The Reapers are the Angels

Temple is alone in a new world.  It used to be the United States, but that doesn’t matter now.  People used to live in houses, ride bicycles, and go to school.  No one does anymore.  Not really.  Not the way it used to be.  Temple’s world is full of zombies, or meatskins, and survivors like her.  

Alden Bell creates both a riveting character in Temple and remarkable world from the first sentence.  “God is a slick God. Temple knows.  She knows because of all the crackerjack miracles still to be seen on this ruined globe”.  Temple’s world is a place where zombies invaded and civilization came to a grinding halt twenty-five years prior, but it’s the only world 15 year-old Temple has ever known.  Although she doesn’t know how to read, she knows how to hot-wire cars, find supplies in abandoned houses and businesses, and, most importantly, she knows how to kill.  Killing meatskins takes no thought and brings no remorse, but when Temple is forced to kill a man who tries to rape her, she must grapple with guilt, remorse, and a muddled sense of spirituality as she runs from his vengeful brother.  Temple’s travels take her places that are bizarre and almost impossible to imagine, an unrecognizable, macabre southern United States.

The Reapers are the Angels is an epic book packed into a small package.  Temple is a study in contradictions, both fearless and vulnerable.  She is brave and principled in the same vein as Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games.  Like Katniss, Temple represents a kind of hope to the people she encounters in her bleak world.  Temple continually grapples with her place in a very violent, chaotic world and wonders what if she will be a tool for good or evil.  Despite having no training in anything other than survival, Temple seeks meaning in a world of zombies, soullessness, and constant death.  Like other teens, she also seeks small pleasures, occasional oblivion, adventures, and someone to occasionally lift the awesome weight of her responsibilities from her shoulders.  

Readers will be enthralled with the zombie-infested world Bell has created.  Temple’s world is one in which she has complete autonomy to take a car and head in any direction, as long as she can stay ahead of her enemies and a zombie bite.  They will understand Temple’s struggle with spirituality and a feeling that there is something greater than herself at work and will admire her sense of immortality in a world where others are cowering in fear.  Temple doesn’t need adults to protect or advise her because she has her survival skills honed as sharply as her trusty khukuri knife.  She is an amazing heroine that will appeal to fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Hunger Games.

Citrus County

Citrus County is a brilliantly conceived and executed novel about the smart, strange, and disaffected in rural America.

In less skilled hands, Toby would be just another teenage bad boy – distant, destructive, irresistible, a real-life Edward Cullen.  Yet this teen bad boy is both perpetrator and victim.  Abusive Uncle Neal, who balances on a razor thin edge of sanity, is raising Toby.  How could he end up any other way?  There’s no explanation available to Toby as to what happened to his parents, why he ended up with Uncle Neal.  But Toby doesn’t dwell on what could have been in his life; instead he accepts what is.  For Toby, that means understanding and embracing his basest impulses, his “badness”.  “He was as weak as ever.  Anything could make him weak – the wrong smell, the wrong tint in the sky, thinking about the dragging afternoons he’d endured in his lifetime and all the afternoons to come.  He was addicted to petty hoodlumism.” 

Orbiting around Toby is Shelby, the gifted, funny, pretty, new girl.  She’s too smart to tolerate the vapid popular girls and too good at being a daughter to her widowed father and motherless sister to risk shaking the family foundation with petty rebellions. When Shelby rebels, it’s going to be with Toby. When she rebels, it’s with forethought and deliberation.  Shelby will save Toby in a completely unexpected way and Toby will be unable to help himself from destroying her and her family in return. 

