When I saw a copy of this at the library, I was pretty excited. Originally, I had planned to review a digital ARC of this through NetGalley, but they pulled it from their list for whatever reason.

Nemesis, written by the same icon of Jewish-American literature who brought you Portnoy’s Complaint, examines the Jewish-American experience during the 1944 polio epidemic. We see the disease spread from urban New Jersey to rural Pennsylvania, ravaging in particular the Weequahic section of Newark.

Bucky Cantor, playground coordinator and athlete extraordinaire, spends much of this book running from conflict. He declines to join his friends in military enlistment, he runs from Weequahic when the polio epidemic intensifies, and he runs from Marcia, his fiancée, when he falls victim to polio himself. He seems to be, on many levels, impotent; he tells us so himself.

But is he really? Native American symbols abound in the latter half of this book, when the Poconos camp where he works engages in some Native American roleplaying. When polio strikes the camp, he believes himself to be the “invisible arrow” (a term borrowed from Native American epidemiology) that brought the illness to the camp from the city. Although doctors try to reassure him that the odds of this are slight, Bucky revels in “self-castigation,” and Marcia later calls him out on this inherent masochism. The “arrow” imagery insinuates potency, virility. It is all but phallic. So while Bucky is powerless to navigate his own relationships and quick to dodge potential conflict, perhaps the “invisible arrow” identity allows him to feel a certain measure of power. Perhaps it is not self-loathing, but self-indulgent.

Powerlessness is one of the prominent themes at work in this story. Parents withdraw their children from playgrounds and camps to protect them from polio. People yearn so deeply for a culprit, an epidemiological scapegoat they can identify and subsequently avoid, that they point fingers at restaurant hot dogs. Lawmakers consider quarantining entire communities to stop the spread the virus. People like Bucky flee the cities in hopes of avoiding infection. None of these measures proves to be particularly effective. No one can suppress the biological realities of polio.

Also of note is Bucky’s crisis of faith as the epidemic intensifies. He becomes something of an agnostic cliché, turning his anger on his god when polio hits close to home. His anger, his powerlessness, and a sense of self-blame more virulent than the polio itself ruin him. The disease ravages his body, but it is his mind that reduces him to the bitter cynic he becomes. Polio robs him of loved ones and of his once-athletic body, but he robs himself of a life with Marcia.

The book ends with a memory from Arnold Mesnikoff, the former student of Bucky who narrates parts of this story. Even after running into Bucky decades after the epidemic and witnessing his bitterness firsthand, he remembers him differently in the end. We are left not with the image of a crippled, impotent version Bucky, but a youthful, healthy one who could throw a javelin with expert precision. Bucky has no narrative control over this memory, so he cannot taint it with his self-loathing. So we remember Bucky as his students do: with fondness and admiration. The tragedy lies in what his life might have been if he had seen himself in this same light.

Dirty Secret - Jessie Sholl

Hoarding. A psychological phenomenon that has quickly become part of our cultural vocabulary. A mental illness that, if unchecked, can leave people homeless and friendless.

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last two years, you’ve seen instances of this devastating disorder in the media. Both A&E and TLC air documentary-style reality shows featuring afflicted families, and various talk shows have devoted entire episodes to hoarding. However, as Jessie Sholl reveals in her memoir, Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding (Gallery Books, December 2010), this phenomenon is hardly a new one.

Books like Stuff (written by psychologists Randy Frost and Gail Steketee) examine the psychopathology of hoarding, drawing upon anecdotal material to illustrate its hallmark traits. Hoarding disorders can be slippery diagnostic eels, often comorbid with a host of other emotional disorders and untraceable to a single cause. They hit different people differently and for different reasons. Books like Sholl’s illuminate just how complex this illness can be.

What makes Dirty Secret so unique is its point of view. This is not the memoir of a hoarder, nor is it the clinical reflection of a hoarding specialist. It isn’t a book of tips for conquering hoarding behaviors or chronic disorganization. No, Dirty Secret tells us what it is like to be the loved one of a hoarder. The relationships between hoarders and their loved ones are often, for lack of a better word, messy. As Sholl tells us, hoarders are prone to lapses in decision-making and deficits in memory and spatial orientation. Sholl herself is the victim of poor decision-making: Her mother did not hold her until she was six months old because she was recovering from surgery; however, even after her recovery, the sight of her crying baby filled her with such crippling indecision that she often declined to hold her. She did not know how to react to her crying child then, and she does not know how to react to the gargantuan heaps of junk that threaten her well-being now.

Like a lot of hoarders, Jessie’s mother has always had big plans for her “stuff.” She collects items indiscriminately to give as gifts to loved ones. She has grandiose plans to get rich crafting cat beds. Despite having written down Jessie’s contact information several times, she must always ask for her address again when sending one of her “gifts.” And it is the gifts to Jessie that illuminate just how warped a hoarder’s mind can become. As a child, Jessie had a traumatic experience at a zoo with a snake. Her mother’s immediate response was to laugh while her child screamed. This is troubling enough. But over the years, she would collect toy snakes from various places and give them to Jessie as gag gifts, despite her daughter’s snake phobia. She persists in doing so even after being told to stop several times by an unnerved Jessie.

