Lul's Literature review

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Wednesday July 27, 201

REVIEW: Stolen by Lucy Christopher

Published: The Chicken House
Formate: Hardcover
Date of publication: 2010

Annotation:

Seventeen year old Gemma is kidnapped for Bangkok airport and taken to the Australian outback.Melvin Burgess describes Christopher as ‘a vivid new voice for teens’ and I couldn’t agree more. Stolen is Lucy Christopher’s debut novel (written as part of her PhD) and it’s a brave, original novel that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.
Stolen is the story of seventeen year old Gemma as stated above, who is kidnapped from a Bangkok airport by a charming, handsome boy and taken to the most desolate part of the Australian Outback. Nobody knows she is there, nobody even knows where to look for her, she’s completely alone at the mercy of her kidnapper, the mysterious Ty.
As the novel progresses and we learn that, not only had Ty been planning the kidnap for years, Gemma had always been his victim and that, for me, is what makes Stolen so unsettling. There’s nothing remarkably about Gemma, she’s an ordinary looking girl who came from an ordinary family in England. Somehow that’s scarier than if she was a movie star or daughter of a millionaire.

Justification for nomination:

Stolen is not a book for the easily offended individuals.  The novel is tense from beginning to end but Christopher doesn’t gloss over the more unpleasant aspects of the story; instead she writes them so delicately that it’s impossible not to feel some kind of empathy towards Ty. Both characters are superb; Ty, in particularly, is brilliantly written. He’s a kidnapper, by all rights we should hate him but it’s so hard to as we learn more about him. And Gemma, she starts off as a stereotypical moody teenager but as the novel grows, so does she and by the closing chapter I had really bonded with her.
Setting is clearly one of Christopher’s strengths as a writer because Stolen is an incredibly visual book. As I was reading it I kept thinking over and over again how well it would all translate on the big screen. If a film adaptation is ever made out of it. someone would be first in line to see it.Stolen might be a controversial story but nothing feels forced and Christopher writes everything so subtly and beautifully that it’s a book that can be enjoyed by teenagers of all ages. I would highly recommend this book as brilliant summer reading book. If someone out there haven't read it yet, I would encourage they to do so.
Cheers
Lul

Lul's Literature Review

Lul's Literature Review
Tuesday July 26, 2011
Review: Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick 

Revolver: by Marcus Sedgwick

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Format: Hardcover, 224 pages

Date of publication: April 2010

Annotation:

Revolver is 224 pages. Sedgwick manage to write a tale of hardship, hope and making life choices. This chilling story proves the power of langauge. It proves that a carefully constructed plot does not need to be dragged out. Even the most reluctant readers would like to pick it up. The book is exciting and easy to read with a philosophical twists where sometimes less is more.The book took place in the Arctic Circle.A boy sits in a cold, bare shack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle, alone but for his father's body lying on a table, frozen both by rigor mortis and the manner of his death. The boy's older sister and stepmother have gone for help. And then there is a knock on the door: outside is a giant of a man asking for the boy's father.

This is as stark a beginning as you can imagine. And it gets worse. The giant is convinced that the dead man has stolen his gold. He isn't going to leave without it – and he has a gun. The tension and fear quickly begins to escalate. Sig is forced to make choices. Although he too has a gun, he only fired ones before on his 12 years birthday.  The giant, Gunther Wolff, has had a bit more practice with his. No contest, then, and even when Sig's sister Anna returns, the odds aren't really improved.
The interposed sections, set 11 years earlier, fill in the backstory. Einar Andersson has been lured, like so many others, by tales of gold found near Anvil Creek in Alaska. Nome is the name of the settlement that turns into a mining town, and Einar becomes the assay clerk for the mining company. That's why he lives a better life, with his wife and two children, than most people in Nome.
Then a giant of a gold prospector called Gunther Wolff turns up and watches as Einar weighs and tests his samples. Wolff suspects that Einar is running some kind of scam in the assay office and he wants half the proceeds. After that, Einar has to escape, but he doesn't make it before his wife has been murdered.  11 years later, here is the giant psychopath, willing to shoot one or both of Andersson's offspring to get the gold he thinks is his. Sig has only his father's secret gun to rely on as already mentioned. He wa wondering how could defeat the giant, by using his father's weapon, which he lack experience.Sig was brought up as a pacifist, yet he admits to being fascinated by the power and beauty of a Colt revolver. He tried one out while researching this book, which also took him to some very cold places and included taking Swedish lessons. Apart from an excursion into Venice with Kiss of Death, most of his books have been set in northern climes, and he writes with the economy and spareness of a Norse saga.
Justification for nomination:
Revolver is a very well written book, which may be welcome to some readers after the huge final tomes of Harry Potter and the hundreds of pages of Patrick Ness. But it's not slight: the issue of whether violence is ever unavoidable is both topical and difficult, and this deceptively simple story raises enormous questions. The story is well paced, and the historical setting of gold/iron-rush Alaska and other Arctic towns are nicely detailed. Sig is a believable character, and his actions are exexpected. Overall, this is a great read for someone who wants something quick and page turning knowledge. It reall forces the reader to think about questions of morality, weaponry, fear, and a free will of making choices.


