Life Updates and The Locked Tomb

Happy summer, readers! First, let it be known that the girl who is writing this got a 5 on AP Calculus and AP English, showing that women truly can have it all, and also that I am a once-in-a-generation calculus genius, etc., etc. Let it also be known that said girl got her wisdom teeth out four days ago and is writing this having not eaten anything except mac ‘n cheese for the past 96 hours. With these things in mind, here’s what’s happened since the last time I updated the blog:

I went to the Grand Canyon with my dad, which was amazing and awe-inspiring until I realized just how scared of heights I am, which resulted in a lot of pictures like this:

look if they’re going to sell a 500-page book in the gift shop called Over the Edge: Death in the Grand Canyon, I am simply not going to take my chances, thanks

But I did get this picture out of it:

Yes, that is me pointing and laughing at the word “butte,” because I am a mature adult. tamsyn muir i stg i have the exact sense of humor necessary to appreciate a nona arc, PLEASE

I was also so freaked out by the sight of snow on this trip that I made my dad stop the car so that I could walk around in it whenever I saw it:

i am a native texan unfortunately.jpeg

I then finished up the rest of my senior year of high school, which involved doing some very impressive-looking labs in astronomy that I cannot make sense of at ALL now, having just cleaned out my backpack:

#womeninstem

I passed my driver’s test, which I don’t have any pictures of because I had literally sweat through my shirt with nerves by the end of it, but it happened!

And then (after prom, AP tests, and the discovery that my calc teacher keeps fishing lures in the supply cabinet for some reason), I graduated. High school, I will miss you in some ways but I also relate hard to the girl in the parking lot after graduation who was giving two very enthusiastic middle fingers to everyone as she drove away.

And that’s that for my K-12 career, I guess! Now I’m leaving for college in two-ish weeks (we’re not going to talk about that, actually) and I’m making some videos for the National Deaf Center, which has been a very cool experience so far!

Now, if you’re thinking, Sarah, this is all great and you are clearly very smart, as evidenced by your astronomy lab–thank you–but where are the books, as this is a BOOK blog?, I regret to inform you that I have not read a single book this summer. This is generally not a good policy if you run a book blog, but I have unfortunately been walking around feeling like my brain has been replaced by a wet lump of scrambled eggs. For the record, I did read during the school year, so here’s that list:

still trying to figure out what to write about True Biz…I did wrinkle the last few pages by crying snottily and inconsolably over them, so there’s that

But besides the scrambled-egg feeling, the OTHER reason I haven’t read anything this summer is because I’ve been re-reading The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. I read Gideon the Ninth back in February and Harrow the Ninth right after that, and I think I may have ruined myself for anything else maybe ever. I’ve been re-reading them both so often that I’ve actually broken the binding of Gideon (apologies to Tor publishing). These books have been taking up so much of my brain space that I literally woke up in a cold sweat one night in June and made this Venn diagram (I swear I am not kidding):

Yesterday I was hunched over the blanket that I’m currently knitting, listening to the GtN audiobook and chuckling at the part where Palamedes says, “The clavicle! Someone was having a joke.” This concerned my mother, who was trying to assemble a blender. Anyway! If you’re asking, as my grandma asked me one night as I resolutely ignored my entire family in favor of re-reading Harrow, what these books are about anyway, I’ll tell you what I told her, which is “What aren’t they about, Grandma?” They’re about lesbians. Space. What it means to be devoted to someone. Haunted houses. Haunted spaceships. Mental illness. Obsession. Manipulation. How power corrupts. Apocalypse(s). Bones. Soup? Epic poetry. Imperialism and empire. What if Draco Malfoy was a girl, but worse and also gay?

(This was not especially illuminating to my grandmother.)

I guess my point here is that I have a horrible time trying to sum up this series for anyone who’s curious about it, and I suspect that Tor does too, since the paperback description of GtN is incredibly bare-bones (haha bones). I mean, the only reason I read GtN in the first place is because when I was fifteen one of the Pride Club officers at my school who I was slightly obsessed with posted some Locked Tomb fanart to their Instagram and I was like “hm interesting” and now my brain chemistry has been irrevocably altered by these books. (This is an extremely Gideon way to get into GtN, by the way.) This post has been in my drafts for weeks because I’ve been trying really hard to nail down what exactly about The Locked Tomb has been so impactful for me, and why I’m spending so much time on Tumblr reading people’s analyses of the Nona poem that Tor released to make me, specifically, lose my mind.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Scale

One thing I love about this series is the slowly unspooling sense of scale and dread. It starts off pretty high stakes already (two arch-nemeses, Gideon and Harrow, must work together to figure out the mysteries of a creepy old palace where people keep getting killed and maybe become God’s right-hand women by the end, if they succeed), and then it gets twistier, somehow. You’ll be reading, and then you’ll be like, “Wait, this is our solar system 10,000 years in the future. Wait, Gideon’s name is on this 10,000-year-old piece of paper, so what does that mean?” What we thought was a haunted-house murder mystery is suddenly a lot bigger than we thought it was! I love that feeling in a book, the “slow accretion of things going just a little bit wrong-er than they should…until a moment comes that shatters the entire world with a whip-crack suddenness you never saw coming.” Or, as Harrow the Ninth puts it:

You were standing in a darkened corridor, and you could not turn around: and then a brief explosion of light revealed to you that it wasn’t a corridor at all, and it had never been dark.

God, I love dread!! I love the quiet building uneasiness of things going wrong!!! I love standing in a darkened corridor only for a brief explosion of light to reveal that it wasn’t a corridor at all, and it had never been dark!!!!

Humor

I posit to you: What if the epic homoerotic space tragedy was funny?

Truly, most of what got me past the first 100 or so pages of GtN (which, unfortunately, is a little bit of a struggle to get through, but everything after that is sparkling and perfect) was the “‘Lo! A destructed ass'” joke on page 47, which I found so funny that I just had to keep reading. The humor is just so perfect! I especially loved the relationship between Harrow and Ortus (hard to explain but he’s someone Harrow grew up with, sort of) in HtN, like in this moment:

[Ortus] instantly took the paper from her shivering fingers and scanned it.

“If you come to my room, I will make you the potato dish you liked,” he read aloud, with gravity. And: “How must we understand potato?”

“As your closest vegetable relative,” said Harrowhark, who’d never seen one in real life.

“You are a ready wit,” her cavalier said, with no apparent rancor and every sign of appreciation.

I don’t know! It just makes me laugh! Especially in HtN, which is a big turnaround from GtN in tone, the fact that there’s still lots of silly jokes like this and that they work is a real testament to Muir’s skills. Also the fact that she’s able to take an extended joke like Ortus’ Noniad and make it the basis for one of the best, most rewarding, most adrenaline-inducing battle scenes I’ve ever read–it’s just good!

Description

I’ve already quoted Jason Sheehan once in this post, so I’ll stop after this, but I loved what he wrote about these books, which is that they’re “fatty with a thousand adjectives, luxurious with its emotional frosting, rich with blood and meat and spattered in sanguinary body-horror.” Basically, Tamsyn Muir just has a way with words! One character’s breathing sounds like “custard sloshing around an air conditioner.” Another character’s shoulders “relaxed a fraction from black-hole stress fracture to pressure at the bottom of the ocean.” Gideon yanks at a closed hatch, “as though offering up the universe’s most useless act might endear her to the physics of a locked door.” (I! Love! That! Line!)

I also particularly love the description of Camilla and Palamedes’ relationship. (Cam and Pal are secondary characters in GtN and are set to take a more central role in Nona). They have my favorite introduction of any of the characters in either book because their relationship feels so lived-in from the moment we first hear them discussing the strange make-up of the building. I wish I could quote that passage here because it’s just a masterclass in How To Get Your Readers Invested In A Relationship Without Really Trying, Except You Are Really Trying You Just Make It Look Effortless Because You Are Tamsyn Muir. I could talk forever about how Muir writes devotion and sacrifice and obsession, but I won’t do that because there’s a million more insightful and poignant posts about that on Tumblr written by people with usernames that are inexplicably always something like GravySupremacy2003. So instead I’ll just say: You should read it! Cam and Pal’s introduction is on page 131! Go forth!

Also, I absolutely do not have the bandwidth to say a whole lot about HtN (see “my brain is scrambled eggs,” above), which is about grief and dissociation and all that fun stuff, so instead I’ll point you to this article, which I think sums up a lot of my feelings. But another example of Muir’s just truly excellent description:

But this was more than she could take stock of. Harrow was too amazed by her body’s expanding capacity for despair. It was as though her feeling doubled even as she looked at it, unfolding, like falling down an endless flight of stairs.

That line has just been floating around my head since I read it, like the bouncing DVD logo. yes I am fine, thanks for asking

Twisty-ness

Reader, I will be honest with you here: I don’t know what the heck is happening in the last, I don’t know, 100 or so pages of Harrow. I still don’t really get what’s up with Teacher in Gideon, and all the Reddit threads I’ve read have been zero help. I am struggling to make sense of the Nona excerpts that have been released so far. It is very, very frustrating, and also very, very fun. You have to build up some tolerance for things being very unresolved to not hate this series with your entire being, because confusion and open-endedness and unreliable narrator-ing abound. I still catch, like, twelve different new and important things every time I re-read Harrow. That’s part of what makes The Locked Tomb so rewarding, I think–all the complicated, tricky plot points and relationships layered on top of each other like complicated, tricky lasagna. But it’s delicious lasagna, do you see what I’m saying? This is Michelin star lasagna. I will stop typing now.

Wrap it up!!

Yes okay fine. Have you ever read a book where you’re like, “Man, I wish I had written this, wait no I don’t because you have to have some very serious issues to be able to write something like this, so I’m glad someone else did”? Have you ever read a book where you’re like, “I think this might be changing the trajectory of my life and the chemical makeup of my being and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again”? Have you ever read a book that reminds you very viscerally of that part in “Prayer” by Jorie Graham where she says “Nobody gets / what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing / is to be pure. What you get is to be changed”? Well if you haven’t, now’s your chance! I truly feel absolutely feral about these books, which I would say has never happened before except for the fact that I was a Warriors fanatic in elementary school and I used to make my dad quiz me about Tigerstar’s family line, so it’s been known to happen.

See you again in probably another six or seven months, if past trends are anything to go by. I would love to be all assertive about it, like, “This is my book blog and I’ll update when I want to, buster!!” except that I do feel slightly bad about only posting twice a year. Also it’s hitting me that I was all of thirteen when I started this blog, and now I’m an adult with a driver’s license and I’m going to college and I think I might be a completely different person now than I was in seventh grade. What you get is to be changed!

–Sarah

An End-of-Year Reading Wrap-Up

It has been a YEAR, people. A YEAR.

