The Shattering by Karen Healey

Keri lives in Summerton, an idyllic beach town in New Zealand where the locals all know each other and it never rains between Christmas and New Years. But Keri wants to get out and see more of the world, especially now that her beloved older brother, Jake, is dead. He committed suicide. At least, that's what she thinks until Janna, a friend whose own brother died years before, tells her that both their brothers were murdered, and she's going after the killer. They join forces with Sione, a tourist boy whose brother was also killed. As they figure out a pattern in the murders, narrow down suspects and try to protect the next victim, they discover dark and very dangerous powers at work in their town.

The characters are truly the stars of this book. The story is told from Keri's, Janna's and Sione's views, although Keri (who speaks in first person while the others' chapters are in third) is the principle narrator. Keri is a planner. Beginning at a young age, she has developed plans for various possible catastrophes, from broken arms to earthquakes. She doesn't like when people act in ways she doesn't see as rational. I sympathized with her on this. Janna is a bassist who wants to make it big in the music industry. I was ambivalent about her at the beginning but really liked her by the middle. She doesn't do well in school, but she has great talents outside it. Unlike the girls, Sione didn't get along well with his brother. He was always the weaker, less popular younger brother. He's sweet and sensitive and usually lets fierce, rugby-playing Keri or outgoing, determined Janna take the lead, but he comes into his own by the end. They're very different people, and I liked all three.

I think this is the first book I've read that's set in New Zealand (Lord of the Rings doesn't count!), so it was interesting to get bits of the Summerton culture. [Edit: Duh! The last book I posted about was set in New Zealand. There are some books with unreliable narrators. I hope I'm not becoming the Unreliable Blogger.] There are several issues that come up around the edges of the main mystery. This seems like regular life to me - sometimes these issues can be your central focus, but sometimes they're just one more thing you deal with while you're concentrating on a bigger event. One of those issues is race. Keri is half Maori, I think, and Sione is Samoan but lives in Auckland most of the year. One of Janna's bandmates is Chinese, and the boy she likes is a Japanese exchange student. It's a different mix of races than I'm accustomed to where I live, but the friction is similar.

On Karen Healey's website, she has a brief "What Happened After" section where she speculates on where the characters end up several years later. I liked that. I cared about her characters and was glad to know what she thinks happened to them.

Awards Day!

Today is Newbery Medal Day! Okay, the books I read fall mostly in the Printz age category, but the Newbery is the one I always think of first. For the list of award winners, see the ALA press release.

Despite the fact that the great majority of books I read are Young Adult, I have usually never heard of the Award winners. I'm doing well if I've heard of one or two of the Honor books. This is okay, though, because it means there are even more good books to add to my to-read list. This year's winners, DEAD END IN NORVELT by Jack Gantos (Newbery) and WHERE THINGS COME BACK by John Corey Whaley (Printz), sound very good, and I look forward to reading them. I was glad to see that Maggie Stiefvater's THE SCORPIO RACES received a Printz Honor; it was easily one of my favorite books last year.

And not to leave out the Caldecott Medal, I read one of the Honor books, GRANDPA GREEN by Lane Smith, and it is lovely.

The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy

Hero is the quiet one in a loud, argumentative, brilliant family. Her mother became famous years ago after publishing a book on raising children. Her older sister has just returned after a long absence, with the teenaged son of her former boyfriend in tow. Her older brother stays at home all the time, supposedly working on his thesis. Her younger sister is chatty and boisterous, and her father stays home to care for them all. Hero loves her family but sometimes wants to escape them.

She frequently goes down the street to an old estate where she can roam the pathways in the trees and live in her own world for a while. Then one day the owner of the estate sees her and invites her in, and Hero discovers that neither her home world nor her private world is what she thought it was.

I really really liked Margaret Mahy's writing style. She's insightful, and her language is full of imagery. That is true of many authors, of course, but Mahy has a unique twist. I will be looking for her other books. Here are just a few of the quotes that I took down.

...back then when I was only twelve, I had two lives. The life I lived with my family was my real life, but the tree life--the early-morning life, which I lived before anyone else was up and about--was also my true life even though it was partly invented. Real life is what you are supposed to watch out for, but an invented life, lived truly, can be just as dangerous.

But I would probably have turned into Old Fairy Tales, which was the book everyone read to me when I was small--the book I used for secret advice . . .for divination. Even when I was as old as ten or eleven, I would try to take Old Fairy Tales by surprise, opening it anywhere, pointing with the first finger of my left hand (my fortune-telling finger) and taking advice from the line I found myself pointing at.

