Millicent Min, Girl Genius
Yet another of the YRCA books, this time in the intermediate category. It seems a little too simple for the grades 7-9 it's aimed at, and it's certainly not on par quality wise with the other books I've read for YRCA.
This book is not exactly breaking down any doors and creating a new enlightening genre. It's the diary of a girl, aged 11, who is a genius. Nothing particularly outstanding about the idea, or the book itself. She has the usual struggle between her intellect and her age, and meets her first friend over the course of her summer vacation.
While Millie is kind of entertaining at first, she's not terribly endearing, and I found myself not very interested in what happened to her. The problem with the diary format is that you only get her perspective on things, and it doesn't really do her any favours to see her self-centered view of the world. While the diary style works for me sometimes, this is not one of those times. It's a harmless enough book, but it made virtually no impression on me at any point. Kids will probably like it well enough, but I'd be surprised if it won the YRCA.
Olive's Ocean
Kevin Henkes is the author of many picture book favourites, including the ever worrying Wemberly and Lily's Purple Plastic Purse. This is the first novel of his that I've read, and I went into it not really knowing what to expect.
One of my bad habits as a reader is not taking into account the expected reading level of the audience. This book is another of the YRCA choices for this year, in the junior category (aimed at grades 4-6.), and I need to remember that when I read these books. I was kind of anticipating a book with a little more meat to it, but I think my expectations were a little unreasonable for a novel aimed at ten-year-olds.
In a lot of ways, Olive's Ocean was kind of generic. Young girl (12, a classic age for books of this sort - it's the perfect angst age of not yet a teenager, but well into the double digits) who wants to be a writer (they all do at this age, and while I appreciate it since I too wanted to be a writer from age 4 through, well, now, it's still pretty overdone. Not every adolescent girl wants to be a writer.) goes to visit her grandmother for the summer. Now, the grandmother's house on the ocean is also a classic device in this stories, and while the grandmother, Godbee, is more interesting than some fictional grandmas, her story isn't fleshed out in any interesting way.
Martha, the main character, struggles with the death of a classmate, but not in any way that's interesting. Olive wasn't someone she cared about, wasn't someone she knew, and while it's interesting in theory to contemplate the death of a stranger, and the idea of the guilt that haunts you when someone you ignored died, we had no way to become attached to Olive in any way, and it was less effective for us to see Martha struggling with it when we had no concept of the person who died.
Overall, I think it was a book that had a lot of potential, but rather than expand on its promise and turn it into a book for slightly older readers, Henkes settled for the simpler story, and as a result, left me wanting to know more about his characters.
The Kitchen God's Wife
This was our book club pick for this month, and although I didn't pick it up until Tuesday, I actually managed to read the entire book AND go to book club, which was a nice change.
As I said at the meeting, it's unusual for me to read books that are generally outside of my own cultural experiences, and that's a major (though I suspect not uncommon) flaw in my reading habits. This book is one woman's experiences in China during World War II, as told to her daughter many years afterwards. While I have read a lot of fiction about World War II, I didn't ever read anything from a non-Western standpoint, and it was quite apparent to me that I'd left a major gap in my knowledge by doing so.
That was a really badly written paragraph. Helllooooo, brain.
Despite my unfamiliarity with the content and the culture, I found this book really easy to read. The characters in it were appealing in a frustrating kind of way - nobody in the entire book really seemed like somebody I'd want to spend a lot of time with, but they all had stories to tell that made them absolutely fascinating to read about.
What really stood out for me is how easy it is to take for granted the lifestyle we lead here. Not just in North America, although obviously living in a first world country is a huge part of that, but as women. I honestly cannot fathom being forced into an arranged marriage as an 18 year old, and Wen Fu, her first husband, was such a despicable character that I honestly cannot come up with a single redeeming characteristic. I was wincing repeatedly when I was reading the stuff that he did, and the idea of being forced into a marriage like that with no choice is just mind-blowing.
This is not very articulate, nor is it terribly accurate, because it's not like there aren't still women all over the world, including, I'm sure, some in North America, being forced into arranged marriages. And I'm painfully aware of the horrible marriages that women stay in because they simply do not know any better. But from my incredibly luxurious position in life, I simply cannot imagine being in that position. I can't imagine living that life. Which, I suppose, is a good thing. But it's good for me, I think, to read books like this that remind me how lucky I am.
I was particularly fond of the relationship between Wei-Wei and Hulan, because it managed to capture that sisterly relationship between two women extremely well, in a way that made you understand exactly why they drove each other crazy, but still see and know why they remained so close.
This book was heartbreaking, eye-opening, and remarkably cross-cultural for a book set in such a specific culture. We were talking at book club (although we could have talked about the book a lot more, alas - we were once again easily distracted from the subject) about how despite the very Chinese nature of the book, there were elements of it that were just very very mother-daughter, no matter what the culture.
Which, I suppose, is just the measure of a good writer.
Next month's book club: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I've already read but am happy to reread. (I've already seen the movie, too, because I'm a big geek.) Then Bel Canto, which I've been meaning to read.
And, I have to say, although it's been a bit bumpy, I'm very impressed that we've kept book club going as long as we have. The first book club I tried to start was a total bust, so I'm delighted that this one seems to have stuck. Even when we don't have lengthy discussions about the book, the conversation is always good, and it's awesome to have an excuse to see people that I don't otherwise often see.
