What would you say if you could go back in time and talk to your past self? Would you tell yourself Still Life With Tornado uses this idea of traveling back to your past selves explore how our past, present, and future are bound up together through the memories and dreams each of us holds.
to avoid the things you regret? Would you want to relive previous stages of your life? How would that change the person you became? A.S. King's novel

Sarah, once a gifted artist, can't even summon the skill to draw something as simple as her own hand. After a falling out with the art club kids she thought were her friends, Sarah stops going to school, instead wandering around the town where she lives, searching for anything that is truly original. One day on her ramblings she meets her 23-year-old self riding a bus. This 23-year-old version of Sarah is angry, though she won't tell 16 year-old Sarah why. Soon after, she runs into her 10-year-old-self, sunburned from a family trip to Mexico that present-Sarah barely remembers, but which was apparently a turning point in the life of her family. Finally, 40-year-old Sarah shows up, firm but kind, demanding present-Sarah remember what happened in Mexico, so she can face the trauma and start to heal. The more time Sarah spends with her past and future selves, the more she is drawn into both her memories of the Mexico vacation, and the truth about her parents' toxic relationship.

There are a lot of moving pieces with this narrative. There are chapters from Sarah's perspective, flashbacks to the Mexico vacation, and short sections narrated by Sarah's mother, revealing the details of her relationship with Sarah's father and how their family got to the low point they are currently in. Despite the jumping around, the story hold together nicely, with well-paced revelations about Sarah's life and family. The past and future Sarahs are not hallucinations; present-Sarah doesn't have dissociative identity disorder, nor do we discover at the end it was all a dream. Sarah's mother and brother eventually see all of the other Sarahs too. While King offers no explanation for where they came from or how they got there, it's clear that the existential crisis present-Sarah is having has caused them to appear. King perfectly captures Sarah in all of her stages; 10-year-old Sarah's personality has clear connections to present-Sarah, and present-Sarah is reflected in the personalities of the older Sarahs. I was impressed by King's ability to create the same character at four very different stages of life that really did feel like they could be the same person, all while having them interact with each other.

Ultimately, this novel explores the impact of domestic violence on families, specifically on children. Sarah's father's rage and violence create a brittle home environment, one in which both parents are present, but clearly not in true relationship with each other. Like many children growing up in violent households, Sarah perceives the long, hostile silences and frequent arguments as normal. Her home life can't be that bad, right? Eventually, through the gentle (and not so gentle) coaxing and cajoling of the other Sarahs, present-Sarah is able to confront the sad and scary truths behind her parents' apparent hatred of each other, and her brother's seemingly inexplicable absence from their lives.

As in her other books, King creates a detailed and well-developed internal life for Sarah. Eventually, the reader learns what the incident was that caused Sarah to stop going to school. That incident became the catalyst for the personal crisis that led Sarah to confront the realities of her home situation. The incident also explains why Sarah suddenly found herself unable to make art, which up to this point had been her outlet for the stress of living with parents who were constantly in conflict. As usual, King has given us a well-crafted, beautifully told story that shows her deep understanding of how teenagers think and feel. I think Reality Boy might still be my favorite of hers, but this one is a close second.

The Lady and the Unicorn, Tracy Chevalier

I'm a  pretty big fan of historical fiction.  To be honest, I wish that history classes were taught using historical fiction as the hook.  Read Ken Follett, then research the time period to confirm or deny his portrayal. (Of course, I think that literature can teach us just about anything).

For instance, if you were interested in art, say the process of making tapestries, in the 17th century, you could read Tracy Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn.  Much as she did in The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Chevalier used a famous piece of art from the past and created an elaborate backstory using characters based on the real artists, artisans, nobles, petty bureaucrats, and common folk who contributed (either in reality or in the fictional world she creates) to the creation of that work of art. In The Lady and the Unicorn, we are introduced to an arrogant Parisian artist named Nicholas des Innocentes (who is anything but).  This womanizer is commissioned by a newly noble patron to design a set of tapestries to be hung in his formal dining room.  Nicholas agrees, though not before seducing the young daughter of his patron.  When he insists on traveling to Brussels to oversee the work of turning his smallish paintings into large tapestries, we meet the weaver, Georges, and his family.  Jumping back and forth between Paris and Brussels, we learn a lot about French society, the social expectations of men and women based on their gender and station, and about making tapestries in the pre-industrial age.

The best parts of the book for me was the descriptions of the tapestry making process.  The process was incredibly painstaking, and could takes months or years to complete depending on the size of the tapestry and the complexity of the pattern.  The plot itself has enough drama to make it an enjoyable read even if you don't care about the art-making parts, with lots of twists and turns.  There is lust, love, betrayal-all of the components of a satisfying read.  The story is old through alternating perspectives, which has become a very common narrative style, and Chevalier does a good job making the story feel cohesive despite the frequent change in narrator.  As historical fiction goes, I suspect this book is longer on the fiction than the history, but either way it is an an enjoyable way to spend a few hours!

The Lost Wife, In Which We Learn Once Again the Evils of the Holocaust

If there is one era of human history that has been well documented and analyzed and memorialized in books and film, it is the Holocaust.  And rightfully so.  The tragic events of that time, perpetrated with such callous disregard for all that is good and right about the world, deserves to be kept alive in our memories, if only to remind us never to let the evils of racism and xenophobia on that scale happen again.  Of course, it has happened again-in Rwanda, and Darfur, and Srebrenica-but most of the Western world at least has heeded the lessons of the Holocaust and has responded fairly quickly and decisively to any hint of the rise of neo-nazism or ethnic hatred.