Every so often I'd catch a glimpse of the house, its weather-beaten tower standing at the end of the main block like an exclamation mark at the end of a magic word.

Real is what everyone agrees about. True is what you somehow know inside yourself.

My reflection showed briefly in puddles, shrunken now to hand size as I walked by. A muddy ghost with smudgy features was walking with me every step of the way, sole to sole with me. Soul to soul with me!

Booklinks:
~~ This reminds me of THE ONLY ALIEN ON THE PLANET by Kristen D. Randle because both books seem poised to become supernatural but turn out to be sadly realistic.
~~ I actually own a different book that's also called THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE. In Mahy's book, some people think Hero is deaf because she doesn't talk. This other book I have is about the Deaf community.

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

I think more novels should have pictures. Wait, maybe I don't think that. There is something to be said about letting your imagination determine how high a hill is or whether a character's hair is light or dark brown. On the other hand, sometimes my brain is so concentrated on the story that a picture is helpful. Well, while the debate slogs along in my muddled head, I will say that Ian Schoenherr's black-and-white drawings add a lot to the suspense and mystery of THE APOTHECARY. Most of the illustrations lurk in the background of the chapter ends and beginnings, but there is one full-page spread that hits you in the gut.

Janie, our heroine, begins the story in sunny California, where her parents are screenwriters in Hollywood. But it's the 1950s, her parents are suspected of being Communists, and so the family flees to cold war-ravaged London. Janie's parents are happy working on a BBC production of Robin Hood, but Janie has a little more trouble adjusting.

Then she meets Benjamin, son of the apothecary whose shop is near Janie's flat. The two of them quickly become involved in a dangerous mystery. Because I had no idea where the story was going, I won't say anything else about the plot for fear of being spoilery. But I enjoyed the unexpected (for me) twists and adventures and the surprising new friends.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford

I had three books going this week and finished them one right after the other, which has caused something of a bookjam in my blog writing. I'll stick with Natalie Standiford and start with CONFESSIONS OF THE SULLIVAN SISTERS, which was my read-at-home-in-the-evening book. (There was also a lunch book and a before-bed book.) This book didn't move me as much as HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT, but it was fun.

Someone has done Something to seriously disturb the almighty Sullivan matriarch (who is actually called Almighty by her family), and she is threatening to disinherit the whole family unless that person confesses. Because no one knows which crime has brought on this threat, sisters Norrie, Jane and Sassy each submit a written confession to Almighty.

The book begins with Norrie's confession, then goes to Jane's and then to Sassy's. In other books with multiple narrators, I've often become so involved with one narrator that I've wished they could finish telling their side before moving to the next person. Sometimes the narrator switch is jarring, and it takes me a second to adjust to the other person's story. But I got my wish in this book and discovered that there are advantages to the other way after all. After starting Jane's story, I missed Norrie, and I didn't get to find out what happened to her until the very end. Aside from that, though, the format works for this book, because each sister can tell her story uninterrupted. Although the girls are talking about the same stretch of time, I didn't feel that there was any repetition, because each sister has such a different perspective.

The Sullivans are an old, rich, Baltimore clan, and they live in a big house with a tower room that has passed from St. John, the oldest brother, to Sully, the next brother, and now to Norrie. The kids call their mother Ginger and their father Daddy-O. The name Daddy-O makes me giggle. Ginger and the girls go to tea at Almighty's every Tuesday.

Conversation topics at recent teas have been Norrie's upcoming Cotillion and Jane's bad behavior in their all-girl Catholic high school. Norrie has been fast losing interest in Cotillion (and in her escort, the eligible grandson of Almighty's bosom friend) because of a happy grad student she's met in a night speed reading class. Jane starts a blog to reveal all the dastardly deeds of her evil family. And Sassy is pondering her newly developed invincibility that has let her walk away with only bruises after being hit by a car. Twice.

The characters in this book, not just the sisters, are delightful. Almighty's current husband (#5) is a quiet, comforting presence throughout the book, even under sad circumstances. Cassandra, a 5th-grader Sassy is tutoring in math despite her admitted ignorance in the subject, is refreshing and matter-of-fact, and although she doesn't believe Sassy's invincibility theory at first, she is willing to hear Sassy out and add her own opinions.

