Library & Literary Miscellany

The Glass Castle: A Memoir (Alex Awards (Awards)) by Jeannette Walls (2005)

“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster.”

Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, may begin with her adult self viewing her mother rooting through a dumpster but much of the book covers the period of her life leading up to that scene. Walls spends much of her youth waiting for her father to build her family the Glass Castle. Finally, as an adult with her father deceased, she ends up just writing about it instead. The result is The Glass Castle–Walls’ story of growing up as the daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls with three siblings and multiple homes and relocations and a will to survive.

She relates her family’s migrations from the Arizona desert to the rural mining town of Welch, West Virginia to the urban mecca New York City. She relates her father Rex’s brilliance and passion for life, for learning, for dreaming, for alcohol… She relates her mother’s passion for painting. And she relates the creative machinations she and her siblings (and, on a good day, sometimes her mother) derive to ensure the family’s little income gets spent on groceries instead of alcohol.

The book spans a wide period, from Jeannette’s earliest memories to her adult life. At the age of three, Jeannette burns herself badly while boiling hot dogs by herself. She calmly rationalizes the incident to an incredulous hospital staff:

“It was easy…You just put the hot dogs in the water and boil them. It wasn’t like there was some complicated recipe that you had to be old enough to follow.”

Even at three, Jeannette affirms her self-sufficiency, her strong will to survive, and her defense of her parents despite their questionable actions. These trends continue as she grows from a resilient child into a resilient woman. Interspersed with the nuclear family issues are the stories of abuse and trauma outside the home–caused by bullies, other relatives, poverty in general.

Years pass as the Walls family waits for Rex to place his family before alcohol and to build the Glass Castle he has promised them. They have all seen the masterful architectural plans that he has drawn up. When the family settles in West Virginia, Jeannette and the other kids further display their faith in their father by digging a hole to serve as the foundation for the castle.

Over time, instead of becoming a foundation for the Glass Castle, the hole becomes the Walls family’s private landfill in lieu of paying money for municipal garbage removal. And over time, the family’s faith in Rex similarly gets trashed. By the day Jeannette embarks for New York, she admits to herself and to her father that she doesn’t believe he’ll ever build The Glass Castle. She can no longer answer “No” with any conviction to Rex’s repeated question, “Have I ever let you down?”

The Walls children find that life in New York is not without its challenges (particularly after Rex and Rose Mary follow them there and embark upon a life of chronic peripateticism and periodic homelessness, conditions which their children work to mitigate normally to no avail). Yet, through it all, they stick together even as they continue to develop as individuals.

The Glass Castle is a striking memoir of human imperfection, human strength, and familial bonds. Page-by-page Jeannette Walls paints a picture of a flawed family whose love for each other somehow remains true. For her memoir’s masterful blend of individuality and community, of love and disgust, of despair and hope, of fallibility and perseverance, The Glass Castle has deservedly won an Alex Award and more than a few admiring readers (of which I am one).

If you’re looking for other memoirs that look deep into individual and family identity, a few suggestions include: Debra Marquart’s The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir, Francine du Plessix Gray’s Them: A Memoir of Parents, Julia Scheeres’ Jesus Land: A Memoir, J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith’s Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club: A Memoir, Nicole Lea Helget’s The Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir, and Rick Bragg’s All over but the Shoutin’.

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Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (2007)

“I will be honest with you. I have no wisdom, none at all. The truest thing I can tell you is that whatever we have between us is all we’ve got. Oh, and of course Mr. Dickens.”

So begins Mr. Watts (Pop Eye) in his not-so confidence-instilling speech to the children at the inception of his informal, short-lived teaching career. Showing he does actually possess wisdom to some degree, Mr. Watts also tells the children “I want this to be a place of light…No matter what happens.” Mr. Watts is the sole remaining white man on the island of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea throughout the dark times of the 1990s civil war.

