Home » Posts tagged "grief in fiction" (Page 13)

Book Review: My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

Atria Books, 2016

ISBN-13: 9781501160486

Available: Hardcover/Kindle edition/Audio Download/Compact Disc

 

Elsa is seven, “going on eight”. Her world looks bleak: she is too mature for her age. and is bullied and friendless at school.  Elsa’s parents are divorced.  She lives with her mother, who is tied up in her work and has little time for Elsa.  Fortunately, she has a tight bond with her grandmother.  Granny is seventy-seven, a retired doctor with a mysterious past.  For many years, she travelled the world helping others caught up in disasters, but spent little time at home raising Elsa’s mother.

Every evening at bedtime, Granny tells Elsa tales about a fantastic world called the “Land-of-Almost-Awake.”  That world has kingdoms with battling armies, princesses, heroes and beasts.  Granny and Elsa have a secret language.  One kingdom is named “Miamas” because Elsa called pajamas, “mjamas”, when she was younger.

As the story progresses, the separation between the fantasy world and the real world becomes obscured.  Elsa, her mother, and Granny live in separate flats in an old apartment building.  Tenants in the other flats are cantankerous and quirky.  Some might have superpowers and unknown connections to Granny’s past.  Most are human, but two tenants, who are never seen, might not be.  They are a hooded giant known as  “Monster”, and the “Wurse”, a huge, hairy canine.

Then Granny dies, leaving Elsa the task of delivering letters of apology to some of the tenants, as well as other people she has known.  Can Elsa evade malevolent creatures from the fantasy world she created with Granny as she tries to carry out Granny’s wishes?  Will she learn who the tenants really are. and what Granny really did in her other life?

My Grandmother Told Me To Tell You She’s Sorry perceptively and sympathetically portrays an exceptional, young girl’s struggle to fit into a world in which she is too mature for her peers, yet excluded from the secrets of adults.  When her Granny dies, Elsa loses her sanctuary and must try to reconcile her fantasy world with reality.  The characters are well drawn, and the plot moves along with an appropriate pace.  Fredrik Backman has written two other novels, A Man Called Ove and Britt Marie Was Here.  These novels also describe the dilemmas and problems misfits encounter in the world of ordinary people. Highly recommended for older children, teens, and adults.

Reviewed by: Robert D. Yee

Posted on October 6, 2017 by , Reply

Book Review: Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology edited by Ellen Datlow

Pegasus Books, 2017

ISBN: 9781861773216

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

This anthology of avian-themed fiction, edited by Ellen Datlow, presents a fantastic collection of short stories by some of the best authors in the horror genre. Each story features, as the anthology title indicates, birds that act as agents of death, sentinels, communicators, and more. The authors present the darkness the bird realm can represent, and present unique philosophical questions and uncomfortable answers in this collection.

Datlow has collected some of the best writers for this anthology. Authors include Sandra Kasturi, Nicholas Royle, Seanan McGuire, Paul Tremblay, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Bowes, Alison Littlewood, Jeffrey Ford, Mike O’Driscoll, Usman T. Malik, Stephen Graham Jones, A.C. Wise, M. John Harrison, Pat Cadigan, Livia Llewellyn, and Priya Sharma.

There is not a single story in this anthology that does not linger with the reader. A struggling academic studying owls gets too close to his research subjects, much to his wife’s concern, and ending in a deadly discovery. What happens to him will change his family forever. A young girl obsessively counts the types of birds she sees throughout the day, and interprets the numbers to mean certain things will happen. She’s never wrong. A grieving widow begins to relate to the herons on her property, who help her deal with the death of her husband. The birds seemingly take care of her problems and provide her with a new sense of freedom. Rogue birds are being investigated by an occult group for helping humans cheat death. A twin returns home after her father’s death, reconnects with her sister, and finds out the terrible truth about herself after the funeral. These tales are only a fraction of what this collection offers to the reader.

While there is very little in the way of gore, there are definitely psychological horrors that the reader will encounter. Sometimes these can be more terrifying than any amount of blood and guts.

Datlow has won multiple Hugo, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards and has received several lifetime achievement awards, including the Bram Stoker Award. She is adept at anthology selection, and I promise you won’t be disappointed with this collection. Highly recommended

Contains: brief sex, abuse, psychological terror

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker


Posted on April 14, 2017 by , Reply

Musings: I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora


I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora
Square Fish, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1250068088
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

I will preface this by saying it is not horror. It is, however, an amazing middle school/YA title that book lovers of all ages ought to know about, and I personally loved it.

I Kill the Mockingbird  examines the effects of hope, love, grief, and literature on the lives of three teenagers who decide to become literary saboteurs as a tribute to their recently deceased English teacher, Fat Bob, who intended to assign just one book(his favorite) as summer reading: To Kill a Mockingbird. Lucy, Michael, and Elena are best friends and book lovers looking forward to summer reading, but as school lets out, the other students are unenthusiastic. Lucy devises a plan to get people reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and enlists Michael and Elena to help. The three of them decide to secretly create and publicize a conspiracy to make it impossible to find a copy of the book, traveling by bus to libraries and bookstores to hide all copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, and leaving flyers behind that advertise a website they’ve built to create buzz about their conspiracy. Taking advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels, their little conspiracy rockets out of control as they build a following all over the country, with copycats hiding the book in other communities and demand for copies of To Kill a Mockingbird rising. Lucy’s summer also involves more personal grief, uncertainty, and growth, as she deals with her feelings when her mother returns home after a protracted and nearly fatal battle with cancer and considers whether she’s willing to risk her friendship with Michael by taking it a step further.

It’s wonderful to see how the lives and families of these three friends are so integrated and familiar with each other, and to see how independent and motivated these kids are, in a world where relationships seem to be fragmented by distance, overscheduling, and social media. And as a book lover, and someone who really believes in getting people (and especially kids) engaged in reading, this was an absolute joy to me. While the plot is well-paced, and the book is a quick read, books, reading, and discussions of the ideas in books (and especially in To Kill a Mockingbird) also have a major role. However, while these are integral, they are not didactic– exactly the kind of thing you would hope to see in the lives of book-loving teens and their families. Near the end of the book there is also a really fascinating part where the characters debate whether burning books, even library rejects, is ever acceptable. The practical application of this is never tested, though, leaving us to struggle with our own answer to that question.

The characters were complicated and enjoyable, the plot was original, and the story of these three teens as they grow and change, and change the world, during the summer between the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, just lifted my heart. I Kill the Mockingbird is a thoughtful, funny, sad, and inspiring book that offers no easy answers, and just might make you crack open a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird yourself.

As a final note, the publisher suggests this as an appropriate book for ages 10-14. On its own, I agree that this is appropriate for this age group, and would include older teens as well. However, I can see this book inspiring kids to try To Kill a Mockingbird, and some 10 year olds are still in fourth grade. Even Fat Bob, the eighth grade teacher in this book, suggests that it can be best read and understood after eighth grade. I suggest that discussion of this would be warranted with elementary aged children interested in taking this further.

Posted on January 14, 2017 by , Reply
First « 1011121314 » Last