My first read of 2012 is Wildwood by Colin Meloy, lead singer and songwriter of quirky band, The Decemeberists. Anyone who has listened to the Decemberists knows their penchant for storytelling. Their albums do not cover the typical contemporary topics of getting drunk, getting laid and breaking up. Instead they draw their inspiration from fables, such as The Crane Wife. If ever a was a singer born to write YA novels, it is Colin Meloy. Thankfully, he doesn't disappoint.
Wildwood begins with 13-year-old Prue taking her infant brother, Mac, to the park in their quiet suburb of Portland, Oregon. All seems normal, until Prue notices a murder of crows gathered in the surrounding trees. Suddenly, the crows swoop down and abduct Mac. Prue jumps on her bike, following them as fast as she can peddle, but she is no match for their speed. As she watches, the crows, with Mac in tow, disappear into what is commonly referred to as "The Impassable Wilderness", a wooded area that all Portland residents know to avoid at all costs. Though she has been taught from birth to keep away, she knows she must enter the Impassable Wilderness if she ever hopes to find her brother.
On her way into the wood, Prue is waylaid by a classmate, a social outcast called Curtis. He insists on accompanying her into the wood. What follows is an adventurous fairytale in the vein of Narnia and Peter Pan. During their search for Mac, the pair of so-called "Outsiders" discover that an entire world beyond anything they could have imagined exists within the wood. It is complete with an evil queen, rowdy bandits, coyote soldiers, wise mystics, a luxurious city, an owl regent, and many more fantastical creatures and settings.
As a fan of YA lit and the Decemberists, I have had my eye on Wildwood for awhile. Overall, I enjoyed the book. Though I will admit it did drag a bit through the middle, I found the characters and situations interesting and the story enchanting. There were two things in particular I loved about the book: the illustrations and the ending.
The illustrations, by Meloy's wife and renowned children's book illustrator, Carson Ellis, are charming. The cartoon-ish, yet simple drawings are very well-suited to a modern day fairy tale set in a magical land on the periphery of Portland.
I enjoyed the end for a couple of reasons. It was well-developed and generally happy, but not perfect. And more importantly (for me anyway) it was not a cliffhanger. As a young adult librarian, it is damn near impossible for me to keep up with every single book in every single YA and children's series out there. It sometimes seems like all books written for the age group are part of a series. I am sick of it. Wildwood, according to the title page, is the first book in The Wildwood Chronicles. Blargh. But, the book ends well enough that I don't feel like I have to continue on with the story. It is a complete and satisfying story in and of itself. It is very likely that I will continue on with this series, but I don't feel like I have to. And I truly appreciate that.
Showing posts with label Pajiba's Cannonball Read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pajiba's Cannonball Read. Show all posts
Friday, January 6, 2012
Pajiba's Cannonball Read 4
I have decided to take part in Pajiba's fourth annual Cannonball Read. I will attempt to read and write reviews of 25 books over the next year. The reading part is a easy (I am a librarian after all,) but the writing part proved to be more of a challange last time I attempted this. Here we go...
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Book 1: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
I first read a Nick Hornby book in high school. As a sixteen-year-old girl living in the suburbs of a midsized southern city in the US, I could hardly be considered the target audience for Hornby's humorous sadsack variety of "dick lit." But I savored every word of High Fidelity. Perhaps it was because I was a sixteen-year-old girl that I identified so readily with such a melodramatic, romantic protagonist. I also really, really like lists.
Since then I have read all of Hornby's works, both fiction and non-fiction. As a whole, I find I enjoy his non-fiction more. The fiction tends to get bogged down in the characters' own sullenness and petty natures. Whereas when Hornby is writing in his own voice, he is generally more humorous, optimistic and warm, even when writing about difficult topics such as his son's autism.
As for his fiction, I loved both High Fidelity and About a Boy, enjoyed Slam!, and pretty much just wanted to shake all the characters in A Long Way Down until they got their heads out of their own asses. How to be Good was so wretched I prefer to forget I even read it. I suppose I continue to read and get excited about his books because I know that when he is on his game, he does realistic comedic novels better than almost anyone else out there. I can't help but hope for another About a Boy.
I picked up his newest work, Juliet, Naked, with some justifiable trepidation. It is a story of three pretty miserable people: Tucker Crowe, a once semi-famous musician who walked out on his career while it was at its peak with no explanation, and now finds himself with no career or ambition and half a dozen failed marriages and half-forgotten children; Duncan, a college professor who has been obsessed with Tucker Crowe and his music for nearly twenty years; and Annie, Duncan's longtime girlfriend who is beginning to wonder if she has wasted her whole life on a man she has little interest in, a career that bores her, and living in a town that is dying a slow death.
