and he improves on Daedalus in that he stays to catch her instead of letting her fall.  Here, once, the metaphor makes perfect, unadulterated sense.  Too bad it's on the very last page.

It just doesn't make sense in the context of the rest of the graphic novel. Hm...

What I do find interesting about this extension of the metaphor is its implication of a positive relationship between Bechdel and her father.  As the image above suggests, they have a rather difficult relationship -- he wants her to be something she's not, while she expects emotions and connections from him that aren't there.  Frankly, the complaint that her father is distant most of the time and has trouble being a parent is common  considering the time period of the mid to late 70s.  And in addition, her dad obviously has quite a few personal issues -- he is a struggling closeted homosexual and possibly a criminal, as there are hints at his relationships with teens and students in his classes, among other more minor offences.

Their relationship seems somewhat abusive at times, as her father is a tough parent with high behavior and aesthetic standards.  The family as a whole is somewhat disjointed, each in their own little space, which adds to the distant feelings the novel generates. Bechdel herself deals with a lot of issues within the novel, a lot of issues that most of the time don't seem to have anything to do with her father.  She spends time discussing getting her period and her college experiences, how she figured out she was a lesbian, how she conquered her OCD.  And none of these seem to have any real connection with her father -- both on the page as Bechdel presents them and as I try to draw inferences as I read the book.

So overall, I just don't understand why Bechdel wrote this novel. It's fragmented -- it's about memory, not about creating a cohesive story, which is unusual as a writing style but not unusual as a thought style. In fact, that's how much of human thought is: fragmented, pulling up memories as they connect to current experiences.  So I understand how the events of the novel are put together, I just don't understand why.  Bechdel admits in the book that she doesn't experience much grief over her father's death, which would be my first thought for motivation in writing it.  I know that many nonfiction pieces don't have overarching themes or messages -- part of reporting life as it happens instead of artificially infusing it with meaning -- but there is still a reason for something to be written.  She could be writing to find closure; she struggles with the possibility that her father might have committed suicide, as in the prevailing opinion of most of her family. But I have to say, there are journals for those types of struggles, and I would imagine there is little reason for that to be made public.

Ultimately, the best idea I can come up with is that she's writing to make sense of a life in which a major player dies, to make sense of her life in relation to her father's death. Maybe there isn't something important Bechdel is trying to do here, maybe she's just documenting the overlap of two confused, struggling lives.

Perhaps I need to read it again.  Or save it and read it again someday far in the future after my own father dies (though he is neither homosexual nor distant, so there won't be a ton of similarity). Or maybe I just don't like this book.

Push

This book is hard to come away from unaffected.  Truly.  The various elements wash over each other and weave together to create a poverty-stricken, illiterate experience that is overwhelming.

Opening this book and diving in is a challenge in itself.  Since Clareece "Precious" Jones is illiterate (at the beginning of the book, she reads well below a 2nd grade level, despite being 16 and in 8th grade), her language reflects her abilities -- a written style that is largely phonetic, misspelled, and difficult to get used to.

Keep going. Once the language starts to make sense, the story unfolds quickly and clearly.  In some ways, the language resembles that of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, a style that is challenging but after about 30 pages fully understandable (and by the end, you too are using that language).  That kind of power with language is impressive.

Precious is a young teenage mother: she has one child, a mentally challenged girl, and is pregnant with her son at the beginning of the novel.  Expelled from school but driven, Precious enrolls herself in an alternative school in order to earn her GED. This public life is complicated enough, yet Precious's personal life is in utter turmoil.  She lives with her mother, a cruel woman who claims that Previous "stole" her man -- Precious's father, who is also disgustingly the father of both of Precious's children.

