First thing’s first; I have yet another review of Beth Revis’ Across the Universe up on the Best Damn Creative Writing Blog. I feel almost like I’m picking on Beth (though it’s a positive review!). Definitely not my intention–it’s just that this book, which is being released today, has a ton of marketing and hype around it and people seem inclined to say stuff like, “Oh, you’ve read it?! Write about it for us!”

Anyway, pick it up. It’s tasty stuff.

So things have been crazy. I know I’m always saying that, that things are crazy (it has been a crazy year), but in this case, it’s very much true. First the holidays, and then, yesterday, my mother had to go in for surgery. No worries. She’s okay. But such things are always stressful. I lost track of my writing for a few weeks with all the travel I was doing, and then impulse-bought a laptop (it’s brown! With a faux-wood finish! And awesome!) in hopes that I’ll keep up better with my creative impulses this way. Already, things feel improved–and I feel improved. It sounds dysfunctional, but I feel cruddy when I can’t write. Writing makes the hard times easier.

Anyway.

I’ve been chugging forward on Daughter of Earth and have also started plotting/drafting a new project, which I’ll call Son of Godzilla 2000 for the time being. The first draft of DoE is nearly finished–I’m at 58k and close to the climax! But I’ve decided to stop forward progress for the time being to massively rehaul the beginning.

I’m usually not a massive-rehauler. But one of the good things about a writing group is that they can tell you where you’re going wrong before you’ve really become cemented into your wrongness. And apparently, I need to work on building the tension more organically and smoothly in my book’s first half. So I’m shimmying stuff around, drafting a new opening.

I’m a little nervous about this beginning; it states, up front, what the book’s central theme is, and it’s one that agents don’t always love: growing up in the shadow of grief (other things introduced sooner: the core tenet of duty, how fucked up Terra’s dad is). But I think it’s the best one for the book, and I need to be a slave to that, not agent-tastes.

Here it is, DoE‘s new beginning. Let me know what you think!

Daddy said it was my duty to look nice for Momma’s funeral, that wearing white would be a misva. I ran the word over my tongue as I straightened the thin funerary cloth down against my shoulders. Teach had told us about misvas just a few days before—how every good deed we did for the other citizens of our ship would benefit us, too. He said that doing well in school was a misva, but also other things. Like watching babies get born in the hatchery. Or paying tribute at funerals. When he said that, he looked across the classroom to me with a kind of watery gleam welling in his eyes.
That’s when I knew that Momma was really dying.

In the hours after the fieldworkers came to take away her body, Rian locked himself away in his room. That left me with Daddy. He didn’t cry. Instead, he wore a thin, brave smile as he pulled off his dark work clothing and tugged the ivory shirt down over his head. I watched him while I held my kitten Pepper to my chest. It wasn’t until the cat pulled away and tumbled to the floor that I lost it.

“Pepper! Pepper, come back!” I said, drawing in a hiccupping breath as he scampered out of my parents’ open bedroom door. Then I brought my hands to my cheeks and touched the streams of wetness there. For some reason realizing my tears only made it worse. I wheezed with grief.

Daddy turned to me, the stays on his shirt still undone. I’m sure I would have seen a few ugly chest hairs straggling out if my vision hadn’t been so completely blurred.

“Terra,” he said, putting a hand against my shoulder and squeezing. My answer was an uncontrollable bray, an animal noise. I let it out. I thought that maybe Daddy would draw me into his arms for comfort; after all, that’s what Momma would have done. But he only held me back at arms’ length, watching me through steady eyes.

“Terra, pull yourself together. You’re soaking your blouse.”

I knew then that he wasn’t Momma. Momma was gone. I brought my hands up to my eyes, veiling them. Like I could hide from the truth behind my fingers.

After a moment, between my own panted breaths, I heard him sigh. Then I heard his footsteps as he drew away from me.

“Go to your room,” he said. “Compose yourself. I’ll get you when it’s time to go.”

