5. A Feast for Crows

In which I greatly miss some characters but get sucked into the continuing saga of Westeros nonetheless

Title: A Feast for Crows

Author: George R. R. Martin

What it’s about: Warning: Spoilers ahead for the three previous books in George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. A Feast for Crows focuses on the aftermath of The War of Five Kings. Though only one of the original declarants remains (Stannis), the country is still at war as new kings are crowned. One Lannister is as good (or bad) as the next, so young Tommen takes the place of his brother on the thrown in King’s Landing. As Tommen is too young to rule and Tyrion is out of the picture following his trial for Joffrey’s wedding-night demise (the second death of a king at a wedding…curious) and the subsequent actual murder of his father, the ruling of the kingdom finally falls on Cersei’s shoulders. For the first time Cersei becomes a POV character, but I was disappointed that her chapters didn’t expand my understanding of her motivations much. While I did develop some sympathy for the once reprehensible Jaime when his chapters were introduced in Storm of Swords, Cersei is pretty much how I always imagined her: self-centered, paranoid, and clueless when it comes to politics. She orders deaths like I order pizza (usually while intoxicated and without much thought to how I’ll feel about it in the morning). When we do get glimpses into her past, they almost exclusively focus on a prophesy experienced as a girl which fortold her marriage to Robert, her three bastard children and eventual fall to another queen. This felt like a lot of energy spent foretelling things that had already come to pass. While Cersei assumes her doom will come in the guise of her new daughter-in-law Margery (three times a queen, twice widowed, and still a virgin? I’d like this girl unpacked a little), we all know the prophesy must mean Daenerys.

Which brings us to one of my biggest problems with this book: No Daenerys, no Tyrion, and no Jon Snow. With so many characters and the number of POVs growing, it would be hard to pick a favorite, but those three are certainly in my top five and with good reason. Tyrion is the wise fool, bringing much-needed levity and clearmindedness. Daneryes is the other, a stranger across the sea, and I always look forward to her chapters because they bring us into such a very different world. And Jon? I think many people see a bit of themselves in Jon. He’s still one of the purest characters, trying to “do the right thing” and also find his place in the world. Martin explained that he chose to leave some characters out because as he wrote he found that the scope of the book was unmanageable, but I question leaving these three out in particular. It left this installment feeling unbalanced.

We do get a few more new additions and visit old friends. I enjoyed our journey to the Iron Islands and closer interaction with Asha Greyjoy and her family of kraken lords. Arya’s voice is always welcome, but I don’t know if I approve of her path. Now an acolyte in the temple of the Faceless Gods in Bravvos, Arya’s teachers try to get her to abandon her identity, to no longer be Arya Stark. But though Arya has taken on many names since leaving Winterfell, she’s always quite passionately been true to herself. And with the Stark name dying out, Arya abandoning it feels like a betrayal of her family.

I was glad to be back in Westeros, but I found my visit less than fulfilling. Martin continues to add layers and his story still manages to surprise me (though often in ways that result in me exclaiming in anger or disbelief). My investment in the characters only deepens, which makes their struggles all the more wrenching. As the story becomes more sprawling in scope, I feel a bit of longing for the unified voices of Game of Thrones, populated by Starks and the odd Lannister or Targaryen. The world was smaller and simpler, but though it was easier, I respect the expansion of the world. It’s no easy task and Martin’s aims are ambitious. I’m along for the ride now.

4. Ghostwritten

In which I try a favorite author’s earliest book only to find some welcome familiar faces

Title: Ghostwritten

Author: David Mitchell

What it’s about: In a series of nine interlocking short stories, David Mitchell takes us from a terrorist’s hideout in Okinawa to the booth of a late-night radio DJ in New York City. Ghostwritten (2001) was his debut novel, but many readers, like myself, will have come to Mitchell through Cloud Atlas, his 2003 best seller. It was surprising to me to take a step back in time and find not only a very similar format to Cloud Atlas, but also some familiar faces. In fact, Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas inform one another in surprising and revealing ways, and I found myself making connections and opening mental doors as the events in Ghostwritten unfolded.

