Tag Archives: 50BookPledge2011

The Sisters Brothers, Patrick deWitt #50BookPledge

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Quick confession: I’m not a fan of Westerns. So when I say it took me a while to get into Patrick DeWitt’s Sisters Brothers, I think it says a lot more about my personal preference than about the book itself. Wells Tower calls this novel “a masterful, hilarious picaresque,” and it certainly is. Eli and Charlie Sisters have been hired to kill Hermann Kermit Warm, and they travel from Oregon to California to track him down. Along the way, they meet various colourful characters, most of whom freak when they realize they’re meeting the Sisters Brothers, who have quite a reputation for brutal, efficient killing. The journey is filled with gun fights, business negotiations and a quest for gold. Eli, however, is seriously considering quitting the killing gig. While Charlie happily shoots people they meet and looks forward to killing Warm, Eli delights at discovering the benefits of dental hygiene, falls for women with kind eyes, and scouts locations where he and Charlie and settle down and become shopkeepers.

I didn’t really enjoy Part One. I loved the dentist, and laughed at a couple of spots, but mostly it felt too episodic, like TV’s villain-of-the-week turned into character-of-the-chapter. Honestly, again, I think this is because I haven’t really read a Western before; I can imagine fans of Westerns being absolutely delighted. As it was, I have to admit, I kept imagining one of my English professors commenting “This is the classic Shakespearean Fool, who appears senile but speaks the truth,” or “Tub is clearly Eli’s horsey alter ego.” Yes, I am a nerd. Publishers Weekly calls Sisters Brothers “genre-bending,” but despite the heroes being bad guys, I thought it didn’t bend the genre enough to appeal to non-genre fans.

That was Part One, and I’m glad I kept reading. Part Two, where the Sisters Brothers have somewhat settled in California and have come closer to finding Warm, delved much deeper into Eli and Charlie’s characters and their relationship, and I was drawn in. I remember Jeff Lindsay saying that the reason Dexter Morgan is so lovable, despite his psychopathic tendencies, is his sense of humour. Eli’s narration is humorous: “Just your everyday grouping of civilized gentleman, sitting in a round robin to discuss the events of the day with quivering erections.” But what ultimately makes Eli and Charlie lovable is their utter devotion to each other, which becomes progressively more palpable as the book goes on. I found myself cheering out loud when Eli and Charlie use a devious, underhanded trick to win against a group of gunmen, not because it was such a clever trick, but because it showed the brothers perfectly in sync.

There is something endearing about a bad guy who wants to be good, and it’s disturbingly humorous when that bad guy ends up doing bad things anyway and having to justify them to himself afterwards. It’s also quite sad. Eli Sisters is like a gun-toting, lumbering Michael Corleone — whenever he thinks he can escape his life, his devotion to his brother draws him back in. Charlie, while delighted enough to kill anyone else, is also fiercely devoted to his brother, a fact that gets called into question early in the novel yet becomes absolutely certain later on.

I can imagine Sisters Brothers becoming a cult classic. Even in Part One, I could see it becoming an award-winning, blockbuster Coen brothers film. I love Dan Stiles’ cover design for the book; I can totally imagine it on a movie poster, can’t you?

Love Westerns? I think you’ll love this book. Not much of a fan of Westerns? I think the wonderful relationship between Eli and Charlie will hook you, as it did me. I’ve decided to donate my copy to a very good cause. Fellow book blogger and Twitter buddy Colleen is organizing an auction to raise funds for Slave Lake, which was basically destroyed last week. She’s already gotten lots of wonderful bookish donations, and Patrick DeWitt’s Sisters Brothers will be up for bids as well. Great cause, great books… bid on Eli and Charlie’s story here. You can also see a list of all auction items here, or check out the general auction website at http://slavelakebookauction.wordpress.com/.

Book trailer from U.S. publisher Ecco Books:

Hunger (Book 2 of Gone series), Michael Grant #50BookPledge

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Michael Grant’s Gone series just keeps getting better. In the second installment, Hunger, the kids in the FAYZ have run out of food, some of the normal teens have drawn battle lines against the kids with powers, and the mysterious entity called the Darkness keeps sinking its claws even deeper into Lana and Caine. Sam and his crew have discovered fields with vegetables, but there are giant killer worms guarding their territory (sounds ridiculous, but they’re actually quite horrifying… and gross).

Worse, kids in the FAYZ don’t want to work. “I’m just a kid” becomes a common refrain, understandably frustrating Sam’s team, all of whom are kids themselves. My sister, who introduced me to this series in the first place, commented that she found it hard to believe that only Sam’s friends are stepping up, and the rest are content to whine about their hunger and play video games all day. She understood about the younger kids, but wouldn’t the tweens and teens at least band together and help organize something? My initial reaction had been that this situation seemed very realistic, but my sister raised a good point — is Michael Grant, and are readers like me, underestimating the potential for maturity in young adults?

Then again, it’s not just that it was only Sam’s friends stepping up; it was just that those who did step up naturally became part of Sam’s “government.” One of the characters also said something that struck me as logical: the kids have no incentive to do hard labour, because they know that even if they do nothing, Sam’s team will make sure they’re fed. One of my favourite secondary characters from Gone, Albert, comes up with what I consider a brilliant solution: he sets up a market economy, first a barter system, then eventually establishing a currency using McDonald’s Monopoly money. Astrid’s response to this disappoints me, considering how brilliant she is supposed to be: she tells Sam to shut Albert down, saying they now have the opportunity to establish a class-free society, where money doesn’t exist and therefore no one is richer than anyone else. Would socialism have worked in the FAYZ? Possibly, but only if established from the very beginning, before they ran out of supplies and most kids show no motivation to work “for the greater good.”

