(Audio) Book Review: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch

Written by:  Donna Tartt

Audiobook read by: David Pittu

Published: 2013

Synopsis: It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

The Goldfinch is a novel of shocking narrative energy and power. It combines unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language, and breathtaking suspense, while plumbing with a philosopher's calm the deepest mysteries of love, identity, and art. It is a beautiful, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the ruthless machinations of fate.
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What is this? Kayleigh writing a review? Can you believe such a shocking and unheard of thing? It has been awhile since I last typed out a review (March 25! WHAT!) and while I definitely missed it I'm kinda happy that the first book I finished (and actually wanted to review) during my absence was this huge hunk of words and emotions.

When everyone's glowing reviews of The Goldfinch* started trickling out I knew it was a book I wanted to read but also, I was in no big hurry. I mean, this book is ginormous. It's gargantuan. It is everything that terrifies me in a book when I know I can't read as often as I want. Plus big books are always such a pain to read in bed, you can never get comfy. So since I had gotten acquainted with audiobooks on my US holiday I decided it made sense to listen to this one instead of lug that 10,000,000 page dead weight with me everywhere. This was both the best and worst idea I've ever had. Best, because I now didn't have to carry the aforementioned giant book. Worst, because big page count equals big hour count, which I hadn't planned for. The Goldfinch comes in at a little over 32 hours as an audiobook, almost double NOS4R2 which was previously the longest book I'd attempted to listen to. And while I wish I could happily listen to audiobooks while I'm on the bus or reading emails or laying in bed before falling asleep, I really can't. I basically only had my drive to my non-uni job to listen (a measly 2 hours of travel each week), which was why I was barely at halfway in my "I'm Alive" post a couple of weeks ago even though I'd started the book back in February. Luckily I started restoring some furniture which turns out to be the perfect head space for audiobooks, and late last week I finally managed to tick "read the never ending, but lovely, The Goldfinch" off my bucket list. But you guys haven't waited two months to read about how long it takes me to read an audiobook. Move onto the actual book shall we?

For some reason I went into The Goldfinch thinking it was going to be about art thieves. Either I disregarded 90% of the synopsis or I skim read a review somewhere, but The Goldfinch isn't really about art thieves, or the underworld of art, or even really about art at all. It's first and foremost a beautifully crafted bildungsroman, an emotionally charged examination into the life of Theo Decker, a young boy who has his mother ripped from his life far too soon and in the most devastating way possible. The book progresses with Theo as he perseveres with all of the minor and major events that befall a 13 year old who loses his mother to a terrorist attack. The hunt for the father who ran off a year earlier, the temporary placement into another family, the fear of foster care, the endless wandering looking for something to fill a gaping hole, the return of the father, the move to Las Vegas, the discovery of a friend and drugs and old black and white movies to mask, if not fill, the gap a desperately needed mother leaves.

In Meg's review she said she thinks just about everyone could come away from this book with a different theme or a different perspective on the story. I think that your takeaway with this book may very well depend on your personal life experiences but I also agree with Meg that this is a book about pain, it's a book about loss and grief and trauma. But it's also a book about the ways we try to persevere through the pain and the trauma. We all have different ways of processing the events in our life, some people are proactive and predisposed to looking for the bright side while others, dare I say most of us, turn to potentially destructive means to keep our heads above the water. How Theo deals with his mother's death is not the same way another child in his exact situation would deal with it, and I think that's where this book excels. Even the most minor of characters have these myriad experiences that have shaped them and turned them into the people they are, making the decisions they make. From the outside we may see that they're making destructive or silly or ill-reasoned choices, but when you factor in their pasts you get it. You understand why they do the things they do, and you don't hold it against them**. Which isn't to say everyone in this book is a criminal or drug addict making awful life decisions and blaming it on the events in their pasts. There are some characters who have taken traumatic or painful experiences and learned from them, built businesses and families and lives. But there are also characters who deny themselves certain pleasures and certain parts of life because they're afraid of repeating the past or they think something they did 10 years earlier somehow denies them certain pathways.

There is no doubt this book is big. But even though I'm sure some of the length could have been lopped off I'm not really sure where you'd take it from. There are so many threads joining every character and event that it feels almost precarious, as though it'd all tumble into ruin if you removed even the most minor of plot lines***. It's a dense and complex story, weaving philosophical and academic perspectives into the very personal narrative. The titular Goldfinch is returned to time and again, a persistent anchor to the past and the tragic events that befell Theo while also symbolising persistence and a potential for a future not as fraught with horror as the past. David Pittu, the reader of the Audible copy I listened to, was magnificent. Not only was he beyond competent at every accent he attempted (his Boris is especially delightful) but his voice absolutely drips with emotion. You feel the longing and guilt Theo feels for his mother in every line, the contempt he has for his father, his confusion about his love life in the last part of the book, Pittu breathes life into every character and even if the book was only mediocre in terms of prose (which it isn't) I think his performance would still raise it to the dizzying heights its experienced since release.

