Next pick: a South American memoir

"Narrow Road"

Did you love it? Any overall impressions or insights?

Love and war

Did the love story grow on you? Or did you continue to find it less engaging than the war passages? What did you think of the ending?

Next pick

"The Narrow Road to the Deep North" by Richard Flanagan

'Rabbit Hole' narrator

Sorry for taking so long on this. You've probably forgotten the book by this point, so this is more to get something on the record. I found it interesting, maybe not so much as others who raved about it, though. I was mainly interested in checking out the child narrator, after having read our last YA pick written from a teen's point of view and having discussed the issues of an adult writing for teens in a teen voice and how realistic that really is. This is an adult writing in a child's voice for an adult audience, which generally seems more plausible to me, maybe because the writer and reader at least are on the same maturity level. It's one adult communicating with another, even if the medium (or subject matter) is a kid. The book won a lot of praise for its realistic boy narrator. Would you agree with that assessment? Or is this enterprise of creating a sustained narrative in a little child's voice really asking too much of a reader's suspension of disbelief? Is it manipulative somehow? It seemed to me that the narrator mostly sounded like a precocious child might actually sound but that the narrative choices —— including this detail but not that detail, etc. —— were inescapably adult. I think adults can recognize the charm of children's speech and perspective but I'm not sure they can convincingly replicate it over the long haul. Still, I appreciated the glimpse into how the drug-lord underworld might appear to a kid who didn't know anything different.

Next pick: "Down the Rabbit Hole"

This is a short Mexican novel lauded for the realism of its 7-year-old narrator. Thought it would be an interesting read after our discussion about the Young Adult perspective.

'There's always the phone'

I thought some of the Liars' rebellion stemmed from deep-down awareness that they would let go of each other once they were separated, best of intentions nonwithstanding. Cady mentioned that in a few ways: That they'd stay connected, tagging photos in September, and then that would die out, or a few times it was "there's always the phone." The adults really only threatened their immediate proximity. They would let themselves down after that.

Writing style

What did you think of the writing? We had the first-person, unreliable narrator; literary references and fairy tale interludes; dramatic metaphor; sentences like: "Johnny, he is bounce, effort, and snark. Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain." Clever, or too much?

The twist

Did you see it coming? Did you like the ghost element, or find it annoying? Did it work with the rest of the story?

We Were Liars

What did you think? Enjoyable, cheesy? CL, you're the expert on YA literature -- how do you think "We Were Liars" holds up in the genre?

Next pick

Thought this would be fun: "We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart

Relationships

One thing I did see that the novellas had in common was a tight focus on specific relationships: old man/boy, teacher/pupil, inmate/inmate, childhood friends, child-self/adult-self, doctor/patient. Which relationship did you find most compelling and/or most well-drawn?

Apt Pupil

I liked this story because it was so moody and creepy and tense. I also found it curious in that I was at no point rooting for anyone in it! I didn't even like Todd's parents; they seemed so ignorant about their son, in that self-absorbed way some parents have. So, as you were reading, what were you hoping would happen? Were you satisfied with the ending?

Seasons

Do you think the seasonal organization of the four novellas into a single volume made sense? I can't think of why this was done, exactly, except for marketing purposes maybe? I didn't see the stories as related in any way, except "The Body" and "Shawshank" had a tiny overlap with the Maine setting and with the minor aside in "The Body" to the Shawshank crime.

Four novellas

OK, the obvious question first: Which was your favorite, if you had a favorite, and why?

Next pick

Thought this might be a good autumn read. It's a collection of four novellas, so it's kind of cheating, like four picks instead of one, but it's not scandalously long. I cold have picked a single Stephen King book that was much longer! I could not find an image of this book that had the title in a larger font than the author's name! This is the best I could do. I hate that. I think Stephen King is a truly fine (and very fun) writer. But come on. Not even Jane Austen gets that kind of billing, and I have never seen a copy of "Moby Dick" where the words "Herman Melville" hover in huge type over the book title! Modern folks are so irritating.

Father figures

I found it interesting how Trujillo was a kind of father figure, how his images were required everywhere and how people were indoctrinated to think of him as the almighty. Not surprising in a brutal dictatorship, I guess, but I found it very poignant how even people who thoroughly despised him, like Patria, still seemed to have a kind of warped faith that he could do good in the end, like there was some kernel of humanity in him that if you said the right prayer or whatever that he could be appealed to like a beneficent deity. It was so sad. He was like an angry father/abusive husband ruling the household with an iron fist and everyone hated him, but he was the only power in the household, the one who, if properly appeased, might change the course of events. Such a terrible, twisted psychology. The Mirabal sisters' example proved to the people that they too had some power, that the almighty's absolute hold on it was illusory, a mirage that could be shattered with a bit of solidarity among the oppressed. What did you think about this? Did you think Trujillo was sufficiently fleshed out to make the people's hatred and fear of him believable? Did you want more background? And, not sure if this is specifically related, but what did you think of the girls' real father as a father figure? Did their relationship to him have any bearing on their relationship to Trujillo as father figure?

Sacrifice

Trujillo was assassinated six months after the Mirabals were killed, followed by a civil war and the election of one of Trujillo's cronies as president.

In the epilogue, Dede says to herself after seeing Lio, "Was it for this, the sacrifice of the butterflies?" Do you think the Mirabal sisters died in vain? Was it worth it?

Dede

I feel like making a post specifically about Dede because her story was so different from the others. I was struck by this line from Jaimito: "This is your martyrdom, Dede, to be alive without them."

What did you think about Dede? Did you think she should have joined the revolution with her sisters? Do you think her survival was a kind of martyrdom?

Sisters

Patria, Dede, Minerva and Maria Theresa

Which of the sisters was your favorite? Which did you sympathize with or relate to the most?

Real-life heroines

Interesting video produced by AARP for the 50th anniversary of the Mirabal sisters' deaths. There's a creepy reenactment at the beginning, but the rest features interviews with Dede and Minou (who's now a congresswoman!) and Maria Theresa's husband, Leandro. And shows the house where they grew up. Worth a watch.

Buffalo heads

Do you think Gaiman was, in the end, trying to boost Shadow's perception that behind it all, behind the spiritual scene, that there was either a Native American motif or even just an idea that land was the ultimate god? Nature? I think of all the gods Shadow asked about bringing Laura back, and how they indicated there was this central figure/concept/experience he'd need to find the answer to that question.

Laura

Sympathies for Laura?

Did your version get into why she was behind the robbery that led to Shadow's imprisonment?

I thought her line about coming into a room and not knowing whether Shadow was there seemed to hurt him more than her betrayal before her death.

Wednesday

Sorry I dropped off here for a few days. How did you process Wednesday as a character? I found him loathesome, then excused him for being a god with petty origins, then processed how he treated people based on what he knew about them (the girl who had killed a pet). Oh, and he's Shadow's father and started the whole battle. A deep character.