Tender Morsels

Yeah, I know, I didn't blog about the conference. It was great. I meant to blog, but seriously, life got busy. And now I want to get straight to the point:

Have any of you read Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan?



So I got a Nook, which I adore, and this was the first book I bought to read on it. And as I began reading, I was drawn in immediately (which is good) and thrown into disgust (both good and bad). If you've read it, what did you think? There's no doubt that Ms. Lanagan knows how to write. She uses such beautiful prose, all the style which I adore....lyrical, poetic, emotional, and she gets right down to the grit of what's going on using these "powers" with words. She toys with us. She makes her characters real, and we care for them, and hate them, and all of that.

But (there had to be a "but," right?) although the story gripped me, and I cared about the characters, I never fell completely in love with any of them. And I think it's because she jumps around between them so much, switching the point-of-view rapidly, going from first-person to third and back and forth all the time. It works because she knows how to vary the characters enough that you recognize right away, most of the time, who it is you're viewing the world from. But it tore me from their hearts, and I never quite got attached. There were only a few characters I wanted to stay with, and one of the biggest deals with me for a book is that the character "stays" with me long after I've put it down. Sometimes months, and in the case of some great characters, years. By the time I was finished with this book, I was ready to be done. I was disappointed in the ending, to say the least, and that might have had something to do with it.

So I am distraught. I can't tell if I liked the book or not. There's no denying it's well-written---beautifully written, no less---but it's harsh and it's difficult to follow sometimes and, well, all the things I said above. I am thankful for having read it, of course. It's a great study on POV (maybe one of the best). It's flushed out, and the world-building is complete. The characters are whole (except the ones that aren't supposed to be).

When I finished, I felt as if I'd been having a very long, drawn-out dream that was half nightmare and half beauty.*

And maybe that's what Margo Lanagan intended. It very well might be.

If you've read it, what effect did it have on you?

* FYI, if I had read this when I was in High School, I would have worshipped it. What a difference a decade (and then some) makes.

Elijah of Buxton

Want to read a book that makes you cry a little and laugh a lot*? Christopher Paul Curtis's book, Elijah of Buxton is the perfect book. It is also the best example of a character-driven novel I can think of. It's also a wonderful example of "voice." The plot is good, don't get me wrong, but I could listen to Elijah talk about anything for another two hundred pages, if Mr. Curtis would have let me. I loved Elijah. I wanted to step right into the book Thursday Next style and meet him.




Elijah is growing up in the Canadian community of freed and runaway slaves just prior to the U.S. Civil War. He is the first free child born in the community and has a story about that and nearly everything that has happened to his town, his neighbors, and himself. He is also greatly afraid of snakes, but he will tell you all about that right off the bat.

This book isn't all laughs, though. On its deeper level, it's about freedom and slavery, good people who risk their lives and those who risk others' lives for their own.

I promise you when you crack open the book, you won't be able to put it down. And you'll want to step into the book and shake hands with Elijah. This is historical fiction at its very best. Oh yeah, and it won the Newbery Honor in 2008.


* Warning: Do not read at the gym while on the tred-mill or you will laugh yourself right off of it and land on your fanny.