The Book Thief: Far Better Than Nazi Germany

There are some stories that read like an old soul reminiscing with a moat of eager listeners, and there are others that read like a hushed and urgent whisper, coming from a friend who is practically spilling over with secrets. The Book Thief is both.

Death narrates and he (yes, he), has stories to tell and an appreciation for spoilers. He's not giving us cliffhangers to keep us fiending for the next page. For Death, who is trapped to the tedious burden of gathering souls, the big events (characters' deaths, for one) aren't enough. He spoils several of them halfway through, and with hardly an apology. Rather than keep us tilting on the edge of our seats, he wants us to appreciate the nuances and details of the characters' lives in full appreciation before they're gone. "I don't have much interest in mystery," he says, "Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It's the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me."Markus Zusak creates a narrator that wants us to savor the meal, rather than scoff it down.

By knowing which characters will not survive by the last page, we focus harder on them. Their actions, smirks and words sit a little more beautifully in our minds, now that we are agonizingly aware of their mortality. Doesn't chocolate taste better when you know there isn't any more in the box? By spoiling a few major events, Death implores us to enjoy what we can before it's too late. And still, even with this cushion of knowing the future, you will not cry any less when Death reaches in and grabs their souls. He doesn't rob us of the opportunity to be shocked and overwhelmed. The experience simply, and effectively, moves us with something more profound than an assassination or otherwise eventful plot-twist.

Which leads me to why this isn't a typical story about Nazi Germany, or World War II. Yes, the Nazis and the war play major roles in how these characters cross each other's paths, but they're the stage and the set, not the players. The players weave the real story, which is one of innocence lost, and making irrevocable choices. When you lose innocence, that means you've become aware; you've realized that you have the power to make a decision. Eve, for instance, lost her innocence when she was faced with the decision to either eat the apple from the tree of knowledge or remain in paradise. Liesel, the book thief, is faced with similar decisions, and more often than not, she takes the contraband despite the risk of punishment. Her loss of innocence didn't come from sex, like the phrase unfortunately implies. Innocence is nothing more than ignorance. Is it coincidence that Eve was tempted at the Tree of Knowledge? Liesel has no interest in innocence, so she takes the apples (sometimes literally, and sometimes in bulk) when they present themselves. That's what this book is about: losing innocence so that survival becomes more than waking up; it turns into a challenge to come back from sleep with a sharper mind, a fiercer ability to love, and a taste for trouble. this is why Death describes her as a "perpetual survivor," an "expert at being left behind,"which is why he tells her story. Of the heaps of souls he's encountered and carried, she is among a handful that are worth not only remembering, but also sharing. It's as if Markus Zusak himself is telling us to grab the apples, if only for Death, an immortal whose soul-bearing burden is lifted by the delight of our own mischief.

Salvage The Bones: Failed Poet Twists the Grotesquerie Of Life Into A Thing Of Beauty

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In her own words, Jesmyn Ward is a "failed poet." At face value, this statement sounds like another lofty, author-y quip that makes many of us roll our eyes. After reading Salvage though, you understand. Ward is an extremely talented wordsmith. She's the kind of writer that was supposed to be a poet, but somehow tripped and fell into prose. This is mostly a good thing.

Early on, we're treated to lines like this: "Seeing him broke the cocoon of my rib cage, and my heart unfurled to fly," (5). It's brief, beautiful, and for a moment, we drift away from a novel into what could be the start, climax, or ending to a really good poem. We know, however, that we are not in a poem; we are reading fiction. At times, the elaborate images can ware on you as you trudge through a narrative that practically bruises the pages with motherless survival and ever impending storms. There's no questioning the skill in her "poetry," but within the prose, it seems out of place at times, like an extra spoon at a table setting. Don't be dissuaded though: the dramatic imagery certainly makes a home for itself in the subjects of the story--the current and imminent hurricanes overhead of a desperate family.

The impending "storms" are both literal and figurative, the former being none other than Ms. Katrina. The figurative spin around young pregnancy, dog-fighting, and a motherless girl in a family of men. You don't get any story about Katrina without lines that turn your stomach, and force your eyes open to the grotesqueries of life. Namely, childbirth. Perhaps the most vivid passage is when our young hero, Esch, describes the birth of her younger brother and subsequent death of her mother:

"I can see her, chin to chest, straining to push Junior out, and Junior snagging on her insides, grabbing hold of what he caught on to try and stay inside her, but instead he pulled it out with him when he was born" (4).

