Books

So, the official word is out that I nominated Nicola Griffith’s Always for the summer round of the LitBlog Co-Op, and I’m going to do my best to try and convince you to read it NOW so you can hop over and participate in the discussion later on. I’ve only been a nominator once before (I chose Jeff Ford’s The Girl in the Glass), and making a choice wasn’t tough at all that time either. This time around, I’d planned on choosing Ysabeau’s Flora Segunda, but then it was getting all sorts of love from the New York Times and, well basically, everywhere, and began to be not overlooked enough (which is a good thing). Griffith’s new novel landed in my lap and I devoured it immediately, loved it, and had a couple of days to make a pick. The choice was clear. (And isn’t it interesting that both of my picks to date have been mystery/suspense? Clearly, I need to be reading more of the stuff.)

Now, I hope this book turns out not to be overlooked too. I hope it is the one which finally gets the attention and buzz and READERS it deserves, but I strongly feel that Griffith’s work–and the Aud novels in particular–deserve more readers. They get pigeonholed, I think, for some interesting reasons.

I should start over a bit and say that if you haven’t read the earlier Aud novels The Blue Place and Stay, then you’re in for a treat, but you don’t have to have done so to read this one. (At least, that’s my take — I suppose the LBCers will get to weigh in on that one, since I imagine most of them haven’t read the earlier books.) Aud is Aud Torvingen, an uber-rich, uber-competent, uber-striking Norwegian expatriate who’s been living in Atlanta (where one of Always’ dual storylines is set) for years. She’s an ex-cop. She knows a bunch of different ways to kill you with her hands. She’s so in her head that she sometimes has trouble being in her heart. But her heart has funny ways of getting around that and when she feels and when she is smashed? It hurts oh so much more.

She is, basically, a larger-than-life noir heroine. No one would bat an eyelash at this character if she were a man, I don’t think (based on James Bond, the Bourne dude, and a half dozen other examples), but I’m really curious to see how the other members of the LBC react to her. There are tons of kick-ass and ass-kicking female characters being written today, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with one exactly like Aud. Again, uber. Uber-everything. And fascinatingly complex. One of the key differences between Aud and the typical male larger-than-life thriller hero is the depth at which we get to look at her insides–those characters tend to be ciphers, the reasons they are what they are often too thin to stand up to scrutiny. And they very rarely change. Aud isn’t a cipher and she is constantly growing, changing, learning while still being completely consistent as a character, both of which are tributes to Griffith’s fine, fine writing.

The other reason I think these books haven’t busted out completely is that Aud is a lesbian and sometimes she falls in love. This new book is part love story. Yes, there is hot girl-on-girl action. (Please, shoot the person who ever came up with that term.) And so maybe this is one of those books that gets embraced by the gay community, but which doesn’t get picked up by the average thriller reader. I suspect this is a factor. It’s a silly factor, but nonetheless. (My recent conversations with gay/lesbian publishing types back this impression up too.)

So, anyway, these are awesome, weighty page-turners–they completely earn that elusive "meaning of life thriller" (to steal Sean Stewart’s term again) designation. These are big, ass-kicking, kick-ass books. Give Always a shot and see if you don’t agree.

I’ll have much, much more to say on the beauty that is Always later this summer. You should too.

See also: Griffith’s Web site

Micol has a great post about authenticity and identity and multi-culturalism in fiction inspired by a questioning letter from a reader of her Emily Goldberg Learns to Salsa:

Growing up as a Puerto Rican Jew, identity sometimes proved a confusing issue with which to grapple. I’ve been told that I’m not "really" Hispanic, or that my mother, a convert, isn’t as Jewish as she should be. I majored in multi-culti studies in college and spent a heck of a lot of time defending my own experiences as defined by status of "not." And my reply to people who thought I had one foot in each world but was fully-grounded in neither was ultimately: yeah, and?

Read it all.

Congratulate the fabulous Holly Black for her amazing book’s debut at number 5 on the NYT BESTSELLER LIST! I love it when good books take over the world.

Okay, so I just read Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover, after someone mentioned it on the Child Lit listserv (where I lurk, but never post) last week and made it sound supremely appealing. Wow. How have I never read her before? What an utterly delicious book — just ask Christopher, who had to stop reading this to listen to excerpts every few minutes.

I know that Jenny and Justine are fans, so then the question becomes why they did not FORCE me to read her sooner? At gunpoint, if necessary?

More later on some elements of this book in contrast to more recent teen fantasies (it holds up remarkably well, but there are some things in here — things that work, I might add — that you just don’t see today).

In the meantime, are there any other wonderful, lesser-known (to me, anyway) YA/children’s fantasy novelists I should know about that y’all are keeping from me? I should confess here that my own seams are showing — the fantasy I grew up reading was mostly of the supernatural variety for adults or from Latin America ditto (aside from the classics for younger children that everyone reads); next up are Franny Billingsley and Susan Cooper’s books, so any recommendations are welcome, even if they seem obvious to you.