Right! What’s the news? I got through days of nine-degree weather and snow with no heat (gotta love the Texas power grid), finished AP Physics I and II, started driving, got vaccinated in the makeup aisle of Walgreen’s, got a girlfriend, got broken up with, finished junior year, cut off like six inches of hair, started senior year, applied to college, had my synagogue set on fire by a neo-Nazi, got my butt kicked by AP Calc, kicked AP Calc’s butt, and knit four pretty good scarves.

And somewhere in there I had time to read!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t really read like I have a book blog. (To be fair, I don’t really write like I have a book blog, either, if the fact that I haven’t posted since June is any indication.) I just sort of read what I want when I want, and a lot of the time I don’t read at all because Oh My God High School Is Hard Can I Be Done Now?, so some of these books I’m about to talk about are pretty out of date. (Like, from 2003 out of date.)

So here’s the best of what I read in 2021, and here’s to a happier, healthier 2022.

Set Me Free by Ann Clare LeZotte

Throwback to the last time I updated this blog in June, when I reviewed the first in this series, Show Me a Sign. It took me half a year to get to the sequel, but it was worth it!

Set Me Free follows Mary Lambert, now fourteen, three years after the events of Show Me a Sign. When Mary receives a mysterious summons from an old friend, she travels to Boston to teach a young language-deprived deaf girl, nicknamed Ladybird. But she soon finds that Ladybird’s story is more complicated than she thought, and that beneath the grand veneer of the Boston home lurks a long history of ableism and colonialism.

As much as I loved Show Me a Sign, I wasn’t sure that Mary, as an eleven year old, was the best choice for a narrator. The subject matter demanded more hindsight and maturity than Mary could offer, and I was worried that this sequel would face the same problem. But making Mary three years older–a teenager who has had time to reflect on the trauma of her kidnapping and imprisonment in Show Me a Sign–pushes Set Me Free into a more fully fledged, nuanced territory. (I’m not sure if it’s Mary maturing as a character or LeZotte maturing as an author, but either way, I’ll take it!)

I retire early, but my mind is working too quickly to sleep right away. I think of Ladybird above me and wonder if she’s as restless as I. Does she know I reside one floor beneath her? Would she care if I did? I’m here, my girl!

Something about the “I’m here, my girl!” gets me–the sort of old-timey register of it, the obvious love Mary has for Ladybird, the passion of the exclamation point–it’s just beautiful. And I feel like we see this depth to Mary we didn’t see in Show Me a Sign–just this profound kindness and gentleness, but the kind of gentleness that’s rooted in strength and conviction.

Show Me a Sign ended contemplatively, with Mary pondering the future of her language and culture. Set Me Free, in contrast, ends on a passionate, active note, with Mary, deeply changed by her time with Ladybird, declaring that her “girlish games are put away.” It’s such a departure from the tone of the first book, but a welcome one–and I think it speaks to the maturation of both Mary and LeZotte. I’m keeping my fingers very tightly crossed for a third book.

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

I’m so mad it took me nearly two years to pick up Elatsoe! On the bright side, I did get the recently released A Snake Falls to Earth for Christmas, so hopefully I’m not too late on the draw this time around.

Seventeen-year-old Elatsoe can raise the ghosts of animals, thanks to her Lipan Apache family’s generational knowledge. Other than that, her life is pretty normal–she rides her bike, hangs out with her best friend Jay, and plays with her (ghost) dog, Kirby. But when her cousin is murdered, she finds herself investigating the strange going-ons in Willowbee, Texas–a town with a sinister secret at its heart. She’ll need to draw on her powers, her smarts, and her amateur sleuthing skills to save her family and avenge her cousin.

First of all: books set in Texas books set in Texas BOOKS SET IN TEXAS. Love it! I thought Little Badger’s description of everything from the road trip down to the shrubbery was just so evocative. Driving through Texas is like corn field corn field Whataburger cow field fireworks stand wheat field weird novelty museum, and I think she really captured that.

Ellie is an immensely likable protagonist, and I almost wish Elatsoe was just a little longer so that I could spend more time with her. She’s competent in a way teenage girls in YA so rarely are, and I love the way she draws on her family throughout the book. It’s heartwarming to see Ellie’s parents not just in the background supporting her, but having an active role–whether it be passing on important family stories or literally fighting vampires.

This is a minor point, but I really love the way Ellie and Jay snoop around in Elatsoe. They’re not just going around talking to people willy-nilly. They use everything from Rate-a-Doc.com to online maps and archives, which feels true to how teenagers today would do it. I think Little Badger really has her finger on the pulse of The Youth™. Speaking of Jay–he’s great! He’s a really fun character who balances Ellie out well, and I like that they can just be close friends instead of romantic–another thing that’s not all that common in YA.

Elatsoe does have some pacing issues: The chapters leading up to the climax felt slow, but the climax itself wasn’t long enough to have been worth all the build-up. Other than that, though, Elatsoe is pitch-perfect–sincere and full of heart and funny and just really, really good. I’m so excited to dig into A Snake Falls to Earth!

Daredevil: Parts of A Hole (Mack/Quesada)

Terrible title, terrible art, but I wanted to read some Echo comics before Hawkeye came out. (Echo was originally introduced in the Daredevil comics.) I’m including this on the list purely because the art is so hilariously awful. For your viewing displeasure:

The Female Form 🙏🙏

what is happening. who signed off on this. is this hell

totally normal date things. also why is matt’s neck so…muscular

every day we stray further from god’s light

And finally, this has nothing to do with Daredevil, but I just needed to show you this actual picture my government teacher put in his PowerPoint:

who doesn’t love a little girl-on-girl action between the Statue of Liberty and Lady Justice?

The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness by Katie Booth

The first time I cried over a non-fiction book! The Invention of Miracles is a biography of Alexander Graham Bell and his complicated legacy vis-à-vis the Deaf community. It’s rooted in Katie Booth’s memories of her Deaf family, whose lives were shaped by the oralism and audism espoused by Bell. Anyway it’s beautiful and compelling and there are moments of just startling clarity and insight, like this one, which I keep going back to:

I was a guest in [the Deaf world], and there is a part of me now that can fall into the trap of peeking into this world as a hearing person and seeing only the beauty. This may seem like a positive thing–the deaf world, from the outside, can appear fascinating, beautiful, magical–but this way of thinking is dangerous, too. Focusing on the beauty can distract from the fact that this world is necessary. If we see it only as beautiful, then in arguments about money, innovation, and power, it is understood as superfluous. Deafness is not seen as a culture, and so efforts toward its erasure, and the erasure of its language and people, are seen as benevolence instead of forms of systematic ethnocide. Though access to this community should be assured as a basic human right, the truth is that the community still has to spend seemingly limitless time, money, and energy fighting for its own sustained existence.

Ironically, the most compelling parts of the book have nothing to do with Bell and everything to do with the deaf people around him–his wife, his mother, his students, and various deaf contemporaries of the day–so I was mostly trying to get through the parts about Bell in order to find those passages. (Part of that may also just be that I don’t have a super high tolerance for non-fiction writing, but.) For example, there’s a long passage about George Veditz’s famous speech, “The Preservation of Sign Language,” culminating with the most well-known (and beautiful!) quote from the speech:

As long as we have deaf people on earth, we will have signs. It is my hope that we will all love and guard our beautiful sign language as the noblest gift God has given to deaf people.

I found that infinitely more compelling than the long chapters spent on the science behind the telephone, but again, a lot of that is probably just my reading preferences.

In conclusion, read The Invention of Miracles! If nothing else, you’ll learn in great detail how a telephone works. (You should also read Booth’s essay The Sign For This.)

That’s all, folks

To be serious for a second–this year was really hard, and it sucked, and I cried, kind of a lot! So as the new year approaches (in literally like a matter of hours–I’m really getting this post in under the wire), just know that I’m wishing you a 2022 that’s gentle, kind, and a little bit less of a dumpster fire than 2021. I’ll leave you with some lines from a poem that means a lot to me and makes me feel hopeful:

I told her / I needed space, which was true, / without it, I’d only be a soul / and no one’s sure that wisp / is real, that’s why we say / of real estate location, location / location, and of speech, / locution, locution, locution, / and of love, yes, yes, yes, / I am on my knees, / will you have me, / world?

From “Confessions of a Nature Lover,” by Bob Hicok

Anyway, happy New Year, y’all. Love you.

Review: Show Me a Sign by Ann Clare LeZotte

As is my standard greeting on this blog lately: Long time, no see, readers! School is finally over. Farewell to the raccoons in the ceiling, and so long to the “no vaping in the bathroom” posters. You will be missed.

Now that it’s summer, I’m really excited to cross some books off my TBR, and I started with Show Me a Sign, a middle-grade historical novel by Ann Clare LeZotte. To be honest, I was really trying to burn off some anticipatory excitement about the upcoming True Business by Sara Nović, and Show Me a Sign seemed to be in a similar vein. But wow–I devoured it in a few hours, and I have a Notes document with some very disorganized bullet points, so let’s do this.

Show Me a Sign follows eleven-year-old Mary Lambert, a young girl on Martha’s Vineyard circa 1805. One of the island’s many Deaf inhabitants, she enjoys chatting with grizzled old man Ezra Brewer, exploring with her best friend Nancy, and generally exasperating her mother (a requirement for all pre-teen girls in historical fiction, in case you forgot). Then a mysterious stranger comes to the township of Chilmark–Andrew Noble, a young scientist searching for the reason why so many of the island’s inhabitants are Deaf. But his intentions are nothing less than sinister, and Mary soon finds herself smack dab in the middle of his heinous plans.

I was really impressed by the research that went into this book–I even recognized (I think) where Andrew Noble’s character came from. (Alexander Graham Bell went to Martha’s Vineyard to study the cause of deafness there. More info about Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language, Chilmark, and the Deaf community there in this short video.) LeZotte manages to avoid excessive exposition, which too often drags down historical fiction, while still giving the reader a good sense of the history of the island.

Less impressive is the pacing, which veers from strangely slow to heart-pounding to wait, that was so fast I didn’t catch it. LeZotte struggles to get the plane off the runway in the opening chapters, which are mostly slice-of-life scenes that would have been fine had they given more insight into Mary’s character. The turn the story takes midway through the book is a bit abrupt for me, and I wish there’d been some lead up to it. I have similar feelings about Mary’s eventual escape back to safety. The final few chapters are really the only place I felt like the pacing was spot-on, as she recovers from her ordeal and finds her place in her community again. (I’m not counting this as a spoiler, because the book is written in retrospect and makes clear from the beginning that the story ends with her safe.)

