The Ocean at the End of the Lane

I saw Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane on Goodreads and decided to check it out. I've always enjoyed everything that I've read by Gaiman, but never been blown away by any of his novels. My feelings on this novel were in line with everything that I read by him: the prose is excellent, the concept is interesting, but it lacks any deep character development which stops me from loving it.

The novel is about a man who goes back to his childhood home and begins to recall memories of a girl that he knew when he was seven, Lettie Hempstock along with her mother and grandmother. The memory of what happened begins to unravel and a frightening story unfolds. It's a good story and is told beautifully, but never quite grabbed me. The novel is relatively short so it's definitely worth checking out. Fans of Gaiman's are likely to be satisfied with this quick read.

The Round House

I have blogged twice about Louise Erdrich's novels (The Plague of Doves and Love Medicine). I think she is an under-appreciated writer because her talent is huge but she remains as virtually unknown to most people. Hopefully she will be more widely read after winning last year's National Book Award for her latest novel The Round House. I read three of the five novels that were finalists (including A Hologram for a King and This Is How You Lose Her) and agree that Erdrich certainly deserved the award. The Round House blew me away.

The novel is told from the perspective of thirteen-year-old Joe, who lives with his parents on a reservation in North Dakota. His mother is brutally attacked and raped, leaving Joe and his father to seek justice... unsure if justice is even within reach. Joe narrates the story as an adult, which brings the story to life in a unique way. It's a powerful novel with a political message. I adored this book. If you haven't read anything by Erdrich, The Round House is worth checking out. I definitely recommend this amazing novel.

Say You're One of Them

I picked up Uwem Akpan's Say You're One of Them for the silly reason of liking the cover. I tried reading it a while ago before I abandoned it. The spine once again caught my eye and I tried again, immediately drawn in by Akpan's prose. It's a tough book to get through though, so I had to continue to put it down, to take a break from the extreme heaviness of it. The book is a collection of short stories (two of which are extremely long) about the desolate living conditions of children in Africa. I read a review that called it "poverty porn," stating that a person can't really like this book as there is nothing remotely enjoyable about it, which is a fair argument. The stories are beyond heartbreaking; they are brutal. I wasn't entirely prepared for that with the praise on the back of the book that included the word "jubilant" and said it showed the resilience of children. But when things are so agonizing, why should a child be expected to be resilient, to bounce back from that?

Say You're One of Them is a difficult book to recommend since it's the kind of book you want to set aside and forget about, to pretend life is not so harsh for so many. But of course that's what I love about fiction: that it opens the reader up to other worlds, shows life from another's perspective, and leaves the reader with a heart full of empathy... and this book did just that. It pulled me from my comfortable life and introduced me to the horror of life for some children in Africa.

Gone Girl

I read Fanny Hill on my phone and when I finished, I needed something easy and gripping. I was browsing my library's e-book selections and found Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl was available and could be downloaded to my phone. I'd heard enough murmurings about the novel that I was intrigued to check it out. I was not disappointed.

Flynn sets up a fantastic thriller with interesting characters and fresh plot twists. The story focuses on the marriage of Nick and Amy, a couple that was once so in love but whose marriage has soured. Amy goes missing on the couple's anniversary and the novel explores what happened through the use of the two character perspectives. That's all I will describe about the story as the reading experience is best if the reader has no more information than that. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. Flynn writes well and still delivers a page turning story. Once I got to a certain point I could not put the book down and finished it much quicker than I've been able to finish books lately. Next time I'm looking for a nice escape read, I will definitely check out another one of Flynn's novels.

Ramona Quimby, Age 8

After reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing to Adam and Noah, we moved on to Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. I found I enjoyed this novel more than the one I had just read them, but for them it was the opposite. Noah kept asking when it was going to get funny like 'the Fudge books' which they have continued to read with Alan. In my memory this book was funny so I had told them it would be, but though it is full of humor, it's not ha-ha funny, which is what they wanted. So perhaps I had set it up to fail by offering them a description from my memory of reading it almost thirty years ago. But there is something completely charming to me about Ramona and Beverly Cleary's writing. I'd go so far as to say that this book is timeless, as I enjoyed this book just about as much as I did when I was a child.