#105: Tumbleweeds

Tumbleweeds, by Leila Meacham

(New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2012)

Summary:
"Recently orphaned, eleven-year-old Cathy Benson feels she has been dropped into a cultural and intellectual wasteland when she is forced to move from her academically privileged life in California to the small town of Kersey in the Texas Panhandle where the sport of football reigns supreme. She is quickly taken under the unlikely wings of up-and-coming gridiron stars and classmates John Caldwell and Trey Don Hall, orphans like herself, with whom she forms a friendship and eventual love triangle that will determine the course of the rest of their lives. Taking the three friends through their growing up years until their high school graduations when several tragic events uproot and break them apart, the novel expands to follow their careers and futures until they reunite in Kersey at forty years of age. Told with all of Meacham's signature drama, unforgettable characters, and plot twists, readers will be turning the pages, desperate to learn how it all plays out."

Opening Line:
"The call he'd been expecting for twenty-two years came at midnight when he was working late at his desk."

My Take:
Silly, entertaining, but forgettable fluff. We all have our guilty pleasures; this one wasn't the best of its kind I've read, but it wasn't the worst, either. That's all.

#102: American Youth

American Youth, by Phil LaMarche

(New York: Random House, 2007)

Summary:
"American Youth is a controlled, essential, and powerful tale of a teenager in southern New England who is confronted by a terrible moral dilemma following a firearms accident in his home. This tragedy earns him the admiration of a sinister gang of boys at his school and a girl associated with them. Set in a town riven by social and ideological tensions an old rural culture in conflict with newcomers this is a classic portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself."

Opening Line:
"The two boys walked the high ridge at the center of the wood road, avoiding the muddy ruts along the sides."

My Take:
As far as I remember, I liked it well enough and appreciated that it was well-written. Didn't absolutely love it or have a tough time putting it down, though.

#101: Talk to Me First

Talk to Me First: Everything You Need to Know to Become Your Kids' Go-To Person About Sex, by Deborah Roffman

(Boston: Da Capo Press, 2012)

Summary:
"Nationally acclaimed educator and author of Sex and Sensibility, Deborah Roffman distills her more than thirty years of experience teaching kids -- and their parents -- into this indispensable guide, helping you to be your kids' number one source for information and guidance on human sexuality. Roffman tackles everything from developmental stages to strategies for handling embarrassing or difficult conversations, offering the best way to make sure you both keep talking (and listening)."

Table of Contents:

1. Getting There First About Sex
2. Raising Children in a World Gone Upside Down
3. Parenting Is a Five-Piece Suit
4. Affirmation: Our Children as Sexual Beings
5. Information: Folding in the Facts
6. Clarity About Value: Honing Your Message
7. The Delicate Art of Limit-Setting
8. Anticipatory Guidance: Turning Children over to Themselves
9. Practice Makes Perfect: Let's Go Fishing

My Take:
Here's one where I really wish I'd kept up on my blogging, as I remember this being an especially useful book about parents, kids of all ages, and communications around sexuality (and in general). Unfortunately, enough time has gone by that the book's long been returned to the library and I don't recall enough specifics to comment on in more detail. Oh well. If you're looking for a good book about talking with kids about sex that doesn't push a particular agenda, read this one.  

#93: Ten Thousand Saints

Ten Thousand Saints, by Eleanor Henderson

(New York: Ecco, 2011)

Summary:
"Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New York City's East Village, Jude stumbles upon straight edge, an underground youth culture powered by the paradoxical aggression of hardcore punk and a righteous intolerance for drugs, meat, and sex. With Teddy's half brother, Johnny, and their new friend, Eliza, Jude tries to honor Teddy's memory through his militantly clean lifestyle. But his addiction to straight edge has its own dangerous consequences. While these teenagers battle to discover themselves, their parents struggle with this new generation's radical reinterpretation of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll and their grown-up awareness of nature and nurture, brotherhood and loss.

