Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

The first novel by travel writer Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children lures readers in with an amazing collection of actual photos, which have been re-purposed to illustrate the novel.  Largely unchanged, their collectively spooky and sometimes disturbing nature sets the scene for what promises to be a haunting ride through Riggs' twisted imaginings.

The novel takes off running, with sixteen year-old Jacob detailing the fantastic stories his grandfather told him as a child, while they looked at photos he claimed were of people he knew during the time he spent at an orphanage during WWI;  Jacob bitterly decided as a boy that all he had believed of levitating children and terrifying monsters from the old man were actually tricks and deceptions.  Flash forward a few years to a frantic phone call, and a tragic discovery in the woods behind the grandfather's home leads to Jacob once again question reality; this time, events push him to realize that he must find the truth himself.  Within weeks, Jacob and his doddering father set off for a tiny island off the coast of the UK, the boy on a path to a place he could barely have dreamed.  It's no great revelation for readers that the home for peculiar children is real, due to the title of the story, but how and when he arrives there, and what dangers confront him, are truly fantastic.

Peregrine starts out strongly, and readers can make an almost instant connection to the emotionally raw Jacob.  The photos are utterly fascinating, and Riggs cleverly incorporates them into the tale immediately, virtually ensuring that the reader will be hooked into the mystery of who and what those portrayed really are.   Riggs has a gift for detail, and Jacob's eventual discovery of the remains of the home brings the smells and aura of the ruins to life.  Key relationships are another strong point of the novel, both between characters and reader-to-character; I genuinely was interested in each of the children, and more than that, was heartbroken for several characters.

However, once the entire truth begins to unfold, Riggs falters a bit in his storytelling.  It is almost as if, without the support of these wonderous photographic guides, he was unsure of where to go or how to keep the reader in the same trance.  Granted, it would be difficult to maintain the same level of grotesque fascination throughout, but the action doesn't quite stand up as well on its own, perhaps because the bar is set so high.  The climax of the story could have been taken from several children's action books, and is a little too easily resolved.  Additionally, readers expecting this to be horror fiction, as I initially was, should be aware that this is a fantasy.  Although the photos are somewhat disturbing (particularly the one of the twins on the back cover, which for some reason completely freaks me out), and may evoke thoughts of Pet Cemetary or any number of demonic toy films, they are not indicative of frightening characters, but rather of mere peculiarities posessed by largely good-natured children.

This is not to say that the bulk of the novel is without surprise or enticement, because that is not the case.  The peculiar children's predicament, and how each one chooses to deal with it (including Jacob's grandfather) is expertly and sensitively told, allowing for variation and uniqueness among the characters.  The eventual revelation of Jacob's grandfather's story, as well as Jacob's own legacy, is stirring and demands the reader to evaluate what, really, would he or she have done in the same situation?  What is bravery, and how do you deal with the monsters when they come for you?  While many of the basic parts of this story have been told before (secret path leads to time / dimension travel, fantastical creatures seeking dominion that must be faced by children, etc), it is the assembly and fleshing out of these conventions that is important, and Riggs does an excellent job of inking them into a new life. 

The ending of the novel makes it clear that this is intended to become a series, and I have already tried to find out the anticipated publication date for the next installment, but haven't had any luck as yet.  When it does come out, I will definitely be waiting to see whether Riggs can continue to keep the characters as strong as they have been, and whether he will continute to incorporate the photos he relied on so heavily to create the characters, or if he will branch out and rely solely on his own imagination in the next go-round.  This novel is appropriate for readers approximately age ten and up; if they're not scared by Harry Potter, and are no longer nervous about creatures under the bed, they will most likely love this story. 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Excellent fantasy debut novel that transcends its YA label.

Review: Dreams of Joy, by Lisa See

Dreams of Joy is the long-awaited sequel to Lisa See's gorgeous Shanghai Girls, the story of two sisters' harrowing escape from 1930s China and subsequent struggle for normalcy as American immigrants.  If you have not read SG, you need to stop here and do so NOW.  It's a tremendous work, beautiful and memorable, and well worth the few days you will spend clinging to its pages before you pick back up here.

