FAR FROM the TREE Nat'l Book Winner ('17) for Young Adult Lit. by Robin Benway

FAR FROM the TREE is an intelligent & affecting novel that connects three high school students. Joaquin, Grace & Maya.  All 3 knew they were put up for adoption at birth.  Grace was adopted by  loving parents with no other siblings.  When Grace becomes pregnant by her boyfriend she makes the courageous decision with the support of her parents to place her baby girl with a couple for adoption.  Grace's pregnancy makes her a social outcast at school which is nothing compared to the grief she bears for not keeping "Peach" with her.  Grace's parents maintained they'd provide her with with any information they had on Grace's biological family.  Grace is given an email for her 1/2 sister Maya and reaches out to her.  Maya has been adopted into a family with a younger biological daughter to her their parents.  Grace & Maya discover they share an older 1/2 brother Joaquin.  The 2 nearly acquainted sisters agree to try to connect with Joaquin who is amenable to meeting them.  While all 3 share the same birth mother, they're lives have taken very different tangents.  Joaquin has been living with a couple for the past 3 years who provide a very loving & supporting home & want very much to formally adopt him.  Grace & Maya have been with their adoptive families since.  The path towards a secure & caring family for Joaquin was harsh.  He changed foster homes so many time he felt rudderless & adrift.  He's built up a wall as a safety net that holds him back from becoming attached to protect him from being shattered.  Joaquin is not alone in coping with anguish.  The strained & awkward initial meetings with each other gives way to a bond of support & understanding as they grow to lean on one another.  FAR FROM the TREE offers awareness into the failings, anguish, compassion & love from foster care & adoptive families from the varied individuals impacted in addition to the child.  We empathize with Joaquin's experiences moving from family to family and not feeling permanency, always fearing he'd be traded in, swapped out, sent away.  Grace represents the sacrifice & grief she felt giving a child up for adoption.  Myah's family has its share of hardships to bear.  Together the 3 siblings form roots that entwine and thrive.  The power of having a family to fall back on is at the foundation of FAR from the TREE.  "Maya had never realized how much power there was in loving someone."   I firmly recommend this poignant and eye opening novel of what it means to be a family.  

Ned Vizzini's BE MORE CHILL a Coming of Age Novel in the Age of Sci-fi Technology

Ned Vizzin's young adult novel BE MORE CHILL ('04)is a coming of age novel dealing with the social hierarchies of high school while living in an age of omnipotent technology.  Vizzini (b Amer 1981-2013) was an accomplished screenwriter & author of young adult novels.  Sadly, he committed suicide at 32 having suffered from clinical depression.  His novel "It's Kind of a Funny Story" ('07) is about a 15 year old placed in an adult psychiatric ward.  Vizzini has said the story's main character Craig was based on his own experiences.  The novel received the Best Book Award for Y/A Fiction in '07.  In his earlier novel BE MORE CHILL, Jeremy is a high school student who keeps a running tab on all the indignities & snubs he receives daily.  Jeremy's only friend is Michael, another outsider from the inner realm of cool kids who rule at school.  Jeremy pines for beautiful Christine whose barely aware of his existence until he becomes bumptious & off-putting.  Jeremy would make a deal with Faust if only he could win Christine's affections.  Faust comes in the form of Rich, an alpha male at school.  Rich convinces Jeremy the answers to connecting with girls and for being cool comes in the form of a "SQUIP;" a pill you ingest.  Besides costing $600 & purchasing the SQUIP in the backroom of a Payless store, it would seem a bogus con job.  However, once Jeremy obtains the money in his own hilarious heist and ingests the SQUIP, his dreams start to come true by listening to the voice now speaking inside his brain instructing him how to behave.  The SQUIP is also capable of doing Jeremy's trig homework in minutes.  The amusing awkward angst of navigating teen pressures takes a disturbing leap into sci-fi satire with eerie credibility.  Jeremy is not hallucinating, he's overrun by the SQUIP embedded in his brain.  The advice seems to steer Jeremy on a fitness regime, a speed course for gaining cool status and for getting the girl of his dreams.  The dream becomes a nightmare for Jeremy & classmates alike.  Vizzini's present & futuristic apprehension that young people in general are so turned in to social media,  technology and celebrity lifestyles that their actual lives are become phantoms or feel too pressurized to seek perfection. BE MORE CHILL is comedic and chilling.  It captures the susceptibility to succumb to external pressures to where common sense is shed and the individual loses their own self-identity.

