Parnassus Reads

This book is full of interesting information, but it's bias is fairly clear. It's also fairly doomy and gloomy. If you're into post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian genres, this book gives a nice overview of how we might get there, one day.

On a planet with two suns, two nations have been at war with each other for almost as long as each has existed. Centuries of war have affected each country differently, though both continually loose generations of men to the endless war. In Nasheen, women rule; The Queen's word is God's word, and her laws are carried out by highly skilled female assassins known as bel dames. In Chenja, women are the veiled property of men who are to be cared for by fathers, brothers, or husbands. Each country has specialized breeding compounds to provide a continual stream of fresh bodies for the war, but In Chenja, a woman doing anything other than staying at home and veiled is considered indecent and punishable by laws seemingly based on Sharia law. The women in Nasheen at least get to choose what they will do with their life: breed or fight. Nyxnissa so Dasheem has chosen the latter. A stint at the war front left her half dead, but she was "reconstituted" and joined the law and order of the bel dames, carrying out government-contracted bounties and assassinations. The book opens with her crossing from Chenja to Nasheen after a failed contract kills her partner, selling her womb (quite literally) for a ticket across the border. She is broken, bleeding, and completely out of options.It's a situation Nyx will find herself in many times throughout God's War, Kameron Hurley's bloody take on religious wars and the damage they inflict on those who suffer them. The titular god bears significant resemblance to the god of the Qur'an, which in Hurley's world is called the Kitab (which means book in Arabic; kitabullah is also used in the book, and this is a direct reference to the Qur'an as kitabullah means "the book of God" in Arabic). No one remembers why the war started, but it continues to be fought over religious and ideological differences (different interpretations of the Prophet's words) between the two nations. None of this really matters to Nyx; the only thing that matters to her is bringing in her notes, assassination contracts handed out by the bel dame council and sometimes even the Queen herself. The main story takes place several years after the opening sequence and concerns a note handed out by the latter behind the back of the bel dame council. Nyx takes the note in hope of redemption, but instead opens a can of worms that could obliterate Nasheen's enemy, Chenja or even Nasheen itself. Speaking of worms, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the tech on this world is mostly organic and relies almost entirely on the use of bugs by magicians and others who can manipulate organic matter. Cars have organic, living hoses and are powered by red beetles. Organic filters surround entire cities and act as doors, but are tailored to let only certain organic matter through. The war is largely fought with organic bursts, biowarfare that unleashes plagues, disease, and other contagens on anyone not inoculated or caught outside the filters (God help them if something explodes inside the filters). Nyx's world is harsh, and anything organic is profitable, including, and sometimes especially, genetic material or body parts (hence the womb). Also on this world are shifters, people who can shape-shift into various animals. Explaining some of this is worth while because like any good SFF writer, Hurley drops you into the middle of Nyx's world and you had better hit the ground running if you want to make heads or tails of anything. She also uses exposition only when necessary, and parsed out in as little space as possible. A line or three here and there, rarely a whole paragraph. And yet it's easy to inhabit Nyx's world; Hurley is thorough without being pedantic. Nyx is a completely likable yet frequently feckless anti-hero. In this she reminds me a bit of Mal from Joss Whedon's excellent but short-lived tv series, Firefly. She's a lot harder than Mal, but just as bumbling sometimes. She's aslo pretty damn kick-ass; just the kind of SFF heroine I like. While I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that gender politics is a main point of Hurley's story, it plays a significant role. But the novel isn't as skewed as one might expect as she gives voice to the Chenja view of women and the world in the character of Rhys, a Chenjan magician hiding out in Nasheen. The narrative form used allows for Hurley to explore multiple perspectives, and while the novel is certainly tilted in favor of Nasheenian views of women and the world through Nyx, it was nice to be given multiple views. If Hurley can anywhere be accused of too much exposition, it's in the sections from Rhys's POV, mainly because he frequently comments on the differences between Chenjan women and Nasheenian women. This book stayed with me long after I finished it, and I frequently found myself thinking of Nyx's various horrible situations-how she could get out of them, etc. After I finished God's War, I immediately downloaded the next in the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy, Infidel. I just finished God's War today, and I'm already half-way through Infidel. The third book in the trilogy will be released in early November, but I've got a NetGalley advance of it, so come back for a review of the next two books soon. This is exactly the kind of hard SF with a female heroine I look for and rarely find. I highly recommend the Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha.

