Stitches: A Memoir by David Small

Stitches is a beautifully illustrated autobiographical graphic novel that tells the story of David Small’s illness and how his dysfunctional family dealt with it. As a child and teen growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, he lives in a silent, angry family that represses all emotions. From an early age he has “sinus problems” that his dad, a doctor, regularly X-rays to monitor. His mother is a pinched woman who takes her rage out on the pots and pans she washes. When he has an operation to remove a “cyst” growing on the side of his neck, one of his vocal cords is removed, leaving him mute. Only later does he find out that he had actually had throat cancer, and that nobody had thought to tell him about it.

Blending dream, imagination, and reality, this book is perfectly illustrated, with surreal excursions into his mind. Small has an innovative way of portraying what his younger self feels and thinks in stark, lovely black-and-white. One of my favorite panels is the one where David sees the stitches all along his throat for the first time. It is also a brilliant portrait of the ’60s. Truthful without being resentful, sad and slightly satirical, it’s a very quick and interesting read. The only thing is that I wish Small had gone more into his life after he left his family, as it seems to wrap things up quickly after age 16. That’s probably because the focus is on his life growing up with his family, but I feel it departs from the tone and style of the previous story a little.

Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales is a collection of short stories by Russian writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (whew, that’s a mouthful) that are bizarre, surreal, and often very beautiful. There are even a couple of stories towards the end that are downright funny in a black kind of way. Divided into four sections: “Songs of the Eastern Slavs,” “Allegories,” “Requiems,” and “Fairy Tales,” these stories are impossible to describe.

They are not really “fairy tales,” though some of them may be based on older, traditional ghost stories or folk tales; they take place in Soviet Russia within the last few  decades, or even more recently than that. They tell of family life and dysfunction, poverty, corruption, loss, loneliness, and despair – the hardships that people have to go through in a place very different from here, and the cruelty and darkness they are capable of. One of the recurring themes is the selfishness that people carry out in their will to survive in a desolate environment. A couple of the stories are vague post-apocalyptic narratives. All of them are very interesting, well-written, and surreal.

Though not fable-like, they are moral tales; however, they are so much more complex and strange than fairytale morality. There’s a lot of haunting symbolism and perhaps allegory. At the same time the stories are down-to-earth and rooted in the details of ordinary people’s lives. It’s one of those books where the line between reality and fantasy cannot be defined, because those two realms are constantly being mixed; and I feel no need to define it. It’s not all just “in their heads,” but it is very psychological and explores the dark places of the mind. If I had to sum it up in one theme, what I would put it down as being about is human nature. The characters’ experiences are touching and poignant at the same time as they are bizarre and brutal.

Though they are not really like anything else out there, sometimes the stories are  sort of Kafkaesque. It won’t just leave you feeling empty, but it is wicked dark and sad. On the contrary, it really serves to prove what strange things people will do and lengths they will go to for love. And it’s a testament to Petrushevskaya’s fascinating and unique storytelling.

Quirky and powerful, it’s a quick, enjoyable, and very interesting read.

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Original edition (September 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143114662

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

The hilarious yet heartbreaking Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is such a gem of teen fiction that I was a little bit afraid to read something else by her that might disappoint me. Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

Like Speak, Wintergirls plumbs the depths of despair of a high school student with extreme darkness, poignancy, and acidic wit. It starts out a bit slow, but gains momentum and gets you deeply engaged, and also becomes more identifiable with Speak as it goes on. It is different, but has many similar beloved traits. Anderson uses language to satirize modern consumer/suburban life in a way that nobody else does. That incredible emotional intensity and ability to make us feel for the main character is a driving force. Her words often have startling clarity. It has a gritty feel, and the signature dark portrayal of the painful side of teen life, but has an undertone thrumming throughout of empowerment, warmth, and love.

What I like about Anderson is that she deals with volatile subject matter and never takes the easy or conventional route. Even when it seems like there is a “breakthrough” for the main character and things will start to look up, it doesn’t turn into the cheerful typical pattern of resolution. There is no neatly tied-up happy ending because it rarely happens that way in real life.

One of my favorite things about the book are the recurring surreal, inverted-fairytale descriptions about the main character and her recently-dead best friend which represent Lia’s concept of the “wintergirls.” The imagery in these parts is dreamlike, creepy, thorny, and wintry, gracefully weaving Lia’s pain and guilt about Cassie into haunting scenes. These passages are poetic, imaginative, eerie, and resonant. The book rings dead true, with piercing deadpan wit, and raw, emotional, near-visceral power. It should become a classic of teen fiction. I think it would also be relevant for adults.

If you loved Speak, you will probably also love Wintergirls.

A beautifully written novel about pain, dysfunction, and healing.

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Speak (February 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014241557X

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist is the most unconventional vampire love story I’ve ever read. Twilight it ain’t. I picked it up after seeing the movie of the same title in theaters, which I loved. I don’t think the novel can really be compared at all to the film, because they’re totally different genres and the movie is such a visual experience; but I also really enjoyed the book.

