The LJ/School Library Journal/Junior Library Guild staff is taking and making recommendations this week, with hive fiction, stalker stories, diversified heroines, L.A. hippies, women soldiers, faux-academic footnotes, and scrumptiously short stories.
Mahnaz Dar, Associate Editor, SLJ Reviews
I’m immersed in Caroline Kepnes’s You (Emily Bestler: Atria, 2014), a novel I can best describe as a 21st-century, social media–infused version of John Fowles’s The Collector, with a dollop of American Psycho and a soupçon of Fatal Attraction thrown in for good measure. It’s a classic story: boy meets girl, boy obsesses over girl’s Twitter, boy stalks girl. It’s also wickedly funny, with lots of good satire of self-involved millennial types and send-ups of pseudointellectuals.
I’m enclosing one of my favorite passages, in which the protagonist draws on a scene from one of my favorite films, Hannah and Her Sisters:
I came to know e.e. cummings the way most sensitive, intelligent men my age came to e.e. cummings, via one of the most romantic scenes in one of the most romantic love stories of all time, Hannah and Her Sisters, wherein an intelligent, sophisticated, married New Yorker named Elliot (Michael Caine) falls in love with his sister-in-law (Barbara Hershey). He has to be careful. He can’t casually make a move. He waits near her apartment and stages a run-in. Brilliant, romantic. Love takes work. She is surprised to run into him and she takes him to the Pageant Bookstore—are you catching a theme here?—where he buys a book of e.e. cummings poems for her and sends her to the poem on page 112.
Shelley Diaz, Senior Editor, SLJ Reviews
I’m currently reading Andi Teran’s Ana of California (Penguin) for SLJ’s Adult Books 4 Teens column. As a die-hard fan of Anne of Green Gables since age 11, I’ve been waiting for this book since I first fell in love with Avonlea and a certain red-haired orphan with an extensive vocabulary and a propensity for scrapes. East L.A. native Ana is shuffled from foster home to group home and back, until she gets the opportunity to work at a farm run by a brother and sister. I’m only a few chapters in, but already, I’m fully immersed in this new world that Teran has created. Taking details from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s beloved classic and fleshing them out with a dreamy but scrappy Latina teen, Teran has given a new heart to a story I thought I knew. Eleven-year-old Shelley is very happy.
Liz French, Senior Editor, LJ Reviews
A former boyfriend told me that only people who’ve graduated from college could comprehend the novels of Thomas Pynchon. I’ve been opposed to Pynchon ever since, which is probably silly of me. After all, this is the same dude who wrote “Caution: too depressing for anyone” on the frontspiece of my copy of Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. I’m pretty sure he never read that book, but he sure did have opinions. I decided to give TP another go recently, on the advice of a friend who said, “Liz, you might just like Inherent Vice, it’s L.A. noir with hippies.” I filed that away in my to-be-read brain, and when a copy jumped off the shelves at a local bookstore, I figured why not. It’s very good and skewery, and I like it a lot. In my opinion, you don’t have to graduate college to “get” Pynchon. But it helps.
Lisa Peet, Associate Editor, News & Features, LJ
Last week I read Laline Paull’s The Bees (Ecco: HarperCollins). Which is dystopian speculative fiction about—wait for it—bees. I picked it up mainly because someone whose literary taste is pretty much the opposite of mine said she read it for book club and hated it, so perversely I felt an overwhelming desire to see if that meant I would, in fact, love it—the seductive power of the inverse recommendation. It turned out to be a strange book, and though I was interested enough to read to the end, I’m still a bit divided about it. I thought the setup, which is kind of The Handmaid’s Tale meets Watership Down meets 1984-slash-Animal Farm, was interesting. And I like what she took on with worldbuilding—in this case a beehive, its residents, and the surrounding insects (the spiders were excellent). But the story line got repetitive in places, which ended up making the social commentary feel heavy-handed, and that kind of thing always does better in less-is-more mode as far as I’m concerned.
Also, it was somewhat hard to latch on to the main character, especially once the drones—the males—came into the picture and were given all personality in the story. Which I realize was the point: the hive is full of female bees that are basically interchangeable within their given roles, and this is what happens when one bee breaks out of hers. I get it. But there was something slightly off-putting about the males being the only really interesting personalities, at least until the main character’s ego kicks in.
But in spite of those complaints, it kept me reading. The beehive world was fascinating in itself. I think, in the end, what flattened it for me was how little humor there was—only the boys and bad guys got edgy lines. Still, it was such a different book I couldn’t quite put it down, so kudos to Paull for pulling it off.
Meredith Schwartz, Executive Editor, LJ
I’m reading Ysabeau S. Wilce’s Prophecies, Libels & Dreams: Stories of Califa (Small Beer Pr.). It’s profoundly weird, sort of Fall of the Kings set in the old West. And then a chaser of faux-academic footnotes that undercut any trace of reliance on the narrator—either of them. I’m not sure I like it, but I’m sure I’m going to read till the end.
Georgia Siegchrist, Assistant Editor, JLG
I’m currently reading One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories (Knopf) by B.J. Novak (better known as a writer for and actor on The Office). It’s a collection of (very) short stories that are funny, sometimes bittersweet, and absurd more often than not. His television writing experience definitely shows through in bits of great dialog and scenes that are easy to visualize. So far it’s a breezy but thoughtful read, and the title is quite apt—the stories are brief and engaging enough that I find myself reading just one more.
Vilma Sierra, Junior Advertising Representative, LJ
As a fan of strong female lead characters, I am reading Michelle Moran’s Rebel Queen (Touchstone). This historical novel journeys back to a time when India was under the control of Great Britain and focuses on Sita, an impoverished young girl who is destined to become a trusted soldier in the female army of Queen Lakshmi, aka “the Joan of Arc of India.” Sita comes from a small Indian village, and, without a dowry, can’t get married. Therefore, her only choices in life are either to become a temple server or “devadsi,” which isn’t that far from working as a prostitute, or train hard to be selected as one of the queen’s soldiers. Sita’s discipline is motivated by her younger sister Anuja. As part of the queen’s army, Sita will earn money for Anuja’s dowry. However, Sita doesn’t expect that her skills will win her a place among the queen’s key fighters, and being one the most trusted soldiers requires a lot of time and dedication, which causes tension in her relationship with Anuja.
Ever since I started reading this book, I haven’t been able to put it down. This story shows us how even though we might be able to provide the best for our loved ones, we still don’t have control over their destiny. A clear example is how parents work and sacrifice to give their children better opportunities; yet no matter how many opportunities arise, they have no control over the unexpected.