The thing is, her mother’s behaviors are so varied, ranging from confusion to bad decision-making to hoarding to obsessive compulsion to avoidance to delusions of grandeur (e.g., the cat beds), that it is hard to blame just the hoarding disorder. There appear to be a host of comorbid problems in play here. This, of course, makes it exceedingly difficult to treat hoarders like her and virtually impossible to cure them.

Jessie’s narrative reveals the frustration, fear, and despair associated with her mother’s hoarding. It also explores her struggle with RSI (repetitive stress injury), a disorder that made writing impossible for a long stretch.

Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding offers the American public a rare opportunity to experience hoarding from the point of view of a loved one. While the television documentaries give ample airtime to the loved ones, it isn’t until we read a memoir like this that we understand just how crippling this disorder can be. Long after the junk trucks leave with their spoils, hoarders and their family members must still dig out from under years of accumulated hurt and resentment. Lifelong behaviors and habits must change. Television viewers glean satisfaction from the before/after shots of these once uninhabitable homes, but they shouldn’t forget that, at this stage, the family’s work has only just begun.

[Disclaimer: I received an advance review copy of Dirty Secret from the author/publisher.]

My bookshelves

1. Blood and Chocolate - Annette Curtis Klause
2. Deadly Little Lies - Laurie Faria Stolarz
3. Dark Song - Gail Giles
4. If I Stay - Gayle Forman
5. Deadly Little Games - Laurie Faria Stolarz
6. The Silver Kiss - Annette Curtis Klause
7. From the Land of the Moon - Milena Agus
8. The Devil and Miss Goody Two-Shoes - Charlotte Hughes (snark project)
9. Pretty Little Liars - Sara Shepard
10. Nemesis – Philip Roth
11. Swoon - Nina Malkin
12. Entice – Carrie Jones
13. Kissed by an Angel - Elizabeth Chandler
14. The Power of Love - Elizabeth Chandler
15. Soulmates – Elizabeth Chandler
16. If You Believe - Kristin Hannah (snark project)
17. The Adoration of Jenna Fox - Mary E. Pearson
18. Matched - Ally Condie
19. A Treasure Worth Keeping - Kathryn Springer (snark project)
20. The Lover’s Dictionary – David Levithan
21. Torment - Lauren Kate
22. After the Quake - Haruki Murakami
23. The Summer I Turned Pretty - Jenny Han
24. Willow - Julia Hoban
25. Crescendo - Becca Fitzpatrick
26. Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin
27. The Color of Earth - Kim Dong Hwa
28. A Cop’s Firsthand Account of Catching the Killer Who Terrorized a Community - Jeff Schober with Det. Dennis Delano
29. Florida Icons - Roger Hammer (in-progress GPP manuscript, Summer 2011 release)
30. No Buddy Left Behind - Terri Crisp and Cindy Hurn (in-progress Lyons Press manuscript, Fall 2011 release)
31. Haunted Savannah – Georgia Byrd (in-progress GPP manuscript, Summer 2011 release)
32. It’s Not Summer Without You - Jenny Han
33. The Rogue and the Hellion - Connie Mason (snark project)
34. RBBAIB (snark project)
35. Prophet’s Daugher - Erin Prophet
36. Across the Universe - Beth Revis
37. Where She Went – Gayle Forman
38. The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
39. Fury - Salman Rushdie
40. Mercury - Hope Larson
41. Temptation’s Darling - Joanna Lindsay (snark project)
42. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
43. Sweet Valley Confidential – Francine Pascal
44. Infinite Days - Rebecca Maizel
45. Winter Longing - Tricia Mills
46. Boston’s Freedom Trail - Cindi D. Pietrzyk
47. Between Shades of Gray – Ruta Sepetys
48. Trapped - Michael Northrop
49. Two Is Enough - Laura S. Scott
50. Class Matters - New York Times
51. Scrawl - Mark Shulman
52. Where the Truth Lies – Jessica Warman
53. Bitter End - Jennifer Brown
54. The Unidentified  – Rae Mariz
55. Maybe This Time - Jennifer Crusie
56. The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham
57. Butterfly Burning: A Novel – Yvonne Vera
58. Bet Me - Jennifer Crusie
59. Nightshade - Andrea Cremer
60. Room - Emma Donoghue
61. Charlie All Night - Jennifer Crusie
62. We’ll Always Have Summer - Jenny Han
63. Unlocked - Ryan G. Van Cleave
64. Once - Morris Gleitzman
65. Luka and the Fire of Life - Salman Rushdie
66. Strange Bedpersons - Jennifer Crusie
67. Welcome to Temptation - Jennifer Crusie
68. Naamah’s Blessing - Jacqueline Carey
69. I Am the Messenger - Markus Zusak
70. The Baby Trap - Ellen Peck
71. Dr. Dad - Judith Arnold (snark project)
72. A Visit from the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
73. Damned - Chuck Palahniuk
74. Simply Irresistible – Jill Shalvis
75. The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood
76. You Don’t Know Me - David Klass
77. The Color of Water - Kim Dong Hwa
78. The Color of Heaven - Kim Dong Hwa
79. Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult
80. Possession - Elana Johnson
81. Then - Morris Gleitzman
82. What Happened to Goodbye - Sarah Dessen
83. Ribbon of Darkness - Julie Coulter Bellon
84. The Waves - Virginia Woolf
85. 9/11: the world speaks – Tribute WTC Visitor Center
86. Imaginary Girls - Nova Ren Suma
87. Wifework - Susan Maushart
88. The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata
89. Escape from Bridezilla - Jacqueline DeMontravel
90. The Edge of Sleep - David Wiltse
91. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie
92. Dear Mr. Kawabata - Rashid Al-Daif
93. Arlington Park - Rachel Cusk
94. Miracle Child - Kayla Daniels
95. Perfect - Ellen Hopkins
96. Food Lovers’ Guide to Atlanta - Malika Harricharan (in-progress GPP manuscript, Fall 2011)
97. The House on Mango Street - Jacqueline Cisneros
98. Arizona: A Photographic Tribute - John Annerino (GPP, Fall 2011)
99. New Mexico: A Photographic Tribute – John Annerino (GPP, Fall 2011)
100. The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
101. Texas Icons - Donna Ingham (in-progress GPP manuscript, Spring 2012)
102. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
103. Nerd in Shining Armor - Vicki Lewis Thompson
104. Love Invents Us - Amy Bloom
105. Tokyo Fiancée - Amélie Nothomb
106. OyMG - Amy Fellner Dominy
107. In Trouble - Ellen Levine
108. Pure - Terra Elan McVoy
109. Palm-of-the-Hand Stories - Yasunari Kawabata
110. Lola and the Boy Next Door - Stephanie Perkins
111. The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides
112. The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine - Alina Bronsky
113. Virtuosity - Jessica Martinez
114. Anna and the French Kiss - Stephanie Perkins
115. The Pale King - David Foster Wallace
116. Double Dexter – Jeff Lindsay
117. Audition - Stasia Ward Kehoe
118. Crossed - Ally Condie
119. Blood Red Road - Moira Young
120. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

