Book Review: We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

I recently read We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. I checked it out on my mother's recommendation.She liked it a lot. I thought it was so-so. I'd give it about 3 stars.

It was pretty hard to get into at first. I feel like the beginning of the book really dragged. Shriver talked A LOT about the "past" and I think it could have benefited from some editing. Some of it was important to build up the context, but some of it just went on forever and ever seemingly without end. I figured if my mom really liked it I should continue plowing through it but it was difficult at first. I'd look at it every night on the nightstand and sigh. About halfway through the book when more of the "action" started to happen I stopped dreading it so much.

The good: the topic was of course interesting. With this rise in school shootings it gives you a lot to think about. I read Jodi Picoult's 19 Minutes which was also about school shootings and I liked it a bit more. It told the story from all different sides (rather than from just the mother of the perpetrator like this one). Of course, like all Picoult books, the ending kind of sucked so it wouldn't get 5 stars either. I did like that it gave the perspective of the mother of a shooter which I think is something we often don't get to see or think that much about. I just wish the writing would have been a little better so that I could have enjoyed that perspective more. 

The "bad"/things I have questions about:

1. The family seemed inauthentic. Why didn't the family have an intervention earlier? Clearly Kevin was NOT normal and was very disturbed. I find it hard to believe that the father would excuse EVERYTHING away and that the mother wouldn't have tried harder to get some professional help. If his personality "disorder" or whatever wasn't SO exaggerated I would have bought this plot/story line more. But he seemed so extreme that I find it hard to believe that it would go on like this until the shooting happened. With the real school shootings that happened many of them did have interventions of some sort or the personality flaws weren't as exaggerated. They still missed a lot of signs but for most of them they weren't life-long issues like Kevin was cast to have in this story. 

2. The whole writing letters to Franklin thing got old and was pretty predictable. At the beginning I thought maybe they were divorced but by the middle of the book I knew he was dead and it was more of a journaling exercise. I think that it was maybe a good idea but not executed well. Especially when there were dialogue portions, etc. No one would actually write like that in a letter. Maybe an infusion of letters in-between standard chapters of "story-telling" would have been more effective. 

3. Going along with point #1, I felt like the mother self-sabotaging came off very inauthentic. Even if the unimaginable happened I would have found many of her behaviors questionable. I can't of course say for sure, never having been in that situation, but I just find it hard to believe that she would try and ruin her life even further by acting like such a bozo (especially in the civil court case-related parts). 

4. I hated the ending. Why did she make a sudden change of heart happen for Kevin? Shriver built him up for the whole book to be a cold, calculating person. And at the end, through no medical or psychological intervention, he suddenly has regrets? He was horrible the whole novel, blinded his sister and all of a sudden he has a change of heart in the juvenile lock-up? I just groaned at that part. It would have been better if he would have stayed cold through the end. It would have left a bigger impact to have to think about him being so cold and sociopathic and to think about him getting out and going to live with his mom after that. Instead she tried to leave us with some hope that he was actually a nice kid who made a mistake...we don't always need a happy ending.

Too bad my lame sister has gone AWOL. I would have liked to hear her perspective about the book. Usually my mom and I agree on books fairly well but this time I think our opinions were very divergent. I would have liked to hear Leslie's perspective. I guess I'll have to read other online reviews!

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Well my sister has pretty much dropped out of the book club. I should rename this Lindsay's Book Club. I wasn't going to write any more but I thought maybe I'd entice my lame sister back. We shall see.

I started trying to read Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls but I just couldn't get into it. It started out with epic tragedy and coming off her last book I just didn't think I could get into it. Maybe I'll try again in a few years. I requested several books from the library and was on hold for a while and then I got flooded by a ton of them at once. I prioritized my reading list by due date & by which ones couldn't be renewed. I landed on Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I had heard RAVE reviews from several people but I wasn't too sure how I'd like it. I'm not too big into fantasy or sci-fi and most places I've seen this book have categorized it as such. In addition, it's a young adult book and while I think some YA books are ok I keep thinking at some point I might grow out of this genre. However, SO many people had recommend it I thought it had a good possibility of decent and when I read some brief summaries of the book it reminded me a lot of my favorite short story "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson that I thought I should give it a whirl.

I am SO glad I did. This book was AWESOME. If I had to summarize it in one sentence it would be "Imagine 'The Lottery' meets Survivor and they have a baby and then you have The Hunger Games." 

