From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant by Alex Gilvarry

Agh, has it been a week since I finished this?  Am I already failing at my New Year's Resolution to not neglect my reviews for weeks or months?  I can't let it happen - not yet!

When Boyet "Boy" Hernandez moves to New York City from his native Phillippines, he's certain he's entered the land of opportunity. Boy, who has a passion and a talent for designing women's clothing, knows the only place to hit it big is in New York. His dreams are filled with Bryant Park's Fashion Week tents, and he's more than eager to get down to making a splash in the New York fashion scene. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as it looks. Finances exile Boy to Bushwick rather than the hipper Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, and Boy is left to labor on his line in obscurity until he makes the acquaintance of his sketchy downstairs neighbor. Ahmed Qureshi spends his time at home clad in a dishdasha and aqua shoes, but he's an important fabric importer who wants suits that will make a splash in society, and he thinks Boy is just the one to produce them. From then on, despite some reservations about Ahmed's character, the two are in business together. Little does Boy know that his naive willingness to adopt Ahmed as the chief investor for his women's fashion line will eventually land him in a world of trouble.

  

Gilvarry's novel takes place in the wildly paranoid post-9/11 world. With Guantanamo Bay slurping up would-be terrorists indiscriminately, and the Patriot Act making it easy and legal to monitor even the most innocent of conversation and correspondence, Gilvarry's entertaining satire featuring the hapless Boy is both ridiculous, yet not so far from the truth about the United States in the wake of the attacks. In Boy, Gilvarry has created a unique character that plays perfectly in his tale.  Boy, an adamantly straight women's fashion designer, is so single-minded in pursuit of his dreams that he's willing to believe with only fleeting doubts that the fast-talking Ahmed really just is a Canadian businessman with all the right connections.  

  

Boy, who thinks that a fertilizer bomb sounds like something made up, hardly blinks an eye at Ahmed's apartment filled to the brim with the stuff until he finds himself detained at Guantanamo Bay for his association with terroristic activities.  Ahmed is obviously trouble but then, he is also an enthusiastic, charismatic and most entertaining terrorist who drives around in a ZipCar (a Toyota Prius to be exact), makes paninis for lunch, and dishes about his home in Nova Scotia where the sun stays up for six months at a time and everyone comes out of their huts and igloos to watch it go down before their six months of night.  Ludicrous?  Maybe.  Hilariously incongruous?  Definitely.  Twisted though it may be, if I had to name my very favorite part of the book, it would most likely be Ahmed and his antics.

  

From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant (FtMoaNEC) is a smart, funny, and vaguely frightening picture of  the post-9/11 U.S. where an agent named Ben Laden, an apartment with a storage area turned bedroom called a "sleeper cell," and a liason with a guy who's making a deal with the ASPCA seem harmless enough but are enough to put an innocent away in Guantanamo Bay.  Admittedly, the book drags a little through the parts where Boy laments his unfortunate detention, and it seems as if Gilvarry is trying to add drama where no drama needs added, but the parts where Boy recounts what led him to this unfortunate turn of events really pop.  At the end of the day, though, FtMoaNEC evokes and harpoons the Big Brother-esque age of the Patriot Act so well that the very act of posting this review, chock full of buzz words like terrorist, Guantanamo Bay, and fertilizer; seems like an act of bravery.

  

(Thanks to the publisher for the review copy!) 

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Debuts

This week is freebie week for Top Ten Tuesday with The Broke and the Bookish.  Participants get to choose their own top ten topic or re-visit an old one we didn't get the chance to participate in.  Having not participated in all that many Top Ten Tuesdays and being lacking in a certain amount of creativity, I've elected to choose and oldie but a goody -  best debuts.  I love reading a new author's work first published work and discovering a potential favorite.  Actually, I think discovering authors' excellent first works before the rest of the world has a chance to tell you how great they are is one of blogging's greatest pleasures for me.  So, I give you some of my very favorite debuts!

1. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips  - I fell in love with the characters in this novel.  I'm so excited to read Phillips' new book, Come In and Cover Me. 

2. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell -  I have never cried harder at a book than I did the end of this one, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.  I was so surprised by how O'Farrell's style of writing had wrapped me up so tightly with her main character that I felt so strongly for her by the end.  It totally sneaks up on you, but it's incredible.

3. Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu - Actually, I read Ursu's other book The Disapparation of James first, but this one is better.  It's all about a pharmaceutical accident that causes all the people in a town to remember all of their memories, the ones they'd forgotten, the ones they've repressed, all of them.  I love how Ursu uses off the wall ideas like not being able to repress memories or the actual disappearance of a kid at a circus to explore serious themes. 

4. The Center of Everything by Laura Moriarty - I read Laura Moriarty's second novel, The Rest of Her Life, first, but this one appealed to me on a much more visceral level.  I saw parts of myself in the narrator that made this hit weirdly close to home even though the narrator's life bears little resemblance to my own.

5. Sweetsmoke by David Fuller - For some reason, I always forget Sweetsmoke when I'm making lists of great books.  This book makes the Civil War South and life on a slave-holding plantation leap off the page, plus it's got a great main character and an intriguing mystery angle, too. 

6. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue  -  I love books that can tell a compelling story and get you to really think about things, too.  I loved this story about a changeling and the boy he replaced that is so much more and makes you think about childhood, memory, music, art...  Great stuff!

7. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray - I loved this so much that I can't believe that I haven't gotten around to finishing the rest of the series.  The boarding school, the magic, the atmosphere plus page-turning suspense made this one a hit with me.  Too bad I suck at series, the rest of this one is lurking on my TBR shelf.

8. The Gendarme by Mark Mustian - This was a debut that I picked up at BEA a couple years ago.  It's great historical fiction told in flashbacks about a Turkish gendarme who falls in love with an Armenian deportee during the Armenian genocide.  I really liked how the story was told in retrospect, and I'd love to see more from this author.

9. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff - This book was full of stuff I don't normally like - no quotation marks, random capital letters, and a bit of incest.  And it was great, super great, too.  I'm looking forward to Rosoff's latest, There is No Dog.

10. The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister -  I loved how Bauermeister gave equal attention to all of her many characters, how she showed food's power to change their lives, and the descriptions are downright delicious.  Plus, I'm happy to report that her second book, Joy for Beginners, is very nearly as excellent as the first. 

What are some of the best debuts you've discovered?  

 

Loose Leafing: Where AM I?

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you were never home?  I mean, I know I've been home this week but sparingly, very sparingly, so sparingly it seems like since last Sunday morning I've been home for a grand total of four hours that wasn't spent sleeping, because sleeping time totally doesn't count, right?  I've been working, working late, working out, eating out, buying books at the winter library book sale (Bad Megan!), but I've hardly been home, and when I have been, I've been doing chores and paying bills and doing all sorts of things that leave me feeling like I've hardly had a few minutes in a row of downtime.  That said, it's nice to be enjoying a much more easy-going weekend.  We've just had our first real snow storm of the winter, and it's delightful to be inside catching up on the blogging I've been neglecting and getting into my latest read, The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin while the world outside is all pretty and white. 

Random.org, which is picking me books from my own shelves this year, apparently feels like I should be getting in touch with my YA collection. First it was Tiger, Tiger and now The Rules of Survival, which is, so far, an excellent novel about three kids who are looking for a way to escape or at least survive being abused by their mercurial mother.  I have a feeling I'm definitely going to like the book, but I'm kind of twisted because I sort of hoped Random.org would pick me a few that wouldn't pass the 50 page test so I could get down to this clearing my shelves thing.  Oh well.  I guess I'd win either way!
In between all the working and the other working and the more working, I managed to finally finish off Alex Gilvarry's From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant.  This was a review copy offered to me by the nice folks at Viking accompanied by this entertaining trailer (be warned, though, the language is not quite all PG) ...



The book is an entertaining mix of the funny and the sad as it follows the hapless Boy Hernandez while he tries to make it as a designer in the New York fashion industry, but has his rise to fame interrupted in a most unusual way. It definitely nails the post-9/11 terrorism hysteria satire, and Boy is unique character with a convincing voice, but I have to admit that the book dragged a little for me, so I'm looking forward to a quick YA read.  Watch out for the full review of FTMOANEC (the title is long!) later this week, in accordance with my blogging resolutions.  ;-)

Also be on the lookout for my Bad Megan acquisition post, since my trip to the library book sale was, as usual, quite fruitful indeed.  I came away with 22 new (used) books to add to my collection, most of which are trade paperbacks, my most beloved of all book formats.  I'm totally over hefty hardbacks, and while I love the size of mass markets, I hate how they don't hold up well to use.  Ah, but the trade paperback, is there anything better?

