When I was in middle school, Paul Zindel was my favorite writer. I remember liking especially
The Undertaker's Gone Bananas and
Confessions of a Teenage Baboon. I think Zindel appealed to me as a 13-year-old reader because in the late 1970s, there were few books written just for teens. (Lois Duncan was another writer I loved.) And Zindel's books, even when funny, are always tinged with a hint of darkness, something I found intriguing against the backdrop of my sunny Southern California childhood.
I read Zindel's
The Pigman again just last month with
my students in a Young Adult literature course. I was curious as to how Zindel's 70s sensibilities would hold up with today's readers, myself included. The answer is that--despite some antiquated slang and obsolete objects (a typewriter provides the novel's frame)--
The Pigman holds up quite well indeed.
As a reminder, here's the basic plot of
The Pigman. John and Lorraine are two high-school loners who become unlikely friends. John is good-looking, but wild, while Lorraine is a quiet good girl with self-esteem issues. Paul and Lorraine spend an afternoon together making crank calls, and as a result of their activities meet Mr. Pignati, the Pigman.
Mr. Pignati is a childlike older man, who enjoys the zoo, encourages John and Lorraine to rollerskate in the house, and introduces them to new foods, like escargot and chocolate covered ants. Mr. Pignati also has a secret: He hasn't come to terms with his beloved wife's death and tells the kids she's off visiting a relative.
The truth comes out just before Mr. Pignati has his first heart-attack. While he's in the hospital, John and Lorraine throw a huge party, complete with drinking, general mayhem, and the borrowing and breaking of Mr. Pignati's beloved objects. John and Lorraine have a little time to begin making ammends, but before their relationship with the Pigman is healed, the Pigman suffers another heart attack and dies.
It's a brutal little novel, but one that stills reads well today. Here's what my students and I found in 2011:
- While the framing device for the story (a project for English class) seems dated (probably because it has been imitated so frequently), the dual narration works. My female students (27 of 30 are women, it must be noted) found Lorraine's voice in particular to be authentic and compelling. Here's what they had to say about Zindel's dual narration in The Pigman.
- The issues Zindel highlights--teenage alienation, problems with adult authority figures, self-esteem issues, and anxiety about growing up--still resonate today
- The students found the Pigman a realistic and sympathetic character, even though most of them said that their parents were more protective in the 2000s than John and Lorraine's were in the 1970s.
- One thing I noticed this read round was the power of the party scene. When I read The Pigman as a child, I understood that John and Lorraine should not have thrown a party in the Pigman's house while he was convalescing in a hospital. As an adult, it become clear how painful a betrayal that act was.
What do you think of The Pigman in 2011?<
Welcome to the final weekend reviews of February! (Crossing fingers for an early spring...)
As mentioned, I didn't read Young Adult fiction in 2010, but I did read many adult novels I enjoyed, some of them with crossover appeal for the teen reader. I'm going to run through them in two posts and in alphabetical order. Here's the first set:
Faithful Place, by
Tana French.
Faithful Place is French's third novel, and as in
In the Woods and
The Likeness, French places her detective-protagonist in a fascinating setting where he or she must solve a case involving several complex and difficult personalities.
Faithful Place's detective, Frank Mackey, finds his mystery in his own claustrophobic, dysfunctional childhood home when the body of his first girlfriend is found two decades after her disappearance.
Crossover Potential? Some. The Likeness (2008) has the most appeal of French's novels to date for the teen reader. The detective-protagonist in The Likeness, Cassie Maddox, goes undercover to discover who killed a teen she had impersonated before. The main suspects are a group of university students living together in a house, former friends of the murdered girl.
A Gate at the Stairs,
Lorrie Moore. A twenty-year-old university student narrates Lorrie Moore's
A Gate at the Stairs and her innocent and biased view on the world will be of interest to teen readers. Tassie, the student, is hired as a nanny by Sarah, a middle-aged restaurateur who doesn't yet have her baby. In fact, Sarah's in the process of adopting a child, and Tassie travels with Sarah all over the upper Midwest to meet prospective birth mothers. As Tassie spends more time with Sarah--while Sarah adopts and then raises a biracial child--Tassie's views become more nuanced and complex.
Crossover Potential? Reasonably High, especially for teens who have spent some time babysitting in another's home.
