Saturday sum-up – Jan 18th

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Here’s what I found bookish & interesting on my tour around the Internet this week:

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Why does too many books still not seem like hoarding to me?

Looking for a way to spice up your reading lives? Check out these cool Reading Bingo Challenge cards over at Random House.

I love The Nerdy Bookclub and they recently posted about Canadian children’s books.

I am a big fan of Nick Bantock. He’s probably best known for his Griffin and Sabine trilogy and if you haven’t read them I highly recommend them. Anyway, my son and I made our weekly pilgrimage to Indigo last night and I stumbled upon Bantock’s latest endeavour, The Trickster’s Hat. I didn’t purchase it, but I’m going to. It’s a beautiful little book about creativity with 49 activities you can do to promote it in your own life. Visit Nick’s Etsy page. (Edited on Feb 22 to add this review of The Trickster’s Hat from the National Post.)

And here’s something avid readers already know: Great novels can change your life…and your brain

Today in literary history: A.A. Milne, author of Winnie the Pooh was born in London on this day in 1882. My mom read me and my brotheKumpulan gambar kartun winnie the pooh Yang Lucu dan Imut Brs Winnie the Pooh  all the time when we were kids. I loved those stories, but I loved my mom reading to me even more.

““If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”  A.A. Milne

Me Before You – Jojo Moyes

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mebeforeyouLast night, my book club met to discuss Jojo Moyes’ novel Me Before You.  I was the only member of the group that didn’t love the book. I liked the book a lot, but it won’t go down in my personal annals as one of the most amazing, romantic, beautiful, (insert other appropriate adjective here) books ever. Trust me, I am the gushiest romantic on the planet so it came as just as much of a shock to me when I didn’t get all weepy and heartbroken at the end.

Me Before You is the story of  26-year-old Louisa Clark, an ordinary girl from an ordinary family. Until recently, she’d been working at the local cafe in the little market village she lives in in England. She lives at home with her parents and her younger sister, Treena and Treena’s young son, Thomas. Their house is too small; they don’t have much money and so when Louisa loses her job at the cafe she is desperate to find new employment so she can continue to contribute to the family coffers.

Enter the Traynors.  They live in Granta House which is on the other side of Stortfold Castle – I presume that’s the posh side. Camilla Traynor hires Louisa as a companion to her son Will who, two years ago, had been in a serious motorcycle-meets-pedestrian accident that has left him as a quadriplegic. He’s a bit of a git.

Circumstances being what they are, Louisa doesn’t feel like she’s in a position to quit, even when Will is arrogant and unkind. Instead, Louisa is determined to make friends with Will and so, of course, that is what happens. Will softens because of Louisa’s friendship; she  flourishes because of his. They are both irrevocably changed.

Me Before You was an easy book to read. I motored through 200 pages on Saturday night. I liked Louisa and I liked Will and I liked their story. Although I didn’t agree with the stylistic choice Moyes made to interrupt the story’s predominantly first person narrative to give readers a glimpse into the heads of a few other characters, I did appreciate this observation by Will’s mother:

It’s just that the one thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the galumphing. unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring – you see before you, with his parking tickets and his unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been rolled into one.

I am a mom and so I knew what she was talking about. Could I have lived without her insights?  Absolutely.

I also took issue with the epilogue. It felt cheap to me. Way, way too tidy. But no matter.

One of the questions  posed last night was whether or not Me Before You was a great book. Define great. That’s the cool thing about reading. Everyone’s definition of what makes a great book is going to be different. I am going to have to figure out how to articulate what makes a book great for me and get back to you.

As for Me Before You – it was a very enjoyable book to read. Could I niggle over a bunch of little things? Sure, but none of them really detracted from my reading experience which was totally pleasant. I didn’t shed any tears, but I did well up once or twice. So, almost, Ms. Moyes.