This relationship makes up one huge part of what makes this novel so controversial.  Precious is the product of an extramarital affair on the part of her father, who began abusing her when she was a very young child.  When she was 12, her own father impregnated her for the first time -- a mix of genes that created a child that Precious names Little Mongo after her Mongoloid appearance, a description of the facial features of those with Down Syndrome that Precious hears in the hospital.  Her second pregnancy is also via her father, a fact that somehow infuriates her mother because her father wants to have sex with Precious instead of with her.  The level of confusion and disgust rose continually for me as I put this all together; I can't imagine parents behaving in that kind of way or a child who seems to believe that this life is normal. And Precious never seems to fight back, as though she has accepted this treatment. That idea is absolutely repulsive, and really it is the only thing that seems to contradict both the overall theme of the novel and the personal motivation of Precious herself: Push.

The title of the novel emphasizes the overall message: Push. Keep going. Don't give up.
Precious hears this message over and over, and never in a place one might expect. The best example is when she gives birth to her daughter on the kitchen floor: The paramedic who responds tells her to push, a command meant to help her focus to have her baby. But the message resonates throughout the book. Precious thinks back to that moment often, thinking about how she has to push to keep going, to be educated, to raise her son, to move beyond her life's limitations and do something great.

And pushing is all Precious can do. Her principal expels her early in the novel, ostensibly for falling behind and causing trouble but really for the example she sets by being 16, in 8th grade, and pregnant for the second time.  But she pushes, an ability I find admirable.  I can't imagine the type of person that principal must be to expel a child who so clearly needs help, and as an educator the potential outcome is horrifying. There is so much education can do for someone, and so little that a lack of education does.  But Precious realizes that power -- she articulates her desire for an education and acts on it when she enrolls herself in a new school.  She pushes on, making progress toward changing her life, and that growths comes through clearly as her writing abilities improve and the language becomes more readable.

Sometimes I wish I could find an effective way to teach my students this message about education. It takes more than just someone saying it for teenagers to believe it though; I know, I say it all the time.  Statistics don't help either; there are piles of them out there about how education affects happiness, health, earning power, and more.  But students want something real to tie education and success together, something that overpowers the one-in-a-million chance that, without college, someone can still become Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, a chance many cling to as a reason to avoid school and hope for the best. No doubt, some of them can do it, but not all. I want them to see that, I want them to take the chance education offers for success and a better future. Sadly, I don't think we could read this book in class, but I am hopeful for something similar someday. This book would just be so perfect! The message is so clear, but not overpowering, not fake -- not something that kids would disregard as BS.

Even though the absurdity of the violence, rapes, etc., is anathema to administrators and parents, I think it would help students feel involved and feel the message.  There is so much going on for Precious, so much that connects to students lives.  There are obviously some extremes in this book, but based on the popularity of so many depressing novels (see: Oprah's old Book Club list. Almost every book on that list is super depressing, yet they were are hugely popular at one time or another.) in America today, depressing content pulls on people.. I realize that some students, like mine who are largely privileged, may find this book too much, may find the content too far removed from their realm of understanding. But the pull that others' misfortune holds in our society, coupled with the deep sense of hope that infuses the novel, could pull students in and open up conversations that I can only imagine.  Something about hope, in almost any form, gets readers involved, something my students are not immune to and something I would happily utilize to have these kinds of discussions in my classroom.

Hope does so much for Precious's life, and yet author Sapphire wrote this poor girl no future. There is a twist to this novel, a twist I won't give away, but suffice it to say that Precious had suffered enough before this last blow.  But her ability to overcome continues to amaze.  I'm not sure why the author gave Precious yet another obstacle, but I suspect she did it in order to highlight the mental and emotional strength of her main character.  

Ultimately, the novel is incredibly depressing..   But even so, it is incredibly hard to put down -- I steamrolled through it in about 3-4 hours in one afternoon. I really do not want to see the movie; I'm not sure I can watch that kind of suffering.  Playing it out in my head was bad enough.  Despite this, I think it likely that someday I will see the movie. The actress who plays Precious, Gabourey Sidibe, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress, an accomplishment all on its own.  That ability tells me the movie is strong, as the novel was carried so much by Precious that the movie must be too.

This novel has a future, and I don't mean its sequel. The overlay of hope is powerful.  This novel resonates with me, helps me understand the plight of the impoverished and illiterate in our country, and makes me want to do something better. I'm already a teacher, so I guess that's a start. A small one, but a start nonetheless.