I pulled myself up on weak legs. My footfall down the hallway was measured, careful, as plodding and as empty as my heart. But when I reached my bedroom door, I pounded my fist against the keypanel hard. Then I launched myself past the door as it slid back, and thrust my body down into my waiting bed. I heard Pepper approach. He let out a curious squeak. But I ignored him, my hands clutched around my belly, my face pressed against my soggy sheets.

Just a note, I’m trying a new experiment with the star-rating system. Recommended reads will get four-or five-stars, accordingly; all others, you gotta read the review to find out what I think. We’ll see how it goes!

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife by Irene Spencer
Recommended

I have this weird fascination with fundamentalist Mormon polygamists.

It started, of course, with Big Love. I’m not a particularly huge fan of the show—I find the compound stuff stiflingly boring, and have never been able to muster up any sympathy for Bill Paxton’s character—but there’s something about the lives of the wives and the way they conduct this complex mental arithmetic to explain away human reactions like jealousy which captivates me.

What’s implied on the show—and it’s reality TV counterpart Sister Wives which, yes, I’ve watched willingly—but is never really discussed directly enough for my tastes, is the way that their society values these women, giving little regard for their capacity for work or creativity beyond a mother’s work and past the inherent creativity of becoming a mom. This unstated shift in priorities from the societal norm seems to underscore a lot of the character motivations on the show, but the possible horrific implications of this are rarely more than alluded to—see Barb’s desperation to have the other wives procreate after she’s rendered infertile by cancer, or the way the husband on Sister Wives pressures his first wife to consider in vitro fertilization as their marriage has only produced one child—and never really explored extensively or directly.

I picked up Irene Spencer’s autobiography, Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist’s Wife hoping to find some direct discussion of these values, though it was with some hesitation. The focus on a family of isolated polygamists in the 1960s had me a bit worried that I’d find something closer to the compound stories on Big Love than a dissection of the daily tensions between men and women in this extremist religion.

Luckily, though it seems that Spencer’s life may have included some of the violence of the fictional Grant family, she makes a conscious decision here to focus instead on her home life (stories about murder plots within her polygamist sect apparently make up the bulk of her companion volume, Cult Insanity). Ultimately, the story of her life proved to be a riveting read, especially for a modern feminist reader like myself.

Irene is interesting; despite the fact that she was raised within a polygamist family herself, she has a very modern sensibility about relationships, and this sensibility is evident early in her life. As a girl, she was courted by an atheist who loved her deeply, and who she loved, in turn. Their relationship was passionate, reciprocal, and physical. However, because of the polygamist dogma of her childhood, she takes a vague “feeling” that she should instead marry her half-sister’s husband and live “The Principle” as testimony to divine intervention. She turns her back on the prospect of a modern, loving, monogamous life and instead moves to Mexico to become the second wife of a man who will eventually have many more.

There’s an interesting tension here between Irene’s monogamous leanings and modern sensibilities, and her life as the de facto head of a massive household of women and children. Irene tells us over and over again of her budding sexuality and her desire to be loved, but her husband won’t sleep with her unless it’s for procreative purposes. Because he thus refuses to use birth control, this means that the poor woman has sex approximately once a year for their many years of marriage, and spends the ensuing time pregnant or nursing her thirteen children.

The narrative becomes stifling here, but really only as stifling as her life. At one point, Irene is offered an out when a farm hand falls in love with her and offers to take her, and her children, away from their impoverished life. As a reader, you can’t help but want her to take him up on this, but unfortunately, according to her religion, this would make her not only a fallen woman but a servant in her husband’s heaven for all eternity—so she says no.

It’s maddening, as is experiencing through her thirteen increasingly-dangerous pregnancies, which her doctor warns her against again and again. But rather than use birth control, her husband simply offers to stop sleeping with her, an impossible-to-consider reality for a love-starved woman. And so she risks her life (though she ultimately has her tubes tied, a choice that she knows will eternally damn her in the eyes of her religion) in order to remain obedient to her husband. Despite the fact that it risks her physical life, and despite the fact that her emotional and spiritual life is really no life at all.