British Author Anthony Horowitz's "Magpie Murders" Is Two Who Done It Murder Mysteries in One

Anthony Horowitz (b UK 1955) is a very prestigious novelist and screenwriter.  His main genre is mystery and murder but he is also a writer of young adult novels.  The Ian Fleming Estate has authorized him to write two James Bond novels and he's penned two Sherlock Holmes mysteries.  The marvelous PBS mystery series FOYLE's WAR was created & written by Horowitz.  MAGPIES MURDERS is soon to be a major BBC1 TV series.  The MAGPIE MURDERS starts out with a novel approach.  Susan Ryeland, an  editor for a small publishing firm is settling in for a cozy read with wine, chips & fags while the rain hammers away against her window panes.  What an enticing intro to an old fashioned British mystery set in the 40s post WWII.  The quaint countryside town is replete with its ancient church, the vicar & his wife, local pubs, haughty aristocracy residing in a manor that lords over the rural landscape.  There's an eclectic cast of eccentric locals.  This is a small town where all the locals know each other, look out for each other and keep their noses in everyone's business.  The death of the longtime housekeeper for the Lord Pye of the manor may or may not be accidental. But the gruesome beheading days later of Lord Pye by the sword from the suit of armor in his hallway brings Inspector Atticus Pund to add his inimitable skills to aid the local ineffectual Inspector Chubb.  A surprising twist comes with the suicide of the Magpie author, Alan Conway just as Susan & the publisher discover the final chapters are missing.  Conway death by leaping to his death is ruled a suicide.  Something clues Susan into believing Alan was murdered.  She becomes an obsessed sleuth determined to get to the bottom of things.  The bookend contemporary tale of Susan's life & her immersion into a Sherlock crime solver is a clever devise.  The reader can hone their own skills at surmising suspects & their motives.  However, the murder mystery wrapped around an old fashioned murder muddled the MAGPIE MURDERS and made an initially intriguing who done flop into a crashing bore.

Sally Field's Auto-biography "In Pieces" Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse and Soaring Acting Career

Sally Field's candid revelation of years of sexual abuse by her step-father take front stage in her revealing auto-biography.  The roles of the cherubic all-American teen "Gidget" & the angelic (albeit moronic) "Flying Nun" mark the initial roles in her illustrious career.  They belie a tormented childhood of sexual abuse & self-loathing.  Sally professes a steadfast attachment to her mother "Baa."  Baa  divorced Sally's father when she & her older brother were toddlers.  Baa's 2nd husband entailed years of abuse marring Field's well-being.  These harsh pieces in her life are painful to read.  A climatic but restrained mother/daughter confrontation of the abuse comes towards the very end of Baa's life.  Field's auto "In Pieces" nay be cut into 3 factions; an abusive childhood & its pervasive aftermath, her young marriage and early motherhood of 2 sons,  and the passionate & circuitous path to honing her highly regarded acting craft.  She maintains acting sustained her lifeline.  The shame & rage from early childhood of abuse may be partially responsible for her submission to other men in positions of power.  Although Sally assesses at 28 she can't claim herself solely a victim.  The path of Sally's acting career is a testament to the commitment to her craft along with the support of other skilled actors and mentors. The "inside the actor studio" section is the central & most compelling portion in her auto-biography.  It offers insightful glimpses of what is required of aspiring & accomplished actors to achieve nobility in the demanding & elusive craft of acting.  "It was all of the those mindless, repetitive tasks I was forced to endure day after day, the getting up & doing every scene the best I could, over & over."  Sally's career was grounded for a long-time after 3 years floundering in a repetitive & unimaginative role.  It was here that a fellow actor steered her to acting classes where she worked arduously to develop her skills.  Delving into her major breakthrough roles as in "Sybil" and "Norma Rae" show an actress unleashing all the nuances of being human and possessing inner strength.   "The pressure of what people thought of me or didn't' think of me, who they wanted to be or didn't want me to be completely stopped."  Fields' remarkable career is a cornerstone to her life.  "In Pieces" is the culmination of Fields' life mired in the shame of abuse, the drudgery of coping as a young worn out mother and the mystifying qualities that make her an iconic actress.  This is not a kiss & tell auto-bio but her relationship to Burt Reynolds does feature in her story.  To fully appreciate Sally's awe-inspiring accomplishments & rousing life, there are grueling inseparable realities that comprise the pinnacle of a remarkable artist.    

