Spud by John van de Ruit

Spud
by John van de Ruit
Razorbill, 2007
331 pages

It's late and I probably shouldn't be writing this right now, but I doubt I'll sleep until I get some of this out of my system. This book has done its level best to destroy me, and I'm fighting back. Talk about reading outside one's comfort zone.

It's hard to talk about this. Did I love this book? Certainly parts of it. Did I hate this book? I'm not sure, but there were parts I think I can fairly say I hated. And whether I love it or hate it, this book has caused me no end of trouble since I picked it off the shelf, a lot of that my own damn fault.

To begin with, I did a thing that no librarian should do: I recommended this book to my brand-spanking-new after school club without having read it myself first. Now, to be fair, it is highly recommended by many whose opinions I respect, and its "target age" is between 12-18, which puts it right about in the ballpark for a book club of 12-13 year-olds. What I should have recognized, and did pretty much from the outset once I had started reading it is that my particular group of 12-13 year-olds isn't ready for Spud. I am a proponent of reading fearlessly, I am not a fan of censorship, I think there is space for controversy in every librarian's job. I also think that reading the right book at the wrong time can be a disaster for the reader and the book. (See: my long-held hatred of Bridge to Terabithia.) My librarian-spidey-senses are telling me that for at least five of the nine kids in the group, this is really not the right time.

So now, of course, I have to go back to them with a mea culpa. I plan on being totally honest with them: I recommended this book based on the information I had, but I hadn't actually read it, and now that I have I'm not comfortable with the choice. They're welcome to read it on their own, but I've got a couple other options for our book club that will scratch the same itch. (Schooled by Gordon Korman will be arriving just in the nick of time, I hope.)

And that's just the first bit of trouble that Spud has caused me.

Summary time!

John Milton is a very bright thirteen-year-old prepubescent boy heading off to a very prestigious all-boys boarding school in South Africa in 1990. While he is there for his first year, Nelson Mandela will be released, apartheid will start to unravel, he will fall in love with two different girls (not counting Julia Roberts), and encounter sex, great literature, death, cricket, theatre, vicious enemies, and good friends. And we have access to it all, because John "Spud" Milton is a crack diarist.

And when I say all, I mean all. Spud lets us in to his very deepest thoughts and desires, as well as chronicling everything he sees around him, leaving nothing out. It's crass, tender, brilliant, occasionally sad, often completely horrifying, and wickedly, wickedly funny. It's easy to read, even when Spud is going places I fear to tread, and he makes such an engaging, sympathetic narrator that right from the first entries the reader is rooting for him.

It's an interesting book to read right now with the bullying issue so prevalent in the media. As with Spud's friend Gecko, I cannot imagine a worse Hell than an all-boys boarding school; Spud is far more resilient than I could imagine being, far more brave (despite seeing himself a coward), and far more humane than I could imagine being under the conditions he describes. This isn't the happy boarding school world of Hogwarts. This is a viciously mean-minded place, where your friends are just as likely to turn on you as your enemies and going for help is considered a punishable betrayal. There's chronic physical and sexual assault, verbal taunts, daily humiliations... it's foul. And reading about it leaves one vaguely horrified because one knows that it's not really made up. This stuff happened. Happens. What is amazing is that anyone can come out of a situation like that and not end up a sociopath. It does become abundantly clear why kids in bad situations like this don't stand up for the bullied, though, or go to adults for help. They simply can't.

It's not all terror and misery, and Spud manages to walk just this side of the line of being the smallest and most pathetic, easiest to pick on. He's got characteristics that give him some street cred, despite his size and beautiful soprano voice. He's likable, he's clever, he's brave enough. He's a good cricketer and he's got some sort of attraction for the female sex, which while being more trouble than it's worth is also his ticket to being accepted by his peers. And it's refreshing to read a book directed at kids between 12-18 that deals so frankly and honestly with the physical as well as the mental aspects of budding sexuality. Spud doesn't think about sex all the time, but it's not that far from his thoughts ever, which feels about right for both males and females of his age.