Which gets to the meat of what I find interesting about these stories: this is the danger found not just in Mormon polygamy but in all orthodox religious traditions that place a woman’s value on her procreative capacities alone. This is the same attitude which has Hasidic Jewish women at the head of massive broods of babies, the attitude that has seen the Catholic Church only recently embracing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS despite thousands of lives lost. It’s fascinating, and it’s sad, but I think it’s important to think about the extent of the impact of these religious principles on the lives of women even today.

Irene’s story isn’t always perfectly written—she’s no prose master, and some of her anecdotes (one about her cluelessness about the popular music of the day particularly comes to mind) fall flat. But ultimately, this is a fascinating and worthwhile read about the ugliness of extremist religions and the impact they have on women.

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by Martha N. Beck

I wanted to follow up my reading on fundamentalist polygamist Mormonism with a story about mainstream Mormonism today. Because I, myself, am certainly not a believer (I’m agnostic and vaguely Jewish, in fact, and I warn you that my attitudes towards religion might be reflected in my review), and because of the secrecy of members of the LDS Church, I thought an account from a former believer would be most-illuminating. I picked up Martha Beck’s How I Left the Saints, hoping that this account by an educated, academic former Church-member would be a nice exploration of the Church’s values and how they impact its modern, educated members.

Beck’s story is certainly well-written and compellingly plotted, if evasive (more on this later). However, that’s really all it has going for it. I realized that this might not have been the book for me not far into the first chapter, in which Beck describes the Mormon temple “sealing” ceremony. I’ve read about this ceremony before—accounts are easy enough to find on the internet, if you look—and found it no more silly or shocking than any other religion’s ceremonies. Honestly, as an agnostic unbeliever, I find most religious ceremonies somewhat silly—but I respect the place these rituals have in the lives of believers and recognize that it’s not my place to pass judgment on any one being any more valid than any other.

But Beck relates the details (well, some of them; some she keeps veiled) in a salacious, kind of shit-talky tone. Like, ohmygod, we wore weird underwear! And watched funny movies! Though I respect the fact that she found the “blood oath” aspect of this ceremony upsetting, I was at a loss to see how this was really so terrible compared to any other religion, particularly as my own still circumcises little boys at eight days old as part of an ancient covenant with God. It was mostly a matter of tone, really, but Beck’s left a bad taste in my mouth.

And I’d say that’s true for my reaction to the remainder of the book. Beck describes moving back to Provo, Utah after the birth of a son with Down’s Syndrome. There, she clashes with the administration of BYU over her feminist studies and ultimately comes to recall being sexually violated by her father, a Mormon apologist scholar. The remainder of the book explores the tension between her spiritual/religious leanings and the Church, and describes her exit from the latter.

There was something fundamentally problematic about Beck’s writing style, though this makes some sense within the context of her story. She reflects on how, when she was a child, all of her conversations with her father were conducted via allusion, without ever addressing any matter directly. Beck’s writing as an adult bears some resemblance to that. This is a sprawling, rambling book, filled with asides and often indirect. I found this habit maddening, though it kept me reading longer than I otherwise would have.

Mostly because I wanted to find out what happened to her as a child—or at least what she thought happened to her. It’s alluded to and indirectly referenced. She has physical scars, and this sexual assault apparently involved scissors and some kind of pseudo-Egyptian ceremony. But she never tells us what happened. What’s worse, it’s not even clear at times if she genuinely thinks anything did.

And, though I’m loathe to disbelieve someone discussing the sexual assault of her childhood, the nature of these memories—they were supposedly repressed, and apparently recovered—makes her account suspect, as these sorts of memories are known to often lack veracity. When combined with the fact that we’re never really told what happened, I found Beck to be a maddeningly unreliable narrator.

She’s also fairly unlikable, a fact that’s underscored in a scene where her therapist confronts her siblings about this sexual assault. Beck’s tone becomes smug and condescending; she brags of how she knew her siblings were too smart for the therapist. Reading this scene, I just felt icky.