This would be more of a 3.5 star book because it's fairly uneven. Some of the stories are excellent, others not so much. Full review later, but I'd like to mention that Catherynne Valente's contribution, One Breath, One Stroke, was very, very good.

Read at Parnassus Reads Kendar Blake’s duology, Anna Dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares is a paranormal romance dressed up as a bloody horror story. Fortunately told from a male perspective, the novels are a mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural. Regardless of their obvious influences, the novels are a refreshing break from typical teen romance tropes and mores. Cas, short for Thessius Cassio Lowood, isn’t just any boy; he’s a prety kick-ass ghost hunting boy, akin to Dean from the CW’s Supernatural, complete with some daddy issues. Aside from that, he’s human and fairly likable. The titular girl, Anna, is dead. She haunts an old victorian house in the boonies just outside of Thunder Bay, where the novels are mostly set. In Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas goes there on a mission to kill her (again), since she is a murderous ghost. Things get…complicated, and those complications form the meat of the first novel. Without revealing too much here, Girl of Nightmares complicates those complications. Anna seems to be back and is playing out gruesome scenes of torture for Cas, whose decent conscious demands that he take action to stop whatever is happening to Anna, where ever she is and no matter what the cost. But these books are also the story of a lonely boy finally finding a place to belong.Part of what makes these novels so enjoyable is a well-rounded secondary cast. This is where the Buffy comparisons come in. Thomas, Cas’s first friend in Thunder Bay, is a psychic witch whose character is a cross between Willow and Xander from Buffy, witchy powers included, though his stem from voodoo. Carmel is the extremely popular blonde unwittingly drawn in to Cas’s and Thomas’s world of death, ghosts, and witchcraft. However, she’s a hell of a lot nicer and immediately more likable than Cordelia, her pop-culture predecesor (and of course there’s a love-thing to be resolved between Thomas and Carmel, just as in Buffy). There’s even a stuffy british know-it-all, Gideon. Blake could have at least been more creative with the names here. Cas has a living mother, and thankfully she’s in on the whole gig (in fact, she even cleans the magic, ghost-slaying knife her son wields).In the first novel, the main focus is on Anna herself and the relationship that forms between her and Cas. As her story unravels, so do pieces of Cas’s past, until they become inexorably entwined and Anna’s fate will determine Cas’s as well. The novel ends well, without major cliffhangers; Anna Dressed in Blood could easily have been a stand-alone. The meat of Girl of Nightmares is less Anna herself and more the relationships Cas has formed with Thomas and Carmel. Some familiar baddies show up to play in the dramatic conclusion, but there are also some new characters, including the vaguely sinister Order of the Black Knife (a druidic order hanging out in a resort complex in the Scottish highlands, black Armani suits and hooded robes included). One new character puts me in mind of Faith from Buffy, though again, more likable. Overall, the first book is the better of the two, but it was nice to see more of Cas and his friends. I’m just glad Blake didn’t submit to blockbuster-trilogy pressure.And that’s the thing, for me. While these novels are fairly original in what they do, reading them felt like watching old episodes of Buffy or Supernatural. They were familiar in that they fit within accepted paramaters set by these shows, so it was more like watching a new episode of either. This isn’t in itself a bad thing; I love both shows. But it can become problematic when those references and paramaters are too comfortable and familiar, or when they show as badly as they do in the Anna books. I am in no way accusing Blake of plagiarism or of being unoriginal, nor am I saying that I dislike the books. All I’m suggesting is that she be a little less obvious with her influences. My final verdict is that these are enjoyable, quick reads with likable characters and better plotting than a lot of current paranormal teen romances. I would recommend these over a host of others currently out there.One final, nagging note. In Girl of Nightmares, Cas and the gang have to pass a test put to them by the Order. This test is to survive the “Suicide Forest” in the highlands of Scotland. There is a real suicide forest, Aokigahara Forest, and it’s in Japan. Much of what Blake describes in this scene seems to come straight out of a 20 minute video on Aokigahara that circulated in 2010. This annoyed me greatly.