Happily for the reader, Spud is really, really funny. Not always on purpose, but he's generally pretty good at seeing the amusing side of things, too, so the reader is laughing with him rather than at him, as he incredulously reports the madness of events around him. His family is utterly dysfunctional; his father is a drunken, paranoid wannabe who is somehow fairly harmless in spite of himself. (Talking point for book club discussion: his father is pretty racist, and I use the word "harmless" -- but even if his father is totally ineffectual and a laughing-stock, is he truly "harmless" in his bigotry?) His grandmother, "affectionately" called Wombat, is convinced everyone is stealing from her -- things like her yoghurt. As Spud says, he's pretty capable of taking what school throws at him because he's used to the complete insanity of the world. And Spud is also compassionate and considerate, trying to do the right thing while maintaining his own grip on sanity, which he (not unreasonably) tends to think he's losing at various points.

John van de Ruit, as one might guess, has inhabited Spud so thoroughly that he disappears into the text. There doesn't seem to be an author, just a kid writing in his diary. Which is mostly good, but can also be a bit difficult in that Spud sometimes can't or won't go places an author could; the depth and seriousness sometimes gets undercut or ignored. Sometimes it feels like it gets undercut for laughs, but one could read that as Spud trying to use humour to cope.

The ending, which I absolutely will not spoil for you, felt very sour compared to the rest of the story because the crisis event happens so close to the end of term that Spud doesn't really get a chance to work through it to this reader's satisfaction. Sitting back a bit, I realize that it would be unfair to ask Spud to be more thorough in his analysis and recovery, because he's a 14-year-old kid writing in a dairy. So it's authentic, perhaps, but it's abrupt. I felt like I was left hanging. And not in a way that leaves me clamouring for a sequel; it's not that kind of hanging. I'd say more but I'll start to give things away. However, I'm writing this review at midnight even though smallfry is asleep and I should be too, because I needed some time to deal with what happened.

Do I think you should read this book? Yes. Read this book and then come back here and talk to me about it. This is a great, refreshing, darkly funny, extremely-well-written book. As you can probably tell from the length of this entry, I want to talk about this book. I think there's incredible amounts of fodder for discussion here, and perhaps someday I will take a crack at it with a book club, when the time is right.

UPDATE: Since writing this, I've had my book club meeting, and explained my discomfort to the kids; they promptly asked why, so I explained that too. Then instead of telling them we weren't doing the book, I said I wasn't going to tell them they had to read it, but they could choose to read it or Schooled. Of the seven at the meeting, two took Spud home, and five took Schooled. Kids are the best judges of their own comfort levels. I'm looking forward to our discussion!

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone

by Wilkie Collins

Oxford University Press, 1999 (originally published 1868)

552 pages

This book took me forever to read. Happily, not in a bad way -- I've just been experiencing a definite slow-down in reading speed and down-turn in interest. Again. Sigh. It will change, I am sure. All that said, I have rarely stuck with a book as long as I did with The Moonstone, and there are several reasons I did.

First of all, it's excellent. This is an entertaining, interesting, easy read. It does start out a bit slowly -- a lot slowly, in a lot of ways -- but never once did "slow" equate to "boring." That's a feat in itself. Second, it was written (as @xicanti reminded me on Twitter, when I was feeling like a reading lump) as a serial. It works really well with periodic breaks in the reading. I never felt like I'd forgotten what was happening, or who people were, or what clues had gone before. This is with sometimes several days between picking it up, or even a week. I always settled back in quickly and easily. And that was really cool. In fact, it's kind of an ideal sort of read for me right now -- something really short that can be read in a matter of hours, or something of an indeterminate length that I can pick up and put down as necessary without feeling lost.

So! For those of you who don't know, The Moonstone is a mystery. It is often listed as the original mystery/detective novel. Wilkie Collins, that fascinating man, wrote it in 1868 as a serial published in his friend Charles Dickens' publication All the Year Round. A fantastic diamond of sinister, possibly cursed origins is left to Rachel Verinder, a young noblewoman, by her nefarious uncle upon his death. She wears it the night of her twenty-first birthday party, despite her mother's, cousin's, and closest servants' wishes. That night, it is stolen from her cabinet by a thief unknown. This sets into motion a series of dramatic events around the household, a tangle of relationships, events, and clues that even the greatest detective in England is hard-pressed to unravel.

