Newberry Medal Winner for Sci-fi by Rebecca Stead "When You Reach Me" is a Y/A Time Travel Mystery

Rebecca Stead received the Newberry Medal and Best of the Year Awards for her young adult, time travel novel that is an homage to "A Wrinkle in Time."  It is also the coming of age story of a pre-teen Miranda obsessed not only with the novel "A Wrinkle in Time" she's convinced of the likelihood of time travel.  Miranda's likable character, unique reasoning & resourcefulness makes this a very appealing story.  Miranda contends "Common sense is just a name for the way we're used to thinking.  Time travel is possible."  She lives with her single mother on the UWS of NYC in the late 70s.  There are days when everything changes.  Miranda's world expands to encompass new friendships and new ideas particularly in relation to time sequences.  "Time isn't a line stretching out in front of us, going in one direction, it's well, time is just a construct."  Stead's sci-fi storyline is propelled forward by the unraveling of a mystery that Miranda manages to solve with contemplation & burgeoning new  friendships.  "When You Reach Me" has a heartwarming village mentality,  neighbors, friends, families & eccentric neighborhood locals look out for one another.  This is a young adult novel is brimming with sophisticated thinking & literary prose.  In addition to working full-time as a legal assistant, Miranda's mom spends time volunteering in a women's prison.  The subject of time travel juxtaposes the stoppage of change for many who are incarcerated.  Miranda learns meaningful lessons from her incomparable mom.  She tells her "Jail is a hard place, and that it can make people hard, too.  It changes them.  Jail stops them from becoming who they might grow to be.  Being in jail can make them feel like a mistake is all they are."  Stead also captures the fun, mischief & spirit of adolescents growing up in NYC who inherently have more liberties than most peers their age.  The adults in the novel are all thoughtful and kind and regard Miranda & her friends as mature & interesting individuals.  The time travel premise poses a confusing quandary.  But, the magic of this intriguing young adult novel are the ways it opens our eyes to viewing the world.  Miranda ponders  her mother's mentoring.  She tells Miranda we all live behind a veil keeping the world in a blurry focus. "We see all the beauty, & cruelty, & sadness, and love.  But, mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves."  Miranda interprets this to mean people get distracted by little stuff & ignore the big stuff.

Garrard Conley's Memoir BOY ERASED - Gay Conversion Therapy is Consecrated Torture

Garrard Conley's memoir BOY ERASED published 2016 is Conley's confessions of religious torment fearing hell and brimstone was his fate.  His fear & self-loathing stemmed from his Baptist upbringing where homosexuality was proselytized as an abomination & mortal sin.   Raised by a devout Baptist minister, Conley was confused by his sexual attraction to the same sex.  His father was without any doubt homosexuality is a sin and threatened Conley to change or forever be banned from his home, his family & any financial support.  Conley for his part believed at the time he needed to change and was willing to seek "help" to purify himself so as not to be turned away by God.  Conley's memoir talks about his 2 weeks in conversion therapy in a program called "Love in Action" (LIA).  Conley's mother jokes that it was the year they were abducted by aliens.  Conley views this time as a year when his life went missing, where everything he cared about was erased.  The humiliation and coercion with which LIA operated their misguided & damaging conversion therapy was odious.  Conley submitted to LIA hoping it would be a savior from remaining a hell-bound sinner knowing he would remain as he was born.  The idea of a sin having a biological basis would have shocked most people in Conley's congregation but many were beginning to suspect the truth; this is factual. And, the perverse idea that conversion therapy is healing or possible should be erased for all eternity.    Conley acceptance of his so called affliction was not something he desired to change has become acceptable to both of his parents.  Conley's rebuff from his father has healed.  The blasphemy of intolerance, particularly based on religious grounds is what's not tolerable.  Fortunately, this abhorrent conviction of conversion therapy has floundered.  Unfortunately,  prejudice against the LGBT community persists.  Conley's memoir delves deeply into the psyche of religious zealots who maintain gays are disgusting abominations.  It sheds light on what many liberals find incredulous.   Fourteen years after Conley's immersion into LIA he's found himself lucky to be alive, and happy with his life & with his family despite how he was treated and still "handled as they would an unwanted piece of family china."  He contends we "...still share the same warm blood that pausing through my veins."  BOY ERASED is a bittersweet memoir written with candor & compassion.

