Ironically, I read this book in its entirety on my flight from Milwaukee to Las Vegas and it made the time go quickly. Sherman Alexie’s novel, classified as young adult, starts out in a realistic fashion—Zits (he says, “Call me Zits,”) is a teenage Indian boy in foster care, who is angry, angry, angry. In the first couple of pages of the story, he has run away from his millionth foster home after mouthing off to his foster dad. By the end of the day, […]
There Are Some Children Here
This book is one that I won’t easily forget; it tells one girl’s story across two different worlds–the first a shantytown in Zimbabwe and the second in suburban Detroit. The story begins as Darling and her friends explore their neighborhoods as well as wealthier enclaves that border them. They are poor and hungry and chock full of American cultural touchstones and attitude. They sometimes discuss the time before–when they went to school and lived in houses–before the military came–but mostly they play in the world […]
Special Topics in Grief
I loved Wolitzer’s earlier book, The Interestings, and in some ways this young adult novel seems like an offshoot thematically. Instead of a summer camp in upstate New York, the characters in Belzhar are at The Wooden Barn, a “therapeutic boarding school” for teens in Vermont. This is basically Jam Gallahue’s story; she was sent to this school because she has been mourning the death of her British exchange student boyfriend for too long. Jam is chosen to be part of a special topics class […]
A Tale of the 99%
This is a solid YA novel set in a dystopian but all too real future—where super storms have battered the coasts of the United States, where fossil fuels have pretty much run out, and where the gap between the haves and have nots has widened to a chasm. Our hero is Nailer, a teen who works on a crew that salvages parts from wrecked oiled tankers along the gulf coast—dangerous work that barely provides enough to keep him and his co-workers alive. However, they all dream […]
Squash Your Inner Cynic
In order to enjoy this book, you have to squash your inner cynic but if you do, you will find this tale of a cranky book store owner in a small resort town/island off the coast of Massuchusetts a charming good time. A.J. Fikry is an old man at forty-five, grieving for his dead wife and annoyed at many of his customers’ tastes in fiction. In a matter of days, several events happen that begin to pull him out of his funk—he has a disasterous […]
Kids in Jeopardy – Part 2
This is the first fiction I’ve read by Jeannette Walls, whose bestselling book, The Glass Castle, prompted my book club to issue the edict—no books about kids in jeopardy for hundreds of pages. They read The Glass Castle a few months before I joined and I haven’t yet read it; however, I did read Half Broke Horses, which tells the true but somewhat fictionalized story of Walls’ maternal grandmother—setting up the crazy that is Wall’s first memoir. Though this is a novel, The Silver Star […]
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