So whether you decide to give your forearms a work-out with the 800 page physical copy or plan an epic road trip so you can devour the 32 hours of audiobook you should absolutely plan to get to this book sooner rather than later. It's rather brilliant.


*Might I recommend the reviews of the ever so lovely and intelligent Laura (Devouring Texts) and Meg (The Terrible Desire)? 

**Or at least you understand it, even if you don't like it.

***Actually I lied. I would take out the final chapter/final 15 minutes of the audiobook. It wasn't badly written or completely extreneous but I also don't feel like it actually needed to be there.

Book Review: Little Star by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Little Star

Written by: John Ajvide Lindqvist

Published: 2012

Synopsis: A man finds a baby in the woods, left for dead. He brings the baby home, and he and his wife raise the girl in their basement. When a shocking and catastrophic incident occurs, the couple’s son Jerry whisks the girl away to Stockholm to start a new life. There, he enters her in a nationwide singing competition. Another young girl who’s never fit in sees the performance on TV, and a spark is struck that will ignite the most terrifying duo in modern fiction

Challenges: Translated Fiction for Book'd Out's Eclectic Reader Challenge.

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I went into this book thinking it was about a man holding a young girl captive and grooming her for entry into an Idol style singing contest. It's actually about a lot more, but at it's core Little Star is a book about girls.

There are two female protagonists, Theres and Theresa, two girls who couldn't be more different yet find their lives intertwined. Theres was found as a baby abandoned in the woods, and brought back to be raised by Lennart and Laila in their basement. After the failure to raise their biological son Jerry, Lennart decides that this time they can do better, they will do better, and Theres will blossom where Jerry failed. Stuck in the basement however doesn't cause Theres to blossom, she's small and quiet and once she does start to speak she speaks in semi-incoherent sentences. What she does well though, is sing. When Theres sings, people stop and listen, they're moved, their concerns and fears are washed away...you get the idea, she's a primo singer. After a horrific event in the basement (actually one of the best moments in the entire book), Theres is moved to Stockholm with Jerry where things happen and she ends up on Sweden's version of Idol.

Enter Theresa. Theresa grew up in a normal family with a mother and a father and older brothers. However as we travel through her childhood years into adolescence we see that she too wasn't a "normal" kid. She was quiet, chubby, inwardly thinking and seemed almost incapable of making friends. She does make one friend though, an equally weird kid who moves in next door. Together they lay down and play dead, share their first kiss and play video games. As she gets older and angstier she turns to two hobbies, writing poetry and trolling on the internet. Both allow her to vent out her anger and frustration and, the trolling especially, provides her a sense of power when she typically feels small and subjugated. Through a twist of fate, her two hobbies collide and allow for a chance meeting with Theres, who at this point has appeared on the Idol show and connected with Theresa in a way no one else ever has.

Once together, Theres's influence effects Theresa and incites a change in Theresa that amplifies the joy and power she got from trolling but with much, much darker undertones. The two girls are joined by several other like-minded girls and the final third of the book is a roller coaster of events that are creepy and unsettling and absolutely what you'd expect from the man that's been dubbed "the Swedish Stephen King".

So that's your basic run down, and holy crap was it hard to write. This is a long book, around the 600 page mark, and there is sooooooo much set up that isn't really necessary but is so hammered into you that it's hard to separate from the story. I started this during the Dewey's Readathon and I spent most of the readathon slogging away through it, and trying to decide if I liked it (which is never a good sign). Bits of it I loved. The final third is amazing, and I would have loved if the story had revolved around this alienated female group mentality. Alas it doesn't, instead the first 400+ pages sacrifices plot development and progression for character development, which isn't a bad thing per say, as long as the character development actually means something. There were all these pieces of character development that didn't really connect with anything. Lennart is a bitter failed musician who beats his wife because she cheated on him 20 years ago. Laila eats her feelings. Theresa's mother is worried her daughter isn't "normal" enough. Jerry is...god knows what the plan for Jerry was. They're all elements of familial dysfuction and have causal relationships to the themes of the novel, but even though they're mentioned at length they never really feel like they pay off. Did we really need to spend 50 pages flashing back to Jerry's childhood or Lennart and Laila's early lives as singers? Was it really important to set up the friendship between Theresa and the boy next door?

Sigh.

I think this could have been a fantastic shorter novel that simply takes the first 400 pages as given and instead focuses on the relationship of the group of girls. In it's best moments it harkens to bleak horror (or horrific) films like The Suicide Club, Picnic at hanging Rock or even The Virgin Suicides and given the amazing quality of Let The Right One In and the successful elements of this book, I feel like Lindqvist had all the tools to really write a phenomenal book that delves into that rocky world of teenage angst and identity. But instead it's a mixed bag sampling ideas and themes from all over the place while never really landing on anything concrete.