Show Me a Sign is marketed as middle-grade, which is why its darkness took me by surprise. I didn’t really expect for it to be, at least on some level, a cautionary tale about eugenics. (I probably should have, given that Andrew’s IRL historical predecessor is Alexander Graham Bell, noted eugenicist and audist. Fun guy!) As a deaf person myself, I found it difficult to read at points, and I do wonder a little bit about who this book is for. I’m not sure Deaf kids reading about medical experimentation, loss of autonomy, and the overall dehumanization of a young Deaf girl in vivid first person is necessarily…the best thing? This book doesn’t teeter on the edge of ableism-related violence and trauma so much as it dives head-first into a boiling vat of it, and I wish it had been handled more carefully and with clearer intention.

For example (and spoilers ahead), at one point, Mary is kept against her will by a doctor who dresses her in his dead daughter’s clothes, touches her, generally treats her like an animal, and–what was it again?–oh, yeah, falsely imprisons her. Mary ends up allying herself with him to escape, which is understandable. Less understandable is LeZotte’s choice to make the doctor a sympathetic character eventually, giving him a sad dead-daughter backstory and essentially absolving him of all guilt. After days of tormenting this eleven-year-old girl, he writes a letter to her that’s like, “Sorry, I didn’t realize you could feel stuff. I’ve learned that Deaf people are people, which is very enlightened of me, so I’ll help you escape back to Chilmark.” Later, Mary says a prayer of thanks to those who “helped” her along the way–a list that includes the doctor, along with several other characters who actively helped keep her imprisoned as a human experiment. Very cool!

Throughout the book, I really wanted Mary to be a lot less forgiving (like in the situation above). This also happens to be a book about how adults fail Deaf kids, either passively or actively, and the ways in which they assert their dignity and personhood anyway. It’s powerful, but it’s also somewhat undercut by Mary’s insistence on forgiveness. She even forgives Andrew by the end of the book, who is Umbridge levels of villainous. That said, I am definitely a lot less skeptical about LeZotte’s intentions because she herself is Deaf, and I’m okay with giving her a certain level of trust that I wouldn’t give a hearing author.

So, speaking of Andrew (and moving more toward the positives), he is an expertly structured antagonist. I mean, wow. I’m really trying to remember the last time there was a villain so cold and quietly menacing and honestly scary, and I’m drawing a blank. There are subtle warning signs–like how, when Mary’s Deaf father asks a question, Andrew addresses the hearing people in the room, not him. Then there are less subtle signs, like a letter from Andrew’s mentor that encourages him to be friendly to the local people because “it will make the study of their inherent deafness and idiocy more pleasant.” The way Mary’s mother comes to like him, and how close he gets to her family, is honestly terrifying and reminded me a little of Ursula Monkton/Skarthatch of The Keep in The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

However, Andrew’s character takes a turn from menacing to cartoonishly villainous in the second half. Things turn very blatant, and his quietly sinister presence turns into outright kicking kittens behavior. Which is fine, especially given that this book is aimed at elementary and middle schoolers, but it does take something away from the story.

On the whole, I would say that the first half of the book is a lot stronger than the second half. Mary’s rapport with Ezra and Nancy–combined with the sleuthing that she gets up to–makes for an exciting, deftly plotted Part One. Part Two, while absolutely heart pounding, isolates Mary (physically and linguistically), and it turns out that Mary’s character doesn’t stand very well on her own–she needs the people around her to make her character interesting. She doesn’t have a particularly strong individual voice, and the second half suffers for it. (That being said, the external action is plenty suspenseful, and I actually pumped my fist when Mary made it to safety.)

The book ends with Mary safe and sound (as she promised she would be in the prologue), surrounded by family and friends, reflecting on not just her future, but the future of the Deaf community:

Others take my place and write their own stories. They read the book I wrote and say, ‘That’s how it was on their island. It is different now. But they came before. They helped us to become who we are. We won’t ever forget them.’

(Maybe I cried. Just a little.)

Show Me a Sign illustrates the devastating consequences of a failure of understanding, and more fundamentally a failure of imagination–the inability of scientists, doctors, even family and friends to envision Deaf ways of being as profound, important, and meaningful. But the book also celebrates the way language builds and sustains communities, and it cherishes the in-jokes, traditions, and history of Deaf people. “Papa was right,” Mary says. “We are fine as we were made.”

Tales Through Time: Pet, Women Talking, and The War I Finally Won

I’M ALIVE, SUCKERS!!

You try looking this cute post-surgery.

Surgery went really well, and I’ve started the long process of learning how to (sort of) hear out of two ears again. I’ve got a cool-looking scar, a new cochlear implant, and three fantastic books to review, so let’s get to it! First, the futuristic Pet by Akwaeke Emezi.

Look, I don’t often recommend hyped-up YA books, but this one is well worth your time. Pet follows Jam, a girl who lives in the city of Lucille. She and her best friend, Redemption, have been taught that the monsters who used to roam the streets and halls of power have all gone. But Jam starts to suspect that this may not be true when she meets Pet, a creature who says it’s here to hunt a monster. Even worse, Pet says that the monster lives in Redemption’s house–one of the safest places Jam has ever known. As she starts to unravel a sinister mystery, Jam must learn how to hunt a monster when everyone keeps denying they exist.

I’ll start by saying that the audience for this book is probably on the younger side–maybe middle school? But I still loved it as a high schooler, and I think adults would probably like it, too. For one, I was refreshed by the fact that Lucille is an actual utopia. Pet isn’t one of those YA novels where a dystopia masquerades as a utopia and the protagonist has to take it down. Lucille’s government and representatives genuinely want the best for their citizens, and they’ve built a city that serves that purpose.

The world-building was wonderful–Lucille feels lived-in and warm. Parents bicker jokingly, little siblings are annoying, the library is still a safe haven for determined kids solving a mystery. Emezi makes the point that a utopia might look more familiar than we think–and, by extension, that it’s more attainable than we think. It references a lot of things that readers are probably already familiar with, like prison abolition, rehabilitation instead of jail time, and protests as a force for change. (And if younger readers aren’t already familiar with these things, Pet provides a fantastic starting point to learn about them.)

Most importantly, though, Emezi warns us that the work of actually sustaining a utopia is never done. Transparency, empathy, and a willingness to listen to the most vulnerable members of society are values that even a utopia like Lucille must re-commit itself to every day.

Also, Jam is selectively mute and uses sign language! So this deaf girl was definitely geeking out the whole time. Honestly, I could’ve read a whole book just about Lucille’s sign language–is it ASL? BASL? Does it incorporate signs from other sign languages, the same way Jam’s parents frequently use Igbo in their conversations? I was literally searching through the pages to see if I could find any more clues about it. The way Emezi showed how Jam’s parents and friends respect her communication preferences was subtle but moving, too.

I loved the relationship between Jam and Redemption as well–there’s something wonderful about a really well-written friendship that doesn’t turn romantic. The range of sexuality and gender in the book also stood out. Jam is trans, but it’s not a huge plot point. Redemption has three parents. It was also something of a relief not having to worry if a trans or disabled character was going to die, because Pet isn’t the type of book to treat its characters so callously.

In conclusion, read Pet! Not only is it a story that shows readers what an attainable utopia might look like, it’s also funny, heartfelt, and overflowing with love for its characters. (You should also read this really great interview that Emezi did with Teen Vogue!)

Next, let’s backtrack to the present(ish) day and discuss Women Talking by Miriam Toews.

In Women Talking, eight Mennonite women convene in a hayloft to debate whether or not they should leave the colony of Molotschna. For the past few years, they and their children have been repeatedly assaulted by a group of men, who are now in jail in the city. When the men of the colony leave to bail them out, the women and children are left alone–and face an impossible choice.

I don’t quite know how to feel about this book–it’s strong in a lot of ways and weaker in others. I’d say the biggest weakness is probably the narration. The story is told in the minutes of the meeting, which are taken by August Epp, a schoolteacher in the colony. He’s a fine narrator during the meetings–not so much when he’s talking about himself. The book gets off to a stumbling start when, within the first few pages, Toews throws a bunch of information about August’s backstory at us, which, to be frank, isn’t really that interesting, especially when the specter of a much larger predicament looms over the story. Even when the meetings actually start and August is taking notes, the book is continually bogged down with references to his life before re-joining the colony that feel excessive. I know that Toews is trying to endear him to the reader–he is the narrator, after all–but I’m pretty certain that there’s a more graceful way to do it.

A lot of the dialogue rings false, too. When Agata, one of the matriarchs, says, “This is a democracy, after all,” a teenage girl replies, “A what?” Ona and August reference poets and art and it’s revealed that August’s mother ran a secret school for girls. Many moments feel shoehorned.

It is caustically funny, though, one of the book’s major strengths. One of my favorite moments is when the women are discussing the certainties and uncertainties of leaving the colony:

Mejal defends Ona. Why couldn’t that be the case, that the only certainty is the power of love? she wonders.

Because it’s meaningless! Salome shouts. Particularly in this fucking context!

The story kind of reads as a Socratic seminar, with the women addressing philosophical and religious dilemmas with a slightly unbelievable amount of careful attention, given that they only have two days to make a decision. It’s a meditation on storytelling, patriarchal violence, and autonomy, and is trying very hard to be smart in the process. It would be smarter if it weren’t trying so hard.

Finally, let’s travel back in time to World War II with The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.

In lieu of an actual review, please accept these screenshots of my grandma and I texting each other about it:

Well, ignore that last part about the AP. But yeah! To say that my grandma loves Little Women with a passion is the understatement of the century, so comparing The War I Finally Won to it is a pretty big deal!

I remember the conversation I had with my dad while I was crying! It went something like this:

“I didn’t expect it to be quite this emotionally devastating!”

“So it was really sad?”

“No!”

“Okay. Just…emotionally devastating.”

“Yes!”

!!!!!!!

Also, bonus: Here’s my grandma talking about The War That Saved My Life, the first book, in case you need some motivation to read it.

I mean!!

Maybe someday I’ll have the emotional fortitude to write a full review, but today is not that day, friends. I did try to write a review in June, but it was just a bunch of scattered thoughts, including the very bitter, “It’s a reminder that someone else has already written the book you want to write.” I mean, I really was so devastated by it that I couldn’t even look at it for a while.

A recap: The last time we saw London evacuees Ada and Jamie Smith, they were being reunited with their caretaker Susan in the seaside village of Kent after a bomb destroyed the house they’d lived in. The War I Finally Won begins a week after the end of The War That Saved My Life, on the eve of Ada’s surgery to fix her clubfoot. Soon after, Ada’s cruel mother dies in a bombing, Susan becomes the siblings’ guardian, and they move into a cottage on the property of the stony-faced Lady Thorton. And then Lady Thorton moves in with them, and later Ruth, a sixteen-year-old Jewish girl from Germany. As they wait out the war together, the world around Ada keeps shifting and growing in this moving, heart-wrenching, and ultimately healing sequel.

