This is our final read-along discussion of Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn. You can see the first part of our discussion here, the second part here, and the third part here. If you haven’t read Brooklyn, keep in mind that there will be spoilers in this post and in the comments section.

Well, we’re finished. And I can’t say that the last quarter changed my mind about the book, thus the two-star rating. I finally nailed down why I disliked Eilis so much: she was a completely passive character. From the beginning, the decision to go to America, the decision to enter accounting school, even dating Tony – all of these things seemed to just happen to Eilis, and she just went along.

That opinion of her was reinforced by the last quarter of the book, by the way she behaved when back in Ireland to visit her mother. Actually, even before she left for Ireland, when she gave in to Tony’s pressure for a quickie wedding. Then she gets to Ireland and falls into a relationship with Jim Farrell, not telling her mother or anyone about her marriage. She puts off deciding when to go home or what to do until she is forced to make a decision when Miss Kelly confronts her with the fact that she knows Eilis is married.

From beginning to end of the book, not one of Eilis’s actions seemed as if it came from her, from her wants, her needs, her desires, her ambition. I understand that an essential part of her character was that of an obedient daughter, but it is almost impossible for me to feel any sympathy or connection to a character like that.

When you combine the fact that I didn’t like the main character with the fact that I didn’t like Toibin’s sparse writing style, hopefully you can understand why I didn’t care much for this book. I hope those of you who joined me for the read-along liked it more than I did!

For those of you who are interested, you can listen to Toibin discuss Brooklyn for the BBC News at this link.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: irish fiction, literary fiction, read-alongs

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The Secret Lives of People in Love is Simon Van Booy’s first short story collection. He deals with life, love, loss, relationships – and sets the stories all over the world. His prose is breathtakingly beautiful, and he completely captures the ups and downs of the human condition; the little moments of pure beauty and joy, as well as the depths of devastation and despair.

Like many short fiction collections, there were some that I loved, some that I didn’t care for, and some that were just okay. What pushed me over the edge of the three-star cliff firmly into four-star territory was the sheer gorgeousness of Van Booy’s writing. He puts words together like few other authors. I’d read a story that didn’t resonate with me, but the next one would have passages that simply took my breath away.

As this was his first collection, I have a feeling that his second collection would be less uneven. And I also know that I can’t wait to read his novel and see what he does with a longer work. And just in case you think I’m exaggerating about how splendid his writing is, I marked a few passages to share with you:

“My memories are arranged like puddles – they are littered throughout the present moment. It seems arbitrary, that which the mind remembers, but I know it is not.” ~ from the story “The World Laughs in Flowers”

“He observed how each raindrop united with its closest other and then, split open by its own weight, ran down the glass in one even corridor.” ~ from the story “The Reappearance of Strawberries”

“I miss autumn – the season when summer takes on the memory of its own mortality. And then winter. And then the miracle season, when everything begins again fearlessly.” ~ from the story “Distant Ships”

“It only seemed like yesterday that small broken wings of snow had silently fallen against the shop window; only yesterday he’d boiled his daughter’s diapers on a frozen winter morning in Russia. Without memory, time would be no use to mankind, Serge thought.” ~ from the story “Apples”

I am not being facetious when I say I could literally open this book to a random page and find another passage just as magnificent.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: literary fiction, short fiction

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When I posted on Monday about receiving a copy of The Things They Carried in the mail, I received several comments from people telling me how brilliant it is and how I will love it. My first thought was, “How do they not know that this book is already in my top five novels of all time?” And then I realized that I have only posted my thoughts on this book on my personal (now mostly defunct) blog, but not here. So I thought now would be a good time to get that review moved here to Books and Movies.

This review was previously posted on my personal blog on October 6, 2006.

“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

I first read The Things They Carried when I was in high school. I was given a reading list – I believe the class was College Prep Literature – and told to choose a book and write a book report on it. I chose this one.

