Considering the many, many scary things Stephen King has written about, you wouldn't think a story
about an old Indian burial ground that causes things buried there to come back to life would be his most disturbing book. But boy, howdy! Pennywise the Clown and the Man in Black have NOTHING on poor little Gage Creed turning into a bloodthirsty killer toddler.

OK, that last sentence almost makes it sound like a joke, but Pet Sematary is probably King's most disturbing book. When the Creeds moved to rural Maine, they chose a house on a logging road. Most of the time, the road was quiet. But when the trucks come through, they are flying at speeds that are dangerous to anyone who has the bad luck to be in the road. Louis Creed and his family discover this the hard way when their daughter's beloved cat is killed. Louis's friend and long-time area resident Jud takes Louis and the dead cat to the Pet Sematary, where local children have been burying their pets for decades. But Jud doesn't stop in the main cemetery-he continues past it to an old Indian burial ground where things that are buried don't stay dead. Sure enough, the cat comes back, but it is definitely NOT the same as it was when it went into the ground. Louis vows never to use the burial ground again-until his three-year-old son Gage is hit by a truck. But if the cat came back different, what will the burial ground do to a person?

This book is so dark that King didn't even want it published. It was inspired by his family's experiences living in Orono, Maine for a year while King taught a class at the University of Maine, during which his daughter's cat was killed, and his son had a close call with a truck on the road. His wife and his good friend Peter Straub, with whom he wrote The Talisman and Black House, agreed with him that it was too dark for publication, but up against a deadline to complete his contract with Doubleday he turned it in, and it became one of his most popular books. I'm not sure what that says about us as readers-it is so bleak, and there is really no happy ending or moment of redemption.

I guess I must be one of those readers who like it bleak, because I loved this book when I first read it in high school, and I enjoyed it again rereading it now. I remember how much I loved Jud's character and the sweet relationship he has with his wife. He is definitely the moral foundation of the book, and yet he is the one who sets up the situation that leads to so much grief and horror.  I remember the movie version of this book not being great, though there is that scene where Gage takes the scalpel to Jud's Achilles that is just chilling. This story definitely demonstrates its tagline: Sometimes dead is better.

By the Time You Read This, Lola Jaye

This book came to me by way of my Little Free Library. I can't really explain why I decided to bring it in. On the surface, it's not really my thing. Regular readers of my book reviews will know that I am anti anything that reminds me of a Lifetime or Hallmark movie. I don't mind sentimental stories, but when the emotional manipulation is so thick you can cut it with a knife, I just can't. But free books are free books, so it ended up on my to-read shelf.

Lois's father dies of cancer when she is five. On her 12th birthday, her aunt brings her a set of manuals that her father wrote for her in anticipation of his death. She is to open and read one on each birthday until she turns 30, the age her father was when he died. Lois, who has spent essentially her whole life grieving the father she barely remembers, anxiously awaits each birthday, ready to read the words of wisdom that he left for her. Along the way she learns a lot about herself and her relationships-with family, friends, and lovers-and comes to terms with the hole in her life that losing her father caused.

Super Lifetime-movie-like, right? I thought so too, and when I started reading I gave it 50 pages before I would abandon it for something less schmaltzy. And then, around page 75, I realized I was totally hooked. It's certainly not perfect-there are definitely sections where I was annoyed either by Lois herself, who essentially spent the majority of her life ignoring the people she had left in favor of the father she lost, or by some overly-sentimental little moment. But Jaye took what could have been a saccharine story and made it palatable, in large part because the manuals themselves, the only mechanism through which Lois or the reader can know her father, are full of self-deprecating humor, self-doubt, and real talk life lessons. No inspirational platitudes here; Lois's father admits his shortcomings and mistakes, and rather than being the untouchable saint Lois tries to make him, the reader sees a real person, struggling with his own mortality and his grief at leaving his young daughter to grow up without him.

While I certainly wouldn't describe this novel as literary, it is a decent example of what women's fiction, specifically chick lit, can be when done well. Of course, most of my criticisms of chick lit still stand-Lois's life is defined by her relationships with men (her father and others), there's a healthy dose of female competitiveness, and her professional success is shown as being hollow without the "love of a good man". But I got sucked in anyway.

Scythe, Neal Shusterman

Neal Shusterman is one of my faves. I heard him speak at a reading conference a few years ago, and I appreciated how much he honors the intelligence of young people in his writing. His novels are full of action and excitement, but they also deal with big, challenging ideas that make the reader think and question. My favorite series of his is the Unwind Dystology, but I've liked almost everything I've ever read of his (sorry, Challenger Deep-I just didn't get you).