Here’s a very brief summarization of some of my thoughts, because I’m not even kidding when I say that if I think about this book for too long I start crying:

• I’ll start with this: There’s this line in an Atlantic article about The Fault In Our Stars that has stuck with me since I read it. It’s, “This is a book that breaks your heart—not by wearing it down, but by making it bigger and bigger until it bursts.” Granted, I don’t feel that way about The Fault In Our Stars. But I do feel that way about The War I Finally Won.
• The character development feels very, very earned. Ada’s trauma doesn’t just go away now that time has passed, but it’s obvious that she’s improved and trusts Susan more. (The relationship between Ada and Susan continues to bring me to tears, btw.) It helps that this book spans a lot longer than The War That Saved My Life. It begins when Ada is eleven and ends when she’s fourteen. (Do NOT even talk to me about how Ada would be in her nineties today or I will burst into tears.) And yet, the book never drags, either, for all the years that pass.
• I’d recommend reading Bradley’s post about writing a character with PTSD while simultaneously having PTSD herself. You should also read “A Touch on Lesbianism,” a funny and incisive blog post about Susan.
• The War I Finally Won is funnier than the first book, which I wasn’t expecting, but the humor feels very natural. Jamie is an excellent foil for Ada, just as before. When Jamie makes his cat a mourning armband, who quickly chews it up, Ada says, “Cats don’t mourn.” “They feel very sad,” Jamie retorts. “They just don’t like armbands.”
• Horses continue to be the best (what else is new?).
• It’s what I call a comfort food book, taking place almost entirely within the confines of the cottage and the surrounding property. It reminded me a lot of the first few pages of A Wrinkle In Time, when Meg, Mrs. Murray, and Charles Wallace are all in the kitchen during the storm. (It should come as no surprise to y’all that that scene was always my favorite.)
• There’s a lot of other stuff I want to say about it, but you should really just read it.

The War I Finally Won is almost unbearably intimate, so full of tenderness and communal care for each other that I was undone when I read the last page. And while the shadow of war and death looms over the story, it’s also filled with bursts of gentleness and love so overwhelming that I had to stop and take a breath just now thinking about it.

“The only way out of this is straight through,” Susan says to Ada while she’s recovering from surgery. “Courage.”

“Is that the same as being grateful?” Ada asks.

“Sometimes,” Susan replies.

Whatever. WHATEVER!! I’m not crying! Anyway, excuse me while I go get some tissues for a completely unrelated reason.

The Decade in Review: Books That Shaped Me

I SURVIVED MY FINALS, EVERYONE!! AND I WOULD JUST LIKE THE WHOLE WORLD TO KNOW THAT I GOT A 91 ON MY RIDICULOUSLY HARD CHEM TEST!

Okay. Cool.

Happy holidays, readers! It’s almost the new year, which is hard to believe, so I thought I’d do an end-of-decade wrap-up post of some of the books that have shaped me these past ten years. This is going to be all over the place because I literally looked like this ten years ago:

I’m playing Super Mario Galaxy in this picture. Super Mario Galaxy, y’all. I feel really old.

So there’s going to be some classic YA, some elementary school favorites, and some newer books! (The list is organized by publication year, not the year I read them, BTW.) Let’s start with some kids’ books that I read in early elementary school:

2010

Dying to Meet You (43 Old Cemetery Road Series #1)

Ignatius B. Grumply moves into a Victorian mansion, hoping to overcome a case of writer’s block, but finds that the house is already occupied by a boy named Seymour, his cat, and a cantankerous ghost named Olive. It’s told in letters, drawings, and newspaper articles, and it is still maybe the funniest and smartest kids’ series I’ve ever read. The best part was that there was always an abundance of these at Goodwill so I always had a fresh supply. (The author-illustrator duo’s other series, Regarding The… is almost as good, and I’m a particularly big fan of Regarding The Sink). 

When You Reach Me

Ugh, I cried over this one. I don’t want to give too much away because HOT DANG THAT ENDING, but here’s the basics: In 1970s New York, sixth grader Miranda Sinclair starts receiving mysterious letters from someone who seems to have an uncanny ability to predict the future. It takes a serious turn when the notes tell her that someone is going to die soon, and she may not be able to stop it. (Okay, that makes it seem really dark, but it’s not!) Also, does anyone else remember Liar & Spy? I feel like it did not get the recognition it deserved. #RebeccaSteadAppreciation2k20, people.

2011

Wonderstruck

More ’70s-era New York! This book has everything: Dual storylines, beautiful illustrations, mystery, and kids breaking into museums. As a fan of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Wonderstruck spoke to me. Plus there’s two deaf characters! Also, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only third-grader who attempted to build Rose’s model of New York, right? Right??

A Tale Dark and Grimm

These books were the best. THE BEST!! I still remember fighting with my best friend in the library over who would get to read the next in the series first because there was only one copy of it. It starts with a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, then quickly spirals into an epic, gory quest that in retrospect was probably not appropriate for second-graders. (I mean, the part where the townspeople boil that man alive?? Yikes.) I’m still reeling over the part in The Grimm Conclusion when Jorinda and Joringel become the tyrants, if I’m being honest. It’s funny, it’s gross, and it’s surprisingly genre-subversive for an elementary school series.

2012

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

I read this one in seventh grade, and it’s stayed with me for a long time (although I can’t find my copy of it now, which is driving me crazy!). It’s about high schooler Cameron Post, who lives with her aunt after her parents die in a car crash. It’s a coming-of-age story that incorporates the experience of being young and gay, and it has a vivid sense of time and place (1980s small-town America). It’s moving and heartfelt, and you should definitely read it before you see the movie.

The Fault in our Stars

Classic YA, y’all, classic YA. I was for sure too young to read it when I was in fourth grade, and my teacher was really concerned when I started crying over it during D.E.A.R time, but it was worth it. I’m not a particularly huge fan of it now (this article by a pediatric cancer survivor gives a good primer about how it reinforces pernicious stereotypes about sick kids and popularized “sick lit”), but it definitely got me good when I was younger, and I probably wouldn’t have picked up another John Green book if I hadn’t read this one. (Turtles All the Way Down isn’t on this list, but it’s remarkable and touching and well-done.)

2013

Yellowfang’s Secret

Okay, look, the whole Warriors series should be on here, because I was obsessed with them for all of elementary school. Did anyone else do those role-playing games on the playground? (I was always the medicine cat, and I can still tell you that burdock root is good for infection.) There was a time in fourth grade where the entire grade was split into the four clans and it got so intense that we were backstabbing each other all over the place and our teachers made us shut it down. All this to say, how could Yellowfang’s Secret not be on here? Everyone’s favorite former-ShadowClan medicine cat with an intriguing backstory gets her own stand-alone book, and it’s fantastic. May StarClan light your path!

Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures

Anything Kate DiCamillo writes is great, but Flora & Ulysses is one of my favorites. It follows Flora, a girl struggling with the aftermath of her parents’ divorce, and the squirrel she saves after he’s run over by a vacuum cleaner. A lot happens, but basically, the squirrel can write poetry, might have superpowers, and is in imminent danger from Flora’s mother. It’s short and sweet, and the protagonists are unique and likable.

2014

El Deafo

One of the first books I ever read with a deaf character, El Deafo is an autobiographical graphic novel of Cece Bell’s childhood after she becomes deaf as a result of meningitis. It’s funny, touching, and hopeful, and it got me writing about my own experiences. (Plus it made me grateful that my hearing aids were BTE and not in the shape of a giant box with earbuds!)

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

This book was, for some reason, in my bathroom for a year, and it freaked me out. It’s another autobiographical illustrated book, it’s about Roz Chast taking care of her aging parents, and it made me cry even though most of it went over my head. I made my mom give it away, but I still think about it all the time.

2015

I Am Princess X

I was in love with this book, partly because of the illustrations but mostly because it was just so good. It follows May and Libby, who have been best friends since fifth grade. Together, they write and draw a comic strip about a princess who lives in a haunted castle and goes on adventures. Years later, though, May has put Libby in the past after she died when her mom drove off a bridge–or so she thinks. She soon discovers that Princess X is now a thriving webcomic, and Libby is very much alive and in need of her help to defeat her kidnapper, the Needle Man. Set in Seattle, this urban mystery novel really checked all of my boxes, and the heart-pounding, fast-paced plot kept me up late reading it.

Mosquitoland

I’ve come to dislike this book for reasons that are explained in a long draft of a post I have saved on my desktop, but my copy of Mosquitoland is so dog-eared that I can barely read some of the pages anymore. I loved it, and I modeled my writing style off of it for quite a long time. David Arnold tells the story of Mim, a girl on a road trip to visit her mother, who her dad and step-mom have cut her off from. Along the way, she meets the dashing Beck Van Buren and a cast of eccentric characters who aid her on her long and emotional journey. (Not a big fan of Beck, a college junior, being in a relationship with a sixteen-year-old and having it written off as romantic, or of sexual assault being used as a plot device, or of disabled characters being infantilized, but that’s a post for another day.)

2016

Exit, Pursued By A Bear

I’ve kept re-reading this one, and still come back to it sometimes for certain passages. It’s a poignant and superbly-written testament to the power of friendship in the face of trauma. It follows Hermione Winters, a high school senior who is raped at a cheerleading camp. Where many books show teen female friendships to be shallow and catty, E.K. Johnston excels at creating a believable and touching bond between Hermione and her best friend Polly. Surprisingly readable for a book about such a heavy topic, but at the same time resonant and haunting, Exit, Pursued By A Bear has stuck with me.

Paper Girls (Volume 1)

This comic about a group of newspaper delivery girls in the ’80s who get caught up in a war between time travelers is gritty, suspenseful, and, at times, heart-breaking (MacKenzie!! WHY???). It’s won a slew of awards and is being made into a TV show, so, you know…read it. I couldn’t sleep for a while, but it was completely worth it.

2017

Spinning

I guess I really have a thing for autobiographical graphic novels. Spinning follows Tillie Walden (who is, by the way, only 23 years old!), and is about her experiences as a figure skater in early-2000s Austin, Texas. At the same time, it’s also about coming of age, growing up queer, and healing from trauma. I’ll have to write a full post about it someday, because it’s probably one of the–if not the–best books I’ve ever read. It’s sparsely but beautifully illustrated, and the color palette is a lovely mix of purples and warm yellows. (Honorable mention that didn’t make it on here: On a Sunbeam, the remarkable 538-page sci-fi masterpiece that made her famous.)

They Both Die At The End

2017 was really a banner year for YA, and a lot of my favorites were published around this time (Turtles All the Way Down, The Hate U Give), but They Both Die At The End really stood out to me. I know I talk about it all the time on here, but it really is that good! It follows two boys in an alternate universe where people are told they’re going to die on the day of so that they have time to say good-bye to their loved ones. Mateo and Rufus’ paths intersect for a day of sorrow and hopefulness, and the book serves as a powerful reminder to live every day like it’s your last.