With best regards
Lul

Lul's Review

Lul's literature review

Tuesday July 19,2011

Review: Please Ignore Vera Dietz

  Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A. S. Kings Alfred A. Novel  Books, print  by  

 Random House. 2010.

Review copy from publisher. Printz Honor.

Annotation:

Vera Dietz, 18, hates and loves Charlie Kahn, her dead ex-best friend. Hates, because he died. Because before he died, he stopped being her friend, started hanging out with people who hated her and tried to make her life miserable. Hated, because he abandoned her. Loved, because from the time she was little, he was her best friend. Loved, because she was always in love with him and was just waiting and hoping for it to be something more. Loved, because she knew his good and his bad.

As for Charlie — his life and death haunts her. What happened in those twenty four hours before he died? Did he really burn down the pet store at the mall? All she has left of Charlie is his secrets. Should she tell?

The Good: The structure of Please Ignore Vera Dietz is fabulous, just the kind of “confusing but not really” storytelling I enjoy. Part One, The Funeral: Vera at Charlie’s funeral. The next chapter is three and half months later. A few chapters later, Ken Dietz (Vera’s dad) has a “brief word” to share. And then the local Pagoda talks. Vera shares some history from the past. Of course, every now and then the dead kid Charlie speaks up. Because, yes, he is haunting Vera. As he explains, “I regret everything that happened with Vera. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have a choice. I was born to a man like my father and a woman like my mother, and I had to save Vera from myself. Loving Vera Dietz was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. She was a good person from a good family.” Charlie’s perspective, especially this, shows us a Vera we didn’t know before. Because the Vera that starts with the funeral is a Vera who is tough, lonely, and drinking. It’s a Vera who has a father who thinks she should be working full time while going to school. It’s a family history where her mother left when Vera was twelve, going to Las Vegas with a new husband and sending Vera one birthday card a year. Vera’s mother  Sindy was 17 when Vera was born, Ken just a year older. When Vera turned thirteen, her father told her, “When you were just a little baby, your mother took a job over at Joe’s.  A strip club. It was only for a few months, Vera. She wanted her freedom back after dropping out of school, getting kicked out of her house, and having — uh — a baby so young. I was still drinking then.” You can just imagine what Charlie’s family is like, if he thinks Vera comes from a good family.

These are the times in the book where I had to remind myself that Ken Dietz was  young when he became a parent (just 18), had pretty bad parents himself, was drinking for the start of Vera’s life, but that he stopped drinking, went to college, provided for his family, and, most important, stayed. He tries. But he really doesn’t realize what he told Vera — or what she heard — because later he thinks, “she’s too young to understand the situation Sindy was in when she was born and I was drunk.” What Ken eventually tells the reader is what the reader probably already figured out: “I was drinking our rent.” Ken really intrigues me, for his own back-story, for staying, for the mixed messages he gives Vera about her absent mother, for his always doing the Cindy/Sindy thing with her name. Turns out, Sindy changed her name when she left her family. What days it say about Ken that for the entire book, he calls her Sindy? That I am obsessing about a side character like this shows the strength of the characterization.
Justification for nomination:

The story isn’t told in a linear fashion, but life isn’t linear. Wait, yes it is, you may say. I am seven, eleven, thirteen, very linear. No, not really. Stories and lives are shaped and told in various ways. So Vera tells the story, and it begins with Charlie’s funeral, and as the year goes by, it is linear but she is thinking on past events, past moments, which is something we all do every day. We remember a meeting, a party, a kiss, a moment and so our own story is full of flashbacks. Just like Vera’s story.

