I enjoyed reading Elizabeth Acevedo’s With the Fire on High so much earlier this year, I immediately put her other book, Clap When You Land(Harper Teen, 2020), on my TBR. And on the last trip I made to my library in its old building, even though I already had a huge stack of books to read, I grabbed this one as well – and I actually did get to finish it before the new library opened up! (It opens Saturday! We’ll wait and go Monday, when there are fewer people. We’re so excited!)
Camino lives in New York City with her parents. Her father goes back home to the Dominican Republic every summer for business; Camino’s relationship with him hasn’t been good for the past year, ever since she discovered his secret. And it’s just after he’s left for one of these summer trips that Camino receives the terrible news: her father’s plane has crashed, and everyone is presumed dead.
In the Dominican Republic, Yahaira, another teen girl, is also receiving the devastating news of her father’s death in the same plane crash. Her life has always been on the edge; she lives with her aunt, and her American father supports them and makes what few comforts they have possible. And now, with his loss, Yahaira’s entire future has become uncertain.
In time, the two girls discover the truth: the existence of one another, the fact that they shared a father, and the complicated meaning behind all of it.
Told as a dual narrative in verse, Clap When You Land is deeply emotional. Camino is far from privileged – her parents work incredibly hard for everything they have, and they’re nowhere close to rich – but compared to the poverty that Yahaira and her aunt are surrounded by, she’s practically a princess. Yahaira is tough; she’s had to be, growing up in a place where tourists visit and take from and never think about what lies outside the walls of their resorts. She’s been on the radar of the local trafficker for years, and now that the protection of her father is gone, he’s following her like a dog. Camino’s life isn’t so precarious, but she’s experienced a lot of pain and fear in her life, and she understands Yahaira better than Yahaira suspects.
This story has a lot of similarities with With the Fire on High; both books tell stories of teenage girls in difficult circumstances, fighting to improve their lives and, occasionally, just fighting to survive. The settings here were so different, though, and the style in which it was written – verse – made it so different from Fire. The two sisters’ lives are so different from each other…but then again, they’re not so different at all. The story ends in a way that wraps everything up, but it’ll still leave you wondering how everything works out once the screen goes dark.
I really enjoyed this one. It’s been a minute since I’ve read a novel written in verse, and I always enjoy that.
I love a good leaving-religion-behind memoir, so that’s how Original Sins: An Extraordinary Memoir of Faith, Family, Shame, and Addiction by Matt Rowland Hill (Vintage Digital, 2022) ended up on my TBR, and I grabbed it on my last run to the library before it closed to move to its new home. And whew, friends. This isn’t your typical “This religion wasn’t for me so I left and it was difficult” memoir. Original Sins is a raw, searing collection of pain that will devastate you, then leave you full of hope.
Welsh-born Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of an evangelical pastor, in a family with three other siblings and parents who fought constantly. Their family dynamic was fraught with conflict, and Matt delved deeply into his religion, desperate to have all the answers. But this wasn’t to be, and later on in life, he turned to drinking, then to drugs to fill in the gaps left behind by a religion he could no longer feel at home in. Falling deeper and deeper into a hole dug by crack and heroin, Matt gets clean and relapses several times while trying to come to terms with the way the world was always explained to him versus the reality of how things are.
This is an astonishingly honest memoir. There were things Mr. Hill wrote about that, as I read, I thought, “You could not torture this out of me!” but that ended up being important to the story later (which really made me admire his courage). His struggles are immense; his descriptions of drug use, cravings, withdrawal, and the many unethical things he did to score his next hit made me ache for him, so great was his pain and the mental anguish he was running from. Addiction is an utter monster, and Mr. Hill never holds back in letting the reader know the realities of living with such a condition. My heart broke over and over as I turned the pages.
This is such a fascinating look at the consequences of…life, really. Mr. Hill’s parents were extremely flawed; they were raising their children in the way they considered right, but obviously, religion of all sorts is never, ever a one-size-fits-all thing. The damage it can do can be massive, as can not dealing with that damage – and if we’re not given the tools to deal, or we’re told it’s wrong to confront our feelings or even to HAVE those feelings…we end up with stories like Mr. Hill’s, full of pain, suffering, and a long, long road back, one that not everyone is able to travel.