 

 

 

I Take You – Nikki Gemmell

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tlc tour hostThanks to the folks at TLC, I’m back with another book by Nikki Gemmell. You’ll recall that I took a look at her novel With My Body last month and today I am going to talk about her book I Take You. Beginning with The Bride Stripped Bare, With My Body and I Take You form a trilogy of sorts, although the characters and plots don’t really overlap so each book could be read independently of the others. I Take You

I Take You is the story of Connie Carven, wife to Clifford, a banker who has been seriously injured in a skiing accident and can no longer – erm – perform certain husbandly duties. No matter, Cliff has found other ways to satisfy his wife, most of them involving his Mont Blanc pen and a wicked imagination. At first Connie seems like a willing participant in her husband’s increasingly perverse sexual games, but one night Cliff takes things a teensy bit  (okay, a lot) too far and something in Connie–I don’t want to say snaps–changes.

Truthfully, I didn’t get Connie’s relationship with Cliff. Like, at all. Pre-accident he was  “her American…someone to be laughed at and admired and feared in equal measure.” Cliff is over-the-top rich and Connie “grew quickly addicted to this way of living — loved the sparkly, unthinking splash of it.”

When she tries to explain her relationship with Cliff to her father she says:

“We’re happy , Dad. As we are. I’m his wife and I have a job to do. A very important one. Now more than ever. Only I can help him, only me. I’ve become crucial to him in a way that’s impossible to explain.”

We are meant to believe that Cliff’s accident was the impetus for her to fall in love with her husband because “it tipped their sex life into something else. Because Cliff gouged out — patiently, gently, beseechingly — the very marrow of his impenetrable wife. It had been the trigger that now tipped him into something else.”  But the thing is, I don’t see these two as having very much of anything at all except perhaps for a co-dependent relationship and a penchant for kinky sex. And I never saw Cliff as a nurturing, kind man and he can’t kiss worth a damn, apparently.

Then, matters get more complicated when Connie meets Mel — he’s the gardener who takes care of the private communal garden that belongs to the houses on their square. It was at this point that I had a ‘wait a minute’ moment. I Take You was starting to sound suspiciously like another book: D.H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover.  According to the blurb on the back (which I hadn’t bothered to read) Gemmell was indeed inspired by Lawrence’s infamous book.

Everything you think is going to happen, happens. Mel and Connie start an illicit affair; Cliff gets all bent out of shape about it; Connie chooses personal happiness over marital responsibility.

So how does I Take You compare with the other erotica out there? Well, Gemmel’s writing is still lovely (although I think I might have appreciated this book a bit more if I’d had more of a breather between this one and With My Body.) It’s often quite graphic, so if that’s not your cup of titillation tea — perhaps this isn’t the book for you.

I can’t say I was quite as enamoured with I Take You as I was with With My Body. I may need a little while longer to figure out why Connie’s journey just didn’t resonate with me the way the narrator in With My Body did.

Saturday Sum-up

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Here’s what I found bookish & interesting on my tour around the Internet this week:

I do a lot of reading about reading. The longer I teach, the less I care about testing and grammar and the more I care about reading. When students leave these hallowed halls (and the hallowed halls of whatever post-secondary route they take) they’re not going to read and then make a poster. At best, they might start a book blog, but even then they’re not going to talk about the figurative devices they come across in the books they read. The question then becomes, ultimately, how do I instill in my students a life-long appreciation for reading.

This article was an interesting look at that very topic: How to teach reading for pleasure.

Yet one more reason to love Jon Stewart: https://twitter.com/JasonElsom/status/421800162143789056/photo/1

(with thanks to @JasonElsom for the original post)

And, egads, The Telegraph shares its list of the Top Ten Young Adult books of 2013 and not only have I not read any, I’ve only heard of two.

On this day in literary history (in 1928) Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure; The Mayor of Casterbridge) died.  He was 87. His heart is buried in the grave of his first wife and his ashes are buried next to Charles Dickens in Westminster Abbey.