Anna Quindlen's "Alternate Side" Show's Life in the Big Apple for the Spoiled and the Toiled

Anna Quindlen's sharp & critical eye for life in New York City for the elite and those who serve them is one of many oppositional social stratums & points of view captured in her well crafted novel "Alternative Side."  Nora & her husband Charles appear financially secure.  Their twins Rachel & Oliver are ensconced in their sr. year of college.  They've raised their family on a rare cul-de-sac on the UWS composed of individual brownstone homes filled with affluent white families creating a closed knit community upon itself.  Keeping the households churning & children cared for are the working class New Yorkers comprised of immigrants & those with far less economic advantages.  Quindlen's satirical highlighting of the haves and have nots in NYC is fiercely funny and acerbic.  Nora is the director for a jewelry museum exhibiting extravagant collections founded by wealthy NY socialite Bebe who likes to encase her own exorbitant jewels.  The ruckus raised by the discovery of imitation jewelry belonging to Bebe is priceless.  Nora notifies Bebe of the presumed robbery which doesn't phase her.  Bebe switched the authentic pieces with copies. "Who cares?  If nobody can tell the difference between real and fake, who cares if fake is what you're showing."  Phoniness is rampant amongst New Yorkers including the "homeless" mendicant outside the museum with whom Nora maintains cordial passing conversation.  And, diametrical vantages are omnipresent.  Ricky, the handyman has ingratiated himself by becoming indispensable to the sanctum of Nora & her neighbors.  He has a completely different personage when Nora seeks him out in his own neighborhood.  Ricky's wife is a real piece of work.  She has no problem laying it on the line what she thinks of Nora's self-righteousness & notorious neighborhood.  Much ado is made over the highly coveted parking lot adjacent to the cluster of brownstones.  When Ricky's van supposedly blocks access by one of the entitled parkers, a horrific incident ensues. Ricky is savagely struck by an aggrieved tenant with his golf club intentionally or not.  The gloves come off and sides are drawn.  The shifting scenarios are astute observations on white privilege, presumptions and pretensions.  "Alternate Side" offers an insider's view of life for Manhattanites.  However, marriage and relationships are at the apex of this clever & engrossing read.  Nora's marriage is dissected from within & by a cackle of caddy women who lunch.  "Marriages were like balloons; a few went suddenly pop, but more often than not the air slowly leaked out until it was a sad, wrinkled little thing with no lift to it anymore."  There's plenty of spark to make "Alternate Side" a page turner.

"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead Wins Pulitzer Prize & Nat'l Book Award for Fiction

"The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead (b Amer 1969) received the Pulitzer Price for Fiction ('17), the Nat'l Book Award ('16) and was Oprah's book selection in '16.  I mention Oprah's selection because it may serve to draw more readers to the accountabilities of the barbarities the white population incurred upon African Americans and Native Americans to build our nation.  "The whites truly believes - believes with all its heart that it is their right to the land.  To kill Indians.  Make war. Enslave their brothers."  Put another war "Slavery is a sin when whites were put to the yoke, but not the African.  All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man."  Cora is the heroine of this oftentimes graphically apprehensible historic narrative.  Cora is a 3rd generation slave on a tyrannical plantation in GA.  Cora's grandmother Ajarry was captured in Africa and sold into slavery, her mother Mabel fled the plantation seeking her freedom leaving Cora to fend for herself as a young girl.  Mabel's fate is never known to Cora but revealed to the reader at the end of the novel.  Cora is approached by a fellow slave Caesar to make their escape.  The epic sojourn follows Cora as she makes her terrifying & grueling journey north.  Along the way she is helped by whites opposed to slavery & courageous blacks.  There are horrors and treacheries everywhere.  The underground railroad is literal in this novel adding a mystic quality.  It questions how it was at all possible to escape and to gain rightful freedom.  Our nation's birth of European tribes, "Conquer and build & civilize. And destroy that what needs to be destroyed."  Cora & Caesar harrowing journeys lands them in several states.  In SC where they feel secure until it's discovered sterilization being forced on black women & syphilis testing on black males.  Whitehead's novel is ambitious in its scope. Cora's escapes to other locations entail the bravery & humanity of other blacks and selfless whites.  This deeply stirring novel serves as a shockingly brutal understanding of the inhumane treatment of slaves and the abhorrent justifications for its practices.   Whitehead sweeping account holds many moments of great dignity amongst the atrocities.  "A free black walks differently than a slave.  White people recognize it immediately."  Mabel considers her daughter's future as a runaway. "The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse."