First Day on Earth

First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars."
- Oscar Wilde

Beautiful, short, but thoughtful, novel. First Day on Earth tackles the subject of alienation - both literal and metaphorical - as well as abandonment, belonging and... space travel. The protagonist, Mal, belongs to Alateen, as well as a support group for alien abductees. A complicated life. There's also enough teenage kick in this book to gain the interest of most YA readers.

I would have liked to have seen the resolution with Mal's father issue handled in a more complex way. Other than that, the novel makes the reader deeply empathize with Mal's heartbreak.

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Lost Cause

Lost Cause by John Wilson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Love the concept of this series. A grandfather leaves his seven grandsons specific tasks and adventures in his will.

LOST CAUSE concerns Steve discovering his grandfather's involvement in the Spanish Civil War. The book does a great job at weaving in historical facts and ambiguities. I would say that is a good choice for a reluctant readers, except that sometimes I found the writing a bit patronizing.

The series could be used for literature circles, as well as research on the contexts and locals of each novel.

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The Rehearsal

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women are merely players;”

So it seems in Eleanor Catton’s dazzling debut novel, The Rehearsal. “What am I?” one of the characters asks. The question of identity is explored in the intersecting plotlines involving a high school sex scandal, an acting institute, a burgeoning lesbian relationship, and lost love. It would be interesting to teach this book to girls in high school, especially since an all-girls’ academy is the primary setting. The desire to protect teens may not be the best thing for them. As the saxophone teachers says wearily to one of her student’s mothers:

[R]emember that these years of your daughter’s life are only the rehearsal for everything that comes after. Remember that it’s in her best interests for everything to go wrong. It’s in her best interests to slip up now, while she’s still safe in the Green Room...Don’t wait until she’s out in the savage white light of the floods, where everyone can see.

Catton’s novel is tightly written and keenly observant. She describes one student, a loner, as being “too bright for the slutty girls and two savage for the bright girls, haunting the edges and corners of the school like a sullen, disillusioned ghost and pursued by frightened vicious rumours that she is possibly probably gay.”

The structure is fantastic and experimental, just like a good teenage-hood should be.


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Death at La Fenice

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four and a half stars.

Death at La Fenice is the first book of the long-standing crime series by Donna Leon. We are introduced to Commissario Guido Brunetti in his native Venice. A famous conductor is found dead in his dressing room during intermission, apparently poisoned by a dose of cyanide in his coffee. In the early stage of the investigation, Brunetti notes “how strangely similar his work was that of a doctor. They met over the dead, both asking ‘Why?’ But after they found the answer to that questions, their paths parted, the doctor going backward in time to find the physical cause, and he going forward to find the person responsible.”

I loved the novel’s sense of moral ambiguity, which is especially ironic since the victim saw justice as black and white. There is also the backdrop of European history: fascists, communists, and nasty Nazi rumours. But the present truth is much darker.

Of course, one of the stars of the book is Venice. Brunetti often mulls her great past and current decline into a provincial town. He wonders “how long it would take before the entire city became a sort of living museum, a place fit only for visiting and not for inhabiting.” Tourists are also fair game as Brunetti wryly observes them as “people who [seem] to find the pigeons more interesting than the basilica.”

What will keep me reading the series is Leon’s attention to Brunetti’s family life and work politics, and her insights on Italian life. I loved Brunetti’s affection for two lazy colleagues, his interaction with an art gossip and a lunch hosted by the dominating matron of one of the area’s best restaurants.


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On the Road to Babadag

On the Road to Babadag: Travels in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasiuk
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Poetic, meditative, and at times piercingly insightful, On the Road to Babadag takes the reader on a trip to the other side of Europe. As one reviewer commented, "On the Road to Babadag...is valuable reading...If we can't read our way around Europe, how will we ever find our place, our identity, within it?" (For the entire review: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/...).

Stasiuk describes the hallucinatory aspects of his trips; his writing sometimes follows suit. After awhile, I found I had to take a break from the book because I needed to ground myself back in reality. However, he finely captures the surreal moments which happen in Eastern Europe, the magic, the lost quality of living outside of the mainstream. Stasiuk says that he seeks "disintegration" and loves the "periphery". If you loves these qualities, too, you should journey with Andrzej Stasiuk.

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