Either a book I've already read or a book of short stories is what I prefer on my nightstand, for reading right before I go to bed. For the last couple of weeks I've been enjoying one story each night from Holly Black's and Justine Larbalestier's collection entitled (pictorially) Zombies Vs Unicorns. I preferred the nights I could go to sleep after a unicorn story (go Team Unicorn!), but the zombie stories weren't that bad, either.
My favorite story is Naomi Novik's "Purity Test," about a unicorn who appeals to a skeptical girl for help:
"So there's this wizard--"
"Wow, of course there is," Alison said.
"--and he's been grabbing baby unicorns," the unicorn said, through gritted teeth.
"You know," Alison told her subconscious, "I've got to draw the line somewhere. Baby unicorns is going too far."
"No kidding," the unicorn said. "You don't think I'd be wasting my time talking to a human otherwise? Anyway, wizard, baby unicorns, where was I--Oh, right. Probably he's trying to make himself immortal, which never works, except wizards never listen when you tell them that, and we would really prefer if he got stopped before he cuts off the babies' horns trying."
"Let me guess,"Alison said. "Is his name Voldemort?"
"No, what freakish kind of name is Voldemort"? the unicorn said.
What happens when Alison asks where the unicorn comes from is fun, at least for a ailurophile:
"we're always here, you idiots just don't notice anything that doesn't shove itself in your faces. You've never spotted the elves, either, and they're taking up half the tables at Per Se every night."
"Hey, Belcazar," a cat said, walking by.
The unicorn very slightly flicked his tail. "Social climbers, cats," the unicorn said with a sniff after they had passed farther on.
"Belcazar?" Alison said...."So, if I help you get the baby unicorns back, this is all going to stop, right? I don't need to be hearing cats talking."
"Who does?" the unicorn said evasively.
The climax of the story, involving the titular "purity test," is great fun--such fun that I really don't want to spoil it by saying any more.
My second favorite story from this collection is Diana Peterfreund's "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn," which is set in a world in which unicorns are known to be dangerous creatures.
If I have to pick a favorite zombie story--ew--I think it might be Maureen Johnson's "The Children of the Revolution," which includes a celebrity caricature, or Scott Westerfeld's "Inoculata," in which he presents an interesting solution to a zombie "plague."
Truthfully, though, all of these stories are favorites in the sense that I savored the chance to read one--just one--each night. It was a nice little treat at the end of the day. I highly recommend rationing your reading of the Zombies Vs Unicorns stories so they'll last as long as possible.
Showing posts with label Justine Larbalestier. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Justine Larbalestier. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Liar
Ever since the cover controversy, I've been waiting to read Justine Larbalestier's new YA novel, Liar. There's a lot of secrecy surrounding this book; even specifying the genre could reveal something that it would be more fun to discover as you read. So I decided to read it sooner rather than later, using the general guideline that as much as I enjoyed the first novel by her I read, How To Ditch Your Fairy, I was also likely to enjoy her second. The first novel was fun, and the second one is also fun but in a slightly different way--it's playful about its narrative technique. How far can you believe in a fictional world being narrated by a self-described liar?
Far enough to get interested, is my answer. I'm going to try not to spoil your reading of this novel in my review of it, but if you want to be sure, stop reading this, go get the book and read it. I mean it, NOW. I'll wait for you.
Okay, at this point I'm assuming that you've either read the book or you don't mind me talking about some of what happens. The narrator, Micah, is a senior in high school and she has more to hide than the typical adolescent. She's interested in only two of her classes (which seems pretty typical to me)--Biology and "Dangerous Words," which seems to be an English class focusing on censorship. When one of Micah's classmates asks a guest speaker "what is it about writing for teenagers that leads to so much censorship?" I leaned forward, at least metaphorically, because I expected that this speaker, this creation of Larbalestier's, would have a lot to say about that. But I didn't get an answer. Instead I got Micah's thoughts:
"I knew the answer to that one but I didn't raise my hand. It's because grown-ups don't remember what it was like when they were teenagers. Not really. They remember something out of a Disney movie and that's where they want to keep us. They don't like the idea of our hormones, or that we can smell sex on one another. That we walk down halls thick with a million different pheremones. We see each other, catch a glance, the faintest edge of one, that sends a shiver through our bodies all the way to the parts of us our parents wish didn't exist."
Micah claims to be telling her reader the truth, although she also says "I'm at least a third-generation liar. Though I bet it goes back earlier. If I could get Grandmother or Great-Aunt Dorothy to talk about it." She makes a confession on p. 169 that changes the reader's entire view of the truth about her (my daughter guessed it on page 63, partly because she reads a lot in the genre to which this novel belongs).
The one lie that disappointed me on first reading--about Micah's brother--turns out later to have been only a partial lie based on wish fulfillment. Like all the best lies in the novel, it's a lie based on what Micah wishes had been true, and it's related to all the other lies of her existence. Her parents, she says
"stopped loving me....[they] still said they loved me, still kissed me good night, still let me live in their home and eat their food, but it was pretend: they were waiting for the right time to get rid of me.