No, seriously, is there?  What's your favorite book format?

Open Wounds by Joseph Lunievicz

Cid Wymann has hardly been out of his apartment until the day he secretly follows his grandmother to her Saturday church services. Little does 7-year-old Cid know that this small feat of daring will open up a whole new world, because, you see, his grandmother isn't bound for church at all, but to the matinee of Captain Blood. On this day, Cid falls in love with the world of film not to mention that of swashbuckling sword fighters.

Life isn't easy for Cid, though. His father is a drunk, and his grandmother is so strict she hardly lets him out of the house. Just as Cid is making his first friends in Siggy Braun and Tomik Kopecky who band together to battle the bullies in their Queens neighborhood, Cid's father disappears and his grandmother dies leaving him orphaned. When Cid ends up an orphanage, he learns that he can't count on anyone and that the easiest way to solve problems is with his fists. Cid's on a long road to nowhere when his badly wounded World War I vet cousin, Winston "Lefty" Leftingsham shows up and makes of himself an unlikely hero. A former Shakespearean actor, Lefty takes Cid under his wing and introduces him to acting and soon enough has him practicing fencing with a down on his luck, drunken Russian fencing instructor, who once taught fencing to the Tsar's court but now finds himself in exile.

Open Wounds is one of my favorite YA reads of the year, nay one of my favorite reads of the year period. Lunievicz brings Depression/World War II Era New York City vividly to life. You can feel the cold wind buffeting Cid and his grandmother when they come up from the subway where a sign cautions to "hold your hat." Everything from Cid's hard-up Queens neighborhood where his neighbors on the verge of eviction mount a last stand against the police to the "Jewish Quarter" of the Lower East Side where Siggy ends up trying to make ends meet by selling pickles is perfectly detailed.

Lunievicz's characters leap off the page. They are perfectly unique, fierce on the outside but with hearts of gold that render them hugely sympathetic as their histories are revealed. Cid is lost and damaged after a childhood of being abused and abandoned. He's grown a tough outer shell, but his childhood love of movies and his dreams of fencing are still alive. Lefty is not the savior every kid dreams of, rather he is a badly disfigured eccentric veteran whose morphine habit and rough exterior make him hard to get close to, but he's much more than that as Cid (and readers!) get to know. Cid's fenching instructor, Nikolai Varvarinski, is a sloppy drunk, but a gifted teacher, and even he is more than what he seems. Each character has a carefully drawn backstory, which is slowly revealed, that informs their actions.

Readers will find themselves unable to resist rooting for this misfit crew as they prepare Cid for an ultimate fencing showdown that will resolve much unfinished business from his past. I was utterly captivated by this redemptive coming of age story. There's struggle and triumph, laughter and tears. Lunievicz has crafted a story that it's easy to get lost in, full of characters that should be unlovable or even downright repellant, but who feel like family when the last page is turned.

(Disclaimer: I met Joe Lunievicz at a BEA event, where we enjoyed a lovely evening at Serendipity 3 compliments of JKS Communications. He is super-nice, and I picked up a copy of the book from the Book Blogger Con swag pile with some trepidation because, for some reason, I worried I might not like it and would have to write a "meh" sort of book review, which I would have done, because that's what I do when the book calls for it. But I need not have worried, and really, *you* need not worry, because I am in no way compromising my reviewish integrity by saying I loved this book because I really did. Is this overkill on the disclaimer front?)

Waiting on Wednesday: The O'Briens

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.



The O'Briens by Peter Behrens

Pantheon, March 6, 2012

Synopsis:

An unforgettable saga of love, loss, and exhilarating change spanning half a century in the lives of a restless family.

The O’Briens is a family story unlike any you have read, a tale that pours straight from the heart of a splendid, tragic, ambitious clan. In Joe O’Brien—backwoods boy, railroad magnate, patriarch, brooding soul—Peter Behrens gives us a fiercely compelling character who exchanges isolation and poverty in the Canadian wilds for a share in the dazzling possibilities and consuming sorrows of the twentieth century. When Joe meets Iseult Wilkins in Venice-by-the-Sea, California, the story of their courtship—told in Behrens’s gorgeous, honed style—becomes the first movement in a symphony of the generations. The O’Briens is the story of a marriage and a family moving through history—from the first flying machines, through two world wars, to the election of JFK—told with epic precision and wondrous imagination.

What are you "waiting on" this Wednesday?