Mini reviews - Mosquitoland by David Arnold, Reader's Digest War Stories, and Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Mini review time! All of these books are from my personal library. 

Mosquitoland by David Arnold is a YA book about a teenage girl named Mim Malone. Mim's parents recently divorced and she has moved to Mississippi (the "Mosquitoland" of the title — accurate, by the way) with her father and stepmother. When she finds out her mother is sick, she decides to take a road trip to Ohio. Nobody is saying anything about her mother so she doesn't know how bad her mom's illness might be. 

Along the way, Mim meets some quirky people, has a lot of unexpected experiences, and discovers a few things about herself. 

Recommended but not a favorite - I had mixed feelings about Mosquitoland but liked it enough to recommend it. It's well plotted (a lot happens) but there were two things that kept it from being a favorite. One is that one of the things Mim sets out to do is resolved but you don't know the full details. That felt like a cop-out to me. The other is that the voice was a little weird and I am frankly tired of super smart young fictional characters. Much of what Mim had to say seemed like it was well beyond her years. She's clearly above average and that just annoyed me. So, that was just a personal issue. 

What I particularly loved was the makeshift family trope. On her journey, Mim picks up a friend here, a friend there and they all bond. I did have a little trouble with the Mississippi portion as it sure seemed like the author knew nothing at all about Mississippi beyond the fact that it's hot, humid, and buggy. But, Mississippi itself was somewhat unimportant to the storyline; I liked the fact that I never, ever knew what was going to happen next; and, I warmed up to the strangeness and humor, the farther I got into Mosquitoland. 

Reader's Digest War Stories is a collection of stories from the Reader's Digest magazine. When I bought the book, I was actually looking for a collection of "Drama in Real Life" stories because it was a "Drama in Real Life" set in London during the Blitz (which I read when I was around 10 years old) that began my interest in WWII. I couldn't find anything like that so I bought the war stories, instead. 

Beginning with stories published in 1956, the book contains personal accounts of war experiences, some historical accounts told by writers, "Humor in Uniform" funnies, and a very nice article about the Churchill War Rooms. I had three particular favorites. One was about a man who fell 18,000 feet from an airplane without a parachute, survived, and had to convince his German captors that he was telling the truth about having fallen from a plane. Another was about a woman who worked for the French Resistance in both world wars. And, the third was "This Secret Place," about the War Rooms. We've visited the Churchill War Rooms but there were two general items of interest to me in this particular article. One is that the war rooms could only be visited by appointment at the time, as there was not yet a museum. The other was the fact that you can only learn so much during a museum visit. I found the article filled out a few cracks in my knowledge and, having been there, it was easy to visualize the rooms mentioned as I'd seen them. 

Highly recommended - The paper Reader's Digest War Stories is printed on is cheap and my copy has already yellowed, even though it was just published in 2012. And, unfortunately, I didn't realize one of the pages in my secondhand copy had a big chunk missing. Wish I'd known that when I bought it so I could have complained to the seller for not being totally honest about its condition. But, I found the war stories captivating, often terrifying, and I'm very glad I came across it. 

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro is the third book I've read by Ishiguro. A set of five interconnected stories with music as one of their connecting themes, I read it as part of my challenge to read anthologies and collections of short stories in 2021. 

I don't have much to say about Nocturnes, to be honest. The first two stories were very, very odd and I thought I was going to absolutely hate the book, initially. But, I did like the last three. They just weren't brilliant or moving or wise in the way you hope a short story will be. Still, I liked the clarity of Ishiguro's writing style enough to keep going. 

Meh - I gave this one an average rating. The stories are strange and generally disappointing but I don't regret reading Nocturnes. However, it fits the pattern. The only book I've loved by Ishiguro is The Remains of the Day. There are two that I've tried to get into several times but found boring. A Pale View of Hills was confusing (I didn't get the imagery) and then upsetting because it contained a senseless killing of kittens. I will never, ever love a book that contains animal abuse of any kind. But, I love The Remains of the Day so much that I will undoubtedly keep trying to find another Ishiguro that I love. This one was just average. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders

I have made it a goal to read everything George Saunders has ever written and in another step toward that goal I read CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, recently. I'm a little behind on my reviews, here, but even as I closed it I was aware that this one would be a difficult book to review. I'll do my best.

Published in 1996, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline was George Saunders' first published collection and includes 6 short stories along with a single novella. I had no idea it was a "cherished cult classic" when I bought it but I can see why it is. In reading it well out of publishing order, it's easy to see that Saunders' unique blend of humor, bizarre situations, violence, and fun taking immense jabs at the ridiculousness of life (especially employers) was on full display. 

In this case, most of the stories take place in a kind of amusement park/living history museum, each yet another strange, ridiculous situation with different narrators. 

When I described the title story to my husband, I realized just how incredibly difficult it is to pin down what makes a George Saunders story so special. In "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline" an employee describes his frustrations with his job and the problem they're having with roving gangs that are entering the park and causing havoc by breaking things, painting graffiti, etc. As a response to recent gang damage, the boss decides to send a single security guard to watch for the gang members and scare them off but the gang shows up and makes a fool of him. A new employee, however, has the killer instinct and the boss is convinced that he'll be able to do the job. He does a lot more than just frightening off gang members, though, as the new security guard is pretty much an out-of-control psychotic and starts killing people. And, they're not always the bad guys. 

