The Penderwicks at Point Mouette by Jeanne Birdsall

Rating: WORTHY!

This is another audiobook, read sweetly by Susan Denaker, but once again I learned after I picked it up at the library that it's volume three in a series of five, which is an annoyance. It ticks me off that publishers do this without offering any indication on the cover that this is part of a series or what number it is in that series. I'm not a fan of series because they tend to be filled with fluff and matters of little or no consequence; however, going blind into this one, before I discovered it was one of several, it didn't feel like a sequel, so I was hearing it like it was a stand-alone and it sounded just fine to me. The novel has a charming old world style to it, although at that point I had no idea when it was supposed to have been set. It turns out it's contemporary.

The author didn't publish the first book in the series until she was 54, which might account for why the book seems a little 'out of time', but that holds out hope for us all doesn't it, that her first novel came relatively late in her life despite her apparently deciding she wanted to be a novelist at the age of ten? Never give up! Lesson learned! The book is quite short, so I quickly decided that if this one panned out, I'd see if I could get the audiobook version of the earlier - and later - volumes. I seem to have been doing this lately in the case of Courtney Crumrin, and Bad Machinery graphic novel series so it's almost a habit by now.

The series is about the Penderwick sisters, of whom there are four, and the OAP - which in Britain used to mean Old Age Pensioner, although there's probably a more politically correct term for it now - stands for Oldest Available Penderwick. Since the actual oldest sister Rosalind, is going to spend two weeks with a friend, the OAP role falls to Skye, the next oldest, who has to look after her younger sister Jane and youngest, who has the unfortunate name of Batty. Their parents are out of the country and the bulk of the Penderwicks are staying with an aunt who's unfortunately been disabled by an ankle injury and is hobbling around on crutched, so the Penderwicks are pretty much left to their own devices.

Skye is nervous about being in charge and trying to corral her wayward sisters, each of whom has her own distinct personality. Batyt is the cute and slightly crazy one who fedeveops fads for colelcitgn beach rocks, shells, and stray golf balls from the nearby gold course, which she then sells on the street, like with a lemonade stand but for these tiny dimpled and expensive balls that cause golfers so much unnecessary grief (when no one is looking, just throw the damned ball for goodness sakes. The hell with the club). Before all these events kick off, the sisters hold one of their secret councils, known as Mops, so Rosalind can pass down the last few nuggets of her wisdom and experience, although it's really not necessary since Skye appears to have it covered already despite her misgivings about performing her new role.

Mishaps and adventures ensue. Batty makes a friend. Jane - the aspiring novelist - falls into deeply romantic love with the older brother of Batty's new friend and tastes cold rejection after penning him an ode. Skye becomes possessed of a cleaning frenzy at one point. But the story is laugh out loud hilarious so often that I couldn't help but love it. There were parts that were less than enthralling for me, but for the most part the novel was highly entertaining. The author's incisive and witty observations make for a joyful read. I imagine she would be a charm to have a conversation with, and I'm definitely interested in pursuing the series, which is a novelty for me. I commend this as a worthy read.

Playing With Matches by Suri Rosen

Title: Playing With Matches
Author: Suri Rosen
Publisher: ECW Press
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Despite the fact that I had a few issues with this novel, I ended up loving it. It was really well-written for the most part, very imaginative and inventive, and it told a really good story. Surprisingly, it also revealed an admirably strong central female character, and it was this, above all else, which won my heart, because characters like this one are rare in YA literature, to be avidly sought after, and treasured when found (and that's an order!).

This is a first person PoV YA novel about a 17-year-old girl, Raina Resnik who has moved to Toronto and now attends the Toronto Hebrew School for girls instead of the New York Hebrew school for girls. Big move, huh? My first question was why she hadn't stayed in NYC with her older sister, especially since said sibling is about to get married. It bothered me that I never got a really satisfactory answer to this question.

Normally I don't like 1PoV because it's rarely done well, but this one wasn't obnoxious. On the contrary, Raina's voice was quite endearing and highly entertaining. The novel opened with amusing commentary which continued throughout the novel. It's one of the two main reasons why I ended up loving this (the other being Raina's strength, of course), but it was not all plain sailing for me. Initially, the amusement at the narration was undermined somewhat by the confusion I felt.