In Mister Pip, Matilda narrates her story of going to school and learning about life and literature even as death and violence circles her village. As Matilda notes, school with Mr. Watts is different. “This was school, but not how I remembered it. Perhaps that’s why everything felt strange, as if we were trying to squeeze into an old life that didn’t exist anymore, at least not in the way we remembered.” Through Mr. Watts’ teaching methods, the children learn to navigate the new circumstances of their lives. A large piece of Mr. Watts teaching centers around helping the children discover new and personal connections with Mr. Dickens’ Great Expectations from which Mr. Watts reads one chapter every day.

To supplement Great Expectations and the other gaps in Mr. Watt’s knowledge (what is chemistry the study of again?), he invites the children’s parents into the classroom so that they can share their own particular knowledge. Out of these occasions the children come away with new insight into topics such as the color blue, faith, the devil, octopus slaughtering and turtle cooking techniques, sex, and weather forecasting (”Trust crabs above all others”). But it is the reading of Great Expectations that provides the classroom anchor and the daily haven even as the village is surrounded by both government and rebel troops.

As Pip and his story become more important and intertwined with the children’s stories, the parents become increasingly uneasy. Matilda’s mother, Dolores, in particular, feels that Great Expectations has no relevance to the children’s lives. For Dolores, her Bible is the only worthy book: “Faith is like oxygen. It keeps you afloat at all times,” and she worries that her daughter’s interest in Pip may lead her to disregard her ancestry and the teachings of the Good Book. Dolores begins to see Mr. Watts as her enemy and rival.

All of this unrest over Great Expectations leads to the only copy of the book disappearing, but by that time, the children know the story so well that they re-create Pip’s story from their memories and their imaginations. Mr. Watts teaches the children that they each have a unique voice and he encourages them to use it, “Your special gift that no one can ever take from you.”

Dolores’ insecurities about the book and about Matilda’s connections to it lead her to tell Matilda to record her ancestors’ names on the beach. Dolores hopes that this action will force Matilda to remember and revere her ancestors like she remembers the book. But Matilda feels more connected to Pip, and she ends up with “Pip” inscribed into the sand on the beach. When the redskins (government soldiers) see “Pip” written in the sand and when they keep hearing his name, they decide that Pip must be a rebel spy. They demand that he turn himself in.

The redskins issue ultimatums to the villagers that they procure Pip or else. Without the book and without a Pip to bring forth, Mr. Watts declares himself to be Pip, and he begins a multi-evening storytelling event in which the tale he tells is partly Pip’s, partly the islanders’, and partly his own as soldiers and villagers alike listen on. All do not live happily ever after, however, as this is war and the redskins and the rebels trust no one and treat others’ with wartime brutality.

Mister Pip stands as a profound post-colonial work commenting on story construction and the power of story, the atrocities of war, and the vicissitudes of human morality. Mister Pip has been recognized as such, making the short list for the Man Booker Prize and winning the Commonwealth Prize and the Alex Award (click here for more Alex Award Winners: adult books with special appeal for young adults).

Takeaway Quotes:

“A gentleman is a man who never forgets his manners, no matter the situation. No matter how awful, or how difficult the situation…A gentleman will always do the right thing.”

“…to be human is to be moral, and you cannot have a day off when it suits”

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A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007)

*some spoilers follow

Nana said, “Learn this and learn it well, my daughter: Like a compass needle that points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman. Always. You remember that, Mariam.”

In his first novel following the success of the The Kite Runner, Hosseini once again brings readers into Afghanistan. Whereas The Kite Runner focuses on telling the story of boys and men, A Thousand Splendid Suns portrays the lives of two Afghan women. Hosseini relates Miriam and Lila’s stories as women in Afghanistan during a time when their country devalued and disrespected women’s rights and provided them with restricted power of choice in the events of their own lives.

“Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami…Mariam did surmise, by the way Nana said the word, that it was an ugly, loathsome thing to be a harami, like an insect, like the scurrying cockroaches Nana was always cursing and sweeping out of the kolba.” Mariam’s classification as a harami positions her to be rejected by respectable members of Afghan society. Accordingly, following Nana’s death, Miriam has little choice but to accept the marriage proposal of Rasheed, a man who turns out to value his wives only for what they can give him–progeny. When it turns out that Miriam cannot, in fact, give him this desire, he turns the full force of his cruelty and abuse upon her.