Let the Right One In is about a twelve-year-old boy, Oskar, who lives in a suburb near Stockholm, where a string of mysterious murders have been happening. He meets his new neighbor, an androgynous girl named Eli who is seemingly never cold, can solve Rubik’s Cubes right after learning what they are, and never shows up in the daytime. I think the movie, though still dark and gritty, is actually cleaned up a lot from its source material. The book is much darker, and deals with a lot of mature, rather sordid themes. The innocence of Oskar and Eli’s relationship is sweet; though they are fully capable of real love, they really act like twelve-year-olds. I see the tenderness shown by the characters as contrasting with the bleak atmosphere of the Swedish winter suburb, where Oskar is tortured by school bullies and there are no fairytale families. Hakan, the older man who is Eli’s caretaker, is a perverted and repulsive character, living long after his death should have ended his existence.

This book is a fast and absorbing read, with its combination of darkness, bizarreness, and genuineness. It deals with the supernatural (and the everyday) in a down-to-earth, real way, and redefines the vampire novel genre. You should let this one in.

A different kind of vampire romance with lots of facets.

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin; Mti edition (October 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312355297
• Amazon Link

We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson

Last week I saw a new edition of the 1962 classic We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson at the bookstore, with an intriguing new cover and French flaps. This quiet, understated book is a very short and quick read, in simple language that manages to be both gray and colorful at the same time.

It tells the story of the Blackwood family, from the point of view of 18-year-old Mary Katherine (her sister always calls her “Merricat”). She, her older sister Constance, and their Uncle Julian live together in the Blackwood home, six years after a mysterious tragedy in which all the other Blackwoods were poisoned to death by arsenic in the sugar bowl. The villagers believe that Constance is responsible for the murders, and taunt the remaining Blackwoods with an intense, mocking hostility. There is one disturbing scene in which the villagers all take on a sort of mob mentality and vent out their mindless hatred for the Blackwoods by destroying their home, a collective act of insane cruelty.

At first, it seems like quite a dark and depressing book, with Mary Katherine venturing out into the village to do the grocery shopping. You think she’s possibly imagining the hostility of the villagers in a kind of paranoia and neurotic hatred of her own. But soon, this is cleared up; the Blackwoods have arranged their lives in order to isolate themselves from the real cruelty of the others. Once she steps into the magic circle of their home, you realize that it’s not really dark, but a sort of whimsical, beautiful fantasy world of their own that they’ve created, totally opposite to the bleakness of the village, which Constance allows and helps her younger sister and to maintain. Though Mary Katherine is 18, she really has the mentality and imagination reminiscent of a child. She is ethereal, perhaps mentally imbalanced, and extremely disturbed by any change in the life that they’ve established. The revelation at the end isn’t unexpected, but isn’t totally explained, either. I think the title, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, refers to the future that isn’t revealed but implied in the book. It mirrors earlier statements like “The villagers have always hated us.” This is a book about isolation, outsiders, and the love and beauty, a safe haven, that one can create out of an ugly existence.

Oh – one of my absolute favorite things is the lovely way that the author describes Mary Katherine’s cat, Jonas, who does everything with her, runs around in meadows, and tells her “cat stories.”

Creepy, dark, yet light. Quiet, old-school, psychological suspense.

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Deluxe edition (October 31, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143039970
• Amazon Link

End Of Alice – by A. M. Homes

I read The End of Alice by A.M. Homes a few years ago, always remembered it, and I reread it recently. I think it’s grown on me since then, and it’s still just as interesting as it was the first time.

Part fantasy, part confession, the book is told from the point of view of a middle-aged man, known only as “Chappy,” who’s been at Sing Sing for the past twenty-three years for the murder of a girl named Alice. Corresponding with a 19-year-old girl who he believes relates very closely to him, he loses himself in his imaginings and begins to be obsessed with her. He constantly weaves between his fantasies, memories, and the reality of his life in prison; in nonlinear flashbacks, we learn about his Lolita-esque relationship with a twelve-year-old offbeat wild child, Alice, who collects butterflies and writes poems by Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson on the bottoms of her sneakers in marker. She is a precociously intelligent and yet childlike girl, a mix of knowing seduction, fierceness, and vulnerability. The sad thing is that Chappy still really loves Alice after all these years; his almost visceral love of the girl is apparent; and as he claims, he never intended to harm her. As she hurtles inevitably towards adolescence, he seems in some way to have wanted to save her from the tragedy of growing up into a woman. It is only at the end, during his parole hearing, that we hear the full truth of what happened to Alice, a perverse horror story that could have graced the front page of any paper in the ’90s. Then he is released from prison, and implies that he is heading out into the world for us.

This novel stands out because of its razor-sharp wit and unique style. The protagonist is highly articulate and insightful, with piercing commentary that’s humorous and perverse, all at once. Though he’s the “bad guy,” it’s impossible not to relate to him, which he as much as tells us. He often directly addresses the reader, sort of forcing us into the position of a voyeur and involving us in his crime. His frank treatment of pedophilia, incest, and sexual abuse might be offensive to some people. The scenarios he comes up with in his fevered brain, the “words of the girl” that he invents/supposedly “reinterprets” for us, sometimes border on erotica and bad taste; but they are his fantasies. His scathing satire of suburbia, and his bizarre revelation of its true dysfunction, decay, damage, and heartbreak, is piercing and insanely sharp. It’s not meant to be totally realistic, but anyone can recognize the truth in it.

Beautifully written, this book maybe isn’t for everyone. However, I think its wit, style, and poignancy make it one of those rare books written in the past twenty years that have really stuck out to me.

Intriguing, dark, and witty – might make you feel morally queasy.

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (February 18, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684827107
• Amazon Link