January 11, 2010
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Interlude
FYI: “Interlude” will be the title of blogposts that are book reviews only. This will make them easier for me to find and easier for you to skip if you have no interest.
I love book awards. There is some argument that there are too many but I say “The more the merrier!” Anything that brings attention to print material in these days of screens and curling up with a good machine has value in my not-so-humble opinion. The William C Morris YA Debut Award (http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/morris/morrisaward.cfm) is in its second year and the name is self-explanatory. I read Hold Still by Nina LaCour, this year’s winner, this weekend. I stayed up into the wee hours to finish it and that hasn’t happened in a long, long time.The characters are brilliantly drawn. Their development is sincere and realistic – both adults and teens. The author’s ability to create a setting that is both general and specific pulls the reader into a place that is right around the corner but genuinely West Coast – no mean feat while sitting in snowy Northeast Ohio and reading about a place in Northern California. At the heart of the novel is Caitlin, strong and vulnerable and sorting it all out. She is perfectly crafted and her growing understanding of the suicide of her best friend Ingrid moves with perfect pacing through the stages of grief. There are moments that glisten like new snow – Taylor during the performance of Romeo and Juliet, her parents trying to find something, anything, to help her heal, and the ebb and flow of relationships as Caitlin tries to find her feet in an Ingrid-less world. This is a wonderful, wonderful first novel. Three rousing huzzahs for this new talent.This being said there is a problem with this book. It’s in the building of the tree house. Caitlin knows that she needs bolts to fasten the house to the tree. She buys bolts. Twice. Then, alas, she never uses the bolts. Never talks about using the bolts, the sounds of the drill, the use of the drill. In fact she actually hammers a bolt into the wood – Can’t be done, darlin’. Maybe nobody else caught it. Maybe it is my experience of iving with a carpenter or building stage sets for a million years, but it jarred me out of the story every single time.
Still, this one is worth reading, I’m just not sure it should have earned an award. Now, Nick Burd’s Vast Fields of the Ordinary on the other hand…. More about that one later.
And so it goes.
Comments (2)
thanks – just requested it from my library (1 of 1, but I don’t know which library has it cuz I forgot to look)
second book requested from the library…two of the childrens books you recommended are waiting downstairs while another three are ‘ready for pick-up.’ Funny, I dropped off 7 or 8 books yesterday, looked through the stacks, and picked up stuff from the request shelf. I went to the self-checkout and it ‘whistled’ at me. She was still reentering my old stack. That’s a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. Our library always seems to be fairly crowded!!! They have changed the hours due to $ cutbacks, so now they’re opening later but still open late enough for after work and school people. I prefer going early, but I’ll go later. Do you know if/when they’ll be able to reintroduce the intrastate borrowing? I’m down in Greene Co. and have gotten alot of books from Cuyahoga. Maybe I should see if my Wright State card is still good…