Consider this line a gift. Now, you can say that being a mom is the hardest job with conviction, rather than an obligation to tinkle kindly in polite society.

From the beginning, Ward treats us to a savage image of survival, and a heart rendering image of relief (page 5),  setting the tone for a bloody, messy, and--miraculously--hopeful narrative of a young girl trying to stay alive.

Tampa: The Most Wicked Thing On Your Shelf

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This is going to chill you a bit before you even get halfway through. You probably won't look down your own street the same way for a little while. Celeste Price is a 8th grade teacher and pedophile. Her appetite for 14-year-old boys is insatiable and her ability to hide her secret is borderline sociopathic. Not unlike hearing a broadcast of a school teacher who slept with a student in your neighborhood, Tampa will hang on your shoulder when you peer down your street, lined with otherwise unassuming households. You'll be sure to remind yourself that not only can you be unsure of what's taking place within those homes, you can also not be sure what kinds of thoughts and desires are spinning behind the eyes of your neighbors. Suddenly everyone has an invisible finger dipped in some kind of wickedness, and the really jarring part is that mixed in with the fear of potential secrets, you've got a budding curiosity.

I don't mean to make you paranoid. I want to make it clear that fear is no decent cage to lock yourself in--because really, it isn't a cage; it's a box. The only path outside of it is a hole just big enough to suck oxygen through, yet too small to peer out of. And you don't want that, do you? You would rather read about a murderer than protect your innocence from a frightening character. You read things like Tampa, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Life and Loves of a She-Devil. You're probably trying like hell to catch up on Breaking Bad. This is because you know that wicked people make for good stories. When a good brain, like Oscar Wilde's, Fay Weldon's and Vince Gilligan's are put to the task of making that story into something we can sink our teeth and claws into, we get exactly what we want out of these villains, or rather, these anti-heroes. The reward is an exposure of wickedness that is so unabashed and honest that you can't help but revel in the quality of the work. The evilness in the character is not chaotic or randomly dangerous; it's deliberate, unwavering, and chillingly human. It's what Alissa Nutting has tapped into with this book.

Nutting writes like a psychologist who's been around forever. Celeste Price's observations of the people around her are so fluid and bright that you constantly find yourself at war with your distaste for her criminal activity. Since I mentioned cages earlier, I'll use an excerpt where Celeste contemplates the captivity of souls within the bodies of middle aged women while she's trying to spy on a student from her car:

Their silhouettes eclipsed my binocular view and I looked up to watch them saunter off, elbows out, rowing through the air like impotent wings. Were there souls left inside these women? It seemed doubtful. The soul had always struck me as being a tricky thing to keep with the body: an easily bored aristocrat with the means to leave whenever it wished. What temptations, what vistas were their lives of folding socks and online diet-plan message boards offering? The goosey (sic) flesh of their limbs was not in rhythm. What facile cages for a spirit hell-bent on sneaking out, the bodies of these women.

How wrong, or misguided is she? Is this the unusually bright, albeit superficial mind of a teenager, trapped in the body of an educated 27 year-old? Either way, what goes on in Celeste's head is not fit for polite society... obviously. We have to admit, however, that these thoughts are not reserved for women parked outside teenagers' houses with a pair of binoculars. For as long as women have been women, the societal gaze upon their bodies has been relentless, and often brutal. Nutting allows us to explore these observations as if Celeste is a vehicle for what we openly agree is wrong, but privately consider anyway.

And within this passage, this matter-of-fact consideration of the "soul" and of these women, is desperation, which might explain deviancy, if only in part. In order to keep her soul intact and within her body, she must avoid the monotonous life she sees many women living out in her neighborhood. She is afraid that others might observe her body and being as Nature's failed attempt to make something beautiful enough to be worth the lustful attention of those she desires. There is weakness in her cold assessment of these women, and weakness is a very natural thing. In the eyes of those women, Celeste is a gorgeous specimen either at subject to their envy, or indifference. Those who did get to know her, truly--those wise to her secret desires--would likely cut their descriptive powers down to one simple word, "monster." Where is the enlightenment, or dare I say it, fun in that?

Looking through eyes of the villain is a rare opportunity we get as readers, or even as movie goers and video game players for that matter. We are always with the good guy, the hero. We're with Harry Potter, and Superman on the side of righteousness and virtue; the side of nobility in the face of death and cruelty. This is all good--in life we want to bring harm to no one and be kind to all, ideally. However, as consumers of entertainment, we limit ourselves to a very cushioned experience as readers. We fool ourselves into thinking there are immoral books that, if read, will contaminate our minds and our desires. We are afraid of being won over by Celeste Price, and then possibly becoming her.