First and foremost, while I can see why it's labeled fantasy/sci-fi, it is SO not typical sci-fi/fantasy. It's like the X-Men version of sci-fi/fantasy. Sure there are some things that are not realistic and far-fetched, but it's mostly grounded in reality and the things that are "unrealistic" are background mostly and don't really detract from the story. While post-apocalyptic style stories do intrigue me, I think they've been slightly overdone so I was hesitant about this aspect of the book. However, like the sci-fi/fantasy aspect, it's mostly background. It's the whole reason for the story but they do not dwell on it really. The story mostly revolves around the actual "game" itself (leading up to it, going through it and the aftermath) and that stuff was REALLY exciting and compelling. It was such a unique story I couldn't put it down. Literally. I read it in 6 hours with only bathroom and lunch breaks.

From the beginning it was hard to figure out who Katniss was. When I figured out she was a girl a while into the story (around page 14) I was a little surprised. As I read I had assumed that Katniss was a boy. This changed things a bit and made me a little more intrigued.

Besides the setting/environment, I really drew a lot of parallels with "The Lottery" at the beginning. However, after the story gets going it leaves that short story behind and moves on into a more Survivor like story but in a more serious way.

The best part of the book is the middle section once they are into the arena for the game. The preparation is interesting but I really couldn't put the book down once all of the contestants were fighting for their lives. I didn't see the "love story" coming, although it isn't misplaced or come out of nowhere but it wasn't something I predicted. It seemed very realistic and believable. Additionally, all of the struggles that the contestants had to go through in the game were also realistic and believable. Collins did a good job of creating an atmosphere of realism and I could definitely picture the setting from her words and imagery. One thing I thought was that the arena seemed bigger at the start of the game and seemed smaller by the end. Katniss journeyed forever on the first day and quite a lot on the second day but by the end it seemed like they could get anywhere in the arena in a few hours by the end. The complex emotions and personalities of the contestants was very interesting. A little Lord of the Flies but much more interesting and entertaining. The Truman Show parallels were also interesting to see. It's like Collins took some of the most interesting twists of all the above mentioned stories and wove them (very well) into this story. I don't mean to say this to make anyone think it's an old, tired story because they way she weaves it all together makes it fresh and interesting. I can just see some influences she may have had.

Although it seemed clear (to me) from the beginning that Katniss would win the game, you were still worried for her throughout the story and really rooted for her the whole time. The twist with bringing her and Peeta together was unexpected and nice. At the beginning of the game I was wondering how Collins would work that one out...although Katniss had some clear resentment towards Peeta I didn't know that she would be able to kill him unless something really drastic happened. I'm glad that the twist made that not have to happen. And because things got changed up so much throughout the story, even though Katniss winning seemed predictable, I didn't mind because the story kept changing so you were sure HOW she would win, and there was a possibility at several points that she MIGHT not win.

The one and only thing I didn't love was the ending of the book. The love story that emerged wasn't all that interesting to me, but mostly because I'm not a romance fan and particularly not in a YA novel. It would have been nice to end the book with a satisfying end rather than letting it linger, although obviously this left the end open for the subsequent books. I don't have a huge desire to continue the series, but since I got so involved with this book unexpectedly I am going to commit to the second book just in case it surprises me as well. This leads to a second tangent of something that I wasn't a HUGE fan of, although it didn't really detract from the story. Throughout the story I would forget that these "kids" were supposedly ages 12-18. They just didn't have a "teenage" voice. The characters were much more thoughtful and advanced than their supposed ages would seem. Again, their ages weren't really the point so it didn't detract from the story, but occasionally I'd reflect on it and think, no way, a 16 year old wouldn't be thinking about things like this. So it seemed a little unbelievable that they were actual young adults rather than young adult characters created by an adult author. But in terms of the overall book and story it was just a minor detail.

Overall I would suggest this book to ANYONE (over the age of 14 probably). I give it 5 Stars and would probably classify it as one of the best books I've read all year. I really, really loved it. Obviously loved it enough to write a review of it which doesn't always happen. Go get it NOW!

Final Review: Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde

Well apparently my sister has dropped off the face of the Earth! I was waiting for her to do her final review of The Glass Castle, but she's too slow. She had her chance; she blew it up.

In between starting and finishing The Glass Castle we started Love in the Present Tense by Catherine Ryan Hyde. As we were moving across the country (me moving, Leslie helping) we decided we could take our book club with us on the journey! We decided to get a book on cd that we could listen to on the 3 day drive. Leslie picked this one...I'm not sure why, but maybe if she ever comes back to the book club she can say why.

