A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

Mattie Gokey has big dreams for her future in a difficult present. Around the turn of the century, she finds herself serving as a farm hand for her father whose oldest son has fled as well as mother to her three sisters after her own mother dies from cancer. As she deals with her day to day struggles Mattie takes refuge in words, looking up a new one every day in her mother's treasured dictionary and committing it to memory. Mattie aspires to get her high school diploma and go to school in New York City where she can develop her talent for writing stories and eventually write books of her own. However, much stands in her way. Even attending school past the age of fourteen is unusual and puts a strain on her relationship with her father who counts on her help with the farm in the absence of her mother and older brother. The family has little money, and Mattie knows she can't count on any financial help to make her dream come true. And there's the "problem" with the handsome Royal Loomis who, it seems, is sweet on her.

When her father allows her to spend the summer working at the Glenmore, a lake resort of tourists, Mattie's dream seems within reach, but her love for Royal and a promise made to her mother on her deathbed force Mattie to reconsider her formerly single-minded pursuit of a college education. In the meantime, a mysteriously drowned young woman is taken from the lake, and as Mattie reads the dead woman's letters to her beloved as her own life marches on, Mattie finds the answers she's been looking for.

Donnelly creates parallel storylines; one which begins with the discovery of the drowned Grace Brown at the Glenmore and the other which explores Mattie's life up until that point. Each "past" chapter is headed with Mattie's word of the day which not only helped to enrich my vocabulary but also helped to shed light on crucial plot points. The portion of the story involving Grace Brown and her letters, though weaker than the rest, still serves to illuminate Mattie's experience; and when the two stories meet with a brilliant "ah-ha" moment for Mattie, the use of this structure really pays off.

Donnelly spectacularly channels Mattie's first person narrative making it seem like we truly are in Mattie's head. Down to the finest detail she stays in character, describing feelings, events, and even other characters' facial expressions in ways that always relate to Mattie's experience. Take, for example, Mattie's reaction to Royal's appraising look at her:

He looked at me closely, his head on an angle, and for a second I had the funniest feeling that he was going to open my jaws and look at my teeth or pick up my foot and rap the bottom of it.

Using Mattie as a jumping off point, A Northern Light thoughtfully works through problems facing women at the turn of the century that continue to apply in some measure today. At the time, new doors were opening for women that didn't involve husbands or babies, but strong expectations that women would still follow that path were still predominant. Even today, I felt like I could see parts of myself in Mattie as she struggled with whether to follow her dream to attend college and write books of her own or to choose to value marriage and family more. Donnelley is successful in portraying the good and bad things about each scenario, which really impressed me. While I appreciate how far women have come, I feel that so many women have become overeager to deride "traditional" roles, and I really appreciated that Donnelly didn't seem to stoop to that level. The balanced view of things really helped me to care deeply about Mattie and what decision she would make in the end. All in all, A Northern Light is a spectacular read about a young woman learning who she is and what she wants out of life and then choosing to go after it. I look forward to reading more from this author in the future.

Read another review at Valentina's Room.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Books like Snow Falling on Cedars are so hard to review. For one, I loved it, and any book I absolutely loved is hard to review because I can't possibly hope to say, nor should I say, everything that made me love it. For another, there was so much going on in it that it's hard to bring it down to something nice, neat, and concise to stick on ye olde blog. That and I promised myself I would retire the phrase "brings to life" for a while, and it's going to be hard to avoid with this book. This all being said, my best advice to you would be to scrap this feeble attempt at a review and just go grab a copy of this book and read it. If I haven't deterred you, here's the review all sad and short and revealing very little of the awesomeness.

