15. Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates

This review is actually just a combination of different things that I sent to CL about what I thought of this book a long time ago. Because of that, and because of the fact that this book was ridiculously sad, it is probably more personal than my other posts. I don't think I'll edit it too much, though. I know I had lots of things to add to it back then, but I can't even find the email exchange in which this ramble originally existed, (which distresses me in many ways, but hey, this isn't my livejournal) so it's good I have this much saved here from when I started this entry in May, at least. I think this post would be different if I wrote it from scratch right now, but I am too fond of my earlier self to inject my current (somewhat happier) viewpoint on these things. So mostly this one's for me, but it's really long and incoherent and has spoilers, so you probably won't read it anyway. What you should get out of this post, though, is that life is hard and you should read this book.




I am rusty with the in depth book analysis, as my blog is more like "it was cool" or "it sucked," but then again I haven't been reading this sort of thing recently. It took me a little bit to get into it. It is true that the liking of them sneaks up on you. I was sort of ambling through the book waiting for "the good part" and then all of a sudden I realized I cared about them a lot. I liked the writing throughout, so that kept me going, but at first it seemed to be going pretty slow. So Yates had to sort of sneak up the caring about the characters on me. And the whole not much happening thing makes sense, because you are probably supposed to feel the suburban monotony and all that.

Some things seemed a bit heavy handed at first, like the whole part about the crazy man is the only one who can REALLY see the truth behind the situation. But actually it might just be because I have 60 years of historical hindsight (and a sense of unwarranted moral superiority that comes from having grown up in the woods) to know that suburbia blows. April and Frank don't have that benefit, because suburbia just started its long reign of blowing, and they had to figure it out for themselves. So at the time I'm sure it wasn't as obvious.

It made me ache to see them in such detail. They were so real. Frank more than April, but that's probably only because we see everything from his mind up until April has her day, and then all the things that before made her annoying (thoughts about her parents, her emotional silent treatment bit, etc.) just made her seem so small and sad and human. But even just the way Frank's inner monologue went made him seem real. Yates put in a lot of things people say to themselves that they don't really talk about. Like the whole imagining the future reactions of April to what he'll tell her about his day, the way he analyzed his movements and his words as though he were on stage, and all the secret weaknesses he had that he tried to hide. Like how occasionally when Frank thinks of himself in 3rd person he is sort of mapping out his next move as though it were onstage. They started out as regular sounding people with an understandable and possibly attainable goal of getting away from it all, and as the story progressed, the responsibility that they began shouldering, all the adult decisions and actions they took built and built and then all crumbled and they just seemed so sad and underinformed and young. They were just trying so hard not to suck, but they failed.

I'm not sure where the blame should lie, either. It is partially the fault of the societal system, for somehow expecting them to be happy in that life. It is also partly the weight of the expectations of the past. The previous generations did a lot of irresponsible European traveling and decadent Sun Also Rises shit, and they (mostly April) have that to contend with, but they also have the expectation that now hard work and dedication will get you where you want to be, like with Frank's whole daddy complex. So they have those issues to contend with, and they are ill equipped. I think SJs (yeah I bring Myers Briggs into everything) can usually be happy hangin out in the stereotypical societal role laid out for them. Frank I think is an INFJ, and April an ENFP. I haven't thought about this a lot, though, so I could be wrong. Point is, they are not SJ.

But suburbia hasn't been around long enough for there to be a clear route or much of a (what's the word- starts with a P, they use it in court to mean "oh well we ruled that way last time so I guess we can do it again" goddammit what is it) to base their decisions on. It's like it takes a few years past being in a decade to be able to define it. I remember in 1999 I thought "What will the defining characteristics of the 90s be? everything seems so normal and boring and undefinable." And right now, I have similar thoughts about the 00s, but by 2004 or so the 90s had a very distinct flavor, and I'm sure that if we make it to 2014, so will the 00s. The point is, they had no idea they were stuck in the shitty Pleasantville 50s. If you look at it as the book telling you "suburbia sucks and steals your soul," then you will respond by saying "well, yes, I knew that." I think you get more from it without focusing on it being Suburbia that did them in. Suburbia does blow, yes, but it is still possible to live a fulfilled life within it (I assume, but I am not about to test this theory). I think that you aren't supposed to blame it on suburbia, because they didn't know. And more obviously, Yates didn't know. Because Suburbia hadn't been around enough to be that big dumb thing in the 50s.