also available at: http://parnassusreads.comFrom the co-author of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, comes Every Day, a novel about someone who spends each day of their (the use of their is intentional, as this person is genderless, per se) life in a different body. A has been jumping from body to body each day of A’s life for as long as A can remember. Currently, A jumps through the bodies of 16 years olds. By now A has figured out the basic rules of the jump (every day at midnight, and never in the same body) and has set up some rules to live by in order to stay sane. Rule number one is don’t get attached. Rule number two is don’t interfere with the life of the body A is currently in. Things go as well as can be expected for A until A jumps into the body of 16 year old Justin. Justin himself is more or less a dick. The problem for A is that A falls almost immediately for Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. The rest of the novel is spent working that whole snafu out. There are some fun plots twists in here, especially toward the end, so my summary will stop here.I haven’t read anything else written or co-written by Levithan, so I can’t offer any comparisons to the wildly popular Will Grayson, Will Grayson or Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, but I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It’s a quick read, but it brings up some pretty tough questions about gender and how we view ourselves. In the first respect, there are places where Levithan seems to get a bit preachy, but it was refreshing to hear meditations on gender so plainly and bluntly put, while still showing the grace of love across all genders and races through his characters. To be clear, gender is not the central aspect of the novel, but it is an important subtext, especially since A has no gender, or rather identifies as neither male nor female. Levithan handles this extremely well, and yet while reading, A sounded fairly male to me. Perhaps it was just because A’s love interest was female. This didn’t really bother me, and hopefully it won’t bother other readers. How often does a YA novel have a genderless, wholly human protagonist? What Levithan has done here certainly pushes boundaries, but in a very good way.The only slightly sour note for me was the fact that A came across as slightly obsessive or stalkerish regarding Rhiannon. A is also quite pushy in a seemingly non-pushy way in trying to secure Rhiannon’s affections. A’s first objective, aside from spending time with Rhiannon, is to get her away from Justin, her current boyfriend. A likewise seems fine with the fact that if they were to be together, Rhiannon would have to basically give up all of her friends and family, because how could she explain A’s body-hopping, or the fact that she seems to be with someone new every day? A doesn’t really care; in fact A’s answer is to sweep Rhiannon off to New York where A will have a better chance of staying around her because the city’s large enough to provide A with millions of bodies in a very small location. She’ll apparently just be running a one room hotel.I’m glad to see that Rhiannon is smarter than that whole thing (saying this is not really a spoiler; do you really think anyone would go for that?). In fact, Rhiannon is a pretty likable character, as is A, once the whole stalker-thing drops off. A is a pretty decent person who tries to do as little damage as possible, given the circumstances, and even does some good where possible. Levithan’s writing is clear, concise, and authentic. At first A comes across as a weary, old-soul type, and A is, but A is also just a kid looking for a place to belong, even though that is nearly impossible. This book will reach out to teens who may feel the same and hopefully open up important discussions about gender and what it means to be a person, regardless of what one looks like. I really enjoyed this book, and hope there is a second, as the end seems to imply. I like A and want to find out what happens next (this doesn’t read like a crappy blockbuster trilogy, but rather like a story that could end here, yet you hope that it doesn’t). Final verdict: Highly recommended.

