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eowyns_helmet's reviews
1911 reviews
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
3.0
I admired the decision to have the book told from the different points of view in present tense of the characters and "collectives": the Mob, Camp, etc. Yet it ended up having a flattening effect, and the characters seemed to all be going through the same struggle with very similar challenges and emotions. Their voices weren't distinctive enough to keep me thinking that I really knew them.I thought the plot and tension were good, though like some other reviewers, I found it hard to believe that most parents would happily give up a child without major force. I wasn't surprised to find that the BBC clip from Ukranian Maternity Hospital 6 remains available on line and is real. The premise seemed to me to be a very good one, and at the same time had chilling echoes in classic horror like [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein (Penguin Classics)|Mary Shelley|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1311647465s/18490.jpg|4836639].
UnWholly by Neal Shusterman
4.0
The scenario is completely believable, and the various advertisements for "harvest camps" and letters to the editor supporting "unwinding" are funny and effective parodies of contemporary phenomena. My reservation is that the characters all seem to meld into one. There's not enough to really distinguish them. Also, the voice is a little distant and a lot of material is jumped over, especially at the beginning.
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien
5.0
This is a marvelous book. It is told in the first-person journal of Ann Burden, a 15 year old who survived a nuclear holocaust on her farm, protected by a valley. The book chronicles the arrival of another survivor, Mr. Loomis, who Ann welcomes and even saves from radiation poisoning. But Loomis has a dark past that is slowly -- and terrifyingly -- revealed.
In its quiet, deliberate way, the book builds to a riveting conclusion. The details are spare, but effective; the character of Ann is utterly convincing. I found nothing to distract me from the fictional dream of the narrative. A tour de force. Ann is Katniss in [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337857402s/2767052.jpg|2792775] without the swagger (and mercifully, without the romantic magnets of Peeta and Gale). She is as resourceful as Mattie Ross of [b:True Grit|257845|True Grit|Charles Portis|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328027080s/257845.jpg|1320617] (though less funny, not in a bad way). She makes terrible mistakes, just as a 15 year old would. Then she recovers, in just the way a 15 year old would.
In normal times, she would be a good though not great student. She isn't beautiful or particularly athletic. She is competent, built to be a farm girl. That is one of the lovely things about her as a heroine. She is utterly ordinary, yet she manages to become a hero.
The writing is never lyrical or showy. It is workmanlike, like Ann. Yet it is muscular and spare, able to evoke the place with great economy. The style fits her precisely.
In its quiet, deliberate way, the book builds to a riveting conclusion. The details are spare, but effective; the character of Ann is utterly convincing. I found nothing to distract me from the fictional dream of the narrative. A tour de force. Ann is Katniss in [b:The Hunger Games|2767052|The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)|Suzanne Collins|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337857402s/2767052.jpg|2792775] without the swagger (and mercifully, without the romantic magnets of Peeta and Gale). She is as resourceful as Mattie Ross of [b:True Grit|257845|True Grit|Charles Portis|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328027080s/257845.jpg|1320617] (though less funny, not in a bad way). She makes terrible mistakes, just as a 15 year old would. Then she recovers, in just the way a 15 year old would.
In normal times, she would be a good though not great student. She isn't beautiful or particularly athletic. She is competent, built to be a farm girl. That is one of the lovely things about her as a heroine. She is utterly ordinary, yet she manages to become a hero.
The writing is never lyrical or showy. It is workmanlike, like Ann. Yet it is muscular and spare, able to evoke the place with great economy. The style fits her precisely.
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
5.0
When I tried [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1)|Hilary Mantel|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg|6278354], it sat on my nightstand day after day, and I must have read and reread the first 50 pages twenty times. It seemed interesting, but I just couldn't engage. I should say that this came at a very stressful time for me, so I wasn't doing much reading of anything but short scraps on the web and the newspaper. I picked up this book at a very different time, Christmas Day, after all of the presents were open, the breakfast cooked and eaten, the Internet OFF and nothing at all on the horizon but a lazy, rainy day. I was able to dig in, and discovered a masterful storyteller, a truly spectacular writer and a mesmerizing tale (all the more so because you know what will happen to Anne Boleyn and her head). I think [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1)|Hilary Mantel|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg|6278354] just came at the wrong time for me. Mantel is nothing if not a demanding writer and as a reader you have to be paying full attention to get every last bit of wonder from her prose. If your attention wavers, you may lose a delicious skewering, a heartbreaking observation or a completely delightful turn of phrase. A marvel on every page and in every paragraph.
Here, for instance, is an early description of Anne Boleyn, where Mantel does something brilliant with fashion and color:
There are a spectacular number of things going on here -- a foreshadowing of Anne's death, Cromwell's dry, workmanlike use of executions, the political temper of the times, Anne's own rapaciousness -- all through color and a bit of jewelry.
And here a description of the slimy Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, uncle to both Anne and Catherine Howard, a future beheaded wife of Henry VIII:
This is one of those books that will go on my writer's shelf for inspiration. Now back in time to [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1)|Hilary Mantel|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg|6278354]
Here, for instance, is an early description of Anne Boleyn, where Mantel does something brilliant with fashion and color:
Anne was wearing, that day, rose pink and dove grey. The colors should have had a fresh, maidenly charm; bul all [Cromwell] could think of were stretched innards, umbles and tripes, grey-pink intestines looped out of a living body; he had a second batch of recalcitrant froars to be dispatched to Tyburn, to be slit up and garroched by the hangman. They were traitors and deserved the death, but it is a death exceeding most in cruelty. The pearls around her long neck looked to him like little beads of fat, and as she argued she would reach up and tug them; her kept his eyes on her fingertips, nails flashing like tiny knives.
There are a spectacular number of things going on here -- a foreshadowing of Anne's death, Cromwell's dry, workmanlike use of executions, the political temper of the times, Anne's own rapaciousness -- all through color and a bit of jewelry.
And here a description of the slimy Duke of Norfolk, Thomas Howard, uncle to both Anne and Catherine Howard, a future beheaded wife of Henry VIII:
So here's the Duke of Norfolk, expecting to be fed. Dressed in his best, or at least what's good enough for Lambeth Palace, he looks like a piece of rope chewed by a dog, or a piece of gristle left on the side of a trencher. Brieght fierce eyes under unruly brows. Hair an iron stubble. His person is meagrem, sinewy, and he smells of horses and leather and the armourer's shop, and mysteriously of furnaces or perhaps of cooling ash: dust-dry, pungent.
This is one of those books that will go on my writer's shelf for inspiration. Now back in time to [b:Wolf Hall|6101138|Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall, #1)|Hilary Mantel|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336576165s/6101138.jpg|6278354]
My Life as a Rhombus by Varian Johnson
5.0
Delightful book with a very difficult story-line handled cooly and with great affection for its lead characters.
In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith
4.0
Beautiful writing, as always, and a fresh, unsentimental yet deeply felt story about two boys on a search for family across a violent landscape. Very few writers "get" the teen male psyche as well as Smith -- the protected tenderness, the frank relationship with violence, the restlessness. The story is a little hard to get into, and I wasn't sure for a long time what there was beyond a road trip in dangerous circumstances. Sometimes, there is a coolness to Smith's style that makes it hard to engage. But he is always worth reading and can turn out hauntingly beautiful prose that is unique, as far as I can tell, in contemporary fiction about teen boys.