Original Sins is vibrating with pain, but it’s raw and brutally honest, and it’s an incredible piece of writing. I wish Mr. Hill all the best in the world for his continued recovery and journey towards finding peace with and in himself, and with the world.
Next up on the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge: a book about a family. Not a difficult prompt to fill whatsoever! Tucked away in my TBR was a book I’d been wanting to get to for a while, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon (Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2018). I’ve read several of Rachel Lynn Solomon’s YA books and have always enjoyed them, but this book is on a whole other level of serious. Don’t open this book looking for an easy, relaxing read. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone is an emotional punch to the gut.
Tovah and Adina are twins, on the cusp of adulthood and figuring out their senior year of high school. Tovah is dead-set on becoming a surgeon after college and med school at Johns Hopkins; Adina, a viola prodigy, is destined to become a soloist. The two have never gotten along, and to complicate matters even more, their mother is stricken with Huntington’s disease, a genetic neurodegenerative disorder. The twins have a 50/50 chance of inheriting this condition, and after they turn 18, they get tested, something Tovah has pushed for, but Adina has resisted.
The horror of it:
Tovah tests negative, and…
Adina tests positive. She’ll eventually develop symptoms and die in the exact way they’re watching their mother slowly die in front of them.
This new information widens the gap between the sisters and sends Adina absolutely reeling. Who will she be when her body no longer works, when everything she’s worked for will be gone? She lashes out at her sister even more and begins an affair with her older viola instructor, all the time panicking that she’s already developing symptoms. Tovah, laden with an early form of survivor’s guilt, draws a little closer to the mother she’s never felt close to, begins her first relationship with a boy, and struggles with what the future will be. The two sisters will have to learn to live with knowing exactly what their futures will be, when half the family will eventually be dead from the same disease.
This was such a heavy book. I knew it would be, but phew. The sisters start out disliking each other, which I think actually made it a little easier. It would’ve been even more emotionally devastating if they’d been best friends and each others’ everything, but it was hard enough to read about the pain both of them were carrying due to the effects of Huntington’s (interestingly, this is the third book I’ve read in 2023 that has included Huntington’s disease. In two, it’s been featured; in one, just mentioned, but still. Wild coincidence).
Adina isn’t a likable character, so be warned. She’s actually kind of awful: standoffish, hateful, manipulative, snobby. She’s gorgeous, she knows it, and she uses it to get what she wants. Her relationship with her viola teacher is just over the line of being legal yet still extremely icky and uncomfortable to read, but it highlights both her manipulativeness and her immaturity, and it made me feel deeply sad for her. Reading this book as an adult is, I think, a lot different of an experience for me if I had read it as a teenager; Adina’s diagnosis is frightening, and as an adult who can see just how quickly those post-high school years go, all the adults telling her, “You have plenty of time!” didn’t much make me feel better. It only made me feel panicky and depressed for her.
Tovah is also a little selfish and immature. She’s so focused on her goals of getting into Johns Hopkins and becoming a surgeon that she kind of forgets to do things just for fun, and to reach outside of herself. She’s never intentionally nasty like Adina is, so that automatically makes her the more sympathetic character. There’s also the guilt of having pushed Adina to get tested, and knowing what Adina’s positive result means for their lives.
The Jewish representation in this book is, of course, amazing. Tovah is more observant; Adina has abandoned it all. Tovah’s love interest is Jewish but not very observant, and the twins’ dad became more observant as an adult. These two characters serve as points of explanation for readers who may not be as familiar with Jewish culture and tradition, which I love. Mom is also Israeli and has some complicated family relationships in her past, so that provides even more tension – with Mom, between the twins, and with their family history. This is all woven into the story like threads of gold in an intricate tapestry; it’s all so well-integrated.