I have to confess that I began this novel a little ferblunjit; I really didn't get what was going on. It was like I'd begun reading a sequel without having read the first volume. Eventually I grasped that the reason that Raina had to move was because her mom and dad had moved to Hong Kong for business reasons, but I didn't really get a good explanation as to why Raina hadn't gone with them. That is to say that there was a reason given, but it not only seemed inadequate to me, it also seemed out of step with how the rest of the novel was told in terms of how few choices Raina had available to her.

Having failed to travel with her parents, I didn't get why Raina couldn't stay in NYC with her sister Leah, who is seven years older, and getting married two months hence. She could have stayed, helped with the wedding preparations, and finished up her last year at her school with her friends. Why didn't she?

Maybe I missed something, but none of the Toronto move made sense at all, especially since she also had an aunt in NYC with whom she could have stayed. I don't recall reading a real explanation for all of this. Of course, I may have missed it in the confusion, but it seemed to me that the only reason she'd gone to Toronto was that there was another Hebrew school for girls there - and another aunt, but this begs the question as to why such a school was so indispensable. That's something which was never addressed.

Yes, there is some unspecified 'incident' at her New York City school, with Raina evidently having been expelled, but the nature of this isn't revealed until the end of the novel and when it is, it seems really inadequate. Besides that, her school wasn't the only one in NYC. She still could have stayed - so again, confusion. I would have preferred a more solid foundation for the novel to rest upon, but in the end, it really didn't matter because the story took over (more on that phrase later!) and dominated everything so very effectively.

I think part of the problem was that Playing With Matches assumes a reader who is intimately familiar with Jewish customs. Now I've lived in Israel (as a volunteer on the kibbutz system) for some six months. I'm also familiar with some Jewish and Judaic culture from reading various materials (fictional and otherwise), and from watching movies and documentaries. This doesn't, of course, make me an expert, not even close, but I do feel like I'm a little bit in familiar territory, yet even with that background, a lot of the comments and references were completely lost on me. A broader approach aimed at a wider readership would have been better for me.

I really didn't get this issue of Raina having to attend Hebrew schools for girls like there is no other option. There's no indication as to why this was such a requirement, since neither she nor any of her family appeared particularly orthodox Judaists (their only real religion seems to have been baseball!), so at that point, only three chapters in, I was really confused and not feeling very welcome! Feeling uncomfortable and for the wrong reasons is not a great start to a new relationship with an author! Fortunately in the end, Suri Rosen proved to me that she had what it took to win me over to her side very much in the same manner in which her character Raina proved the same thing in her own story. Amusing coincidence, huh?

I have to say that there was something of a claustrophobic feeling here, too. The novel was entirely about Jewish people and Jewish lifestyles and Jewish relationships. None of the characters appeared to know anyone or to have any friends who were not themselves Jewish. They appeared to exist and interact only within their own isolated community. I found that to be rather offensive, especially in a climate where we have major issues blowing up between Israelis and the Palestinians even as I write this review. Maybe this is how some people are, but it's not how novelists are compelled to write about people. Maybe there are 'enclaves' like this in Toronto and other cities, but it seemed a bit much to cook-up all of this without adding - if I can put it this way - some leavening from a wider perspective.

But that's just me! Now back to the story in progress. When Leah shows up at the bus station in Toronto, Raina discovers that the wedding is off. Raina, who's supposedly so close to her, has to learn this almost second-hand when her sister arrives sans wedding gown and sans engagement! Worse, Leah is evidently blaming Raina for the break-up because the latter never did trust Ben, the ex. Oy gevalt! So yes, this provided a nice thrust of conflict into the novel, but it was accompanied by some unfortunate confusion once more!