Books read in 2010:

1. Maxxed Out - David Collins
2. Flying in Place - Susan Palwick
3. Kushiel’s Chosen – Jacqueline Carey
4. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
5. Miles from Nowhere - Nami Mun
6. After Dark - Haruki Murakami
7. Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament – S.G. Browne
   
8. A German Love Story - Rolf Hochhuth
9. Kushiel’s Avatar - Jacqueline Carey
10. World War Z - Max Brooks
11. Kokoro - Natsume Soseki
12. The Woman in the Dunes - Kobo Abe
13. Nightlight: A Parody – The Harvard Lampoon
14. The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
15. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón
16. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
17. The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
18. Hush, Hush – Becca Fitzpatrick
19. Kushiel’s Scion - Jacqueline Carey
20. Kushiel’s Justice - Jacqueline Carey
21. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
22. Kushiel’s Mercy - Jacqueline Carey
23. The History of Love - Nicole Krauss
24. Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli
25. A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
26. Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater
27. Love, Stargirl - Jerry Spinelli
28. The Eye of the Sun - Ahdaf Soueif
29. The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
30. Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons - Kurt Vonnegut
31. The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
32. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
33. Get Me Out of Here - Rachel Reiland
34. Passion’s Disguise - Rita Balkey (romance novel snark project)
35. Naomi - Junichiro Tanizaki
36. The Three-Cornered World - Natsume Soseki
37. Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things - Randy Frost & Gail Steketee
38. The Song of the Whales - Uri Orlev
39. The Clearing - Heather Davis
40. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
    
41. Naamah’s Kiss - Jacqueline Carey
42. The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
43. I Kissed a Zombie, And I Liked It - Adam Selzer
44. Being - Kevin Brooks
45. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
46. Need – Carrie Jones
47. Luna - Julie Anne Peters
48. The Sea and the Silence - Peter Cunningham
49. Numbers - Rachel Ward
50. Adios, Nirvana – Conrad Wesselhoeft
51. Paper Daughter - Jeanette Ingold
52. Crazy – Han Nolan
53. Bite Me – Christopher Moore
54. Uglies - Scott Westerfeld
55. Crank - Ellen Hopkins
56. Glass – Ellen Hopkins
    
