historical fiction

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

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Okay, this wins apenelopiad_coverll the retellings (of which I am, admittedly, just starting to read)!  I LOVED reading Penelope’s side of the story, seeing Odysseus’s cleverness from her perspective, gently allowing her unreliable narration.  Was she faithful?  Was she not?  She sure wants us to think she was, just like Odysseus wants us to think he’s a tragic hero.  They’re a perfect match for each other….which is only half the story!

Undoubtedly, the highlight of this book is the way it dissects the story of the twelve maids who were hung at Odysseus’s return.  The historical, cultural, and sexual discussions surrounding their role in the story are both fascinating and horrifying. And so clever (which is fitting, in a book about Penelope and Odysseus).  Every few chapters, the maids speak for themselves, sometimes in poetry, sometimes in song, sometimes in lecture, sometimes in a mock trial.  Their righteous indignation is so simple and powerful, right from the beginning, with their “The Chorus Line: A Rope-Jumping Rhyme”:  Continue reading →

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

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100 year old manThis book is absolutely delightful.  Its protagonist, the titular 100-year-old man, is a sweet, mild-mannered guy who hates politics and loves drinking and making explosives.  An odd combination, but this book is a Forrest Gump-esque romp through history, and Allan Karlsson is distinctly created to affect history without ever being affected by the consequences.  He gives atomic bomb advice to Americans, Russians, and Iranians.  He spends years in jail, which is okay by him so long as he has a place to sleep and perhaps a bit of vodka.  He is utterly unflappable, even as chaos reigns around him.

But that’s just his past.  The book goes back and forth between his past unexpected adventures and fancy dinners with various famous politicians around the world and throughout history and his present circumstances:  bored with life in an nursing home, he climbs out the window, spontaneously steals a suitcase full of money, and manages to outwit and escape a gang while making friends during his escape.   Continue reading →

Ransom by David Malouf

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This short novel tells the story of Achilles and Priam, zooming in on their evening together with short descriptions of the events leading up to their truce (Hector’s death) and following (Achilles’s and Priam’s deaths).  It’s a beautiful story that captures the uniqueness of the moment:  a king walks into danger to beg from his son’s murderer.  A hero weeps and embraces the enemy king.  I loved these characters before, and I love them even more after reading Ransom.   Continue reading →

The Illyrian Adventure by Lloyd Alexander

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There has never been a better opening paragraph than this one:

Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master.  She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them.  She understands the use of a slide rule but prefers doing calculations in her head.  She does not hesitate to risk life and limb–mine as well as her own.  No doubt she has other qualities as yet undiscovered.  I hope not.

Now that is a heroine.  From the first page (and every page thereafter) I was completely enthralled by Vesper’s persuasive wit.  Added to the fantastic characters was a really fun plot–an Indiana Jones-type treasure-seeking adventure.  The book is short, and its brevity quickens the novel’s pace.  Where modern YA books might describe long treks through the jungle or every detail of a banquet, Alexander bypasses these scenes with clever paragraphs that add to the dry humor of the story.

I really enjoyed reading about Vesper and Brinnie’s adventures, and I will definitely be on the lookout for more in the series in future. Continue reading →

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

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OH NOOOO I’m losing it!  This book made me feel EVERYTHING, and there’s no way this review will be anything coherent.  I guess I know why The Iliad continues to be read millenia after it was created–no one can create a drama like the Greeks!  The tragedy here is SO STRONG, with characters acting so stupidly human that you want to shake them, but you totally see their point, and then everything falls apart because there are no real “good” guys and “bad” guys, but dumb humans seeking glory, and AHHHH!

Okay, I’ll try again.  Reading The Song of Achilles is like watching Titanic.  I knew what was going to happen, but I couldn’t help but desperately hope things would turn out differently.  Every bit of foreshadowing heightened the horrified anticipation so that when the climax came I was just helplessly awash in emotion.  I mean, I actually thought I was holding it together pretty well, until I read the very last paragraph and surprised myself by bursting into tears.   Continue reading →

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro

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Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant feels a little slow, but instead of being uninteresting, this deliberate pace feels more like a spell, drawing readers deeper into the plot with every new revelation.  Axl and Beatrice are an elderly couple on a journey, and I loved having protagonists at the end of their love instead of the beginning.  Theirs is a historical England, after King Arthur but before all his knights died, but the realistic setting is peppered with fantastical dragons, pixies, and a mist of forgetfulness.