I read this book in an afternoon. It appears to be light, but the things discussed in the novel are no less than the purpose of human existence, free will, and the nature of god(s). I really do like this little book. It is at once universal and intimate, and yet very quiet. I will write a full review later, but for now, I jut wanted to say that I'd recommend it.

also available at: http://parnassusreads.comCarlos Ruiz Zafón, is, in many ways a book nerd’s dream. All of his adult fiction thus far translated into English has centered(however obliquely) around the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books. After the first novel released in English, The Shadow of the Wind, fans were hungering for more of this secret place with its impossible architecture and its hundreds of thousands of forgotten books. The next book released, The Angel’s Game, promised to bring us closer to this mystery, yet left us woefully confused (at least I was) at the end and nowhere nearer to the central mystery than we were before. The latest installment, The Prisoner of Heaven, promised the same, but only somewhat delivered.The Prisoner of Heaven is certainly a good read, better by far than Angel’s Game, but not quite as enchanting as The Shadow of the Wind. In The Prisoner, we return to Daniel Sempere and Fermín, who made their first appearance in the first of Zafón’s intriguing novels. David Martín also makes an appearance and the events of both previous novels are frequently referenced, though you don’t necessarily need to have read them to keep up with this book. Daniel Sempere has been married for two years now, and Fermín is on the verge of marriage. Fermín has some unresolved issues, however, and his past comes a-callin’ one winter evening. Alexander Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo plays a significant role in the novel and provides much of Fermín’s backstory, which is mainly what The Prisoner gives us. I don’t like to give things away, so I won’t. The background for Fernín’s story is WWII Barcelona and the red scare. Much of the backstory takes place in a famous castle prison full of nutters, one of whom we’ve already met. The main villain of the novel is Governor Mauricio Valls, a man tied to all of the main characters in The Prisoner, but who remains continually out of reach. The Valls enigma becomes central to Daniel, but that unravelling will have to wait for the next book.This book is a quick read, and nowhere near as complex as either of the other two novels, though better written than one. After Angel’s Game, I was ready to give up on Zafón, but now I might have to stick around for a bit. There was some cheeky meta-stuff happening here (Daniel telling another character to write a secret history of Barcelona and Julian Carax, a significant character in the first novel; a manuscript titled The Angel’s Game appears, etc.), but I really just wish that the book jackets would stop promising to deliver on the Cemetery of Forgotten Books if the novel is only going to include maybe a scene or two of it, especially when those scenes are not central to the plot. Final verdict: this is an excellent book for a late summer beach read (though try not to get sand in the plastic library covers, like I did).

also available at: http://parnassusreads.comSo lately I’ve been perusing Clive James’s massive Cultural Amnesia, a browser’s guide to the major thinkers, writers, and cultural icons of the past several hundred years (back as far as Sir Thomas Browne), though most of the personages that fill these pages are from just the past century. At first glance, this book may appear to be friendly to your average reader, one of those books the average reader might pick up to gain a not-so-quick overview of Western thought, or even perhaps just some good talking points for the next cocktail party. Average reader, beware; this book is probably not for you. Even when discussing known figures (Coco Chanel, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michael Mann come to mind), James veers off in completely unexpected directions. Not that this is necessarily bad; Montaigne is famous for this. The difference between Montaigne and James, however, is that Montaigne has a wholly unique and essential way of bringing the reader full circle. James frequently leaves the reader far from where they started.He also frequently leaves the reader with his abhorrence of totalitarianism. This, no matter the subject, inevitably makes its way into almost all of the essays, even the one on Coco Chanel, who he pinions for accepting the protection of a German officer during WWII before hiding out in Switzerland until France saw fit to recognize her as a national treasure. In fact, the essay on Chanel becomes more of an essay about materialism and the economics of war-time Berlin. This is precisely what makes James’s book so fascinating. If you don’t mind getting lost in ideas, following tangents that leave you sometimes far from the place of origin, then this book is a treasure of information: historical, cultural, theoretical. I was so overwhelmed by what I was reading, I started to take notes on some of the essays and created a general reading list of interesting books mentioned in the various essays. These essays are not a starting point for the reader, but rather a focal point. James distills decades of hindsight and perspective through his unique lens and sets the reader on a quest for primary sources, the best thing that can happen for someone like me who loves nothing better than a fat bibliography at the end of an academic article.However, this book is not scholarly in the sense that it’s an academic treatise or historical account: there isn’t even a bibliography at the end (only an index!). Yet reading even one page makes you feel as if you’ve learned something, and usually you have. These essays are the opinions of someone dedicated to exposing the faults of some of the West’s most revered thinkers and icons–but not out of malice. As the title suggests, James wants us to remember the multi-faceted aspects of history and to reject the often easy and convenient narrative of our past, especially when it comes to totalitarianism, fascism, communism, and the ideologies that fueled them.

