When You Reach Me

This past winter, I read several amazing reviews of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, and then in January it won the Newbery Award. Needless to say, I had high hopes for this one . . . and it just about lived up to them. On the surface, this is another middle grade novel with quirky characters: Miranda doesn't quite fit in at school and spends most of her time with Sal at the beginning of the story, she helps her mom prepare for her upcoming appearance on The $20,000 Pyramid, and she starts working in cranky Jimmy's sandwich shop at lunch for a salary of cheese sandwiches.

But there's a disquieting mystery at the heart of this story: Miranda receives a note saying someone is coming to save her friend's life if only she'll write him a letter first. The stranger who sends this note--and future ones--not only knows where Miranda lives, but he is able to predict things that happen to her and her family. As Miranda makes more friends at school, she is able to unravel the mystery with their help. And, of course, her obsession with A Wrinkle in Time helps, too.

The reviews had said you needed to be familiar with Wrinkle, so I read that, too, before jumping in. I'm not sure how I missed this one growing up--it's not like I didn't much as a kid. I'm not much for science fiction, so I didn't absolutely love it, but I did like the idea that people were fighting the dark force trying to take over the universe with art and intellect.

Both of these books were fun, adventurous reads . . . for children of all ages! Now, it's back to the list. I'm jumping back in with Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.

Every Last One

So, I deviated from the list again. I'm good at doing that . . . which is probably how I ended up with a list in the first place. But, I got an advance copy of Anna Quindlen's new novel, Every Last One, from the First Reads program on Goodreads and felt obligated to get a review up on the site quickly.

I haven't read any of Anna Quindlen's fiction, but, as I said when I read her nonfiction work, Imagined London, I used to want to be her. She was both a journalist and a novelist, and I thought I wanted to be both of those things. Of course, I ended up neither. So, I thought I was in for a good read (no pun intended) when I picked up Every Last One.

And, her prose is good. It's very readable, and I liked the characters she had created. The first half of the book introduces us to the Latham family. Mary Beth Latham has 3 kids: a teenaged girl and twin middle-school-aged boys. She is happily married and owns her own landscape design business. Not too much happens in the first half; we see the family going through everyday events . . . her daughter, Ruby, finds the perfect prom dress, then breaks up with her boyfriend, someone she has known since early childhood. One of the twins, Max, develops depression, and that consumes much of Mary Beth's time and worry--and rightfully so. Except, at the same time, Ruby's ex-boyfriend just won't go away. He leaves her little gifts and keeps showing up, even though Ruby makes it clear she no longer wants to see him.

At almost exactly the midpoint of the book, an unspeakable tragedy occurs. The story was setting up for something to happen, but not an event of this magnitude. The second half follows Mary Beth as she picks up the pieces.

It's an easy read . . . the 300 pages move along at a fast clip. But it felt very Lifetime Movie-ish. I can see certain book clubs enjoying it . . . just the fact that the violence seems to come out of nowhere would offer some discussion. I didn't love it, however. There were some touching moments in the second half, but not enough to sustain the whole book. I think, in the future, I'll stick to Quindlen's nonfiction.

The Brothers Karamazov

936 pages of nineteenth-century Russian fiction . . . but other than a couple hundred pages describing the happenings at the local monastery, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a great read. The jacket copy was quite titillating: "Compelling, profound, complex, it is the story of a patricide and of the four sons who each had a motive for murder . . ." I was ready for that murder, too, having been a fan of Crime and Punishment. I kept waiting for it . . . 200 pages in, okay now he's set up the story . . . 300 pages in, it has to be just around the corner . . . but it didn't come until about halfway through. And at that point, the book is hard to put down. There's a good soap opera going in the first half, too, with a couple of love triangles. Really, the writers of Grey's Anatomy could learn a thing or two.

I'm not sure what purpose the bit about the monastery serves. I'm sure it's brilliant--perhaps simply to give the novel its moral center, or maybe a commentary on the religious politics of the time. But parts of that section were hard to get through.

Once the murder occurs, though, the story just takes off. We see the police investigation and the courtroom proceedings, all of which is drama-laden. Like in Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has created some vivid and sympathetic characters--despite their foibles. It really is a brilliant novel, and you don't really notice the page count once you get into it.

Now that this giant tome is crossed off the list, I really feel like the end is in site! 23 more to go, but not nearly as long as this one.