As a fan of mysteries, particularly cozies and Sherlock Holmes, it was really quite fun to see some of the conventions pop up, knowing that this was probably the first or one of the first instances, and knowing that the original readers would have been drawn in to the twists and turns of the labyrinthine plot. At this point, I've read enough in the genre that some of the outcomes were clear to me at the beginning (not all, though!) and yet that didn't deter from my enjoyment.

Some of the specific conventions I noticed were, of course, the red herrings -- so many! And so skillfully deployed. The closed circle of suspects, all available and under suspicion thanks to a dinner party the night before the theft. And the detective! Sergeant Cuff, a man who could easily have been Sherlock Holmes' grandfather. He clearly deserves some of the credit for The Great Man: his slightly off-putting manner, his careful observation of the evidence and his attention to the slightest detail, his exasperation with the local constables, his clear intellectual superiority. There was a dramatic twist near the end, and a denouement that satisfied all the remaining questions.

But there were also things that made this read fresh and interesting. For one thing, I had no idea before I started that this was an epistolary novel, in the form of reports written for the record by the participants in the case. Collins' attention to his characters' voices was meticulous. There are several different narrators, though the longest portion of the tale is told by Gabriel Betteredge, the chief steward of the manor house in which the theft takes place. We can get a lot from what Betteredge tells us, even when he doesn't realize what he is revealing -- and he also reveals a lot about himself as a person, in what he says, how he says it, and what he doesn't say. This is the case for each of the narrators, but especially for Betteredge, from whom we hear the most. He can be sexist, extremely xenophobic, and astonishingly self-absorbed -- but he's a fully-developed, fully-rounded character and I found myself liking him for his good points while still being aware of his flaws. Given that his flaws are a difficult sort for me to get over, it's no small feat that I generally didn't mind spending time in his head.

Contained within these narratives are some surprisingly modern views. Collins' female characters are strong; and if they seem a little melodramatic, well, the entire book is written to be a bit over-the-top (it was a sensational novel, after all.) The foreign characters, the Indians, are treated with respect by the author as well -- they are operating under different cultural mores than the narrators, but they treat those they meet with dignity and respect except for those who stand in their way. It's not an entirely flattering treatment, but it's a startlingly even-handed one for the time. The treatment of the character Ezra Jennings, the mysterious and strange doctor's assistant, is even more compassionate and clearly out of character for the times; the poor man is deeply shunned by all in the small rural community where he resides. In Jennings we get the impression that Collins is directly challenging commonly held attitudes and conceptions on class and social conformity; the man is clearly an intelligent, compassionate, decent human being who has been hounded his entire life by a dark secret in his past that has destroyed his present. Held against him by some of the characters and others in the town is not so much his past but his odd appearance, his lack of roots in the local area, and his mysterious lack of history.

Sadly, sometimes one wonders if we've really changed all that much.

Highly, highly recommended book. Don't let the fact that Collins was a contemporary of Dickens scare you off, if you are (as I am) extremely wary of Dickens and other authors who were paid by the word/installment. Collins was an extremely talented writer, and The Moonstone reads easily. It's fun to read for its history and as a snapshot of English society, and even more fun for a fan of mystery and detective novels. But it stands on its own merits as well, and it's easy to see why it has stood the test of time.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
The Dial Press, 2008
274 pages

Though you've likely already heard this from many other people by this point, I must add my voice to the chorus: this is a really lovely book. It is funny, sweet, moving, and sometimes deeply sad. I think one of the things I appreciated most about it, though, was how the humour and healing were injected after the darkest moments; the dark parts were not glossed over, but they were moved past once they'd had their time. Some of the story seems a little improbable; I don't know how closely it follows what really happened on Guernsey and the other Channel Islands during the war, but I imagine many of the facts about life in an occupied territory were quite closely observed. I also imagine that some of the people during the Occupation handled themselves with the grace and aplomb of the Literary Society.

