Nobody's Secret

Emily Dickinson, sleuth? It's a concept Michaela MacColl pulls off with surprising effectiveness. In this mystery, teenage Emily Dickinson is years away from housebound spinsterdom (albeit brilliant, poetical housebound spinsterdom.) She's a thoughtful, engaging teenage girl who takes chances, strains against the confines of her respectable upbringing, and finds herself determined to discover the murderer of a young man she meets one day in the meadow, a man who introduces himself as "Nobody." To which, of course, Emily responds, "I'm Nobody too."  The author deftly weaves pieces of Dickinson's poetry into the text of the novel (which is not written in verse), and I found myself turning the pages to see how it all would end. Notes at the back of the book provide a series of interesting details about the real Emily Dickinson and each chapter heading is linked to a line or two of Dickinson poetry. In the pages between, Emily seeks first the identity of Nobody--and there's a great scene when she goes to view his unclaimed body laid out in the local church--then the reason for his untimely demise.

Fast and fun, this book left me thinking of Emily Dickinson as the Victorian Nancy Drew.

Shark Girl

Ever wondered what it would be like to survive a shark attack? Me neither, but I found out when I read Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham. Man, life can be rough after your pleasant day at the beach turns sour and a shark chomps down on your arm. Maybe if you'd stopped to help that woman who dropped her tray, maybe if you'd taken a little longer to get on the road, maybe if you'd done just one small thing differently you wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you were. You don't remember much of the attack (disappointingly for your macabre reader) but the aftermath is endless days in hospital, after waking to the realization that the doctors had to amputate your right arm. And of course, that was your "good" hand. You were an artist and now your dreams have gone up in smoke. Everyone tells you that you should be happy to be alive, but you're bitter. You're bitter and you can't stand the attention and the Pity Bears that strangers send and the letters about what an inspiration you are just give you the creeps. How does life go on once something so horrific has happened to you?

I was glad that this book wasn't one of those plucky, I-shall-survive stories. I thought it was very true to life that our heroine would be bitter and that she'd have realistic difficulty in accepting her altered life. The tale was told in free verse, and mostly it works well. A few of the poems fell flatter than others, but the premise of the story is enough to carry a reader through the instances of less than perfect poetry. One particular poem threatened to send the book over the edge into absurd hilarity, completely unintentional I think, and then the final poem in the book references the same poem. I still can't tell whether the author meant for it to be really weird or not. It involves a letter from a young amputee suggesting that the main character have a funeral for her arm. . . and I'm almost laughing recalling it now. Luckily, the book recovered, as the narrator tries to recover and to adjust to life with a prosthetic arm (which she names Chuck!) This is an unusual premise for a book and one that naturally caught the attention of a ghoulish person like myself. I have to admit that I was curious about just how difficult it would be to go through life with only a left hand, and I decided to try an experiment in which I used only my left hand to type, open drawers, and do all of the other daily activities. I lasted less than five minutes. I'd better stay out of the water.

And Now for Something Completely Different, Part the Second

What better way to honor the great poet, Sylvia Plath, than to write a book about her, all done in poetry? That is just what Stephanie Hemphill set out to accomplish in her new book, Your Own, Sylvia. I am a huge Plath fan, so I try to read anything and everything published about her. Still, I have to admit I was a little nervous about this book. A fictional biography of Sylvia Plath written in poetry is an enormously ambitious undertaking. This kind of homage is great. . . if the poetry’s any good. If the poetry’s awful? Well, then it’s just painfully embarrassing, isn’t it? Yes, I started this book with some trepidation, but I was very quickly swept up in the ficitonalized re-telling of my favorite poet’s tragic life. With a sigh of relief, I realized that not only are the poems not bad, but the majority of them are very good. Your Own, Sylvia was a fast and engrossing read. I found it difficult to set the book down, but just kept turning from one poem to the next to the next until the entire story was told---and of course I already knew how things were going to end. Many different voices tell the tale, with the poems coming from the mouths of people who knew her well, from those who wanted to know her better, and from those who barely got a fleeting glimpse of the powerhouse and streak of passion that was Sylvia Plath. The only voice we don’t get is Sylvia’s. Though Hemphill uses quotes from Sylvia’s poems and journals throughout, she doesn't overstep herself by daring to write a poem from Sylvia Plath’s point of view (with only one exception.) I think this was definitely the right call on the author’s part. The one time she puts words into Sylvia's mouth, it's because she is mimicking a particular Plath poem that was written in first person. It bugged me a little, but not too much because it was well done.

This is a great book for a Plath fan. It’s based on the reality of her life, but at heart it's a fictional undertaking. Hemphill has obviously read a quite a bit about Sylvia Plath and she has managed to turn her research into art and really give a strong sense of who Sylvia was. I only have two quibbles with the book:

1) Hemphill concentrates way too much on Sylvia's anger toward Ted Hughes and not enough on the fact that Sylvia loved him and found him essential, even in the midst of her anger over Ted's betrayal. (For heaven's sake, go read Her Husband: Ted and Sylvia: A Marriage, and stop relying so much on Rough Magic!)

and 2) the footnotes after each poem, although interesting, rather aggravated me. They interrupted the flow of the poems. I knew most of the information contained within them but I found I couldn't just ignore them. They were right there, hovering at the end of each poem! I would have much preferred to get all the footnotes at the end of the book. However, I realize that most other people on earth don't obsessively buy Sylvia Plath books, compare and contrast them, and retain an encyclopedic knowledge of all things SP. So, these footnotes are probably necessary for a Plath newbie. I wonder, though, how many people will want to read this book if they are not already slavering Plath fans? I hope this book will encourage people to seek out Sylvia's poems and The Bell Jar (even if the book went seriously downhill at exactly page 100).

This is a great homage to Sylvia. The poetry is stellar. The story is tragic and addictive. Three thumbs up from me!

Sex, Love and Missing Moms

April is National Poetry Month -- did you know that? I have a bulletin board up in Club Fishbowl featuring poetry for teens in honor of National Poetry Month.

In further honor of Poetry, I decided to read The Geography of Girlhood, a book that showed up on the new book cart, even though it didn't look like something I would like. I have a love/hate relationship with novels in poetry format. I either love them to pieces (What My Mother Doesn't Know) or I hate them with a fiery passion (A Wreath for Emmett Till). Just judging by the oh-so-girly cover of The Geography of Girlhood, I was leaning towards the hate side of the equasion.

I was SO wrong.

Penny is a good girl with a wild child sister and a missing mom. The book starts in the summer before her freshman year of high school, when she's just starting to wonder about girls and boys, and what it means to be a grown up. It follows her first kiss, her father's surprising remarriage, her friendship with a cool older girl, her bad-idea of a relationship with her sister's ex and the deep sadness she always carries with her.

What makes this book so amazing is how real Penny is. She thinks and sounds like someone you could meet on the street tomorrow. So even if you don't like poetry or don't like books with girly covers, you should try The Geography of Girlhood. The author, Kristin Smith, was a writer on some of my favorite movies, and she really knows how to create a beliveable and memorable character.