It says something about just how many YA books I currently have on my to-read shelf that it's taken me as long as it did to read Scythe, the first book in a new trilogy by Shusterman. The book is set in a future America where an artificial intelligence called the Thunderhead has benevolently taken over control of human society, solving all of the problems that plague mankind-poverty, crime, war, disease, even death-in the process. Because people can now reset themselves to younger ages, even be brought back from the dead (they call it "being deadish"), the population threatens to grow too large for available resources. That is where the Scythes come in. The only thing the Thunderhead does not control in this new world order are the Scythes, trained assassins who are required kill a certain number of people each month in an effort to keep the population under control. Scythes can choose to do this however they see fit, as long as they don't choose their victims based on biases, or spare victims because of personal connections. As you can imagine, Scythes are not exactly a welcome sight at your office picnic or kid's soccer game. Though they are revered for their necessary service to society, no one really wants to BE one. But that is exactly what Citra and Rowan have been selected for-to be apprenticed to a Scythe in hopes of earning the robes that will allow them to choose life or death for the people they meet. But, as they soon discover, there is a growing corruption in the order of the Scythes; there are Scythes who feel they should be freed from restrictions on who and how many people they can kill, Scythes who enjoy taking life so much they make a spectacle of it. Citra and Rowan must figure out how they can protect society from these immoral Scythes, or die trying.

Shusterman does a few unique things here with his worldbuilding. First, there is the whole premise of Scythes. I mean, people try to cheat death all the time, right? But what would the world be like if people really couldn't die? Would they stop getting married, having families, etc..? Probably not. The planet would be overrun in a generation. (This reminds me of Torchwood: Miracle Day, which had a similar storyline, though with a different cause). Also, not only didn't they die, but they can reset themselves back to a younger age to have a better quality of life. This appears to lead to some changes in the way people perceive relationships, both romantic and familial. Would people stay married to the same spouse for eternity, or would they eventually desire something different? How many children can a person have over centuries before they can't even remember all of them? How does the relationship change when suddenly your grandmother looks and feels younger than you do?

Most of the time when authors write stories about all-powerful AIs, they are trying to enslave humanity (think Skynet from the Terminator movies). Shusterman's Thundercloud, however, uses its power to save humanity. Of course, it takes over the functions of government to do so, and controls every aspect of daily life, but benevolently. Maybe Shusterman is setting us up for some big reveal about how the Thunderhead is actually using humans as slave labor for some larger purpose, but I don't think so. I think that Shusterman is presenting a version of the future where the technology we've created really does end up helping us instead of hurting us. That would be great, since technological advances are happening exponentially and there's no stopping them. I'd prefer the future where that's a good thing instead of a world-ending thing. This does beg the question of genre, though. I mean, ordinarily I'd say this is dystopian science fiction, but is it really dystopia if life is better after the computers take over?

The main characters Citra and Rowan are pretty well-developed, though I'm a little over the star-crossed-lovers thing in YA books in general. At least in this case the thing that makes them star-crossed is a little more unique than usual. I'm looking forward to seeing where Shusterman takes the story-a plot line that I assumed would take the whole trilogy to resolve was resolved by the end of the first book (and resolved well, not rushed nor through some deus ex machina shenanigans). Book 2, Thunderhead, arrived yesterday, and despite the many other books that have been on my to-read shelf longer, I may just have to dive right into it.

Ten White Geese

Right about this time of year, after the holidays and months before spring break, when the weather is dreary and the days still short, I start to long to run away to a little cabin in the woods.  Ideally, it would be me, a stack of books, and no cell phone or internet.  I desire the solitude, the lack of responsibility for anyone but myself, and permission to hunker down and wait for warmer weather.  Of course, since I like my job and my house and my wife (and would like to keep all of them), I have never actually run away to the forest, but I do think of it from time to time.

So when I began reading Ten White Geese, I was at first envious of the main character-a woman whose

name we don't learn until the very end of the book.  She is a professor of literature, specifically a scholar of Emily Dickinson.  Something has happened, though at first we don't know what, that has caused her to leave her husband and her job, and to rent a small house deep in the forest in Wales.  When she moves into the house, there are ten geese living on the property.  One by one, they start to disappear.  In addition, there is a badger that only she can see, a surly neighbor who acts as though he has dominion over her house and her person, a nearby town full of small people with small concerns, and eventually a boy and his dog.  The woman, who calls herself Emilie, slowly comes apart before the eyes of the reader, despite the best efforts of the boy and his dog to care for her.

Not being all that familiar with Emily Dickinson myself, I can't really speak to how much the plot of the book may or may not have paralleled her life, but the other women in my book club assure me that there were definitely some elements that spoke to her work.  Both the main character and Dickinson withdrew from society, both undoubtedly were suffering from depression, and both longed for human connection, but only on their own terms.  Dickinson had her poetry, and Emilie had a garden-a garden that she was trying to plant, despite the wrongess of the season, so that at least something would be left behind when she was gone.  In the end, the futility of her endeavors only added to her belief that while she may revere Dickinson and her work, she can't possibly live up to her example.