So, I tried to describe that and realized that what I didn't manage to portray at all was George Saunders' sense of humor. There's just something about his unique turn of phrase and how he sets up each situation that combines to make his stories funny and awful and real at the same time. They are fabulous. 

My edition, shown above, is a 2012 printing with a note from the author that is every bit as interesting as the stories themselves. He talks about being a young engineer, sneaking in writing time at work and trying to find his own style through various phases of imitation (James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway) while living through the salad days with his wife and two children. It's immensely moving and actually brought tears to my eyes as he talked about his overwhelming love for his family and how he looks back on those days when he had very little materially but was rich in love. Oh, my goodness, it was just beautiful! Of course, he also talks about how he finally discovered his true writing style and it's also lovely – about how he'd been trying so hard to be a serious writer and when he wrote something that made his wife laugh he realized that it was actually OK to let his sense of humor run free.  

Highly recommended - This particular set of stories requires a bit of a strong stomach for violence, which I don't actually have, and yet I loved them. I think the fact that the bloody and sometimes disgusting scenes are couched in the midst of humor makes them not just bearable but tremendously entertaining. They're twisted and dark and hilarious and gross and bizarre and wacky and so, so good. 

I'm looking for someone to introduce me to George Saunders so I can call him a "friend" and buy his new release. Not happening, so far. I guess I'll have to wait till 2022 to get a copy, unless I can nudge my husband into submission. I have dropped the hint that I'd like an autographed copy from the local indie so many times it's getting ridiculous. 

©2021 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

400 Minutes of Danger by Jack Heath

• Nika is halfway up the face of a glacier when she realizes it's melting from the inside and there's only a sheer face of ice that will fail soon, inundating the village in which her parents work for Doctors Without Borders. But, she's too far away. Can she find a way to save the village from catastrophe?
• While on a field trip in a national park, Charith spots a man creeping around with a gun. He tells his teacher and they hastily board the bus but the man gets ahead of them and plants a bomb in the road, severing their brake line and sending them careening down the mountain with a kid at the wheel. 
• Nancy is standing on the deck of a cruise ship when an island that shouldn't exist materializes out of the mist. Spotted by the people on shore, they are pursued and hit with missiles. But, Nancy left her dog in her cabin. Can she get down to the lower deck to save her dog without going down with the sinking ship? 

These are just a few of the short stories in 400 Minutes of Danger by Jack Heath, a middle grade book that is so tense and action-packed that I would not advise limiting it to a middle grade audience. Each story plunks the reader right at the beginning of a terrifying, taut situation in which the main character has a limited amount of time to figure out how to save someone, complete a dangerous job, or just survive. 

Highly recommended - Whether you have an action-loving child, one who doesn't love reading that you're trying to tempt, or just need a book that's great for breaking a reading slump, 400 Minutes of Danger is a perfect, fast-paced and lively, often outlandish, read. It took a while for me to realize that the stories in 400 Minutes of Danger are interconnected, as the author slowly drops clues and then nicely gathers those clues and explains them in the final story. I appreciated the way he wrapped things up but I would have also been perfectly happy if the stories had no connection because they're so entertaining. 400 Minutes of Danger is a wild ride not to be missed. 

My thanks to Sterling Children's books for the review copy! 

I have one more Jack Heath book for review and I would have been perfectly thrilled if Sterling had sent me everything he's ever written. I'll keep my copy of 400 Minutes of Danger for when I'm in a reading slump as this kind of fast-paced adventure is exactly what I need sometimes to break the spell. And, I'll be reading the next Jack Heath book, soon! 

©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

Twofers: The Scatter Here is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer and In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

Twofers = Two for the price of one, aka two mini reviews. 

The Scatter Here is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer
Copyright 2014
Harper (short stories)
Source: HarperCollins 

I'm jumping the gun a bit, here, as The Scatter Here is Too Great doesn't release till mid-August. But, I want to write about it while it's still fresh in my mind.  I took The Scatter Here, etc. with me to New Jersey because it's a book of short stories and I've found that when traveling short stories can be excellent for those stop-and-go moments when you can't sit still long enough to read an entire novel. As it turned out, I had tons of reading time on vacation. My granddog and I had a terrific time reading together.

The stories in The Scatter Here is Too Great are all set in Karachi, Pakistan and they're centered around a deadly bomb blast.  The author tells the same story from a number of completely different perspectives. And, in some ways they are interconnected -- the father of a character whose story you've read early in the book may appear later, telling his own version of the events, for example.

Unfortunately, I found that the biggest problem I had with The Scatter Here is Too Great was in trying to figure out how the characters were connected. I enjoyed the stories, found the setting fascinating, liked the way Karachi was -- yes, I've read the claim that saying so has become a cliché -- a character in and of itself. I did think the setting had a life of its own, so I don't mind sounding a bit cliché. Once I realized that I was trying too hard to figure out those connections, I enjoyed the reading a lot more. In the end, though, because I wasted so much time trying to figure things out instead of just immersing myself in the stories, the book ended up being an average read. 