57. Pretties - Scott Westerfeld
58. Specials - Scott Westerfeld
59. The Love Market - Carol Mason
60. What Is Left the Daughter - Howard Norman
61. Your Republic Is Calling You - Young-ha Kim
62. Through a Glass Darkly - Karleen Koen
63. Tyger Tyger - Kerstin Hamilton
64. Piers’ Desire - Marianne Ackerman
65. A Long Walk to Water - Linda Sue Park
66. It Started with a Dare - Lindsay Faith Rech
67. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
68. Origin - Diana Abu-Jaber
69. Crescent - Diana Abu-Jaber
70. Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami
71. Dance, Dance, Dance - Haruki Murakami
72. Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin
73. The Bells - Richard Harvell
74. Fallen - Lauren Kate
75. The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors - Michele Young-Stone
76. Wake - Lisa McMann
77. Fade - Lisa McMann
78. Gone - Lisa McMann
79. Seven Types of Ambiguity – Elliot Perlman
80. Burned - Ellen Hopkins
81. Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
82. The Maze Runner - James Dashner
83. Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac – Gabrielle Zevin
84. North of Beautiful – Justina Chen Hadley
85. Tell-All - Chuck Palahniuk
86. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling
87. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J.K. Rowling
88. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K. Rowling
89. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - J.K. Rowling
90. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling
91. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
92. Vestments - John Reimringer
93. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
94. Naamah’s Curse - Jacqueline Carey
    
95. The Real Thing - J.J. Murray
96. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
97. Tithe – Holly Black
98. Split - Swati Avasthi
99. Initiation - Susan Fine
100. White Ash - Mike Aloisi
     
101. Broken Glass Park - Alina Bronsky
102. In Your Arms - Rosemary Rogers (romance novel snark project)
103. My Darling, My Hamburger – Paul Zindel (romance novel snark project)
104. Miss Dalrymple’s Virtue - Margaret Westhaven (romance novel snark project)
105. Remembering Raquel – Vivian Vande Velde
106. Hate List - Jennifer Brown
107. As Simple as Snow - Gregory Galloway
108. Annexed - Sharon Dogar
109. The Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin
110. The Tombs of Atuan - Ursula K. Le Guin
111. The Farthest Shore - Ursula K. Le Guin
     
112. Pirate’s Wild Embrace - Linda Windsor (romance novel snark project)
113. Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz - Olga Lengyel
114. White Noise – Don DeLillo
     
115. In the Woods - Tana French
116. The Likeness – Tana French
117. This Must Be the Place - Kate Racculian
118. Dune - Frank Herbert
119. Ribbon of Darkness - Julie Coulter Bellon
     
120. The Local News – Miriam Gershow
121. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
122. Annie on My Mind – Nancy Garden
123. Bushwhacked Groom - Eugenia Riley (romance novel snark project)
124. Santa Olivia – Jacqueline Carey
125. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
126. The Glass Slipper and Other Stories – Shotaro Yasuoka
127. Sweet Savage Splendor – Lauren Wilde (romance novel snark project)
128. Blackwood’s Woman – Beverly Barton (romance novel snark project)
129. Baby of Mine - Jane Toombs (romance novel snark project)
     
130. Just Listen – Sarah Dessen
131. Linger - Maggie Stiefvater
132. Blessing in Disguise – Lorna Michaels (romance novel snark project)
133. The Truth About Forever - Sarah Dessen
134. Howl’s Moving Castle - Dianna Wynne Jones
135. This Lullaby - Sarah Dessen
136. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
137. Traitor’s Kiss - Jane Toombs (romance novel snark project)
138. Along for the Ride - Sarah Dessen
139. Evermore – Alyson Noël
140. Price of Passion – Susan Napier (romance novel snark project)
     
141. The Complete Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi
142. Beautiful Creatures – Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
143. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
144. The Dancing Girl of Izu - Yasunari Kawabata
145. Spring Miscellany and London Essays - Natsume Soseki
146. Some Prefer Nettles - Junichiro Tanizaki
147. Dreamland - Sarah Dessen
148. Captivate - Carrie Jones
149. The Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
150. What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal – Zoë Heller
151. Blue Moon - Alyson Noël
152. Traitor’s Kiss - Joy Tucker (romance novel snark project)
153. Traitor’s Kiss - Terri Valentine (romance novel snark project)
154. A Kind of Intimacy - Jenn Ashworth
155. One Day - David Nicholls
156. Zulu - Caryl Ferey
157. Damage - Josephine Hart
158. Botchan – Natsume Soseki
     
159. Dexter Is Delicious - Jeff Lindsay
160. Fallout - Ellen Hopkins
161. Evernight - Claudia Gray
162. Stargazer - Claudia Gray
163. Hourglass - Claudia Gray
164. Lock and Key - Sarah Dessen
165. Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
     
