Saturday, March 29, 2008

Historical Fiction Worth Reading?

In my formative years, I could count on one hand the number of "historical fiction" titles I deemed worth reading. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series (totaling eleven? or twelve? books) and The Witch of Blackbird Pond made the list because they didn't seem like history lessons; they simply told great stories.

As I've typed before, I have enjoyed every page of Team of Rivals but *sigh* I'm still turning its pages.

Browsing the stacks in the library's teen section recently, I picked up The Girls They Left Behind and was hooked on the first page. The historical fiction in a diary format introduced me to the main character, code name Natalie (because "My real name is not fit to print"), who gave me a glimpse of what it was like to be a 17-year-old girl in Toronto in 1943.

What was it like? Well, teenagers are teenagers: Beryl/Natalie has crushes (and kisses!), fusses with her hair, is quite delighted to leave school for a high-paying job, and loves/hates her eight-year-old brother. But as a teenager on the home front in WWII, she also hates watching (just watching) most of her male friends go off to war; at the same time, she's embarrassed to be seen with Carl, who is of age but unable to enlist because he's deaf in one ear. She also hides to trade ration coupons (it's illegal!), hates the blackouts, and struggles with the emotions letters from the front - and worse, telegrams - bring.

Author Bernice Thurman Hunter died (in 2002) before she completed the book; her daughter, Heather Anne Hunter, finished the job. And well. From now on, any kid who tells me they don't like historical fiction will get one more recommendation...

Monday, March 24, 2008

Saturday

Ian McEwan's 2005 novel, Saturday, follows a British neurosurgeon on a typical Saturday that in fact becomes extraordinary. I finished it last Saturday :)

I hate to admit this was the first of McEwan's books I've read, but it was. While I enjoyed it, I'm not going to rush out to pick up another title by the acclaimed author (whose Atonement was adapted to screen and is in theaters now).

Saturday is full of multi-layered characters, so richly drawn you feel you know them better than most people you know in your real life - and yet the description doesn't bog down the book.

Where I fault McEwan is plot - there wasn't much, frankly. (Yeah, I realize it's a book about a 24-hour period; how much did I expect, right?) It involves a plane crash, a traffic accident, a homecoming of sorts with his two grown children and cantankerous and eccentric father-in-law, and a nasty run in with a couple of thugs. I won't give away the ending, because to do so would spoil the reading...and it really is worth reading.

While I love the author's ruminations on how our minds work - tangled up in this book with the way the brain operates, and how it can be operated on - in a few instances, there's too much looking inward (and too little action) for my taste.

That said, McEwan can write. And he writes "up" to his readers - a compliment, I think, and a welcome change from the many MG/YA books I've devoured in the past year. By the time I reached page 36, the author had discussed neurosurgery (the removal of a pilocytic astrocytoma, among other cases), (the comet) Hale-Bopp, the psychology/philosophy of commercial plane travel, politics, and Schrodinger's cat.

It's heady stuff. Had he given me a bit more of a story, and I'd be hooked for good, lamenting the fact that McEwan has "only" given us 11 novels to date...

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Oh, the Piles!

After my son used the wicker magazine rack as a step-stool a few too many times, I sighed and decided it had to go. (The rack, not the boy.)

Which means I had to face up to the fact that about two dozen magazines had been collecting dust inside the rack. Among the National Geographics and various science mags, some Design News and NASA Tech Briefs were tossed in for good measure. I'm almost caught up...sigh...almost. I love reading those mags, I really do. But I love reading a lot of stuff. A lot.

Like books by Barbara Kingsolver. I have to admit the one I just finished, The Prodigal Summer, has been my least favorite of the Kingsolvers I've read so for. Animal Dreams and Pigs in Heaven were so much more...um, immediate? raw? I'm not sure what descriptor I'm searching for... even The Bean Trees, which was published before Prodigal Summer and the much-acclaimed Poisonwood Bible, was more gripping.

That said, I can't quit the darned book, of course. BK has quite a way with words - and even more talent with characters.

Maybe someday she'll write about a lady who keeps magazines piled up in her living room, as surrogate stepping stools...