This novel is odd and spare and fairly bleak.  It's set in November and December in the Welsh countryside, a time between-between fall and full winter-and Emilie herself seems to be in some in-between place in her life.  Slowly over the course of the novel her layers are peeled away, until what is left is merely the shell of a woman who is trying desperately to have some control over a life that has gotten away from her.  By then end of the novel, I was certainly not envious of her running away to the woods anymore.  Instead, I felt the loneliness and despair that drove her away from everyone and everything she knew, and I was relieved for her when it all finally came to the end-an end that was as tragic as it was inevitable.

The Least Depressing Book about Death I've Ever Read

Occasionally my book club forces me to go outside of my regular reading comfort zone and try something that I would never have picked up on my own.  I remember thinking that I wasn't really interested in reading The End of Your Life Book Club, by Will Schwalbe.  It's non-fiction, for a start, though it is memoir, which I find much more enjoyable than other forms of that genre.  But I will admit to having some prejudices.  I imagined a book full of discussions about "how to deal with death/dying" books, and I was prepared for something akin to The Five People You Meet in Heaven (not that there's anything wrong with that-just not my cup of tea).

What I got instead was a smart, thoughtful, thought-provoking look at the end of a remarkable life.  Will Schwalbe's mother, Mary, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2007.  She was a strong, confident, socially conscious woman who had worked for years supporting refugees in war-torn parts of the world.  She had traveled to some of the most dangerous places in earth, and when she came back from a trip to Afghanistan feeling ill, at first no one thought too much of it.  But what her doctors thought was a form of hepatitis was soon revealed to be tumors in her pancreas, which had already spread to her liver.  And while treatment could extend her life, the illness was terminal.  This left Mary with the task of living while dying, and her family the task of figuring out how to relate to their spouse and mother knowing her time was limited.

Will would often accompany his mother to her chemo treatments, and it was in the waiting and treatment rooms at Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York that they started what was to become a two-person, mother-son book club.  Both Mary and Will had always been avid readers, and the books they chose to read were either old favorites or new stories they discovered with and for each other.  The chapter titles are the titles of the books they read together, and each book frames a different part of their experience.  Some of the books had new meaning reading them while in the process of dying.  Some of them reminded Mary or Will about the things that were important in life, and all of them were high-quality literature.  My fears of a book full of trite, sentimental soundbites and self-help advice were unfounded.  In fact, as I read I found myself drawn more into the books they were reading than the story of their relationship.  I got a new reading list out of it, in fact.

That's not to say that the story was moving and emotional on a personal level.  Will and his mother had the enormous privilege of having the means and opportunity to spend this time together.  At several points in the book, Will or Mary points out how lucky they are to be in a position for her to get the best possible care, or for Will to quit his job and take on a new venture without worrying about losing his house or feeding himself. But ultimately, all of the money and education and connections in the world could not stop the inevitable progression of her disease.  Rather than railing against his mother's fate, Will is grateful for the time they were able to have, memories that will now forever be associated with the many wonderful books they read and loved together.

Red Hook Road

For most people, their wedding day is one of the most joyful days of their lives.  For me, even though my first marriage ended in divorce, I still have fond memories of the wedding that brought us together as a family for the short time we lasted.  But for Becca and John, the young couple who get married at the beginning of Red Hook Road, their happy day becomes a nightmare when they are killed in a car crash on the way to their reception.

For a marriage that only lasted an hour, Becca and John's union had a lot of power over the other people in their lives, which becomes evident as the story follows Iris (Becca's mom), Daniel (her dad), Jane (John's mother), Matt (his brother) and Ruthie (Becca's sister) in the years following their deaths.  Set during four summers in the small coastal Maine Town of Red Hook, the book details the way that each person struggles to deal with their loss.  Iris is an East Coast intellectual a professor of English literature who lives in New York most of the year, but who strongly identifies with her family's connection to the old beach house where they have summered for three generations.  She is like a force of nature, strong and willful, and her sometimes overwhelming personality causes her children, her husband, and the other people she loves to be at once awed and intimidated by her.  Daniel, who has always found it easy to let Iris plot the course of their lives, suddenly finds himself frustrated and resentful at her attempts to control everything that happens in the aftermath of the tragedy.  Jane, John's mother, is a local woman who was never comfortable with her son's relationship with a privileged daughter "from away", and resists any attempt my Iris to continue their families' connection after the young people are killed.  Ruthie and Matt each try to live up to their older siblings' examples in their own ways, but find following in the footsteps of those who have passed on before their time more difficult than they anticipated.