“Icky” would be how I would describe my experience reading How I Left the Saints overall. I wouldn’t be surprised if Beck’s thesis—that the Mormon Church has, at times, systematically covered up sexual assault committed by high ranking members—had something to it. Because, after all, this has been shown to be true with many monolithic religious institutions who feel the need to save face. But I’m not sure that Beck’s book does anything to forward her argument, particularly as it left me—a stalwart non-believer—feeling skeptical.

View all my reviews

Hey all.

I’ve had a crazy week (still feeling sick, unfortunately!) and will be scrambling to catch up this week. That includes 3–count ‘em, 3!–book reviews, including one of the ARC I stayed up all Saturday night reading, of Beth Revis’ 2011 debut Across the Universe.

I’ve been thinking about what I’d say in my review. My feelings are almost entirely positive (hence the staying-up-all-night-reading), though there were a few flaws in the novel I want to discuss. And so I’ve been ruminating, once again, about how I’d rate it on GoodReads. My internal debate about it–is a flawed book I really enjoyed a 4-star or a 5-star read?–has me wondering, once again, if I should abandon the star-rating system on there completely.

Here’s the thing: I write reviews because I like talking about books, thoroughly and honestly. And I use GoodReads because I adore the community on there, and how it facilitates this dialog. However, their rating system is really pretty inherently flawed, mostly because it’s non-intuitive. This is what GoodReads says their star ratings mean:

• 1 star – didn’t like it.
• 2 stars – it was okay.
• 3 stars – liked it.
• 4 stars – really liked it.
• 5 stars – it was amazing.

So the problem, here, for one thing is that it jumps from a completely subjective descriptor at 1-4 stars to a somewhat objective measure of quality at 5. 5 stars doesn’t indicate “I loved it,” but “it was amazing,” which to me, sounds more like a measure of conceptual and craft success on the part of the writer, rather than an indicator of just enjoyment.

It’s also problematic because almost no one uses the ratings this way, probably because it’s incredibly non-intuitive to have only one negative ranking. To most people, 1-star suggests that they hate a book, and two, perhaps, that they didn’t like it but felt less strongly about it. But that’s not what GoodReads tells us: they tell us that a 2-star rating–a rating less than half of the possible star rating!–indicates a book that’s “okay.”

Finally, there’s no room for half-star ratings, which reduces the possibility of nuance, makes rating a lot more reductive, and forces reviewers to look at things in a kind of black and white way that’s just not realistic, considering the varied and complex responses people have to books!

Most of the time, I follow GoodRead’s guidelines for star ratings, except, usually, for 4- and 5-star reviews. For me, both indicate that a book is very good, but a 4-star ranking usually indicates that there’s something about a book I might change to consider it ideal or perfectly crafted (“amazing”). Here, I’m usually making guesses about authorial intent and how well that intent was carried out. If a book is rated 5-stars, I usually can’t conceive of many, if any, ways to improve it.

However, this also means that there are some books that may be a bit flawed, but that I absolute love! And I may feel slightly less fervent about a book that’s rated 5-stars, despite the fact that it’s pretty perfectly written! I can’t help but think of the review I’m going to write for Revis’ Across the Universe (which, according to my usual rating style, I’d give 4-stars), and for Cynthia Hand’s Unearthly, which I recently reviewed. I really really really liked both books. I think Hand’s Unearthly was pretty perfectly crafted for an angel book. However, I’ll never love any angel book as much as I love a SF-adventure on a generation ship–because I’m a dork, because I love spaceships right down to my toes. And really, I think I loved Across the Universe more, even if there were a few flaws I’d like to discuss, and none that I can think of for Unearthly.

(Of course, sometimes I absolutely totally love books that I also can’t find any flaws in, to which I give unthinking and enthusiastic 5-star ratings without hesitation.)

I try to show these nuances of opinions in my actual reviews, which is where the meat of reviewing inevitably lies. I try to explain my biases, my perspective. I try to give readers a sense of my tastes, so that they can decide whether they, too, would be interested in a given book. And I try to think about authorial intent and whether the author was successful in light of their genre and goals. All this is nuance–I try to make my reviews nuanced, well-considered, careful.