Easy – Tammara Webber

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easyEasy was easy to love. So easy, in fact, that I started it and finished it in pretty much one sitting – abandoning all else yesterday after I got home from school and fed my kids –  reading until I’d turned the last page…about midnight. This novel by Tammara Webber hit all my guilty-pleasure buttons and a few others besides.

I think Easy is one of those novels that belongs in this New Adult category I see everyone talking about.  I actually wish we didn’t spend so much time shelving books into these categories  but, anyway, I can see how this book just crosses over the line from YA. For those of you unclear about the New Adult designation, Goodreads defines it as ” fiction [that] bridges the gap between Young Adult and Adult genres. It typically features protagonists between the ages of 18 and 26.” I also think that New Adult is a little more forthcoming with details of a sexual nature. (I should also add that at Indigo, this book is filed in the Adult section.)

Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page with regards to New Adult, let’s get to the good stuff.

Easy is narrated by Jacqueline Wallace,  a sophomore (for Canadians who don’t know what that means because we don’t use those terms it’s 2nd year) at an unnamed university. She’s there because she followed her high school sweetheart, Kennedy.  He’s just dumped her. She’s heartbroken. But that’s not how Easy starts.  It starts with Jacqueline leaving a frat party and getting jumped by someone she knows and always considered benign. Buck has other things on his mind, though, and the relatively graphic nature of the attack is an early indication that we’re leaving strictly teen fiction behind.

Jaqueline has a knight in shining armour, though. The stranger, Lucas,  pulls Buck off Jaqueline before he actually rapes her and beats the crap out of  him. After Jaqueline declines a trip to the hospital or police station, he whisks her to her dorm and safety.  I pretty much fell in love with Lucas from this moment on.

I stared back into his clear eyes. I couldn’t tell their color in the dim light, but they contrasted compellingly with his dark hair. His voice was softer, less hostile. “Do you live on campus? Let me drive you. I can walk back over here and get my ride after.”

Easy is a lot of things, but what it isn’t is the clichéd bad boy, good girl story we’ve all read a thousand times. Yes, Lucas has a pierced lip and lots of tattoos and a body to die for (I wish Ms. Webber’s editor had told her it was biceps not bicep though – even when referring to one) but anyway – that’s beside the point. He’s HOT. Smokin’ hot. And smart. And kind. And mysterious. And tragic. And sometimes, when he speaks, there was swooning – and I’m not just talking about Jaqueline’s reaction.

There’s more than just a love story going on in this novel. To Ms. Webber’s credit she’s created several other compelling minor characters including Jaqueline’s roommate bestie, Erin, and, Benji,  a boy in Jacqueline’s Economics class. The book offers lessons about personal safety and girl power without being didactic. In addition, there’s enough push/pull between Jaqueline and Lucas to sustain Easy through its 310 pages and I never once found myself screaming “just get on with it.”  If Lucas sounds just a tad too mature for his age – his childhood experiences will explain all. He’s a keeper and Jacqueline deserves him.

Will it go in my classroom library?  Yep. I can think of a dozen girls who will love it as much as I did.

Some Girls Are – Courtney Summers

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somegirlsareSome girls are bitches. In Courtney Summers’ compelling and disturbing YA novel Some Girls Are, calling the characters bitches is an extreme understatement. Some of these girls are psychopaths.

Regina Afton used to be one of the Fearsome Fivesome – a pack of girls led by Anna Morrison. Every high school has them, I suppose, that group of mean girls who take extreme pleasure in ruining the lives of others. That said, I don’t recall any from my high school days (yeah – okay, it was a million years ago!) and I don’t know of any at the school where I teach – at least none as venomous as this. And man, these girls are really, really awful.

The novel opens at a party where “everyone is wasted.” Everyone except Regina, that is,  because it’s her turn to be the designated driver, a job she takes relatively seriously even though it’s “boring.”  When she tries to rouse a passed out Anna, she encounters an obstacle of another kind: Anna’s equally intoxicated boyfriend, Donnie.

