The Courage To Question

Book Review: Dear Martin by Nic Stone

The coming-of-age story has been a common subject of art and literature across human history, in no small part due to its universal nature. The trials, challenges, and changes surrounding the transition from childhood to adulthood are both timeless, and specific to the times and places and cultures where they occur.

The world that Homer's Telemachus faced was quite different than that of John Grimes, the protagonist of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. Yet their stories have much in common. The coming-of-age genre is all about seeing the world through different eyes. Baldwin captures the very essence of the genre in his novel when he writes:

"... only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place."

The protagonist finds, whether they are Telemachus, Huck Finn, or Jean Louise Finch, that their childhood views on how the world works no longer fit what they see and feel.

In Nic Stone's Dear Martin, high school senior Justyce McAllister finds himself facing a world that no longer plays nicely with his childhood conceptions. Words and actions take on a different weight, values are challenged, and the things he has taken for granted have lost their stability. Feeling lost in this new world, he looks for a foundation - a mentor - to help guide him through these changes. In his journal he begins writing "letters" to Martin (Dr. Martin Luther King); nothing existential or philosophical, simply the events of his days, and the doubts and questions of a young person dealing with huge changes.

Needless to say, the late Dr. King does not answer Justyce's letters, anymore than the long-absent Odysseus answered his son Telemachus. The passage from the innocence of childhood into the world of the adult is a highly personal one, there are no pat answers. In her closing note to Dear Martin, author Nic Stone sums up Justyce's path this way:

"... while the answers can be hard to come by, the point is to find the courage to ask the questions in the first place. I hope his journey will give you a way to identify your own questions. And answers."

The goal of the coming-of-age story, and I believe, literature in general, is to provoke questions, not necessarily to provide answers. Life is a highly personal journey; we should beware of anyone or anything that proclaims to have the answer for everything. Even if answers are hard to come by, it is vitally important to ask the questions, both of our world, and of ourselves.

Twisting Reality like Taffy

Book Review: Bushman Lives! by Daniel Pinkwater

Bushman Lives was my first exposure to the work of author Daniel Pinkwater, and overall it was an enjoyable experience. I was reminded of the work of Louis Sachar (Holes, the Wayside School series), not an unflattering comparison, with that same 'dropped down the rabbit hole' feeling to it.

What happens is that the author introduces us to a fairly normal character in a fairly normal situation - and then begins to pull and stretch it in different un-normal ways. Reality takes on the consistency of Silly Putty; malleable, elastic, and taking the imprint of things which it is pressed against. The result can be both amusing and enlightening, although requiring suspension of disbelief to increasing depths. When is a house not a house? When it's covered in whitewash of course!

However much I enjoy this sort of thing, Bushman Lives didn't quite fulfill my expectations. It feels incomplete-there were infinite possibilities, but I felt like I had been left hanging. I was not expecting a 'happily ever after' conclusion, but neither was I looking for the book to just sort of trail off ...

A Labyrinthian Mystery

Book Review: Floors: Book 1 by Patrick Carman

Part fantasy, part mystery, part allegory, and part myth - author Patrick Carman covers all the bases in his young adult novel Floors. That's a high hurdle for any book to leap, and I think Floors clears it with room(s) to spare.

We join the young protagonist, Leo Fillmore in his quest to find out what happened to Merganzer Whippet, owner and builder of the Whippet Hotel. The hotel is a maze of hallways and stairwells, tunnels, hidden floors, and secret rooms. And in true labyrinth fashion, the only way out of the mystery of Mr. Whippets's disappearance is the way in - into the secret heart of the Whippet Hotel. Following cryptic clues, Leo follows the thread deeper into the unknown windings of the Whippet.

Every labyrinth needs a mythical monster, and in the case of the Whippet, that monster is the unnamed, unseen Mr. M. Or is it? There is a real monster inside the Hotel, and it is up to Leo to uncover it. In the process he discovers how the hotel and its builder are linked, and how Leo himself is part of the puzzle.

It's a journey of discovery for both Leo and the reader, "Floors" is a highly enjoyable story on many levels.

One Person Can Make a Difference

Book Review: His Name Was Raoul Wallenberg by Louise Borden

How do you convey the terror of one of the darkest times in modern history to the young? How do you try to explain the horror of the Holocaust to your children? And how do you show the heroism of those who refuse to let the light of humanity be extinguished?