I am not going to lie, though. I am a large hater of suburbia. I am also a large hater of cities, but I understand a little more why people like those. The concept of an ice cream man and playing street hockey with all the neighbor kids does sound cool, but I will staunchly claim that me hanging out by myself making forts and bottling the juice of a Jewel Weed plant for its healing properties was a million times better. I guess it is unfair to blame it all on suburbia, but I don't think I did that. Just don't go giving suburbia undeserved credit just to make up for all the shit it gets. It does get stereotyped, mostly because it is that one thing that stands out about that part of American history. So it deserves the stereotype? I guess I am saying that April and Frank still could have succeeded and it was mostly their own damn fault they failed, but still.They had no idea this was a typical plight that would define their generation. They just knew "Oh god, this sucks. I want to leave but I don't know how."
So for that I really fucking felt for them.

The ending was really good, too. I knew that something big would have to happen, and although I was rooting for them the whole time, I knew they'd never make it to Europe. As it happened, the ending was perfect in its sadness. On the back of my (tied for first with Catch 22) favorite book, At Swim, Two Boys, one of the reviewers says something like "blah blah richness of scope and ambition that makes one reluctant to come to its tragic and inevitable close." Wow, you know you've read a book a lot when you have the reviews memorized, too. Anyway, point is that I always think of that "tragic and inevitable close" thing when other books pull it off, too. There's really nothing else that could have happened to April and Frank.

Yates does the whole "what if" bit, talking about how little things could have changed the outcome, which is true, but of course those little things happened the way they did because they had to. They were doomed from the start. Which really sucks. But it was beautiful that way. Of course she would rather die trying to be herself than live the shitty way she was living, and of course Frank would hurt for a while but then find an easy and dull comfort in burying himself in the very life he originally was trying to get away from.

It was especially pertinent and emotionally murderous to me because of my current life crisis. Of course, everyone sees their crisis as new and different from anyone else's, but just like Frank and April weren't the only ones who thought their road was strikingly unrevolutionary, I am not the only graduate who doesn't want to go get a real job or some shit. But in the moment, in the glaring face of stifling mediocrity, no one can help but see their struggle as singular in its importance.

So it killed me with really really quality writing, and it also killed me by being really terrifying and raising lots of unpleasant questions about the future. I am terrified that I will end up settling, bit by bit without noticing, for something comfortable. I have no large reason for feeling that way- I've actually done a large number of cool things in my past, and I have no reason to think I will be unable to continue them. But still the difficulty of finding something fulfilling and lucrative to do, the difficulty of somehow locating and not hiding from a boy that I share both viewpoints and life goals with, the difficulty of staying with said mystical boy for more than 2 years (my record, set in high school), the difficulty of creating new people that will not only feast upon my innards for 9 months but will require intellectual and physical guidance for the rest of my life, and doing it all (because I really do want to do these things) without feeling trapped inside some cliche white picket fence. I know it is possible, because I have seen it done. It just looks real hard. So I hoped a lot that Frank and April would get their shit together and live with a beautiful purpose. But they didn't, and I knew they wouldn't, and it wouldn't have been as good a book if they'd succeeded. But goddamn, somebody needs to or else I am going to go crazy.

Pages: 337
Time: April 10-14 2009
Rating: 9.75

12, 13, 14 The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney

Hey, I'm back! I started a bunch of reviews 4 months ago, so I'll finish some of those and then skip around, probably not reviewing much of what I read this summer. Oh well. At least this blog is alive again.

I lost the piece of paper I used to take notes on this book, and I finished it ages ago, but we'll see what I can remember (the entire point of this blog...oh well) about what I wanted to say.

This book is the first in a series. I'm actually up to book 4 in this series now, since I started this entry early last May. So Technically this entry can be about Revenge of the Witch, Curse of the Bane and Night of the Soul-Stealer. Anyway, the series is about a kid named Thomas Ward who is the seventh son of a seventh son, which means he is eligible to apprentice as a Spook. A spook lives a solitary and terrifying life, wandering around the country and getting rid of evil things that plague everyday society. It's not any sort of secret, though. Everyone's aware of ghosts and boggarts and witches and things, and they need a spook's knowhow on defeating this kind of thing to live peacefully.

I am kind of a wimp when it comes to scary things and I will admit that I read this in my bed at night with my bankie wrapped around me tightly. It wasn't too scary, though. I really like the art in this book, too. There is a whole page for chapter art, not just below the chapter titles, so that's neat. Lots of crosshatching and sketchy linework or whatever it is that art stuff is called.