British Author Rose Walsh's Novel GHOSTED - A Crossed Stars Lovers Story to Cross off Your List

GHOSTED is Rose Walsh's US debut novel and one that should be shrouded & forgotten by all of us.  It's a story of 2 middle-aged star crossed lovers, Sarah & Eddie.  The two meet on a quaint country road while Eddie is herding sheep & enlists Sarah's help.  Job well done, the two are off to the local pub and a pint turns into a week of unmitigated bliss in Eddie's work studio home.  Between jumping in the sheets the two unwind their life stories while not revealing entire naked truths about their past & present lives.  Walsh, a documentary filmmaker says the novel mirrors events from her own life.  Outside of falling in lust quickly and then just as quickly ghosted from the subject of one's infatuation, nothing rings true in this sappy overwrought melodrama.  Sarah is currently living in LA although they both grew up in the same area.  Their lives had crashingly merged unbeknownst from what they've shared.   Eddie was set to take a weeks vacation at the end of their week of love and Sarah selflessly encourages him to go ahead with his plans.  She tells him she will be waiting for him when he returns.  Here's the burn, she no longer hears from Eddie and all his social media is erased & she's unceremoniously unfriended.   How is it possible that this one week together has Sarah so insanely in love and willing to pursue any leads to contacting him.  The story is more than "he's just not into you."  However, the added mystery, friends and angst further bury this unbridled lah lah love story with its cliched text "Love has no edges, I do believe when you know you know, Don't let love slip through your fingers, try everything."  The one thing Walsh got right is "A silent phone brings out the worst in us."  Don't waste time decoding this intentionally misleading maudlin mess.  And, yes, if you don't hear back - believe it, he's just not into you.  It's not worth pursuing your misguided & misread signs of devotion.  And, it's just not worth going through the motion of reading this apparition.

"The History of Wolves" by Emily Fridlund is Short Listed for Man Booker, A Howling Unforgettable Tale

 "The History of Wolves" ('17) is a daring & haunting novel by Emily Fridlund (b Amer. 1979) was shortlisted for this year's Man Booker Award.  The story is set in the northern outreaches of MN, where the harsh winters are relentless & unforgiving.  Madeline, also known as "Linda" or more commonly as "freak" or "commie" by her high school peers.  But mainly, Madeline is disregarded & left by herself.  Linda lives with her father & mother & several hounds on an abandoned failed commune on an isolated lake.  Fridlund's remarkable writing deviates from any formulaic coming of age tale. Linda was reared apart from childhood playmates leaving her feeling lonely & unanchored.   Linda found "No help from the boredom. No changing from loneliness." Linda's sole companionship is with the dogs she cares for at home.  She's adrift and at a loss for attachment.  Linda is first drawn to the new teacher whom she makes a weak attempt to seduce.  Then a young family moves into a cabin across the lake.  The mother Patra enlists Linda to help sit for her 4 year old son Paul.  Linda finds a moor in Patra's attention & Paul's neediness.  Linda's formed familial bonds are shattered by the arrival of Patra's husband Leo and stalactites of pending horror bear down.  Fridlund's brittle handling theological questions on the origins of good & evil, christianity and the nuclear family are haunting and pristine.  Linda is coerced to conceive of "Heaven and hell are ways of thinking.  Death is the false belief that anything could ever end."  And, "It's not what you do but what you think that matters."  Linda finds herself in an untenable situation but realizes "You can't just do whatever you want to someone and get away with it."  We see Linda as a young adult years after her previous encounters.  She is somewhat frozen between self-reliance and commitment.  Wolves hunt out the weak, the sick, the injured and  mostly avoid people.  Fridlund's harrowing & lyrical writing unfurls  a character of inner strength set against a frozen tundra.  The reader is left to slowly thaw from the author's majestic writing.  "The woods just kept unfurling and blooming and drying up and its constant flux of implied meanings 1/2 revealed, 1/2 withheld - mysteries."  I highly recommend this impressive, enigmatic & thought provoking work.