My dad is a Vietnam vet. He did two tours in Vietnam, one on land and one on sea, courtesy of the United States Navy. He wasn’t in the infantry, so in some ways I know his experience must have been very different than the one Mr. O’Brien describes in his book. But I’m also sure that in some ways it was the same, because my dad served part of his land tour as a medical corpsman, carrying wounded and dying – and sometimes dead – soldiers from the battlefield.

I only know this because my mom told me. Dad told her a long time ago. But growing up, the only time my dad talked about his time in Vietnam was to tell the funny stories. The time he got in trouble and had kitchen duty. How he got a cushy assignment because he was one of the only men who knew how to type. How on the aircraft carrier he would watch the same movie several times, showing it to the pilots during their “down-time” as part of his duties. He never talked about the war itself, what he saw, what he did, who he knew, who died.

In high school, reading The Things They Carried almost felt like a sneaky thing, like I was peering into a part of my dad’s past that he wanted to keep buried. But I was proud of his service and wanted to know this part of him.

When, as a teenager, I read how Mr. O’Brien described almost running away to Canada to escape the draft, and how he only went back to face enlistment because he was too cowardly to face the shame heaped on him by friends and family if he ran, I almost felt as if this book was betraying Dad’s service to his country. Dad thought that the cowardly thing to do was to dodge the draft. He enlisted, choosing the navy because it was the only dress uniform that didn’t require a tie.

I have a much different perspective now. I am still proud of my dad for the service he gave our country. But in the past four years since we declared war on Iraq, I have heard him speak more about Vietnam than I can remember in all my years of growing up. He doesn’t speak of it directly, but in the way he views this war. He is angered by the fact that our young men are sent over to fight without the body armor they need to protect themselves. He is outraged that the families of servicemen are having to scrape together funds to buy body armor, and that soldiers are using sandbags as a measure of protection in their vehicles that should be armored already. He is saddened that the war seems to be dragging on, and grieves the marriages that are destroyed as a result of multiple deployments and the psychological damage that our soldiers are bringing home.

Please don’t see this post as a traitorous, anti-war post. I fully supported President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. But as the war has dragged on, and mistakes in the carrying out of the war have been made, my feelings toward it have become ambivalent. I believe Iraq is better off without Hussein, without a doubt. But I am grieved that it is still going on, and that the end may not come ten or more years from now. I personally know of two marriages that have been irreparably damaged as a result of long separations. The son of my best friend is likely facing another deployment, and the thought that his 6 month old baby daughter will not remember him when he returns breaks my heart.

As I re-read The Things They Carried, I was reminded that our current war is not the same as the Vietnam war. Although I believe mistakes have been made, I believe the events and motives leading us to war were more honest and ethical than the events leading to Vietnam. Mr. O’Brien’s opinion of war has been colored by which war he personally served in. This quote sums up his feelings on war in general:

“A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.”

Would Mr. O’Brien’s belief that there is no virtue in war be different if he had served in Wold War II? Undoubtedly. But he didn’t. He served in a war which was fought on an unfair playing field, a war that was unwinnable because our men were expected to fight with one arm tied behind their backs. They returned to a country torn apart, to hatred and scorn from people who detested them simply because they had been there.

My dad never fired a gun at the enemy in Vietnam. He spent his time with a construction battalion, building roads and bridges and, at one time, a public swimming pool for the local village. He spent time as a corpsman, helping to patch up the wounded. He spent time as support on an aircraft carrier, waking the pilots when it was time to go. None of this stopped people from calling him a “baby-killer” when he returned to the United States and was easily identified by his military haircut and residence in San Diego near the naval base.