But those stars, those damn stars, sometimes stop readers from seeing the nuance–and I can’t blame them. I’ve had readers of my reviews message me to say things like, “You only gave that book 2-stars? I’m going to skip it then.” I’ve had writers slightly tersely link to my 4-star reviews of books I really loved, then watched them squee over other reviewers’ 5-star reviews. I’ve wondered if these writers–of books I gave 2, and 3, and 4 stars, thought I was just trashing their books, despite the fact that I’m just trying to rate books in line with GoodReads’ guidelines.

And I’ll admit, part of my frustration with this is out of my constantly running internal debate about my insistence at being, publicly, both a reader and a writer. I love writing reviews, love honestly talking about books and how to make them better and when they thrill you even when they’re flawed, and what those flaws are, and what deeper thematics reveal about us as a culture, and what the impact of, say, anti-feminist strains in YA do to us as a society. For whatever reason, this dialog is important to me, and I don’t think it’s one I can have in private. This discourse–with you, gentle reader–has undoubtedly made me a better, more considerate, and more careful writer, and a more thoughtful and articulate reader, too.

But still, many writers don’t feel as I do. Many writers are afraid to openly and honestly dialog about books, particularly in YA. Many loathe the impact it might have on their careers–citing discomfort at conference panels when they have to sit next to someone they reviewed. I’ve worried about this (I’ve had nightmares about this!). But when it comes down to it, the way some writers work around this dilemma–maintaining radio silence about books they’ve read and didn’t like, as if the experience of disliking a book doesn’t exist; or giving every book they read a 5-star rating no matter how they really feel about it or if they’ve even read it; or rating them only, without discussing their reasoning–doesn’t sit right with me. I’m an obnoxiously honest person; I hold myself to rigorous standards of honesty. And many of these ways around conflict don’t sit right with my own moral compass. I’m okay with it if it’s what other authors want to do, but it doesn’t feel right for me. And, while I know that my policies about reviewing may shift and change, and that, inevitably, some authors will have their feelings hurt over the discussion of any flaws in their writing (this, I think, unrealistic of them and also counterproductive, but that’s for another blog), I wonder if eliminating the star rating might reduce that–if only because it forces readers to look at, and consider, my words rather than a reductive and imprecise star rating.

Because those words are what matters, but I realize that it might be difficult to see them when they’re beneath a one- or two-star review (for both authors and readers). When it comes down to it, while I’ve written a few reviews that are unflinchingly positive, I’ve never written one that had nothing good to say about a book. Really. Even my harshest one-star review will acknowledge (okay, grudgingly, I’ll admit) what an author does well. As reviews should! This is about thinking critically about art, not giving a thorough and unrelenting trashing.

And so it’s something I’m considering–ditching the stars, which are simplistic and reductive and probably not entirely accurate–and just talking about books from here on out. What do you think?

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was really excited to pick up an e-ARC of Lauren Oliver’s Delirium on netgalley, as her first book, Before I Fall is one of my crit group member Shannon’s all-time faves.

On a prose level, I can certainly understand her fondness for Oliver’s writing. It is very pretty and well-controlled, full of the sort of stylistic flourishes often absent in young adult literature. This was especially true in terms of her descriptions of the natural and man-made landscapes of the book. Delirium is set in a near-future version of Portland, Maine, and I almost felt like I’d been vacationing there by the time the book was finished. It’s a very well-described setting.

Unfortunately, other aspects of the world building, and many other aspects of the plot, fell flat for me.

My first problem was with the premise at large. This is a dystopian novel, and it opens with an extended infodump establishing our universe: in the future, a cure for love has been found, and with it, a host of mental disorders and crimes have been eliminated, too. At the age of eighteen (and not a moment sooner, we’re told, for fear of ill health effects—though this guideline is later broken without more than a slight nod of acknowledgement), all citizens are put through a “procedure” (a partial lobotomy, really), which cures them of all forms of love, from romantic infatuation to filial affection. The resulting population is peacefully matched to their future spouses, and, I suppose, the reader is supposed to be horrified.

