(no subject)
Apr. 10th, 2009 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furyofvissarionA Little Too Much Is Enough - Kathleen Tyau. This is a set of linked stories (a blurb on the back refers to this as a novel but it really didn't feel like one to me, somehow) about Hawaiian-Chinese Mahealani Suzanne Wong—Mahi for short--growing up in Hawaii & eventually leaving for the mainland for college. As unfair as it is, it was hard not to compare this in my head to Lois-Ann Yamanaka, one of my favorite authors & the author of most of the fiction about Hawaii that I've read. This comparison reflects badly on Tyau. Yamanaka can rip your heart apart in 7 ways with just one page, but with this book it took 50-plus pages before I started to care much about the characters—or even feel like I knew them v. well. Also, it wasn't apparent to me until over halfway through the book that it took place during the Vietnam War.
However, there were a couple of stories (chapters?) that I found really moving & vivid & that made reading the whole thing worth it (“Mana,” about a gay neighbor whose boyfriend has died; and “Pick Up Your Pine,” a hypnotic account of Mahi's grueling first day at the pineapple cannery).
Also I did actually laugh out loud during one part—when Mahi's brother Buzzy brings a haole girl to his graduation luau & is introducing her to everyone:
Ten Things I Hate about Me - Randa Abdel-Fattah. Jamilah, an Australian Muslim teen girl, lives a double life: she goes by Jamie at school & dyes her hair blonde; no one at school knows she's Lebanese & Muslim. Yes, she does finally get the nerve to come out as herself, but somehow the book wasn't satisfying in a lot of ways.
Let's start w/the title; I love the movie Ten Things I Hate About You, but it just feels a bit tiresome that this book, too, features a teen girl w/an overprotective widowed father who has superstrict rules about dating, as well as a new boy in school who doesn't care about how the cool kids mock him (& given that the book takes place in Australia, it really does mean that I couldn't picture the character Timothy as anyone but a young Heath Ledger). Presumably the title is meant as an homage to the movie, so it makes sense that the book is similar in some ways (but w/a Muslim twist, blah blah...).
Maybe I just hate the flipping of the “ten things” to be what the protagonist hates about herself, instead of the protagonist being “tempestuous”/a “heinous bitch.” I mean, Jamie faces loads of social pressure & stress around her family background—that I found credible. I still was torn between sympathy for Jamie & wanting her to just wake up already (& stop mooning over a horribly racist & jerky guy).
Anyway—something else I found a bit odd: Jamie's new name & look only started 3 years prior to where the story begins--& somehow she doesn't now go to school w/a single person who knew her then, or bump into anyone who knew her then & would out her to her current classmates. That seems a bit too convenient for me, even if it's the sort of thing where she goes to a different school now. Jamie uses the title of the book as her e-mail address—which seemed sort of weird to me.
Anyway, add in a credibility-stretching secret e-mail correspondence with an unknown boy to whom Jamie can unburden herself & seek advice from, too. Also, I felt like the arguments some of her classmates used as to why racism was wrong relied on them having lived in Australia for a long time—so what does that mean for new immigrants? Do they not have the right to complain about harassment?
The Conversations of Cow - Suniti Namjoshi. Suniti is a bitter lesbian in Canada who meets Bhadravati, a Brahmin lesbian cow. Hijinks ensue. Unfortunately, this '80s attempt at feminist-lesbian humor has not aged well, although I'm not sure I would've thought it was particularly engaging or interesting back then either.
Men of the Otherworld - Kelley Armstrong. Armstrong originally put the stories in this book up on the website for fans of her Women of the Otherworld series, & here presents them on paper with all proceeds going to charity. I originally didn't think I wanted to read all about the past of werewolf Clay Danvers, but Armstrong actually makes him more sympathetic (whereas in the other books I found him annoying at times) & more believable as the awkward, territorial, v. v. wolfish werewolf he is. Reading about Pack leader Jeremy Danvers' conception & birth annoyed me—Jeremy's father Malcolm is clearly set up to be a jerk w/his racist hatred of Jeremy's Japanese mother, but then it turns out that the Japanese woman's family are all oooooh exotic spellcasters of a type no one had seen before. Sigh. Still, ignorable enough, for now.
Magic to the Bone - Devon Monk. My first question is: are editors of urban fantasy at the Penguin Group on strike against contractions or something? Because Monk has a habit of having characters abandon contractions in a random & nonsensical way that makes their voices sound really fake. It's the same kind of thing that drives me nuts with Ilona Andrews' books; she's published by Ace, Monk by ROC. Anyway, someone needs to fix that.
Aside from that, this is a mostly forgettable novel about magic & its costs. I am generally uneasy when mentally disabled characters are put in as plot points—when their main reason to exist seems to be to use magic in some stunning way everyone thought was impossible. Also, protagonist Allie Beckstrom gets into a romantic tangle w/Zayvion Jones, a black character who at one point seems to become just another black character there to sacrifice himself for perky white heroine. Plus, from a stylistic point of view, Allie starts referring to him as Zay during a time where it seems like that sort of nicknaming would be really unlikely, & also wouldn't go unremarked-on (but it does, which makes me think it's just sloppy writing). I've read worse urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels, but I think that's about all I can say for this one (I mean, I didn't even like Allie or find her sympathetic).