I’d turned him down in the ninth grade. Anna says we’ve been close to hate-fucking ever since, which is too gross for me to even contemplate. It’s a gunshot kind of thing for her to say – a warning. The way she says it, it’s like she can see it happening, and the way she says it lets me know I better not let it happen.

But then the unthinkable almost does happen and when Regina turns to another member of the Fearsome Fivesome for help and advice, she suddenly finds herself frozen out of the group she was once an integral part of.

The interesting thing about Regina is that she isn’t all that likeable. She’s mean. She wasn’t always mean, though. That would have to be true for readers to root for her even a little bit, but her exterior is so prickly it takes a while to warm up to her. Like, a long while. And I found that interesting. She’s an anti-hero.

Life becomes almost unbearable for Regina once Anna and Kara, Regina’s replacement, get going. It’s not just covert tactics they employ to ostracize Regina – they humiliate her, physically abuse her and truly make her life a living hell. Regina has no allies because when she was part of the clique, she’d been horrible to just about everyone in the school.

I’m  used to everyone’s eyes on me; that’s nothing new. When you’re Anna Morrison’s best friend, people look. We’re the kind of popular that parents like to pretend don’t exist so they can sleep at night, and we’re the kind of popular that makes our peers unable to sleep at night. Everyone hates us, but they’re afraid of us, too.

There’s really no relief for Regina until Michael  Hayden – one of her former victims – slowly lets her into his life. And with his friendship comes Regina’s redemption.

Okay, I’m a teacher – I know that the vast majority of teens aren’t like the people portrayed in this book – but some of them are. Some teenagers are nasty, messy, insecure, and hateful. And hopefully some of those will, like Regina, have the opportunity to make amends for the damage they do.

Some Girls Are crackles with real energy and I couldn’t put it down.

Saturday Sum-Up

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Here’s what I found bookish & interesting on my tour around the Internet this week:

read every dayArt from Scholastic.

The Guardian’s Philip Hensher had some thoughtful things to say about reading: This should be a golden age for readers, but it feels like the end of days

I was particularly interested in Mr. Hensher’s assertion that even reading 15 books a year has a positive impact on your life. A mere 15 books, people! Since I intend to do way better than that (I read 62 books in 2013), I’ve already signed up for Savvy Readers’ 50 Book Pledge. It’s easy to use and a wonderful way to see what you’ve read.

Speaking of seeing what you read…

If you are a book voyeur, you need to follow  Savidge Reads regular feature Other People’s Bookshelves  Simon lets people share their reading lives via their impressive bookshelves and it’s always fascinating.

*

I am not ashamed (okay, maybe I’m a teensy bit ashamed) to admit that I can’t wait to watch this remake of Flowers in the Attic. Teenagers of a certain age devoured this book (come on, admit it!) and this remake looks a bazillion times better than the 1987 movie.

On this day in literary history:

Albert Camus, author of The Plague, was killed in a car accident near Sens in 1960.

And a recommendation:

If you haven’t already discovered her blog, I highly recommend The Perpetual Page-Turner. Jamie updates regularly with interesting (and often interactive) content. If you are a book-lover, she’s definitely one to follow.

Eleven random questions (and answers) w/ thanks to @Rams_English for asking

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I am a sucker for this stuff…comes from my days at Live Journal, I guess. Ken over at Rams English (one of my most favourite education blogs) tagged me to participate in The Eleven Game and as it is blustery outside, who am I to say no?

First, you list 11 random facts about yourself. Second, you answer 11 questions sent your way by the blogger who “tagged” you. Then you create 11 new questions and tag 11 other bloggers. (I’ve listed those bloggers I’d like to respond below and if you do decide to participate  – you are not obligated, of course – please leave a link to your answers in comments so I can go read them.)

Ready. Set. Go.

Eleven Random Facts About Me.

