Grant’s second novel, The Glass Demon, is equally teen-friendly and, like the first, is set in Germany. It too involves deaths and more than a whiff of the supernatural, this time involving something called Bonschariant, a demon that haunts glass. It’s enough to make you throw away your mirrors!
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Gruen, Sara. Algonquin, 2006. ISBN: 1565124995. ROM, HIST, ALEX
Told by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, this novel of reminiscence is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s when Jacob, a young almost-veterinarian (he has been forced by the accidental death of his parents to abandon his studies less than a year shy of his degree), joins the circus, specifically the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. There he is charged with caring for the menagerie of the shabby traveling circus, which includes an elephant named Rosie that Jacob comes to love. He also falls in love with the circus’s equestrienne, a beautiful young woman named Marlena. Unfortunately she is married to the circus boss, the sometimes sadistic August, who has been known to mercilessly beat Rosie and also Marlena when he is in his cups (which is often). While the romance will capture the reader’s attention, it is the careful reconstruction and evocation of circus life in the ’30s that is the novel’s most distinguishing and memorable feature.
WHAT GIRLS LEARN
Cook, Karin. Pantheon, 1997. ISBN: 0679448284. GF, ALEX
Published in 1997 and named an Alex Award winner for 1999, Cook’s first novel is the poignant story of two sisters, Tilden (the narrator) and Elizabeth. Their romantic mother Frances, a divorcée, moves with her daughters from their home in Atlanta to New York, where she meets Nick, falls in love, and marries him. The girls, naturally, feel uprooted. The relationship between the two sisters becomes edgier as Elizabeth, the younger and more vivacious sister, fits into her new environment quickly while Tilden remains an outsider. As Tilden turns 13 and Elizabeth 12, sex becomes a disconcerting issue for them. But there’s worse to come: Frances discovers a lump in her breast, and life becomes more than an exercise in fitting in—it becomes a study in survival. This is a quintessential crossover novel that could have easily been published as YA, though adults have certainly found as much to like here as teens. Cook, a graduate of Vassar College and New York University’s Creative Writing Program, currently works as the development officer of the Door, a multiservice youth center.
WHAT I WAS
Rosoff, Meg. Viking, 2008. ISBN: 9780670018444. HIST, LOI
The first two novels of author Rosoff, an American living in England, were published for teenagers rather than for adults. Indeed, one of them, How I Live Now, won the Printz Award. But this novel, her third, was published in England first, then brought over here and published as an adult book. Why? The cynical answer would be that someone at Rosoff’s publishing house decided the book would be more profitable if it were published on the adult side. The more charitable answer is that the frame story—a 100-year-old man’s reminiscences—along with the novel’s sedate pace and fairly cerebral tone would not attract young adult readers. I would argue that despite the narrator’s age, the novel will be of interest to YAs, since its focus is the man’s boarding school years, when he meets another boy named Finn while running on the beach. He and Finn, a solitary boy living in a rude hut on the shore, become best friends and perhaps more. Readers of this luminous fiction will decide for themselves.
WHEN THE EMPEROR WAS DIVINE
Otsuka, Julie. Knopf, 2002. ISBN: 0375414290. HIST, LOI, ALEX
Set during World War II, this universally praised first novel tells the sad story of a Japanese American family who—following the arrest of the father for alleged conspiracy—are taken from their Berkeley, California, home to an internment camp, where they are forced to spend the next three years in deplorable conditions. The story continues when the family returns to Berkeley to find their home trashed by vandals and a climate of continuing prejudice and racial hatred there. Otsuka tells the story from the shifting points of view of each member of the family—mother, 11-year-old daughter, 8-year-old son, and father—in quiet, understated prose that is made only more powerful by its subtlety. Though small in size, the book contains large truths that young adults need to know. Readers of this novel will also want to read Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars.
WHEN WE GET THERE
Seliy, Shauna. Bloomsbury, 2007. ISBN: 9781596913509. GF, LOI
Thirteen-year-old Lucas’s mother has vanished in the wake of the death of her coal miner husband in an underground explosion. She has left the boy in the care of his grandmother, Slats, with the stern admonition that he is not to go in search of her. Of course, he immediately does and quickly learns that he is not the only one who is searching: a possibly deranged local man, Zoli, is also looking. What to make of this? And what has happened to Lucas’s mother? And will the boy realize his late father’s dream of finding, in the Allegheny Forest, a place called Heart’s Content? There will be answers to these questions and the search for them is certainly compelling, but what really distinguishes this first novel is its beautifully realized setting—the western Pennsylvania coal country—and Lucas’s huge extended family of Russian, Croatian, and Hungarian extraction. In my starred Booklist review of this novel I wrote, “The word ‘lovely’ might well have been coined for the express purpose of describing the sensibility that informs this splendid first novel.” That was written in 2007, and it remains as true today as it was then. An unforgettable, heart-touching novel.
WHEN WE WERE ROMANS
Kneale, Matthew. Doubleday/Talese, 2008. ISBN: 9780385526258. GF
Told in the voice of 9-year-old Lawrence (complete with misspellings and grammatical and syntactical quirks), this is the haunting story of how the boy’s mother takes him and his younger sister, Jemima, on a trip to Rome, where she had lived years before and where she hopes old friends will give them a temporary home. The catalyst for this hasty and ill-planned trip is the mother’s paranoid fear that her ex-husband will harm her and her family. Lawrence knows that sometimes his mum gets “stuck,” as he puts it, and it’s up to him to give her a little push to bring her back to normal. Sadly, “normal” becomes less and less a part of their lives. Though Lawrence doesn’t realize it, older readers will understand his mother is mentally ill (she’s probably a paranoid schizophrenic). Kneale, a winner of England’s prestigious Whitbread Prize for his previous novel English Passengers (which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize), once again demonstrates his singular skills in this new novel as he invests Lawrence’s innocent perspective with symbolic underpinnings in the form of the boy’s fascination with the insane Roman emperors Nero and Caligula. This is a sad but brilliantly conceived and written novel that deserves a wide readership.