The parallel story is that of Laila whose circumstances also conspire to force her into marriage with Rasheed–Laila’s parents have been killed, and she is pregnant by a man whom she loves but believes to be dead. Laila marries Rasheed, and, for a time, Laila and Mariam are the bitterest of enemies until they become the best of friends.

The story shifts back and forth between the perspectives of these two women as together they endure in their country perpetual war under different rulers with different level of tolerance of women–Soviets, the mujahideen, the Taliban. Together they endure in their home life perpetual fear, powerlessness, and abuse. Because they are together, they also help each other to hope for a better future for Laila’s children. When Taliq (Laila’s childhood love) returns, the far-off promise of hope draws near to reality.

A Thousand Splendid Suns reveals the lives of two women whose courage, resilience, and love keeps them going and makes them memorable characters; it also shows the interconnections between sacrifice and redemption, situation and choice, and power and powerlessness. For other books that are set in and around Afghanistan try:

Non-fiction:

• Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez
• The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
• The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan by Christina Lamb
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
• Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan by Ann Jones
• Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom by Sulima and Hala and Batya Swift Yasgur

Fiction:

• Measuring Time by Helon Habila
• The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton
• The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
• The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra
• Under the Persimmon Tree by Suzanne Fisher Staples (young adult)

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The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean (2007)

“The transporter room aboard the starship Enterprise is rubbish in comparison with a little child’s imagination.”

Sym’s fourteen now, but she feels the same way about imagination. After her father’s death, her imagination becomes an even more vigorous coping mechanism, and she brings to life in her mind her deceased Antarctic explorer hero, Captain Titus Oates (Wikipedia entry: Captain Lawrence “Titus” Oates).

When Sym tells her classmates that she’s happy imagining, they label her the mad girl–sad, frigid, and mad. Her response: “So that’s when I sealed myself inside. Laced up the tent, so to speak. Filled the locks with water so that they would freeze. That’s when Titus and I looked at each other and decided we could do without them, as long as we had each other”.

Sym’s got Titus for support but she’s also got her Uncle Victor and her mom. Her Uncle Victor is the one who got Sym hooked on all things Antarctic. When he surprises her with an Antarctic expedition (unbeknownst to her mother), she’s thrilled…at first.

From there, the plot darkens–survival is a constant battle and love and trust are concepts that were left behind in civilization. As Sym puts it, “I felt wiser now. Though sometimes a dose of enlightenment tastes a lot like swallowing bleach.” Sym receives many such doses of enlightenment from the moment she begins traveling with her Uncle, each dose hitting her viscerally and leaving her reeling and feeling utterly alone on the Ice Shelf. The fact that she continues to put one foot in front of the other as the mysteries of her life unravel and lay bear disturbing truths shows admirable strength of character.

The White Darkness stands out as a young adult novel that’s lyrically and inventively written and that crosses multiple genres–adventure, survival, thriller, mystery, psychological fiction, and coming of age. The setting has a prominent role as much of the novel’s action springboards off the physical circumstances. Sym’s internal journey and struggles parallel nicely with the external perils.

It’s a gripping story that includes some historical (mainly about former expeditions to the South Pole) and factual detail (did you know that penguins stink?) along the way. McCaughrean’s remarkable story was recently recognized as such when it won the 2008 Michael L. Printz Award.

Quote to ponder:

“It’s true: Everyone needs a reason to stay alive–someone who justifies your existence. Someone who loves you. Not beyond all reason. Just loves you. Even just shows an interest. Even someone who doesn’t exist, or isn’t yours. No, no! They don’t even have to love you! They just have to be there to love! Target for your arrows. Magnetic Pole to drag on your compass needle and stop it spinning and spinning and tell you where you’re heading and…someone to soak up all the yearning. That’s what I think. That’s what I deduce.”

