Defined By Books

The Year of the Flood - Margaret Atwood

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood is her most recent, brilliant novel. Ms. Atwood continues the journey she began with Oryx and Crake by giving us an alternative view of the events that took place that we learn is referred to as the "Waterless Flood" by a cult called God's Gardeners.

We are introduced to two survivors of the plague, Toby and Ren. Toby is living her days after the Flood in a popular spa called AnooYoo. After having to go into hiding and losing her identity when she was young, Toby is rescued at a fast food joint in the pleebands (areas of the city) called SecretBurgers by the Gardeners. She has been a victim of sexual abuse by the manager, Blanco the Bloat, by whose own proclamation he never lets a woman live. Toby joins the Gardeners with their strange rooftop gardens, basement mushroom growing and refusal to eat any sort of animal product with a face. They are a back-to-nature cult who teach their followers about God's love of animals and humans and their respect to their surroundings. Toby begins teaching an herb class and eventually becomes the bee keeper. However, Blanco's obsession with finding Toby never wains, bringing terror to the Gardeners. Toby gets an identity change, complete with new hair and plastic surgery and begins managing the AnooYoo Spa until the plague begins to spread quickly across the world. Per the Gardener's teaching of the "Waterless Flood" that God has planned for them, she has a storage of food and supplies hidden away that she lives upon after sending all the Spa girls to their families and locking herself inside.

Ren is a trapeze dancer at the local sex joint, Scales and Tails. Her BioFilm suit that she wears while "performing" is torn and she is locked into an isolation room, escaping the terror of the plague. She spent her earlier life among the Gardeners, when her mother brought her there.  She left in her early teen years, when her mother went back to her father in the Compound. Through a series of unfortunate events, she ends up at Scales and Tails as a high end prostitute and truly enjoys her job.

The story follows Ren and Toby's narrative, painting a brilliant picture of their pasts and how it lead up to their present situations. I believe the most intriguing part of this novel is where the overlapping of characters occur. Jimmy and Glenn, from Oryx and Crake, appear repeatedly in the novel, cleverly entwined with our current characters and others from their past, whom we wonder if they are alive or dead.

Ms. Atwood introduced us to many new concepts in Oryx and Crake that she refers to as "speculative fiction" versus science fiction. The world is full of genetically engineered animals, foods and diseases. Everything is based off of the scientific progressions occuring within the Compounds with the pharmaceutical companies. In Oryx and Crake, Ms. Atwood introduces to the scientific side of the plague. In The Year of the Flood, she introduces us to the more human side. 

I can't write much about this novel without giving anything away, not that it's a great secret! Read Oryx and Crake to get a little background and understand what the words "liobams", "pleeblands" and "Crakers" actually mean. Read Oryx and Crake to wonder what the world would be like if we were completely wiped out by a plague and there were few human survivors, if any Then read The Year of the Flood and figure out what could happen next if there were survivors of the plague.

Vanishing Acts - Jodi Picoult

Vanishing Acts contains Jodi Picoult's typical complex, yet tearjerking formula. The main character, Delia, has a child out of wed-lock, with her fiance, Eric, who is both the love of her life and her best friend. Her best friend, Fitz, is also Eric's best friend, all three growing up directly next to each other. Delia's father, Andrew, works with the local senior citizen center in their small New Hampshire town. He has not only raised Delia since her mother passed away when she was four, but also became a father figure for her two, inseparable friends. Shortly into the novel, we find out that Eric's mother was an alcoholic, which he too suffers from. Fitz is a genius with words and works for a small, local newspaper and he's thoroughly head over heels in love with Delia, even though he knows her heart belongs to Eric.

After a string of strange recollections that seem more like dreams than memories, Delia recalls them to Fitz, who takes it upon himself to look into it with his journalistic ties. One thing leads to another and suddenly, Delia is standing at her front door letting the police in, who arrest her father in front of Sophie, her daughter. He is charged with kidnapping Delia at the age of four and fleeing from Arizona with her to live in New Hampshire. Eric becomes, more by association than anything, Andrew's attorney.