Recommended but not a favorite - Solid writing, vivid setting but I think the book would have had more impact without any character crossover, which I found bogged down the reading for me. 

In the Sea There Are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda
Copyright 2010
Doubleday (retelling of a true story)
Source: Sent by friend

In the Sea There Are Crocodiles is the retelling of a child's escape (at the age of 10) from his dangerous home country. Even though the story doesn't take place anywhere near the North American continent, given the current immigration crisis along our American/Mexican border, I consider it relevant because of the similarities. A child in danger is taken from Afghanistan to Iran by his mother with the help of a a friend involved in human trafficking. At a mere 10 years of age, he must figure out how to survive and then keep moving from one country to another, seeking a better life until finally he reaches asylum in Italy.

The story of Enaiatollah Akbari is told by an Italian novelist who tried to write the book as it was told to him. Although he admits that the details cannot possibly be perfect because Enaiatollah was young and reconstructing memories will always contain imperfect elements, it doesn't matter. The story has a tremendous impact because it allows the reader to view the unforgiving life of a refugee child as he is abandoned by a mother who loves him too much to even say "goodbye" then moves from job to job and country to country, from Iran to Turkey to Greece then finally Italy. Occasionally beaten, stolen from and "repatriated" to a homeland where he faces almost certain death, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles gives you an idea what it's like to be a child refugee dealing with human traffickers and people who aren't interested in giving a child asylum. 

In the Sea There Are Crocodiles has been translated from Italian to English (translator: Howard Curtis) and I think the translation is done well. There was never a point that I felt like I didn't understand what a particular sentence meant. It's told simplistically but it's a harsh story and not all books are told with lyrical beauty. I disagree with a reviewer who believes the book should be labeled YA merely because of its simple language. One must remember that it was told by a man whose first language is not Italian, written down as close as possible to the way it was related and then translated. Simplistic or not, it's a story whose horrors make it a very adult read. There are humorous and touching moments in addition to hardship, which helps keep the book from being an exhausting downer.

Highly recommended - Especially relevant to Americans as our leaders are in the process of deporting refugees from South and Central America. An eye-opening story of what it's like to escape a life of terror, only to face hardship and deportation. I actually cried with relief when Enaia finally found sanctuary in Italy.

©2014 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery  or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald

When It Happens to You: A Novel in Stories by Molly Ringwald
Copyright 2012
Harper It Books - Fiction
237 pp.

His turn as Trigorin in The Seagull had been hailed as "superlative" (according to the college newspaper), matched only by his interpretation of Richard Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross, in which local reviewers found in Peter that intangible fusion of intensity and irresistible insouciance--in short, the elusive charisma that is the golden ticket for any young actor. 

In When It Happens to You, Molly Ringwald explores modern relationships -- love (including that between parent and child), attraction, betrayal, heartbreak and healing in a series of interconnected short stories.

I chose the excerpt above because "that intangible fusion of intensity and irresistible insouciance"struck me as representative of the author's grasp of language.  When It Happens to You is surprisingly well-written.  Apart from a few minor grammatical errors, there was absolutely nothing that jumped out at me as worthy of criticism.  I'd heard early comments to that effect and decided I had to see for myself. I love the way the stories in When It Happens to You are interconnected without always being immediately obvious in their connection.  Ringwald really has a way of dragging readers into her stories, immersing them in characterization and setting and then yanking out the emotional rug without totally removing hope from the equation.

The bottom line:  Highly recommended, no-holds-barred writing (there are R-rated moments).  I'm impressed.

Cover thoughts:  Love the pretty, graphic cover.  It's appealing and strong, very eye-catching in my humble opinion.  I always try to match my bookmarks to the covers of the books that I'm reading and because of that little flash of tomato red wording, "a novel in stories", I used a bookmark with a photo I took of rows of tomatoes.  They looked terrific together and made me think, "Hmm, I need to incorporate teal and tomato red in my decorating, somewhere."  Weird but true.

I'm writing my review of When It Happens to You late on a Saturday night because both sons, my daughter-in-law, my grand-dog and Kiddo's girlfriend are all here.  My daughter-in-law said she'd love to read Molly Ringwald's latest book, so I figured I'd better whip out a review before the book walks out the door.

Meanwhile, we finally have a carved jack-o'-lantern, thanks to Kiddo's girlfriend.  Isn't it cute?

This has been a truly fun weekend.  Fiona has handled the influx of visitors well (including the canine) but poor Isabel has retreated to the closet to have a nervous breakdown.  I considered it a major victory when I peeked into the closet and saw that she's eaten some of the food I set out for her, even if it wasn't much.  She is such a sensitive girl.

From the Haiku book I just purchased, yesterday, and promptly read:

Best to those who are expecting bad weather or bracing for a tsunami.

©2012 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery and Babble or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.