This is an unfounded fear. No book is going to singlehandedly make you into a sex offender. If you somehow become a sex offender after reading this, I guarantee no sensible judge is going to let you go and throw her behind bars. You'll be changed after this book, like with any good book, but you won't be unrecognizable from your old self. I give Nutting a lot of credit for her writing, but she's not a witch; she's an author. A really good one who just doesn't have the face of someone who wants you to sleep with the members of One Direction (see book jacket for image).

4 out of 5 stars.

What The Family Needed: A Family Of Heroes You Won't Believe Aren't Real

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I'm all in for this one.

Before we even meet the family, they've cracked. A mother and her two children are already moving away to a sister’s house in paradisiac suburbia. Instantly, we realize this book’s universe did not begin on page one. Readers will find themselves bursting with curiosity, and eager to get to the next page already. We don’t even see the mother, Ruth, pile her children into her blue hatchback, and leave her husband looking down (or not looking at all) at them as they take off. By they time they arrive at her sister's "peaceful" home, we’ve only been racing along the blue hatchback for the last sliver of that fateful car ride. In less than two pages, we’re informed of this pre-existing universe. A lesser writer would have taken longer.

Speaking of temporality and our collective need to hurry the hell up and enjoy ourselves, Steven Amsterdam wastes no ink. The first chapter follows Giordana, who acquires the ability to render herself invisible. The source of the power isn’t revealed. Giordana has her suspicions of the source, and where they lie create the potential for a delightful unfolding later on in the story. An economically wise decision, which successfully keeps our curiosity as readers on a steady tap.

Delightful might be the wrong term, considering the amount of contained dysfunction amidst our heroes. And I say heroes because we are treated to the perspectives of every main character—all seven—over different periods of time, separated by decades. Amsterdam seems to understand the reader’s intrinsic taste for gossip and drama with the way this book is structured. The characters that barely speak, or don’t even make an appearance in one chapter, are cracked wide open in their respective chapters. The gift of perspective he treats us to is truly a privilege.

Not only that, but Amsterdam’s talents for description and clarity are unrivaled. The revelation of each superpower is not a saccharine, operatic ascension to the super-hero’s pedestal. With humility, and simplicity he guides his characters through these sudden developments that are so believable, it’s nearly breathtaking. Take Giordana’s disappearing:

From the veranda, she could see that the street was still. A few cars sat in driveways and not even a breeze through the evenly spaced trees. Giordana went back inside to make a quick round of the house without the house knowing. She lessened herself. Looked down: no legs, no arms. Ace, She trusted her senses to know she was not just a floating head. Proprioception, the feeling of your body in space. What was it called when your body was there but not there? She took the stairs with her hands up, as if it was a balancing act.

Giordana is not placed in—brace for irony—an invisible realm reserved for beings with super ability. There isn’t a spot reserved for her on Olympus from where she can observe weaker beings. She’s hardly even made into the quintessential, and exhausted portrait of the girl who’s "not like other girls." Her human curiosity and lack of assurance in the face of new power are very much there. In this regard, Amsterdam's approach to a girl feeling empowered by her invisibility is as refreshing as it is enticing.

What won’t surprise you is the link between the characters' humanity and their super-ness. The powers reflect their desires and their flaws, which are the main ingredients to personality. And although the connections between super power and personality is a method old as time, Amsterdam doesn’t lose steam and neither will you as you read. Each hero is illustrated brilliantly; they each, within the space of a single chapter, read as more than figments of Amsterdam's remarkable imagination. This comes from a kind of story-telling that is unabashedly honest, and composed with dedication to each word.

As I stood reading a borrowed copy of this book, I decided I needed my own before I got to page five. When I eventually arrived at it's ending, I went right back to page one.

5 out of 5 stars.

The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time: A New Kind Of Hero We Need To Know.

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At the risk of sounding ignorant (okay, of admitting ignorance), I feel as though I've gained ten times as more insight into Asperger's Syndrome than I had before I read this. I don't know whether Haddon did ten months of research, or ten years, or ten days, but I believe him--as if he, the author, is unable to lie just like Christopher John Francis Boone, the story's hero. The subject of truth makes plenty cameos, but they are not all are as simple as a question and an honest-to-God answer (especially since Christopher is steadfastly atheist).

