Review: Impossible by Nancy Werlin

It is suitable that I fell in love with Impossible by Nancy Werlin - after all, the book is about the redemptive power of true love against extraordinary odds, about how believing in love is the ultimate leap of faith, and how that faith can bring remarkable strength for even unfathomable tasks. But the novel doesn't beg or plead for your love - it doesn't need to. Rather, like its main characters, it enraptures the reader, capturing, enchanting the reader. Picking up this book was like sustaining a hypnotic state that I didn't want to shake.

Lucy Scarborough grows up in a loving home amongst a supportive foster family and enduring friendships, but she is haunted by the recurring presence of her mother, Miranda, a frequently disappearing vagrant whose reappearances are marked by obscure, hostile remarks, inexplicable actions, and a version of the folk song "Scarborough Faire." For most of Lucy's life, Miranda's appearances are simply a disruption - a blight on an otherwise idyllic upbringing with two open-minded, understanding foster parents.

At seventeen, however, Lucy learns of the true background of Miranda's illness - a family curse, placed by the Elvin Knight after being spurned by a human woman, Fenella. The Elvin Knight arranges for each daughter of Scarborough to be impregnated by eighteen, then burdens themwith the three impossible tasks from the song "Scarborough Faire" - if they can achieve each impossible task by the time the baby is born, the curse will be broken. Otherwise, they will go insane and the curse will repeat its pattern on the next generation.

As Lucy begins to understand the curse, its implications on her, her mother, and her family history, she sets to accomplishing the three impossible tasks before the birth of her own daughter. Unlike her mother, however, Lucy has the love and helpful support of her parents and longtime friend, Zach Greenfield - but will it be enough to save her sanity and that of her unborn daughter's?

To tell more than that is to give away significant portions of the text, which would be a shame because Werlin builds an intensity so subtle, 100 pages passed without notice, then another 100 pages. The use of "Scarborough Faire" as setup is an ingenious move - the song, often thought of as beautiful and loving, can also be read in very sinister terms, with the protagonist asking the impossible of a possible "true love," insisting that if these tasks are not completed, then she is not a true love of his - but without an excellent execution, Werlin's device would have come off as a novelty.

Werlin's a better writer than that. The touch of magic inhabits almost every character and plot action, but she never overdoes it. She lets the vibe carry through the story, but doesn't pushes by filling her plot with an overabundance of magical characters, strange happenings, or fantastical occurrence. The magic comes in bits and pieces - a character's devotion to another, an implicit understanding, a family bond, a lucky coincidence, an odd presence - and the characters realistically respond to out of the ordinary things.

Werlin crafts an excellent protagonist in Lucy. She's smart and strong, but fallible, and by midway through, the reader's affection for her is on par with that of the supporting characters of the novel. There always seems to be a purpose to her choices, even when her decisions are confusing or counter-productive, and it is to Werlin's credit as an author that while the love story set up for Lucy is pushed along rather quickly, it matches the tone of inevitability coursing through the book.

Good versus evil looms large, but inevitability is also a core concept - how inevitable is Lucy's fate? In the long line of Scarborough daughters, not one has managed to break the curse on the family. In her journal, eighteen year-old Miranda confesses that she could not even accomplish the easiest of the three tasks. She fears for her sanity each day closer to the birth of her daughter, the inevitable turn that will happen after the baby is born, after each Scarborough baby was born.

But Miranda's situation is unlike the others before her, and also that of Lucy's. While the others suffered in predictable loneliness and despair, Lucy has the abounding resolution of her family around her. She is supported by something much stronger than the crushing compounding doom of the looming family curse. What has been inevitable may not be once the impossible is achieved.

This is a YA novel for any age, a fairy tale for all audiences, a beautiful and beautifully written story.

Re-Post: Galley Talk

Okay, so this appeared in last week's "Children's Bookshelf," a children's literature email newsletter by the friendly and invaluable folks at Publishers Weekly. I have made no edits to increase the slickness or better the language of this review. This is exactly what was published:

Emily Fear, manager of children’s books, Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Pittsburgh, Pa., talks about a fall favorite, Candor by Pam Bachorz.