I didn't get why, if they were supposedly so close, Leah had not mentioned to Raina this failure to engage as it were, before she arrived in person. Yes, she apparently (and for no good reason), blamed her sister for being 'Raina on her parade' so to speak, but if they were so close, why was it not even touched upon? Or are we to understand that Raina is lying about how close they were or that she was clueless as to the deteriorating state of their relationship? If so, how can we trust anything else which this narrator tells us? This bothered me because it reflected badly on Raina (and unfairly as it turned out). I don't like anyone messing with Raina like that!

I don't want to give much more away. That would ruin the story, and this is such a good story that it deserves the benefit of any doubts. I really did enjoy it immensely despite all my kvetching. I liked Raina very much as a character - Leah not so much - and I loved the way the story kept opening up more levels, like a matryoshka doll. Let me confine myself to saying that Raina ends up becoming a bit of a shadken (she calls herself "Matchmaven" - hence the novel's title) purely by accident (if you can imagine that!), to which her own sister ends up 'subscribing'. So the engine of the novel becomes the question of whether Raina can find her sister a match and get back into her good graces while striving for good grades? Good grief! Or is Raina simply playing with matches? Will she be kosher or toast?

One final issue, and this isn't just about this novel, but about far to many YA novels penned by female writers. I was distressed by the stark emphasis on beauty and on girls needing guys to be complete. That was a bit much for me and rather demeaning to women. Being a shayner maidel only gets you so far (and not very far at all with me), and I know that too many people only see women skin deep, but that doesn't mean we have to perpetuate stereotypes or demeaning traditions. I sincerely hope that Jewish girls are not defined and confined by overly idealistic concepts beauty and a 'need' to find a guy to make them complete, but given how people are, maybe they are. Why would they be any different from any other girls?

As much as I liked the novel, I did feel that more could have been done here. I think this is a duty of YA authors, especially of female ones, and I think it's also sadly neglected. It's quite simply wrong to perpetuate clichés of 'beauty' when women have so much more to offer and when, in the end, beauty (when defined as skin-deep appearance) means so very little.

I know that authors (for the most part) understand this, but that understanding counts for nothing if it isn't translated into the written word. Can we not include other traits, such as integrity, loyalty, strength of character, smarts, decency, self-sacrifice, kindness, generosity of spirit, and so on? If you must include beauty, can it not be shown to be a result of those character traits rather than the sole product of a millimeter depth of skin? can we not show that a character's beauty (or handsomeness if the character is male) stems from those things - or from those things as well as (if you must), physical appearance. Please?

On the other side of the coin, this story was very engrossing, with Raina increasingly feeling like a shlimazl as her plans subside. She gets into one highly entertaining and unanticipated scrape after another (such as texting back and forth with someone who doesn't know who you are, but who happens, as you discover, to be in the bathroom stall right next to yours...). None of these escapades felt artificial or unrealistic, so kudos to Suri Rosen for her gifted imagination, quirky inventiveness, and her sheer writing skill. Even with the reservations I've mentioned, I was very entertained and I enjoyed this read a great deal. Since this blog is actually all about writing, I very much appreciated a chance to read some of this quality, and I look forward to her next story with great anticipation.

Talking of which, here's an interesting writing issue to leave you with: on page 130, we read, "Matchmaven had overtaken my life." Is this wrong? Discuss! I would have written "Matchmaven had taken over my life" but is that better? Does it mean the same thing? How about "My life had been overtaken by Matchmaven"?

It's not critically important to the story, but it is the kind of thing which my rather warped and disturbed mind latches upon! After all, without words, there are no stories, and without putting those words together just so, there is no literature. It's always worth giving some thought to these things. Is there a there a perfect way of wording your sentence and how much, exactly, does it matter? If you agonize over an issue like this are you hindering completion of your novel or making it that bit more memorable?

Playing With Matches is a particularly appropriate title for this novel, but it does bury it somewhat amongst so many others with that same title. Hopefully this one will stand out above those others. It deserves to since it's such a worthy read, and Suri Rosen is a writer with a future.

We Are the Goldens by Dana Reinhardt

Title: We Are the Goldens
Author: Dana Reinhardt
Publisher: Wendy Lamb
Rating: WORTHY!

DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.