This is how Haddon captivates you: as you follow his story, you realize that the hard lines and angles of Christopher's mind are not as solid as he, Christopher, initially promises. He simply tells us that he cannot tell lies, as if the wiring of his brain doesn't permit it. Yet, as we follow the narrative, we learn that his staggering ability to tell the truth matches his penchant for half-truths, white lies and even deception.

Christopher's deception is borne of a passionate desire to write a book about the murder of a neighbor's dog. The presence of passion in the heart of someone who is all brain, so to speak, makes you root for him, especially when his dishonesty is crafted so closely to the margins of his own logical mandate of telling the truth. Here is a boy with social skills so lacking he barks at those who come near, yet he shares the same lofty ambition with every person who ever took a writing class.

 of beguiling truth bring a largely unfamiliar kind of mind and the more typical mind together, separated by difference that seems only as thick as a mirror. Things so dissonant as math and literature seem not like the antitheses to each other but rather like distant relatives, the kind you meet awkwardly and then suddenly feel you've known forever.

Like an actual sibling or relative, you will get fed up with Christopher, but not ever enough to abandon him. His honesty and careful effusiveness as a writer leaves you so little room to not understand the parts of him that are dark and profoundly human. A strong pinch of your happiness depends on his fate, especially when he discovers who really killed that dog. Christopher is curious, determined, scared, and far more like you than you expect.

If you haven't read this yet, do. Haddon gives us the pleasure of a gripping story, and a sense of clarity that turns Asperger's and autism on its heels to appear less like disability and more as a difference for us to put against the back drop of our own scattered minds.

4 out of 5 stars

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said the main character in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time has autism. While that isn't necessarily false, the clarification must be made that Christopher has Asperger's Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Click here to learn what the difference is under "Characteristics."

The Fault In Our Stars: Refreshing, Heartbreaking, and Triumphantly Un-put-down-able

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We don't tend to love books whose main characters are terminal. We spend our days occupying ourselves with work and play to avoid the reality that since we are all aging, we are all dying. No one leaps at the chance to read the story of a girl with stage 4 thyroid cancer--too depressing. I'm telling you now to not let that determine your decision whether to pick this one up. As someone with his own fear complex regarding death and oblivion, I can say without a doubt that The Fault In Our Stars is the exception.

On the first page, Hazel, the protagonist, says "But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is, really.)" From there on out, the tone is set. Hazel's statement sounds depressing at first, but really, she is giving us some very good news: since everything is a side effect of dying, and everything we do can be considered the matter that makes up our lives, then dying is evidence that we have lived, that we wear our existence in the form of cuts on our knees, white hair, and laugh lines branching from the outmost corners of our eyes. Dying means that you existed.

Granted, I don't think I've cried more from reading a book than when I read this. John Green makes it near impossible to not love Hazel and Augustus, the "gorgeous plot-twist" she meets at a cancer support group. Both characters are drawn with dry senses of humor, sharp wit and profound perspectives on what it means to be alive and fall in love. From what I gathered, it usually means accepting the fact that joys and tragedies are often concomitant of one another. When something builds up joy, that joy, by having simply been built, is at risk of being brought down by one of the myriad side effects of dying (or living).

If there were ever a call to action in Green's novel, it would be to let yourself do both. Live and love despite the ensuing tragedy of one day losing what you love or being lost from the world yourself. Tomorrow, after all, is guaranteed to no one. Cancer grows without an eye for the character or benevolence of its host, and cars with distracted drivers come out of nowhere. Which, I guess, is a dramatic way of saying, shit happens.

Here's a minor/major spoiler alert depending on how you read. It speaks loudly and clearly to the very idea of shit happening and it not being our fault.

If you're anything like the twelve-year-old school girl living in my brain, you'll love that Green references the title in the novel. It happens when Augustus writes to Hazel's favorite author for her in an attempt to get him explain the ending of her favorite book. They get a letter back from him, and he points out that the "Shakespearean complexity of [their] tragedy," stems from how ill Hazel is at this point and how not ill Augustus is, a microcosmic comparison of all the sick people in the world and all those that are healthy:

"Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is in the nature of our stars to cross and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves'... but there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars."

The 'Fault,' capital F, in our stars is the simple metaphor of life's gargantuanly complex (spoiler: Green likes adverbs) and relentless nature. The biggest fault in us, and there definitely is one, is denying ourselves the indulgence of what we love. Regardless of the paths our stars make when they cross, though terrible they may be, refusing to take part is to refuse the prospect of happiness and all its side effects. For compassion, we sacrifice our contentedness, and then live with the eruptions of both joy and tragedy that wear on both our skin and our two hearts--the one physically beating in our chests and the figurative one that makes us beat on our chests.