2018

Children of Blood and Bone

This intricate fantasy novel (the first in a planned trilogy) is rich and suspenseful. Zélie Adebola, her brother Tzain, and fugitive princess Amari are on the run from the powerful rulers of Orïsha as they try to restore magic to the kingdom. It’s great at balancing three alternating viewpoints, and I’m really excited to read Children of Virtue and Vengeance, which came out earlier this month.

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

I was so planning to write a review of this when it came out, but there was so much I wanted to say about it that I couldn’t get it all down! AART is about a woman named April May, who discovers what she thinks is a strange robot statue in Manhattan. When she films and posts a video online, she instantly goes viral, and her life is changed. The statues (affectionately termed “Carls”) appear all over the world at the exact same time, and people think it’s just a piece of really cool, out-of-this-world art–until they discover that it may literally be out of this world. It’s really not a sci-fi novel that I’ve seen before, and it’s gotten high praise: “It’s not the nature of a sci-fi comedy blockbuster to shift boulders in your soul. But with his debut novel…Hank Green pulls it off,” writes one reviewer at Paste Magazine. That cliff-hanger ending will be resolved in A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, to be released this summer. (And yes, Hank Green is John Green’s brother, so I guess it runs in the family.)

2019

I’ve literally had time to read, like, one current book this year, so here you go:

Are You Listening?

I’ve already raved-reviewed about this one here, and talked about Tillie Walden too much just in this post, but Are You Listening? was wonderful. Another entry in the quiet, beautiful canon of Walden’s work, it uses magical realism as a conduit to explore issues like death and sexual assault, all rendered movingly in the friendship between two young women. Plus, there’s a road trip and cats!

Honorable Mentions (AKA my favorite books that I read this decade but were released pre-2010)

• Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo: Good lord this one made third-grade-me cry. It’s sweet and moving and has a wonderful cast of characters, like the adorable Sweetie Pie Thomas and eccentric pet store owner Otis.
• Holes by Louis Sachar: It’s a book that should be way more of a classic than it is, am I right or am I right? The lives of several boys at the juvenile corrections facility of Camp Green Lake intersect in a funny and touching way, all while a larger mystery unfolds.
• The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: It’s every young Greek mythology geek’s origin story. Percy Jackson discovers that he’s the son of Poseidon and goes on an epic cross-country road trip to find Zeus’ stolen lightning bolt. I started reading these books in second grade and I haven’t put them down since.
• Savvy by Ingrid Law: I was obsessed with this book as a fourth grader, which follows 12-year-old Mississippi “Mibs” Beaumont, born into a family where every teenager acquires a power, called a “savvy.” When her father falls into a coma after a car accident and the family is separated, she goes on a road trip with the local pastor’s family and her brothers to find him again. It’s a wonderfully original coming-of-age story with a magical twist.

That’s all I’ve got, readers! What were some of your favorite books of the decade, and what books shaped you growing up?

Happy New Year, everybody!

Here’s to a bookish 2020!

–Sarah (The Inside Cover)

Let’s Talk About The Silence Between Us by Alison Gervais

Happy fall break, readers, AKA the only time I’ll be able to update the blog until late December because finals season is hell!

Can high school be over yet??

The good news is that I found time to write a blog post today! I wrote a first draft of this thing way back in August when The Silence Between Us first came out, and it was long and rambling and man am I glad I didn’t publish it. But now that I’ve a had a few more months to mull it over, let’s discuss!

First, a plot summary:

The last thing seventeen-year-old Maya wants to do is leave her friends at the Pratt School for the Deaf behind, move halfway across the country, and start at a mainstream hearing school.

But no dramatic tension, no book! So, of course, that’s exactly what ends up happening. She feels like she’s working ten times as hard as her hearing classmates, and it doesn’t help that most of her peers are completely oblivious about the Deaf community. At least she’s got a good interpreter, Kathleen, and a maybe-friend, Nina. Plus, she’s still dead-set on becoming a respiratory therapist in order to help kids with cystic fibrosis like her little brother, so she’s preoccupied with getting the grades to match her ambitions.

Enter Beau Watson, the school’s resident overachiever. When he starts learning ASL and chatting with her, she’s suspicious he’s just doing it for the brownie points, but she has to admit that it’s nice not needing to use her voice all the time. When their friendship starts to turn into something more, the disconnect between their hearing and Deaf worlds becomes starker, and Maya must ask herself: Is this a divide she can bridge without sacrificing her identity?

Let’s get this out of the way to begin with: In terms of, like, actual writing…well, it’s not the most masterful work of fiction ever. The dialogue is often clunky and clichéd, the plot is slow-moving, and Nina and Beau are painfully static for characters that play such a large role in the story. It’s far from the worst book I’ve ever read, but it could use some work.

Despite all that, I was thrilled to find this book. Like Maya, I’m deaf, go to a mainstream high school, and struggle with hearing peers and teachers. I’d never really seen these experiences rendered in fiction, and I was excited to see how Gervais would go about it.

In terms of school issues, every experience Maya has rings true. From “group time” (every d/Deaf/HoH student’s worst nightmare) to teachers over-compensating (e.g., talking super loudly, over-enunciating, generally treating deaf students as dimmer-than-average), you can tell that Gervais–who herself is hard-of-hearing–has had personal experience with the infuriating day-to-day reality of being disabled in a mainstream school. I was especially blown away by a scary experience Maya has during her chemistry final that mirrored, almost exactly, a lab that went wrong my freshman year in biology class.

I was a little disappointed that teachers under-compensating wasn’t really addressed–things like uncaptioned videos, note-taking, and seating accommodations were never talked about. In fact, aside from Maya having an interpreter, accommodations were barely discussed at all.

But 504s and IEPs and the legal nuances of disability accommodation in public schools isn’t good content for a YA romance novel!, I hear you cry. Which…okay, fair enough. The complexities of navigating that system doesn’t make for the most exciting book (although watching my dad scare the bejesus out of my science teacher in my 504 meeting last year was pretty entertaining). This book–one of the very few YA novels that follows a mainstreamed Deaf student–doesn’t have to address everything, and that’s something I’m trying to keep in mind as I write this review. I got a bit frustrated with the lack of nuance at some points, and I’ll talk about that when we get there, but it’s worth remembering that The Silence Between Us is one of the first of its kind.

Along those lines, let’s talk about the circumstances of Maya’s deafness. After contracting meningitis, she becomes medically deaf at age 13. She and her mom work hard to learn ASL, and she ends up attending a school for the deaf before they move. By the time we meet her, she proudly identifies as big D Deaf, AKA culturally deaf. All this happens in the span of four years.

First, I feel like you’d have to be pretty darn good at ASL before being able to attend a school for the deaf and excel there (as Maya did), and I’m not entirely convinced that she lost her hearing and was able to take high school level classes in sign language immediately after that. (I’m being nit-picky here, but it feels like a bit of a glaring plot hole for Gervais to overlook, and anyway I would be interested to find out what Maya’s learning process and transition into the Deaf community was like.)

Also, I wish I had seen what the conversation between Maya and her mom was about deciding to learn ASL rather than go for cochlear implants. Maya’s decision not to get CIs, while I respect it, seems counter-intuitive–not in a “cochlear implants are a miracle and she should’ve gotten them to lead a ‘normal life!!'” kind of way, but in a “she became deaf at age 13, all she’s ever known is the hearing world, so what exactly was her thought process here?” way. As far as I can tell, she’d never had exposure to the Deaf community before she became deaf herself, so…what happened there? It feels like an important conversation that the reader needed to be in on.

So let’s talk about the whole cochlear implant thing, shall we? (In the first draft of this post, this took up a good 900 words, so I cut it waaaaaay down. You’re welcome.)

Maya has a firm stance on cochlear implants–nope–but she understands that they’re a good choice for some people, just not for her.

Full disclosure–I’m coming at this from the perspective of a deaf gal who has both a cochlear implant and a hearing aid and who is learning ASL (cue the Hannah Montana “Best of Both Worlds” theme song), and I was a little miffed at the way she portrayed non-signing CI users, AKA me, so I’m not totally unbiased about this whole thing.

Throughout the book, I felt like the way Gervais chose to portray CIs was essentially to give hearing people a crash course on the cochlear implant debate. (Google it. I have way too much WHAP homework to explain it here.) So while it might have changed some hearing readers’ previously held notions about how ~cochlear implants are a miracle~ (spoiler: they are not), it doesn’t really do justice to the complexity of the whole thing. It’s very, very black-and-white: Either you have CIs and hate ASL and all that it stands for, or vice-versa.

All this is best shown in my least favorite scene in the whole book, the deaf kid meet-up. Around the middle of the book, Maya attends a meet-up of other deaf high schoolers in the area, hoping to find some other signing teens, but soon realizes that they’re all oral and all have CIs (never mind that having CIs doesn’t automatically mean you’re oral, people!!). It goes about as well as you’d expect–the kids and their moms are the AG Bell website personified (shudder), Maya can’t follow along, and some rude, off-hand comments are made by the moms. All the CI’d kids come away looking kind of like jerks, which sucks, because everyone I’ve ever met with a cochlear implant is super nice! (Except for Rush Limbaugh. We don’t stan.)

The whole scene, while maybe introducing some new concepts to someone who’s never heard of the whole debate before, is in reality pretty simplistic. I would go as far to say that it maybe even introduces some harmful concepts to a hearing reader–namely that being culturally, big-D Deaf and having cochlear implants are two mutually exclusive things when they very much are not. Gervais’ portrayal of the Deaf community is, disappointingly, very narrow.

Look, I can appreciate the need to ignore some of the nuances of such a big, heterogeneous population like the d/Deaf/HoH community, and like I said before, this book doesn’t need to–and can’t–address everything. But it does feel like more care was needed here.

Let’s talk about Connor, Maya’s little brother with cystic fibrosis. You know, it’s a real skill to write a book about teaching able-bodied folks that disabled people are not a monolith, that we have lives outside of our disability, and that we need to be the tellers of our own stories, and then to do precisely the opposite with the only other prominent disabled character in the book.

Alison Gervais! What are you doing, girl?? I am genuinely dismayed! She straight-up did the disabled sibling thing, you guys!! She did the thing! She did the Rules by Cynthia Lord thing! She did the Olivia’s-chapters-of-Wonder thing! She did the Counting Thyme by Melanie Conklin thing!

I feel really strongly about the able-bodied-sibling-of-a-disabled-kid trope, guys, because generally it is not done very well. The disabled kid is used as a means through which the able-bodied sibling grows and matures, while the disabled kid remains totally static and voiceless. It’s different in The Silence Between Us because they’re both disabled, which somehow makes it worse because one of those disabled characters is portrayed with a lot of agency and makes the point that we need to be listened to, and then somehow Gervais couldn’t put it all together and allow the same for Connor!