Finally! Another author who has a dot net instead of a dot com. Why is that such a rare thing?! But I digress! This is an oddity of a novel. That's probably why I liked it so much, but I have to ask why I appear to be cursed with long novels which are not always a pleasant read, and then short gems like this, which are irresistible? It doesn't seem right, somehow. Can't I have longer versions of the good ones and shorter bad ones? But here’s the thing: I appreciate an author more who knows when her novel needs to end rather than one who’s dedicated to writing 400 pages no matter what state the novel ends up in!

This story is told in first person by younger sister Nell, who obsesses over her older sister Layla. Despite my antagonism towards first person stories, this one wasn't bad at all in the telling. See? Some writers can carry it, but not many. Reinhardt is one who evidently can. This is the first of hers that I've read, and I am disposed now towards reading others since this was such a good experience.

It’s a love affair after a fashion, although one in which there's nothing incestuous going on. I must confess that I don't know about this choice of names for the two sisters. Somehow 'Nell' and 'Layla' (the names) don't seem to go together, whereas Nell and Layla (the sisters) are perfect together. This (the names) bothers me a little bit because names are really important to me. In this case, it’s like the two girls are from different eras, like each name has its own un-blend-able ethos, but I digress…(again).

The novel is told as though Nell is speaking to Layla (who might be lying in a coma or in her grave for all we know to begin with) or as though Nell is writing a letter - an old fashioned hand-written one, not an email, or a dear diary to a sister who has run away or who has mysteriously disappeared. It was intriguing to say the least, and part of what drew me in to this story, because at the beginning, we have no idea how it's going to end, and I wanted to know.

Both girls play soccer which I think is hot. Yes, I know, that might seem quite disgusting to you: Nell is only fifteen and Layla hardly any older, but I'm shameless - and anyway, I'm not saying that the girls are hot, merely that their penchant for sports is hot: that they play, and play well. A sport, anyway, since the only one that they play is soccer, which is wonderful, but it seems odd that they have no other sports interests.

On that, er, score, my only real problem here was that the author completely glosses over the soccer! I know it’s not the most important thing going on here, but this sport was important to them and yet we got nothing about the first game of the season, save that City Day (their school in San Francisco) won 2-0, and this was after she had given the game a little bit of a build-up. We get precious little later, too, and I felt somewhat let-down by this, which is never a good feeling with which to imbue your readers!

It was disappointing to learn nothing of how either girl performed on the pitch, when we had been delivered pretty much a blow-by-blow account of the rest of their lives, and when the soccer was shown as an important part of their lives, being mentioned repeatedly. That struck me as an important omission, but it does let me get this in (WARNING: shameless plug coming up) for some great soccer action, you can always read my novel Seasoning, which in my totally unbiased opinion is the ultimate girls soccer novel....

The soccer, however, is a delivery vehicle - it delivers to us the first clues about what's going on here: what the underlying current is in this novel. Some might argue that there is some telegraphy at play here too, but it was never so much that you had an "A-ha!" moment where you felt you knew for a fact what was happening (or more importantly, what was going to happen), and sneakily, the tide which begins to run here serves to mask an under-current which is going to become important later. Note that neither of these affairs is anything new or avant-garde. The joy of this story does not lie in that anything happens to teens here which has not happened before; the joy lies in how these things happen, and in how they're addressed by the author and by each of the sisters. That's what makes this a worthwhile read.

Here's a pet peeve; this author doesn’t get that it’s 'biceps', not 'bicep'. I can't believe how many YA authors make that mistake! It’s becoming bizarrely common, but no, they will not convince me that they're right and that I should join them over on the dark side with this error! Other than that, the quality of the writing was excellent. It was well-done, it was intriguing, it was amusing, it was observant, and it was engrossing: in short, everything I need in a novel right there!

If I had a real complaint about it, I'd use it to question the wit and vocabulary expressed by Nell, who in her fifteen years comes off as way more mature than reasonable expectation might lead you to accept. Maybe she is. There are people like that, but Nell presents like she's an Eng. Lit. major or a book critic, or an editor, with some stand-up comedian tossed in. I would have loved to have known someone like that at that age, or better, at eighteen or twenty-one, but for a mid-teen to express herself this way strained credibility a bit for me.