Candor by Pam Bachorz (Egmont USA, Sept.) is a Stepford Wives-esque tale—the galley even references that novel. But instead of a novel about the brainwashing of wives, this is about brainwashing an entire community, especially its teenagers. The founder of the town of Candor tries to shape what he believes should be model teens—down to what they should eat and how they should dress. He plants subliminal messages into audio CDs that play nearly constantly throughout the town. Everyone becomes addicted to the CDs and has to keep listening to them—otherwise they’ll go insane.

The novel doesn’t pull any of the punches you might expect from a YA thriller. You might expect a tidy ending or a hero whose motives are unquestionable and who has noble intentions. But this novel’s protagonist is very flawed. He’s the son of the town’s founder and runs a secret business selling teens CDs to counteract the brainwashing. But actually he’s also brainwashing them—and doing it for profit. There’s a totally unexpected ending that defies the reader’s expectations of what this character is capable of.

I’d recommend this book to customers for a number of reasons. This is a very intelligent teenage thriller, and a spooky one. The novel offers a dark twist on society’s expectations of teens, revealing an exaggerated form of parental authority. I think teens will respond to the notion of what it would be like to have the pressures on them magnified like this. The plot’s pacing is really well done and the action is creepy without being violent. Well, there’s a tiny bit of violence, but nothing very graphic. The gleefully misanthropic protagonist is very likable despite his flaws. And the relationships between the characters are really dynamic.

It’s an incredible first novel, and the fact that the author wrote it while living in Celebration, Florida, the planned community developed by Disney, makes it all the creepier. It’s a great crossover book, especially since so many adults have read or seen the film version of Stepford Wives.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth or Why I Hate Selling Young Adult Novels in a Post-Twilight World

No doubt, the publishing industry is attempting to rebound from the fiscal crisis by banking on whatever is the most plausible follow-up sensation to the epic, sales-juggernaut Twilight series. Booksellers, librarians, pub reps, avid readers, anyone with a remote interest in the topic is laying their bet on what is going to be the next big series draw. Some are staying with vampires. Some are leaning heavily on werewolves (it seems so long ago since Blood and Chocolate, does it not?), others are saying ghosts (very probable), but some... some are laying their bets on zombies.

Of new YA novels, March's buzz book was The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, mostly because the smart folks at Random House had the savvy to align it with Twilight without making direct comparisons, and because a lot was made of the supposed violence and dark tone of the novel. Well, and I'll admit this right now, I have not read Twilight (although I did read The Host, which proved to be surprisingly sturdy, if problematic...), but I can guarantee that if Twilight held the same poor writing, bad pacing, and gaping plot holes that this novel suffered so severely from, there's no way it would have the near religious following it does now.



The basic premise: Mary has grown up in a cloistered, protected world, defined by the Sisters who run the town, and the fence that separates the civilized from the hungry, savage "Unconsecrated," who, generations ago, rose in population to such a degree that, outside of the village, mankind no longer exists... or does it? Growing up, Mary's mother passed along family stories of life before the Unconsecrated, of cities and human populations and oceans. As a result, the young woman is plagued by a restless curiosity that inevitably leads to trouble.

When the fences are breached, Mary and a small crew of survivors must figure out how to survive while traveling a fenced path that may or may not lead to their salvation. Meanwhile, Mary is struggling with her feelings for Travis, a fellow villager, but cannot freely express her love due to his betrothal to her best friend, Cass, and Mary's own betrothal to Travis's brother Harry. Also along for the death trek is Mary's brother Jed and Jed's pregnant wife, Beth.

The first half of the novel is semi-promising, with its venture into the convent of the Sisterhood that runs the village and the sudden, ominous appearance of a stranger, whose appearance isn't nearly as troubling as her then sudden disappearance. But very little of the Sisterhood's conspiracy is fleshed out, and Mary's minor discoveries, made in the hidden, underground chambers of the Cathedral are surprisingly anti-climatic.

By the time the village is seized by the undead, the story is falling apart. Mary is a difficult protagonist to become attached to as a reader. Under a more capable hand, her contradictions would be worthwhile complexities, and watching her slowly unravel would be a breakthrough for the character as well as the reader. Instead, she is poorly drawn, and instead of coming off sympathetically rebellious, she comes off unreasonably stubborn, difficult, and self-serving. Ryan doesn't attempt to help the reader understand Mary's intrinsic attraction for Travis. The feelings exist, they continue to exist, but the few meaningful details the reader is given don't add up to a romance of impact.