Juliet is the author of a successful series of humour columns, published throughout the war (World War II) under a pen name. She's working her way through a book tour now that the war is over, and stressing over what to write next. Simply put, this is the story, told in letters, telegrams, and a few journal entries, of how Juliet finds her next book topic. Underneath, it's a story of survival and grace under terrible conditions, of love of reading and literature, of how reaching out to strangers can have unexpected and wonderful consequences. It's also a story of a community grieving and trying to heal itself after deep hurts have been inflicted upon it.

The writing is skillful. I have come to the conclusion that I am extremely predisposed to like epistolary novels, but it's not always easy to give a full sense of character through letters only, or a full sense of plot without it coming off as contrived. Books that do it, and do it well, make me so happy. This one -- it's like unwrapping a gift. I prefer the slower storyline and reveal in an epistolary novel versus a regular novel, because in the regular novel I'm far more likely to become impatient with a slower pace. With letters, I'm happy to follow wherever the writer wishes to take me.

It's not so hard with these characters, as charming and full as they are. I dearly liked Juliet, and I missed many of the Society's letters when (small spoiler!) Juliet makes it to Guernsey. I was impressed with how large and diverse the cast of characters was, and how I was able to keep track of who was who and probably would have been able to even without names attached. They had distinctive voices and styles.

My only complaint is that there is one point, near the very end, when we switch from letters to a secondary character's journal, and I would much have preferred to see the events from the point of view of the participants themselves. So I was quite disappointed, but I think I understand how difficult it might have been to contrive for Juliet, for example, to have written about the events in a letter.

Overall, a really gentle and lively book, well worth its accolades. Very glad to have read it. Recommended to fans of war stories who are not really fans of gore; also for those who like epistolary novels, humour, and a slightly slower pace to their story.

*re-read* Sorcery & Cecelia by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

As stated, I've been pottering my way through some of Wrede's books because I really, really need them right now. I've been forced to read some things outside of my usual list due to training, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because it's for a reader's advisory workshop and so widening my reading circle will be very helpful. It's bad because I hate being forced to read anything for any purposes (I now have a little over a week in which to read To The Lighthouse, for example, sigh, and I've been strangely slow about finding myself a copy...) and it tends to make me very irritable. So I have promised myself that for each book I read that I must, I can slip another one in there that I want. Books like Wrede's Regency England fantasies are such a perfect balm.

I read and reviewed Sorcery and Cecelia not that long ago, so I'm not going to go into a summary of it this time. But it was just as delightful the second time through, which justifies the purchase. And also, in my mind, justifies the purchase of the next two books in this series sight unseen. Ahem.

This is partially a book about effective communication. Cecy and Kate communicate very effectively with each other. They explain what is happening, they bounce ideas off each other, they lay out their theories and have a strong back and forth conversation. Something I noticed a lot more this time was how little the men, specifically James and Thomas, communicate to Kate and Cecy. And that many of the problems the girls cause (because they are both troublemakers) stem from this lack of communication. They are basically fumbling about, completely in the dark, using snippets of second-hand information and scraps thrown to them by the men, to try and figure out what the heck is happening -- this, though their stake in the game is entirely as large as either James' or Thomas'.

At first it irked me how little the men seemed to think of Cecy and Kate (as it clearly irked the girls, too) but then I realized that this is the more realistic scenario, for that time period; men and women didn't talk except in highly structured, socially-acceptable ways. The men wouldn't have thought that either Cecy or Kate could grasp the severity of the situation, or come up with any useful way to help, since they're just women, after all. Thomas even calls Kate "my dear half-wit" for a significant portion of the novel, though he cuts that out (thankfully, because that also irritated me as much as it irritated Kate) once it becomes quite clear that she's not vapid at all. Once he actually starts talking to her, rather than just deciding things for her. I thought, incidentally, that it was hilarious that she completely wrecked a plan of his simply because he hadn't bothered to tell her anything about it, though she played a significant part in it.

