Fiction Friday (141)

 

I'm the kind of person that always has a fairly extensive list of books that I want to read, some of which linger there for years and others that find ways to leapfrog themselves to the top. After having avoided Middle Grade for the better part of a year, I was swept up again with Hollowpox and since a new Nevermoor book is a ways away, I decided to move into a series that I felt I'd been neglecting...a mistake that has now been corrected.

Keeper of the Lost Cities by Shannon Messenger

(Aladdin , 2012)

Sophie is not like the other kids in school, and not simply because she's 12 years old and a senior in High School. She's always known she's different, but until one fateful field trip that leads to a strange encounter, Sophie has no idea just how different she truly is. And so begins the epic tale that has already spanned nine bestselling novels about a group of friends who inhabit a world that exists within our reach but beyond our understanding.

I had been unaware of this Middle Grade series until rather recently and finally found time to dive in. Though certainly in the Harry Potter realm (a school for talented magical kids, a hidden secret enemy, and a main character of destiny) it doesn't really feel the same, though the same fans are certainly reading it. The key to any great middle grade fantasy is that the characters, while having adventures one could only dream of, still suffer with the same dilemma's that readers can identify with. 

There's a clear reason why these books have been so popular for the last decade and I enjoyed every single one of the 450+ pages of this story...so much so, that I'm moving on to the second book on the same day I finished the first. 

Fiction Friday (117)

 

I recently took over running the book club at the library where I work, a book club that has been going for over twenty years and is made up entirely of woman who are significantly older than myself. The books they read are books they vote on, so needless to say, they choices are not titles I would typically pick up. In addition, the books are primarily all somewhat contemporary. As a general rule, I don't read much if any contemporary adult fiction, so it's been interesting to get into the books. This is the first one that I feel worthy of sharing with you all.

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

(Ballentine 2017)

In the not so distant past, just over 80 years ago, there was an orphanage called the Tennessee Children's Home Society that matched wealthy families with children in need of a home. But what if those children weren't in need of a home? What if they had loving families and were stolen from those families and essentially sold to the highest bidder?  

Told in alternating time periods, Lisa Wingate's powerful novel is horrifyingly based on the very real situation that many children of the time period found themselves in. A journalist at heart, Wingate based her story on the mountain of evidence that had been uncovered to reveal how the orphanage had been run like a racketeering empire, using a network of legislators, police, and social workers to take children from poor families, preferably attractive children and place them into the homes of the well-connected, who were lied to and left in the dark about the circumstances that brought these children into the home's custody.

May (formerly Rill) was twelve when the police took her and her siblings from their boat home on the river and delivered them to the abusive home. As she struggles, and fails, to keep her family together, we experience the heartbreak and injustice of her situation...a situation which she hid until a present day granddaughter of May's youngest sister uncovers the truth. 

May's story is told with tenderness and grit, bringing her 12 year old self to life in the spirit of Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird. The modern day story reads more like a cleverly unfolding tale of family intrigue, which feels slightly less literary, but doesn't detract from the overall experience.

Fiction Friday (50)

It's April. I'm embarrassed that this is the first Fiction Friday post of the year. So much for my trying to increase my reading. Well, not exactly. I've read mountains of academic articles and textbooks in past four months, but I would never bore you all with those readings. I also suffered a setback when I spent a month reading a book that I just couldn't get into enough to finish, a habit that I very rarely partake in. But all that aside, the Fiction Friday file is back and here is the first filing of the year...and it's a great one. Hopefully these posts will increase in frequency from now on. Enjoy. 

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges
(Grove Press, 1994)

This collection of short fiction was my first introduction to Borges, which is a little odd that it took me so long to come around to reading his work given my love of this kind of writing and obsession with Grove Press material from the time period. But alas, it was my introduction and I have to say the introduction went well.

I was hooked from the first story about a strange encyclopedia which seemed to chronicle an alternate history of worlds and later fell in love with the story of Babel and a circular mystery piece which reminded me of Robbe-Grillet's Erasers. If my descriptions sound cryptic and a little disjointed, well that's because Borges' writing is cryptic and a little disjointed, which is precisely what I like about it.

I've encountered similar writing styles in novels and am pleased to see it work so well in shorter works. In some cases it works better, but my novel obsessed self craved more in some of the works. I wanted the irregularities to continue for hundreds of pages and dig deeper into the imaginative ideas presented. But that is also the genius of the short format...leaving the reader to wonder and extend the story through his or her own imagination.

Star Wars on the Mind

So I woke up insanely early in the morning as I've grown accustomed to doing ever since my daughter joined the family. Only, when I woke this morning, she was sound asleep. So in the moments before I fell back asleep, my brain turned to thoughts of Star Wars as it often has since I was about six years old. There I was, laying awake in the dark, thinking about midi-chlorians and thinking, this is my life?

Midi-chlorians are perhaps the most hated aspect of Star Wars, with the exception of Jar Jar Binks. I admit to also being perplexed at the inclusion of these microscopic organisms in Episode I, thinking that Lucas was trying to jump on the current DNA obsession of the time. It seemed pointless to talk about these things and unnecessary to use them as a way of justifying Anakin's importance in the history of The Force. I never gave it much more thought beyond that...until this morning.