Mary Karr's Lit was my favorite memoir of 2010. In Lit, Karr writes about becoming a poet, a wife, a mother, and an alcoholic. Karr discusses the fits and starts of her recovery, one that is ultimately successful. Lit is a beautifully written and sometimes difficult read (Karr can be tough on herself), but one well worth your time, if you're older than twenty five or so.
I'm looking for conversation (and trouble?) over at Crossover.
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I've missed talking books with you all. I'm hope to see some of you in Minneapolis!
Hello, everyone, from Scotland! I have a review of Siobhan Dowd's latest (last?) novel, Solace of the Road, up over at Crossover.
Usually when I write a review of a crossover book, I'm reviewing an adult book I think children ages twelve and up will like. This time, however, I am reviewing a book marketed to teens that adults will appreciate--Tamar, by Mal Peet. (Tamar won the 2005 Carnegie in the U.K.)
To be honest, I am not sure why Tamar is a Young Adult novel. Some sections of the book are narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl, but the vast majority of passages concern adult resistance workers in World War II. To miss Tamar, subtitled A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal, because it's located in the Young Adult section is a betrayal, indeed.
Tamar opens with a conversation between a father--William Hyde--and his adult son. The son's wife is expecting and the father has an usual request: If the child is a girl, will his son please name her Tamar? The father gives no reasons for the request, but the son likes the name and agrees.
The reader then travels back in time to when the father (and soon-to-be-grandfather) is working for the British Secret Service with the Dutch Resistance in a small town in the Netherlands. He is one of two men working under assumed names: Tamar, the resistance organizer, or Dart, his code transmitter. Both men love the same woman, Marijke, whose house serves as a base for the young resistance workers, but only Tamar has a relationship with her.* Two men in love with the same woman, fear, starvation, and a rogue resistance worker, who rebels in spectacular fashion against Tamar's command, lead to ultimate betrayal and loss for World War II-era Tamar, Dart, and Marijke.
Interspersed with accounts of Tamar, Marijke, and Dart's lives in Nazi-occupied Netherlands are passages in which modern-day Tamar, the fifteen-year-old granddaughter of "William Hyde," tries to understand why her grandfather committed suicide just months before, when already an old man. He leaves her a box of clues--clues that will lead to the truth about his past.
Tamar is a detective story and a meditation on the meaning of truth. It's a great novel for children, sure, but it's also an important story for adult readers as well. And, good news: A little research tells me the paperback edition is out in the U.S. on September 9.
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* Yes, Tamar is biologically young Tamar's grandfather. The question is, who was William Hyde, the grandfather Tamar knew and loved in 1990s England.
Recently I complained about the adult fiction I've been reading. I kvetched about my weariness with the 20th century anti-hero. In brief, I'm tired of the over-educated, New York-living male hero who is alienated from his family and from the world.* Susan, of Chicken Spaghetti, recommended What Was Lost, a first novel by Catherine O'Flynn, and not only did I find What Was Lost a fantastic and restorative read, but I also think it is a book teenagers will enjoy as well.
What Was Lost is a novel no less ambitious than any of the top-10 New York Times reviewed novels of 2007 or 2008. Catherine O'Flynn uses many protagonists to tell her tale, most prominent among them a 10-year-old girl and two mall employees--all from Birmingham.# The novel opens in the voice of Kate Meany, 10-year-old girl detective. Kate is an orphan and she spends her days watching people in the shops and at Green Oaks--a new shopping center. She's sure she's about to catch a criminal in the act when she disappears.
The narration then skips forward twenty five years and is primarily in the voices of Kurt, a Green Oaks security guard, and Lisa, a manager at the mall's music store. Lisa has a connection to Kate: Her elder brother Adrian was a friend and mentor to Kate at the time Kate disappeared. Kate's disappearance leads, of course, to Adrian's own hiding, even though he was innocent. Kurt also has a connection to Kate, although he doesn't remember it at first. He saw Kate, on her last day in Birmingham, when he was about her own age. Kurt doesn't remember his sighting until a series of hallucinations visit him when working at the mall in the middle of the night.