You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone is a tense story of an already complicated sibling relationship strained by the results of a genetic test. It’s not an easy read, and one of the sisters is immediately unlikable, but it’s incredibly well-written and so multifaceted that despite its extremely heavy subject matter, I’m glad I read it. This will stick with me.
Trigger warnings exist for mental illness, self-harm, inappropriate relationships, Huntington’s disease, a lot of talk about long-term illness, decline, and death.
It’s April! The month that really *should* be spring, but is instead usually just a gloppy mixture of rain, chilly temperatures, random bizarre snow, and sometimes unseasonably warm days around here. It’s a completely unpredictable month here, and sometimes even May can still be downright cold, so there’s no celebrating the warmth yet. More indoor reading, which is just fine by me!
It’s been a quiet-ish month around here. Dental woes, which are never fun, but we’re on spring break from homeschool as I write this, so that’s at least a bit of relief. More reading this week, and getting caught up on All The Things that I don’t have time for throughout the school week.
I’m still making my way through the stack of books I checked out from my library before it closed for the big move to its new home, along with books from another local library, so it’s all good!
13. The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsalle
14. Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation by Linda Villarosa (no review: I’m not smart enough to review this!)
15. You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone by Rachel Lynn Solomon (review to come)
16. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones (no review; I’m not smart enough to review this)
17. The Little Gymnast by Sheila Haigh (no review; read out loud to my daughter)
18. The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor (no review; read as part of my personal Read Harder challenge)
Not a ton of books this month, but Rose Madder was long, over 600 pages, and some of the nonfiction I read was super information-dense and heavy, and I’m definitely a little slower on those. I chose not to review a few of these, because to be honest, I don’t feel like I can do these books justice, and I don’t necessarily think the world needs another random white lady talking about race (the books and their authors speak for themselves more than enough). I read books like Once I Was You and Under the Skin because the world definitely needs to listen to more Black and brown women’s voices, and White Too Long, while written by a white man, is honest about the racist history of Christianity in America. All of these are worthy reads.
I think this will be the stopping point for my daughter and me in the Penderwicks series for now; we tried to start the next one, but it skips forward five years in time, and the beloved family dog has since died (six months before this book begins), and my daughter, who freaks out at anything about anything that mentions death, didn’t want to continue. So we’ve switched to reading a few books that I loved when I was younger. The Little Gymnast was a favorite for me when I was her age; I can’t say it’s held up well – SO much telling, so little showing, and there are way fewer gymnastics than I remember – but next we start The Girl with the Silver Eyes, which I adored as a kid, and I think my daughter will love as well.
Ten fiction; eight nonfiction; one graphic-nonfiction. Seven of these books came from my TBR. Ten were read for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge.
Reading Challenge Updates
Coming along swimmingly here! Here’s what this looks like now:
Out of fifty books, I’ve read 32, so I’ve got 18 left to go! I feel like I’m doing okay here, and I’m pretty proud of the progress I’ve made!
State of the Goodreads TBR
Last month, we left off at 123 books. After reading a whole bunch from my TBR, I’m now at…
Drumroll, please…
120!!!
I really want to read this down to as low as I can. The lowest it’s been in the past ten years has been in the 70’s (that was right before the pandemic started, and then we all had nothing to do but sit at home and add books to our TBRs, so it blew up again at that point). When I’m not participating in reading challenges, I tend to read almost exclusively from my TBR, and I’d like to get it low enough that I also feel more able to just browse in the library from time to time without my TBR exploding. We’ll see!
Books I Acquired in March 2023
None!
Bookish Things I Did in March 2023
…not really anything I can think of, to be honest!
Progress! This month, I delved into The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor. I was familiar with one or two of her short stories before reading this, but that was it, and after reading one story a day every day in March, I can confidently say I’m not the biggest FOC fan in the world. I was about halfway through the book when I realized I really wasn’t enjoying this, and after a few days of pondering, I realized why: everyone in her stories is just absolutely terrible. They’re horrible, awful people, and thus, I just don’t care all that much about them as characters. Read and learn, I guess!