Something that is kind of annoying, though, is how the back covers proclaim that this is the ideal series for kids who've outgrown Harry Potter. Sunday Times Review, please! These books are cool, and they have neat, creatively imagined monsters and an intricate enough plotline, yes. But there's no way it's even close to as scary or complex or sad or risque as HP. I wonder how many books in this blog I compare to Harry Potter? Maybe I should read less YA fantasy. Or maybe not.
Pages: 340-500, depending on which book
Time: may-july
Rating: 7

So...

I didn't forget about this, I swear. I am just unmotivated, and I am reading things too quickly to write about them.

11. Skulduggery Pleasant, by Derek Landy

I've got 5 books to report on, so I am starting with the easiest review.

This book cover is hilarious, y/y?

Kids are checking this out left and right at the library, and I found myself on lunch break with nothing to read, so I picked it up. It is about this chick who leads a boring life and then her uncle dies, leaving her all his stuff, and then a LIVING SKELETON named Skulduggery Pleasant comes and saves her from some dude who tries to kill her. Turns out there is this whole huge world of magic people hanging out in the world (except anyone can learn magic it seems like, but most people never notice that they can) and there is some big bad dude out to steal everyone's magic and enslave the nonmagic population. Oh, and lolz, if you though Lord Voldemort was a dumb name, the Big Bad in this book is called Nefarian Serpine. SERIOUSLY?
It's times like these when I am completely astounded by the genius of one Joanne Katherine Rowling. It seems pretty simple to come up with some sort of semiplausible (plausible as fantasy, not reality), world but really difficult to create one that isn't really dumb and with a million holes in it. This book was fun to read. I read it on the plane to Nicaragua and I was thoroughly wrapped up in wanting to know what happened next, but that isn't the only thing that makes a book good. There were no real layers to it. I made no bonds with the characters and in no way did the world created by the author seem real at any point. One mark of a good book is that it sucks you in and you forget you are looking at words on pages because you are seeing the world of the novel as though it were real in your mind's eye. This is hard for any book, but even more hard for a fantasy/sci-fi book, because it has to convince you, even if just for a moment where the story is getting really intense, that it is real. Not real as in within the laws of physics, but real as in you are not thinking "I am reading a book about ___," you are thinking only of what is happening in the story. Harry Potter does that (and of course many others, like LOTR, but that's an entire other league of detailed insanity). JKR puts so much backstory into it that there's not a question you could ask that she wouldn't have the perfect answer lined up for. Derek Landy, with this book, didn't try that hard.

I am going to talk about this even more when I review a book called The Dark is Rising.

It did deal with some pretty neat concepts, though. I like stories that place a lot of importance on names. I have a half baked J novel concept about the magic of names in my head. In this book they talk about how if you know something's real name you can have power over it. In the context of the book it is magic, of course, but it is one of those things that is really just a metaphor for real life. You know, if you know someone's true self you can use it for good or for evil. In the book, everyone has 3 names: your true name (all of them are located in this heavily protected book that no one can read so no one actually knows this), your given name, and your chosen name.

I was pretty pumped about how the main character got to choose her own name. Her given name was Stephanie, and I really hate that name, so I was jazzed she'd get to pick something else so I would get to stop reading "Stephanie," but then she went and picked Valkyrie Cain. Ugh. Skulduggery is a cool name, though. Props, skeleton dude.

So basically it was fun and if there was a sequel (he sort of sets it up for one) I might read it and if they make a movie I might watch it, but I'm not going to be upset if that day never comes.

Pages: 400
Time: Apr 11-14
Rating: 6, maybe 7.5 if I was 12 and the girl wasn't named Stephanie.

10. Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

This is one of those books that everyone and their mom seemed to be checking out. I figured out that it was partly because it is a Battle of the Books book, but still. I eventually got around to reading it recently (I am typing this one up out of order, but other people want to read it so I need to turn it back in) and man, all the talk is not for nothing.

I have read a fair amount of fantasy in my day. I'm not much for the medieval sort of fantasy with robed princesses with staffs and jeweled headbands holing back their flowing locks on the covers. But the more contemporary sort, you know, with the kid who stumbles upon a secret world and somehow ends up really special. The genre is pretty large, though, and full of not very good books. It is difficult to make something fresh and not done a million times in any genre of fiction, but I feel like it is the most glaringly obvious for fantasy. Some books (Harry Potter, obviously) can be original and well written enough to break through all the millions of predictable plotlines and characters with stupid names. The Graveyard Book pulls it off.