For five years I lived a shadow life with shadow parents and never knew the difference.
Except that I did.
I just couldn't admit it to myself.
But they never admitted it either. They abandoned me.
Who's the bigger liar?
Me or them?
Isn't lying about love the worst lie?"
Nothing is simple in this novel. Nothing turns out to be what you thought. The ending is ambiguous, mostly because you can't tell exactly how the adults in Micah's life might have actually responded to being told her truths. In other words, reading this novel makes you feel a lot like being seventeen.
Far enough to get interested, is my answer. I'm going to try not to spoil your reading of this novel in my review of it, but if you want to be sure, stop reading this, go get the book and read it. I mean it, NOW. I'll wait for you.
Okay, at this point I'm assuming that you've either read the book or you don't mind me talking about some of what happens. The narrator, Micah, is a senior in high school and she has more to hide than the typical adolescent. She's interested in only two of her classes (which seems pretty typical to me)--Biology and "Dangerous Words," which seems to be an English class focusing on censorship. When one of Micah's classmates asks a guest speaker "what is it about writing for teenagers that leads to so much censorship?" I leaned forward, at least metaphorically, because I expected that this speaker, this creation of Larbalestier's, would have a lot to say about that. But I didn't get an answer. Instead I got Micah's thoughts:
"I knew the answer to that one but I didn't raise my hand. It's because grown-ups don't remember what it was like when they were teenagers. Not really. They remember something out of a Disney movie and that's where they want to keep us. They don't like the idea of our hormones, or that we can smell sex on one another. That we walk down halls thick with a million different pheremones. We see each other, catch a glance, the faintest edge of one, that sends a shiver through our bodies all the way to the parts of us our parents wish didn't exist."
Micah claims to be telling her reader the truth, although she also says "I'm at least a third-generation liar. Though I bet it goes back earlier. If I could get Grandmother or Great-Aunt Dorothy to talk about it." She makes a confession on p. 169 that changes the reader's entire view of the truth about her (my daughter guessed it on page 63, partly because she reads a lot in the genre to which this novel belongs).
The one lie that disappointed me on first reading--about Micah's brother--turns out later to have been only a partial lie based on wish fulfillment. Like all the best lies in the novel, it's a lie based on what Micah wishes had been true, and it's related to all the other lies of her existence. Her parents, she says
"stopped loving me....[they] still said they loved me, still kissed me good night, still let me live in their home and eat their food, but it was pretend: they were waiting for the right time to get rid of me.
For five years I lived a shadow life with shadow parents and never knew the difference.
Except that I did.
I just couldn't admit it to myself.
But they never admitted it either. They abandoned me.
Who's the bigger liar?
Me or them?
Isn't lying about love the worst lie?"
Nothing is simple in this novel. Nothing turns out to be what you thought. The ending is ambiguous, mostly because you can't tell exactly how the adults in Micah's life might have actually responded to being told her truths. In other words, reading this novel makes you feel a lot like being seventeen.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Fiddling Around with Fairies While Rome Burns
I feel a little Nero-ish, talking about a book I recently read and liked in light of the google news headlines ("WaMu tumbles") I just went past to get here. But since I have rejected the suggestion that I boycott my blog in order to bring congress to its knees, I think I'll just go ahead.
I've been waiting for Justine Larbalestier's How To Ditch Your Fairy since I began reading about it this summer on Bookshelves of Doom, Whatever, and Justine's own blog. Did you know that she's married to Scott Westerfeld? Anyway, the book was worth the wait.
The main character of the book, Charlie (for Charlotte Adele Donna Seto Steele), has a parking fairy. Whenever she's in a car, it gets a primo parking space. Being only 14, she doesn't appreciate this. So she's trying to ditch her fairy by walking everywhere. Evidently, a fairy will go away eventually if you don't use it. Only one person in the book seems to know much about fairies, a character's mother, named Tamsin, and she doesn't publish her book about them for fear that it's not yet "complete" enough. So the world is left knowing only that "some people don't think it's a fairy that makes sure that every car I'm in gets a parking spot. Some say they're ghosts or some kind of spirit, and some people, like my dad and Steffi, don't believe it's anything but luck."
Charlie and the reader become believers in fairies, however, when Tamsin shows Charlie her fairy's "aura" in a special mirror, and when Charlie uses Tamsin's book to trade fairies with Tamsin's daughter Fiorenze, who has a boy-attracting fairy. Charlie thinks it will be great to have all the boys' attention, but soon finds out that it's a nuisance and that most of them don't really like her, but are merely compelled to act as if they do.
Fiorenze tells Charlie that Tamsin herself has had
"'at least six different fairies....The current one is a never-being-late fairy. I think it suits her best. She's very, um, OCD. It drives her insane when she's late because of trains or planes or whatever. But now nothing keeps her from being on time.'
'And before that?' I asked.
'The first one I know of was a loose-change-finding fairy.'
'Hmmmm, bog ordinary. I can see why you'd want a different one. But not exactly a nightmare fairy....'
'The second was a good-hair fairy,' Fiorenze said...."