While Toby and Shelby torture themselves and others with anger, lust, and uncertainty, their geography teacher, Mr. Hibma, plots the murder of a fellow teacher and creates plays for the girls’ basketball team that he’s been forced to coach.  “Teaching had been the only job available to him, and for awhile it was amusing, another lark, but now he’d been doing it a year and half.”  Mr. Hibma is, in many ways, more immature than the students he teaches, as he steals sodas from the teachers lounge and forces the girls basketball team to undergo makeovers.  “In middle school, he reminded them, ugly girls are intimidated by pretty girls.  Hell, it was this way with adult women.  A team could gain advantage by keeping tan and having their nails done.”  Like Toby, Mr. Hibma struggles with his “badness”, his most immature feelings butting up against the functioning adult he is becoming despite his best efforts.

There is a crime at the center of Citrus County.  It is perpetrated and the horror of it is felt in everything following – kisses exchanged, library visits, emails written, breakfasts prepared and eaten, and greeting cards purchased.  There is no black-and-white, Citrus County is hot, humid, and full of gray areas.

John Brandon has created genuinely complex teen characters, imbuing their contempt and recklessness with the seriousness that teens treat themselves and each other.  Their voices and actions, even at their most shocking, ring true.   Mr. Hibma is deliciously contemptible as the morally questionable and thoroughly pathetic boy-man in charge of teaching adolescents every day.  The events that unfold in Citrus County will stick with you.

More about the book at McSweeney's.

Dogfight, A Love Story

Can you steal your brother’s girlfriend and business while he’s in prison and make everything okay when he returns? Alfredo’s day of reckoning has finally arrived. His older brother Tariq, formally known as Jose, is coming home from prison, where he’s been incarcerated for armed robbery. Alfredo and his hapless best friend, Winston, come up with a scheme to steal some drugs to get Tariq back in business, to steal a pit bull so they can host a celebratory dogfight in honor of Tariq, and to make it to the doctor on time for Isabel’s prenatal visit.  Just another day in Queens in Dogfight, A Love Story.

Unfortunately for everyone, but most of all Alfredo, his ham-fisted attempts at robbery go haywire when he has a panic attack and has to call in vicious reinforcements. In addition, Alfredo and Winston cannot find a dog to steal for the dogfight. All of the things Alfredo plans as a way to make amends to Tariq are falling apart. The question quickly becomes how disastrous the results will be. 

Matt Burgess does a masterful job of building tension around Tariq’s return. Alfredo and Isabel are so young, confused, passionate, and stupid that it’s not difficult to understand why they both followed Tariq before he went to prison and what they found in each other once he left. Burgess also forgoes easy characterizations about drug dealers, high school drop-outs, and teen mothers and writes about young adults doing the best they can in chaotic, barely working-class poverty.

Isabel’s conversations with her son in utero are both heartbreaking and hopeful. Alfredo’s charm, eagerness, and almost paralyzing sensitivity make it impossible not to root for him to survive, if not succeed. Tariq’s thoughts and actions are positively chilling and Burgess describes a violent psychopath who is also a beloved brother and son - no small feat.

Readers will be thoroughly sucked into the drama of the love triangle, wondering how Tariq will react when he sees Alfredo and a pregnant Isabel together for the first time. The book is also infused with the aimless bullshitting and wandering that most teen nights are full of, whether it’s in person or on AIM.  Adult readers will remember the potential for fun or danger every night seemed to hold. This is a book full of drugs and violence, but it’s not about drugs and violence. Dogfight is Shakespearean urban grit.

Lean On Pete

15 year-old Charley Thompson is a heartbreaker of a protagonist.  He and his Dad move to Portland, Oregon, where he is left to fend for himself while his Dad works, parties, and sleeps around.  Shoplifting food and scrambling for money is second-nature to Charley at this point, although he is a fundamentally good, kindhearted teen who loves to run and longs to return to Spokane so he can play on the football team again.  Neglect and disregard turn to danger when his Dad sleeps with the wrong married woman.  Her husband decides to even the score with drastic consequences for his Dad and Charley. 