Ryan is a mediocre writer. Not by YA lit standards, because I don't believe that there is necessarily a lower standard, but by genre standards. It is possible to write a thrilling horror novel without losing narrative nuance. Sarah Langan is the name I throw around the most, because I found The Missing just absolutely enthralling. Ryan can't hold the story together. Her supporting characters border on caricature, and attempts to add dimension only muddle the depiction even more.

The ending is a mess. The whole ordeal is reminiscent of the movie The Village, but more abruptly startling in its absurdity. And, as a reader, I didn't buy any of it. It's fine to ask your readers to take certain leaps of faith with you, to suspend disbelief in matters of the plausible. It is not the same thing to write something filled with holes that renders the outcome nearly implausible.

And if I had to read of a character smelling like sunshine one more time...

Yet, with all my complaints, even initially, with the text, I finished the book. There's something weirdly intoxicating about the book that allowed me to continue reading, despite my growing disinterest. I described this feeling to a friend of mine, and she responded with, "I felt the same way during Eclipse [the third Twilight book]. And I had to read the fourth book too."

If there is any mercy in the publishing world, Carrie Ryan will not write another installment. I don't know if I'll be able to stand another book... or resist it.

The trailer for the book is actually more entertaining than the entirety of the novel. Maybe because it uses imagery and words from the first half...

When I Grow Up review

The last two weeks have been easy reading time. I’ve been a bit lazy, reading a pair of very different new releases and a graphic novel. One of the books, The Gargoyle, and the graphic novel, Alison Bechdel’s excellent Fun Home, offered the kind of challenges so necessary in a reader’s diet. The other book, Juliana Hatfield’s memoir, When I Grow Up, wasn’t what I would classify a challenging read. At points, it wasn’t even that enjoyable, as Hatfield is novice memoirist and resorts to cliché and redundancy on more than a few occasions. The trio, however, formed a near-perfect unit of reading, and, I admit, I’m a bit desirous to repeat the formula. It breaks up as this:

1 lightweight non-fiction + 1 heavy work of contemporary fiction + 1 heavier work of contemporary graphic fiction = satisfied literary appetite.

Perhaps it doesn’t breaks down quite so easily. But I had hit a bit of a slump following the hilarious and weirdly inspiring Stiff (Mary Roach), and following Roach’s own glowing review of Traffic, I gave it a try. And while the book is written with extreme intelligence and style, I put it down about halfway through. Maybe because I don’t drive, the detailed implications of the hows and whys of traffic conditions didn’t hold my interest. If I ever do manage to get my driving license, I’ll probably pick up Traffic again. It’s one of those books that is good, and good for you, and unfortunately, I’m almost never in the mood to really get the most out of a book like that.

I was still struggling through Traffic when I received a copy of When I Grow Up, and in the interest of timeliness and courtesy to Stephanie Corby from Wiley Publishing (thanks!), I took up the memoir immediately, and upon following, I needed something that would be its opposite, and in the middle of The Gargoyle, my copy of Fun Home arrived at the store, so I read bits and pieces of it during register shifts. So now, at the end of my three- book streak, I’m on the hunt for the next trio. My reading habits seem to come in three-book bursts, with about a week- long period where I can’t seem to find anything that grabs me.

But I think the new streak has begun, because I picked up How to Be Idle just yesterday, so I think I’ve found the one lightweight non-fiction book in the formula. Maybe I really should try the equation again, see if I can perfect it.


When I Grow Up – Juliana Hatfield (September 2008 -Wiley Publishing)

I have a tendency to fetishize 90s alternative rock. I was just old enough to see women like Lisa Loeb, Jill Sobule, Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, etc., as older sister archetypes, women who I didn’t exactly want to be (okay, I did want to be Lisa Loeb), but I wanted to be just old enough to really relate with at the moment. Really, at heart, all I really want to be is Wynona Ryder in Reality Bites, with an adorable short hair cut and adorable clothes listening to mid-90s alternative rock, “Spin the Bottle” spinning in rotation with The Lemonheads, Pixies, Pavement, as well as all kinds of terrible mid-nineties radio jams that I absolutely loved. (I also have to point out that both Lisa Loeb and Juliana Hatfield are on the Reality Bites soundtrack. Also, if I were Wynona Ryder in Reality Bites, I would have picked Ben Stiller over Ethan Hawke. I have complex reasoning as to why, so I’ll explain at a later point.)