It is all quite infuriating as a reader, to want to sit down and shake the characters until they just talk to each other. It helps that it's infuriating for the girls, too, and it helps even more that it becomes very clear that it's a losing game when people don't talk to each other. Wrede uses the time period and societal conventions very effectively to showcase this point.

So, yes. I have ordered both the next books. I'm looking forward to reading them when they come in; it should be a riot.

Sorcery & Cecelia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Any book that contains the following quote in the first paragraph is going to get my attention, and most likely, affection:

I wish Aunt Elizabeth were not so set against my having a Season this year. She is still annoyed about the incident with the goat, and says that to let the pair of us loose on London would ruin us both for good, and spoil Georgy's chances into the bargain.

Sorcery and Cecelia, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot is just so ... charming, is the best word I find to describe it, but that's not enough. It's charming, it's intelligent, it's funny, it's mysterious, it's clever, it's just so damned delightful I can't quite wrap my head around my enormous, immediate, and unconditional love for this book. I loved this book so much the first time through that I've started it a second time, really-truly, which is the first time that's happened since the advent of this blog. I used to do it a lot more when I wasn't trying to expand my reading horizons as much as I am now. But I just can't get enough of this one.

First thing to note: I am a Patricia C. Wrede fan, and have been since grade seven when I absently picked up a little book called Dealing with Dragons from my homeroom teacher's classroom library. I love her sense of humour. I have not read nearly enough that she has written; The Thirteenth Child is on my list, but I haven't gotten to that yet. I've read the entire Enchanted Forest Chronicles, and a little book called The Raven Ring which I read the first time through and didn't quite like because it was, in many ways, way over my head. I've read it a couple of times since and enjoyed it much more with each reading.

I had never even heard of Caroline Stevermer, but you can be sure I'll be keeping an eye out for her other stuff, too.

This is a) a fantasy novel; b) an epistolary novel, and c) a Regency romance in the style of Jane Austen. That is to say, it was a pretty much guaranteed hit for me, although having had experiences where I should love a book and really didn't, I went into this one with some trepidation. Cecelia (Cecy) and Katherine (Kate) are cousins, living comfortably on an estate in Essex. Kate has been taken to London by their Aunt Charlotte to be presented for her first Season with her younger (and prettier) sister Georgina. Cecy has been kept back at home, ostensibly because of the goat, and is to have her coming out Season the year following. Things start to go a little wonky when a witch attempts to murder Kate and Cecy meets a lovely young woman who seems to attract more than her fair share of suitors. Luckily for these two wonderful young women, they have their wits about them and a speedy post to deliver their detailed and often highly amusing letters to each other.

I think Wrede and Stevermer must have had a riot writing this book. It was great fun to read, and it's the kind of great fun that only happens when the authors themselves have thoroughly enjoyed producing the work. I have only two little quibbles, and both come in towards the end; one is a major spoiler, although you'll likely see it coming somewhere just after the midway mark. It has to do with the villains, and villainous motives, and which villain has which motives, and which villain turns out to be more effective. I think it was a little cliched and that was a bit disappointing. The other was that there is a bit of a deus ex machina that appears close to the end. It's a well-integrated one, but I don't think that lets it entirely off the hook. That said, who cares. There are too many other things to like.

Both Cecy and Kate are lovely characters, similar in the ways that relatives with common experience who are also dear friends may be, but different enough that they each have a distinctive voice and distinctive mode of action and thought. They are supportive of each other, and often encourage each other. They will also discourage actions they consider problematic (but they don't always listen to the other's advice.) They work things out together, and I love that. The secondary characters are each fleshed out quite well, as well, through conversations the two report having, through their observations, and through their occasional funny and Austen-esque gossip. The secondary characters are varied and interesting, though not always fully fleshed out, as one might expect in a novel told in letters.

I am on the lookout for a copy of this book now, and consider it a must-have for my collection. It's been on my radar for a while now, but it was Cecelia's (no relation) blog that finally pushed me over the edge. If you're looking for something light and utterly charming, you cannot go wrong with this book.