Charley is a survivor and manages to find work at the local racetrack, helping the casually cruel, repulsive alcoholic Del with his horses. Sometimes Del pays him, sometimes he pays him less than he promised, and sometimes he doesn’t pay him at all.  A desperate Charley rarely asks for what he earned, what he literally needs to survive.  He’s grateful to be remembered, to stay afloat and off the radar of Child and Family Services.  Charley is almost animal-like in his ability to survive being literally and figuratively kicked, coming back to give his Dad, Del, or others who mistreat him a second chance to be as good as he is.  But he doesn’t have to worry or flinch when he is with Del’s horses and he develops a special bond with Lean on Pete, an aging racehorse who is kicked and abused himself.  As Charley’s desperation grows, he ends up living in Lean on Pete’s stall at the horse track.  Throughout horror after horror, Charley remembers good times he had with his Dad and reflects continually on his beloved librarian Aunt Margy, who took loved him and took an interest in him before she had a falling out with his Dad and they lost contact a few years before.

Del’s plan to sell Lean on Pete is the impetus that induces Charley to steal his beloved horse and set out on an arduous journey to save the horse and find his aunt in Wyoming.  With nothing left to lose Charley and Lean on Pete drive, ride, and walk, all in hopes of finding the one person who was ever steady and good.  Charley experiences small acts of kindness along that way and his gratitude is heartbreaking.  He also continues to encounter those same type of people who have always preyed on his vulnerability and general kindness.  

Lean on Pete is such an unusual, melancholy story of a boy and a horse.  Charley’s unrelenting, gentle spirit, even in the face of chaos and violence is inspiring and a testament to nature versus nurture. He refuses to stop looking for love, even if it comes in the form of a broken down horse named Lean on Pete.  Readers will appreciate the devotion Charley feels for the increasingly lame Lean on Pete. They will also be moved by the people and situations Charley has to endure and admire his gentle, indomitable spirit.  Life is emphatically not fair for Charley and even the most jaded readers will be angry and outraged on his behalf and cheer him on as he and Lean on Pete try to make their way toward Aunt Margy and the possibility of a better life.

Be sure to take a look at author Willy Vlautin's music playlist via Largehearted Boy.

One Bloody Thing After Another

Three speeding trains are about to crash into each other.  Speeding train #1 is Jackie.  Jackie is a teen lesbian in love with her best friend, Ann.  She’s volatile, angry, and can disappear by invoking her dead mother.  Speeding train #2 is Ann.  She’s grown distant from Jackie lately not because, as Jackie fears, she’s sick of her or their relationship.  Rather, Ann’s Mom is turning into a monster of some sort and Ann is preoccupied with finding things to feed her - bloody steaks will no longer satisfy her cravings.  The third train may not be speeding as much as rolling along.  Elderly Charlie and his ancient dog, Mitchie, go for their daily walks and enjoy each other’s company.  What Charlie doesn’t enjoy is the headless ghost who exhorts him to knock on his neighbor, Mrs. Richard’s, door everyday.  Is Mrs. Richards hiding a secret or is Charlie losing his mind? Jackie, Ann, and Charlie pass through each other’s lives, wreaking havoc (knowingly and unknowingly) as they deal with both literal and figurative demons.

One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau is a strange and satisfying book. Comeau plays with dialogue, time, and place skillfully. Even when the story doesn’t progress in a linear fashion, the narrative trains speeding towards each other make sense and the reader finds themselves hoping the pedal will be put to the metal.

Both Jackie and Ann are well-conceived teen characters. Jackie alternates between mooning over Ann and dangerous willful destruction of property and self.  Only a teenager has that intensity of lust and rage.  Ann’s sense of being overwhelmed in caring for her Mom and keeping up the facade of normalcy eventually breaks down in a shocking, outrageous way.  In addition, the relationship between Charlie and dog Mitchie is twisted and hilarious.  Charlie spends their walks bemoaning Mitchie’s dawdling and desire to stop and be petted by random strangers. But it’s clear Mitchie just might be Charlie’s last tie to sanity.