1. I moved around a lot as a kid. By the time I hit high school we’d moved about 30 times. In grade seven alone I went to three different schools. Somehow my mom managed to make each new house and each new place an adventure (I don’t know how she did it, actually). I did manage to stay in the same high school although we switched houses three times. There’s nothing in me that wants to subject my own children to that. I’ve owned two houses and plan to stay-put in house #2 until my kids are – at the very least – through high school.

2. I could eat spaghetti every. single. day. Don’t judge me.

3. I have 500+ books on my To Be Read shelf. I have an addiction. I’d rather have books than clothes (but I don’t read naked, I promise.)

4. I am really, really sentimental. I save letters and cards and ticket stubs, and baby teeth and handkerchiefs and all sorts of other crap. I have ‘the feels’ over long-past relationships. I cry at sappy commercials and when I hear Barbra Streisand sing “The Way We Were” and every time I watch Love, Actually.  Yeah, that kind of stuff.

5. I have three younger brothers, no sisters and I wouldn’t change a thing about that. My brothers are all different from me and each other – but we are pretty close and see each other a lot. (I think my grandmother had something to do with that. See my answer for question #11 below.) I can count on any one of them to help me out in a pinch. They are good, good men.

6.  I would move to Italy in a New York minute. I love the weather, the wine, the landscape and…hello, spaghetti. Yay! (I love New York, too.)

7. I have always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was a little kid. I was the editor of my university newspaper. I’ve written for tv, radio and print media. I’ve had a couple of poems published…but that elusive novel. But hey, I did NaNoWriMo with my writing students in November and I managed to finish (the light version at least – 30,000 words.)

(7a. Am I really this dull?)

Moving along.

8. Cats are my preferred pet. I have the world’s BEST cat, Lily. She loves to snuggle and sleeps with her head on my shoulder every night.

9. I have an embarrassing crush on Ryan Gosling. (He is, however, just one in a long list of celebrity crushes my friends and family have endured  over the years. Ryan’s awesome-sauce though – on so many levels.)

10. I hate the winter. Yes, I live on the East Coast of Canada where it feels like winter about 8 months of the year, but I hate it.

11. We talk a lot of politics in my family (my brothers are junkies) and while I am not someone who enjoys talking about politics, I am going to take a stand and say I think Stephen Harper is a jerk. He doesn’t represent me or my views.

Here are Ken’s questions for me:

1. What is the best PD book and YA book you read in 2013? Why are they so good?

What is this PD book? Professional Development? Um. I don’t think I read a PD book cover to cover in 2013…but I definitely dipped in and out of  Reading Reasons by Kelly Gallagher a lot. I really like his practical approach to literacy. As for YA reading…I read a lot of YA this year. If I had to pick my absolute favourite it might be Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian or maybe David Levithan’s Every Day. I wish we’d had all these choices when I was a teen. I just think kids (all different kinds of kids) see themselves represented in today’s YA fiction way more than we ever did back in the day.

2. It’s Friday night. Which would you prefer — comfort food at home, or fancy dinner out with your friends?

If my bff Michelle is making the comfort food and there’s Pinot Grigio, I’m there. Usually on Friday night I am content to stay home especially in the winter. That said – I do love to go out. And it doesn’t have to be fine dining either (not many opportunities for that in these parts, anyway).

3. If you could spend an airplane flight conversing with any famous writer, living or dead (for the sake of this question and lest you get bored, we will bring the dead to life), who would you choose and why?

This isn’t fair. If I think back over my reading life, there have been so many writers who have had an impact on me…how could I chose just one? Okay. Carolyn Slaughter. (Because I wrote my one and only fan letter to her and she graciously responded and three of her novels –The Banquet, Magdalene and The Story of the Weasel- have stuck with me over many, many years. That said, I’d love to sit beside John Green for a while. (Maybe not a long-haul flight, though – he’s too energetic for an old doll like me.)