What I love most about Hunger is that we see the vulnerability in so many of these characters. Sam’s heading for a breakdown: “I’m not their parent,” he constantly tells Astrid, to which she reminds him, “They’re just kids,” who need parenting. Sam, of course, is a kid himself, and even adults would prefer to focus on the bigger issues like finding food or preparing for Caine’s next attack rather than have to deal with complaints of who pulled whose hair and who called whom stupid. Lana, as the Healer, feels a similar pressure. Kids come to her with everything from bloody noses to loose teeth to skinned knees. She’s like a celebrity hiding from paparazzi; everyone demands her attention, and all she wants is privacy. Astrid’s brilliance reveals its cracks. While Sam is the official leader, Astrid definitely holds the power, and a lot of her decisions (shutting down Albert’s enterprise, curtailing Quinn’s initiative in going fishing) reveal short-sightedness. I can understand why some of the kids in the FAYZ have grown resentful. I especially love the bigger role other characters play: Mary’s eating disorder grows much worse, Albert and Quinn reveal economic savvy, Edilio takes a much stronger leadership role, Brianna, Taylor and Dekka become essential to battle, and even Caine reveals his softer side.

Gone was thrilling and action-packed, with characters you grow to admire. Hunger is even more thrilling, and makes these characters even more real and tangible to us. Fantastic sequel, darker and more introspective than the first, Hunger takes the FAYZ kids from trying to survive a battle to taking the first steps in creating a long-term, sustainable society.

Big Girl Small, Rachel DeWoskin #50BookPledge

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I read Rachel DeWoskin’s Big Girl Small mostly because of Shannon’s wonderful review of it in Savvy Reader. At 5’1”, I would never dare to imagine I can understand how a little person feels, but in other ways, I do know how it is to grow up feeling different. I imagine practically everyone has felt different in some way or another. High school is tough enough without being 3’9”, and DeWoskin’s protagonist, Judy Lohden, handles it with sarcasm and wit: “If you’re born saddled with a word like Achondroplasia, you learn to spell.”

In so many ways, the things Judy goes through are things practically every teenager experiences. She is the new kid at a performing arts high school, and worries about fitting in. She has a “teacher crush” on her inspirational AP English teacher and feels sympathetic for her dorky math teacher. She falls immediately for the handsome Kyle Malanack when she sees him at a party: “I think maybe the very not-realness of teenage love makes it the only real thing. […] what’s true about love isn’t a quantity thing — it’s a quality one. And the reason I know that is because I still feel like I’m actually going to die.”

We know from the first chapter that something big and bad is going to happen to her and cause her to run away. What happens to her isn’t much of a mystery for long (Judy drops a lot of hints along the way), but that didn’t impede my enjoyment of the book at all. It just made me feel utterly helpless, watching her moving towards her situation without being able to do anything to stop it: “If the first boy you dare love pulls the worst Stephen King Carrie prank in the history of dating, then you run and hide.” It is however the next part that really struck me as being absolutely true and heartfelt: “Because who can love you after that? Maybe your parents. But how can you face them, when you’ve all spent so much time convincing each other that you’re normal?”

In a way, her parents’ overcompensating for her dwarfism by pretending she’s normal makes things worse; Judy actually appreciates it when her friend Goth Sarah admits she admires Judy for having the guts to go to parties and face all the stares. Yet at times, when reading about Judy dressing up for a party or daydreaming about Kyle, even I forget she’s a little person. The advantage of reading her story is that I sometimes got so lost in the universality of her experiences (I had a crush like that too! I agonized over outfits like that too! I stressed over impressing a teacher too!) and only remembered Judy’s size when she makes a joke about it.

Judy jokes a lot about her size; she gets very defensive about it, yet in a way I can understand. It’s like how some comedians say they crack jokes about themselves because it’s better than having other people poke fun at them. Her jokes are actually also funny, designed to put the person she’s talking to at ease with her size so they can get on with an actual conversation. Her narration is often hilarious, her observations spot-on, and her descriptions vivid. Judy is an interesting, smart and relatable teenager.

She’s also lucky in so many ways. Unlike some other YA books, where the hero/heroine has to face obstacles alone, Judy has a very strong support system. Her parents, while completely clueless at times, clearly love her very much, and even Bill, a middle aged man Judy meets after she runs away, becomes a good friend, being her sounding board and recipient of her story. Judy’s friends Molly and Meghan are both wonderful, supportive friends, and Goth Sarah is simply a standout — quirky and loyal, the best friend a teenage girl could want. I winced whenever Judy would shun Goth Sarah in favour of the more popular Ginger, who while definitely nice and friendly, was clearly (to my twenty-eight year old brain anyway) nowhere near as interesting.

Big Girl Small is a wonderful story, with relatable characters. I would have loved to be as independent and confident as Molly or Goth Sarah when I was in high school. I was probably a lot like Judy — I knew I was good at some things (not singing, which is Judy’s big talent), I was shy and insecure about other things, and I too have had crushes where I thought I would never again feel that way about anything else. I can only hope that I’d handled it with as much wit and aplomb as Judy has.