One Bloody Thing After Another is a weird, gruesome, out-of-control book and I enjoyed it a lot.  I think readers who aren’t afraid to try something different will be delighted with the blood and lust and intrigued by the unusual narrative style. 

As a total aside, this book has one of my very favorite covers of all time.  It truly captures the creepy, discombobulated nature of the book itself.  

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead

Frank Meeink and Jody M. Roy tell of Meeink’s story childhood spent raised by alcoholics and drug addicts on the low-end of the working class spectrum in Philadelphia. Despite a loving extended family, no one protects Meeink from savage beatings from his stepfather, the emotional abuse and indifference from both his mother and father, and the constant fear he lives in as he bounces around low-performing, dangerous elementary and middle schools. An all too brief childhood filled with severe violence and neglect makes him an easy target for recruitment when he visits his cousin in rural Pennsylvania. Older neo-Nazi teens are interested in his development and protection, something he hasn’t regularly experienced in his life. They act as mentors, friends, and a de facto family as they indoctrinate him into the movement.

Upon his return to Philadelphia at 14, Frank becomes, for the first time in his life, a leader, a strategist, an entrepreneur, and an absolutely feared person as the head of the local neo-Nazi movement. Meeink takes the reader on a horrifying journey of rage and hate, allowing a look behind the curtain into how a virtually homeless teen boy finds a sense of family in a group created around a twisted ideology of white identify. The book provides fascinating details about The Movement – everything from fashion to regional differences in organizing. Meeink does not censor the rage and alcohol-fueled actions he committed for years as the leader of Strike Force, a gang of neo-Nazi teams he created and led. In fact, he recounts the pride he felt when a neo-Nazi leader, freshly released from prison, joins Meeink and his friends in savagely beating homosexuals outside of a bar. “Shoulder to should with my comrades, back up against the wall, awaiting my first trip to juvie in the glow of Scott Windham’s approving smile, I felt proud, truly proud, for the first time.”

Eventually, Meeink’s actions in Philadelphia finally force him to flee (with the help of a neo-Nazi mentor) to the Midwest, where he descends further into violence and madness. After brutally kidnapping and torturing a member of his new group of recruits, or freshcuts, Meeink lands in prison. As he headed to prison, Meeink was a leader in the young neo-Nazi movement, an alcoholic, and soon-to-be father. He was 17.

His innate street smarts and his role as a neo-Nazi leader outside prison walls ensured he survived and, in many ways, flourished during his time in prison. But the neo-Nazis who protected him inside and revered him outside couldn’t foresee the epiphany he would have behind bars that would ultimately lead to his redemption. During his time in prison Meeink ends up playing football with Vice Lords and becoming close friends with two African American teen prisoners. They commiserate, like teens everywhere, about what their girlfriends are doing when they aren’t around, and helping each other decode secret messages of infidelity in letters and phone calls home. For the first time ever, Meeink lives with the “mud” he had been indoctrinated to hate and the holes in the neo-Nazi ideology he had held so dear become quickly apparent to the middle school dropout.

Of course, it’s not that easy to walk away from the only life Meeink has known. Upon his return to Philly, Meeink reunites with the Strike Force, but he’s not the only one who has changed. Friends and family have died, become strung out on drugs, or left the Movement. Meeink quickly turns to drugs and returns to drinking to numb his confusion and rage. He can’t live as a leader in a movement he doesn’t believe in anymore and his day of reckoning is violent and appalling, giving him another excuse to lose himself in drugs and alcohol.

Meeink’s ideological redemption ran parallel to his descent into drug addiction and alcoholism. As he found meaning in his work with the Anti-Defamation League, telling the truth about his actions as a neo-Nazi, he becomes an even bigger liar as he spends days shooting up and stealing Oxycontin from his mother. Just as it did with the neo-Nazis, Meeink faces a day of reckoning with his drug and alcohol use that is violent and heartbreaking.