Snow Falling on Cedars, set on a scenic island off Washington state known for its fishing and its strawberries, begins and ends with the trial of Kabuo Miyamoto who is charged with the murder of fellow islander and fisherman Carl Heine. As the testimony in the trial proceeds, we meet and become intimately acquainted with many members of the community of islanders which is divided between its white citizens and its significant population of Japanese-Americans. Taking place just after World War II, the novel deals with lingering prejudices from wartime when the island's Japanese Americans were "resettled" in California for the duration of the fighting and when even those white islanders who might have once been favorably disposed to their Japanese counterparts struggle to reconcile their post-war relationships with their Japanese neighbors after fighting the Japanese during the war.

Guterson takes on so much with this novel and does it beautifully. Starting at the center with the trial, Guterson works out throught the entire community exploring a forbidden affair, intense prejudice, war wounds of both the physical and emotional sort, hopes, dreams, struggles, and finally healing for a community that is coming to terms with itself. Guterson's narrative flows seamlessly between past and present between trial testimony and deeply personal memories. His prose is vivid and makes it totally possible to see, smell, and even taste the unique surroundings of San Piedro Island. The greatness of this book lies in the community that Guterson creates and his immense talent for perfectly capturing moments we might have some sense of but could never describe so deliciously.

He captures the feel of a thunderstorm...

Late in the afternoon, at about four-thirty, heavy clouds shadowed the strawberry fields. The clean June light went softly gray and a breeze came up in the southwest. It was possible, then, to feel the cool pause before the first drops fell. The air turned thick; sudden gusts caught the cedars at the edge of the fields and flailed their tops and branches... The pickers craned their necks to watch the clouds and held their palms out to check for rain. At first just a few drops raised tiny wisps of dust around them and then, as if a hole had been punched in the sky, and island summer rain poured hard against their faces...

...Kabuo's memory of the sea from his prison cell...

From his bunk in the Island County Jail he felt the sea again and the swells under his boat as it rode over the foam; with his eyes shut he smelled cold salt and the odor of salmon in the hold, heard the net winch working and the deep note of the engine. Rafts of seabirds rose off the water, making way in the first misty light with the Islander bound for home on a cool morning, half a dozen kings in her hold, and the whine of the wind in her rigging.

and the essence of a snow day:

Yet on the other hand the snowstorm might mean a respite, a happy wintertime vacation. Schools would shut down, roads would close, no one would go off to their jobs. Families would eat large breakfasts late, then dress for snow and go out in the knowledge that they'd return to warm, snug houses. Smoke would curl from chimneys; at dusk lights would come on. Lopsided snowmen would stand sentinel in yards. There would be enough to eat, no reason for worry.

Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger

I have to admit, despite its being a Printz Honor book with a very interesting premise, I was afraid that this book was going to disappoint. For one, it starts out with a very similar set-up as another of Wittlinger's books that I had read recently, Razzle. Slightly boring "normal" guy falls in love with off-beat unusual girl, hurts her, and hates himself. I couldn't have been more wrong.

Wittlinger brings her two struggling zine-writing teens to life. John is a normal teenage guy. His emotions never come to the surface and when they seem to in his writing, he claims it wasn't his intention to seem emotional. Dealing with his parents' divorce and his father's desertion of him (on an emotional level) and his mother's desertion of him (on a physical level) have left him emotionally stunted and so indifferent about love that he can't rightly identify himself as straight or gay. The complete other side of the coin is Marisol, who identifies herself as a lesbian and seems completely comfortable in her own skin even before she graduates from high school. She's a straight shooter who abhors lying, even to one's own self. John, in an effort to escape his average every day reality, can't seem to stop lying.

When Wittlinger brings these two characters together, fireworks go off. Soon John is sure that he is capable of love but has found an unfortunate target for all of the love and emotion he has kept inside since his parents' divorce. On the other hand, Marisol, while never doubting her sexuality, allows her wall of somewhat phony self-confidence to be penetrated by the bumbling John. The two become each other's best friend and worst enemy capable of hurting each other in a way they never thought possible. Wittlinger's development of these two characters is flawless.