Anyway, so I have an enduring fondness for Juliana Hatfield, despite that I find her later music to be irritatingly self-possessed. Actually, her music is almost always a little gratingly self-possessed, and it’s an early strength and belated weakness. Still, she’s a woman who has been on the scene since the late 1980s, starting with her band The Blake Babies, through her moderate alternative-rock success as a solo artist and subsequent breakdown, semi-come back, semi-retirement, semi-come back. The chapters are written in back and forth view points, half tour diary, half recollection. Both halves suffer from redundant storytelling. Hatfield either doesn’t trust her readers to recall simple information, or her copy editors weren’t nice enough to do the job for her and cut out the repeated information.

The tour diary is the stronger of the halves overall. It feels more immediate, fresher, more vividly recalled. It dates back to the first Some Girls tour, Hatfield’s latter day trio with fellow former Blake Babies’ drummer, Freda Love. Surprisingly, it doesn’t matter if you’ve heard a Some Girls album, Hatfield provides enough details on the people in and working for the band, the places they visit, and the music they play to give the reader a full picture of the tour experience. In fact, the tour chapters read as a kind of generic diary of an artist dealing with playing a scene that she has less and less in common with, and a dwindling fan base of devotees that she is simultaneously grateful for and exhausted by. And for as much apologetic self-explanation that Hatfield resorts to, she exhibits a brave willingness to expose all of her bad behavior, unappealing bitchiness, neurosis, and insensitivities all. Like when a quiet fan in Columbus approaches her after a show, asking her to sign a giant, career-spanning pile of Juliana Hatfield merchandise. Hatfield balks:

“He didn’t even say hello to me – and not a word about the show- and now he wants fifteen or twenty autographs? But why? So he can sell them on eBay? Why can’t he just be happy to see me, like all those smiling people over there talking to Heidi and Freda? He’d probably be just as disappointed with me if I chopped off one of my fingers right now and gave it to him. It wouldn’t be enough. He’d want the whole hand.”

Melodramatic, yes, but then again, whose diary isn’t? Hatfield could have edited a lot of the conflict, nail-biting, self doubt, and bad mood stuff out, but she would have lost the cranky heart of the book (as well as more that half of the chapters). Her overwhelming point is that she’s not exactly cut out to be a public figure, and the stories she tells back that up to a strong degree. Still, even devoted fan reading this might feel like Hatfield is overreaching a bit when she talks about the oppressiveness of being in the spotlight (especially when she’s talking about the spotlight as it exists upon her now).
The other half of the memoir, the real memoir-ish half, remains compelling when Hatfield discusses her childhood, her painful early time at Berklee College of Music, the nitty gritty of her Blake Babies/solo success in the early 90s, and her emotional/physical breakdown in the midst of her career decline. Especially of interest is the later chapter regarding God’s Foot, the lost Juliana Hatfield album that, lacking a single, Atlantic pulled from release and shelved. Candid writing about that level of artistic castration is rare, and the subsequent bravado/vulnerability that Hatfield details of her post-label career is heartbreaking.

Hatfield is a gifted enough writer that she knows how to carefully construct a scene, and the environments and players she depicts are genuine. Hatfield, herself, plays up the “remarkably unremarkable” image, and she’s not above a little cloying self-deprecation, “I’m so horribly ordinary, how could anyone care about me, care about my music, love me and appreciate me and think I’m pretty,” etc, etc. It’s almost a neat literary trick when, in the later chapters, as Hatfield discusses her emotional growth and subsequent return to making music, the writing gets stronger and stronger. For all the emotional outreach that she attempts to depict with her interactions with fans, friends, fellow artists, she finally nails it on the last page. With a single paragraph, Hatfield finds grounding, and When I Grow finds its true heart.

- Em