The nine stories in this book seemed to be more solidly connected than those of Cloud Atlas, as each character encounters the next in a fleeting but tangible way and as the book progresses more and more points light up on the metaphorical switchboard and our narrators tend to have greater effects on their counterparts. While Atlas was a journey through time and space, Ghostwritten spans a much shorter period and most of the stories overlap temporally, all the while drawing us east and forward to a terrible catastrophe.

The book begins and ends with extremes (a cultist experiencing the aftermath of a bomb he planted, and a supercomputer searching for the solution to humanity’s tendency toward destruction), but bookended are a few more grounded tales. Each story contains an element of the fantastic, be it a non-corporeal being searching for its origin or an impoverished ghostwriter roped into a gambling competition in a London casino, but also focuses on a simpler human element. Mitchell’s characters are risk takers and make sacrifices for what they want. They share a kind of drive toward something, a conviction in some goal. This brings an intensity to the book and also a feeling of forward movement. I also enjoyed Mitchell’s different meditations on the nature of love—be it the Russian woman involved in an art theft ring to please her gangster boyfriend or the scientist on the run who returns to her ancestral home on Clear Island for a few days with her husband and son before the U.S. government forcibly removes her to a hidden facility in Texas to create a master-weapon.

I do wonder why Ghostwritten hasn’t found as wide an audience as Cloud Atlas when they share so many qualities. His most recent The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet was a beautiful focused historical fiction with only a few spotlighted characters, and markedly different from his earlier books (though many have commented that intertextuality is one of his hallmarks and Mitchell claims there are several carryover characters in Autumns, but I appear to have missed them). But for fans of Cloud Atlas, Ghostwritten will seem like a meeting with an old friend. It’s shorter and, with more stories, it clips along at a faster pace. You’re sure to enjoy the winks and nods to Mitchell’s other work. And if you’re coming to Mitchell for the first time, this is as good a place to start as any (and I recommend you do).

3. The Fault in Our Stars

In which I find a story about cancer cast in a fresh light

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

What it’s about: Hazel has already gotten her miracle. Two years ago, the doctors seems sure that her thyroid cancer would leave her with only a few months to live. But then she started taking an experimental drug and now her expiration date is more of a question mark. Everyone knows it’s coming, but since the drug is untested there’s no way to guess when it might be. Enter Augustus Waters, a new addition to Hazel’s weekly cancer support group. Augustus is on the other side of his battle with bone cancer, but has joined the group in support of his friend Issac, whose eye cancer is about to leave him blind. Hazel finds a kindred soul in Augustus, but knows what she is—a grenade, ready to burst and leave all those who love her wounded. She tries to keep Augustus at arm’s length, but their connection is too strong.

Though Hazel has cancer, this should by no means be considered a “cancer book.” It is a love story, a story about struggle, and, most acutely, a story about how a young person deals with the reality of death. You may cry, but you’ll also laugh, you’ll think, you’ll smile, you’ll feel warm-fuzzies. It’s a deep, rich book that drives you to ponder mortality, family, love, literature and our heroes.

I’m almost through the Green oeuvre now, but TFIOS takes the lead as my favorite. Green’s back up to the emotional resonance he achieved in Looking for Alaska, but the female narrator does him a great service this time around. I saw repeated elements in Alaska and Paper Towns tied to the male voice, in particular the nerdy male narrator idealizing an unattainable female. The first time around it worked for me, but the second time I felt a bit of deja vu. Hazel’s voice retains the poignant honesty of his previous narrators, but feels singular and fresh. And though she’s also in love, this is a very different kind of love than I’ve seen Green tackle before (I haven’t yet read An Abundance of Katherines, so that book must be excluded from my analysis). Though Augustus and Hazel are teenagers, their life experiences age them emotionally and bring an element of the adult to their relationship. And that’s a good thing.