"Moving back and forth between Vermont and New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is an emphatically observed story of a frayed tangle of family members brought painfully together by a death, then carried along in anticipation of a new and unexpected life. With empathy and masterful skill, Eleanor Henderson has conjured a rich portrait of the modern age and the struggles that unite and divide generations."

 Opening Lines:
"'Is it dreamed?' Jude asks Teddy. 'Or dreamt?'"

My Take:
Perhaps I was feeling unusually uncharitable here, as I read this one right after Imperial Bedrooms and had had it up to here with drug-addled adolescents before I tackled the first chapter. That said, Ten Thousand Saints didn't overwhelm me. It wasn't repugnant the way IB was, and the characters here were rather more sympathetic -- partly because it's set in the '80s and definitely conveys that this was a different time, and partly because it's easier to excuse adolescent behavior when it actually comes from adolescents.

And perhaps I just bring too much of my own baggage to the story. Jude and Teddy are of my generation, a mere two years older than I am, which means I should be able to relate to their world ... but I really can't. Sure, I grew up 30 miles from the NYC where much of the story is set, but that may as well have been another universe, and my suburban adolescence was probably more sheltered than most. Mine wasn't a drugging or even hard drinking crowd, if the motley handful of not-yet-cool nerds I occasionally socialized with constituted a "crowd" at all. I never had any burning desire to fit in either with the stoners who make up Jude & Teddy's clique at the beginning, and I don't think I knew such a thing as straight-edge existed at the time. Punk, yes, but much as I loved the music, I was well aware a big-haired teeny bopper from the 'burbs would have been eaten alive in that environment. Instead, I contented myself with volunteering at a crisis line throughout high school and growing vicariously wise through the lives that touched me there.

It's interesting, too, to look back on the '80s with enough distance and perspective that you're aware of the hallmarks of the era. As a middle and high schooler, I knew something about the culture and history of the 1920s or '40s or '60s -- enough to reference an era convincingly in a term paper, or make guesses about how my grandparents' adolescence differed from my parents' or my own. But I couldn't articulate what made the '80s the '80s or what future generations would see as the hallmarks of my decade, any more than my daughter can define the 2010s or a particularly conscious fish could tell you what it's like to breathe water rather than air. Ten Thousand Saints depicts the era as a very long, unglamorous morning after the hedonistic '70s, with the principals' parents as the clueless hung over guests you just know will spend the next week bragging about how awesome the party was and how wasted they were, and Jude, Johnny, and Eliza the housemates who get stuck cleaning up all the spilled food and broken glass. Jude's mom, Harriet, is the canonical leftover hippie, naming her kids after Beatles songs (Jude's sister is Prudence), selling handblown glass in a small town in Vermont, and earning the bulk of her income selling bongs; his father, Lester, is a successful Manhattan pot grower who takes pride in being a cool, approachable pseudo-stepdad to his girlfriend's daughter Eliza but hasn't bothered to contact his own kids in who knows how long. After Teddy's death, Jude and Eliza's guilt leads them (with Johnny's help) to discover the no-drugs, no-drinking, no-sex world of straight edge, drawing spiritual sustenance from a Hare Krisha temple whose connection to the former is never exactly clear.

Henderson's writing is clear, understated, and sad, and the setting an interesting, unusual one. I only wish the characters (yes, this is always a sticking point for me) felt big or complex enough to live up to it. The book was OK, and I finished it -- but it felt more like a duty than a pleasure to get through (although it did get somewhat better in the latter part).

#74: The Reader

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink

translated by Carol Brown Janeway

(New York: Vintage International, 2008, c1997)

 Summary:

"When young Michael Berg falls ill on his way home from school, he is rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover, enthralling him with her passion, but puzzling him with her odd silences. Then she disappears.

"Michael next sees Hanna when she is on trial for a hideous crime, refusing to defend herself. As he watches, he begins to realize that Hanna may be guarding a secret she considers more shameful than murder."

Opening Line:
"When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis."