The novel touches upon alcoholism, child molestation, kidnapping, and a plethora of other moral actions that adults make while dealing with themselves and children. As I stated above, Ms. Picoult uses her usual suspects in this novel: an attorney suffering from some sort of underlying issue (Eric's alcoholism), a parent having to make a life-changing decision for their child that will affect the way that child grows up (Andrew taking Delia away from her alcoholic and therefore, neglectful, mother) and a close friend having to deal with their own moral decision. Just to give the dish a little flavor, she throws in child molestation, a neighborly friend with her nose stuck in the family's business who also happens to introduce them a little Hopi tradition and a long-lost mother who delves into old Mexican witchery.

I'm sure that each one of us has known, or know now, of someone who is an alcoholic, current or recovering. Unfortunately, it's one of those diseases that more people know about than should. By writing about a subject that many of us can relate, Ms. Picoult can make us more sympathetic to her plot, or rather, to Andrew's plot.

I enjoyed this novel, as I do most of Picoult's novels. I guess I need to take a short break from her novels as I know her formula so well, I can nearly guess what will happen in the end. Too much of a good thing? For now anyway...

Handle With Care - Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's latest tearjerker, Handle With Care, lives up to the Picoult tearjerker theme in every way. She includes the usual personal ethics and morality theme with medical aspects. This time, she chose the subject of osteogenesis imperfecta. In laymen terms, it's brittle bone syndrome, which means that people who suffer from this disease can do very little and break tons of bones.

Willow is born with osteogenesis imperfecta. By the time we meet her in the novel, she is 5 years old and has already broken some many bones that her mother, Charlotte, has lost track of the exact number, although always recalling where and the pain she felt with each break. Charlotte and her husband Sean are beginning to see how having a child with such a complicated disability affects them financially and as a family. When Sean seeks an attorney after another incident at Disney World involving Willow and multiple breaks, their relationship begins to break apart along with their family. The attorney offers Charlotte a way to get out of her family's bleak financial future by claiming a wrongful birth suit against her ob/gyn, who also happens to be her best friend. Finally, to add misery to even more misery, Charlotte's older daughter, Amelia, begins to have her own problems dealing with bulimia caused by her own self hatred.

When I can't decide what I want to read, I check out a Jodi Picoult book. I can guarantee a few things when I finish one of her books: 1) I will feel much better about my life and whatever negative situations I am dealing with and 2) I will cry and thus, probably just feel better in general. I also know that I will read an "impossible to put down" book and that I will thoroughly enjoy it, even though I will probably be morally against the end decision. She often deals with children, rare diseases and crazy law suits that have to do with those children. Parents often make absurb decisions in Picoult's book but when I think about it and whether I would make that same decision, I sometimes stall. Would I be able to do the same thing?

I am always intrigued by Ms. Picoult's novels. She pulls together a number of provocative issues and makes one question our own morality. I will say that this particular novel of hers did not make me cry. I thoroughly enjoyed the book until the end. I felt it was contrived and Ms. Picoult just wanted the reader to react to her rash decision without any thought to how well we paid attention to the novel. Willow is so much smarter than Ms. Picoult makes her out to be in the end, she would never have acted the way she did after all she had been through. I also felt the same about Charlotte's character. Would a mother who claimed that she loved her daughter that much do what she did and believe that her daughter would truly recover emotionally?

So, if you want a tearjerker, read a Jodi Picoult novel. Just don't read this one...read The Pact or even better, the original and more believable tearjerker, My Sister's Keeper.

Twilight series - Stephenie Meyer

That's right. I read 'em. All of 'em. I read Twilight on Tuesday, November 10th, New Moon on Wednesday, November 11th and Eclipse between Friday & Saturday, November 13th & 14th. I read Breaking Dawn on Monday & Tuesday, November 16th and 17th. The last two took longer because I was doing other things besides reading. Darn.

I can't deny that I thoroughly enjoyed the books. I flew threw them like a little kid eats his candy on Halloween night. No guilt either. Okay. Maybe a little.

Here is what I have to say in general about the books:

Bella freakin' drives me crazy. She's an idiot. I felt like I figured things out half the book before she did. Which makes me go to my next general point:

The books were too obvious. I realize that I am a fairly observant person but jeez. I could have nearly stopped reading the books halfway through and would have been just fine figuring out what happened.

My next point will be a positive point: I loved the characters. Well, I loved the vampires. More like, I just liked the Cullen clan. The werewolves were considerably annoying but I dealt okay with them.