I’ve got a massive book of O. Henry’s short stories; we’re talking like over 1000 pages long. Some of the stories are quite short, so I think I’m going to split my Read Harder time in between that and a few other shorter books. I’ll read a short story, then dedicate whatever time I have left (I set the timer at 30 minutes for longer books) to reading some from one of these books.
Real Life Stuff
Oof. For the last month, I’ve been dealing with some dental crap. Dentist is kind of a try-something-and-wait-and-see personn, which I don’t hate, but it also means I’ve been in the kind of mouth pain that wakes me up in the middle of the night since the end of February, and that I’m beholden to Advil and Aleve 24 hours a day. I’m now in another wait-and-see period, so I’m basically just not eating much, and only drinking (cold and warm bother me, too) when necessary. BLAH.
It’s been spring break this past week, which is wonderful; I really needed this time off. We’re actually pretty close to being done with everything I had planned for the year and have delved pretty deeply into our supplemental Women’s History unit that my daughter had requested, which has been great. After we finish with absolutely everything on our list, we’ll just learn whatever looks awesome when we’re at the library and go from there!
Our library move is going well, from what I can tell. All the books have been packed up and moved over to the new building; we can see books on shelves in the children’s department when we drive by, which is, of course, SUPER exciting. They’ve still got some minor construction work to do; we can see that the main staircase by the entrance still needs a railing, stuff like that. Should everything stay on schedule, the library is set to open at the end of this month, and they’ve sent out community invitations for the grand opening. It’s likely going to be too people-y there for us the first two days (which are on a weekend); our plan is to go that Monday to return our books and explore. We’re excited!
What’s up next in April? Passover starts this week; I’ll just kind of be sucking on matzah (chewing hurts, so…). I have to schedule an eye appointment at the end of the month; I went in six months ago and my eye doctor didn’t like some of the changes she was seeing, so she wanted me back in six months – and that’s fine because I think my prescription in my right eye got worse, AGAIN. The new library will open, my daughter will turn NINE, and hopefully I’ll get plenty of reading in there with all of this going on.
Wishing you a lovely month filled with excellent books that speak to your soul. Be well, friends. : )
The next prompt on the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading challenge was for a book that features two languages, and while many of the books I’ve read so far would qualify here, I like having a new book for each category, so I poked through my TBR and found A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick (Algonquin Books, 2019). I have a map on the wall where I keep track of all the places I’ve ‘traveled’ to in my reading throughout the year, so I was happy to be able to put a pin in Papua New Guinea!
Don Kulick is a renowned anthropologist and linguist who has spent a good portion of his career living and working in Gapun, an extremely remote village in Papua New Guinea, studying the demise of Tayap, their native language. Why was it being abandoned in favor of Tok Pisin, and what did it look like when a language was voluntarily left behind? What would the community lose, and how would it be affected? Over several decades, Don Kulick lived with the villagers of Gapun, getting to know them and their lives and working hard to compile what he could of the Tayap language before it disappeared completely.
But this book isn’t solely about language. Mr. Kulick’s time among the people of Gapun is fascinating and eye-opening. While their remote lives in a village that lacks even the basics of what Westerners would consider technology look extremely different from ours, at heart, the people are extremely similar to us. They gossip about each other. They desire more for their lives. They raise children, they fall in love, they grieve losses and try to find meaning when someone dies. And, increasingly, violence between the people of Gapun and outsiders becomes a part of everyday life.
