Each year, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) mines the world of adult publishing to create an awesome assemblage of adult books with teen appeal. The 2011 Alex Awards list acknowledged two of my favorite books published in 2010. Hooray!
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
Doubleday, 2010 – 292 pages
Learn more: http://www.flammableskirt.com/
“Was it so different than the choice of a card-table chair, except my choice meant I could stay in the world and his didn’t?”
Nine year-old Rose Edelstein discovers she can taste the emotions of the people who prepare her food. As the secret sadnesses stirred into her meals by her mother becomes too much for young Rose to swallow, she turns toward prepackaged foods processed by machines, among them Doritos that “ask nothing” of her. This off-kilter and deeply poignant coming of age tale follows this girl with unusual abilities from childhood through adulthood. I was fascinated by the magic realism of Bender’s short story collection The Girl in the Flammable Skirt (a collection I mentioned on my blog last year), and also greatly enjoyed her talents in this full-length work of foodie fiction. If you liked Joe Meno’s The Great Perhaps (which I reviewed in 2009), the quirky Edelsteins may also find a place in your heart.
The House of Tomorrow by Peter Bognanni
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 2010 – 368 pages
Learn more: http://www.peterbognanni.com/
“I played a few songs over and over, trying to understand them. They didn’t have an immediate effect. This was a new species of sound. Something entirely different. The shrill squawks from the guitars. The fuzzy bass guitar parts, and the caustic singing. It didn’t make sense necessarily, but eventually I found the simple melodies sticking in my brain. The fast rhythms and thundering drums made my pulse jump. I could tell that something was happening.”
Seventeen year-old Sebastian Prendergast is homeschooled in a geodesic dome in the middle of Iowa. That’s right. A geodesic dome maintained by his grandmother, who also serves as a tour guide for curious visitors. When family hardships give Sebastian the opportunity to explore life beyond the dome, he finds that he actually kinda likes the outside world. There’s Jared, a sickly and wickedly sarcastic kid who just may become his first real friend. And blinding, throbbing energy of punk rock. And girls who intimidate, intrigue, and confuse him to no end. Bognanni’s descriptions of musical experiences through Sebastian’s eyes are an absolute joy. As I read on I was eager to know what would become of Sebastian and Jared, but I ached with the completion of each chapter because I didn’t ever want the book to end.
The following adult books weren’t published in 2010, but they’ve lingered in my brainmatter months after reading them:
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
Vintage Books, 2000 – 298 pages
Originally published in two volumes as Noruwei no mori by Kodansha Ltd. in 1987
Learn more: http://www.murakami.ch/main_1.html
“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
“Always,” I said. “I’ll always remember.”
One day when he is nearly forty, Toru Wantanabe hears a version of the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” The simple melody triggers a flood of memories of his days as a university student in Tokyo in the late 1960s, which form the basis of this narrative’s many depictions of loves and losses. A film version of this bittersweet, beautiful book was released in Japan in December 2010. The screenplay was written by Ahn Hung Tran and the score was composed by Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead. So far the film has not yet been released in the United States, but I hope I’ll have the chance to see it one day.
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House, 2005 – 448 pages
Learn more: http://curtissittenfeld.com/prep.html
“She opened her mouth but did not immediately speak, and I felt, simultaneously, the impulse to coax the words from her and the impulse to suppress them. I always thought I wanted to know a secret, or I wanted an event to unfold – I wanted my life to start – but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Prep. The bright hues of the cover image make it look a bit airy, but this story about an adult woman looking back on her past as a girl entering a Massachusetts boarding school as a scholarship student from South Bend, Indiana has a certain gravity. Teenage Lee Fiora feels like a bit of an outcast among her wealthy peers and becomes a perceptive observer of the gender, race, and class struggles playing out in the halls and dorms of her school’s campus. The intensity of her friendships felt very, very real and very familiar.
All the Names by José Saramago
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Harcourt, 1999 – 238 pages
Originally published as Todos os nomes in 1997
Learn more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/19/books/19saramago.html
“… indeed it is in the General Cemetery that the results of progress are set out before the eyes of the studious or the merely curious, there are even those who say that a cemetery like this is a kind of library which contains not books but buried people, it really doesn’t matter, you can learn as much from people as from books.”
All the Names is the story of Senhor José, a low-level clerk in an unnamed city’s Central Registry. Birth, death, and marriage certificates are kept in these labyrinthian archives, and Senhor Jóse clerical duties are fairly humdrum. His only interest is maintaining a secret clipping file of famous people, but everything changes when he stumbles across the birth certificate of a young woman to whom he feels an inexplicable connection. Told in the late Saramago’s recursive, run-on-filled style, Senhor Jóse’s quest to learn more about this stranger is a tale of both darkness and light. The philosophical and humorous prose somewhat reminded me of Paul Auster‘s early work. Many thanks to Myrrh Larsen for recommending this one during a warm, tea-filled afternoon when I visited Portland last spring!
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