To be fair, it’s slightly less egregious in terms of sheer inspiration porn than, say, Wonder.  And at least Maya and Connor’s relationship isn’t the sole focus of her character arc, and she grows and changes in many other ways. But it is absolutely baffling to me that in a book that is so clearly about giving disabled people agency and control over their own stories that the same respect for Connor’s disability and character isn’t afforded.

I’ll move on from this point because I feel like I’ve really ragged on the whole book, and I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about it. I actually enjoyed it, and it was really cathartic to see a character dealing with the same day-to-day struggles that I do.

So let’s do an end-of-post positivity dump!

Maya’s experience with lipreading is portrayed in a cool, innovative way: Almost every spoken sentence is dashed through with ellipses, indicating words that she couldn’t decipher. “Wonderful…excited to…always wanted…sign language…” is all one sentence, spoken too quickly for Maya to understand. There’s almost no sentence that goes by without these ellipses, giving hearing readers some idea of how difficult and tiring lipreading is.

Dialogue in sign language is written in its glossed form. I can’t speak to the accuracy of it as a beginner signer, but I can say it’s super awesome to see ASL in its untranslated form. For example, when Maya and her mom are in the hospital because Connor has an emergency relating to his cystic fibrosis (disabled sibling used as a way to move the plot along? Check), their conversation goes like this:

YOU OK? was the first thing she signed to me.

FINE, I signed, even though I didn’t mean it one bit. I was stiff all over and my head was throbbing painfully. YOU SHOW UP, WHEN?

EARLY MORNING, Mom answered. TIME 5:30.

Since ASL doesn’t have a written form, it’s cool to see it about as close to real signing as possible, rather than how I’ve usually seen it–in perfect English, such as in Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase series. Gervais’ style drives home the point that ASL has its own grammar structure, syntax, and slang–it’s not English with hand movements.

Other good things: Maya’s vivid description of what’s been termed “dinner table syndrome” gives hearing readers a good idea of what isolation in non-accessible settings feels like. An exploration of job discrimination illustrates some of the structural barriers Deaf people face when it comes to trying to make a living. A healthy hearing-Deaf relationship is portrayed, where the hearing partner educates himself and grows.

So in conclusion…it’s complicated, peeps. I haven’t come across another review of this book by someone who’s d/Deaf/HoH, so it’s a little hard to gauge what others are thinking. I’m so, so happy that we finally get an #OwnVoices Deaf character, and Maya’s experiences are recognizable and relatable to disabled readers. But depth and nuance were lacking in places, and the actual plot structure and characters leave much to be desired.

Clearly, there’s room to grow. But I’m glad someone’s out here paving the way, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the next book about d/Deaf/HoH characters can only build off the good work Gervais has done.

That’s all for now, readers. Wish me luck on finals (if you don’t hear from me in a month, that means my chem test has murdered me), and I hope to update sooner rather than later!

Signing (pun intended) off,

The Inside Cover

Book Review: Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden

Happy spooky season, readers! Sorry I’ve been MIA–I’m alternating between kicking sophomore year’s butt and sophomore year kicking my butt, so it’s been busy.

Anyway!

Before I started writing this, I was looking for an old post I wrote about one of Tillie Walden’s other books, On a Sunbeam, and then discovered that I’d never actually written it, I just had a hyperrealistic dream once where I thought I did. That’s how much I love Tillie Walden–I write rave reviews for her in my sleep.

This is going to be a short review, because algebra homework, but I’ve been so excited for Are You Listening? since she announced it, and boy, I was not disappointed. Let’s jump right in!

This cover. THIS COVER!!!! MMMM!!

What’s the plot?: After a chance encounter at a gas station, Bea and Lou are sent on a road trip through West Texas to return a cat to a town that, according to their map, doesn’t exist. The longer they drive, the more strange things start to happen–bridges crumble as soon as they’ve finished crossing them, once-empty diners are suddenly full of people, and they’re pursued by the ominous Office of Road Inquiry.

As the landscape stretches and shifts before their very eyes, the two young women must come to terms with the grief and trauma that have brought them here, now. Stirring and poignant, Are You Listening? is a graphic novel for the ages.

My thoughts: Magical realism? Road trips? Queer gals with cute glasses? This book was fine-tuned in a laboratory for me.

Okay. Okayokayokay. I don’t even know where to start.

As someone who’s been on a great many Texas road trips, Walden perfectly captures both the eeriness and the beauty of everything from run-down gas stations to vast and empty landscapes. (I legit considered making this post just pictures of all my favorite panels, FYI.)

I mean…….RIGHT?????

Plus, all the dialogue is just *Italian-kissy-hand-thing* magnifique. It helps that Walden is actually Texan and can make all those “y’alls” sound like they’re meant to be there. Beyond the Texan accents, though, it’s worth noting that the book is not dialogue-heavy, and any conversations that happen sound true-to-life and flow naturally.

Actually, almost nothing in this book, apart from some of the themes, is heavy. As in Walden’s previous works, faces are drawn simply and without much detail, just enough to tell people apart. The number of Big Important Plot Points are kept to a minimum, leaving room for the quiet, poignant moments that have come to define her books. Landscapes defy the borders of the panels, drifting from page to page to create a beautiful dream-like effect. (A scene late in the book where the panels all but dissolve and the characters are nothing more than a few lines on the page makes the moment particularly moving.) This NPR review is super worth reading, just because it really captures what it is that makes this style work so well.

The themes explored–namely, coping with the loss of a family member and coming to terms with sexual assault–are rendered with tender empathy through Bea and Lou. Walden does what many authors can’t: Explore heavy issues in a way that is not just respectful and responsible but that also rings true. It’s part of why I also love Spinning and On a Sunbeam so much. Plus, Are You Listening? marks another Tillie Walden book that deals with young queer girls in Texas, so…I felt that, y’all.

Also! For a magical realism book, there’s surprisingly little world-building happening, and this only adds to the eerie tone that surrounds the Office of Road Inquiry and the town of West, which may or may not exist. One of my favorite scenes is when Bea and Lou stop at a visitor center looking for information. The seemingly small building turns out to have high vaulted ceilings and a single desk at the end of a long hallway. When Lou asks the woman at the desk whether or not West is close by, she replies, “Depends.” Lou grows more frustrated and tells her that they’re trying to return a cat. The woman’s expression sours as she says, “My agency isn’t responsible for dealing with the cats.”

It’s a smart move to leave it up to the reader to fill in the blanks–this is the type of book that just wouldn’t work if it were bogged down by explanations and theorizing. The air of mystique also lends an added layer of beauty to Bea’s encounter with a mysterious woman who lives in West. “Everyone, everything has the potential for magic,” she tells Bea. “You just gotta be standing somewhere in the world and in the body that lets you see it.”

Every page of this book is imbued with magic, with meaning, and with heartbreak and healing. Every page of this book asks, Are you listening?

Final score: Five stars

Book Review: Sadie by Courtney Summers

Happy Monday, readers. I’ve been in a reading funk for awhile–I got to the middle of a couple books (Good Omens and Code Name Verity) before losing interest and putting them back on my shelf. Then, two days ago, I got Sadie, stayed up until 1:00 AM getting as far as I could, and polished it off yesterday morning.

Y’all. I am about to scream about this book. Get ready.

What’s the plot?: Girls go missing all the time. 

That’s what West McCray, a New York City radio host, tells his boss when he starts investigating ninteen-year-old Sadie Hunter’s disappearance for a true crime podcast. He knows there won’t be a story there–he wants something new, exciting, fresh. But when he arrives in the small town Cold Creek, Colorado, and starts following her trail, he begins to realize that there’s something big here–something more sinister than he thought.

Sadie Hunter is going to kill a man. Oblivious to the fact that her disappearance will soon become the center of a hit podcast, she leaves behind the Cold Creek trailer park she’s lived in all her life in search of the man who murdered her little sister, Mattie. A girl with revenge in her heart and a switchblade in her pocket–what could possibly go wrong?

Part podcast transcript, part road trip story, Sadie is a haunting, heart-pounding exploration of sisterhood, trauma, and the lengths we’ll go to for the ones we love.

My thoughts: My heart is racing as I type this because there’s so much I want to say about this book. It’s so good that there’s absolutely no way I’ll be able to capture its magnificence in this review, so please, please read it for yourself.

Where to start?

The format of Sadie is interesting–part of it is transcripts from the podcast that’s eventually made about Sadie’s disappearance, called The Girls, with West McCray interviewing the people that encountered her and following her trail. The other parts are first-person narration from Sadie’s perspective as she hunts for her sister’s murderer.

I’ll admit that I was skeptical of the format at first–I’m typically not a fan of mixed-media books, with newspaper clippings and interviews interspersed throughout. But it works. It really, really works.

Most of the reason it works is because you get a deep sense of the character of West, as well as his frequent interviewees, like May Beth Foster (the sisters’ surrogate grandmother) and Claire (their mother). Just like Sadie grows and changes, so do they, even without the reader getting a glimpse into what’s going on inside their heads. The dialogue is so masterful and painfully real–stumbling, halting, reluctant. People get choked up, cut themselves off in the middle of a sentence.

Courtney Summers has said in interviews that part of the reason she wrote about true crime podcasts was because she was “thinking about how true crime is a genre devoted to justice, to the search for truth, but at the same time, it’s hard not to wonder how well we’re serving the narratives of people who aren’t around to speak for themselves. On top of that, so many true crime stories feature violence against women and girls. That’s the heart of those stories…So, I wondered, what is the impact? What does it mean when these kinds of stories are so consumable? What are the potential consequences?”

This theme (the consequences of telling the stories of people who can’t explain their side) resonates throughout the book–we, as the reader of both sides, know what really happened; but when interviewed, many people cast Sadie in an unfavorable light, turning her into a madwoman in the eyes of the people who only listen to the podcast. It’s frustrating and even scary when you realize the real danger that Sadie is in if this is the narrative that’s put out about her. Eventually, West discovers a more accurate version of her story, but even that doesn’t quite capture her full character and motivations. While no questions about the ethics of true crime are ever really completely answered, it compels the reader to wonder about the impact of consuming these stories, especially when it comes at the expense of a full, accurate narrative for the sake of drama.

Moving on to Sadie’s side of the story. Her narration is something else. Just…something else. It’s really something special to find an author like Summers–though her teen characters may not be philosophical like John Green’s or quite as achingly relatable as Adam Silvera’s, they’re completely and utterly believable. Even Sadie’s improbable circumstances (I mean, she’s on a road trip to kill her sister’s murderer, for heaven’s sake) makes sense to the reader when Sadie tells it–of course she would do this, of course she would say that. And that is incredibly hard to do, to make a character seem alive and real in every single moment. (I’m explaining this terribly. My apologies. READ THE BOOK.)