There’s so much to consider in this book that I think it’s going to stick with me forever. The demise of the Tayap language is, from a linguistic standpoint, tragic; we lose so much knowledge, history, and culture when a language disappears, especially one not completely documented (something Mr. Kulick laments, especially the knowledge of the names and uses of the rainforest plants that the villagers knew and that he could never make heads or tails of. Solidarity, Mr. Kulick; I stink at identifying plants even as I live very close to where I grew up!). The culture in Gapun is obviously different from anything I’m familiar with, and reading about his experiences there and his struggles to fit in and understand their ways of life was absolutely an adventure. The life of a traveling linguist definitely isn’t for me, but this makes for an intriguing read. There are some scary parts; an attack on the village while Mr. Kulick is there leaves a man dying in front of him (Mr. Kulick got extremely lucky that he wasn’t harmed), and at one point, he uses his satellite phone to charter a helicopter out of the village on an emergency basis. The food he describes…doesn’t exactly sound palatable to my Western tastes, and the remote living (even the most basic medical care is hours away) and the illnesses and conditions he suffered from while there (and I’m sure the villagers suffered from as well) sounded deeply uncomfortable and debilitating. Not only did I feel a lot of sympathy for the villagers, I’m even more impressed at what it takes to do the work Don Kulick and other anthropologists like him do.
There are also some really painful parts of the book where the villagers’ attitudes towards themselves and the way they live show how racism and colonialist attitudes have penetrated their remote society so deeply. The villagers are convinced that their skin will turn white after death, and they desperately wish to live more like the examples of white folks that they’ve seen pictures of. Those parts hurt to read, and I’m so sorry for how deeply Western culture and Christianity has wounded these folks’ sense of self. It’s all so unnecessary.
This was a really fascinating book about a way of life that has undergone a lot of change in a very short period of time, and I’m glad I got the chance to journey there via Don Kulick’s research and writing.
Coming up next for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge: a book about a holiday that’s not Christmas. Super simple for me; I peeked at my TBR and there sat Eight Nights of Flirting by Hannah Reynolds (Razorbill, 2022), the follow-up novel to her The Summer of Lost Letters, which I loved. As you can probably tell from the title, Eight Nights is set during Hanukkah, so it was a perfect match!
Shira Barbanel is spending winter break and Hanukkah at her grandparents’ house on Nantucket, along with the rest of her large extended family. Her main plan is to get a boyfriend – namely, smart, studious, solid Isaac, who’s working as her grandfather’s assistant. She’s never had a boyfriend before, but Shira’s determined. Her plan is foiled from the get-go, however, when a winter storm keeps her family away the first night and forces Shira and her former crush, Tyler, together overnight. The two strike up a deal: super smooth Tyler will teach awkward Shira to flirt, and Shira will introduce Tyler to her great-uncle, in the hopes of him gaining an internship.
Tyler’s not exactly the surface-only playboy Shira thought him to be, however. His smooth exterior hides a multitude of insecurities, and as he and Shira grow closer, she realizes there’s more to him than she ever thought. At the same time, a decades-old mystery at her grandparents’ home comes to light, and Shira and Tyler will work together to discover the truth behind the mysterious contents of the box from the attic. And along the way, they just might discover how perfect they are for each other.
Hannah Reynolds is a master of creating a wonderful setting. Just as in The Summer of Lost Letters, Eight Nights is set on the island of Nantucket, and though I’ve never been, Ms. Reynolds was able to transport me there amidst the raging snowstorm, the winter winds whipping along the coastline, the charming shops and stores still open during the off-season. I’m not much of a traveler, but she *really* made me want to go there immediately.
Shira and Tyler are great characters. Shira is flighty and awkward, unable to open up to friends or commit to activities she’s not 100% perfect at. Tyler puts up a front of being nonplussed and a major flirt, but he keeps a lot hidden, something Shira realizes fairly quickly. Despite their rocky history, the two make a good team with a huge amount of chemistry, another thing that Hannah Reynolds is a master at writing.
And the Hanukkah celebrations! Despite it being a minor holiday, Shira’s family goes all out with decorations and food and parties and family togetherness, and it’s all so much fun. Reading about the massive family get-together and the joyful chaos that ensued made me want to be a Barbanel as well so I could join in.
Hannah Reynolds has become a YA favorite of mine, and I’m looking forward to reading more from her in the future.