After a previously unreleased demo of Tucker's greatest album, "Juliet", finds its way to Duncan and Annie's doorstep, the cracks in their relationship become too clear to ignore any longer. Around this same time, Tucker begins communicating with Annie via e-mail after she posts a scathing (and in Tucker's mind, deservedly so) review of the new album now known as "Juliet, Naked" on the Tucker Crowe fanpage. From this point forward, the lines between the characters begin to shift, diverging and crossing where previously they had not done so.
It took me a couple of days to decide whether I liked this story or these characters. In a lot of ways I'm still not sure. Tucker's only true redeeming quality is his relationship with his six-year-old son, Jackson, the only one of his children he has not, nor will ever, abandon. I finished the book yesterday, and I barely remember Duncan. Annie, though, is the biggest puzzle to me. She yearns for a child, for a family, for something to prove that her life has not been a waste, but she seems to do little to change her situation. Well, I guess thinking back on it, that is not true. She makes some major changes to her life, and takes a few pretty substantial risks. The changes she makes just don't seem to move her all that far in any direction. None of the characters or plot lines are resolved by the end of the novel. This is both comfortingly realistic and totally frustrating. Hornby is one of those authors who likes to end with an ellipsis rather than a period. I like not knowing how it will all end up. There is something too artificial about having everything resolved and perfectly tied up in a little bow, but at the same time, after 400+ pages I want to feel as though I got somewhere, and with Juliet, Naked? I don't think I did.
Since then I have read all of Hornby's works, both fiction and non-fiction. As a whole, I find I enjoy his non-fiction more. The fiction tends to get bogged down in the characters' own sullenness and petty natures. Whereas when Hornby is writing in his own voice, he is generally more humorous, optimistic and warm, even when writing about difficult topics such as his son's autism.
As for his fiction, I loved both High Fidelity and About a Boy, enjoyed Slam!, and pretty much just wanted to shake all the characters in A Long Way Down until they got their heads out of their own asses. How to be Good was so wretched I prefer to forget I even read it. I suppose I continue to read and get excited about his books because I know that when he is on his game, he does realistic comedic novels better than almost anyone else out there. I can't help but hope for another About a Boy.
I picked up his newest work, Juliet, Naked, with some justifiable trepidation. It is a story of three pretty miserable people: Tucker Crowe, a once semi-famous musician who walked out on his career while it was at its peak with no explanation, and now finds himself with no career or ambition and half a dozen failed marriages and half-forgotten children; Duncan, a college professor who has been obsessed with Tucker Crowe and his music for nearly twenty years; and Annie, Duncan's longtime girlfriend who is beginning to wonder if she has wasted her whole life on a man she has little interest in, a career that bores her, and living in a town that is dying a slow death.
After a previously unreleased demo of Tucker's greatest album, "Juliet", finds its way to Duncan and Annie's doorstep, the cracks in their relationship become too clear to ignore any longer. Around this same time, Tucker begins communicating with Annie via e-mail after she posts a scathing (and in Tucker's mind, deservedly so) review of the new album now known as "Juliet, Naked" on the Tucker Crowe fanpage. From this point forward, the lines between the characters begin to shift, diverging and crossing where previously they had not done so.
It took me a couple of days to decide whether I liked this story or these characters. In a lot of ways I'm still not sure. Tucker's only true redeeming quality is his relationship with his six-year-old son, Jackson, the only one of his children he has not, nor will ever, abandon. I finished the book yesterday, and I barely remember Duncan. Annie, though, is the biggest puzzle to me. She yearns for a child, for a family, for something to prove that her life has not been a waste, but she seems to do little to change her situation. Well, I guess thinking back on it, that is not true. She makes some major changes to her life, and takes a few pretty substantial risks. The changes she makes just don't seem to move her all that far in any direction. None of the characters or plot lines are resolved by the end of the novel. This is both comfortingly realistic and totally frustrating. Hornby is one of those authors who likes to end with an ellipsis rather than a period. I like not knowing how it will all end up. There is something too artificial about having everything resolved and perfectly tied up in a little bow, but at the same time, after 400+ pages I want to feel as though I got somewhere, and with Juliet, Naked? I don't think I did.
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