There’s another really interesting facet to our main character–Sadie has a stutter that she’s never outgrown. Every line of her dialogue, unless she’s by herself, is written with a lot of dashes and repeated letters. Now, y’all know disabled rep is right up my alley, so rejoice when I say that Courtney Summers pulled it off. I repeat: she pulled! it! off! (With the usual disclaimer that I do not, and never will, speak for all disabled people, and if y’all have a different view on this, lmk in the comments and I’ll update the post.)

How people should be celebrating this incredible feat of a respectful portrayal of disability in YA.

For one thing, it’s not something that’s part of Sadie’s character arc–she doesn’t “overcome” it in the end, and it’s not framed as something that’s ruining her life. I mean, it makes it difficult for her to communicate and forces her to come up with new ways to get her point across (+1 point for portraying a disabled character trying to accommodate themself in an able-bodied world), but mostly, it’s just there–you know, like a disability is.

Another thing that’s really accurate–she gets a lot of either intentionally rude or ignorant comments about her stutter. “So do you do it because you’re nervous? I don’t get it,” says one girl. (At this, Sadie “bite[s] back the urge to tell her it doesn’t matter if she f*cking gets it” and bravo Courtney Summers for understanding, hallelujah.) “Should you–I mean, can you drive?” asks a woman who’s about to sell Sadie her car. “If you’ve been drinking, you know I can’t just let you drive outta here,” says someone else, mistaking her stutter for slurring.

She’s also subject to the non-verbal reactions of other people–grimaces, widened eyes, not knowing what to say. They’re reactions that are relatable to any disabled person, that moment where people aren’t quite sure what to do with you. Though they’re not intentional, it makes for an awkward start to a conversation, something Summers captures really well.

But I was most surprised by the descriptions of Sadie’s intense anger about these comments. Though she only voices her irritation some of the time, that frustration is always there, simmering. Rarely do we get to see disabled characters’ emotional reactions to this kind of everyday ableism that pervades our lives. (I mean, rarely do we get disabled characters at all, but still.) I’ve been praised for my graciousness in answering invasive and personal questions about my disability when all I really want to do is pull out a passive-aggressive PowerPoint about why what’s coming out of their mouths is offensive. I don’t think able-bodied people often consider the emotional toll their questions take, or interrogate exactly why they feel entitled to our life stories for their edification. Sadie, much like it prompts questions about the ethics of true crime, also inspires self-reflection on how we treat disabled people not institutionally, but in our day-to-day lives.

This is actually kind of a funny time to be writing about this because yesterday, I was told (very sweetly) by a (very well-meaning) woman that my deaf accent was better than most deaf people she knew, and that I talked “very normally, which is good.” Obviously, I don’t have a speech impediment as severe as Sadie’s, but I do lisp and slur my words together quite a bit. A lot of the comments Sadie is subject to are familiar to me, and I was relieved that rather than letting them go unaddressed, Summers uses them to do basically a crash course on what questions not to ask disabled people.

I know that was a lot of paragraphs about a stutter, but this is my book blog and I make the rules. (I tried to insert a “deal with it” GIF here, but all of them were so painfully mid-2000s that I decided to spare you.)

Story-wise, Sadie is a tightly-plotted, gut-wrenching, heart-pounding [insert pretty much any noun-gerund pair here] thriller. The pacing is perfect–it lingers in all the right places, but for the most part, it’s a fast-paced whirlwind. Sadie is also a mystery, but not in the way you might expect.

Let me explain. I initially thought the story was going to be about Sadie following a trail of clues to find out who killed her sister. It turns out that she knows who did it from the get-go–a man she knew as Keith, one of her mother’s boyfriends. Sadie’s side of things is relatively mystery-free–it’s about her finding him rather than trying to figure out whodunit, a smart choice that leaves more room for a character-centric story. West’s perspective is where the real mystery is as he tries to answer one question: Sadie disappeared five months ago and counting–so where is she now?

Another thing I wasn’t expecting, though I probably should’ve, considering it’s about a girl trying to kill the man who killed her sister: Sadie is deeply, intensely upsetting. I had to put the book down a few times because I couldn’t see through my tears. Her road trip, while she’s oriented on her goal, also serves as a time for her to finally come to terms with–or at least feel–the weight of the trauma she’s experienced. Her mother was an addict before she abandoned her and Mattie; she had to raise Mattie even as their relationship became more and more fractured; and finally, her sister was murdered by the boyfriend that lived with them for a year when she was younger.

But the real beating heart of Sadie, and a threat that’s omnipresent and alive on each page, is sexual abuse. Sadie may use Keith murdering Mattie as her motive for trying to kill him, but she has her own history with him, one that doesn’t have the police coming to her doorstep but is no less violent. Her descriptions of his abuse, and the moments leading up to it, for the most part non-graphic, are quietly haunting–here she describes Keith putting his hand on her shoulder when he first came into her life at eleven years old:

The girl’s shoulders tense, every one of her muscles tightening at the feel of those calloused fingers against the barest parts of her body. She doesn’t say anything and she won’t say anything and I know why she won’t, why her tongue keeps itself quiet…She knows about the calm before the storm, a quiet building toward a greater chaos. Everything about this okay guy doesn’t fit quite so well into the landscape of their lives. He’s too sober, too concerned, too everywhere she thinks she’s alone. He’s too many other things she can’t put the words to, like the way he’s touching her right now, which is far more familiar than it has any right to be and more intimate than should be allowed.

Much like The Nowhere Girls, Sadie excels at describing these non-violent but all the same violating moments. The fear and hyperawareness she experiences are familiar to all too many girls who know the feeling of someone standing too close, breathing their air; the humiliation of looking away as someone’s eyes linger on them for longer than they should; the jarring realization that someone’s suddenly “everywhere she thinks she’s alone.”

Sexual violence touches every woman and girl in this book–whether through an actual experience with it, the threat of it, or their proximity to it. Remarkably, though, Summers manages to avoid sensationalizing it or using it simply as a plot device to move the story along. While sexual abuse does drive a good chunk of the plot, its aftereffects are never ignored and it is never treated flippantly or lazily.

It also raises questions (so many questions are raised over the course of this book and that’s good!) about where the all the “nice guys” fit into this. West, motel owner Joe, boyfriend Paul, and many others never abuse or assault anyone, but Summers forces us to ask: are they complicit anyway? How is West profiting from telling this story, and is he treating it with the depth and nuance it needs? Did Joe, though he never suspected something like sexual abuse, turn a blind eye to Keith’s suspicious activities? What about the well-meaning men, Summers asks, the ones who don’t laugh at gross jokes but don’t speak up either, who brush off the warning signs?

When Claire asks West why exactly he’s looking for her daughter rather than caring for his own, he replies, “Well…having a daughter of my own has made me–”

“Don’t even finish that sentence,” Claire interjects, taking on the question of what West is gaining, personally and financially, from this project. “You’re doing this because your daughter opened your eyes, is that it? Having a little girl makes you realize, what, there’s a whole big, bad dirty world out there? So now you’re going to try to save mine from it and pat yourself on the back for leaving it a little cleaner than it was?…You think you can take our pain, turn it into something for yourself. A show…I’ve been used by men my whole life, and if you want the truth, I don’t think you’re going to be any different.”

Is there anything less than exceptional about this book? Initially, I thought about the relationship between the two sisters, Sadie and Mattie. Sadie reminded me a lot of another book about an older sister looking after a younger sister in less-than-ideal circumstances: Gem and Dixie by Sara Zarr, a quiet, understated story that addresses the various ways the adults around us can fail us and the bonds that bring us together anyway. The relationship between the titular sisters is so movingly drawn out, in all its complexity and fierce love, that I was somewhat underwhelmed by the description of the relationship between Sadie and Mattie, only talked about in-depth by May Beth or in passing by Sadie. But Gem and Dixie is a lot more slow-moving, and the stakes are much lower. I think Sadie would’ve been almost too overstuffed if it had anything more than what it does now, so I’m more than willing to let that nitpick go.

All through this book, my heart was in my throat and my breath was stoppered up (and also my back really hurt because I was reading in a weird position so I could maximize the light I got from my lamp). If Sadie isn’t a YA masterpiece, I’m not sure what is.

Girls go missing all the time. That much is true, Summers seems to say, but each one of them has a story to tell. It’s up to us to decide if we want to listen–and if the way we consume their stories might do more harm than good.

Final score: Five stars

Book Review: The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed

The Nowhere Girls has been on my TBR list for…eight months, I think? For some reason, I just never picked it up until a couple days ago. Then I read all 404 pages in one sitting. So this review won’t exactly be current, per se, but I think there’s a lot of stuff in here that’s still topically relevant! Let’s dive right in.

Here’s a brief overview of the plot: Grace Salter has just moved to the small town of Prescott, Oregon, after her pastor mom had a political awakening that drove them out of their Southern Baptist community. Rosina Suarez would love nothing more than to start her own band rather than waitress at her uncle’s restaurant, but her conservative Mexican family has other ideas. Erin DeLillo, whose two passions are marine biology and  Star Trek: The Next Generation, can’t shake the feeling that her family is falling apart and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

When Grace learns that she moved into Lucy Moynihan’s house, who had to leave town after accusing several popular students at Prescott High of gang rape, she, Rosina, and Erin lead a movement to protest the culture at their school and in their town at large. As the group grows steadily larger, the Nowhere Girls may just end up changing the lives of their friends, family, and community.

My thoughts: Part of the reason I was reluctant to pick up The Nowhere Girls was because it sounded so similar to Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu (a bunch of girls form a secretive group to fight rape culture in their small-town high school). Moxie, while it leaves you with a bit of a buzz afterward, had a lot of problems. First, it’s wildly unrealistic and is total wish-fulfillment. It was so short that there just wasn’t enough time to let the events play out realistically. I definitely felt like TNG handled the whole “change doesn’t actually happen that quickly!” aspect of it better. Secondly, Moxie really fails with the whole intersectionality thing. There are characters of color, and some do point out to the main character that they’re facing different struggles than the white girls at their school, but the book’s voice is ultimately a very white, very straight, very middle-class one.

Unfortunately, The Nowhere Girls falls prey to the same problem. While I commend Reed for the character of Rosina, a queer Mexican-American girl whose character arc is just as full as Grace and Erin’s, the voices of non-straight, non-white, and non-middle-class rape survivors are stifled. Researcher Nicole Froio makes the point that ever since Speak came out in 1999, the protagonists of books that deal with rape have almost all been white and straight even though Native American, African-American, and LGBTQ+ girls are statistically at a higher risk for sexual assault. “The YA genre needs books that highlight the impact of rape culture on queer girls, depict Black and Brown girls as victims, and explore how these different communities navigate and react to sexual assault,” Froio writes. “If we don’t talk about the different ways women and girls are targeted by rape culture, dismantling it will be impossible because we won’t be able to recognize how race, size, sexuality, disability and other facets of oppression factor into their assault, trauma, and healing.”

We’re…getting there, I guess?

