Tag Archives: 50BookPledge2011

Divergent, Veronica Roth #50BookPledge

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I’d heard a lot of buzz about Divergent. A friend had compared it to The Hunger Games, which I love, so I was thrilled when another friend offered me her ARC. I finished it in one day – yes, it’s that exciting – and I liked it. Not as good as The Hunger Games, and it didn’t blow me away, but I liked it. Divergent is a good start to what could be a great series.

The book hooked me from the very first page. The heroine, Beatrice “Tris” Prior, is about to turn 16 and so is about to choose which faction to join for the rest of her life. Tris’s society reminds me a bit of Lois Lowry’s The Giver. To maintain order, society has been divided into five factions, each representing a different virtue necessary to a utopia: Abnegation (selflessness), Dauntless (courage), Erudite (intelligence), Amity (peace) and Candor (honesty). Beatrice’s family belongs to Abnegation, but at 16, she can choose for herself whether to live the rest of her life according to the virtue of selflessness, or choose a different virtue, which will mean leaving her family forever. Once she chooses, she will then have to undergo an initiation process, and if she fails, she may end up among the factionless, who are poor and homeless.

It’s an interesting idea, particularly because I realize that the faction I would’ve chosen at 16 (Candor) is not the same as what I would choose now (Erudite). People change after 16, and Tris’s society doesn’t take that into account. There are Divergents, who exhibit dominant traits from more than one faction, and so technically don’t wholly belong to any one faction. However, Divergents are forced to hide their true nature and pretend to be completely part of one faction, for reasons that will be explained later in the book. Also interesting are the larger political issues characters in the story raise. Majority of the government is comprised of people from Abnegation, and it seems to make sense that society can be much improved by politicians who think more of others than of themselves. However, Jeanine, the Erudite government representative, challenges the current system, demanding a return of democracy, and accusing the Abnegation government of hypocrisy and corruption.

Unfortunately, most of the book barely deals with those issues. Without giving away any spoilers, I can say that once Tris chooses her faction, probably two thirds of book has to do with her training and tests to become a full-fledged member. The bigger political issue is referred to a few times, mostly by a character reading an editorial by Jeanine attacking the Abnegation government, and, by extension, Tris’s family. There are the requisite bullies, sidekicks, terror teachers, and love interest. Imagine the first book of Harry Potter, but with a faction-style training camp rather than Hogwarts. More action, less magic. Not necessarily a bad thing, and there were some exciting incidents during training (especially with the Edward/Peter rivalry), but with such a rich story in the larger picture, I found the training segment much too long. The secondary characters as well were mostly either likable or detestable, but none complex enough that I felt a very strong emotional connection to him/her.

The love story between Tris and Four is pretty good. Four respects Tris, and compliments her abilities without being condescending the way Harlequin-style heroes tend to do. They also have nice chemistry, and in an especially squeal-inducing scene, Tris shows her mother who Four is, and admits, “He’s kind of intimidating.” Her mother immediately replies, “He’s handsome,” and Tris says, “I find myself nodding without thinking.” However, unlike in Hunger Games, or even Harry Potter, there doesn’t seem to be much at stake for Tris and Four. The most significant conflict is brewing beyond the faction training and so Tris and Four’s romance mostly lacks the gravitas that the Katniss/Gale/Peeta triangle and the Ron/Hermione relationship had.

The issue of Divergents is developed in more detail than the political conflict, mostly the question of why Divergents are considered such a threat to social stability, just because they can fit in with more than one faction. I thought this was an excellent question, and a fascinating link to larger political and social issues, and wished it had been explored even more. However, I found the ultimate explanation simplistic and very one-sided.

In fact, bias is another major concern for me in this book. It might be because I would have chosen Erudite as my faction, but I don’t like how the Erudites are portrayed in such a bad light. In complete fairness to Roth, she mostly focuses on Jeanine as the villain, with Jeanine just happening to be Erudite, and Roth does also include a “good” former Erudite who becomes friends with Tris and disagrees with Jeanine’s tactics. However, Jeanine’s motivations are explained very superficially, and mostly with the judgement call that Erudites just want power. With Erudites representing intelligence and logical thinking, I would have loved to know more about their reasoning, or at least Jeanine’s reasoning, behind her actions.

The final fourth or so of the book, after faction training has been completed, and war suddenly breaks out, is the best part. The stakes have finally become higher, and characters become more complex. If this had happened much earlier in the book, Divergent might have completely blown me away. As it was, what I found to be the best part felt rushed. We get revelations about some of the characters, some dramatic developments and major character growth for Tris. Unfortunately, rather than all these twists at the end making me breathless, they made me feel like Roth was trying to squeeze everything she needed to say into the remaining few chapters.

That’s why I think Divergent is mostly just a good book, but with the potential for a great sequel. There are many threads left untied at the end, and I’d love to see how those get resolved. Roth is a strong writer, and hooked me into the story from the beginning. Divergent, however, works best as the beginning of a series and isn’t quite as strong as a book on its own. It’s a fun, exciting read; I just think it could have been so much more.

The Midwife of Venice, Roberta Rich

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I’d been eyeing Midwife of Venice for a while, and eventually picked it up only because I’d heard about it on Twitter and I wanted something new to read. I’m glad I did – it’s an interesting story, a good blend of romance and cultural conflict.

Hannah, a Jewish midwife, is hired by a Christian nobleman to help his wife who is going through a very difficult childbirth. Despite it being illegal for a Jew to help a Christian woman give birth, Hannah takes the job in order to make enough money to ransom her husband Isaac from slave traders. The novel alternates between Hannah’s story and Isaac’s life as a slave in Malta. Both are motivated by their love for each other, and Roberta Rich communicates the strength of this love without being mushy.

Rich creates some interesting secondary characters. Hannah’s sister, in particular, is very well fleshed out. She’d converted to Christianity, and had been disowned by her family and the Jewish community in Venice, so that when she was having a difficult childbirth and was in danger of losing the baby, Hannah was forbidden to help her. Other minor characters – the nobleman’s greedy brother, the slave trader, the nun – aren’t given the same level of complexity in their own stories, but still add colour and conflict to Hannah and Isaac’s love story.

Minor irritants – I found the ending too neat. On one hand, I cared for Hannah and Isaac, and I found the ending satisfying for that reason. On the other hand, the timing and events all seemed too convenient, so that the ending felt staged.

Also, despite both Hannah’s and Isaac’s stories being compelling, I thought Hannah’s story was developed so much more richly than Isaac’s. We are told, for example, that Isaac’s an amazing writer, and it is by playing Cyrano de Bergerac to the slave trader that he can earn his freedom. But we aren’t shown his writing. Isaac promises that his letter will be so well-written that the recipient would fall in love with even the utterly vile slave trader. Isaac then says at one point that all he needs to complete his letter is the recipient’s eye colour, and is horrified that the slave trader couldn’t remember. With such characterization of romance and poetry in Isaac’s character, I wanted to see for myself just how beautiful this letter is. Another minor point in Isaac’s story is that a woman in Malta falls in love with Isaac, and somehow wants to free him from slavery while still keeping him from Hannah. I wanted to find out more about this woman, and how she reacts to Isaac’s devotion to Hannah. Subtlety is one of the reasons I enjoyed this book so much, but, in Isaac’s story at least, I wish there had been less of it.

Overall, definitely a good read. At its heart, it’s a beautiful love story. It’s refreshing to see a romance where the couple is so secure in their love for each other, with no contrived conflict to make them doubt each other, and where much bigger issues like culture and economics are what keep them apart.

Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay

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A friend recently handed me her copy of Sarah’s Key and said, “This book is amazing. You have to read it.” So I really have her to thank. This is a very good book, compelling and moving. The story takes off from an incident in July 16, 1942, when French police officers rounded up thousands of Jews and held them captive at the Vélodrome d’Hiver before sending them to Auschwitz. Ten-year-old Sarah and her parents are among the families captured in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ incident. Before she is taken away, Sarah locks her younger brother in their secret cupboard and promises she’ll come back for him.

Sixty years later, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist in France researching Vel’ d’Hiv’ discovers Sarah’s story, its link to her own life, and dedicates herself to finding out what became of Sarah and her brother. Sarah’s Key is very much a story with a message, if not a moral, and I think it’s best expressed in a scene where a man asks Julia why she wants to track Sarah down. When Julia admits she wants to apologize, the man asks why, considering Julia was in no way involved with Vel’ d’Hiv’. Julia replies that she’s “sorry for being forty-five years old and not knowing [about Vel’ d’Hiv’].”

The novel emphasizes that the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup has been whitewashed by history into a Nazi action, when in fact, it was French police officers who captured their own countrymen. As well, the fact that it was mostly children who were taken to Vel’ d’Hiv’ has been glossed over by sound byte speeches. Julia’s French husband Bertrand appears emblematic of the French attitude to this point in history when he tells Julia that it’s happened so long ago that no one cares about the incident and will only be annoyed that Julia has dug it all up again.

Bertrand refers scornfully to Julia’s American disdain for France and French ideas, and on one hand, her judgmental attitude does get somewhat heavy-handed. She is outraged that French Christians kept a blind eye on the incident, and demands to know why Bertrand’s grandparents, for example, could move into an apartment vacated by Jews captured during Vel’ d’Hiv’ without feeling guilty. While I understand, and also feel her anger at the injustice the Vel’ d’Hiv’ Jews experienced, I found Julia’s self-righteousness annoying at times, and Julia’s desire to track down Sarah just to ease her own conscience at “not knowing” to be self-aggrandizing.

On the other hand, however, I still found Julia’s story very compelling. More than just going on a quest to learn about Vel’ d’Hiv’ and find Sarah, Julia struggles to figure out her own life, particularly her relationship with Bertrand and the development of her own identity as an individual. She acknowledges the futility of her search – even if she finds Sarah or Sarah’s descendants, all she can do is assure them that Vel’ d’Hiv’ is remembered, by her at least, if not in French history in general, and this in no way compensates for what the Jews in Vel’ d’Hiv’ suffered.

I think Sarah’s Key ultimately delivers a powerful message because Julia’s attempt to make up for Vel’ d’Hiv’ is a desire a lot of us have had about various atrocities in history. There are a few heroes who make a major difference, and right historical wrongs. But there are also many individuals who, like Julia, do their part in very personal, often unnoticed ways. The most important first step is to acknowledge an injustice, and make sure it isn’t forgotten. That’s what De Rosnay has done with writing Sarah’s Key, and that’s what Julia attempts to do in her own way in the novel. The inscription on the Vel’ d’Hiv’ memorial reads “Never forget,” and with Sarah and Julia’s stories, Tatiana De Rosnay ensures we never do.