My Take:
Liked the earlier segment of the story, in which Michael and Hanna become unlikely but passionate lovers despite Hanna clearly having some skeletons in her closet (and frankly, if she's a 36 year old woman having a clandestine affair with a 15 year old boy, doesn't this almost go without saying?) rather more than the later, in which Michael is a grown man studying law and Hanna on trial for war crimes. Maybe that's because I'd figured out Hanna's secret fairly early on, so the big reveal didn't have the punch it might. Maybe it's because I've read rather a lot of World War II novels (which would be screamingly obvious to my readers if I actually had any), and while the events of which Hanna is accused are certainly horrific, neither the Nazi atrocities nor the legal drama was the most compelling example of their genres that I've ever read. To be fair, both might read better a) in the original German, and b) to someone more intimately familiar with German culture and how WWII has affected subsequent generations. A well-written book with interesting imagery, even in translation, but not quite all I'd hoped for.

#69: The False Friend

The False Friend, by Myla Goldberg

(New York: Doubleday, 2010)

Summary:

"Twenty years after Celia’s best friend, Djuna, went missing, memories of that terrible day come rushing back—including the lie Celia remembers having told to conceal her role in Djuna’s disappearance. But when Celia returns to her hometown to confess the truth, her family and childhood friends recall that day very differently. As Celia learns more about what may or may not have happened, she becomes increasingly uncertain whom she should trust.

"In The False Friend, Myla Goldberg -- bestselling author of Bee Season -- brilliantly explores the cruelty of children, the unreliability of memory, and the unpredictable forces that shape our adult selves."

Opening Line:
"The sight of a vintage VW bug dredged Djuna Pearson from memory."

My Take: 
Not sure I ever quite bought the book's main premise -- that Djuna wasn't taken away in a strange car, but fell into a hole in the woods, and Celia's been lying about it all these years -- but it still made for an interesting story about our memories of childhood and its friendships, our growing awareness of our parents' imperfections, and how our hometowns look from a distance.

#60: A Slipping-Down Life

A Slipping-Down Life, by Anne Tyler

(New York: Ivy Books, 1992, c1970)

Summary:

"The story is based on a young girl called Evie Decker who we are told in the first page of the novel is not musical. She develops an attachment however for a rock and roll singer who is called Drumstrings Casey. She begins to follow him around to all the places where he sings. He pays no attention to her and so she decides to do something dramatic.

"We are told how one night while he is playing in a club she appears with the name Casey etched on her forehead. As a result he begins to notice her, but he despises her ... . He is egotistic and concerned with furthering his own career. He plays with one man who is a drummer and who decides to act as his manager. This man is called David and he offers Evie the chance to help Drumstrings in his singing career by attending all the concerts and showing to the crowd what one woman will do for a singer. ..."


Opening Lines:
"Evie Decker was not musical. You could tell that just from the way she looked -- short and wide, heavy-footed."


My Take:
This one's a first:  the first book I read on my new, early birthday present Kindle. (Thanks, Mom.) Honestly, I think I still prefer the feel of an old-fashioned paper-and-ink novel, but the Kindle does have its place. When traveling, for example. (Though I do remember hearing some airplane neighbors on a recent flight commiserating about how hard-core readers still need to bring a non-electronic book on flights, for that takeoff and landing period when no electronic devices at all are allowed, period, the end.) 


Anyway, I read Slipping-Down Life on the train to and from Providence last weekend, and knew without checking the publication date that it must have been an early Tyler novel. There's not the depth and complexity of, say, Noah's Compass or Digging to America. It's also notably shorter than most of the Tyler books I've read, though I didn't have any pages to hold and compare so part of that may have been a function of the simpler story line needing less time and attention. Nonetheless, there are moments when Tyler even here captures small details just perfectly: the awkwardness of Evie and Violet's first trip to a rock show, for example, or the thoughtless cruelty of how Drum speaks to Evie in a key scene later (details deliberately vague to avoid spoilage). 


All in all, glad I checked this out of the library rather than buying it, as I don't think it merits repeat readings, but it was about what I wanted for an hour-long, not very scenic train ride on an overcast day. 