Would I recommend? Most definitely. Green has found a great balance in this book and created a compelling story that goes far, far beyond the confines of what we’ve come to expect from a story about cancer.

P.S. I did not receive a Hanklerfish or a Yeti and I’m very disappointed.

2. The Distant Hours

In which an author who previously wowed me leaves me wanting

Title: The Distant Hours

Author: Kate Morton

What it’s about: When Edie’s mother receives a letter from Juniper Blythe, it arrives almost fifty years too late. Juniper’s letter is one of a few that got lost in the mail during World War II, and only now have the letters been delivered through a quirk in the postal service. But Edie is surprised to see her mother’s strong reaction when she opens the letter, and even more surprised to learn who Juniper is. Edie discovers that her mother spent part of the war in the countryside, taken into Milderhurst Castle by the three Sisters Blythe. Glimpsing this hidden chapter of her mother’s life, Edie becomes obsessed with learning more about the castle and the sisters, especially when she discovers who their father is—Raymond Blythe, author of the children’s classic The Mud Man, the story that first got Edie interested in writing and set her on the path to becoming an editor. As Edie meets the sisters, she begins to discover secrets long buried, about her mother, the sisters, the castle, and the origins of The Mud Man.

About a year ago I picked up Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden and found myself lost in a gothic mystery that was both delightful and surprising. I say surprising because I hadn’t expected much from the book—I picked it up at an airport bookstore in an hour of need—so the payoff was all the sweeter. I noticed two books of equal girth that also carried Ms. Morton’s name and mentally filed them away (or added them to my Goodreads queue) for a future read.

I’m sorry to say that my second encounter with Ms. Morton left me more than a little disappointed. In fact, though The Distant Hours seemed like it would have many of the same characteristics as Morton’s earlier work, they were almost entirely absent from this book. The Distant Hours felt under-crafted and under-thought, with paper-thin characters and a heavy-handed delivery. It’s all the more surprising because I described The Forgotten Garden as finely crafted, with a light touch of symbolism. The Distant Hours is the opposite. Edie is a clunky narrator with no apparent personality and her voice often drew me out of the narrative with references to “what she’d learn later” or things she “wished she could have known then.” She has no personality of her own and her mother’s connection to the castle is never properly exploited.

Instead of developing the ostensible main character, the book focuses on the three sisters and Edie becomes just a set of eyes, an outsider stand-in for the reader who does a lot of telling instead of showing. Morton wants to deliver a mystery, to make us wonder about how these three women came to spend their entire lives in a decaying castle. But the “mystery” of it all is laid on so thick that we learn next to nothing about the characters until the final act. By then, I cared little for Saffy and Percy Blythe or the origins of the mysterious Mud Man. These people even edit their own thoughts to keep us from discovering their secrets (which, by the way, are not even that scandalous or surprising). The only one with any semblance of depth was Juniper Blythe, who had some vivacity in her early appearances in the novel as a young girl, but is rendered into a Jane Eyre Bertha-esque specter in Edie’s present-day interactions with her. As Morton keeps us from the secrets, whole chapters end up feeling like treading water. I kept telling myself there’d be some kind of shocking payoff, but there wasn’t. t can hardly believe the same person wrote both these books.

Would I recommend?  The Distant Hours was a real disappointment to me. I’d certainly recommend The Forgotten Garden (I even consulted some others who had read that book to be sure it was as good as I remembered. I started to doubt myself after reading this one. They assured me I had not lost my mind or taste in books.) But my advice is to skip The Distant Hours. It’s not a good reflection of Ms. Morton’s talent.