For readers who enjoy survival stories a few other books to try include the following:

Nonfiction:

• The Coldest March: Scott’s Fatal Antarctic Expedition by Susan Solomon
• The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander
• Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer
• Left for Dead: A Young Man’s Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis by Pete Nelson
• Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales; Fire Fighters: Stories of Survival from the Front Lines of Firefighting by Clint Willis
• In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
• Survive: Stories of Castaways and Cannibals by Nate Hardcastle (includes fiction and non-fiction)

Fiction:

• Blizzard’s Wake by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
• Overboard by Elizabeth Fama
• Storm Catchers by Tim Bowler
• My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Alden Carter
• The Shark Callers by Eric Campbell
• A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer
• Wild Man Island by Will Hobbs (and other works by Hobbs)
• The Wreckers by Iain Lawrence (and other works by Lawrence)
• Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen
• Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden
• Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen (and other works by Paulsen)
• Holes by Louis Sachar
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (post-apocalyptic adult fiction)

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Before I begin this review, my congratulations go out to all of the authors of the ALA Award and Honor books for this year. Since Elijah of Buxton won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical fiction, the Coretta Scott King author award, and a Newbery Honor I thought it an apt title to review for the day. So here goes…

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis (2007)

Elijah of Buxton is a fortunate child–fortunate to have been the first child born into the town of Buxton, Canada, a community of free blacks and escaped slaves founded by Presbyterian minister Reverend William King. He’s fortunate, but he’s also fragile and prone to gullibility and mischief. Elijah of Buxton relates Elijah life as he catches fish, throws rocks, plays tricks, learns a trade, and makes mistakes and rectifies them as best he can.

Along with these episodic adventures, Curtis includes a culminating adventure in which an unethical “Preacher” steals money from Mr. Leroy, a man whom Elijah works for and respects. Mr. Leroy has been saving to buy his family out of captivity in the South, and the Preacher’s theft drives him to desperate measures–measures which entail taking Elijah to America to catch the Preacher and to recapture the money. It is this final adventure that makes slavery real for Elijah such that he recognizes its horrors and comes to truly appreciate his freedom. “Fragile” Elijah grows up–recognizing that he can be sensitive and empathetic while also remaining courageous, steadfast, and true.

In Elijah of Buxton, Christopher Paul Curtis has once again brought history to life by creating a winning protagonist and a compelling story (see The Watsons Go to Birmingham or Bud, not Buddy for more of his historical fiction). He portrays the injustices and cruelties of the period in sensitive and age-appropriate ways. For example, he uses Elijah’s narration to show such scenarios as how escaped slaves who are used to fleeing and hiding must be cautiously approached and how one escaped slave was caught and tortured to death in his attempt to join his family in Buxton. Curtis also realistically portrays the grief experienced by the family and community upon hearing the news of the death.

At the same time, Curtis highlights the strength of spirit of both the enslaved and the free and escaped slaves. Elijah of Buxton does include a significant portion of dialect which might cause struggling readers to stumble over some of the content, but overall, Elijah’s story is an important story and an award-worthy addition to historical fiction.

Takeaway quote (and sampling of the dialect):

Mr. Leroy tells Elijah, “Fish eating’s like anything else in life, Elijah. If you go at it ’specting something bad to happen, all you gunn do is draw that bad thing to you. You caint be timid ’bout nothing you do, you got to go at it like you ’specting good things to come out of it. If I’s to worry ’bout bones choking me, it’d happen every time I et fish. Ain’t nothing further from my mind.”

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In preparation for ALA awards announcement on January 14th (including but by no means limited to the Newbery and the Caldecott), I’ve linked to a few of my fellow kidlitosphere bloggers predictions as to the winners:

100 Scope Notes: Newbery/Caldecott Placement Predictions

Children’s Literature Book Club: Newbery Buzz

A Fuse #8 Production: Newbery & Caldecott 2008: Predict-o-rama

Look Books: Newbery Predictions and Recollections

Mother Reader: ALA, Newbery, Caldecott

Wizards Wireless: Why Hugo Cabret is Going to Break my Heart and Predicting the Winners

The Kiddosphere @ Fauqiuer has an informative post A New Year and a New Newbery on the awards process that also includes a compilation of links to groups that are hosting Mock Newbery Awards (for example, see the ACPL Mock Newbery Results and Anderson’s Bookshop Candidates). The Kiddosphere @ Fauquier also has its own Newbery prediction in the post New Newbery Favorite.