I didn't dislike this book,but it's never a good sign where I stop reading every 10 minutes to ask myself if I'm enjoying it. Which sucks because after reading Let The Right One In I was sure I'd found a new favourite author. This is now my third Lindqvist book, and the second time in a row I've felt like he missed the mark. Handling the Undead was equally disappointing for me, again full of potential that was spent on the wrong things. This could all be my fault, perhaps I'm simply placing a level of expectation on him that's impossible to match, but I'd still recommend approaching this book with caution. Maybe sample a few chapters in a bookstore or on your Kindle, test the proverbial waters before you dive right in. 

Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (and a fantabulous giveaway)

Ready Player One
Written by: Ernest Cline

Published: 2011

Synopsis:It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them.

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?

Stay tuned for the giving away-iest giveaway at the end of this review.
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I had never heard even the teeniest inkling of info about this book until Laura mentioned she was reading it and everyone was like "IT IS SO GOOD" and I was like "hmmmm, colour me intrigued". And then I read Laura, Alley and Alice's reviews and I thought " yup, this sounds like the book for me". But then I sort of forgot about it. Not for long mind you, but I was distracted enough that I didn't race onto The Book Depository and buy a copy. If I hadn't headed to my Sydney holiday at around this time it's possible this book would have ended up earning a permanent place on my TBR, but fortunately I happened to stop into the greatest of all bookstores (Kinokuniya) and it was right there. Right by the entrance, in a neat little stack basically daring me to buy it. And I don't let dares pass me by (actually I do, buy-this-book dares are about the only ones I'm brave enough to do) so I snatched that little baby up and took it home. And then uni stuff happened, and Laura warned me about how addictive it is so I decided to keep it as a reward for meeting my huge deadline. That deadline was last Tuesday, and by Tuesday night I was well and truly under the spell of Ernest Cline and the pop-culturaliest book that ever did be. And by 2.30 Thursday morning I had finished it.

And it was good. Oh my god, was it good. It was an extremely FUN read, probably the most fun I've had reading a book in a long time and the first book in even longer that I honestly considered putting down because I wanted it to last while also obsessively turning page after page because I just couldn't wait. And I didn't even peek ahead, which I almost always do. It's just a genuinely enjoyable read full of nerdy quotes and references to obscure (and not so obscure) 80s games, movies, songs, and other junk while somehow managing to never feel too Frankenstein-y. I guess it's probably to do with the writer being a major 80s geek himself, and pouring his love and obsession into his book - but it's still a feat that deserves much praise, because there aren't too many authors who can work in this many references and not feel like you're reading the question cards of an 80s edition of Trivial Pursuit.

So basically this book is a John Hughes coming of age story combined with a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with a little synth-heavy music thrown in for good measure. Wade (known as Parzival) is living a shitty life in an even shittier world. All the things going wrong in the world right now, famine, global warming, war, the economic meltdown, have finally come to a head in the not-to-distant future, and the world has chosen to retreat into a video game. Released in 2012, the OASIS is the ultimate in virtual reality, and in the future school, work, and all free time is spent revelling in a world that couldn't be. The creator of this program, James Halliday, was a sort of video game prodigy and on his deathbed announced his final game- a quest to win the ownership of the OASIS, and all of his fortune. Wade is just one of the many people trying to win that prize, and it's his journey from solving the first clue to the home stretch that we follow in Ready Player One. 

OASIS is such a phenomenally awesome (though not new) concept. When you're plugged in you can visit a universe of planets. Some are made to replicate the tv canon of sci fi worlds (Firefly, Star Trek, Star Wars, BSG), while others are designed to mimic the cosy suburban life of Earth as it was. You can battle creatures to raise your level and take quests to find magical items to add to your inventory. You can visit dance clubs which have impossible gravity fields and dance floors in the middle of the air. You can make your avatar just like you or you can make them taller, stronger, beardier. It's basically your average game of Dungeons and Dragons (or similar RPG games) in a vitual space and I TOLD YOU D&D WAS COOL. I can't really blame people for retreating into this bliss, especially when there is no sign-up cost and you can get the virtual reality kit free when you sign up for school. If I was living in a world that was made up of stacks and stacks of mobile homes and all sense of decency and democracy had vanished I'd probably be the first one in there from sun up to sun down. But I also really like that amid Wade living it up virtual style, the implications of living this kind of virtual life are also raised. Aside from the fat, pale nerd kid living in their parent's basement issue, there are the indented workers, people who have raised horrendous debts in the OASIS and to work it off basically live as slaves working for the largest ISP organisation in America. These issues are woven into the refence-laden quest and help move it from Awesome Book to Awesome Book with a Message (sort of).

I'm not going to bother mentioning any of the flaws in this book, first because they're pretty minor and second, this was Ernest Cline's first book - so the awesomeness far outweighs any novice mishaps with style and exposition. But also, I don't really care. When a book is this much fun, and has you reading well past the time you're normally counting Zzzzz's it doesn't really matter if a few plot holes come along, or certain characters are a little questionable (Art3mis, I'm looking at you). There are bits of Messages and Points and what-not, but they aren't really the point. They're the milk with the cocoa-pops. Technically (mostly) good for you, but not why you poured the bowl in the first place.