1. The Great Gatsby

In which I present my dissertation on the merits of rereading

Title: The Great Gatsby

Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

What it’s about: Let’s get something straight before we start. I’m not planning on “reviewing” The Great Gatsby because frankly that wouldn’t benefit anyone. The Great Gatsby is probably one of the most read books in America. Thanks to some unwritten rule that this book must be taught in high school, it’s got a pretty wide readership and, what’s more, many people name it their all-time favorite book (behind Harry Potter and Catcher in the Rye, of course). And after I read the book for the first time, I stood resolutely outside that group. Not only would I not have listed The Great Gatsby as one of my favorites, I would have gone so far as to say that I didn’t see what all of the fuss was about. On my first reading, which I think was early in high school or perhaps even in middle school, I found Gatsby dull and unremarkable. But after the passage of many years, I decided to treat Gatsby to a rereading.

I’ve always been a rereader, most often with books I love. I like to revisit them after at least a year and I often find that on my second reading I absorb the text more, focusing on the wording and enjoying each phrase. I think it’s because I’m not dying to find out what happens. Since I know where the whole plot thing is going, I’m able to concentrate more on the craft and less on whether or not someone’s going to die or if those two are going to end up together. I learn more about the characters, flesh out the setting, and catch motifs I might have missed on the first frenzied read. I even like to reread books from my childhood, picking up old favorites to see if they’ve stood the test of time, but also to bring myself back into a world I once loved.

Books I didn’t love rarely get a chance at the reread. There’s a pretty steep backlog of books I’d like to read, so coming back to a book that didn’t impress me can feel like a waste of time. But, there was one notable exception that convinced me to give Great Gatsby another shot: The Lord of the Flies. I first read Flies in middle school as part of an “advanced” literature group. Myself and four others met in the hallway for independent reading and our teacher chose Flies as our first book. Maybe it was the way our group was structured—we didn’t have much teacher interaction, just worked from lists of discussion questions—or maybe I just wasn’t ready to enjoy Lord of the Flies, but I just hated it. Until I was forced to read it again for a high school class. I wasn’t even sure I was reading the same book! Things that had seemed pointless or gross to me on that early read suddenly made sense. I liked the book and my eyes were opened. Maybe some books were worth a second read.

So, recently I said to myself, “You know what book you hate that everyone else seems to love? The Great Gatsby. Can all these people be so wrong?”

So I guess I don’t hate The Great Gatsby. I even found it sort of beautiful. And funny! I had no idea it was funny. It wasn’t the dense, dry thing I remembered—it was vibrant! So, what I meant to say is, rereading is a worthwhile endeavor. Now Heart of Darkness…I’m not quite ready to give that one a second chance.

28. Paper Towns

In which a paper girl leaves a paper town

Title: Paper Towns

Author: John Green

What it’s about: Next door neighbors Quentin and Margo were childhood friends, but inevitably drifted apart. Now in high school, Q is a band geek who’s not in the band and Margo is popular and famous for her outrageous stunts. Also, Quentin is still in love with her. To Q, Margo Roth Spiegelman is revolutionary, spectacular, singular, and gorgeous. He also hardly ever speaks to her. One night, Margo appears at his window and takes him on a mad midnight revenge ride around Orlando. The next day she disappears. Q discovers that Margo has left clues about her whereabouts and believes that those clues are for him. Convinced that Margo wants him to find her, Q follows her trail, hoping he can bring Margo back before graduation and also come to understand the real person behind his ideal girl.

First, as a girl raised in Florida who is fairly familiar with the Orlando area, I loved the setting of this book. Orlando is, without a doubt, a paper town. The actual people who live there and the interesting lives they may lead are just totally eclipsed by the machine that is tourism. Theme parks, theme hotels, theme restaurants—everything is artificial. If you drill to the core, there are places with some authenticity, but they are practically smothered by the hollow wonderland. Central Florida is also something of a wasteland. With none of the benefits of the coast, it’s unrelentingly humid and swampy, conditions that only add to the hopelessness that breeds in Margo Roth Spiegelman and leads to her disappearance.