As for my own predictions, I’ll just throw out a few of my favorites for the Newbery: A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban, No Talking by Andrew Clements, and The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. These books seem to fit well with the ALA defined criteria for the award.

But the awards go beyond the Newbery and the Caldecott. The following award information is from the press release about the live webcast offered by ALA regarding the awards. Awards to be announced on January 14th include:

• Alex Awards: for the best adult books that appeal to a teen audience
• Andrew Carnegie Medal: for excellence in children’s video
• Coretta Scott King Book Award: recognizing an African American author and illustrator of books for children and young adults that reflect the best in artistic and literary expression of the Black experience in a pluralistic society
• John Newbery Medal: for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature
• Margaret A. Edwards Award: for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award: recognizing an author, critic, librarian, historian, or teacher of children’s literature, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site
• Michael L. Printz Award: for excellence in literature written for young adults
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award: for an outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language in a foreign country and subsequently published in English in the United States
• Odyssey Award: for excellence in audiobook production for youth
• Pura Belpré Award: recognizing a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth
• Randolph Caldecott Medal: for the most distinguished American picture book for children
• Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award: for most distinguished informational book for children
• Schneider Family Book Award for books: that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience
• Theodor Seuss Geisel Award: for the most distinguished book for beginning readers

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Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (hardcover 2006, softcover 2007)

Suite Francaise requires slow and careful reading in order to appreciate its scope, its historical significance, and its range of human characters and emotions. Suite Française—comprising the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—succeeds as a piece of literature that probes the heights and depths of human nature.

Suite Francaise’s first part, ‘Storm in June,’ details the characters’ hasty departure from Paris in the summer of 1940. The second part, ‘Dolce,’ details life in a German occupied French village. In each of these parts, Nemirovsky weaves together multiple stories seamlessly so that readers recognize that while the experience of war does look different depending on one’s angle–whether it be victor or vanquished–war has long-lasting, deleterious effects on all who come within its inexorable reach.

Characters from Part 1 (such as the family Pericands, writer Gabriel Corte, gas-thief Charles Langelet, the bank employee Michauds) and from Part 2 (such as Lucile Angellier and her mother-in-law, their live-in German commander Bruno von Falk, and Benoît and Madeleine Sabarie) each have his or her moral fiber tested to the breaking point (and, in many cases, broken) by the war.

In both parts, Nemirovsky juxtaposes extraordinary scenic beauty and human cruelty. She shows the raw and ranging emotion experienced by all individuals touched by the war–fear and resignation, contempt and compassion, narcissism and selflessness, revenge and forgiveness, hate and love. Suite Francaise’s poignancy and tragedy is augmented by its author’s fate; in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. Irene Nemirovsky died a month later at the age of thirty-nine leaving the world with only story fragments and plot outlines of the remaining three pieces of her masterpiece.

For more works by Nemirovsky, 2007 saw the publishing of Fire in the Blood a posthumously published work that also speaks to village life in France (albeit pre-war this time) as well as to the human condition.

As a side note, IMDB lists Suite Francaise as possibly being a future 2009 movie. There’s really no information available at the link, but I thought I’d point it out as something to be watching for anyway.

As a second side note, I am a big fan of Metacritic as a source of media reviews (and as a source for my own what do I read, view, listen to next). You will find that Suite Francaise tops the list of all-time highest book reviews scores with 95 out of 100. An incredible score for an incredible, significant work.

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The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci (hardcover 2000, softcover 2001)

Torey Adams: “When perfect lives come crashing down, some people say they come down with a vengeance. The more perfect the life, the more complete the destruction…I seem to remember the theory that we’re all dealt fifty-two cards by the end of our lives. If you get all aces in the beginning, you have a greater chance of getting your twos and threes in rapid succession later…For sixteen years I had a perfect life. I got my share of twos or three in the weeks following the corpse.”