The book examines issues of death and loss, dealing with grief, and privilege.  John was a shipbuilder, and the old boat that John was restoring at the time of his death, which Matt takes over afterward, becomes a symbol of the group's collective experience-mainly, that of being stuck, unable to move on with the task of living their own lives, so mired are they in trying to honor and remember the dead.  Each character must go off the the trail a bit to eventually find their footing-Iris, through a young musical prodigy; Daniel through revisiting his young adult self; Ruthie by re-examining her assumptions about what her own path should be; and Matt through coming to grips with his feelings of guilt and inadequacy.  The relationship between Iris and Jane highlights the differences between two very different kinds of mother, but in the end their strong love for their children brings them together, if not into an easy friendship, at least into mutual respect.  Red Hook Road is not the best family drama I've read, but it does have an easy readability about it that makes is accessible to even the casual reader.

I Still Don't Like Hemingway, But...

...if The Paris Wife is an accurate historical portrayal of his early literary life, then I feel like I can forgive some of his macho, sexist writing.

In case you lived under a literary rock for the last 12 months, The Paris Wife is the fictionalized story of Hadley Hemingway ne Richardson, who was Ernest Hemingway's first wife (out of four total).  Based on extensive research into the Hemingways' time in Paris, the novel starts in Chicago, where a young Hadley meets an even younger Ernest at a party.  Instantly drawn to each other, the two start an affair that eventually leads to marriage.  Despite the disapproval of both families, Ernest and Hadley set off for Paris, the happening scene for writers and artists in the very early 20th century.  Surrounded by such literary giants and Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein, Ernest sets about the serious business of writing.  Hadley, left to her own devices most of the time, loses herself in his career.  Over time, their relationship cannot withstand the darkness in his own soul, or his affair with a young editor at Vogue.

I've managed to read one and a half Hemingway novels, and a few of his short stories.  The one I remember best is Hills Like White Elephants,  about a woman who wants to have a baby with her husband but he wants her to have an abortion so he doesn't have to change his rather selfish lifestyle.  Not exactly endearing.  I've always been put off by his very violent ideas about manhood, and his rather apparent disrespect for women.  Having read The Paris Wife, however, I am better able to put his ideas in not just a historical context, but a more personal, emotional one.

What I didn't know about him before reading this book was that he was injured in the first World War, and that he spent most of the rest of his life trying to stare down death, terrified by his own morality.  Constantly afraid of being seen as cowardly or weak, he actively sought out experiences, like the bullfights in Pamplona, to convince himself of his own strength.  His war experiences, coupled with his depressive nature and the history of mental illness in his family, suddenly I see his overly-macho definition of what it means to be a man in a new light.  And while I still don't like his fiction, and I still think that he was a philandering sexist, at least now I have a context to put it in.  I now have compassion where before was only contempt.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy

The Road is one of those books that I knew I should get around to, but just never seemed to make its way into my reading rotation.  I knew that it was post-apocalyptic, which I enjoy.  I knew that McCarthy is a well-respected author, for good reason.   I was waiting to watch the movie until I read the book, and even that wasn't enough of a push.  Well, I finally got around to it, and now I know why I resisted.  I knew that the story was depressing as hell and it would suck me into its dark, ash-filled, cannibalistic world like a black hole sucks in light.

The story centers around a man and his son, wandering a world that is utterly dead.  While  this is obviously because of some man-made disaster, we never really learn what.  The man and his son have been wandering and scavenging for years, sometimes going days without finding anything to eat.  There are no animals, nothing grows-the earth is filled with ash and smoke and burned out cities.  They often have to hide from gangs of cannibals, looking for other survivors to hold captive and use as food.  Despite the apparent hopelessness of the situation, the man and his son keep traveling along the road, not really believing that things might be better on the coast, but unable to bow to the seeming inevitability of death. 

Here's the thing-despite the fact that at least once I was contemplating suicide on the characters' behalf, I loved this book.  The writing is genius.  I've never read any of McCarthy's books before, but if all of them have the same ability to convey with just a few words the enormity of life and love and death then I'll read them all.  I'm always in awe of authors who can choose exactly the right words to create a vivid picture for the reader-no more and no less.  Being rather verbose myself, I admire this ability.  I also admire the imagination that can come up with this kind of skewed reality in the first place.  Though it makes me wonder what kind of dark place McCarthy's mind is.

My one complaint-the ending.  Not that it is left completely open-ended.  I get that as a metaphor for life in general, and that as long as there is life the story is never over, everything is uncertain except for the passage of time, etc..In fact, my complaint is that the story should have ended about 10 pages sooner than it did, with the boy completely alone.  Now THAT would have been a head-scratcher, real food for thought, a book group discussion starter. Despite my feeling that he caved a little bit at the end, overall I am deeply affected by this book, and find myself thinking about it off and on in the days since I finished it.  What more can a book have to recommend it than that?