As a Unitarian Universalist, I belong to a denomination that believes in radical inclusion.  One of our central beliefs is the right of all people to determine their own path to the divine, to search for their own truth and meaning through a variety of theological or ethical beliefs.  And as a youth advisor, I spend a great deal of my time discussing our faith tradition with my youth.  Whenever we talk about inclusion and acceptance, we inevitably get around to "the Hitler Question", as one of my youth put it.  Would we as accepting, radically inclusive Unitarian Universalists accept Adolf Hitler?  The answer, of course, is that we would never be put into that position, as Hitler would not have been likely to associate with a progressive church that loves Jews and gays, but also because everything he stood for was antithetical to the Untiarian Universalist principles.  But Hitler, for all of his evil, was also perhaps one of the most successful manipulators of public opinion in history.  In The Lost Wife, by Alyson Richman, we are offered as proof of this manipulation in the form of the Terezin, a prison work camp for Czechoslovakian Jews that also served as a way station for Jews headed to Aushwitz.

The Lost Wife begins with a recognition-Josef, in his 80s, meets an elderly woman at his grandson's wedding who seems very familiar.  It is not until he sees the numbers tattooed on her arm that he begins to suspect that she could be his long-lost wife, Lenka-a woman he thought died in Auschwitz over 60 years before.  The rest of the novel details their lives in Czechoslovakia, from growing up privileged pre-occupation to the terrible run up to the war, to the camp and to America.  Josef, a doctor, escapes to American, promising to send for Lenka and her family.  Lenka is sent with her sister and parents to Terezin, a work camp that was used as a cover for the Nazi's real agenda-the extermination of the Jewish people.  Because of the chaos that ensued, both Josef and Lenka believed that the other had perished, until that fateful night when Josef's grandson was to marry Lenka's granddaughter.

For me the book was an education in the way the Nazi's attempted to keep the world in the dark about what was happening in the concentration camps.  Built specifically as a ghetto, meant to hold 5,000 people, was home to up to 55,000 at a time.  A film was made about the town, proclaiming to the world that the Nazi's had built a "city for the Jews".  The one time that the Red Cross was allowed to visit, the ghetto was dressed up along the route the officials would take, with prisoners given extra food to make them look healthier, allowed to bathe and given new clothes.  The shop windows were filled with goods, which were immediately taken away when the Red Cross left.

One of the things that made the camp unusual was the incredible number of artists of various kinds that were housed there.  Richman said that part of her motivation behind writing the book was to tell the story of the Holocaust from the point of view of an artist.  Lenka was a painter, and she was given work with other artists making art that the Nazi's sold to help fund their war effort.  But that was not the only art that made it out of the camp.  Many artists stole painting supplies and smuggled out pictures of what was really going on in Terezin.  There were also many musicians in the camp, and there were operas and plays and concerts performed whenever a group could find a secret place to hold them.  The Lost Wife, while being a testament to the enduring power of true love, also shows the triumph of the human spirit and artistic endeavor over pain, fear, powerlessness, and violence.

Welcome Friday Hoppers!  Glad you made it to my little corner of the blogosphere.  The Book Blogger Hop is a chance to check out new (or new-to-you) blogs hosted by Jennifer at Crazy-for-Books.  Here's what she has to say about it...

ABOUT THE HOP:

In the spirit of the Twitter Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and share our love of the written word!  This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books!  It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs to read!  So, grab the logo, post about the Hop on your blog, and start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list below!!

The Hop lasts Friday-Monday every week, so if you don't have time to Hop today, come back later and join the fun!  This is a weekly event!  And stop back throughout the weekend to see all the new blogs that are added!  We get over 300 links every week!! 


Your blog should have content related to books, including, but not limited to book reviews.

 

This week's question comes from: Sarah @ SarahReadsTooMuch

Do you judge a book by its cover?

 

The answer is yes and no, as I imagine it is for a lot of us.  If the book is by an author I love, I don't really care if the publisher gave it a stupid cover-I'll read it.  Ditto with books that good friends have recommended to me.  Usually if someone knows me well enough to give me a serious book recommendation, they know me well enough to know that I will like it regardless of cover art.  When browsing for myself, I will admit that certain kinds of covers turn me off.  I think part of the reason I don't prefer romance novels is because the covers always look so cheesy.  Same with high fantasy novels, or some women's fiction.  Call me a snob, but there you have it!

 

I do not, however, ever choose a book JUST because of the cover.  I have read some books with beautiful covers that are real duds.  Clearly, it is in the best interest of the publishers to have their book jump out at you, your local bookstore being the crowded marketplace that it is.  They also seem to know that we as consumers are drawn to certain kinds of art on book covers, because once a book becomes popular with a particular style of art on it, suddenly every book on the shelves with similar genre or theme is doing copycat covers. Ultimately, the cover is irrelevant to the writing, and since it's the writing I'm purchasing the book for, the cover becomes an added perk if it's attractive or thought-provoking, and something to ignore if it's not.

 

Happy Hopping!