So, last year I had the 75 books sidebar for the Infamous Challenge de Ed, and I got rid of it when the year changed. But since I don’t have time to post at length about everything I read at the moment, I thought I’d bring it back. Below the Read Read list over to the left, you’ll find my 2007 Reading List — mostly up to date with what I’ve read or reread so far this year, and with an unsatisfyingly inexact star rating for each book.

I’m also going start doing the thumbnails again, though it remains to be seen whether I’ll do it going forward or go back and catch up. Anyway, as you’ll see, I’ve read mostly entirely awesome books so far this year. Check them out if they catch your eye.

The fabulous, fabulous news about Viking publishing a Kelly Link YA collection is out and PW has the story. Yay, Kelly! Yay, Sharyn!

Three things YA-related of note:

1. Meghan has a really wonderful rant about queers in YA and recommends Tripping to Somewhere (which I need to get my hands on stat).

2. Holly’s wondering if there was swearing in teen fantasies before 2002 (when Tithe was published) — so far Francesca Lia Block is the main name coming up.

3. Cecil Castellucci’s World Domination 2007 is coming! Beige and The Plain Janes are almost out! The Not Your Mother’s Book Club Cecilpalooza is set! I loved both of these books SOOOO much and will be posting about them soon; order now. Now. Go.

p.s. Semi-YA related: Do not miss Hank Green’s ode to Helen Hunt. If, like me, stills from Girls Just Wanna Have Fun are enough to make you happy, then your head will explode.

A sequel to her first novel Tithe, Holly Black’s Ironside finds pixie Kaye caught between the world of Faerie — and the Seelie and Unseelie courts — and ours, the one she grew up in. Roiben’s coronation as head of the Unseelie Court brings with it war and estrangement from Kaye. The events of Tithe still weigh heavily on all involved, particularly on Kaye’s best friend Corny. You guys know how I hate plot summary, and this one is complex enough to not boil down easily without me spoiling it for you. It’s about family and friendship and pain and redemption. It’s riveting and dark.

As far as I’m concerned, this novel further cements the fact that Holly is writing some of the most compelling fantasies being published. These books aren’t just redefining faery stories, they’re helping stake out new territory in urban fantasy and in literary YA writing. These are brave, bold novels that achieve exactly what they set out to do — and it just so happens that, mostly, at the moment, no other books are quite doing what they are.

I often find that fantasy novels fall down on the issue of consequences. Too frequently, characters literally get away with murder with very little difficulty. The rules of the world may be such that the characters just aren’t made to suffer greatly, and yet are often rewarded with greater than great prizes. That is a recipe for boredom. For staleness. For disinterest. It attracts cliche.

Which is why writers should flock to these particular novels to learn how consequences — and plotting — are done. And it’s not by skimping on character either. I can’t remember the last book I read where the stakes ratcheted up in each chapter, without feeling like a phony escalation. Where the character’s betrayals of themselves rang so true; these characters have real flaws, not the idealized ones so common to fantasies (and other types of stories). Flaws that hurt. Holly is willing to put her characters through hell, unflinchingly, and that makes for good reading.

There’s no higher compliment a writer can give another writer than to admire their book so much they wish they’d written it. There are a handful of books I feel this way about. Books that I’ve reread almost as soon as I finished them. Ironside is one of those books. I’d call it perfect, but that would make it sound less interesting than it actually is. I’m even planning to write a paper on it, just for the fun of deconstructing the pieces to see more clearly how it all works.

Plus, this little bit on page 68 made me laugh and laugh:

Kaye rummaged around in the stacks of clothing until she came up with a dark brown T-shirt with the black silhouette of a man riding a rabbit and holding a lance.

She held it up for Corny’s inspection. He laughed nervously. "It looks tight."

Ellen shrugged. "It’s from a book signing at a bar. Kelly something. Chain? Kelly Chain? … "

Hee.

Hear also: A recording of the prologue.

We went out to Joseph-Beth — which has been reconfigured in a not entirely pleasing way (not entirely displeasing either, to be fair) — to check out the Kids Bargain Book Blow-Out, which claimed to be selling off tons of remaindered YA books for $1.50 a pop. Well, of course, pretty much everything that was for sale sucked eggs, except for the things for younger readers and the books we already owned. I’d set myself a budget expecting to clean-up and I more or less stuck to it and I did clean up. At least, if you consider three new hardbacks cleaning up. And I do, when the books in question are:

Holly Black’s Ironside (YAY! You know what I’m doing tonight…)
Cassie Clare’s City of Bones
Ellen Klages’ The Green Glass Sea

It’s a remarkably aesthetically lovely trio to look at — all three are gorgeously designed books that I expect will be utterly fabulous. I feel better now.

If only the rain would stop (making the dogs sad), the tax refund would arrive, and my book would start to write itself, life would be damn near perfect.

I’d be remiss, however, if I didn’t direct you to the debut issue of Hot Metal Bridge, edited by one Carolyn Kellogg. It features new fiction by Michael Martone, an interview with Dan Chaon, and new poemtry by the one and only Alan DeNiro, to name but a few offerings. What are you waiting for?