Mr. O’Brien calls this book a work of fiction, and yet he is the narrator, even called by his real name. Only he knows how much of it is true. But in the way that a book makes you understand someone else’s experience, this book is true.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contemporary fiction, literary fiction, vietnam war fiction

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Rose (Rosalind), Bean (Bianca), and Cordy (Cordelia) are the daughters of a renowned professor and lover of all things Shakespeare. They grew up in a college town, in a home where books were revered above all things, and where communication consisted of trading passages from the Bard. As adults, they couldn’t be more different from each other. When they all return to the family home in Barnwell, Ohio, to help care for their cancer-stricken mother, they are harboring secrets for their true reasons for returning. Rose isn’t sure she ever really left home, and doesn’t know if she has the courage to abandon comfortable roles and expectations. Bean has fled New York City – the place she once fled to – in disgrace, and needs to learn just who she is, who she wants to be. Cordy, home after flitting from one place to another for years, must discover that sometimes having roots is a good thing. And most of all, they will have to learn how to love and trust each other, in spite of their prickly past.

The story of The Weird Sisters is told in first person plural – “we.” For the first few pages, I kept trying to figure out which sister was narrating. And then I realized – they all were. This is the story of the sisters, and they tell it. Once I settled in to that understanding, this book came to life. It is such a unique way to tell a story, and it worked perfectly for Rose, Bean, and Cordy.

As I read, I had so many times I thought, “Oh, I’ll mention this in my review!” or “So-and-so (insert name of book blogger here) will LOVE this book!” or, simply, “I ADORE this book.” – followed by a happy sigh. The Shakespeare quotes. The love of books. The beautiful depiction of the choppy relationship that is sisterhood. The books! The gorgeous way Eleanor Brown puts words together. Shakespeare and Shakespeare and more Shakespeare. The descriptions of Cordy baking bread. The way the library is revered as an almost hallowed place. Did I mention the books?

Bottom line:

If you have sisters (I have three) – read this book.

If you love Shakespeare – read this book.

If you love books – read this book.

If you love words – read this book.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contemporary fiction, literary fiction

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When The Boy in the Gap opens, Jack Sammon is in jail, accused of a terrible crime that has terrorized his community. Writing in a school notebook, he pieces together the story of his childhood and adult years, the events that led him to this place. The pieces begin to fall into place, but the reader is left to question Jack’s guilt or innocence until the very last pages of the book.

Jack’s childhood was far from a happy one. His father died when he was 9, and his mother was in and out of the hospital for depression. The family farm continues to survive thanks to a neighbor couple who cares for Jack’s family. His mother ruins that when she chooses a violent gambler and drunk for her romantic partner, a man that no one in the community approves of. The new man in his life is just one more blow to Jack’s already fragile psyche, and he gets firmly set on a path leading to destruction.

In some ways, reading this book was like watching a train barreling down a track, knowing very well that it’s on a collision course. Because the book begins with Jack already in jail, you know that things have gone badly for him. There were times that I wanted to quit reading, simply because the decisions made by those around Jack pushed him into a very bad place, and I knew it was going to end in disaster. I didn’t quit reading, though, because the author did a good job of getting me invested enough in the character that I wanted to know why he was in jail.

Paul Soye definitely had a story to tell; unfortunately, the method he chose to tell it didn’t work very well. There were scenes that were in the present – Jack in jail – and then scenes set in the past, telling the story of his life from childhood up until that point. I’ve seen this used before as a storytelling technique, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The biggest thing that kept it from working in the case of The Boy in the Gap is that the flashback scenes were not told in chronological order, and so I often found myself completely confused as to where I was in Jack’s timeline. There were scenes I had to go back and read more than once to figure out what age Jack was supposed to be. This detracted from my reading experience, and even the quality of writing wasn’t enough to take this book out of the “like” category into the “love” category.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contemporary fiction, irish fiction, literary fiction

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This is the story of my life, that while I lived it weighed upon me and pressed against me and filled all my senses to overflowing and now is like a dream dreamed.

Hannah Coulter is a simple book. Hannah is at the end of her life, and she looks back over the years behind her, telling her story and the stories of the people she loves. Wendell Berry is one of the only authors who could take such a simple premise and turn it into a work of beauty, a novel that reads like an ode to the simple things that make up a life: family, friends, a home, a place, love, children.

I’ve raved about Wendell Berry before – enough that I decided to host a reading challenge devoted to him this year. I’ve adored his short fiction (That Distant Land), his essays (The Art of the Commonplace), and his poetry (Sabbath Poems), but Hannah Coulter was the first of his Port William novels that I’ve read.