What Was Lost is ostensibly a mystery--how and why did Kate Meany disappear? But it's also the story of finding your way when you're a young adult stuck in the soulless world of a suburban mall. Will Lisa be able to dump her manager's job at Your Music and her even lamer boyfriend Eric? Will Kurt be able to come to terms with his father--who hated the mall, but worked there as a janitor because there were no other jobs left for him in the city--and move on? These are real questions ninety percent of the reading public face and Catherine O'Flynn presents them with humor, grace, and intelligence.
But let's not forget our heroine who opens the story. Kate Meany, girl detective, is quite possibly the most authentic 10-year-old girl I've read in years. She's smart, vulnerable, naive, and believes in truth and justice, even in her run-down neighborhood in Birmingham. Children like Kate, who have nothing, always have hope--hope Kurt and Lisa have lost, but must find again in order to remake their lives.
I highly recommend What Was Lost to all readers ages twelve and up. Tweens and teens will be drawn to Kate's story, and the multiple points of view will challenge them. Anyone who has ever worked a dead-end job in a mall will recognize Kate's world. What Was Lost is a not-to-be-missed novel.
Thank you, Catherine O'Flynn, for restoring my faith in the "literary" novel.
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* Seriously, novelists: Stop this.
# Did you hear me? TWO MALL EMPLOYEES. They have lives too! Who would have known?
I'm always in the market for a good mystery, so when Tana French's In the Woods won a 2008 Edgar Award for best first novel by an American author, I ordered it right away from audible.* From the first pages I knew In the Woods is a novel teen readers will love as well.
Rob Ryan is a young detective on the Dublin murder squad. When the body of a 12-year-old girl is found in the woods outside Dublin, he's called to investigate. The situation is eerily familiar to Ryan: When he was twelve he also disappeared in the same woods with two friends. When he was found, he was covered in blood and had no memory of what happened. His two friends never returned.
Now, obviously, Ryan should have removed himself from this case, but finds he can't. He begs his partner--the wonderful Cassie Maddox--to keep his secret in the hopes that his past will help them to solve the case. While investigating Ryan is haunted by partial memories, neighbors from his past, and faulty judgment. As a reader, you don't trust Ryan, who narrates In the Woods, from the very beginning. You do, however, find his motivations and story undeniably compelling.
Dark fairy tale themes and the unreliability of childhood memories haunt Ryan and In the Woods, making this a mystery teens will love. The detectives are young and live young lives--solving cases together while eating and drinking well into the night. Ryan's partner, Maddox, is a kickass heroine--smart, hardworking, and tough. And the victim, a young ballerina, and her family will appeal to young readers, especially when compared to our hopelessly unreliable narrator.
Best of all? I thought I had In the Woods all figured out by the time I was halfway through reading. But I wanted to finish this mystery anyway because of the interesting characters and narration. The bonus? I was completely wrong in my armchair sleuthing. In the Woods is highly recommended for readers ages fourteen and up.
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*What is going on with audible and audiobooks these days? None of the new books I want are coming up on audible or on iTunes. No new Rick Riordan for the little one and I have a list of about 15 books recently released I want to read and not one of them is available. Where is that reader's bill of rights? I want to choose audio or text format for each and every book I buy. I mean it.
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And, Tana...if you ever stumble upon this post...I hope your next book will star Cassie Maddox on the domestic abuse squad.
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By Anatoly Liberman
Strange things have been observed in the history of the verb shine, or rather in the history of its preterit (past). To begin with, a reminder. Verbs that change their vowels in the formation of the preterit and past participle are called strong (for instance, sing—sang—sung, shake—shook—shaken, smite—smote—smitten), in contradistinction to verbs that achieve the same results with the help of -t or -d (for instance, shock—shocked—shocked, cry—cried—cried). For practical purposes this division is almost useless, for weak verbs can also change their vowels, as in sleep—slept, and mixed types exist (the past of strew is strewed, but the past participle is usually strewn). (more…)
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By: Kelly Herold,
on 2/27/2011
I read The Pigman as an adult after I read Zindel's memoir, The Pigman and Me, which I liked a lot. It was an interesting experience because the memoir includes a character who seems to have been the inspiration for the fictional pigman. So I was actually seeing the inspiration before seeing the fictional creation. My recollection of The Pigman is that I found it a little disappointing after the memoir. If I had all the time in the world, I'd read it again, and the memoir, too.