But though Q makes much of Margo, she’s a paper character in this book, and we’re never close enough to her to even begin to understand her, which mimics Quentin’s struggle to figure Margo out. I like where Green takes the book, how he shows us how we invent others and that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to truly know another person. The teen years in particular seem rife with this problem. Green shows us a boy who quite clearly invents a girl. Oh, the flesh and blood person is there (until she’s not, of course), but his conception of Margo could never live up to an actual person. Though I think this phenomena is quite common, I found myself almost distractedly frustrated with Q and couldn’t help agreeing with his friends when they urged him to leave his search for Margo behind and enjoy his last few weeks of high school. As they pointed out, his obsession with Margo keeps him from his own life, taking but giving nothing.

Would I recommend? I have to admit that I enjoyed Looking for Alaska more than Paper Towns and I’d recommend making that your first stop in the Green oeuvre. Paper Towns has the same wit and intelligence, but was a little less emotionally impactful for me at least. Others have mentioned it’s their favorite (his new The Fault in Our Stars excluded as it’s just been released…it’s on my list!) and I’d be interested to hear why other readers rank Paper Towns above Looking for Alaska.

27. A Young Wife

In which a young girl finds a husband in an unusual way 

Title: A Young Wife

Author: Pam Lewis

What it’s about: When Minke is 15, a distinguished older man in a yellow car arrives at her parents’ home looking for a girl to come to Amsterdam to nurse his ailing wife, Elisabeth. Minke’s time with Elisabeth in the attic of her lavish home is short, but the two form a bond as Elisabeth relates her travels to Argentina through sporadic opium-induced dreams. Then, suddenly and almost without warning, Elisabth passes away and Sander DeVries—the man who came to fetch Minke—proposes to Minke, hoping to secure a new wife less than three days after his last has died. At first scandalized, but later charmed by Sander and his promises of adventure and beauty in Argentina, Minke accepts and the two are married in the old way, breaking a ring in the company of her family. Minke and Sander board a ship for Comodoro Rivadavia, along with Sander’s business partner, Cassian, an enigmatic doctor charged with looking after Minke while Sander sees to his business ventures onboard. Minke’s life settles into a series of peaks and valleys. She falls deeply in love with Sander, enjoying their nights together and his passion. But Sander often leaves her alone and in the dark, about himself and their future. The nature of his  business is murky, mixed up in oil, shipping, and morphine, and he shows streaks of jealousy and possessiveness as Minke befriends some of the men onboard. At her first sight of Argentina, Minke is disappointed by the barren, dirty town, its houses with walls of corrugated iron and dirt floors, but she soon embraces her new surroundings, befriending the wild gauchos who ride into town to trade, much to the dislike of her husband. Minke will soon find out that Sander is not the man she thought he was and will have to fight for a happy future for herself and her children.

A Young Wife is compelling, partially as it’s based on the true story of the author’s maternal grandmother. It’s the second book I’ve read this year that tells of women’s struggles to carve out better lives for themselves and their children in male-dominated societies. (More on the first here.) Minke’s voice is honest and clear and Lewis weaves a beautiful narrative. Some elements are a bit expected, but in general the story is fact-paced and engrossing. I could have done without Minke’s secondary love interest and found Cassian inconsistent, sometimes acting in sinister capacities for Sander and sometimes proving Minke’s ally. But these niggling points aside, it struck me that while Minke’s story is a coming-of-age tale, it’s also about a woman learning to understand a man and the progression of their relationship. We see Sander through Minke’s eyes and though there are clues that he’s duplicitous, we always have Minke’s understanding and also her love for him, especially in the first portion of the book. As their story unfolds, we see what Minke thought was a love story dissolve into a tragedy. But with this dissolution, Minke learns about herself and grows up. She is, after all, a very young wife.

Would I recommend? I enjoyed this book and read it quickly. It has many elements that I am drawn to: a strong female narrator, a historical basis, and travel to exotic locales. Though a few plot points didn’t come together for me, A Young Wife is emotionally honest a worth a look for fans of historical fiction and romance.