I needed a book where the main character’s name is in the title for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. This wouldn’t have been a tough one; everywhere I go, I see books with a name in the title, so the pickings were anything but slim. Fortunately, they were also easy; right there on my TBR was Zara Hossain Is Here by Sabina Khan (Scholastic Press, 2021). I really enjoyed her The Loves and Lies of Rukhsana Aliin 2019, so I was looking forward to reading this, and this challenge was the perfect push!
Zara Hossain, the daughter of Pakistani immigrant parents, is having a little trouble in her Texas high school. One of the students, Tyler the jock, has been being a huge dick to her about Muslims and immigrants in general. Her parents are worried, but Zara’s well-supported by Nick and Priya, her two best friends, and Chloe, a girl from another school Zara’s interested in. She’s not about to let Tyler ruin things for her.
But as his racist attacks escalate and involve other students, Zara refuses to back down. This leads to his vandalizing her house one night, and when her father goes to confront Tyler’s father, he’s shot. Suddenly, Zara’s entire future is at stake: her father’s life, his safety and ability to stay out of prison, the entire family’s immigration status. Zara had been looking forward to applying for colleges; now she’s looking at a very possible return to a country she barely remembers. But Zara’s not backing down, not without a fight.
This is definitely a timely novel. There’s been so much in the news the past five or six years about how broken our immigration system is, and this novel is the perfect illustration of how, even when you do everything exactly right, you can still be deported immediately due to the whims of other people. Ms. Khan has created characters, a family, that lives on the edge all the time, even though they’re privileged and not struggling with issues that many other immigrant families face, such as poverty. Zara’s father is a doctor, and even that’s not enough to save them from the strain of immigration-related stress.
I did feel that the book is a bit lacking in terms of the depths of the characters, that the message takes more of a center stage at the expense of character growth. I never truly felt like we get to know Zara outside of this immediate moment, outside of the current struggles she and her family are facing. I would’ve liked to have seen a few more shades of her personality and who she is outside of her sexuality (her bisexuality is an important part of this story) and her immigration status. She’s a strong character, both determined and dutiful, but I would’ve enjoyed getting to know her a little beyond these traits.
Immigrant teens will likely see something of their own struggles and frustrations in Zara’s, but teens who aren’t part of that world need these stories just as much. Our immigration system is in dire need of a fix; my hopes lie in this next generation and the inspiration they’ll take, not just from their own stories and those of their friends, but also from reading stories like these and understanding just how badly things need to change.
It’s rare for me to reread anything. I usually have such a healthy, flourishing TBR (and so little time!) that I rarely glance behind me, in a reading sense, even when there’s times I’d really, really like to. And that’s the beauty of this year’s Pop Sugar Reading Challenges. Not only has it been pushing me hard to read outside my comfort zone, it’s also allowing me to do a few rereads. First up, to mark off the prompt of a book that I read more than ten years ago, I picked up a favorite – we’re talking a MAJOR favorite – from when I was a teenager in the mid-90’s, around fifteen or sixteen years old: Rose Madder by Stephen King (Hodder & Stoughton, 1995). I don’t think this is one of King’s better-known books, but it had a lot to say to me as a teenager, and rereading this was a really interesting trip down memory lane.
Trigger warnings for spousal abuse, graphic miscarriage, rape, violence, racial, sexual and gender-based slurs, and murder.
Rose Madder opens on a scene of horrific violence: Rose McClendon is miscarrying a much-longed-for baby after yet another terrible beating at the hands of her husband, Norman, a police officer. Flash forward nine years later, nothing has changed, and a glimpse of a single spot of blood on her side of the bed wakes her up long enough to understand the consequences of staying married to such a man. Rosie flees, taking a bus to an unnamed Midwestern city, and begins a new life at Daughters and Sisters, a women’s shelter for women leaving abusive situations.
Starting over from nothing isn’t easy, but Rosie’s new friends, a job changing sheets at a hotel, and a rented room are enough, and soon, a new job offer and the attention of a new and gentle man named Bill Steiner turn her life into more than she could ever have dreamed. A mysterious painting of a ruined temple and a blond woman, purchased from Bill’s pawn shop, begin speaking to Rosie, and not a moment too soon: Norman’s desperate search for his wife, to make her pay for abandoning him, is bringing him closer and closer, and threatening everything Rosie’s built.