166. Glimpse - Carol Lynch Williams
167. Boy Meets Boy - David Levithan
168. Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
169. Firegirl - Tony Abbott
170. Teach Me - R.A. Nelson
171. When It Happens – Susane Colasanti
172. I Am Number Four - Pittacus Lore
173. Breathing Underwater – Alex Flinn
174. The Sky Is Everywhere - Jandy Nelson
175. After the Moment - Garret Freymann-Weyr
176. Wintergirls - Laurie Halse Anderson
177. Blankets - Craig Thompson
178. Paper Towns - John Green
179. Identical - Ellen Hopkins
180. Impulse - Ellen Hopkins
181. A Little Wanting Song - Cath Crowley
182. The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai - Ruiyan Xu
183. Dirty Secret: A Daughter Comes Clean About Her Mother’s Compulsive Hoarding – Jessie Sholl
184. Tricks - Ellen Hopkins
185. Point Omega - Don DeLillo
186. Guardian of the Dead - Karen Healey
187. Keep Sweet - Michele Dominguez Greene
188. Sweet Dates in Basra - Jessica Jiji
189. It Happened in Idaho - Randy Stapilus
190. Myths and Mysteries of New Mexico - Barbara Marriott
191. Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa
192. Five by Endo - Shusaku Endo
193. Triumph - Carolyn Jessop
194. The Girl I Left Behind - Shusaku Endo
195. The House of Tomorrow – Peter Bognanni
196. Echo - Kate Morgenroth
197. Liar - Justine Larbalestier
198. Godspeed - Charles Sheffield
199. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men – David Foster Wallace
200. Sweet Misfortune - Kevin Alan Milne
201. Sweet Savage Surrender - Kathryn Hockett (romance novel snark project)
202. Oh, Susannah - Leigh Riker (romance novel snark project)
203. Martin and John - Dale Peck
204. Shadowland - Alyson Noël
205. Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata
206. The DUFF - Kody Keplinger
207. Deep Drive - Mike Lowell
208. Night Star - Alyson Noël
209. Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
210. Deadly Little Secret – Laurie Faria Stolarz
     

Damage - Josephine Hart

On the surface, Damage is about a middle-aged man who has an affair with a younger woman. Pretty standard dramatic fare, right? But wait–there’s more. The younger woman in question happens to be his son’s fiancée, and the man in question happens to be a member of Parliament.

There is much more at work here than mere lust, or even mere love. No, it is sexual obsession that dominates this story, an obsession so pervasive that it propels the narrator to unspeakable lows. It propels the narrative toward its tragic conclusion.

Still, it isn’t dramatic excess that packs a punch in this story. It is an eerie and enduring emptiness. These characters are all, on various levels, devoid of humanity. The narrator has traipsed through a loveless fifty years of life, never once experiencing feelings of love or sexual passion until he meets Anna, his son’s newest girlfriend. His wife, Ingrid, seems content with their passionless union and, together, they put on a good show in public. They are both façades.

Martyn has meandered from one relationship to the next with women who vaguely resemble his mother. Anna has dragged multiple men through her psychological mud in a vain attempt to escape her troubled past. Sally, the only remotely functional family member, remains fairly remote throughout the story. Her romantic relationship with Jonathan is the only functional one in the book. Her narrative distance from the rest of her family allows her to transcend their collective emptiness.

We experience this story through the detached eyes of a cold narrator, who engages in some logic-defying mental contortions to justify what he is doing. But there is no escaping the consequences of his disturbing romantic entanglement with Anna. He remains firmly rooted in the delusion that he has found true love, that he can have a domestic life with this young woman. He even assigns himself godlike powers of taking on others’ negative feelings so that they can be free of them–all in the name of assuaging his own vague sense of guilt. At points, he even deflects blame from himself and onto the “devil.”

The writing style lends itself to this inherent emptiness. Sentence fragments and long strains of simple sentences give the story an abrupt, staccato feel. The chapters are short; the story flits from one scene to the next quickly, leaving the reader with impressionistic shards of rising and falling action, rather than a fully realized narrative exploration. We are on a crash course with ruin from the moment we begin reading, and the story takes no detours on its way there.

(Disclaimer: I received a digital galley of this title from Open Road.)

Evermore - Alyson Noël

** spoiler alert **

I had a review written for this, but I can’t bring myself to post it. It isn’t constructive, and I try not to pan a book without offering up at least something positive or helpful. I once self-published an ebook (which has been offline for “repairs”/a total overhaul for three years now), so I know firsthand how unbelievably grueling it is to write a book. I struggle with it daily, and am the first to admit that the original version of my story (and possibly even the current one) was, in parts, really bad. I’m still learning. Even Salman Rushdie and Haruki Murakami are still learning. So, keep in mind as you read this that, while I may complain heartily about a book, I’m always respectful of the mind-melting work that went into it.

There are so many things about this story that make me worry for impressionable young women reading it that I held nothing back in my original review. Beyond the numerous Twilight ripoffs and the protagonists’ own abhorrent behavior, this book (like so many others) romanticizes stalking and controlling romantic relationships. It glorifies dishonesty and cheating. It even, at one point, has the “heroine” driving drunk to school, an appalling act for which she suffers no real consequences–and, even worse, something she treats as a big joke.