Moving on to the character of Erin–whew, there’s a lot to say here. Erin has Asperger’s, and so far I haven’t managed to find a review of TNG by anyone with the same condition, but I hope you’ll allow me a few thoughts on her portrayal anyway.

First, I think it’s really important that there’s a female character with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Characters with autism have been disproportionately male in the mainstream media (see: Shaun Murphy from the TV show The Good Doctor, or Christopher in the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time). ASD is diagnosed about 4.5 times more frequently in men than in women, but it’s often posited that this is because autism doesn’t present itself in girls the same way it does in boys. I think it’s a step forward that we get a female autistic character who has real agency. Erin, like many of the characters in this book, also struggles with the aftermath of rape; and how often do we get an autistic female character who grapples with trauma, has complex feelings on her family situation and friendships, and initiates a healthy relationship with a boy in her class she has a crush on? Never, that’s how often!

I was really excited about Erin’s character, because (at least from the point of view of a neurotypical gal who just does a lot of research on disability representation), she was blasting stereotypes left and right. But the ending to her character arc made me feel a little…icky, I guess? Erin has an aversion to touch as a result of her Asperger’s, and throughout the book this results in tense moments with her mom and friends. Her big climactic moment comes when she embraces a rape victim as she tells her story, and while it’s a poignant chapter, it rubbed me the wrong way.

A couple posts ago, I talked about some harmful tropes that authors use when writing disabled characters. While Erin’s situation isn’t strictly “inspiration porn” as I described it in that post, it does have that quality of, “Look at this character overcoming their disability!! Isn’t that so inspiring?” 

This idea that Erin has to “overcome” her Asperger’s in order to have a full character arc is an insulting one–but also surprisingly common in books and movies. Just look at the popular YA novel Colin Fischer, whose main defining moment (almost exactly like in TNG) comes as Colin holds the hand of another character. Corinne Duyvis, an autistic YA author, writes on the subject: “Make your character grow, yes. But consider whether they really need to ‘overcome their autism’ to do so. If authors do want to center their plot on their autism, let’s read about a character…learning to understand their own behavior. Teach them self-acceptance, self-advocacy…That would be nice to see for a change.” To sum it all up, she says, “Don’t ‘soften’ autistic traits as easy shorthand for meaningful growth.”

All that aside (phew!), let’s talk about some positives!

It’s difficult to juggle multiple POVs and still make each of the characters seem alive and realistic (I’m looking at you, The Case for Jamie). For the most part, Reed does a really fantastic job with this. Though Rosina and Erin seem a little more 3-D than Grace, they’re all undoubtedly individual, and their voices are distinctive and a pleasure to read.

The narrators’ relationships with their moms are another strong point of the book. Though they’re strained, they make points about the complicated nature of mother-daughter relationships and intergenerational trauma. Rosina’s especially tumultuous relationship with her mom makes for some of the most emotional, heart-breaking scenes of the book. Erin’s frustration with her parents’ difficulty to understand and respect her feelings on her disability rings true for any kid who has one. Grace’s struggle to re-connect with her mom after drifting apart is emotional and affecting.

Just the way Reed describes the sheer discomfort of being a girl–that hyper-awareness, that always-looking-over-your-shoulder, always second-guessing, always-preparing-for-something-bad-to-happen-to-you feeling–is enough to qualify this book for, like, a million awards. Reed makes so many important points about gender and power throughout the book, yet she introduces them in ways that feel entirely natural and approachable. One of the most humorous yet heart-wrenching scenes in the book (and there are a lot) happens during a Nowhere Girls meeting as they discuss how their experiences with sex compares to those of their male peers. It’s simultaneously extremely depressing and extremely revealing about how we socialize girls to think about sex and pleasure.

Back to the negatives for a sec, though. We get a lot of well-developed and complicated female characters, and that’s as it should be, because this is a book exploring rape culture and its effects on girls from many walks of life. But the antagonists in the book are so archetypal that it really detracts from all the wonderful things about the story. We’ve got the football coach/English teacher, whose first substantial block of dialogue consists of the phrase, “I’m not going to waste our time with work that is popular because of passing fads and political correctness,” which is just way too on-the-nose to feel like authentic dialogue (though teachers making you read exclusively dead white dudes is a pretty universal experience). There’s the corrupt principal, who’s in cahoots with the corrupt police department, who gang up to make threats against the Nowhere Girls in an effort to get them to shut down. (Not that a principal trying to shut down a social movement at their school is entirely unrealistic, per se, but she’s so Umbridge from Harry Potter that it’s not even funny.) Then we have the boys who gang-raped Lucy.

Now, this book isn’t one where we really need to–or even where the best course of action would be to–humanize the villains. The book centers around survivors, and rightfully so. Some could make the point that the rapists’ totally flat, static characters are a missed opportunity to explore the effects of toxic masculinity on boys, but I think a book that already explores so many ideas about rape culture’s effect on girls would be too overstuffed if Reed included an exploration of how boys respond to growing up in this culture as well. That being said, a bit of backstory, a bit of humanity being shown, would have elevated the book to a much higher degree. (I sound like Gordon Ramsay critiquing a beef pâté or something, sorry!) That’s not to say that they should be sympathetic characters, but it felt like something more was needed than what Reed gave us.

I’ve always loved the “stick-it-to-the-powerful-forces-in-the-school-system” genre of books. (Frindle? No Talking? About Average? Man, Andrew Clements really does not like the public school system.) I especially love it when the ending of these stories doesn’t feel idealistic and false. The Nowhere Girls excels at making the reader feel like the characters earned that ending. It’s not exactly a victory, but it leaves you hopeful that there’s justice on the horizon–both for Lucy Moynihan and for girls everywhere.

Final score: Four stars

Cat picture translation: Despite its shortcomings, The Nowhere Girls offers a nuanced story about trauma, gender, and power. Very highly recommended!

Book Review: The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg

I’ve been waiting since the school year started to say this, so drumroll please: HAPPY SUMMER, READERS!

My freshman year of high school is over, and may I just say: good riddance. I’m looking forward to a couple of months of reading, watching Netflix, and sleeping late. (Today I slept until 12:00! This is unheard of!)

Anywho, I came across this book sort of by accident. I’m writing a short story set in the summer of 1984, and I wanted to read a book also set around this time to see how it was done. I skimmed the book jacket of The Music of What Happens and saw a reference to the 1980s and I was like, eh, good enough. It turns out it’s not about the 1980s at all, actually, but I’m really glad I ended up stumbling upon it, because I have some thoughts!

Here’s a brief overview of the plot: Max has waited all year for a summer of hanging out with his baseball team buddies, playing video games, and swimming in his pool. But when he comes back late from a night that’s left him confused and angry, his mom sentences him to doing data entry at State Farm with her unless he can find another job over the weekend.

Jordan is uncertain about taking over his late dad’s food truck with his mom. Without him there to help them run it, their first day is an absolute disaster. At the same time, he’s burdened with the knowledge that he may be the only thing keeping their family from losing their home.

When the two boys meet and end up running the food truck by themselves, shenanigans ensue, but sooner or later they’ll both have to face the undercurrent of trauma in their lives.

My thoughts: My first thought after I finished reading this book was, holy heck, this is the guy who wrote Openly Straight? If you haven’t read Openly Straight, it investigates a lot of interesting ideas about coming out, identity, and being queer. I definitely didn’t feel like it was executed very well, however–it felt juvenile and all-around not well written, though the themes he explored were compelling. The Music of What Happens was an astonishing departure from his previous books, at least in my view. It was like a glo up from his previous writing style, almost? It felt a lot more mature, both in content matter but also in how he developed his characters and unspooled the plot.

In regards to the characters, it felt like they could both pop off the page and come to life at any moment. The dialogue between Max and his friends as they’re hanging out was delightfully real, and I was glad to find a YA author who didn’t write his teenage characters like they were tiny philosophers (*cough* John Green *cough*).

And Jordan. Ugh. Jordan. The amount of secondhand embarrassment I felt for this character was unreal, folks. I think just about any teenager can see themselves in all the times he doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing and has to ask Max for help, even when they’ve just met and Jordan is supposed to be the one with all the knowledge on how to work the food truck. For all the kids who’ve ever felt intimidated by that one classmate in the group project who has enough confidence to fuel the ego of five Elon Musks, this book is for you.

My bar for relationships coming together in short periods of time rather than Jane Austen slow-burn style is raised pretty high, mostly because Adam Silvera, another acclaimed YA author, does it so well. But Konigsberg went above and beyond my expectations. The chemistry between Max and Jordan doesn’t feel forced at all, and their relationship is sweet, healthy, and mutually supportive, something that’s always welcome in an industry filled with couples like Edward and Bella.

I was especially blown away by the author’s examination of sexual violence and its aftermath. It was surprising for me to see these themes examined in an experience between two boys, one of them a person of color, in which the survivor isn’t the “perfect victim” that so many books choose as their protagonist. It’s worth commenting on just how far ahead of the curve this is in terms of where our media is right now, even as we continue to explore narratives surrounding rape and assault. I’m glad Konigsberg is paving the way with a respectful, complicated story that will set the bar for other books looking to address this issue.

Consider me thoroughly impressed.

Another wonderful thing about this book is the depth and complexity of the parental relationships. Max’s bond with his mom feels believable and real, and it’s refreshing to see a mother whose entire character isn’t pattering around in the background offering to make snacks for the protagonist and his friends. Max’s relationship with his divorced comedian dad is another one of the book’s strong suits. It could easily fall into a mess of deadbeat dad tropes, but it goes the extra mile of portraying Max’s dad as someone who genuinely cares for his son, but just doesn’t know how to go about it. Jordan’s relationship with his mom is one that’s a little difficult to read at times, but that inspires empathy for the both of them. There’s a sense of both relief and sadness when his mother’s gambling addiction comes to a head and Jordan chooses to call the police.

Another wonderful thing (there’s just so many!) is that Konigsberg explores how we teach masculinity to boys and its effects on reckoning with trauma and guilt. The opening scene of the book is Max reflecting on an incident when he was little where he hit his head but his dad refuses to help him under the guise of teaching him to “warrior up.” This philosophy of processing and suppressing pain internally resonates throughout the book as Max struggles with the aftermath of rape, but feels as though he can’t tell anyone because it’s a weakness to be fixated on it. One of the most emotional scenes of the book is Max and his two best friends (very traditionally masculine, sports fans, video-game-playing characters) opening up to each other about their insecurities and letting go of pain they’ve been holding onto.

The Music of What Happens combines two achingly relatable characters with a sweet, understated love story that at the same time addresses heavy issues in a way that’s approachable and sensitive. What a gem of a book.

Final score: Five stars

Cat picture translation: This wonderful book showcases all of Bill Konigsberg’s strong suits while simultaneously addressing important topics like race, sexual violence, and being gay in a heteronormative world!