November 17th, 2009

Teaser Tuesday: Body of Evidence

November 3rd, 2009

Teaser Tuesday: Mortals

TEASER TUESDAYS, hosted by MizB at Should be Read­ing:

1. Grab your cur­rent read and let the book fall open to a ran­dom page.
2. Share two (2) “teaser” sen­tences from that page
3. Share the title of the book the “teaser” comes from … that way peo­ple can have some great book rec­om­men­da­tions if they like the teaser you’ve given!
4. Please avoid spoilers!

“There were two Boers who had come up for black sex where nobody they knew would see them.  But it was the hawk­ers, the lace sell­ers, who upset her the most.”

–Page 177 of Mor­tals by Nor­man Rush

June 26th, 2009

Product Review: Willow by Julia Hoban

I received Wil­low by Julia Hoban back in March, but, due to a slew of fam­ily events was unable to read it nor write my review in a timely man­ner. It’s a shame too because I have such good things to say.

Wil­low is the story of a young girl of the same name who is deal­ing with, on top of the typ­i­cal super­fi­cial mishaps of being a teenager, the loss of her par­ents due to an acci­dent of which she takes the blame. She is rid­dled with guilt, loss, fear, and iso­la­tion all while try­ing des­per­ately to stay out of her older brother’s way. But, she finds a way to cope. She cuts her­self with a razor in order to stop the pain of life from over­pow­er­ing her. and even when she has made a con­nec­tion with some­one, she finds it dif­fi­cult to give up her rela­tion­ship with her razor.

I began read­ing this book on March 3 and my sis­ter died on March 8. As I read Hoban’s beau­ti­fully writ­ten descrip­tions and highly emo­tional insights, my eyes would well and I found myself often times nod­ding in under­stand­ing.  As an adult I sym­pa­thized for her not as a mother but as a woman and as a sis­ter. I under­stood the strug­gle that she felt to over­come an unhealthy attach­ment in order to allow heal­ing to take place. And bet­ter yet, I under­stood the guilt not just because there were so many things left unsaid between myself and my sis­ter, but because I could not save her.

Hon­estly, when I was teach­ing, I was very con­cerned that most young adult lit­er­a­ture is really depress­ing and involves such hor­ri­ble image– cut­ting, rape, and more. But Wil­low is not like most YA nov­els. It has depth. Wil­low is a mul­ti­level char­ac­ter with intel­li­gence way above her age level tak­ing a lik­ing to Shake­speare and Anthro­pol­ogy. Even her cut­ting is well planned and exe­cuted. Hoban writes about it as if she were writ­ing about a func­tion­ing alco­holic who has planned his drinks through­out the day. Wil­low is so depen­dent on her “cure” that even after she is dis­cov­ered, she can­not give it up.

Wil­low is a great read and very edu­ca­tional for par­ents and kids alike. It explains the rea­sons for cut­ting in a way that does not triv­i­al­ize the real pain that goes along with it– emo­tional and phys­i­cal. In addi­tion, it may help young adults under­stand that ver­bal­iz­ing one’s feel­ings is the first step to healing.