I will share the lists from my original review and spare you the rest:

Behavior that, according to Ever and Damen, is totally copacetic:
–Using psychic powers to cheat on tests (and then criticizing mortal girls for doing the same, sans psychic powers).
–Using psychic powers to cheat at gambling and win hundreds of thousands of dollars.
–Stalking.
–Breaking and entering.
–Self-medicating with booze.
–Driving drunk.
–Lying, as long as it’s about “unimportant” things.
–Invading your significant other’s thoughts, allowing him/her no privacy.
–Controlling your girlfriend’s clothing, music, thoughts, and dreams.
–Ditching your girlfriend to “go surfing” when she turns you down for lovin’.
–Stealing another woman’s husband over and over, and then killing her for not taking it lying down.
–Flirting with other girls to make your lady love jealous.
–Plying your girlfriend with tulips every time you do something jerky.
–Breaking the code and going after your best friend’s crush.
–Not giving your girlfriend a choice to spend eternity with her family before making her an immortal like you (even Edward gave Bella a choice, which basically involved Bella convincing him for 1500+ pages that she had nothing to live for and just wanted to be like him–but, still, he gave her the choice).

Blatant Twilight ripoffs:
–The sequel is called Blue Moon. (“Come on!!! Are you serious?!” asks Mr. Mere.)
–New girl in new town meets new boy in new town. The two sit next to one another in class.
–Immortal boy thinks bland, somewhat unlikable first-person narrator is more extraordinary than any of the girls he’s met across time and space.
–Ever can read everyone’s thoughts but Damen’s.
–Damen is seventeen, immortal, rich, and drives a fast car.
–Damen never eats and his lips are “icy cold.”
–These characters are centuries-old virgins.
–Damen cuts school a lot, leaving Ever to plotz over his absence.
–Damen shows up randomly and without warning in Ever’s bedroom. Sexless sleepovers ensue.
–Ever has no parental supervision whatsoever. Even when she narrowly dodges expulsion for getting wasted at school, her adoptive aunt (Sabine) half-heartedly hides the booze in an unlocked cabinet rather than pouring it down the sink.
–Ever and Damen share a timeless love but, really, their central conflict is not being able to have sex. Though I’m not sure what’s stopping Ever–it’s never really made clear.
–Key scenes in meadows/fields.
–Damen to Ever/Edward to Bella: “I can’t stay away from you” (258). A blatant, word-for-word dialogue lift.
–Instead of catching a falling apple in the cafeteria, Damen catches Ever’s falling water bottle. Like Edward, he moves so fast that it’s a blur.

Things Damen can do:
(Note: According to Ever, Damen has a “neverending list of things he’s good at” (55). There are several paragraphs in this book that are just laundry lists of all the things that make Damen awesomesauce.)
–Anything. Everything.
–Painting, diving, surfing, soccer, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, magic tricks, etc.
–He taught Picasso everything he knows about painting. No joke. Picasso and Van Gogh both painted him, and he was also BFFs with Leonardo da Vinci. His modern-day art teacher realizes “she’s never had [a student:] with such innate, natural ability–until now” (56). This is some serious Gary Stu (thanks, Ashley) characterization. On top of all this, he has signed books from Emily Brontë and William Shakespeare, and he knew Marie Antoinette and all four Beatles.
–He’s ambidextrous and, to quote Bella Swan, “impossibly fast.”
–He regularly cribs passages from various popular New Age texts, which combine to form a confusing mish-mash of manifesting, positive thinking, Transcendental Meditation, chakras, karma, and reincarnation. These concepts are not, as pop American pseudo-philosophy would have you believe, interchangeable.
–In other words, he bastardizes legitimate Eastern religions/philosophies to make them palatable to an American teenage audience. It happens all the time.

Miscellaneous other issues:
–Excessive use of participial phrases and miscellaneous copyediting errors.
–Using “nauseous” instead of “nauseated” multiple times to describe feeling sick to one’s stomach.
–Blatant product/celebrity placement (Sidekick, iPhone, iPod, Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, Evanescence, etc.).
–A plot more than vaguely reminiscent of The Twilight Saga, Fallen, Hush, Hush, Numbers, The Lovely Bones, and others.

I’ve heard that the subsequent books improve, so maybe they iron out some of the kinks of this first one. I think that I could have forgiven a lot if the core relationships in this book had been stronger. Sabine is too busy with her job to parent Ever at all. Ever is too self-involved to be a good friend to Miles and Haven. Damen is too controlling to be a healthy choice for Ever. Riley is too derivative of The Lovely Bones for me to take her seriously. I felt no real connection between any of these characters. And, once again, I’m left wondering if physical beauty is the only thing that attracts Ever and Damen to one another.

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

My spoiler-free, character-based review. It does, however, contain generic quotes from throughout the book, so be warned.

Title: Why Katniss Everdeen is not your typical YA heroine
Subtitle: In other words, why Katniss rocks

I am going to break this down one quote at a time. Indirectly, this book calls a lot of young adult authors onto the carpet for lazy storytelling and limp-as-a-dishrag heroines. It’s hard to say whether or not this was deliberate, but my first quote, exhibit A, makes me think it might have been.