We didn't start the book until late on Day 2, but once we started we were pretty hooked. We forced ourselves to take breaks and do other things in the car (sing our heads off, take naps, giggle, etc.) but we did a good job of plowing through it. However, the trip wasn't quite long enough because we only got through 4 and 1/2 of the 7 discs. It equated to about 2/3 of the book. Once I got a library card here I was able to go pick up the book and finish it in paper format.

The book on cd version was good except for the readers they chose. The voices of all the characters were SO annoying. Leslie and I couldn't stop talking about how annoying they were. Eventually we got over it enough to become absorbed in the story, but they were still annoying. After I started reading the book I could still hear their dumb voices in my head as I was reading.

I thought it was a great story overall. Very original, not something I'd ever read before. Listening to the story it was kind of hard to figure out who was telling the story and at what point in time they were doing so. It was much easier to do that with the paper version of the book. I think the back and forth of the story was the only part I didn't totally enjoy. It added to the story because if it would have just went in chronological order the story would have been very different. But it was kind of confusing.

I really liked the ending to this book. It wasn't the happiest ending, but it felt good in the end to have most of the loose ends tied up. It wasn't unrealistic, but you just felt like everyone was going to be ok. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fiction.

Review: House Rules by Jodi Picoult, Chapters (Cases) 1-3, Pages 1-146

So I am ahead of everyone else at this point in the reading. I've been trying to stay ahead because I am also working on my dissertation right now so I don't have a ton of free time on my hands & Leslie has a tendency to devote an entire day to reading and will knock a book out in under a day so if that happens I don't want to be eons behind. But in case our schedules don't jive I thought I'd write down my thoughts so far...

So I've read three chapters so far. I'm calling them chapters even though the book isn't really divided into chapters. Every once in a while Picoult will put in a "Case" that are numbered chronologically. I'm guessing these are like chapter markers? At least how I'm treating them. I am not sure why the cases are in the book--they don't have anything to do with the story (as of yet) and they are just a random one page summary of some murder case. We'll see if they have any importance later in the story.

So far I like how Picoult divides up the story from different viewpoints. I like when books show different authors speaking so you can get a different piece of the story from lots of different characters perspectives. The one thing that makes this difficult in this story is the telling of Jacob's perspective. All of the other characters are easy to relate to and there isn't so much "explaining" that is done. I feel like when she is writing from Jacob's perspective she has to do a lot of "this is how people with Asperger's think/act/behave" which makes it seem like Jacob is talking TO the reader, not like the reader is experiencing the story AS the character which is what it seems like when you are reading the other character's perspectives. I don't know how Picoult could make it better and I think she's done a good job of trying to represent the inner workings of someone with Asperger's but it's just different. Also, not really knowing anyone with Asperger's I don't know how "true" it feels. I'm excited to see how it pans out through the rest of the book.

On a sidenote related directly to Asperger's I was a little wary when Picoult went into the whole vaccine related issue (do vaccines cause Autism?). I kind of wish she'd left that out because I didn't think it was relative to the story at all. I know that people who are invested in the debate WANT to talk about it, but it's so controversial I feel like it could have been a potential distraction to the story. I know when it first came up I was ready to just skip over it because I didn't want it to taint the rest of the story. However, I must say, for bringing up the issue Picoult did as good a job as possible to try and stay balanced in the debate. I just wish she wouldn't have brought it up at all.

Another predictable (but kind of annoying) thing that I see developing is a love story between Emma and Rich. It seems like that is one pattern in all of Picoult's books. Two of the main characters, usually two who have "had it hard," end up falling in love. It's one of those stereotypical romance lines that you find in fiction geared towards women that I find distracting and lessens the quality of the story. But that's my bias. Maybe some people like to have romance in all their stories. I'm just here for the interesting part of the plot (the Asperger's storyline).

Another interesting sidenote is that this story doesn't seem to be a "ripped from the headlines" story, which tends to be a lot of Picoult's books. Maybe it is and I'm just not aware of it, but I can't recall ever seeing anything about anyone with Asperger's that may be involved with the criminal justice system. I mean, the connection with Autism being a media-related story is sort-of in line with her past story telling, but that's about it. This doesn't have much to do with my review of the book, but it was just interesting to note.

Overall I am enjoying the book. I'm curious to see what happens because it seems like, at this point, it is obvious who DIDN'T kill Jess, although the real culprit is yet to be identified. I'm only about a fourth of the way through the book so it will be interesting to see what happens as it develops and how Picoult rounds out the story because at this point it doesn't seem like 3/4 of the book could still be about this case! I'm sure she'll do a good job of twisting and turning the story until the end.