4. Have you ever heard of a “meme”? Would you know one if you fell over one?

Absolutely. Like I said above – Live Journal. Me. Me. They’re the ‘slams’ of the Internet generation. Do you know what a slam is? Or a FB before it stood for Facebook?

5. Yellow mustard or Grey Poupon? Hellman’s or Miracle Whip? Margarine or butter? Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

Like ’em both. (It would be pretentious to put Grey Poupon on a hot dog.) Miracle Whip for sure. Butter is better, but I only use it when it’s really gonna count. I’m Canadian so Tim’s (Tim Horton’s). But I don’t drink coffee and donuts are evil…so neither really.

6. What literary character are you most similar to? Explain.

I’ve related to lots of characters over the years. For a couple of decades I felt just like Ellie in Kristin McCloy’s novel Velocity.  Every once in a while I’ll come across a character who speaks to me, but they’re always so much better than I am.

7. Are you addicted to your cellphone? Proud or embarrassed?

Nope. I only use it to communicate with my kids. It’s rarely even on.

8. Congratulations! You’ve won the lottery! Do you continue to teach?

Nope. But not because I don’t like teaching. I’d just rather travel, read, read, read. Maybe open a little bookstore where I could just talk about books with people and drink tea.

9. If you were named principal of your school, what would be your first three executive orders?

More options for kids so they didn’t have to be stuck in classes they have NO INTEREST IN.

Let English teachers decide what texts they want to teach (we have good professional judgement, thanks very much) and make sure there’s $ to buy the books.

Ability to get rid of dead wood teachers.

10. What is your favorite memory from childhood?

Anything and everything to do with my maternal grandparents. They were the quintessential storybook grandparents. My grandfather served in the Royal Navy and had wonderful stories. He adored my grandmother and she adored him and they taught me what a healthy relationship should look like (even if I didn’t quite manage it myself). My grandmother was a wonderful cook and when we lived close enough we had Sunday dinner with them all the time. Everything I did with them, looking back on it, was magical. I miss them.

11. If you could make up any question to answer and call it “Number 11,” what would it be and how would you answer it?

If you had the opportunity to do-over some aspect of your life would you?

Excellent question. 🙂

Trust me, not everything in my life has turned out quite as I thought it might but that said I am not unhappy with where I am today. I have wonderful friends, amazing kids, a job I love and sure, there have been some bumps along the way…but I wouldn’t be who or where I am without the not-so-positive stuff.  So no, I don’t think I’d change any aspect of my life for fear it would alter the final result.

Now my 11 questions for you.

1. What was the highlight of 2013 for you?

2. Describe your perfect day.

3. Name somewhere you would like to visit before you die and explain why.

4. Miley Cyrus: visionary (a la Madonna circa 1984) or skank?

5. What’s one movie you never get sick of watching. What is it about it the allows for repeated viewings?

6. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Who gave it to you?

7. Which author holds pride of place in your personal library? Why?

8. eReader or physical book? Coke or Pepsi? Coffee or tea? summer or winter? red or white (wine, of course)

9. You just found $500 on the road and there’s no way of returning it to its owner. How would you spend it?

10. All-time favourite television show. Why?

11. Which quality do you most appreciate in a friend? Explain.

I tag:

Michelle

Heather

Barb

Simon

Nathan

Luanne

Andrea

Russell Brand (Yeah, I know, eh? But wouldn’t his answers be potentially hysterical?)

Jamie

Kristilyn

Chris

Always Something There to Remind Me – Beth Harbison

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alwaysI’m not a book snob. I like a good ‘chick lit’ book as well as the next gal. I know Beth Harbison is a much-loved, best-selling author of women’s fiction…but Always Something There to Remind Me will have the distinction of being both my first and last book by Ms. Harbison. Blech.

Erin Edwards is a beautiful, successful party planner in Washington D.C., where she lives with her precocious sixteen-year-old daughter, Camilla. She and Camilla’s father are no longer together…not that we know much about their relationship (and not that it matters anyway). Always Something There to Remind Me is Erin’s story to tell and we get the then (in third person) and now (in first person).