Fans of Edward Norton's American History X will find this book even more compelling than that movie. 

Listen to Frank Meeink on NPR and read an excerpt.

The Left Hand of God

Thomas Cale is being raised in the Hogwarts from Hell, the Sanctuary.  The Sanctuary is an orphanage/training camp for the young acolytes of the Redeemers, warrior monks tasked by God to wipe out non-believers and infidels.  Cale is the star pupil of The Lord Militant Reedemer Bosco, which means he is drilled on military strategies and other points of Redeemer doctrine mercilessly and savagely punished for infractions, real or imagined.  Cale is hardened after 14 (or 15, no one has been counting) years of living in the Sanctuary, survival instincts honed to perfection.  He is clever, fearless, and ruthless.

While Cale is a warrior-in-training with the mindset of the toughest prisoner, he is still a brave teenage boy.  Although he tries to rebuff any friendly overtures in the name of survival, he reluctantly becomes friends with Kleist and Vague Henri, both warriors-in-training themselves.  A series of events allow Cale to use his survival skills for good and rescue an innocent teen girl, Riba, and escape The Sanctuary with Kleist and Vague Henri.

And so the odd foursome begins truly begins their adventure.  It is a strange and gripping journey to survive the Redeemers who seek them and also survive the politics and intrigue of the city that takes them in, Memphis.  Four teenagers, three trained killers, are put to use by the politicians and ruling class of Memphis, the Materazzi, and have to put the survival skills they learned under the watchful eyes of the Redeemers to good use against the schemers of Memphis high society.

But this is truly the story of Cale, a survivor. He shakes up the Materazzi by challenging their pecking order, wooing the most beautiful girl in the city, and brashly showing the revered military leaders how they must fight The Redeemers if they want to win.  But his sheer ability to survive foreshadows something special about Cale, something the Redeemers want back.

Hoffman writes amazing scenes of battle and intrigue, full of violence and gore.  He creates layers upon layers of Redeemer history and lore and builds an entire Memphis society.  Cale is a multi-dimensional teen killer – raging hormones and ice-cold blood running through his veins.

The Left Hand of God is a fantasy adventure with loads of appeal for a reluctant fantasy fan like me. Cale is the ultimate bad boy. He takes a lot of pride in being smart, as well as completely ruthless and fans of badass but sexy vampires and werewolves might find his character intriguing.

The Patterns of Paper Monsters

The Patterns of Paper Monsters kept me up all night, my heart pounding towards the end to see if the nightmare scenario proposed by one of the characters comes to fruition.

It is the story of 16 year-old Jacob, a rebel with cause. He is locked up in a juvenile detention facility for, what the reader comes to find out during flashbacks, is the drug-fueled armed robbery of a convenience store and assault of its lone employee. Jacob’s peers, counselor, teachers, and guards find him reticent and moody. But while his exterior is flinty, Jacob’s reflections on those around him at the detention center, as well as his mother and stepfather, The Refrigerator Man, are incredibly insightful. Like so many teens, Jacob feels like no one could possibly understand or appreciate what he’s already been through and how hopeless he feels.

Little-by-little Jacob lets his guard down as Andrea, a new girl at the detention center, catches his eye and becomes both his friend and the closest thing to a girlfriend he can have while incarcerated. Jacob even begins to open up to his adult mentor, acknowledging sincere efforts to befriend him. In a strange way, the detention facility is safer and saner than home itself. His vulnerability and growing contentment are threatened when David, an extremely disturbing and violent teen, is sent to the detention center and becomes determined to enlist Jacob in his twisted plans. Because of David’s diabolical actions, Jacob literally must choose between good and evil. The reader, knowing all that Jacob has learned about hate and violence his entire life, but hopeful that his intelligence and core goodness will win the day, will be shocked to find which path he chooses. There are no happy endings in The Patterns of Paper Monsters.