DoJ picks up where SG leaves off,  with the 17 year-old Joy overhearing a terrible argument between the two sisters that reveals the true status of her parentage.  It is now the 1950s, and the height of the cultural revolution in China, a time when some American Chinese, feeling persecuted by the American anti-communist movement, were returning to China; the traumatized Joy makes the misguided decision to flee to her family's homeland to find her father and participate in the 'rebirth' of China.  Once the Paris of Asia, Shanghai is no longer the cultural heaven it once was, and Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution propaganda are posters atop a pit of despair.  Joy's discovery of her father leads her down a dark and horrible path to near-destruction, while May undertakes a harrowing, emotionally-fraught journey of her own to find her daughter and make peace with her painful past.

If you know nothing about the Cultural Revolution, I highly suggest you read up on it; it is a fascinating and terrifying historical example of humanity and government at its worst.  However, readers need not study up in advance of picking up See's novels, which in fact do an excellent job of portraying China's nightmarish period.  The events described in this novel follow closely what I have read in various non-fiction publications (I had a double-major in history in college, with a focus on China), and See allows the reader to discover and experience the perfumed stench via colorful descriptions and fully-realized characters who portray the growing terror of the underclasses at that time.  Joy's gradual awakening is delayed by the power of Mao's propaganda; the constant repetition and overwhelming enforcement of his increasingly insane decrees burrow a kernel into her mind, and the reader travels with her as she slowly realizes the horror she has inflicted upon herself and her family in her misguided guilt and grief.  For her part, May, once a Shanghai Beautiful Girl, is reduced to being a paper collector, literally clearing the city of shreds of her own past to make way for the 'New China', as she searches for her daughter and a way for them all to escape the mire.

Almost everything about this novel is wonderful.  Particularly engrossing and horrifying are the public 'confessions' that are forced from those who have been perceived to have wronged society in some way; See's descriptions of the way the masses figuratively clamber onto the backs of those poor sinners in order to find the momentum and political capital to survive are eviscerating.  Among the few quibbles I have with this novel is the ease with which May was able to communicate with the outside world, which was at the time nearly impossible.  That she was never betrayed by anyone along the lengthy line of stops her letters had to make in order to get out of the country is difficult to believe, as is the ease both women had in finding Z.G., Joy's birth father.  Really, though, these are small issues compared with the sweeping achievement that this novel represents. 

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars.  A worthy sequel to a fantastic book; historical fiction at its finest.

Review: The Year We Left Home, by Jean Thompson

Jean Thompson's The Year We Left Home is the multi-voiced tale of an Iowa family, told over three decades by a rotating cast of six characters.  Both parents and their young-adult children are given turns at the narration, which evolves as characters move forward to being grandparents and parents themselves, respectively.

This novel takes quite awhile to get into.  The initial characters that the reader is introduced to aren't really likable, and the tone is grey and bleak.  In fact, very often the character offering his or her perspective behaves in a manner that isn't terribly appealing, and the reader is left to find the overriding interest in the story not by focusing on one person in particular, but rather in how these flawed, damanged humans manage to relate to one another.  Once all the characters are introduced, and the family web is completed, it's a little easier to become attached to one person or another; as the characters age and become less selfish, they likewise become more appealing.  Still, however, because the family members don't deal with each other very often, it's frequently easy to forget that this is a family drama at its core.

SPOILER ALERT - SKIP TO BELOW IF YOU PLAN ON READING THIS BOOK

One serious flaw with this novel is the loss of the voice of the voice of Torrie, the bright young daughter with the eating disorder, after a terrible car accident on her way home from a funeral.  Because this novel is offbeat, and Thompson takes risks in her portrayal of characters by allowing them the freedom to be more than slightly crazy (for example, the returning Vietnam Vet with the serious inter-personal, and mental, disabilities), it would have been germaine to allow Torrie to maintain a role in the telling of the story on her own, rather than through the occasional observations of others.  People with traumatic brain injuries are not devoid of experience, and even if her voice was garbled, or childlike, this would be preferable to essentially removing her voice altogether, especially as she took dramatic steps towards independence at the end of the novel.  Prior to the accident, she was my favorite character, and her shift to inactive voice creates a large hole as far as I am concerned.  I would have been extremely interested to read her perspective on the world around her.