Berry loves the land, land that he continues to farm to this day. Port William is based on Port Royal, Kentucky, where Berry lives, and his respect and love for the land and the people who work it infuse every word on every page.

Hannah Coulter is a beloved member of the fictional Port William community, a woman who loved two men, who was touched by war, who raised three children, and who honored the place she lived. Reading this novel is like sitting down with a beloved grandmother and hearing her tell you about her life, about what is important, about the people she has been surrounded by. And as you listen, you learn what it means to honor others, to respect yourself, to be content.

There is simply no way I can do justice to the beauty of this book and the power of his prose, so I’ll leave you with a few of the (many, many) passages I marked so that I would remember them.

Hannah speaking of her grandmother:

She would do a man’s work when she needed to, but she lived and died without ever putting on a pair of pants. She wore dresses. Being a widow, she wore them black. Being a woman of her day, she wore them long. The girls of her time, I think, must have been like well-wrapped gifts, to be opened by their husbands on their wedding night, a complete surprise. “Well! What’s this?”

Hannah speaking of her first husband:

When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you were young. It is almost like looking down from Heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world. You see yourself happy, holding in your arms a good, decent, gentle, beloved young man with the blood keen in his veins, who before long is going to disappear, just disappear into a storm of hate and flying metal and fire. And you don’t know it.

Hannah speaking of grief:

I began to know my story then. Like everybody’s, it was going to be the story of living in the absence of the dead. What is the thread that holds it all together? Grief, I thought for a while. And grief is there sure enough, just about all the way through. From the time I was a girl I have never been far from it. But grief is not a force and has no power to hold. You only bear it. Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.

Hannah speaking of becoming a mother for the first time:

To know that I was known by a new living being, who had not existed until she was made in my body by my desire and brought forth into the world by my pain and strength – that changed me. My heart, which seemed to have only loss and grief in it before, now had joy in it also.

Hannah on marriage:

We quarreled because we loved each other, I have no doubt of that. We were trying to become somehow the same person, one flesh, and we often failed. When distance came between us, we would blame it on each other. And here is a wonder. I maybe never loved him so much or yearned toward him so much as when I was mad at him. It’s not a simple thing, this love.

Hannah on growing old together:

The only people here were just this aging couple, getting a little too small for their skin, their hair turning white, standing it might be in the middle of the kitchen or the garden or the barn lot, hugging each other the way the hungry eat, in a hurry for night to fall. We still had the children to think about and worry about, of course, wherever they were, and our work always ahead of us, and the place always around us with its needs and demands, and yet for a while there I would think that this, this right now, was all the world that I held in my arms. It was like falling in love, only more than that; we knew too much by then for it to be only that. It was knowing that love was what it was, and life would not complete it and death would not stop it. While we held each other and our old desire came upon us, eternity flew into time like a lighting dove.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: literary fiction, wendell berry

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It is 1953, and Pearlie is an African-American housewife caring for her polio-afflicted son and her husband, Holland. Before their marriage, Holland’s aunts warned Pearlie of his weak heart, and Pearlie spends her time protecting him from anything upsetting. One day, Holland’s former employer, Buzz Droomer, shows up on their doorstep, and Pearlie is left wondering if she ever knew her husband at all.

The Story of a Marriage is a small, deceptively simple book that is exactly what the title says it is: the story of a marriage. Pearlie and Holland were high school sweethearts who lost track of each other when Holland went to war. They meet again after the war in San Francisco, get married, and have a son. Their life is uncomplicated. Pearlie stays home and cares for the house and their child; Holland works all day. In the evenings, they listen to the news and Groucho Marx together and have a nightcap. Occasionally, they visit Holland’s aunts, two older ladies who love to gossip.

At the heart of Pearlie and Holland’s story is this question: how well do we know the ones we love? I can’t tell you more about this book without giving away plot points, and you’ll want to go into this one unspoiled. The author does a wonderful job of getting inside Pearlie’s head – it is very unusual to read a book in first person where the narrator is female and the author is male and have it sound natural, but Greer pulls it off.