I had a revelation about it today and have come to the conclusion that it's just another wonderful aspect of the story of a galaxy far, far away. This is how I figure it...back in Episode I, the Galactic Senate was still operating, though barely. There was still peace and prosperity. It was operating under the protection of the Jedi Council and the government. It was a developed and central organization, and therefore it makes sense that science was important. 

It was only after the dark reign of the Empire and the breakdown of government that mysticism took over. And without the Jedi around, and the mention of them being shunned, their existence became something of legend and myth. The science was forgotten, but that doesn't mean the science doesn't exist. The midi-chlorians serve as a metaphor for the deterioration of science in the deterioration of democracy. 

So concludes my reflection of middle-of-the-night thoughts.

In a Dream Far, Far Away...

While I have not yet seen The Force Awakens, I've recently spent some time in a galaxy far away. On the night the new film opened, I dreamt that I was in Star Wars: A New Hope. I was Luke, which is unusual seeing as how Luke was never my favorite character, it was always Han...but if I'm being honest, I've always been more Luke than Han. 

In the dream, I was with Obi Wan on the Death Star. We were face to face with Darth Vader and Obi Wan was attempting to bring Anakin back from the dark side. He was telling Darth how he'd accomplished everything he set out to do, and asked if things were really any better. Eventually he convinced Darth that his path on the dark side was finished, and the two of them went off to deal with the Emperor. Meanwhile, I was to wait in disguise as a maintenance man on the Death Star, accompanied with droids. The whole time, I was kept thinking to myself, this isn't how it happened before, and the idea of seeing how an alternative Star Wars would play out was the most exciting thing. 

Unfortunately I woke up before the saga ended. But it certainly awakened the excitement for the new film, which had already been in full bloom. It just goes to prove what I've always said, that the stories that are inside of us are more interesting that the stories of our lives most times. Long live fiction.

You Wait There, I'll Be Right Back...

The other day I was thinking about what happens to my characters when I'm not working on a manuscript. Since I've been writing two things at once, I let one project sit for a few days while I finished up the other. But I kept reminding myself where I'd left my two main characters, so that it was constantly fresh in mind.

I'd left them sitting on a bed. I kept picturing them in this state of suspended animation. Like toys set up for a permanent scene. A museum piece, frozen in time. And then I come marching back in and expect to them to just pick up where they left off. 

It's a fascinating thing, this fiction stuff.

Where Do We Go Now?

On a grey and wet, autumn-like afternoon yesterday, I did the best thing to do on such afternoons and lost myself in fiction. In other words, I went to the movies to see Prometheus. I can't remember the last time I've looked forward to a movie with as much anticipation as this and overall, I thought it delivered. Of course it looked great and sounded great, and the story was also intriguing. And when it really comes down to it, story is what I'm always longing for.

I've always believed that a great sci-fi movie leaves you with as many questions as it answered. It's a genre designed to make the viewer, or reader, ponder the bigger questions in life that sometimes feel too big to think about in a vacuum. It's easier to think about abstract concepts like where do we come from within the context of fiction. I felt Prometheus did a fantastic job of sparking the imagination while still allowing the story to live on long after I left the theater. 

I'm also a sucker for in-depth development of fictional worlds and mythology. Prometheus expanded the Alien mythology exponentially. By the end, I felt they left the blueprints for a universe as vast as the one found in Star Trek. It also stayed true to the Alien formula, but not in a way that felt stale...more in a "yeah, I missed these kind of characters" way.

Cylon Occupied Nightmares

The past few nights, I've had three dreams where I find myself on Cylon Occupied Caprica after the fall. I'm strangely attached to this abandoned world where life in the twelve colonies came to a sudden end. A world left somewhat intact, but completely unlivable.

The dreams have played out somewhat like video games where I wander, vaguely aware of danger everywhere but encountering very little first hand. And though the dreams have been nightmares, I feel oddly at home on Caprica. Naturally this means I've been watching too much Battlestar Galatica again. But I blame the BBC for that.

I think one of the strongest compliments a writer can get is when a reader admits they had a dream about his or her story. The world you created suddenly feels more real because you know that now it exists in more than one person's imagination. It is no longer just some place you made up--it's a real place where others can go.

I could live in a place like Caprica, but I could never live in a world without fiction.

Broadcasting My Sympathies

There are certain phrases, when presented in certain contexts, and especially on certain days when things are generally running afoul, that really bother me. One such bit of offensive language is when someone makes the claim Oh, you could never imagine how it feels. After all, my job is just that, to imagine how it feels.

Last week I wrote about an undercurrent of opposition I've encountered when it comes to writers voicing themselves through a character of a different gender. Similarly, I often see authors attacked for stretching to write about a situation he or she may never have actually gone through. I can't help but think these critical readers confuse truth with authenticity.

Now, I'm not justifying someone who does a hack job on a potentially rich topic. If it sounds phony, the writer failed. But to say one can never fully imagine the thoughts and feelings an individual may go through in a given situation is not only insane, but also disturbing to me. What a horrible world it suggests, one where no one has any sense of genuine empathy.

Limiting authors to telling stories that only relate to their own lives is basically a call to the end of fictional writing. It's a plea for memoirs, which frankly, I can't abide. Memoirs are a place for people to talk about themselves and get the reader to feel for the individual. Novels are supposed to be a place where readers can share experiences with characters in order to gain a deeper understanding of others and the workings of the world.

A good author can very well imagine how it feels. You may not like what we imagine, but please never say we can't do it.