However, there were a couple of stories (chapters?) that I found really moving & vivid & that made reading the whole thing worth it (“Mana,” about a gay neighbor whose boyfriend has died; and “Pick Up Your Pine,” a hypnotic account of Mahi's grueling first day at the pineapple cannery).
Also I did actually laugh out loud during one part—when Mahi's brother Buzzy brings a haole girl to his graduation luau & is introducing her to everyone:
Buzzy moved from table to table, saying to Elsa, “This is my aunty. This is my uncle. This is my aunty. This is my uncle.”... Elsa whispered at one point, “What are their names? Are they really all related to you? What am I supposed to call them?”Ha ha, it's like being Filipino! Anyway, by the end of the book I felt like I would read more of Tyau's work—this is her first book, so hopefully she's smoothed out some of the rough spots in her writing by now.
“Just call them aunty and uncle,” he said. “I forget all the names.”
Ten Things I Hate about Me - Randa Abdel-Fattah. Jamilah, an Australian Muslim teen girl, lives a double life: she goes by Jamie at school & dyes her hair blonde; no one at school knows she's Lebanese & Muslim. Yes, she does finally get the nerve to come out as herself, but somehow the book wasn't satisfying in a lot of ways.
Let's start w/the title; I love the movie Ten Things I Hate About You, but it just feels a bit tiresome that this book, too, features a teen girl w/an overprotective widowed father who has superstrict rules about dating, as well as a new boy in school who doesn't care about how the cool kids mock him (& given that the book takes place in Australia, it really does mean that I couldn't picture the character Timothy as anyone but a young Heath Ledger). Presumably the title is meant as an homage to the movie, so it makes sense that the book is similar in some ways (but w/a Muslim twist, blah blah...).
Maybe I just hate the flipping of the “ten things” to be what the protagonist hates about herself, instead of the protagonist being “tempestuous”/a “heinous bitch.” I mean, Jamie faces loads of social pressure & stress around her family background—that I found credible. I still was torn between sympathy for Jamie & wanting her to just wake up already (& stop mooning over a horribly racist & jerky guy).
Anyway—something else I found a bit odd: Jamie's new name & look only started 3 years prior to where the story begins--& somehow she doesn't now go to school w/a single person who knew her then, or bump into anyone who knew her then & would out her to her current classmates. That seems a bit too convenient for me, even if it's the sort of thing where she goes to a different school now. Jamie uses the title of the book as her e-mail address—which seemed sort of weird to me.
Anyway, add in a credibility-stretching secret e-mail correspondence with an unknown boy to whom Jamie can unburden herself & seek advice from, too. Also, I felt like the arguments some of her classmates used as to why racism was wrong relied on them having lived in Australia for a long time—so what does that mean for new immigrants? Do they not have the right to complain about harassment?
The Conversations of Cow - Suniti Namjoshi. Suniti is a bitter lesbian in Canada who meets Bhadravati, a Brahmin lesbian cow. Hijinks ensue. Unfortunately, this '80s attempt at feminist-lesbian humor has not aged well, although I'm not sure I would've thought it was particularly engaging or interesting back then either.
Men of the Otherworld - Kelley Armstrong. Armstrong originally put the stories in this book up on the website for fans of her Women of the Otherworld series, & here presents them on paper with all proceeds going to charity. I originally didn't think I wanted to read all about the past of werewolf Clay Danvers, but Armstrong actually makes him more sympathetic (whereas in the other books I found him annoying at times) & more believable as the awkward, territorial, v. v. wolfish werewolf he is. Reading about Pack leader Jeremy Danvers' conception & birth annoyed me—Jeremy's father Malcolm is clearly set up to be a jerk w/his racist hatred of Jeremy's Japanese mother, but then it turns out that the Japanese woman's family are all oooooh exotic spellcasters of a type no one had seen before. Sigh. Still, ignorable enough, for now.
Magic to the Bone - Devon Monk. My first question is: are editors of urban fantasy at the Penguin Group on strike against contractions or something? Because Monk has a habit of having characters abandon contractions in a random & nonsensical way that makes their voices sound really fake. It's the same kind of thing that drives me nuts with Ilona Andrews' books; she's published by Ace, Monk by ROC. Anyway, someone needs to fix that.
Aside from that, this is a mostly forgettable novel about magic & its costs. I am generally uneasy when mentally disabled characters are put in as plot points—when their main reason to exist seems to be to use magic in some stunning way everyone thought was impossible. Also, protagonist Allie Beckstrom gets into a romantic tangle w/Zayvion Jones, a black character who at one point seems to become just another black character there to sacrifice himself for perky white heroine. Plus, from a stylistic point of view, Allie starts referring to him as Zay during a time where it seems like that sort of nicknaming would be really unlikely, & also wouldn't go unremarked-on (but it does, which makes me think it's just sloppy writing). I've read worse urban fantasy/paranormal romance novels, but I think that's about all I can say for this one (I mean, I didn't even like Allie or find her sympathetic).