The Round House by Louise Erdrich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading Round House was a warm and wonderful three-day weekend with an old friend. I'd read much of Erdrich's early work, but nothing recent. I'll not stay away so long in the future.

Erdrich is an expert at imagining and breathing life into a whole community of personalities, weaving together their struggles, their laughter and their pain.

In this novel she shows us the depth of a young man's frustration with the extent the legal system is able to bestow justice and more significantly peace on his broken family.

Along the way a touching often hysterically funny coming-of-age story unfolds. And so too the story of community and culture forged in a history on injustice. A lovely and perfect novel.

View all my reviews

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Stead's book accomplishes what I like best in a novel. The story of twelve-year-old Miranda is beautifully simple, yet littered with moments of wonderful insight. Here's one example:

"Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that when I asked Alice Evans to be my bathroom partner. I wasn't one of the girls who tortured her on purpose, but I had never lifted a finger to help her before, or even spent one minute being nice to her."

Miranda is not especially anything -- not suffering some great injustice nor blessed with exceptional intelligence or beauty. Maybe it is her ordinariness that makes her and her story so hypnotic. When the story opens she's inexplicably estranged from a life-long friend and neighbor Sal. In the void, she ends up making some surprising -- and yes, even magical -- discoveries elsewhere. L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, a favorite of both the author and Miranda, provides a subtle time travel motif.

While When You Reach Me is at home in the genre of young adult literature, somehow it doesn't read like Stead was writing it just for teens. This book is a lovely and perfect small miracle.

View all my reviews

Code Name Verity

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Wein's novel is wonderful! Deeply researched and eminently plausible, this fictional account of two young British women -- one a pilot and one a spy -- during WWII is gripping and heartrending. So involved in Wein's plot, I felt as if I was abandoning the characters when I put down the book -- and read it in one sitting. She's done an amazing job a creating two powerful characters and embedding them in a thrilling tale of espionage, history and undying loyalty. An excellent choice for both adult and young adult fans of historical thrillers.



View all my reviews