I picked this up at random because it looked interesting and I had some book money saved up. I ended up using part of it in my English 1101 class. My students really enjoyed the section I gave them and really seemed to engage with the style of the writing (we used it during our description/narration unit). The writing is accessible and highly engaging. The stories themselves are terrible in their simplicity, brutality and beauty. I thought I would just peruse the book and then come back to it later, but I read one entire section in one sitting because I became so wrapped up in one of the stories. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in American history, but also for anyone who has an interest in human history--in the human cost of racism discrimination, no matter what your skin color or ethnic heritage. This is a wonderfully written and researched book.

I picked this up at random because it looked interesting and I had some book money saved up. I ended up using part of it in my English 1101 class. My students really enjoyed the section I gave them and really seemed to engage with the style of the writing (we used it during our description/narration unit). The writing is accessible and highly engaging. The stories themselves are terrible in their simplicity, brutality and beauty. I thought I would just peruse the book and then come back to it later, but I read one entire section in one sitting because I became so wrapped up in one of the stories. I would recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in American history, but also for anyone who has an interest in human history--in the human cost of racism discrimination, no matter what your skin color or ethnic heritage. This is a wonderfully written and researched book.

British writer Graham Joyce’s latest novel is set in the English countryside near the foreboding Outwoods, which happen to be on a geological anomalie. many of the nearby residents are afraid of the Outwoods, and rightly so, it would seem. 15 year old Tara Martin disappeared from the Outwoods, only to magically return 20 years later, looking the exact same age as when she first disappeared. Her answer for where she’s been for the past 20 years seems insane and yet strangely plausible, if you believe in fairies, that is. Her reappearance uncovers old wounds between her brother, Peter, and Ritchie, her boyfriend at the time of her disappearance. Both men are in their 40s now, and only Peter had been able to move on. Will Tara’s reappearance give Ritchie a fresh start with the girl he never stopped loving, or will it prove to be his undoing? Joyce takes us on a psychological journey of heartbreak and healing and leaves us with the ultimate question of what is fantasy and what is reality?This is the first novel by Joyce I’ve read, and while it was relatively predictable, I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Joyce’s writing is clean and measured and his characters feel like they could be the people down the street. Only Tara felt somewhat hollow, but that was probably due more to her role in the narrative and plot than a poorly drawn character. My favorite character was actually a minor one; Dr. Vivian Underwood, the shrink hired to examine Tara, who belongs more to the fairies than anyone else in the novel. This was a fairly quick read, and not terribly deep or probing. It would be good for an afternoon at the beach or a cloudy evening at home. While reading, I had the strong urge to drink some Earl Grey, since everyone is always drinking tea, which can apparently fix almost anything. One final thing I loved about the novel was the short quotes preceding each chapter. My favorite is by Marina Warner: “Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and fear.”