What I remember appealing to me so much as a teenager were the emotions of this book: the fear Rosie felt, the horror that was Norman (who is actually even worse than I remembered), the newfound wonder of a life rebuilt and the first blossoming of love after so much pain and terror. Back at fifteen, I thought Bill Steiner was just the swooniest character out there; as an adult, I see that he didn’t have quite as big of a role in this story as I thought I remembered. This is Rosie’s story, and Norman’s: the narrative is split between the two, with the main narration going to Rosie, and Norman’s barely sane voice chiming in every now and then.
Good hell, can Stephen King write an abusive husband. Norman is one of the scariest characters I’ve ever read, one of the most dangerous. His scenes scared me more as an adult than I ever remember being scared as a teen. Another thing that really struck me is how much more difficult Rosie’s escape would’ve been today. She arrived at the shelter and her stay was fairly brief, thanks to being able to rent a room which she could afford on wages earned under the table as a hotel maid (there was also talk of supporting herself waitressing or possibly running a cash register somewhere; there were training sessions on this at the shelter, mentioned briefly). And Rosie had no children to support. How much more difficult, or even impossible, is it for Rosies today to flee such terrible situations and maintain any kind of life? Can women with zero work history, no skills, and a child or several, even manage at all? Thinking about this just depressed me further while reading this book.
It was really interesting, though, to see how much this book has affected my own writing. There were a lot of lines here and there that I remembered, and a few scenes that I hadn’t even remembered but that influenced a few things I’ve written (mostly an unpublished novel about a young woman rebuilding her life after leaving an abusive relationship. Yeah. This book had that much of affect on me!). A few times, I’d turn a page, read a line or a paragraph, and would be immediately thrown back into my teenage bedroom. If nothing else, finding my way back to this book has really reminded me of the magic of rereading.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the ending back then, and I’m still not now, though I understand it much better. No spoilers, but I do think it works a lot better reading it as an adult. If you’ve read this book, I’m curious as to your take on the ending, or on anything about this book. It’ll always be one of my favorites, both because of my history with it, and because of the strong emotions King has managed to make come alive throughout.
I needed a book with Girl in the title for the 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, and since none of the books from my TBR fit, I went searching. It didn’t take long before I came across The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant (Scribner, 2014), and that was an easy choice. I love Anita Diamant. I love her fiction, I love her nonfiction, I’m a huge fan. So much so that I was almost frightened to start this book, because what if I didn’t like it? Cautiously, I opened the cover, turned a few pages to the first chapter, started reading…and hilariously, I was hooked within the first two paragraphs. Unsurprisingly, I ended up loving this book.
Told in the style of an interview with her granddaughter, The Boston Girl tells the story of the life of Addie Baum, a Jewish woman whose life spanned the course of the 20th century. Her parents are poor and don’t quite understand this new country that they’ve fled to; her sisters are distant, and forming relationships with them in such a volatile household is nearly impossible. But Addie scrapes together a life for herself, using the many resources around her, like the Settlement House and its courses and support groups, to turn herself into a real Boston Girl.
Growing up as the impoverished daughter of immigrant parents. World War I and its devastation. Unexpected pregnancy in a dangerous time. A prescient retelling of the terror of the Spanish flu pandemic. Life, death, love, struggle, and triumph. It’s all here in this book, where Addie Baum blossoms from a naïve young girl to a woman surrounded by love, family, friends, and the incredible life she’s built for herself.
This book is fabulous historical fiction that covers so many topics that are still relevant today. I think I held my breath through all of the pages that were set during the Spanish flu pandemic; that part was particularly well-written and far too familiar, so much so that I flipped back to the copyright page and was a little surprised to find this was published in 2014. Of course it’s part of Addie’s timeline, but I think that part of the story has taken on far more meaning since the book’s initial publication date.