SPOILER OVER

Where Thompson is strong as a writer is in her constant movement forward.  She doesn't waste time coddling the reader, making sure you have kept up with the leaps forward in time.  The story is not continuous, and if the reader isn't paying attention, the book will continue on regardless, leaving her confused and needing to flip back in order to place people and events.  Like all families, some members fit better than others, and all have strong and weak points.  Thompson is unapologetic for her character's failings, until the end, where she seems to succumb to a need to tie things up neatly with a bow.  This is unfortunate, because the rest of the novel is so untidy, and a sunny ending is a bit jarring.

Overall, The Year We Left Home isn't a waste of a read, by any means, and is more male-friendly than most in the family-story genre.  The characters face real-life choices that we see friends and neighbors making daily (re-entry after war, adultry, drugs, tragedy, parenting), with varying results, and Thompson doesn't waste time with overdone, non-action-related descriptions.  This is a no-nonsense book, and the trade-off for this is that the reader doesn't spend as much time building a relationship with each character.  That, combined with the challenge that some of the characters aren't overly likable to begin with, makes it less likely that the reader will experience that can't-put-it-down feeling.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.  No-nonsense, multi-voiced slow-starter describing real issues faced by a wide-spread family over a generation.

Review: The Widower's Tale, by Julia Glass

 

When I checked out The Widower's Tale, I was expecting a slightly melancholy novel about an elderly man who had recently lost his wife of many years, and who was left with nothing more to fill up his time than meddling in the affairs of his adult children.  This seemed like a familiar topic to me, as it has been thoroughly covered on the widow side, and I was interested in how the reverse might be different.  This was not, however, the story I actually got.   What I did get was a look into the life of a very vibrant, not-elderly-at-all man who is more than content to allow his children, and grandchildren, to live their own interesting lives.

Percy (aka the non-elderly man), 70, has been a widower for some thirty years, and still lives on the same beautiful property where a tragic accident resulted in the death of his wife.  His two daughters, Clover, an absentee parent who can't seem to keep a job and Trudy, who is the overachieving mother to the equally overachieving Robert, have remained close to their father, if not each other.  The story begins with the relocation of a displaced preschool into the newly remodeled barn on Percy's land, one that used to house his wife's ballet studio, and which is now a hub for the who's-who of the well-off community.  The school becomes almost a puzzle frame for the story, encircling each character who appears in an embrace that is at first warm, but becomes increasingly stifling as time passes.  Additional central characters, such as Arturo, Robert's roommate, Sarah, a preschool parent who is much more to Percy, Ira, an in-the-closet prek teacher, and gardener Celestino, who is equally in the closet, albeint in a different way, complete the cast of this family drama, forging relationships that complete the web of the tale.

A large part of what keeps this story intensely interesting is the quality of writing demonstrated in the creation of many of these characters.  The book focuses largely on the males' point of view, which is refreshing and surprisingly touching.  It would have been easy for Glass to have written The Old Man, The Gay, The Illegal, and The Disenfranchised Scholar, but Glass does not rely on stereotypes to create these characters, and as a result they are varied and textured in a way that I have rarely seen in novels written by women.  I particularly appreciated Percy, as the older parent who is involved in his children's lives, but not overbearingly so, and who has an intelligent, caring, adult relationship with the much younger Sarah without becoming The Dirty Old Man.  Clover, also, evolves as a character, moving from an annoying, flightly, absentee mother to a much more likable, introspective, involved woman.  Each character grows and evolves throughout the tale, changing in ways both attractive and not, much as the very real people in our own lives.

Glass introduces several sub-plots that focus on one or two characters, but the repercussions of which have bearing on everyone involved.  The drama of the local eco-terrorists, Clover's quest for her children, Sarah's medical challenges, and the preschool as a community entity swirl around Percy, who as the anchor character plays a small part in each vein.  While the climax of the story takes place largely without his participation, it is his reaction, and decisions for the future, that cement the final quality of Glass's work.  The ending is lovely, well-wrapped without being stifling, and leaves the reader with a solid foothold for imaginings as to what the future might bring for this cast of characters. 

While no novel is perfect, and I found certain characters more interesting and engaging than others, part of the beauty of the story is that there are enough angles for readers to latch onto that almost anyone could pick up Widower's Tale and find a niche.  I thoroughly enjoyed this alternative, man's view telling of family and community drama.

Rating: four stars.  Interesting perspectives, via a well-developed, evolving cast of characters, on family and community dynamics.