Grant Grinder's "The People We Hate at the Wedding" for People Clinging to Beach Reads and Grudges

"The People We Hate at the Wedding" by Grant Grinder (b Amer 1983) is a humorous look at family dysfunction, sibling quibbling and relationship fiascos.  Ginder's funny & irritating novel can't help us have a love/hate relationship with the crazy family with matriarch Donna, eldest daughter Eloise and Eloise's 1/2 siblings Alice and Paul.  Eloise is the daughter of Donna's first whirlwind romance & marriage.  Donna was a young 20+ who fell hard & fast for a Frenchman who provided an exotic & luxurious lifestyle nonpareil with her midwestern modest origins and back again with 2nd husband Bill father to Alice & Paul.  Life with Henrique was too good to be true.  Henrique c'est tres Francais.   Whose to say mistresses on the side are not okay?  Peut etre the American the wife, Donna who would not go for that and that may be her biggest regret.  The 2nd biggest regret maybe her 2nd marriage to Bill the salt of earth kind of guy except for his homophobic hatred which extended to his son, Paul.  Eloise was endowed with a trust fund that entrusted her life would be free from financial worry and filled with privilege.  That sounds like grounds to resent one's older sibling feeling she's always gotten the better deal.  There's more to explore in terms of neurosis, relationship disasters and self-combustion fueled with booze & drugs.   Alice & Paul don't seem to have it together at all.  While Eloise is the one whose always trying to please.  There's only so much disappointment one family can be expected to take.  "The People We Hate...." is a family fiasco extraordinaire.  We really do care for the characters regardless of their irritating shenanigans or maybe because their escapades are so outlandish.  Eloise is getting married in London which entails a family reunion.  This promises to be a wedding bash that is bound to crash.   Grinder was a political speech writer before turning humorous novelist.  Perhaps, his political speech writing background was grounds for finding absurdity in grandstanding.  "The People We Hate at the Wedding" is a beach book, guilty pleasure that you shouldn't hate yourself for savoring.  C'est la vie!

Putlizer Prize Novelist Annie Prouix's BARKSKINS - An Epic Saga that is Devastating & Everlasting

Annie Prouix (b Amer 1935) is one of the finest living novelists.  "The Shipping News" won both the Pulitzer & Nat'l Book Award (1993).   Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was made into an Acad. Award winning film.  Her brilliant writing style & subject matters vary enormously in her body of work making her creative genius paramount.  However, there is a unifying theme that concerns protection/destruction of the environment and persecuted populations.  "Barkskins" (2018) is an epic novel that spans the globe and generations beginning at the end of the 17th C spanning up to the 19th C.  The cast of characters become so convoluted and churning that it becomes arduous to keep lineage and logistics in line.  The 2 male characters from whom the family tree and future logging legacy in North America stem are 2 Frenchmen who land in French Canada as indentured slaves yet cunningly and relentlessly build their vast fortunes from the land.  They build their empires by razing the trees and decimating the Native Indian population who lived in harmony with their environment before being overrun by entitled, heartless white settlers.  The men who at the forefront of conquering the land and financial rewards are multinational, polyglot individuals.  These men are resourceful but not remorseful.  The history of the shipping trade industry, lumbering industry and financings is fascinating until halfway through this factual & shameful odyssey.  This reader went overboard midway despite knowing not to change horses midstream.  Still, I applaud Prouix's masterful writing and moreover her historical rhetoric that needs retelling.  The destruction of the seemingly plentiful national forests is ruthless and the treatment of the indigenous population, heinous.  The lacking morality & inhumane disregard for the land and its indigenous population bears retelling.  One of the few surviving Mi'kmaw Indians (living in Canada) tells his offspring.  "I learned that Indian people must take whatever is useful from the whitemen.  It is just because they have taken everything from us.  Many of our people died with secrets locked in their heads.  Now it is good for us to learn how to read and write so we may know how we make useful things, how our grandfathers lived.  That is why we learn to read-so we can remember."  The 800+ book (which should be purchased via kindle to conserve the use of paper) is monumental in scope and shaming of ruthless justifications that permitted the dehumanizing of races and demolishing of forest lands & natural resources.