As good as the writing is, however, I was left feeling a bit cold. I wanted to know how the story turned out, but it didn’t excite me or involve me emotionally, and I think the main reason is that I had a very hard time relating to Pearlie and the choices she made and actions she took during the course of the book.

Audio notes: S. Epatha Merkerson became Pearlie in the audio edition; I’m not sure I would have pushed through to finish had I been reading it in print. Listening to it read in Pearlie’s voice was like having her tell me her story in person – the producers could not have found a better narrator.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: audiobooks, contemporary fiction, literary fiction

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Whenever a bird is injured in Spring Green, Wisconsin, Milly and Twiss receive a drop-in visit, calling for their expertise to heal – and sometimes, bury – the bird. They are known as the Bird Sisters, but the folks in Spring Green don’t give much thought to the people behind the nickname, and Milly and Twiss have a story, a story that explains why they ended up living out their lives together, unmarried, and without children. The story goes back to the summer Twiss was 14, when their cousin Bett came to visit from Deadwater and Milly fell in love and their priest lost his faith and their father lost his golf swing.

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Rebecca Rasmussen over the past several months, through blog comments and Twitter conversations, and I love her. She is, to put it simply, a joy. And I looked forward to reading her debut novel with a mixture of equal parts anticipation and dread. Because, to be honest, becoming friends with an author whose book you intend to review can be a sticky business. In the past, I have had to give a less than favorable review to a book by an author with whom I had an online acquaintance, and the negative (though respectful, in my opinion) review brought our relationship to an end. I know enough about Rebecca to know that would not be the case if I didn’t love The Bird Sisters, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings!

I can say with all honesty and relief that The Bird Sisters was a pleasure to read. The book is suffused with a mood of reminiscence, and the writing evokes the hazy days of summer and adolescence. Twiss and Milly are doing their best to survive their parents’ deconstructing marriage. They married for love, a fact that their mother continually mentions cost her the lifestyle she had been accustomed to. Her father had been convinced that his work as a golf pro would give him an “in” with the kind of people he had tried to marry into. The actual result is that his wife and daughters bear the burden of his obsession.

These parents infuriated me. My heart ached for Twiss, who believes that she has to choose which parent to love; for Milly, who chose to meet everyone’s needs except her own. And their cousin, Bett, whose coming lights a match under the powder keg that their parents have been building for years – she was so clearly a product of her environment that I wanted to take her in and tell her she was a person worthy of love.

When it comes down to it, The Bird Sisters is a love story about the love between sisters, a love that can endure anything. I can see Twiss hitting her golf ball, see Milly baking her tractor cake, and I know these are two characters who I will miss. If I was giving my rating based simply on the characters Rebecca created and the way she put the words together, I would give this book 5 stars. It’s a minor quibble, but I had a bit of difficulty with the transitions between the two time periods, and sometimes felt like it took longer than it should for me to know whether we were in the past or the present. Definitely not a reason to miss out on the pleasure of getting to know Milly and Twiss.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: contemporary fiction, literary fiction

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This is the second book in Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and the second one I’ve read aloud to my kids. We loved this one just as much as the first. Riordan has done a good job of giving us an over-arching mystery (the prophecy surrounding a child of one of the “Big Three” gods at age sixteen), but also giving us a rollicking, fun tale in the meantime. Percy, Annabeth, and a young Cyclops named Tyson head out to the Sea of Monsters to rescue Grover and prevent him from becoming a Cyclops’ bride. Like the first book, modern culture is woven together with Greek mythology, making for some very funny and hair-raising adventures.