A Man Jack (you find out bit by bit that he's a part of this governmental conspiracy group of Jacks thing) breaks into a house, kills a mom, dad, sister, and the baby escapes (okay yeah that does sound a bit like HP, but it is different because the family is normal and the baby is normal and it just wanders away; it doesn't get saved by magic). The baby wanders into the graveyard across the street and the spirits living (residing?) there, upon figuring out his situation, decide to raise him themselves.

They name him Nobody, call him Bod for short, and give him the protection of the graveyard, meaning he's invisible to the typical mortal, just like they are. He grows up, gets into many kinds of trouble, meets a lady, deals with the Jacks as they try and finish the job, etc.

So as much fun as I've been having reading the fluffy YA fantasy lit (I will review a book called Skulduggery Pleasant that fits into this category perfectly soon), it was really cool to read a book that is what the genre is supposed to be about.

It has a really creative interesting story, good writing, an array of lovable and hatable characters (my favorite being Silas, Bod's semi-mortal caretaker), and an ending that really gets you. It ends at a perfect place in a perfect way, but it still makes me want a sequel. Badly. Nice job, Gaiman.


Pages: 312
Time: Apr 22-24
Rating: 9

9. Savvy, by Ingrid Law

I honestly wanted to read this book because of its cover. Which you're not supposed to do, but hey, sometimes judging a book by its cover works out. This time it didn't, though.

This book was about a family of people with exciting talents like electrical manipulation, the ability to create land, water manipulation...other elemental manipulation, etc. You get the picture. You turn 13 and your "savvy" manifests. So on the main character's 13th birthday, her dad is in an accident (he is a normal dude) and she freaks out, wants her savvy to be something that saves lives, finds herself on some madcap road trip with her brothers and some stuck up preacher's kids on her way to find her dad. I like reading about siblings, especially brothers, and I liked her youngest brother who hides like a cat and doesn't talk to people.

Still, though, it was thoroughly mediocre writing with really obvious plot twists and there was too much God in it for my liking. He wasn't a large force in the book, but I guess everyday references to stuff like praying for your coma-bound father to wake up rub my bitter atheist heart of stone the wrong way. Whatever.

But it was a J book, meaning its intended audience is like 8-13 year olds. And when I was 8-13 I wouldn't have caught on to the transparently contrived foreshadowing, I hadn't solidified my annoyance with unnecessary references to the Lord, and the chaste handholding would have made me blush pleasantly.

Also, the concept of powers manifesting at a certain age has always been extra cool (I am still waiting for my Hogwarts letter, and with each passing birthday I amuse myself by pretending that in the real world it comes not at eleven, but one year later than the age I just turned). So basically I'd have liked it if I was 10, or if it was the same premise but for older people.

As it is, though, I'd recommend wholeheartedly it to any young kid who, like myself at their age, desperately wished to stumble upon one of the many secret magical worlds hiding quietly within our own. Just, you know, for myself, it was kind of boring. I did read it in like one sitting, though, so it didn't take much out of my life.

Pages: 342
Time: Mar 27
Rating: 5, unless you are 10, then maybe 7.5

8. Fables Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham, etc

I apparently like graphic novels a lot more than I thought I did. Owen gave me this one and neglected to tell me the premise, so it took me a second to figure out exactly what was going on. And then I was a bit skeptical, but not for too long.

Basically every character from any fable that didn't have creative rights restricting it is in this series. Snow White is more or less running this exiled kingdom of fables, who are all living in our world, as some Opponent that you don't learn much about in book 1 has invaded their homelands and kicked them out into our dimension. Other characters of note are detective Bigby (big bad) Wolf, Prince Charming (the womanizing douche), Beauty, The Beast, Jack (as in the beanstalk), etc.

The plot revolved around Rose Red (Snow White's sister, ya know)'s mysterious death. I'm not ususally much for mysteries, but it was fun. And well drawn. I especially like the art between chapters. I know it sounds lame. But it wasn't really. With everyone being immortal and all, they've all had time to sleep with everyone, create grudges, have lots of tension of all kinds, etc.

I will probably read more of the series at some point.

I am also like 5 books behind on this thing. G'damn. I'll probably write shorter reviews til I can catch up.

Pages: 120
Time: Not sure. Probably around Mar 15-17?
Rating: I am not obsessed with comic books, but for what it was, it was good. So... 7?