Test post from Semagic.
Book: Show us a book that has helped or inspired your writing.
Okay, maybe not. But it could be. Should it be?
~Lewis Carrol~
I actually listened to this one as a book on tape, and that may partly explain why I liked it so much. Ordinarily, first person present tense makes me tense. Very tense. And unhappy. And Picoult tells this story rotating points of view. I should have hated it!
In the audio version, different voice actors read for the different characters, and for the first rotation I was sometimes disoriented as to who was speaking, and what his or her part was in the story. Wait a minute, is this the sister speaking? The mother? The guardian ad litem?
I couldn't give up though, because this story hooked me by the throat right away, and I had the voices straight in no time. It was well worth it, too. This book is about a thirteen year old girl named Anna whose parents had her specifically so she could serve as a bone marrow donor for her older sister Kate, a leukemia patient. In the opening pages, Anna approaches high power attorney Campbell Alexander and requests that he represent her in a suit for medical emacipation. In other words, she doesn't want to be a donor anymore, even though this decision may rip her family to pieces and result in Kate's death.
You might think you wouldn't like a girl who would be so selfish, at least I thought that...but I completely did like her. I also liked Anna's mother, in spite of her efforts to manipulate her daughter into continuing the role of spare parts, Anna's troubled brother, and her father the fireman who, during one of his turns at the microphone says, "The safety of the rescuer is of a higher priority than the safety of the victim. Always." And I liked Kate, who never spoke for herself, but managed to come through with dignity nevertheless.
This is an amazing book--breathtaking, even. I never knew who to cheer for, and so I had to cheer for every character even when they were at odds. If I were in the business of giving out stars, I would give this book one hundred and thirteen. If you like this kind of story, about real people up against the wall in situations with no clear cut right vs. wrong answers, this is a winner.
A couple of links:
Her page about this book, with some spoilers
Last night I lay in bed listening to the large amounts of traffic coming and going at my neighbors' place, which is far too close, and the static of rainfall the front brought through. The air, cool after weeks of smothery heat and humidity was enough to give a girl a skin-gasm, I swear. The neighbors quieted, albeit temporarily, and I rolled over to give the rest of my skin a chance to refresh and luxuriate. From the corner of my eye I saw a flicker.
I imagined that, I thought, peering closer. Either that, or something, a bit of stray cellophane Easter grass or a similar bit of house dandruff is moving in the breeze. Whatever it is has gotten caught up against the edge of the dresser.
It flashed again, greenly, and I knew then what it was: a lightning bug, sometimes known as a firefly, most likely sucked in by the fan. Blink. Flicker. Blink. Each tiny flare came a little further apart from the last one, and endured for a little less time. Dying, you know.
Well this is another way being overly sensitive sucks rocks. What can a person do to save a mangled insect? Nothing. And in truth, in the light of day fireflies seem to me like red-headed winged roaches with tail lights, certainly nothing the least romantic.
It's the males that fly. They fly, and they flash their signals, and if a female on the ground finds his flash appealing, she flashes him back. If their frequencies agree, they mate. As hard as it is for most humans to find a lover with the right flash, imagine how much harder when you only have three or four months in which to accomplish it? I bet you get less picky in a hurry if you're a firefly. Also you never have to worry if he's going to pay larvae support.
I went on lying there, gone misty over a bug. Afterwards I would realize I'd watched for over an hour and a half, while those little sparks diminished and faltered. And I thought how it would be to be dying and just keep flashing--hoping--until the very end. True, insects probably aren't wired for despair. But there are always those amazing people who just keep keeping on. I've known a few.
I never wanted to write a "Romance" novel with a big R, because in my mind Romance = formula, and hell, let's face it...I can barely follow the directions on a box of mac and cheese. But this morning I'm thinking I should write about those kinds of people, the keep on lighting up kind of people. And if they keep on lighting, why shouldn't they hit on the right frequency before it's too late?
Not to say it will be a "Romance" with a big R. But a love story, I definitely think so.
Here's a link to a Jeff Corwin's Carnival of Creatures article about Coleoptera Lampirydae (fireflies).
I'm not finished reading Boy's Life just yet, but I'm about 2/3 of the way through. It seems to have a stew of similarities to various Stephen King works. It may be McCammon had these ideas first. More likely, there are only so many ideas to go around and both writers had similar ideas...I've experienced this myself in one writing group I used to be a member of, and it can be both annoying and spooky.
So far in this book, I've noticed quite a few elements in common with It, including a Loser's Club-ish group of pre-teen boys, a preternaturally fast bicycle with a name, and some bullies. Also there's a touch of Pet Sematary in the form of an undead-ish animal, but where the Sematary critters were just creepy, McCammon's just about ripped my heart out.
This book puzzles me in that I can't figure out why I'm still reading it. It opens when the first person protagonist--Cory Mackenson, one of the preteen boys--and his father witness the aftermath of a murder, and I thought the story would be all about that. And it is, but it's not only about that, or even mostly. It's mostly about the boy's life--go figure, huh?--in the small and subtly fantastic town of Zephyr, Alabama in 1964.
There are so many details that seem to serve no purpose. An icky girl with a crush on Cory, a writing contest, a monster known as Old Moses swimming in the depths of the town's river (except when it floods), backwoods organized crime, a WWII refugee, a beautiful married teen named Chile who steals Cory's first love, and the son of the town's reclusive and wealthy patron who now roams the town without a stitch of clothing after a bad experience in publishing. The story touches on alcoholism, racism, government corruption, prostitution, even censorship and abuse. There is just so dang much here. Normally I would lable this a "kitchen sink" story (with minor but noticable point-of-view problems) and go on to some other book.
Except McCammon somehow manages to tie these details to each other. I really wonder if there has ever been a book with so many examples of what agent Donald Maass (Writing the Breakout Novel) calls nodes of conjunction. I can't wait to see how he weaves all these elements together next. The writing itself is not much like King--McCammon has a very different voice, but he has done every bit as good a job of creating a world for me to visit and making me care a lot about the myriad people who live in it.
You can visit his site here, and read a synopsis of the story here.
(Why yes, I do often read and sometimes review books that have been out for years. In my experience, just because there's some dust on the, um...dustjacket...doesn't mean the pages aren't full of wonderment and delicious story.)
First entries are hard. Low expectations for them are good.
I was very excited to see my VOX invitation in my e-mail box today, but full of dread too. I was afraid it would end up being too much like Gather. I love blogs, but I hate Gather. The pages there are so cramped and...orange. To me, orange is like itching powder for the eyes.
So far I like the photo options a lot. I am not sure this service will ever replace LiveJournal for me, though.