Title: Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life
Author: Selected and introduced by Robert Hass
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: The Ecco Press
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy from the public library

Like many anthologies, I loved a few poems from this collection, liked a lot more, and didn’t care for some. But what makes this one stand out is the format. When Robert Hass was United States Poet Laureate, he started a nationally syndicated poetry column that ran in many national newspapers. He compiled those columns by season and put together this book, which includes not only the poems he chose to share with the American public, but also his thoughts on the poem, as well as as a bit of biographical detail about the poet. Most of the poetry is American, with a few exceptions, and much of it is very good. I enjoyed reading Hass’s notes on each poem and his explanation as to why he chose that one for his column.

Title: Waiting for Columbus
Author: Thomas Trofimuk
Genre: Contemporary fiction, literary fiction
Publisher: Doubleday
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Source: Print copy from my personal library
First line: Imagine a man standing on a rocky shoreline looking out to sea, pondering the question, the same question we whisper when we look up at night into a star-crazed sky – swirls of light millions of years old – everything moving away, or toward, or around: What’s out there?

What can I say? I read this a couple of months ago for a read-along with some other bloggers, and some of them disliked it as much as I loved it. All I can say is that I thought it was brilliant. Beautifully written, lushly sensual with details of taste, touch, smell – and an intriguing mystery as well. A man washes up on the beach in Spain. His belief that he is Christopher Columbus lands him in an insane asylum, where his detailed tales of Columbus’s life intrigue the nurse who cares for him. Who is he? What happened to him to cause him to have such a slip from reality? And why is she so drawn to him? Trofimuk answers all of those questions, and gives us a beautiful story of love and loss.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: children's fiction, contemporary fiction, fantasy, literary fiction, middle grade fiction, poetry, read-alouds

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Jacquelyn Mitchard is an author who is hit or miss with me. I absolutely loved The Breakdown Lane and The Deep End of the Ocean. This one was more of a “like.” I really liked the characters, but the story was fairly predictable, and the ending was dragged out way too long. It was only because I loved the characters so much and I wanted to know how things turned out for them that I kept listening. As far as the audio edition goes, Robin Miles is a great narrator, and embodied each of the characters – including many Creoles – very well.

Title: The Angel’s Game
Author: Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Genre: Literary fiction, gothic literature
Publisher: Anchor
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Source: Audiobook from the public library
Audiobook reader: Dan Stevens
First line: A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story.

David Martin, a young author of gothic-slash-horror novels, is dying of cancer. He makes a deal with a publisher named Andreas Corelli, a deal that gives him a future he wasn’t supposed to have. The price is far greater than he could ever have imagined. I loved listening to this atmospheric, slightly sinister novel. The city of Barcelona is drawn as a cursed city, and Martin is doubly cursed. There is a terrific cast of characters, an intriguing mystery, and plenty of bookish love. I didn’t realize that this was written after The Shadow of the Wind, as a prequel. I will definitely be reading Shadow soon – I can’t wait to be drawn back into the world of Barcelona and the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Dan Stevens is a wonderful narrator. He is understated – not a reader who does extreme accents or vocal stunts – but varies the characters enough that there is no question who is speaking. As the voice of our protagonist, David Martin, he was perfect.

Title: Chains
Author: Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre: YA historical fiction
Publisher: Atheneum
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Source: Audiobook from the public library
Audiobook reader: Madisun Leigh
First line: The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up.

This is my third experience with the work of Laurie Halse Anderson (I listened to both Twisted and Prom on audio) and this is, by far, my favorite. Chains is the story of Isabel, a slave girl during the Revolutionary War. Isabel is a strong character, one whose story broke my heart. The experience of the slave during the Revolutionary War is a theme I also visited when listening to the Octavian Nothing books by M.T. Anderson – the unbelievable idea that our forefathers were determined not to be slaves to the King, but had no problem owning black slaves and using them like animals is one I find difficult to grasp, a part of our history that hurts my heart. Isabel’s story will stay with me for a long, long time – and I will be continuing it with book two in the series, Forge. Madisun Leigh’s voice took some getting used to, but after the first disc or so, I only heard Isabel.

© CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2011. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: audiobooks, contemporary fiction, foreign fiction, gothic fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, paranormal fiction, spanish fiction, supernatural fiction, translated literature, YA fiction

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