Readers get a believable view into the psyche of an "average" teenage boy and all the hurt that lies therein. A few of the final scenes of the book moved me nearly to tears. As a teen book, Hard Love accomplishes what few that I've read recently do. It captures real issues without condescension and without slamming readers over the head with so much shocking bad language and behavior that it seems totally unsuitable to younger readers. I'm not faint of heart, and I was always allowed to read whatever I wanted once I hit my teenage years, but even I have to admit that I have been a tad blown away by what passes for "young adult" fiction now. This book breaks the mold. Highly recommended!

No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod

All right, so here goes this reviewing books in my blog thing. I picked this up through a bookring (which I thought I had sworn off until the chance to read this book came up) through Bookcrossing (a great site to visit if you're interested in sharing your books and meeting a lot of other folks who love to read and share their books) and BookObsessed (another great site with a great community of book lovers, not to mention some great Yankee book swaps which I am heavily addicted to). But anyhow, on with the show.


MacLeod's novel chronicles the life of the MacDonald clan from the time they left Scotland to the present day on Cape Breton in Canada. His characters, though far removed from the Highlanders of old, feel a profound connection with all of their ancestors and with each other. A repeated theme is that of taking care of one's own blood which is demonstrated throughout the book, when Alexander, the narrator, and his sister are taken in and raised by his grandparents when his parents meet a tragic end. Again we see it when Alexander puts his education as an orthodontist on hold in order to join his older brothers and members of his clan sinking uranium mine shafts on the Canadian Shield. Again the theme appears when the same group of men offers refuge to a cousin from San Francisco who is seeking to dodge the Vietnam draft. Even though the brothers have never met him, they welcome him with open arms and no questions asked. This theme holds the book together and emphasizes the deep connection of the clann Chalum Ruadh from the distant past to the troubled present. One of the finest moments in the book occurs when Alexander's sister visits the Scottish Highlands and ends up meeting with a crowd of members of the clann whom she has never met, but all are moved to tears by the "reuniting" of this distant Canadian member with those who chose to remain in the Highlands.

Alice Munro praises No Great Mischief saying this, "You will find scenes from this majestic novel burned into your mind forever." A truer word was never spoken. While the novel as a whole is engaging, without MacLeod's talent for creating captivating scenes describing the past or the scenery or even events that would fail to capture our interest if it weren't for his descriptive flair, it would most likely fall flat. These are the moments that make this novel a very worthwile read.

It speaks for itself in descriptions of the scenery...

If we were there in the windy days of fall, and if the wind were off the sea, we would run down to the Calum Ruadh's Point and engage in contests to see who could remain standing in the wind's force the longest. If we faced the sea, the wind would blow our breath back within us as the spray from the water on the rocks rose and covered us and Calum Ruadh's gravestone with glistening drops, and we would have to avert our heads and gasp for air or throw ourselves on our stomachs and breathe with our mouths pressed against the flattened grass or the cranberry vines or the creeping tendrils of wet moss. If the wind were off the land, we would not be allowed to go, for fear that a sudden gust might lift and carry us over the point and dash us down to the shining boulders or out to fall into the wind-whipped sea, which was always brown and angry with agitation. pg. 73

And in imaginings of the Highlanders in their former glory...

"I see them sometimes coming home across the wildness of Rannoch Moor in the splendour of the autumn sun. I imagine them coming with their horses and their banners and their plaids tossed arrogantly over their shoulders. Coming with their broadswords, and their claymores and their bull-hide targes decorated with designs of brass. Singing the choruses of their rousing songs, while the sun gleams off the shining of their weapons and the black and the redness of their hair." pg. 89-90

The only complaint I have about this book is that only a few of the main characters have actual given names, the rest of them are referred to as "my second brother" or similar titles. It's a little bit confusing and occasionally discourages from the characterization. Other than that, this book is a can't miss. MacLeod brings these tightly-knit Scottish descendents and their environs to vivid life. Unforgettable!


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