In His Name was Raoul Wallenberg, author Louise Borden manages to answer those three questions with a text that is both lyrical and profound in its simplicity. Borden shows how the life of Raoul Wallenberg was changed by the time he lived in, and how he changed history in response. Born into a life of privilege, he became a tireless advocate of those who were being ruthlessly victimized simply because of their own birthright. Borden lets us see that as Wallenberg's awareness of what is happening grows, his resolve to take a stand grows as well. History made the man, and the man made history in return.

Adult readers may find the form and content of Borden's work unfamiliar and unfulfilling. Adult readers are not the target audience of this book. It is sent out to the young, and I believe it will squarely hit that mark. It is clear that Ms. Borden knows her subject well, and I do hope that she will grace us with a more detailed full-length adult version of Raoul Wallenberg's story. Even we adults need to be reminded that "one person can make a difference in the world."

The Story Within the Story

Book Review: My Favorite Band Does Not Exist by Robert T. Jeschonek

Deity's Syndrome: "Multisystemic symptoms resulting from a psychosomatic manifestation of the unshakable fear that the patient is a character in a novel".

That mouthful of psychological jargon is the diagnosis for the character of Ideal Deity in Robert T. Jeschonek's My Favorite Band Does Not Exist. It also sets the stage for a wild allegorical ride through philosophical thought from the Greeks to modern Western philosophy.

The characters we meet are always more than they seem. Symbolism is rife in every name, occupation, and physical description. Janus, two-faced god of beginnings and transitions makes an early appearance, albeit in female form, and is there to guide Ideal along the path from existential solipism, through Cartesian dualism, and finally to nondualist enlightenment. Along the way we meet Descartes' "evil genius" and a host of mythological and religious figures as friends, foes, or fellow travelers. All of this is set in the current world of online music, Twitter, and the Internet - well, except where it moves into a different reality.

Jeschonek does a great job of matching the actual format of the book to the story. You know when you are reading the book within the book because, well it's a book within the book! The language and concepts are accessible; this is not a philosophy text full of 6 syllable words. As the novel moves towards its closing, the story does gather speed, flipping through reality like a deck of cards in Alice in Wonderland, and it can be a little hard for the reader to keep up.

The question in the back of my mind throughout this fast-moving book was, "Would a teenager like this?" The book is targeted to ages 12 and up (grades 7+), and some of the vocabulary and plot twists are more appropriate for the higher end of that range. I can see this being used in an English classroom to teach metaphors and symbolism; motivated students would have a field day deciphering names and finding hidden symbology. But would they read it for fun? I'm just not sure. I definitely know some kids who would love this - and some who would glaze over a few pages into it.

That being said, if you know a young adult that likes a story with a little more story to it, and enjoys sci-fi/fantasy, I heartily recommend My Favorite Band.

Post-Apocalyptic Archetypes

Book Review: Blood Red Road by Moira Young

The new hot genre of the moment for young adult readers seems to be the Apocalypse, or rather the Post-Apocalypse. It's beginning to beg the question: how many ways can writers end the world before it actually happens?

Written in the form of a first-person narrative, Blood Red Road by Moira Young is the story of a young girl's journey to rescue her twin brother, set against a post-Apocalyptic background. Told in the backwoods dialect of the heroine, Saba, the story ranges from the deserts to the mountains of Saba's homeland. Along the way she picks up help from likely and unlikely fellow travelers. Saba comes of age in the course of her journey, in more ways than one, her horizons irrevocably expanded from her childhood home at Silverlake.

Admittedly, at times it feels that the book is simply a derivation of previous end times works like David Brin's The Postman. Even the cage fighting of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is invoked during Saba's effort to find and save her brother. Initially I found myself being critical of the story not being "original", and cynically ranking it as a re-working of other authors. I had to dig a little deeper into my own conceptions to rate this story correctly.

As with any genre of literature, post-Apocalyptic tales have common themes and characters. From the Book of Revelation through Stephen King's The Stand there is a continuity of concept in the balance between salvation and damnation. The inevitable struggles of the hero and the duplicity of the villain are grounded in symbols as old as human existence, and naturally find their way into accounts of the end of humanity as well. The commonality of human experience may be archetypal, but that is the very reason we celebrate it in literature.

Moira Young may be cultivating previously tilled soil, but she does it with style and enthusiasm. What saves Blood Red Road is what sets apart any work from its fellows: the Story. The book is eminently readable, the plot cohesive and understandable for its teen target audience, and adults as well. The action is fast but doesn't leave the reader behind in a cloud of verbal dust wondering what happened, or why. This is the debut novel for author Moira Young, and I look forward to further work from her.

[Reviewers note: There are now 3 books in the Dustlands series]