Pauline Chen’s new novel, The Red Chamber, is actually a retelling of a classic Chinese novel, The Dream of the Red Chamber. Chen’s version is severely truncated; the original novel is currently sold by Penguin in three volumes and was never finished. Chen freely admits she has taken many liberties with the story in order to better introduce it to Western audiences, she claims. I can in no way compare the two, since I had not even heard of the original before reading Chen’s book, so I will take The Red Chamber as a unique work of fiction.The Red Chamber is set in 18th c. China and details the lives of the Jia family. The Jias are wealthy and have long and good connections to the imperial palace through the family patriarch, Jia Zheng; however, it is Lady Jia who truly rules the household. When Daiyu’s mother dies, her father sends her to stay with her maternal grandmother at the Jia family palace. There Daiyu meets three individuals who will leave indelible marks on her life: Xue Baochi, daughter of the widowed sister-in-law of Jia Zheng, Wang Xifeng, wife of Jia Lian, and Jia Baoyu, Zheng’s son and Lady Jia’s favorite (there is a helpful family tree at the beginning of the novel). The novel details the intimate family bonds and sometimes chains that bind each character, except for Daiyu, perhaps. It is grand and intimate at the same time; family drama set against the back drop of imperial strife.Chen’s narrative is told through mainly the three females of the novel, with occasional forays into Zheng’s or Baoyu’s perspective. Each of the women is unique as are their voices. Xifeng is the under-appreciated house-hold manager, Baochi is the seemingly cold but dutiful daughter, and Daiyu is the “gauche” newcomer, daughter of a mother who threw away everything and defied Lady Jia to marry for love. Lady Jia never forgave her, even in death and her wrath has carried over to Daiyu. Three events set the course for the fate of the Jia family: the cover up of a murder, illicit love (on multiple fronts), and the fall of an Emperor. How will Daiyu survive in the grand city of Bejing amid all of the family politics and sweeping change?Many have compared this to Artur Goldstein’s Memoirs of a Geisha, but I was constantly reminded of Raise the Red Lantern, the film by Zhang Yimou. I really, really enjoyed this novel. It immediately draws the reader in and through Chen’s gift for narrative, we begin to understand what drives each of the three women and who they must be in a tight-knit family irrevocably bound together. I wanted more after finishing this, and perhaps that was Chen’s intent: give Western readers a taste of a massive and loved Chinese classic so they’ll go in search of the original. While I’m not rushing out to the bookstore to find it, I did add it to my never-ending wishlist. Final verdict: highly recommended for those who love to be swept away by historical and intimate family portraits.

The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano is the second beautiful but sad Italian novel. Well, if I’m being honest, it’s downright depressing, but not in the week-long funk inducing way that Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and The Magician King were. The beauty of the Giordano’s prose tempers the dreary subject matter, which is a sad tale about two broken people trying to deal with the “weight of consequences,” as Alice, one of the book’s protagonists puts it. Both of the actions that create weighty consequences happen in the first two chapters of the novel. For Alice, it’s an unfortunate accident. For Mattia, the other protagonist, it’s an unthinking, childish need to be normal for the space of a birthday party. These actions haunt each character, to the extent that both retreat from the world into solitary obsessions. Mattia turns to the solitude of numbers, and Alice to starving herself. They use these obsessions to create iron-clad barriers between themselves and everyone else, including each other.The novel follows them from youth, the time surrounding each incident, through adolescence when Alice and Mattia meet and form a timid friendship, and then through early adulthood. What is most depressing about this novel for me was the fact that both Alice and Mattia recognize one another for who they are and have the capacity to understand each other. And yet, time and again, neither will take the action that could save them both. The last two pages of the novel helped, gave some hope, but the novel as a whole is pretty bleak. But it is also quite beautiful, and that’s why I continued with it. I also kept hoping that Alice and Mattia would get their shit figured out.The cast of characters is fairly small, which is good since Giordano sometimes jumps into various heads to offer differing perspectives, not on the same event, but rather as a way to show us how others see the primary two characters. It’s done well and not nearly as jolting as it was in Swimming to Elba, and for that I’m grateful. I realize that I really don’t read much contemporary “literature,” and because of that am not used to it’s tropes. I usually read as an escape and don’t usually enjoy reading about someone who could be my next door neighbor. I need something other, so international contemporary literature or anything pre-1980s is generally acceptable. I’m about to start rambling, so my final verdict is that this is a well-written meditation on the loneliness we inflict on ourselves and the weight of consequences. It is quiet and sometimes lovely, but also heavy and suffocating, like water at the bottom of a river on a warm summer day.