Printed on my cover is a quote from USA Today which says that this book is "Willy Wonka meets the Matrix". And that is pretty perfect. It's fun, and fast-paced (around the occasional info-meteor) and the stakes are high and it's quirky and technical and very in-the-know. The references reach pretty wide at times, plucking from literature, technology, film and music (mostly 80s but ranging from 60s to 00s) but really, it's very possible that you'd end up feeling like you were reading a different language if you weren't familiar with the main reference points. But even when I hit a reference that I didn't get, I never felt like the book was lording that over me, instead Ernest Cline, much like the wizardly James Halliday wants to share his favourite things, he wants you to learn about them and get equally addicted. Basically this book is the internet. The internet in book form. The internet in book form following the structure of an 80s film. WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE HUH?

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HEY! YOU THERE! DID THIS SOUND LIKE AN AWESOME BOOK? YES? I KNOW RIGHT?! WANT A COPY? PLUS AN AWESOME ADDITIONAL 80s GIFT? OF COURSE YOU DO, YOU'RE NOT STUPID. I CAN TELL. WELL STOP READING MY STUPID CAPS-YELLING AND LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS. K? NOW! JUST DO IT. SAY YES. SAY ANYTHING. SAVE FERRIS. 

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Film Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Released: 2012

Directed by: Stephen Chbosky

Starring: Logan Lerman,
Emma Watson
Ezra Miller

Synopsis: see book review.








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To me, the film version of The Perks of Being a Wallflower was everything the book failed to be. It took the same coming of age story and stream-lined it, aged the protagonist Charlie, and set it all to the perfect soundtrack . By the final half an hour I was so invested in the characters that I was constantly wiping my eyes and trying hard not to sob out loud. I wasn't the only one either, the two girls behind me were openly bawling their eyes out, and a girl in front of me summed up the film during the credits by saying, "Jesus that was sad, good though!"

Fans of the book, don't stress. The film follows the same basic plot as the book. Charlie (played fantastically by Logan Lerman) is still a quiet, awkward boy embarking on his first year of high school. The first friends he makes (outside of his awesome English teacher played by Paul Rudd) are still Patrick (Ezra Miller) and Sam (Emma Watson), and the ending is just as emotional, if not more so, than it was in the book.

What changes is that Charlie no longer seems so much younger than the others. Yes, he's clearly more awkward, naive and innocent than his new friends, but it felt natural for the friendship to grow beyond the older sibling protective dynamic. More importantly, it made it much less weird and awkward that the love interests that blossom, blossom.

 With Sam and Patrick, as well as the rest of the gang, Charlie gets to experience all of the wonders that awaits the odd and eccentric kids at school. We get to see them perform as Rocky Horror plays on the movie screen behind them, we watch Charlie get his first taste of weed, we become infinite with the three of them as they drive through the tunnel. Everything you loved in the book is made visceral and real in the film - it breathes life into a story that, for me, was always slightly lacking that special something.

We also get to see the slow disintegration of Charlie, something which is far darker and more intense in the film than it was in the book. Because the film isn't the same epistolary style (although there is narration in the form of letters from time to time) we see Charlie outside of how Charlie sees himself. We see him struggle to make friends, and then struggle to keep them. We get to experience the absolute lows, and we see the flash of a brief memory that's slowly working its way to the front of Charlie's mind. It becomes far more visceral, and the stakes seem so much greater than they ever did in the book. There's one particular scene towards the end that is so intense that if the movie up until that point had been rubbish it would have been completely redeemed. It's all due to Logan Lerman's phenomenal performance, not only in that scene, but throughout the movie to that point. I'm really looking forward to seeing where that kid goes next.

Because the director of the film is also the book's author, there is very little excluded from the book or added to the film that doesn't make complete sense. Chbosky has had enough time to percolate over that gem of a book and tease out the bits that didn't work, or refine the areas that did. It also means that the vision of the film is so clear. He understands the book and Charlie because he created them, so he knows the exact right song or costume or house- because he was instilling the book with all of these elements long, long ago. And the film does have that perfect little time-capsule feel - a snapshot of a year that Charlie will never forget, or the perfect seasonal mix-tape with The Smith's Sleep on it at least twice.

So regardless of whether you've read the book or not, or even if you liked the book or not, make sure you see this film at the cinema and be sure to take A LOT of tissues with you, because otherwise you'll walk out with tears and snot messing your face up big time.

