I read Jeannette Walls’s excellent memoir, The Glass Castle, a couple months ago. I can see where she borrowed from her (frankly, insane) childhood in The Silver Star, but this novel falls a bit short of her nonfiction. Set in the 1970s, The Silver Star is narrated by 12 year old Bean, whose mother has abandoned her and Bean’s 15 year old sister Liz in order to pursue her dreams of stardom (the mother seems to suffer greatly from something like manic depression). After a few weeks of eating pot […]
Narcolepsy sounds really awful, guys
I was really certain that I’d posted this review when I finished this book over a week ago, but apparently I didn’t. So apologies if my memory is a bit sketchy here… “Now there’s only me and everything else is on the periphery, just slightly out of reach or out of touch or out of time.” Mark Genevich stars in The Little Sleep (a play off Raymond Chandler’s far superior The Big Sleep). Mark is a P.I. in Boston, and suffers from narcolepsy as a result of a […]
If you broke Elena’s heart, Star Wars would spill out.”
I’m not sure what I can add to the many reviews posted about this little story, other than that it was adorable and I, of course, loved it. “And the thing about nerd culture being mainstream culture now means that there’s no place to just be a nerd among other nerds – without being reminded that you’re the nerd.” Elena loves Star Wars — the characters, the story, the connection it gives her to her father. She’s never seen the prequels, but that doesn’t stop […]
“The door opens with a rusted jingle, and an animatronic Santa insults my moral virtue three times. Ho, ho, ho.”
I definitely borrowed this book based solely on the presence of a short story by Rainbow Rowell, but I’ve read books by some of these other authors, too — David Levithan and Gayle Forman (Forman’s story in this was one of my favorites). And I know Holly Black’s name (The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, which I will eventually get around to reading, I promise!). Basically, if you like young adult fiction, you’ve probably read at least one of these authors. And you should probably read this, […]