There are some fraught moments, moments of death, sexual assault and harassment, a soldier’s PTSD, and what we recognize today as emotional abuse by a parent. But there’s also joy, of friendship, of carving out a career path, of falling in love for the first time. This is truly a well-crafted story that spans a century of incredible change, and Ms. Diamant manages to cover just enough history without bogging down the reader with tiny details or the more complicated parts of history. This is character-driven with a heavy influence by the outside events of history, and I truly loved it.
The 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge directed me to read a book with a forbidden romance, so I browsed through some lists and came up with A Pho Love Story by Loan Le (Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2021), a YA novel about two teenagers from families who own competing Vietnamese restaurants. Super cute cover. I thought I was in for a sweet, relaxing YA love story and settled in.
Not so much.
(My apologies for not being able to do the diacritics in Vietnamese words; I’m not familiar with the language, nor am I confident I would get them correct even if I were to copy and paste from a character map. Accuracy is important, especially in terms of names, and not being able to do this really bothers me, so please accept my apologies.)
Bao Nguyen and Linh Mai are two Vietnamese teenagers from families who own competing restaurants across the street from each other. From their early childhood, their parents haven’t allowed them to have any contact, and the families have done nothing but speak badly about each other. Though the two attend school together, they know little about each other. Linh is an accomplished artist, struggling to make her parents understand what painting means to her; Bao is content to go through life not really drawn in by anything and is uncertain what his future will hold. Both teens struggle with the reality of living with parents burdened by their refugee pasts, loss and pain and secrets a part of their families’ everyday lives.
When Linh’s best friend recruits both her and Bao to write and illustrate restaurant reviews for the school newspaper, the two get to know each other in a way that has never been allowed before, but they must keep their newfound friendship and attraction hidden from their families. Digging into the past brings long-buried secrets to light, but maybe Bao and Linh can change things for good…
So.
Up until about two-thirds of the way through this, I was struggling. Something felt…off. Not right. Slow. A little draggy. Heavy. Which isn’t necessarily unexpected, as these teenagers are first generation Americans of refugee parents. There are going to be some tough topics here. But after thinking about it a little bit, I realized that the cover had led me to expect something of a different story.
The cover is WAY more lighthearted-looking than this story is. There are deaths mentioned; neither family left Viet Nam intact, and they carry their pain and scars with them. Their struggles to build a successful life in the US continue on into the present day; running a restaurant is tough even for people who don’t struggle with PTSD and are native English speakers, so it’s doubly tough for folks who come here with trauma and have to rebuild everything, and are at constant risk of financial failure and their entire lives falling apart again. Linh and Bao live with the pressure of this every day, and Linh has the added stress of knowing her parents don’t approve of her passion and talent for art, which she has to do behind their backs.
This is not at all a lighthearted love story. This is a story of two teenagers living in not just the shadows of but under the strain of their parents’ trauma. They’re trying to build their lives in the dual cultures they’re raised in, but the strain and pressure are incredible and intense, and the stress of this is evident on every page.
While the romance was cute, it didn’t quite have enough intensity or chemistry for me, but that wasn’t my real issue. The book is billed as a romantic comedy, which led me to expect something very different. I think it works well more as a drama, but intergenerational family trauma, financial pressure, and heavy familial expectations don’t mesh well with my idea of comedy. What this book does well is show what life is like for kids of refugees who are working almost beyond capacity in order to rebuild their lives from nothing. It shows their stress, their fatigue, their sorrows, their confusion, their struggles to meet their families’ expectations while still being true to themselves. It’s difficult growing up in a country and culture that your parents don’t fully understand, and that’s something I think this book portrays exceptionally well.
If you pick up A Pho Love Story, don’t go in expecting a lighthearted love story. Read it to understand a little more about Vietnamese refugee culture, and what family life of Vietnamese refugees might look like. Don’t let the cover or the description as a romantic comedy fool you; this book is a lot heavier than it looks, but I think it’ll speak to kids who recognize themselves in Bao and Linh and the weight of the expectations placed upon them.
She's probably at the library... 