Review: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower 
Written by: Stephen Chbosky

Published: 1999

Synopsis: Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

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I only decided to read this book because of how much I loved the film (I know, shock, horror, sacrilige!). I had always heard praise for it, and I even recommended it to my mum when she was looking for a book to buy my sister (who loved it as well) but I never felt a desire to read it, or to even know much about it. I knew it was a coming of age story, that it was about a "wallflower" and that it was a little darker than your typical teenage story, but still, it never pulled me in. And now that I've seen the film (which I loved) and read the book...well, I could have gone without reading the book. That isn't to say the book is bad, just that I found the film to be far, far better. I'll get into more of that in my review of the film, so forget about that for the moment and I'll discuss the book beloved seemingly by everyone.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a fairly typical coming of age story told in the epistolary style. Each "chapter" is a letter from Charlie, the protagonist, to an unnamed friend. Because the recipient doesn't know Charlie or any of the people involved (though perhaps could, if the right details were provided) the letters are unabashedly personal and read more like a journal, but unlike a journal these "can't be found". Which is pretty clever if you ask me. Especially considering Charlie discusses love, and friends, and drinking, and taking drugs, and masturbation, and depression and homosexuality and a bunch of other things 15 year olds don't typically wish to discuss with their parents.

Throughout the book Charlie writes essays for his English teacher about the books he's given, and at time it feels like the letters are another form of essay. He's always present, but also always slightly removed from it all, as though he's discussing his life as if it were a book he'd read, or a film he'd watched. It's an interesting element of the book, but also links into my biggest problem, Charlie himself. Charlie experienced some pretty intense emotional trauma early in life, and it's something that continually haunts him and threatens to tear his life apart. Because of this trauma, Charlie isn't a normal boy. He's quiet, reserved, emotional (OMG SO MANY TEARS) and it seems that the events of his youth stunted his mental and emotional self. This is where my problem is, because of the emotional turbulence (I guess?) he doesn't seem like a 15 year old. The writing style and comprehension of this supposedly 15 year seems much closer, in my opinion, to that of a 10 year old. Furthermore, he seems to have absolutely no self-awareness, no filter system and a very surgical way of looking at life. He reminded me a lot of Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, not so obviously autistic, but also not a normal* (though traumatised) 15 year old. It just didn't gel for me, especially when a good part of the book involves his English teacher giving him A's and encouraging him to do his own reading and essay writing at home and complimenting him on his natural writing talent. That just didn't come across to me in the letters, they were clumsy, and child-like and not at all like the short stories or essays my advanced English class were writing at his age. I do think that this was the fault of Stephen Chbosky not knowing quite how to write a 15 year old character who was supposed to be naive and troubled. Maybe he was too old at the time of writing the book (he was 29 when it was published), or maybe it's because his education is in filmic writing but whatever the reason, the character of Charlie just doesn't sit right for me.

Okay, now that I've gotten past my major issue with the novel I can focus more on the rest of the book, and the bits that did work. As I said before, it's a fairly typical coming of age tale. Charlie has to navigate through his first of year of high school, which is hard enough already, while still coming to terms with the death of his best friend Michael and dealing with puberty and making new friends and experiencing the highs and lows of the dating world. It's turbulent, cringe-worthy at times, and completely relateable. I mean, I know I had life wayyyyyy easier than poor Charlie (or any of the characters to be honest) but I still get the anxiety, fear and apprehension that comes with trying to work out that difficult path between child- and adult-hood. As he begins to become friends with a group of seniors it becomes clear that Charlie isn't the only person to suffer great loss or trauma and it affected them all deeply and shaped their characters, but it seems to shake Charlie's world to an extent that he can't move past. From early on in the book we're aware that Charlie's best friend committed suicide the year before, and that he struggled a great deal after the death of his aunt, but there are greater depths that are revealed as the book continues, and perhaps it wasn't so much these particular events but something about Charlie which made these events so monumental and hard to get past. In the final letter we find the missing puzzle piece, and he, Charlie, begins to make more sense.

While Charlie is clearly the focus of the novel, his new best friends Sam and Patrick are fascinating in their own particular ways. Sam, the victim of sexual abuse as a child, is always falling in love with the wrong guys, is loud and gregarious, while also battling with crippling self-esteem issues. Her step-brother Patrick is outgoing and the life of the party, but he's also secretly dating and in love with the star quarterback who refuses to come out of the closet. It's for Patrick I feel for the most, being different and being in love are both hard enough in high school, but to have to hide your reason for happiness because that person is ashamed and afraid? I don't even know how you do that, it would be earth shattering, every single day. The other smaller characters, Mary Elizabeth, Alice, Bob,  Bill; they all have their moments in the sun, and they all play an extremely important role in helping Charlie develop and mature both as a teenager and as someone struggling with a dark past. It's the camaraderie of this group of misfits and wallflowers that makes the book interesting and heart warming, even though I have a hard time accepting that a group of seniors would openly accept a freshman into their permanent circle of friends, especially one who seems so much younger than 15. However, to be fair, the group does seem to have a certain level of protective older brother/sister - younger brother feelings, especially since Charlie is able to open to these older brothers and sisters in a way he could never truly open up to his own brother and sister.