WICKED
Maguire, Gregory. HarperCollins, 1995. ISBN: 0060391448. SPEC
Maguire’s wickedly clever reimagining of The Wizard of Oz has become virtually a household name thanks to the enormous success of the Broadway musical that is based upon it. With or without the musical accompaniment, however, Wicked the novel stands tall and proud on its own merits. In Ma-guire’s revisionist version of the classic Baum tale, it is not Dorothy Gale of Kansas who is the protagonist but, rather, the Wicked Witch of the West, whom the author dubs Elphaba. Born with emerald green skin and unusual teeth, Elphaba grows up an outsider, goes off to college—where she rooms with a dippy socialite named Glinda—and ultimately becomes an animal rights activist in a Land of Oz that is ruled by a dictator Wizard who has made the kingdom more dystopia than fairyland. As if that’s not enough, Dorothy doesn’t enter the picture until very near the end of the book. Take that, Baum purists! Maguire has subsequently written three other volumes to complete his Oz cycle: Son of a Witch, A Lion among Men, and Out of Oz.
WINTER’S BONE
Woodrell, Daniel. Little, Brown, 2006. ISBN: 031605755X. GF
Sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly’s good-for-nothing, drug-making (call it “crank cooking”) father has jumped bail, and if Ree can’t find him and bring him back within a week, she will lose the family house and she, her two younger brothers, and their mentally ill mother will be out on the street. Of course, finding him is easier said than done, since turning to the family for help is not only frustrating but downright dangerous, for these are Ozark Mountain people who don’t welcome visitors, not even if they’re kin. “Talkin’ causes witnesses,” they say tersely. Fans of Southern gothic fiction will embrace this wonderful but occasionally bleak novel, which—at its best—evokes the spirit of Flannery O’Connor. There is no higher praise than that! And whether Ree’s odyssey will find success is a mystery that will hold readers’ rapt attention until the final page.
This novel is a sequel of sorts to Woodrell’s earlier novel Give Us a Kiss: A Country Noir, which focuses on the Redmonds, a rival drug-dealing family.
WONDER WHEN YOU’LL MISS ME
Davis, Amanda. Morrow, 2003. ISBN: 0688167810. GF, ALEX
Faith, 16, is a formerly fat girl who has slimmed down following a brutal attack that inspires a (failed) suicide attempt and sends her to the hospital. The trouble is, the fat girl she was is still alive and well and mouthy inside her, urging her—when she returns to school—to take revenge on those who hurt her. When she finally does, Faith and her internal succubus run away to join the circus. There, surrounded by misfits like herself, Faith pursues a new life and new self. Davis brings an unusual and memorable take to an all-too-familiar problem—teenage cruelty—while also doing a fine job of creating a realistic circus milieu that recalls another circus novel, Water for Elephants.
THE YEAR OF ICE
Malloy, Brian. St. Martin’s, 2002. ISBN: 0312289480. GF, LOI, ALEX
Set in Minneapolis in the 1970s, this is the compelling story of 18-year-old Kevin Doyle, who is attempting to deal with the accidental death of his mother, killed in an automobile accident when her car spun out of control on icy pavement. But it is also the story of Kevin’s growing awareness of his homosexuality and his struggle to deal with this. His efforts to remain closeted become more difficult as he attempts to stave off the interest of girls attracted by his good looks and to keep secret his love for his classmate Jon. In the meantime his binge-drinking, irresponsible father, Pat, is also being pursued by women and turns to Kevin for help in resisting their advances. These twin efforts by father and son are not without their moments of humor, as is their basic relationship, but things become darker as the boy begins to suspect that his father’s philandering may have been the cause of his mother’s death. A compelling coming-of-age story, this first novel is an Alex Award winner.
YOUTH IN REVOLT: THE JOURNALS OF NICK TWISP
Payne, C. D. Aivia, 1993. ISBN: 1882647009. GF, HUM
Here is yet another cult classic that found a mainstream audience when a movie version was made of it, this one starring Michael Cera. Youth in Revolt is actually three novels bound together as one: Book I is “Youth in Revolt,” Book II is “Youth in Bondage,” and Book III is “Youth in Exile.” All are told in the wonderfully idiosyncratic voice of Nick Twisp, who is 14 when we first meet him. Like Pygmy (see above) his voice is arguably the most memorable thing about him. Here’s a sample of Nickspeak:
My last name, which I loathe, is Twisp. Even John Wayne on a horse would look effeminate pronouncing that name. As soon as I’m twenty-one, I’m going to jettison it for something a bit more macho. Right now, I’m leaning toward Dillinger. “Nick Dillinger.” I think that strikes just the right note of virility.
Speaking of virility, Nick may be, er, revolting, but his idea of revolution has a lot more to do with losing his virginity than overturning the government. The object of his affection is the beauteous—to him, anyway—Sheeni Saunders. The kids live in Oakland, California, and their destinies will involve coming of age, dealing with divorcing parents (Nick’s), experiencing the horrors of high school (both), dealing with forty-eight cans of garbanzo beans, and more, much more (the book is five hundred pages long).
Kids will think this is a hoot; many adults will agree, but a word to the wise: the boy does have a mouth on him, and he is, let us not forget, obsessed with S. E. X. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.