As a playful Augustus puts it:

"... [even when] the robots recall the human absurdities of sacrifice and compassion, they will remember us."
"They will robot-laugh at our courageous folly... But something in their iron robot hearts will yearn to have lived and died as we did: on the hero's errand."

Green's novel is the exception to the sad-cancer-genre for this reason: it makes it absolutely clear that rewarding our survival with joy is, in fact, heroic.

5 out of 5 stars

Golden Boy: What happens when a prominent family tries to hide the fact that their son is both male and female? A story fit for tabloids.

The point of the irrevocable, and those who either walk past it willingly or are dragged by the betrayal of another, all make for a good story. In Golden Boy that line is crossed early on, though I won't say how exactly because that will ruin it. The rest of the novel shows the quiet, ebullient free-fall of intersex Max and his mother Karen; the fierce, and persistent war-cries of his ten-year old brother, Daniel, who wants (and deserves) to be taken seriously; and the unwavering acceptance of his father, Steve. You see, Max is special: an over-achieving, angelically good-looking star-athlete who is at once both male and female, and yet, neither as well. He is what we no longer in polite society call, a hermaphrodite.

You can't help but imagine Abigail Tarttelin thinking up the story: Pupils dilated with anticipation of the chaos that would ensue after giving two publicly prominent figures an intersex love-child. Yet, there is a tenderness to Tarttelin's writing. She is not a Pan, God of Mischief. She's more like the grown-up version of a child who likes to smash her toys and see how they come apart. Tarttelin, unlike a precocious brat surrounded by dismembered dinosaurs, knows how to put things back together and then some.

Secrets are revealed and the characters stretch desperately like rubber bands and snap back, often with understanding, and often with more questions than answers. The largest question being, is being normal really worth it? In exploring this idea, we come to understand the difference between behaving normally, and seeming normal to those looking in (which, in the Walkers' case, is the whole damn town). The definition of normal is turned and tossed like a raw pizza dough. You'll find that as Max learns more about his body (with the help of the underplayed Dr. Archie Verma) both the definition of normalcy and very value of mimicking those around him ebb and flow. Being normal may take more energy than he realizes, and giving up on that endeavor might really be the courageous effort of loving his whole self, the leap of acceptance he needs to survive.

If anything, this book is a lesson in reacting to the idea that something is "wrong" with you. With a remarkable wisdom, Tarttelin asks all the questions for us and answers them only so much as to leave room for our sense of wonder to still buzz in the margins. Like a true British novelist, she abides by the law that, like the dead, secrets will up like weeds in the garden, and when they do sprout, havoc will reek. That is, until someone throws tidiness to the wind and digs elbow deep to take care of it.

(Side note: while reading this, I put together that "hermaphrodite" is the marriage of Hermes, and Aphrodite, two gods who I'm pretty sure banged and as a result, conceived a child called Hermaphroditos. Neat, huh?)

4 out of 5 stars

What Is the What: Great writing, slow plot, flickers of humor.

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Yes, what is the what? What kind of question is that? It's so baffling, I almost want to ask, how is that question? Furthermore, what grounds does caucasian Eggers have for writing about a black man in the middle of a Sudanese civil war? The title alone of Egger's most popular novel reads like a code. You'd have to be a rock to not at least want to flip through the pages to get a whiff of understanding.

After reading the whole damn thing, it turns out the question/title itself has less to do with the race and location of the protagonist, than it does with the fact that he has a choice: stay within Africa and face deadly conflict, or leave to an unknown. The What, it seems, is not only the concept of opportunity, but also abandonment of what is familiar. In the heat and tumult of conflict between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Army, the citizens of Sudan and nearby countries are pitted with the choice of either remaining where they are, or fleeing to somewhere else--in many cases, remaining put means committing suicide. Arab mercenaries, a powerful and corrupt government, and the merciless heat and wildlife of Africa do not seem to spare those who decide not to run away.

Like most novels by Eggers, this story does not move quickly. I would love to read this in a class rather than read it on my own. The book is 535 pages of violence, history and personal narrative told to us by the part fictional, part autobiographical protagonist, Valentino Deng. The story of his escape from Africa is framed within the story of his adaptation to America. It's a heart-cleaving narrative in which Deng's loneliness and helplessness are palpable. 