This book covers a tumultuous year filled with fun and and risk-taking and lows and emotional breakdowns and foot-in-mouth-moments, and it does a lot of this really well. But the clumsy first person narration (though I loved the letters themselves) really made it hard for me to love this book, or to really feel any of the moments which were supposed to rock me to my core. I really, really, really wanted to love this book, and while I admire what Stephen Chbosky was trying to do, and there are some great parts to it, I'm just feeling incredibly disappointed.




*I don't like to use the word normal there, but I'm not sure how else to convey it. Sorry guys.

Book Excerpt: The Car Thief by Theodore Weesner

How did everyone enjoy yesterday's guest post (the first ever for Nylon Admiral by the way)?

 I thought it was fascinating to read how wide and varied a life Theodore Weesner has lived and the devotion he has shown to his writing career. Something that I'm sure you all can imagine is expressed wonderfully through his writing. As promised I have an excerpt from the book for you all to read. I'll stop waffling and let you all sink you teeth into the goodness below soon enough, but before I do I just want to remind you all to click through if you're interested in reading some more about the book, its critical reception and the links to the myriad sites where you can purchase it.

Now, this excerpt is from the second chapter and follows the theft of Alex's 14th car. Bored and wanting to do something crazy, Alex decides to do the unexpected and actually attend school for once.


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ALEX PARKED THE BUICK three blocks from the school, where he had parked the day before, and walked back. The snow had turned to rain by now and the leather of his shoes was quickly soaked black. He had considered clearing the car of evidence, to wipe away fingerprints and to empty the ashtray, but for no clear reason he parked it and let it stand. About ten minutes remained in the lunch hour, and as he walked back, the feeling of drawing nearer to the school moved through him with the sensation of a wind rising and falling, rising again.

Ahead, before the dairy bars, there were only a few students about, and they were walking with their faces down against the damp snow. Alex walked past the parked cars, cars which were full, their windows steamed over. The windows of the dairy bars across the street were also steamed over. He did not cross the street. He was growing vaguely weak in his joints, fluid in his muscles. He imagined a car door being thrown open, or the door of one of the dairy bars being thrown open, and someone running—he would not run himself—and grabbing his arm, calling back to the others following, as if they could not see, “I got him, here he is, I got him,” the others strung out, walking, trotting, smiling, without their coats. Teachers could see from the second- and third-floor windows across the street, men teachers whispering afterward as Mr. Burke had once, after a fight, whispered to him, “Hey, who got his clock cleaned down there?”

He did not look toward the steamed windows of the dairy bars across the street. He walked by and crossed over to the sidewalk leading to the school. He was thinking he might as well try to hit one of them, maybe feign submission, for there would be words, and come up, come around, with all he had—he might as well try for Cricket Alan, close his eye, break his nose bone, maybe knock him out, cold-cock him. But no one came running after him, and he walked along, rubbery. Just as he reached the heavy double door, the other side came swinging open and startled him. It was a girl, nameless, a familiar and pudgy face. She wrinkled her face and turned it down immediately against the weather, and went on, and he forced a weak smile over the jumping of his heart.

Within the warm air he foolishly stomped his feet on the link-metal mat, splashing the water the mat lay in on his pants legs. He walked on into the first-floor corridor. In spite of all else there was a faint feeling of coming home after having been away. Here was the tile floor, the familiar hallways lined with dark-green lockers, the whiskey-colored varnished molding, the globes hanging from the ceiling. Except for two girls walking away on the right, the corridor was empty. Far off, also to the right, music was playing, record music from the noon-hour dance in the girls’ gym, which, because he had never learned to dance, he always avoided.

His locker was to the left, in the basement near his homeroom. He walked along. Here he was, he had come back, the object, he believed, of a morning of corridor conversations. But the first student he saw, Barry Fagan, coming down the stairway ahead, walking fast, looked at him as he passed, nodded, walked on. Alex tried not to walk too fast, or too slow, and it was difficult to coordinate himself.

Going down the stairs to the basement, he met his homeroom teacher, Mr. Hewitt, coming up. Mr. Hewitt, besides teaching history, was the varsity baseball coach, and a quiet man, neither popular nor unpopular. He nodded lightly at Alex as they passed. Then, behind him, Alex heard Mr. Hewitt say, “Alex, were you here this morning?”

Pausing, Alex said, “No.”

“Where were you?”

Rather than condemnation, there was some kindness in the man’s voice, and Alex, stopped on the steps, was affected and weakened by it. He found it hard to look up at Mr. Hewitt, who stood waiting. At last, glancing up, Alex said, “I’m back to school now.”

Mr. Hewitt was amused. “You’re back. Good, I’m glad to hear that. Where have you been?”

“Nowhere,” Alex said. “Just messing around.” He stood where he was, looking down again, knowing that Mr. Hewitt was standing there looking at him.
“You have a minute?” Mr. Hewitt said. “I’d like to talk with you.”