The imprinting thing was so obvious with Jacob it made me sick that it actually happened.

However, like I said, I can't deny that I LOVED these books. I loved it the most when Bella FINALLY became a damn vampire and stopped being so annoying and started being useful.

So I'm not really going to give a review of these books because I'll just be annoying and you would hate me for all of my negativity. But, I will say, if you get a chance, read the books. They are addictive and interesting and will make you feel happy after reading them. Like you've accomplished something directly related to true love. With vampires. And werewolves. And weird half breed children.

Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

When I was 12, I was over at Brandy Weaver's house (she was Keffer than I think and is now) and saw a book in her bedroom. I picked it up, curiosity getting the best of me. It was Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice. I had been reading various "scary" books for a year or two so I had no problems with the idea of reading this book. Brandy and I were the type of girls who were happy to sit in the hammock out in the yard and read books "together." I was a bonafide nerd in those days and once I got my hands on a book, I couldn't put it down.

Before I was 15, I had read nearly all of Stephen King's published works. I had delved into Ira Levin and pre-Jurassic Park the movie Michael Crichton. I have ventured into the world of Bram Stoker and had singlehandedly checked out and read every single Young Adult suspense thriller in our sad little library. I had easily finished any suspense, vampire, horror and similar book I had put in my eager little hands. I was a fiend when it came to reading. I was nearly always curled up with a book somewhere in our creepy 1.5 story, so engrossed that I wouldn't even notice when day turned to night.

By the time I went to college, my obsession with the supernatural had practically subsided. Well, with the exception of my need to read every single Dean Koontz book published. Hardly an easy task since he's apparently written well over 100 novels. Whew. Vampires and the appeal of their lifestyle, regardless of who made it up and what myths went with that character, were a thing of my past. I no longer needed my collection of Fear Street books, R.L. Stine and crew were too young for me.

I tried with every part of my being to ignore the Twilight series. I knew I could easily be sucked into the excitement of a new vampire chronicle. Louis and Lestat weren't that far from my memory. I didn't want to get dragged down by the obsessions that come with a series like this. I know them well, first hand. Much like the Harry Potter syndrome, even after finally getting my hands on the final novel, I would crave more.

Yesterday I gave in to my crumbling willpower and bought Twilight, the first of the series at Barnes and Noble. I began reading it around 2 pm. I stopped for a bit to clean the dishes and the living room and vacuum and watch the news and eat dinner and all that, but yesterday was a blur. By 10:40 pm, I had finished the 450 plus page book.

Damn.

Fe and I had watched the movie last Friday evening. Like every movie made from a popular book, it wasn't all that you wish it to be. But that's life. I learned that after I read Alive and then watched the gory movie. Gross. But it was enjoyable. Intriguing. Which is why I chose to read the book.

Vampires have always been a human obsession. They are beautiful and surreal and unlike humans in every way that they are just like humans. Stephenie Meyer did what Anne Rice did some many years ago, she made us fall in love deeply with them. We care for them and don't see them as savages or animals. We feel their cold emotions as our own. We want to be near them. To touch them. To kiss them.

It's an amazing ability for an author to be able to transport a reader into the character. I'm not sure if in my mind I was a careful watcher, narrator or one of the characters themselves. Either way, I was part of the story, part of the intensity.

I remembered while reading Twilight why I enjoy reading so much: I DO become involved. It's so surreal to put down the book after reading a brilliant chapter and realize that my life is just as it was before I read that chapter. Nothing interesting has happened to me in that time except the story provided by someone else that I was reading. However, something DOES change. The power of reading, of a great novel, is felt all through my mind and body. I am physically MOVED by a great book.

Now, I will stop myself and say that when I read Twilight, I do feel a lot like I've been dumped back into my late teen years and that's not really a good thing. But besides that, the story is appealing. It's not so believable anymore after reading hundreds of books on the subject, but it is easy to let your mind go into fantasy world, even for just a few hours, and wonder what it would be like to be Bella or Edward or Alice or even Mike.

So, I am addicted to the Twilight series. I will be borrowing the remainder of the series from Lisa this afternoon. Since I am leaving tomorrow, after I pack tonight and for the rest of the weekend and during my dad's surgery, I have a feeling I might just finish the series before the end of next week. Grrr...