Emma Rathbone has created a truly fascinating teen character in Jacob. He is the son of a sad, neglectful, alcoholic mother who allows both herself and Jacob to be terrorized by Refrigerator Man. Jacob’s anger and sadness boil just below the surface, fueled by his extreme intelligence. Once his anger and neglect lead him to drugs, violence, and eventually the detention facility, it’s not hard to see why teachers and counselors take time to help him – there’s something special about the way Jacob sees the world.

Rathbone also does an excellent job creating a sense of place – the sterility of both the detention facility and the sprawling, generic suburbs that surround it. The scene reflects the characters so well, demonstrating that there is more going on behind the bland facades seen in so much of chain store America.

I'm surprised this wasn't published as YA, as I think teens will identify with Jacob’s sullen, sharp intelligence, as well as his exasperation with what he sees as the hypocrisy and stupidity that surrounds him. Adults failed him for much of his life, but the ones who took the time and made the effort end up creating the biggest impact - a sentiment I personally loved.

A Hachette representative at the 2010 Annual American Library Association Conference was nice enough to give me an Advanced Readers Copy. The book will be available on August 9, 2010

Shit My Dad Says

Shit My Dad Says is, hopefully, a hint of things to come – an excellently conceived, written, and edited memoir based on a Twitter feed. All that being said, it is one of the most soul stirring, balls-out funny books I’ve ever read. I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried. I cried on the subway from laughing. I laughed and cried during rush hour in New York City and I wanted very badly to read the book aloud to my neighbors on the crowded train. Luckily, everyone was giving me a very wide berth.

Justin Halpern skillfully takes the hilarious, often lewd sentiments that come out of his Dad’s mouth and uses them as a funny foundation on which he recalls pivotal moments in his childhood, teen years, and young adulthood. It’s clear that Halpern himself finds his Dad hilarious, but he takes his amusement and crafts a truly poignant read. He manages to relate a fully fleshed out Sam Halpern – a kid who grew up poor, a Vietnam veteran, a scientist and doctor, and a passionately loving husband and father. In addition, Halpern is fully willing to relate stories of his own follies and stupidity, showing over and over how his Dad set him straight or saved him in his own, unique fashion.

Shit My Dad Says is Halpern’s story of growing up, but it’s also the story of his growing love and appreciation for his father. He manages to make his profanity-laced twitter feed and the obvious admiration has for the father that originates those hilarious bon mots into a book full of love, laughs, and (dare I say it?) life lessons.

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is magically real, really magical, and magic realism. It is the story of Rose, who can taste the emotions and secrets of the person who prepares the food she eats. She becomes so attuned to food that she is eventually able to taste the actual origin of each individual ingredient. This ability is rarely a blessing and usually feels like a curse, as she learns more about the inner secrets of her family, as well as complete strangers. As Rose moves from childhood and into young adulthood, she develops coping mechanisms around food and eating, in order to protect her own heart and mind.

But Rose is not the only gifted member of her family. Her brother is brilliant and aloof, hiding his own haunting gift from those who love him. Both her mother and father struggle with their own preoccupations and desire and Rose is all too aware of their emotions as they share meal after meal. I loved Rose’s voice – it changes and matures as she goes from a happy 9 year-old to a teenager dealing with her anger and ultimate outsider status and into her young adulthood, where she begins to figure out the blessings involved with her gift and finally deal with the vulnerability and isolation it has brought.

Bender creates not only an authentic, beautifully crafted character in Rose, she also builds a truly nuanced, extraordinary family in the Edelsteins. Each member is struggling to find their own gift, protect their own happiness, and love each other in the best ways they know how and it is heartbreakingly real. Other family members are as gifted as Rose, in both magical and real ways, and their journeys are amazing to experience through Rose’s eyes. Bender paces the emergence of Rose’s ability and the inner upheaval in her family perfectly. She emerges a young adult for which the reader feels the pride, relief, and worry of a parent.