Exhibit A: Haymitch: “‘I want everyone to think of one incident where Katniss Everdeen genuinely moved you. Not where you were jealous of her hairstyle, or her dress went up in flames or she made a halfway decent shot with an arrow. Not where Peeta was making you like her. I want to hear one moment where she made you feel something real.’” (74)

Read this passage. If you have ever so much as fantasized about writing a novel, memorize it. It is glorious. It is an APB to authors everywhere that a character needs to be more than a blank slate. A character needs dimension and clear motivation. She needs to evoke genuine emotion, rather than merely the adrenaline thrill associated with a first kiss or romantic scene. She needs to aspire to something more than boys. Don’t tell us she is awesome without providing the narrative goods to back it up. Don’t reduce your secondary characters to a mere claque that worships everything about her and reminds the audience at every turn that she is the most amazing girl who ever lived. Show us why she is amazing.

Exhibit B: “The very notion that I’m devoting any thought to who I want presented as my lover, given our current circumstances, is demeaning” (40).

Katniss is one self-aware young lady. In key scenes, she is not whining about her romantic melodramas, but actively seeking solutions. She waits for no one to save her–she is perpetually proactive. Moreover, unlike so many young adult heroines I’ve read recently, she does not begrudge others their happiness. Despite her belief that she is “manipulative,” she genuinely cares about others. She asks Prim how she is doing and actually lets her talk. When others are happy, she becomes a lens through which we witness that happiness, never subjecting us to self-indulgent whining about her own troubles. Take that, one-sided friendships (which occur often in poorly written YA narratives).

Exhibit C: Boggs: “‘Well, you’re not perfect by a long shot. But times being what they are, you’ll have to do’” (91).

This snippet of dialogue may not seem significant, but it is a tremendous leap forward for YA literature. A character can become popular without, as I mentioned earlier, a claque of characters giving her a standing ovation every time she so much as smiles. The characters in the Hunger Games trilogy are allowed to dislike Katniss and disagree with her openly, without fear of narrative retribution later for daring to dissent.

Exhibit D Johanna: “Jealousy is certainly involved. I also think you’re a little hard to swallow. With your tacky drama and your defender-of-the-helpless act. Only it isn’t an act, which makes you more unbearable. Please feel free to take this personally” (220-1).

This should really be Exhibit C2. Again, we have a character who doesn’t particularly like Katniss, and she isn’t a villain. She isn’t vilified to sanctify Katniss. She just is. This scrap of dialogue not only pokes fun at Katniss, but at a host of YA heroines who are, simply put, “unbearable.”

Exhibit E: “Because an angry, independently thinking victor with a layer of psychological scar tissue too thick to penetrate is maybe the last person you want on your squad” (251).

Did you hear that, Bella Swan? In a believable story, if you are cold and detached from your peers while sporting a vague superiority complex, people will not like you. They will not line up to be your friend as the teens of Forks inexplicably did. Katniss knows this. She understands the ramifications of her behavior, and doesn’t expect people to pat her on the back when she is in the wrong.

Exhibit F: “And what was I, really? A poor, unstable girl with a small talent with a bow and arrow. Not a great thinker, not the mastermind of the rebellion, merely a face plucked from the rabble because I had caught the nation’s attention with my antics in the Games” (294).

Katniss has more to recommend her than most YA heroines these days, but she never, ever toots her own horn. Above, she underplays the vital role she plays in the story. Peeta says it best: “‘I think…you still have no idea. The effect you can have’” (325). She doesn’t understand what Peeta, Gale, and the reader do: that she is the rare first-person heroine that has earned her spot as the narrator of the book. No one else can tell this story better. With so many other YA stories, I find myself thinking that other characters would have made more compelling narrators. Not so here. Collins got it right on the first try.

Now, for some headline-worthy quotes:

“‘Covers will be blown. People may die’” (Haymitch, 164).

“‘There will be no survivors’” (Katniss, 99).

“The Mockingjay will not lose her voice” (178).

So, without divulging any plot details, I will say that this book was phenomenal. There are quotes about warfare and society that I would love to share, but they contain vaguely spoilerous material. This series truly got better as it progressed. I gave Hunger Games three stars, Catching Fire four, and Mockingjay five. Congratulations, Suzanne Collins, on writing a trilogy that actually gained momentum as it went.

Linger - Maggie Stiefvater

** Spoiler Alert **

“Once upon a time, there was a girl named Grace Brisbane. There was nothing particularly special about her, except that she was good with numbers, very good at lying, and she made her home in between the pages of books. She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.” (338)

Ladies and gentlemen, your heroine. Like a fine wine reduction, drain all the fluids/blood from her body (literally), and this is what she boils down to. Unlike a fine wine reduction, not exactly awesomesauce.

Four characters narrate this story: Grace, Sam, Isabel, and Cole. One of these things is not like the other. We have Sam, the haunted former wolf who must learn to be human and make peace with what his parents did to him. We have Cole, former frontman of a prominent band, wrestling with suicidal tendencies and a desire to be all wolf, all the time. We have Isabel, still reeling from her brother’s tragic death in Shiver.

And then we have Grace, the blank slate who, ultimately, steers this ship. This is her story, despite the split narrative attention to make us believe otherwise. The problem? She is, by far, the weakest character. It is by the grace (pun totally intended) of the three other characters that I gave this book three stars. They’re all so much more compelling. I would read an Isabel book.