I had issues with this infodump as a narrative device—I think it’s always a little bland to start a book this way—but I would have abided by it if Oliver had built something truly terrifying with her premise. But instead of seeming scary, our heroine Magdalena’s world just seemed simply implausible to me. I think this premise is indicative of a larger problem with YA dystopians: they often seem to be forming arguments in opposition to criticisms that no one has made. If we’re to look at humanity, historically, and as we know it today, I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that anyone would line up for procedures which “cure” them of love, as the narration tells us has happened in this society—particularly as Lena’s society is nominally somewhat Christian, a religion which at least in its modern form pays a great deal of lip service to the importance of love. Further, there’s no inciting incident—the formation of a political dictatorship, for example; or some sort of plague or war that leaves humanity vulnerable—to really justify this sort of philosophical sea change. We see hints of some political despotism; there are raids of homes and all citizens are constantly monitored. But these tropes go unexplored and when they are described in any depth, it’s somewhat limply. Perhaps Oliver is holding out for the second and third volume in this series to give us any deeper answers, but I found that it contributed to this volume’s failure when added to the more pervasive problems.

What’s worse, though (as I said above) what we have of the setting is beautifully described, it’s written in a way that is entirely too contemporary for my tastes. Bear in mind that I don’t dislike near-future political science fiction. When used correctly, I think contemporaneous details can contribute to the richness of a dystopian text. Take, for example, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In Atwood’s novel, the accuracy of details makes it easy to see how her society advanced from one very much like ours to an absolutely stifling dystopian world. Sadly, the details of Delirium do none of that. Lena runs for her high school track team; her friend downloads music illegally. I found neither of these details, or any of the others like it, to be particularly incisive enough to create those sorts of logical links between our world and a terrifying future. Instead I found myself wondering if perhaps Oliver simply lacked the imagination to create an accurately vivid world herself.

She tries. I know that she did because she utilizes an interesting narrative device, starting each chapter with a fictional piece of literature from her society, an excerpt from one of their handbooks for children or history texts or perhaps a prayer. But these, too, fail to coalesce into any deeper, more meaningful message. There was a vague anti-science message that I had a bit of trouble parsing—one prayer is a recitation of the periodic table, and there are references to how the church and science have merged to form a “New Religion, which teaches the Holy Trinity of God, Science, and Order.” I’m not entirely sure why, but I suspect this was supposed to be scary. But I don’t find the periodic table, even if told in nursery-rhyme form, particularly scary, and if the message is that we’re supposed to be scared of scientists who want to give us lobotomies, well then, yeah, clearly.

Finally, though Lena’s voice is well-done (if a bit of an Everygirl), and some of the supporting characters vividly rendered, I found Alex, the love interest, the most important character to get right in a book about star-crossed lovers, to be utterly bland. He’s cute. He and Lena kiss. He recites poetry. But other than that, I have no idea who he is, and why he’s so special.

Maybe that’s sort of the point. There’s a recurring thread here about Romeo and Juliet. In Lena’s repressed society, it’s taught as a “cautionary tale” about the dangers of love. When Alex hears that, he laughs and says it’s a great love story. The only problem with that is, of course, to call Romeo and Juliet naught but a great love story is to oversimplify. It is a cautionary tale—about blood feuds—and the capriciousness of Romeo’s emotions, particularly, and the fool-heartedness of both Romeo and Juliet are also important themes. Of course, that’s not how Romeo and Juliet are often perceived by high schoolers. Many see it in reductive, over-simplistic terms (see also: how Bella and Edward interpret it in New Moon), which is how they often see love, too, throwing themselves into it whole heartedly even with people who aren’t that interesting.

If that was really Oliver’s point, then I think it’s a provocative one for a modern YA author to make. However, if that was her point, I really wish she would have shared it with her audience.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book for review purposes from netgalley.com

View all my reviews on goodreads.com.