At the end of the book is a "list of known fairies," and here are some of them:
Bacon: Ensures your bacon is always cooked just how you like it.
Bladder: You never need to go in the middle of a movie, and when you do need to go there's always a bathroom around.
Cat: All cats like you even if they bite or scratch everyone else.
Clean clothes: No one will ever spill ketchup on your white sweater again.
Clothes shopping: You will always find clothes that flatter you and they will be drastically marked down.
Getting out of trouble: When you break the rules, teachers and parents don't notice.
Good hair: your hair always looks good.
Good skin: your skin is always clear.
Grip: Whatever you pick up stays in your hands until you decide to let it go.
Photogenic: You look great in every photo ever taken of you.
Never getting cold
Never getting lost
You get the idea. This book has started a debate at my house, about what kind of fairy we'd each like to have. The best fairy, we all agree, would be the one that gives you daily benefits. My idea that a getting-hired fairy would be good was rejected on this basis. I'm currently debating between a never-falling-down fairy (traditional fairy stories make me fear that although I wouldn't fall, I could still twist ankles or knees while upright) and a what-you-should-have-said fairy (I'd always say that thing you think of right afterwards, what you should have said). Ron is thinking that he'd like an apt quotation fairy (you'd always have an apt quotation spring to your lips at the appropriate moment). I asked Walker if he'd like a catching fish fairy, but he said he thought a never-being-late fairy would be more useful to him. I proposed a safe swimming fairy to Eleanor, and she quite likes the idea, although being fifteen she really wants a good hair or good skin fairy.
So now you are invited to join in--what kind of fairy would YOU like? Let's have something to distract us from the headlines of impending doom!
I've been waiting for Justine Larbalestier's How To Ditch Your Fairy since I began reading about it this summer on Bookshelves of Doom, Whatever, and Justine's own blog. Did you know that she's married to Scott Westerfeld? Anyway, the book was worth the wait.
The main character of the book, Charlie (for Charlotte Adele Donna Seto Steele), has a parking fairy. Whenever she's in a car, it gets a primo parking space. Being only 14, she doesn't appreciate this. So she's trying to ditch her fairy by walking everywhere. Evidently, a fairy will go away eventually if you don't use it. Only one person in the book seems to know much about fairies, a character's mother, named Tamsin, and she doesn't publish her book about them for fear that it's not yet "complete" enough. So the world is left knowing only that "some people don't think it's a fairy that makes sure that every car I'm in gets a parking spot. Some say they're ghosts or some kind of spirit, and some people, like my dad and Steffi, don't believe it's anything but luck."
Charlie and the reader become believers in fairies, however, when Tamsin shows Charlie her fairy's "aura" in a special mirror, and when Charlie uses Tamsin's book to trade fairies with Tamsin's daughter Fiorenze, who has a boy-attracting fairy. Charlie thinks it will be great to have all the boys' attention, but soon finds out that it's a nuisance and that most of them don't really like her, but are merely compelled to act as if they do.
Fiorenze tells Charlie that Tamsin herself has had
"'at least six different fairies....The current one is a never-being-late fairy. I think it suits her best. She's very, um, OCD. It drives her insane when she's late because of trains or planes or whatever. But now nothing keeps her from being on time.'
'And before that?' I asked.
'The first one I know of was a loose-change-finding fairy.'
'Hmmmm, bog ordinary. I can see why you'd want a different one. But not exactly a nightmare fairy....'
'The second was a good-hair fairy,' Fiorenze said...."
At the end of the book is a "list of known fairies," and here are some of them:
Bacon: Ensures your bacon is always cooked just how you like it.
Bladder: You never need to go in the middle of a movie, and when you do need to go there's always a bathroom around.
Cat: All cats like you even if they bite or scratch everyone else.
Clean clothes: No one will ever spill ketchup on your white sweater again.
Clothes shopping: You will always find clothes that flatter you and they will be drastically marked down.
Getting out of trouble: When you break the rules, teachers and parents don't notice.
Good hair: your hair always looks good.
Good skin: your skin is always clear.
Grip: Whatever you pick up stays in your hands until you decide to let it go.
Photogenic: You look great in every photo ever taken of you.
Never getting cold
Never getting lost
You get the idea. This book has started a debate at my house, about what kind of fairy we'd each like to have. The best fairy, we all agree, would be the one that gives you daily benefits. My idea that a getting-hired fairy would be good was rejected on this basis. I'm currently debating between a never-falling-down fairy (traditional fairy stories make me fear that although I wouldn't fall, I could still twist ankles or knees while upright) and a what-you-should-have-said fairy (I'd always say that thing you think of right afterwards, what you should have said). Ron is thinking that he'd like an apt quotation fairy (you'd always have an apt quotation spring to your lips at the appropriate moment). I asked Walker if he'd like a catching fish fairy, but he said he thought a never-being-late fairy would be more useful to him. I proposed a safe swimming fairy to Eleanor, and she quite likes the idea, although being fifteen she really wants a good hair or good skin fairy.
So now you are invited to join in--what kind of fairy would YOU like? Let's have something to distract us from the headlines of impending doom!
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