Just 'cause I haven't been reviewing doesn't mean I haven't been reading—so now here it is, four reviews in one. Of course we can only hope I remember the first ones well enough to talk about them. We'll soon see.
Susan Patton's The Higher Power of Lucky is this year's winner of the Newberry Award. Although I've read more gripping Newberry winners, Higher Power had several good and insightful moments. The story, briefly: ten-year-old Lucky is the child of a man who never wanted children and a woman who, while out walking after a storm, splashed through a puddle and was electrocuted. Lucky is now being taken care of my her father's first wife, who came from France to do so. Lucky now dreams of permanence, a wish well expressed when Lucky thinks, "The difference between a Guardian and an actual mom is that a mom can't resign. A mom has the job for life." (page 4)
It strikes me that a good writer for children has to be able to think like a child. Ms Patton seems to do so quite well—IMHO—in the following: "Lucky and HMS Beadle walked up Short Sammy's path, which was not the kind of path you could stray from because it had old car tires along each side, and each tire had a cactus growing in its center, which made sure you went carefully along straight ahead because your feet were entirely positive of the way with a path like that." (page 55) Or maybe the sentence was merely another expression of Lucky's desire for permanence and order in her own life.
Elizabeth Hyde's The Abortionist's Daughter was a pretty cool whodunit. I found it pretty obvious who the killer was, but getting to the point where his/her identity is revealed was fun reading. (Perhaps a really good surprise when the book began made me expect less predictable events throughout.)
I read Larry Doyle's I Love You, Beth Cooper because Entertainment Weekly said it was a book demanding/screaming/something to be turned into a movie. Always on the lookout for ideas that would make someone say something like about my writing, I opened I Love You eagerly—and was disappointed. IMHO the writer was trying way too hard to be funny and the resulting humor was forced. Then, surprisingly, he caught my attention with "he grinned at Becky Reese much like Frankenstein's Monster grinned at that flower girl before the misunderstanding." (page 19) "Misunderstanding"? What a great word choice.
I became a happy camper and was laughing out loud when I reached "Being beaten up meant a little meant bruising but no breaking, twisting but no tearing, and loss of less than a tablespoon of blood. Denis (protagonist) suspected Kevin (Beth Cooper's military boyfriend) would not adhere to these guidelines, or even, based on news reports, the Geneva Convention. Given what the military did not even consider abuse, Denis shuddered at what might constitute a little beating under the U.S. Army Code of Conduct." (page 79) Then, sadly, the book drifted back into tedious and boring.
Bottom line? I Love You, Beth Cooper can scream all it wants; I wouldn't turn it into a movie. Or even go see it if someone else does.
Eons ago I gave H. P. Lovecraft a try and found him boring in his best moments. Recently his short story "The Call of Cthulhu" was recommended so I bought a collection of Lovecraft short stories. I made it through "Cthulhe," then threw the book across the room. In the future, if I have a yen for lengthy descriptions, convoluted sentences and no dialogue, I'll happily return to Poe or Hawthorne.