Alex hunched his shoulders, to say yes, and walked along slightly to the rear of the man. They went past Alex’s locker and into the homeroom, and Alex still found it hard to look up. It seemed that if he did, something like whimpering would spread from his chest to his throat. He glanced up enough to see that Karen Parker was sitting at a desk in the homeroom, reading, and looked away as Mr. Hewitt said to her, “Karen, would you excuse us a minute, please?”

She did not quite understand, and Mr. Hewitt added after a pause, “We’d like to have a talk in private for a minute.”

“Oh,” she said. Alex heard her gather her things and heard Mr. Hewitt step over to close the door behind her.

Mr. Hewitt said, “Sit down.”

Alex sat down, looking ahead to look away. He saw the bottom half of Mr. Hewitt move to a seat on a desk top. Mr. Hewitt said, “You’ve gotten yourself into some kind of a dilemma, haven’t you?”

Alex had not expected or wanted kindness from anyone; he was too easily affected by it, and even as he smiled lightly, his cheeks were trembling and he could not look up.

“Can you tell me what’s happened?” Mr. Hewitt said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alex said quickly.

“Why are you so upset?” Mr. Hewitt said. He spoke all the more kindly.

Alex hunched his shoulders and lips again, as if not knowing or not wanting to say.

“Something at home?”

“Nah,” Alex said.

“I know you’ve missed a lot of school lately. What have you been doing? I’m not going to punish you or anything. Perhaps I can help.”

“Ah, just a lot of bad things,” Alex said. But his voice failed to work clearly—it rose at the end—and he continued to look ahead at nothing, angry with his voice, with himself.

“What kind of bad things? You mean skipping school?”

“No.”

“What, exactly? Can you tell me? You feel free to tell me?”

Unable to speak and unable to look, Alex hunched his shoulders again—he didn’t know. He felt his lower lip reaching out.

Someone opened the door and came walking in. Alex’s view to the door was blocked and he did not look anyway, but Mr. Hewitt said impatiently, “Please wait outside and close the door.”

After a pause, almost in a whisper, Mr. Hewitt said, “Serious bad things?”

Alex nodded once. He did not look up. He knew Mr. Hewitt was studying him, and in his pause, that Mr. Hewitt believed him.

“These wallets—the money taken from the locker room. Do you know anything about that?”

“No.”

For a moment neither of them spoke or moved. Then Mr. Hewitt said, “I’m afraid the class is about to start. But I want you to do me a favor—I want you to come back this afternoon after school—immediately after—will you do that?”

Alex moved his shoulders again and more or less nodded that he would.

He stood up as Mr. Hewitt rose, but he still could not look at the man. He walked over toward the door without looking back, and heard Mr. Hewitt say behind him, “Don’t get too worried now. It’ll work itself out.”

Alex said nothing; before him through the glass half of the door he saw faces on top of and beside each other. They began to separate and back off before he touched the doorknob.

He stepped through them without looking at a face, saw bodies before him in the thickening corridor, and heard someone whisper, “What’s going on?” The bell, ringing suddenly, startled him.

At his locker, facing the wall and holding his lock in his hand, he tried to tell himself the numbers. They came close but he could not quite catch them. He fingered the lock’s black face, and beside him someone said, “Hey, what was that all about?”

Alex turned and looked at the boy beside his shoulder but could not think of his name, however familiar his face. “What?” he said to the boy.
The boy spoke again, but Alex’s mind was hearing Mr. Hewitt again and he did not hear the boy. Alex turned his back on him, as if to conceal the working of his combination, and the boy’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Hey,” the boy said, and Alex, not looking back, suddenly, violently, whipped his shoulder to shake off the hand. The hand did not return. Nor did Alex look back. He continued staring down, hardly seeing the face of the lock.
In a moment he knew, decided in the knowing, that he was not going to the afternoon classes. What was he doing there? How could he have thought of coming to school? Sitting at a desk, sitting there, sitting there, sitting there. He closed his eyes for a moment, still facing the wall. But he could not see what he seemed to have been trying to see.

At last he let the lock drop. He turned to leave, making his way as calmly as he could through the confusion of corridor movement, aiming for the side door on the landing, fifty feet away, aiming for the gray and cold air outside. He experienced a slight shivering of panic as he walked, panic against the ringing of the second bell, a fear of being collared by some teacher, being led to a classroom and turned over to another teacher like an errant Tom Sawyer when he was of a range of mind this moment to go for the teacher’s head, or eyes, or throat.

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I hope you all enjoyed this brief foray into what seems like a unique book (I'm hoping to finally get a chance to read it once my uni commitments start to die down). If you're interested in learning more, click through the link provided at the top of the post. And if you missed the guest post by the author yesterday, be sure to click through to read it now.

Author Guest Post: Theodore Weesner

Hello everyone! I know things have been quiet around here, but I think this post will make it all worthwhile! Below I have a wonderful guest post by Theodore Weesner, the author of The Car Thief. 