Then happened twenty years ago. Sixteen-year-old Erin has her heart set on eighteen-year-old Nate Lawson.

From the first time she’d seen him, his image had been emblazoned on her mind, and when he stepped into view it was as if her mind closed over it like a trap. She didn’t want to think about him, but she couldn’t stop.

His eyes met hers and something clicked.

Ahh. Young love.

Erin and Nate’s teenage romance has all the requisite twists and turns: silly fights, jealousy, sneaking around in the dead of night to have sex on basement floors. But even though Erin really, really, really loves Nate, she still can’t help doing childish things and eventually he dumps her, breaking her heart and leaving her to wallow (however secretly) for the next twenty years.

Fast forward twenty-odd years and she is in a relationship with smart and perfect and handsome Rick who has just asked her to marry him. Erin’s hesitating though because she can’t stop thinking about Nate…even though she hasn’t seen him in forever.

Until the day she’s visiting her mother in the old neighbourhood and she decides to take a walk which invariably leads her past Nate’s parents’ house and – as luck (or fate) would have it – there’s Nate.

I just watched the shock in his eyes as he took me in, and knew mine probably looked the same. Shocked, glad, scared…it was hard to read both what I saw and what I felt.

But I couldn’t look away. And when I saw him try, I realized he couldn’t either. He glanced down, a muscle in his jaw tensed, but then he looked back at me, still unspeaking.

People – you can see where this story is going from like a mile away and that would all be fine except that WHO CARES? Seriously. Erin is annoying as a teen and not even remotely self-aware as an adult. Her daughter, Cam, sounds like a therapist and the treacley ending made my teeth ache.

I bought this book because it sounded like it might have something significant to say about regret and love, but if you want a book that looks backwards at what you’ve left behind, read Losing the Moon instead.

 

 

 

Joyland – Stephen King

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joylandAlthough I devoured Stephen King as a teen and young adult, it’s probably been 15 years since I’ve read a King novel (Bag of Bones, which I loved). I decided to give Joyland a go and it was like settling into a comfortable pair of slippers. (I know, it’s ridiculous to compare the Master of Horror to a pair of comfy slippers, but I’m talking more about that feeling of just knowing that you are in really good hands — which you always are with King.)

Joyland is not a horror story really. It’s the story of Devin Jones, a college student who takes a job at Joyland, a Disney-style amusement park (I imagined Family Kingdom at Myrtle Beach, S.C., which I visited once as a teen) in North Carolina.  Devin tells the story of his summer and autumn at Joyland through the lens of late middle age. He says

That fall was the most beautiful of my life. Even forty years later I can say that. And I was never so unhappy. I can say that, too.

Devin’s unhappiness stems from his recent break-up with his first serious girlfriend, Wendy. Devin has an inkling that their relationship has run its course when Wendy doesn’t even hesitate to encourage him to take the job at Joyland, even though it means that they will be separated for the summer. “It’ll be an adventure,” she tells him, without realizing just how much of an adventure it’ll actually be.

Devin meets a cast of interesting characters at Joyland and in the little seaside town he calls home while he works there. Characters like Lane Hardy (who shows him the ropes around the park) and Rosalind Gold (the resident fortune teller who makes a couple of astute predictions about Devin’s future) and Emmalina Shoplaw (who owns the boarding house where Devin rents a room and who tells him about the murder associated with Joyland’s  Horror House) add a bit of local character to the story.  Other characters, like Mike and his mother, Annie, have a more profound impact on Devin’s life.

Devin Jones calls that summer “the last year of my childhood” and he is right. King expertly balances the story’s nostalgic look back, and his protagonist’s bittersweet reminiscences (“I still want to know why I wasn’t good enough for Wendy Keegan”). Joyland is as much a coming-of-age tale as it is a murder-mystery. Both aspects of the novel will keep you turning the pages.