I picked up Swimming to Elba by Silvia Avallone (trans. by Antony Shuggar) because I read somewhere that everyone in Europe was raving about it and there were only 2 holds ahead of me at the library for it (and I am an incessant hoarder of library books, which I have mentioned elsewhere, so when I see a book that people are talking about with few if any holds on it, I must immediately have it). The book is centered around two Italian girls, one blond and the other brunette, both beautiful, the summer they turn 14. Their town, Poimbino, is dominated and in turn centered around a giant but dying steel plant. The novel takes place in early 2000-2001 (the Italians’ take on 9/11 is amusing), and though well before the economic crash of 2008 and later, Poimbino is clearly on the verge of its own economic crash. Glittering just a few miles off-shore is the rich, tourist island of Elba, always visible, but always just out of reach for the novel’s sometimes gritty, usually desperate, and frequently frustrated characters. In many ways this is a classic bildungsroman, but it’s also an indictment of socialism, capitalism, class, and gender stereotypes (however much it fails at the latter). The two girls, Anna (brunette) and Francesca (blonde) are inseparable best friends. They live one floor up from each other in massive, concrete city-owned housing projects. Anna’s father is a wanna-be Godfather while Francesca’s is a great brute of a man who beats both Francesca and her mother. The novel opens with a scintillating description of the girls in their newly developed, scantily clad bodies frolicking on the beach and flirting with the older boys, all as seen through Francesca’s father’s binoculars and told through his POV. Creepy. While there are beautiful passages and cinematic scenes, that opening really sets the tone for the entire novel, but gets progressively worse and more and more depressing as the girls’ relationship crumbles and they each get caught up in the adult world of sex. Books like this are why I generally stay away from modern literary realism.The jacket describes the book as a “lightening-rod for discussion” in Europe and a strong criticism of the Leftist, Socialist ideal of the happy proletariat in Italy. I can see that, and I get what Avallone is trying to do here, if what the jacket says is true, and I applaud her for doing so. That doesn’t make me like the book any more than I do. There are a few reasons for my general dislike. The first is technical: Avallone uses the third person omniscient POV, which allows her to jump into the head of whoever she wishes, which she does quite frequently. Therein lies the problem. While most writers that I’ve read who use this narrative technique do so with ease, Avallone’s continual head-hopping is confusing, especially when she does it in the middle of a paragraph using only gender pronouns, when the scene includes several members of that gender whose head she’s already been in and could be in again. I frequently wasn’t sure whose head I was in at a given moment, which continually forced me out of the narrative, instead of keeping me locked in an otherwise engrossingly real world.The second issue I had with the novel was its treatment and view of women. That the opening description of the girls is given through the highly sexualized gaze of one of their fathers is creepy and gut-tumbling enough, but the book is drenched with more and more of it. All of the men in the book are possessive, nearly misogynistic assholes who see women (or rather 13 and 14 year old girls) as nothing more than a good or bad fuck at best, and inhuman house slaves at worst. The women frequently seem to see themselves in these terms as well, and the young ones do what they can as soon as they get tits to look like a good fuck so they can get married to one of the charming assholes from the steel plant and become a house slave later on.There is so little hope in this book, and what bright spot there is is imperiled half-way through. I don’t doubt that this may be what life in a small costal city dominated by a dying industry in Italy looks like; her depiction of life there was so thorough it began to bleed into my own view of Seattle and for that I hate the book a little bit. But in the same way I get what it’s like to look at something shining and shimmering that is close enough to touch but is always just out of reach. I think anyone who reads this book would (unless they were reading it on the white beach of Elba), and for that level of realism, that level of detail that can suck you right in and make you part of that world, I give the book and its author my respect. Final verdict: read at your own risk.

I'm not much of a poetry reader for pleasure, but I've studied enough of it to know what's good. I hadn't encountered Millay's poetry before however, and I sincerely wish I had. Her poetry is simple and beautiful and highly recommended.

I generally love McSweeney's (even if I tend to have the baseless notion that Dave Eggers is slightly pretentious), and this collection of humor from McSweney's Internet Tendency is no exception. It has one of my all-time favorite McSweeney pieces: an unused audio commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on disc 1 of LORT: The Fellowship of the Ring extended version boxed-set. Great stuff.