This book is powerful, because I didn’t think I cared much about it until I finished the last page, at which point I hugged it to my chest and repeated a word over and over again.  I won’t say what word for fear that it will give something of the ending away.  Suffice it to say, at that point I realized the story had sunk into my body, and I am changed by it.

Themes of forgiveness and revenge, peace and memory, love and endurance weave throughout the story and our five main characters.  Different chapters have different perspectives, and most begin by jumping forward in time before slowly revealing what has happened in the interim.  Yet despite these choices, the plot slowly reveals itself, and by the time we know what is really happening and how everyone aligns with each other, it feels incredibly right.  Ishiguro is a genius.  Continue reading →

Close Kin by Clare B. Dunkle

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Okay, I’m sad to say I didn’t like Close Kin nearly as much as I liked The Hollow Kingdom.  Although it was so much fun to return to a world where Victorian humans interact with goblins, elves, and dwarves, there was not nearly enough Kate and Marak to satisfy me. Of course, this was not their love story.  It was…Emily and Seylins’?  Which is weird, because they spend very little of the book together.  Even when they are finally reunited, we hardly get to see them.  Other couples, like Sable and Tinsel, dominate the last fourth of the book.  Which is okay, I guess, because the goblin/elf relationship was oddly sweet.  But it was disorienting to root for one couple the whole time, only to be left with an anticlimactic reunion.

The best part, for me, was getting to see the cultural differences between goblins and elves.  I loved Dunkle’s subversion of the norm, so that her goblins are loyal, respectful, and kind, while her elves are cruel, vain, and dirty.  The ugly creatures are beautiful inside, and the beautiful creatures are ugly inside.  Fun!  Semi-relatedly, I also really love how the goblins see their deformities as based in strength.  There was one especially sweet scene when a goblin heals someone’s scars, but not fully.  He’s happy about this, because the scars are reminders of her courage, and he wants her to be able to keep some part of that.

I still love the world Dunkle has created, but it was definitely the Beauty & the Beast storyline of Kate and Marak that so completely enthralled me in The Hollow Kingdom.  Guess I’ll just have to reread it!

closekinBook Jacket

“Goblins are just a tale to frighten children.”

Emily might have believed this once, but she knows better now.  For years she has been living happily in the underground goblin kingdom.  Now Emily is old enough to marry, but when her childhood friend Seylin proposes, she doesn’t take him seriously.

Devastated, Seylin leaves the kingdom, intent on finding his own people:  the elves.  Too late, Emily realizes what Seylin means to her and sets out in search of him.  But as Emily and Seylin come closer to their goals, they bring two worlds onto a collision course, awakening hatreds and prejudices that have slumbered for hundreds of years.

In this sequel to The Hollow Kingdom, Clare Dunkle draws readers deeper into the magical world that Lloyd Alexander, winner of the Newbery Medal, calls “as persuasive as it is remarkable.”

Release Date:  2004

Want another opinion?  Check out reviews by The Thunder Child and Scribd.

Marking Time by April White

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A friend suggested I download Marking Time while it was free on Kindle.  I did, though I was not super won over by her texts about how embarrassed she was to love the series.  It took a while for me to get into the plot–it jumps around quite a bit–but soon I was also hooked.  It’s a clever premise, as White creates a mythology that explains popular YA tropes, from time travel to vampires.  And the writing is occasionally really witty and clever.  

You can sense the “but,” right?  But, the plot ambles or accelerates at an unwieldy pace.  It tries to be too much–a boarding school book, a secret powers book, a supernatural romance book, etc.  I never quite got totally hooked, although full disclosure, I am prejudiced against ebooks.  They don’t seem real (even if they are actually published in print but I’ve just happened to read an e-version) and I don’t give them the same leeway I would a book with pages.
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Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

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I have been scorned multiple times for the fact that I have not read Anne of Green Gables.  Well, no more!  I picked up a copy for $0.50 at Half Price Books and read it through.

Of the two title characters, I unabashedly loved Green Gables (and the surrounding town of Avonlea).  Montgomery is almost too good of a writer, describing the ponds and woods with such magic that the place sounds almost like paradise.  I’m entirely sold, ship me off to Prince Edward Island at once!  Continue reading →