Hailed as a modern American classic, this coming of age tale is Theodore's fourth novel and just the tippy-top of his illustrious writing career. Before going any further in my introduction, I'm going to whet you literary appetites with a brief synopsis of The Car Thief;

It’s 1959. Sixteen year-old Alex Housman has just stolen his fourteenth car and frankly doesn’t know why. His divorced, working class father grinds out the night shift at the local Chevy Plant in Detroit, kept afloat by the flask in his glove compartment and the open bottles in his Flint, Michigan home. 

Abandoned and alone, father and son struggle to express a deep love for each other, even as Alex fills his day juggling cheap thrills and a crushing depression. He cruises and steals, running from, and to, the police, compelled by reasons he frustratingly can’t put into words. And then there’s Irene Shaeffer, the pretty girl in school whose admiration Alex needs like a drug in order to get by. Broke and fighting to survive, Alex and his father face the realities of estrangement, incarceration, and even violence as their lives hurtle toward the climactic episode that a New York Times reviewer called “one of the most profoundly powerful in American fiction.”

Do I have your full attention now? Good! I'll be posting an excerpt from The Car Thief for your enjoyment tomorrow, but right now I have a post that Theodore was kind enough to write about the making of The Car Thief. Below you'll be able to read about the inspiration that lead to The Car Thief and exactly how much of Theodore's own life is mirrored in this fascinating new novel.

Enjoy!
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Theodore Weesner, author of The Car Thief

What was my inspiration for writing The Car Thief and how much of me personally went into the story? 


I'm working to answer those questions in a personal memoir I have underway called ‘Hoodlum Artist.’

 As a short answer let me say that I lived a stupid and ignorant life of deprivation that commenced on being abandoned at age one, with my brother Jack, age three, to a 550 pound immobile woman named Alice Sleeseman, who took in children from broken homes in Flint’s ‘Little Missouri.’ We may have been dirty and scrawny but ours was a ‘Summerhill’ life of almost total freedom (I recall nothing but happiness, exploration, adventure) and I’m not complaining. If I was damaged on having been abandoned by my mother, I’m not smart enough to say. She was fifteen when she gave birth for the first time, on proceeding into a life devoted to drinking, dancing and honky-tonking. She never visited, while my father stopped by every other weekend or so to see how Jack and I were doing. Grandma Sleeseman, as we called her, made her way each morning to a centrally-located rocker from which she issued instructions, sending Jack and me with some dollars and a rusty wagon to a grocery store on Fenton Road to buy food supplies, and instructing other children of the house in the preparation of meals in the kitchen. Jack and I always had an eye out for the appearance of our father’s green Chevy and the thrill we felt when it came into view.

(After an extremely rough childhood, Theodore (known as Ted) picks up his story in a defining incident in High School…)

Central High School. Working as a part-time carry-out boy at Hamady’s, minding my own business and striving to get my life on track, I wandered into the stands of a high school football game one Friday evening after work, only to find myself inexplicably charged, on Monday at school, with fighting in the end zone. The witness making the charge was the Principal himself, on having used binoculars from Atwood Stadium’s 50-yard line to make his identification. At a subsequent hearing attended by my step-mother as well as the Superintendent of Public Schools--where the Principal wept in the face of the terrible punishment he felt compelled to administer despite my claims of innocence--I was permanently discharged from Flint Central, never to be allowed to set foot on school grounds again.

Disturbed and cheated, needing at all costs to prove myself, I began to become an over-achiever. Having turned seventeen, enlisting in the army as a GED, I soon became a model soldier who—by the time my three years were up, spending all but six months in Germany—I had qualified for OCS (based on high test scores, ranked in the 99th percentile) and, as a decent athlete, had also been considered for appointment to West Point…which consideration was quietly withdrawn when my juvenile criminal history and time served came to added light.

Admitted by some quirk to Michigan State University, I continued as an over-achiever, giving my all to catching up with the proper kids who had left me behind. Qualifying for a newly launched Honors College, I also received Hinman Creative Research scholarships with which to supplement my monthly checks under the GI Bill. I was invited as well, as a junior, to represent the giant-sized University in competition for a Rhodes Scholarship. Not wishing to undertake the competition and interviews, having fallen in love by then—having been ‘called’—to be nothing less than an artist committed to creative writing, I went on in search of success in the craft…and never looked back. All along, in my writing, I had been exploring conflicts I had known before landing on my feet in the army and as a student. So it was that I called my first novel, which was inspired by need, experience, and artistic hunger, ‘The Car Thief,’ during the writing of which I drew on the guts of my own history in search of valid themes and exquisitely realistic details.

-Theodore Weesner
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Be sure to keep an eye out for the excerpt from The Car Thief I'll be sharing tomorrow. Or if you simply can't wait, click through for all the purchasing options, and a more detailed run down of the book.