Torey Adams is on the list–the list of guys with perfect lives according to Christopher Creed’s enigmatic suicide/disappearance letter. Torey narrates the novel as he recounts the events following Christopher Creed’s disappearance. Christopher’s disappearance, the disappearance of a kids that had previously only received attention when he was being picked on or beaten up, has gripped the attention of the entire town of Steepleton, New Jersey.

Torey is puzzled by Christopher’s perception that he’s one of the guys with a perfect life. Before Christopher’s disappearance, Torey accepted without question the division between the affluent “in” kids and the outsider “boons” (so named for their residence in the boondocks). After Christopher’s disappearance, Torey begins to question the labels that kids stick on other kids (in this book, the main labels under consideration are boon and slut). As Torey tries to understand life through Christopher’s eyes, he begins to see Steepleton’s (and his own) hypocrisy, injustice, arrogance, and heartlessness toward those on the outside of “cool”.

In his quest for understanding and self-pardon, Torey forms an unlikely friendship with Bo “boon” Richardson and Ali “slut” McDermott. Each for his or her own reasons, together they delve into Christopher’s disappearance. The trio are caught in their attempt to retrieve Christopher’s diary from his room, and their investigation ends up having repercussions for the entire town. Steepleton’s secrets, scandals, and mysteries of the past are brought out into the open

Basically, Plum-Ucci is plumbing the depths of teen angst and arrogance, superficial behavior, insidious social cliques, and personal responsibility. Christopher’s disappearance brings Steepleton to its knees and makes it clear that words and actions have consequences. She also includes ideas about withholding judgment of others. Christopher’s harshest critics and abusers would not have been so quick to do him harm if they had first stopped to take a long, hard look at themselves.

This book reminds me quite a bit of Gail Giles’ What Happened to Cass McBride? in the whole “be careful what you say and do for it impacts those around you and may come back to haunt you” sort of way. The Body of Christopher Creed is by no means light reading, and it is recommended by its publishers (and by Publisher’s Weekly) for young adults 12+ (Note: I appended this sentence on December 01 as Renay from the-book-ninja.org pointed out my wording was poor, thanks Renay).

While the book may engender some challenges (discussion and/or action related to suicide, sex, and violence are all included in the book), the overall message is an important one for young people (and all people) to understand–treat others with the respect they deserve as fellow human beings.

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The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (hardcover 2006, softcover 2007)

Mythology, storytelling, books in general—these topics are paramount in the lives of the characters of The Thirteenth Tale. “All children mythologize their birth” begins the prologue of Vida Winter’s collection of tales Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation, a collection from which the thirteenth tale is inexplicably missing.

When young reclusive, literature lover and biographer Margaret Lea meets older, master storyteller Vida Winter, the secrets of the thirteenth tale that have lived buried in the past for so long are inexorably brought to bear on the present. Both women have secrets and both women are longing for a chance to share those secrets. Their outlet comes in the eccentric relationship that develops between them; in this relationship, they find empathy and understanding as they share their secrets with each other and, in so doing, set the truth free.

Margaret agrees to become Vida’s biographer, if and only if, Vida tell her the truth. Vida, a consummate storyteller has given myriad versions of her life to many other news seekers. However, this time Vida agrees that she will relate only truth. As Vida begins telling her story, the past and the present begin to coalesce. This story-within-a-story gothic tale lays bear truths of familial bonds, of destructive relationships, of loves and of losses that, in the end, cannot stamp out the strength of the human spirit.

The Thirteenth Tale delves deep into the past as it draws upon gothic constructs to revive the past—beginning with the strangeness encompassing the Angelfield family—from the sadistic and masochistic proclivities of siblings Charlie and Isabelle passing forward onto Isabelle’s equally unstable twins Adeline and Emmeline. To add to the gothic ambience, Setterfield throws in ghosts, orphans, mental illness, lunatic asylums, destroyed gardens, a downtrodden estate, a wily governess, a wise but aging housekeeper and gardener, and a fatal fire with cataclysmic consequences.