I also liked Robbie, Norrie's new boyfriend, but he was my one big problem with this book. Party pooperish of me this may be, but I think that 25 is way too old to be dating 17. (Unless you're Colonel Brandon, in which case you can be 35 to Marianne's 17, but that was a very different time.) I realize that age is a somewhat arbitrary standard on which to base behavior, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and in this case, I will side with the law and wish they had waited until Norrie was 18.

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

This is my first favorite new read of 2012.

Beatrice has just moved with her parents to Baltimore, where her father will be a professor at Johns Hopkins, her mother will stay home and act more and more oddly, and Bea will attend a private school with only 40 students in her senior class. Thanks to alphabetical chance, Bea Szabo is seated next to Jonah Tate, the boy that her classmates treat like a ghost. Bea tries to be friendly to him, and Jonah introduces her to a late-night call-in radio show, thus beginning a strong, unconventional friendship. Bea and Jonah are more interested in meeting the callers to the radio show (one of whom is from the future, another of whom is holding out hope that Elvis will come back to life and to her) and taking a secret trip to Ocean City than in hanging out with their classmates at repeated parties or going to prom. Trying not to be spoilery here - Jonah discovers something about his past that his father has been hiding from him, and Bea willingly helps him try to sneak around his father to fix it. But it gets too big for Jonah, and even Bea can't help him.

Reading about Bea and Jonah made me think about how conventional I am (something I don't tend to dwell on). Before the move Baltimore, Bea and her mother used to spend their time together dressing up in elaborate costumes and recreating scenes from old movies that Bea would photograph. She and Jonah don't want to go to prom because it just isn't their thing, and they can come up with something to do they'd enjoy so much more. I didn't go to prom either, but if I had, it would have been a big deal to me. If they (Jonah in particular) had gone, they would have been more than bored.

I liked Bea. She seems to be comfortable with herself. She is willing to help Jonah with his risky plans, but she is also more grounded than her mother. She tries to be nice to her classmates but isn't at all concerned with getting the popular ones to like her. Her narrative was easy to read with some humor to leaven the heavy parts.

Experience told me that not many guys were into flat-chested sticks with big round lollipop heads and stringy hair, unless by some miracle that was the regional definition of cute. If so, I hadn't come across that particular region. Mom kept telling me I had to grow into my face, but I knew a euphemism when I heard one.

Jonah, meanwhile, broke my heart. He is a very good friend to Bea, often thoughtful and caring. But when he gets into his trouble, he withdraws into the ghost-like boy he had been before Bea moved in. My staid adult self recognizes that my teenage self would have related to Jonah (not that I had to deal with anything like what he has to). Bea's mother says:

"Jonah always struck me as kind of, I don't know, insubstantial."
"You're wrong," I said. "He has substance. It just flickers off and on."
"Reminds me of somebody else we both know," Mom said. I think she was talking about Dad but, frankly, it could have been anybody.

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT is a moving book about a relationship that is more than friendship, more than romance, but in the end is unable be saved by just one person or even by the real love of both people.

(Also posted in Goodreads)

Booklinks: I like it when I happen to read books, one soon after the other, that relate to each other somehow. This book has two for me.
~~ At the beginning of the book, Bea names a stray gerbil Goebbels, after one of the Nazis that she has been reading about in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, which I read for one of my book groups (okay, I read one-tenth of it - although unexpectedly readable, it's realllly looong).
~~ Bea and Jonah listening to a late-night radio show reminded me of Annabel and Owen in Sarah Dessen's JUST LISTEN, although Owen's show had more obscure music, while the Night Lights in this book had more callers and talking.

Abandon by Meg Cabot

Pierce Oliviera died. While in the Underworld, she met John Hayden, a death deity who wanted her to stay with him, but she escaped. She and her mother have now moved to her mother's hometown on the island Isla Huesos off the coast of Florida. After the disasters that occurred since Pierce was revived, her mother wants them both to make a new start. But John keeps appearing, as do the disasters, and Pierce must figure out what is happening and what her role is in it.

Meg Cabot can certainly write an engaging story, and you can depend on her for a smart heroine and a sensitive/vulnerable hero who looks great in tight T-shirts. I stayed up late last night reading ABANDON and took extra time at lunch to read more. This is the first of a series, and I want to find out what happens next. I'm hoping Pierce's cousin Alex and new friend Kayla have bigger roles in the next book.