Please Ignore Vera Dietz has been nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. The mystery surrounds Charlie’s last twenty four hours, and Charlie’s secrets. Vera knows the secrets, knows the truth, but is reluctant to share what she knows with the police, with her father, even with herself. She is the child of an alcoholic, and Ken Dietz has tried to be a good father, the father he never had, but parents teach things they don’t mean to. Ken Dietz has taught his daughter to keep secrets, to not talk, to not share. To so fear becoming when nature and nurture have in store for us (alcholism, teen pregnancy, poverty, violence, abandonment) that the lesson Vera learned was to be invisible.  That, too, is part of the mystery of Vera Dietz: why does she want to be invisible? What will happen when she no longer ignores herself?

Check out the review at Reading Rantss, which talks more than I do about the wonderful language and dark humor. The Book Smugglers sum up Vera Dietz and Vera’s and Charlie’s world as “a horrible, poisonous environment they live in where the idea of destiny (and genetics even, as idiotic as it may sound from outsiders who know better) keep them both trapped in a vicious circle and because they are both failed by the ones that would help them getting away from it, i.e. their parents it is all down to Vera and Charlie to try and break away on their own. We know that Charlie didn’t and this is part of what makes it heartbreaking. Because it leaves Vera in such a lonely, cumbersome life where breathing is hard, getting away is hard, trying to see is hard but by the end of the book, there is definite hope in the horizon.” It’s a great description of the physical, mental, and emotional trap that Vera is stuck in. Ignoring it all, ignoring herself, just make it! The author has a very good way of telling the story. I love how the story is told, which force me to want to recommend the book to those who loved to read books.
Thanks
Lul

Lul's Review

Lul's Literature review

Monday July 11, 2011

Review: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

                                                             Twilight: A novel               

                                   By Stephenie Meyer

                                  1st eddition

                                  Published  in 2005 

Annotation:

The Author of this book, have done magnificent job. The story in this book started when seventeen year-old Bella Swan leaves sunny Arizona to live with her father in the small and gloomy Pacific North-West town of Forks she doesn’t expect to like it.  After all she has made excuses not to go there enough times over the past few years.  If living in Forks, with its constant mist and rain, wasn’t bad enough she will have to make a whole new set of friends and settle into a new school.
Bella soon makes some new friends at school but when she sees a boy called Edward Cullen sitting with his brothers and sisters in the cafeteria she is instantly intrigued.  Edward is stunningly attractive, almost inhumanly beautiful, and yet he is an outsider too.  Although Edward and his family have lived in Forks for two years they have never really been accepted by the townsfolk. 
At first Edward is aloof, sometimes it almost seems like he can’t stand to be in the same room as her, but eventually they strike up an unlikely friendship.  Even as Bella falls hopelessly and irrevocably in love with Edward, she still can’t work out exactly what makes him so different to everyone else.
On a trip to the beach, Bella is told of the local legend about the “cold ones”, a group of blood drinkers who have sworn off hunting humans but are still not welcome on Indian land because vampires are not to be trusted.  Realising Edward is vampire changes nothing for Bella, she knows that she still loves him even if he’s not human.
Edward and his whole family are vampires.  Edward himself was made a vampire when he was seventeen years-old, although that was at the end of World War I.  For Edward his love for Bella is both a delight and a torment.  A delight because she is the first person he has loved since he was made a vampire.  A torment because although he has sworn off human blood and only hunts animals the craving for human blood never truly leaves him and the very scent of her also stirs his hunger for blood….