Margaret’s meticulous research and relentless observation imbues a sense of reality and forthcoming answers into the mysterious plot. Setterfield’s novel has a touch of Jane Eyre-like creepiness and insanity smattered with a sprinkling of Rebecca-like mystery.

Words, both true and untrue, are shown to have powerful and lasting effects on life. Setterfield’s masterfully layered novel requires careful attention in order to understand the truths about human nature and the continuing relevance of the past to the present that she buries within The Thirteenth Tale.

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A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: a Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz

In general, it’s a part of being human to go to great lengths to be loved and accepted. How far would you go? For Maud Flynn, the question of how much to compromise herself in order to be loved becomes extremely pertinent after she is adopted by the Hawthorne sisters.
It’s 1909, and high-spirited Maud has lived at the overcrowded, prison-like Barbary Asylum for Female Orphans for many years. It’s little wonder that she jumps at the opportunity to be adopted. She is sure her adoption will mean freedom from the persecution and isolation imposed on her by the superintendent of the Barbary Asylum. Unexpectedly, Maud enters a new and different sort of prison–a sort of spiritual and mental entrapment–from which she will have to use all of her character and willpower to escape without forgetting who she is.

Even as Maud trades in her daily gruel for toast and bacon, her grubby asylum uniform for multiple beautiful dresses, and the smelly outhouse for the wonders of indoor plumbing, she begins to suspect that there is more to her new life than its surface perfection. After all, it is a bit suspicious that her new caretakers don’t want anyone to know of her existence and, thus, make her remain upstairs for many hours each day (on the positive side, she does get a large portion of reading done, including reading Little Lord Fauntleroy multiple times).

Maud’s caretakers, the three Hawthorne sisters (aka spinsters), have chosen a somewhat unconventional (and somewhat unethical and illegal) means of sustaining themselves in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. They are false spiritualists who hold séances to trick the relatives of the dead out of money. Maud is faced with the realization that they did not adopt her out of the goodness of their hearts; instead, they adopted her because they needed her to take part in the séances.

Out of Hyacinth, Victoria, and Judith Hawthorne, Maud particularly longs for the love of Hyacinth. Hyacinth, capable only of self-love, uses Maud’s hunger for love and drags Maud further into the treachery and trickery of the seances.

To enter into Schlitz’s tale is to enter into a story of secrets and séances, of humans passed on and humans left behind, of self-love and selfless love. Multiple séances are held throughout the story, a necessity given the plot, but worth mentioning as a source of potential objection to the tale. Really, though, the paranormal elements provide the foundation for the novel’s probing questions that each of us must come to terms with–life, death, life after death, life after loss.

Given Hyacinth’s hold over Maud, it seems impossible that a happy ending will prevail for anyone in this Gothic paranormal tale. Yet, even as Maud begins to play out her role in the séances, she becomes increasingly unsettled about the repercussions of her actions on others, particularly as she begins developing relationships outside the Hawthorne sisters. In particular, Maud’s relationship with the deaf servant Muffet is poignant and plausibe. Maud desperately needs Muffet’s steadfast love–a love without performance conditions–in order to break free of Hyacinth’s conditional love. Hyacinth tries to convince Maud that they are doing relatives a service through their false spiritualism and seances, but Maud comes to see the false hopes that it sets up for the living relatives and the devastating effects the trickery has on those relatives.

Hyacinth soon learns that she picked the wrong orphan to pick on. Maud’s fighting spirit is present from the beginning (as the novel opens, Maud has been incarcerated in the outhouse (again), and she is singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic). Despite Maud’s being cowed into submission for a time by the fear of Hyacinth’s withdrawal of approval, her resilient spirit and sense of right and wrong come to the fore in the novel’s climax.

Schlitz’ fast-paced novel has depth, raising questions without providing answers about personal responsibility, morality, and eternity. A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: A Melodrama, Schlitz’ first novel, won the Cybil Award for Middle Grade Fiction in 2006.

Read alike: How it Happened on Peach Hill by Marthe Jocelyn

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