But everyone loves Grace. Cole falls all over himself upon first meeting her, declaring that he “would do anything to be her friend and earn that smile again” (282). Earn that smile? Does it bestow blessings and good health? Does it solve differential equations? Does it cure nebulous werewolf diseases? Let’s not even mention how awful he is to Isabel, who apparently isn’t as amazing as Grace. In fact, he tells us, “She didn’t look disgusted, like Isabel had” (282)–effectively setting up Isabel as the heavy. A few paragraphs earlier, he also tells us exactly what he sees in Grace: “She was pretty in an undramatic way, and she had this great voice: very plain and matter-of-fact and distinctive.” Yikes. The reader needs something more to grab onto than this–Grace being vaguely pretty, having a great voice, and earning high marks in math and lying.

Also, when pondering Grace’s illness, Sam emphasizes that “Grace was the only one of her kind” (336). Of course. Always. Just like Bella (**Twilight spoiler alert**) was the only vampire to skip the painful transition period.

Also, like Bella, Grace contorts herself every which way to be with her supernatural boy wonder. She starts listening to alternative music, which she hates, because Sam likes it. She crosses college off her New Year’s resolution list rather flippantly so that she can shack up with him after high school and have a red coffeepot (I’m not making this up). She runs away from home to be with him after her unfair parents won’t let him sleep in her bed anymore. As much as I hated her parents, let’s get real–there is nothing normal/healthy about these Romeo-and-Juliet nightly sleepovers that have taken the YA romance market by storm.

By the end, I actually thought that Grace was going to die. This would have made sense, strangely. So many of the final scenes between Sam and Grace feel valedictory, as if building toward her death. If this story weren’t trapped in the “trilogy” mindset, maybe it would have gone down that way. Instead, she becomes a wolf in the hospital (thanks to Cole’s saliva–imminent love triangle, anyone?) and takes off for more coniferous pastures.

Not that Grace’s becoming a wolf is without storyline potential. It’s a pretty fitting reversal, and the only logical conclusion given that this is a trilogy. But her becoming a wolf means that she must rely on the men to find a cure. Grace is a good student. She’s smart. If this is her story, which I believe it to be, why couldn’t she be the one to find the cure? Why must she be the one who needs rescuing? Why couldn’t she be a Katniss (Hunger Games Trilogy) instead of a Bella (The Twilight Tetralogy )? Of course, I’m making a lot of assumptions about the third book, but the saga seems to be making a beeline toward Sam and Cole finding a cure so that everyone can live happily ever after. It would be awesomesauce if the third book proved me wrong. What I liked about Shiver was that it was the boy who needed rescuing for once.

A question: Why are all of the parents in this saga so terrible? We have Sam’s parents, who tried to murder him in a bathtub; Isabel’s trigger-happy, wolf-killing father; and Grace’s parents, who have straight-up neglected her for years and suddenly decide to try being parental in this book (with disastrous results). At least in Twilight, we had that paragon of parental win otherwise known as Charlie.

Now, for some quote-specific issues:

“‘This is why you are single’” (65) — Really, Grace? This is how you speak to your best friend? Funnier yet, she says this to Rachel simply because she’s acting a little goofy, a little offbeat–a little, I don’t know, herself? Also, is it a good idea to make teenage girls think that being single is a bad thing?

That said, Rachel can be somewhat over-the-top. A bit obscure, but when she refers to Isabel as “she-of-the-pointy-boots” (313), I was reminded of the annoying Damian Spinelli on General Hospital (yes, I used to watch soaps). He used to use similar nomenclature (and probably still does).

There are some clichés in here, most of which I overlooked, but “dark as pitch” (279) is one of my top 3 simile no-nos. Just don’t do it.

There are things that Maggie Stiefvater does really well. I give her major kudos for making Sam likable when so many other YA paranormal romance authors are cultivating harsh, abusive heroes. As I mentioned earlier, Sam, Cole, and Isabel are quite well-developed. The weak link for me, again, is Grace herself.

Just Listen - Sarah Dessen

This is not your average young adult romance. It has layers. Annabel isn’t always on her best behavior–she has flaws. Owen is edgy without being menacing. Frightening, emotionally abusive “heroes” have become a pervasive problem in young adult romances. It’s nice to see one break free of that formula.

If there is a walking stereotype in this novel, it’s Sophie, the controlling, unpleasant popular girl who dictates Annabel’s life through most of high school. She is the only character undeserving of my empathy. Sure, her parents once dragged her through their ugly divorce. Sure, her boyfriend is a tool of the highest order. But she treats everyone horribly. It is rare, even after the chickens come home to roost for her, that she shows any traces of humanity. Her most honest moment is after being rejected by Kirsten, Annabel’s older sister.

This novel tackles all of the important issues in fiction for teenage girls: self-esteem, body image, honesty, assertiveness, identity, love, family, and independence. It’s about speaking up for yourself. It’s about not letting other people walk all over you. And it’s also about a cute boy. For once, that’s okay–because this particular boy helps Annabel to become a more honest, independent version of herself.