Justification for Nomination:

Twilight is the story of Edward and Bella’s romance.  Forget any vampire romance you have read before, Twilight is so unique it is almost like it’s in its own genre.  The book is marketed at Young Adult readers but it has the ability to cross age barriers and will satisfy both teenagers and adults alike.
The story is told in first person from the perspective of Bella, so the reader only ever know what she knows, making Edward and his family a mystery that is slowly unravelled through out the book.  Even by the end of the book I was still thirsting for more of the Cullen family back story - hopefully their characters might be developed further in future books.  Bella herself is a well written and realistic character, shy and lacking in confidence, her sarcastic inner voice narrates the story for the reader.
Twilight is simply and yet beautifully written.  The descriptions of Forks leave you feeling like you can almost smell the damp air and hear the rain falling on the roof. 
The romance between Edward and Bella is both touching and compelling.  There is a melancholic feel to their impossible love, yet at the same time they both are unwilling to give up hope that their relationship is not doomed.  The book reaches a fever pitch of excitement as the romance between Bella and Edward turns into a frantic race to stay alive. 
I have heard Twilight described as “a vampire story for people who don’t like vampire stories” and I think I would agree with that.  This book really has something for everyone.  Young adult readers, vampire fans or romance readers will all find Twilight to be an appealing story.
For a Young Adult novel the book is quite long but don’t let that put you off reading it because each page is to be savoured.  Believe me, this is one book that you won’t want to end reading. It absolutely a must read book.

Lul's Review

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Tuesday July 5, 2011

Review:  Going Bovine by Libba Bray

Going Bovine by Libba Bray
Random House, Hardcover,

Coming out Sept. 22, 2009

Summary from Goodreads:

Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?

Annotation

The narrator Cameron, a self- proclaimed slacker's main goal in life is to get through high school.  He is 16-year-old who wants to get through high school and life in general with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks.After the news of sickness, Cameron start to give up on trying, He begin having hard time connecting with his parents, classmates, and even the music called Great Tremelo. The kind of disease was a madcow disease. He had diagnosed with mad cow disease and his life really begin tearing apart. However, the author of Going Bovine, Libba Bray, manage to turn a hopeless situation into a hilarious and hallucinatory quest, by suggesting a winged form  Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She told Cameron that there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cameron sets
off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

Justification for nomination:

Going Bovine is completely different than Libba's other books. It's realistic, fantasy, sci-fi, and a whole lot of mumbo jumbo mixed together. However, they all have one thing in common - humor. Going Bovine is weird mix od string theory, classic literary referrences, and teenage  sarcasm, irony and humor. Cameron's voice is smart, disilusioned, and priceless; we can take his thoughts on high school English class, for example.The plot is very unique - Cameron finds himself in a dire situation where he will die soon and he goes off to look for a cure from the mysterious Dr. X. However, as he travels around the country, he learns and experiences life. He finds friends, laughter, loses his virginity, gets chased and kicked out, and a bunch of other experiences.

However, I have to admit, after a while, the hallucinations that Cameron gets and reality becomes really warped. I got confused towards the end because I couldn't figure out what was real and what wasn't. Things that I had assumed was real came back to bite me on the butt because questions were asked and answers  were not given Cameron was an interesting character. He's a typical stoner, badass kid who is typically ignored or picked on by the "cool' kids. However, when he finds himself on the verge of death, he begins to become real. He was wonderfully written and gave off a unique personality.Gonza and Balder are basically characters for comic-relief. I always thought it was funny how Gonza being a dwarf didn't really let people get taken back because, hello, he's a DWARF. If it was me and I found that someone was a freaking dwarf, I would totally be surprised. Overall, Going Bovine is an entertaining novel that will definitely bring laughter to your ears. It is thought-provoking and will allow you to rethink of our purpose here on earth. You can read this novel in two ways, either Cameron is lying in a hospital bed, hallucinating as the disease eats away at his brain, or Cameron really was battling the forces of good and evil while seriously crushing on a candy addicted punk angel. Either way you see it, I have to reiterate  that Goving Bovine can help you laugh out loud, folding down pages that have some of the best quotes you have read in years. You will live your life to the fullest as the old lady in the hospital tells Cameron, "I don't think you should die before you are ready. Untill you have wrung out last bit of living. The book has great stories, everything from near death experience at Disney World, potty mouth dwarfs prone to panic attacks, mad cow disease, evil snowglobes, really good jaszz, a punk rock angel with a sweet tooth, a serious run-in with a happiness cult and so much, much more. I recommend it to those who have not see the book yet and have a glimpse, give it a short hurry look friends.
Untill next time
Lul Gatluak