Having said that, Nell, it turns out when it comes down to the bottom line, is the more mature of the two sisters who in the end does the right thing. This was an amazing novel, with twists and turns that are remarkable. It's very readable, and I enjoyed this immensely. In reading this, I found a new, strong female character to admire, and a new YA romance to champion as how it should be done. I recommend this novel very highly.

The Other Sister by ST Underdahl

Title: The Other Sister
Author: ST Underdahl
Publisher: Flux
Rating: WORTHY!

Susan Thompson Underdahl is a psychologist who has experienced the very story she relates in this novel, and relate she does. I don't know how much of it is fiction and how much is actual memory, but I do know this was a novel I read through from cover to cover in one sitting, and I enjoyed it immensely. Afterwards I found myself wondering how the Josey's real life counterpart felt when she learned that this novel was coming out.

The novel is about Audrey, an adoptee, contacting her birth mother and discovering she has a birth father married to that same mother and she has two brothers and a sister in that same family. I can;t imagine what kind of a shock or revelation that would be to a young woman. Underdahl was the 'Audrey' of this novel, but she told it from the 'Josey' perspective which is interesting, and is perhaps what I might have done if I'd been in her position. I think she was able to empathize with Josey so well because in some regards, Audrey and Josey were the same person while at the same time being quite different, having gone through very different experiences and having an outlook on life which differed in many ways.

Josette, sixteen, is the middle child, with an older brother Jake and a younger brother Julian (yeah, I know). She's a straight-A student who wants to become a psychologist. She has two best friends, Sarah and Britt, and comes home one day after studying with them to discover that her mother has some news about which she's very nervous about sharing with her daughter. Josey has never seen her mother quite like this. Why her father isn't present for this discussion I don't know. I found that slightly disturbing, but his absence at that particular time is actually a part of the story in a way; it's a harbinger of the relationship between Josey and her parents which bubbles up later in the novel.

Josey (I don't like that name, neither in its full version nor the diminutive) is hit rather harder than her brothers by this news. Why her mother chose to tell her before she told either of the sons, and especially given that one of the sons is older, is also dealt with later in the novel. I think in this case it was a wise decision, but later, the parental decisions were not so wise in these events!

Since the real story took place twenty years before, Underdahl chooses to address the lack of Internet and email by giving Audrey an aversion to tel phone contact and having the initial correspondence take place via snail mail, although the very first contact, not with Audrey but with a social worker, comes by phone. The purpose of the call to ask Anne (Josey's mother) if she's averse to her adopted daughter contacting her. Anne gives the go-ahead and soon receives an intelligently-written letter from Audrey tentatively opening the lines of communication. There's a photograph enclosed, of Audrey and her fiance. Audrey looks very much like Josey.

This is the first of a series of crises through which Josey goes. The next is when she learns that Audrey is a psychologist. Josey now feels that she has lost her position as only daughter, and as senior daughter, as well as being 'replaced' by someone who looks like her, has usurped her career goal, and is occupying almost all of her mother's attention. It's heartening to see how Josey, so young and so struggling, steps up to the situation. I doubt that I would have handled it so well at her age.

Yet despite her rather heroic struggle, she is struggling. Her parents arrange for a meeting in Cancun - neutral ground - so that they can all meet and get to know one another. Because Anne works for an airline, she's able to get discount fares and they occupy a small villa, and spend three all-too-short days together, but Josey notices that Audrey is crying at one point, and when they part at the end of the vacation, she says something mean to her new sister and, too late, regrets it.

In the end it's all resolved and the outcome works for everyone, but there is a journey before Josey can get there, and it's a journey with some surprising revelations about her calm and confident older sister. But this is something you will have to find out for yourself. Despite the misgivings I had after reading Susan Underdahl's bio (she knew a ghost for eight years? She can sometimes breathe underwater?) which made me doubt her veracity in other regards, this novel is all I'm reviewing here, not the author, and the novel is well-done, sensitively written, inventive, entertaining, and very enjoyable. I rate it worthy!