You will want to step into the pages and help Deng with things non-immigrants have the privilege of doing with relative ease: seeking help from the police, getting medical attention, getting into school, getting a job, getting married, being noticed when something goes wrong. 

Much of the novel takes place on a long, perilous walk from Sudan all the way to Kakuma (which is fucking far). You witness starvation, thirst, death by lions, death by exhaustion, death by madness and death by simple submission. This alone will make any reader look up from the page and think, "Thank god I was born here in Blahblasville, CT." Egger's portrait of death in this story it worth reading, for the shear simplicity in how he explains the tremendous weight of losing someone when all there is left of hope is someone nearby who will shake you when you start to lose it:

"His eyes slowly closed and I ran to get our share of the animal. While I was gone, the life in William K fell away and his flesh returned to the earth.

It was easier to die now... I had assumed that dying always took place over those many hours in the dark. But William K had done something different. He only stopped walking, sat under a truee, closed his eyes, and was gone. I had returned with a finger's worth of meat to share with him and found his body already cold... I sat next to him for some time. In my hand his hand became warm again... I knew the vultures would be circling... I decided I would bury him, even if it meant that I would lose my place with the group... I no longer had any faith in our journey or in our guides... we would walk and die until all boys were gone" (217)

It's a lot of ink to get through, but simply by comparison, Eggers' invention and recording of this refugee's story gives us a lot of time to realize we have it pretty good.

It's not all sad, thankfully. It's not outright hilarious, but there is humor. As a boy, Valentino's father explains to him that they, the Dinka, are superior to the Arabs. This becomes interesting when the Deng family has several Arabs over for dinner. Valentino loses a small but potent bit of innocence when he thinks, "[My father] was sure that the Arabs knew they were inferior to the Dinka, but he knew it would not be polite to explain this to them at dinner" (63). It's not far from what we might find in a small suburb in Connecticut: The Jones's have the Carter family over for dinner, all the while, Ms. Jones smiles widely, knowing that Mr. Carter has a penchant for seducing the local swim instructor, and that Ms. Carter simply pretends to not smell the chlorine in his hair. Ms. Jones may blab to her other friends, and to the grocer, and the crossing guard if there's time, but at dinner, she's mum. Call her a superficial gossip, but never a bad host. Valentino's father reminds me of my fictional Ms. Jones in this way, and it's delightful. If you want to get through a book weighted down with genocide and children being eaten by lions, you have to look hard for the humor that wiggles between the lines, rather than wait for it to dance across the page. Noticing it when it's harder to see, I find, is more rewarding. 

However, I definitely needed more of it.

What Eggers does most obviously well is illustrate the odd consequences of freedom. Valentino struggles for his freedom throughout the entire novel, but whenever he achieves one level of it, he is burdened still with the responsibility of having to choose what to do with it. Being freed from any kind of prison, emotional or physical, leaves us with the responsibility to do well in it. Eggers creates a narrative that forces us to examine freedom as a blessing and as a demon howling its catch in our ear.

3 out of 5 stars

Bring Up The Bodies: For the smart reader with a taste for revenge and cruel intentions.

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Bring Up the Bodies is a story that reads like a ghost feels. The presence of what is not there, feels, in fact, very much there. The tensions of dying friends and family members, and of enemies plotting in the other corners of country, house and room all sit above each line. Hillary Mantel knew what she was doing when she chose such ghostly subjects; it feels as if the dead read over your shoulder as you follow Cromwell, Master Secretary to King Henry, through a fine-tuned tale of power, struggle and desperate revenge. Go into it knowing well that Anne Boleyn will literally lose her head among other things. Look for what she keeps intact and for what she lobs off the survivors before the axe drops on her neck.

This historical fiction is a hard read. You can't speed through it lest the dozens of characters blend into one faceless man whose coat tails continually whip out of sight (there is a lot of whipping out of sight). Thankfully, before the story begins, Mantel includes a cast of characters and text explaining their loyalties. Nevertheless (remember this word and it's cousin: however), the cast of characters will not be enough to grasp the twists and hidden meanings. Read and re-read. I was lucky enough to read a copy that has my former professor's notes in it. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much without her circlings and notes in the margins.

Read along with a friend. It will be a good substitute for gossip; just as delicious and without the eventual consequence of an awkward brunch after your loose friend, Mary, finds out you blabbed about that mysterious rash she acquired from a man who really "felt a connection with her." 

Seriously though, if you pay attention and piece this story together, it'll grab you by the collar as if it were a ghost shocked back to life.

4 out of 5 stars