#47: Dedication

Dedication, by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (New York: Atria Books, 2007)

Summary:
"What if your first love left town, without a word to anyone, days before graduation?

"What if he went on to become one of the biggest recording stars on the planet and every song he’s famous for is about you? What if, after thirteen years of getting on with your life – walking past his face on newsstands, flipping past his image on TV, tuning him out on the radio – you get the call that he has landed back in your hometown for an MTV special two days before Christmas?  What if you finally had the chance to confront him?  What would you do?


"Kate Hollis finds herself on the threshold of her thirtieth birthday, about to discover that the only way to embrace life as a fully-fledged, well-adjusted adult is to re-visit seventeen."

Opening Lines:
"'He's here.'
 "'Laura?' I ask into the phone, disoriented, voice sandy with sleep."

My Take:
Saturday of my first weekend in Boston was wet, wet, wet. As in, the 40 days and 40 nights kind of rain. OK, maybe it was closer to 4 hours, but I still don't think I could have gotten any soggier even if there had been an ark instead of just a parade of duck boats swimming by. It only hit me that morning that I'd left both my raincoat and all my umbrellas back home in NY.

About 5 minutes later, it dawned on me that I might would get wet if I went out anyway, but I was about as certain to get weepy and fragile and withdrawn if I just sat here alone in my conveniently-located but poorly lit apartment, and ... well, wet stuff dries. So I set off down Charles Street with an adventurous spring in my step, snapping artful pictures of puddles and park benches with my iPhone. I fueled up for my trek beneath the tin-punched ceilings of Panifico and vowed to walk off my delicious but generous plate o' hash before I went back home. I fell in love with Commonwealth Avenue and its memorials on every corner, flanked by the hundred-year-old townhouses with their curved fronts and indecorous flower boxes who seem to be Boston's true grandes dames. I stumbled across a Marshall's incongruously planted between a Talbot's and a La Perla, finally brought an umbrella after I was drenched enough for my hair and jacket to drip a path through the store, and told myself the funny looks I imagined getting from the Back Bay Brahmins (well, any who'd wandered into Marshall's by mistake on their way to the Kate Spade in the next block) would make for a colorful story.

And since I was right there on Boylston Street anyway, and it was a rainy day, I found myself in Copley Square across from the Boston Public Library, which just happened to be having a book sale that day. You can guess where this is going. For a dollar or in some cases (i.e., if you ain't too proud to read anything from the paperback romance boxes) a quarter apiece, I could stock up on fun reads aplenty. Most are still in the apartment unread, but I did read Dedication (you knew I'd get there eventually, right?) a few weeks ago.

Decent, but I fear McLaughlin and Kraus may always suffer from the fact that they'll never write another Nanny Diaries. Dedication was pretty good, a fun read ... but I felt like I was meant to empathize with Kate a lot more than I did. Wondering about an old flame, especially if he's gone off and become famous? No personal experience but I can imagine how it might work. But the degree to which it's become an obsession, and to which it's been The Only Thing Jake seems to have written about over the years? Not feeling it. Worth what I paid for it, I guess, but not really funny or moving enough to keep it on my shelf long-term.

#38: Bed

Bed, by David Whitehouse (New York: Scribner, 2011)


Summary:
"Mal Ede. a child of untamed manners and unbounded curiosity, is the eccentric eldest son of an otherwise typical middle-class family. But as the wonders of childhood fade into the responsibilities of adulthood, Mal's spirits fade too. On his twenty-fifth birthday, disillusioned, Mal goes to bed -- back to his childhood bed -- and never emerges again.


"Narrated by Mal's shy, diligent younger brother, Bed details Mal's subsequent extreme and increasingly grotesque transformation: immobility and a gargantuan appetite combine, over the course of two decades, to make him the fattest man in the world. Despite his seclusion and his refusal to explain his motivations, Mal's condition earns him worldwide notoriety and a cult of followers convinced he is making an important statement about modern life. But Mal's actions will also change the lives of his haunted parents, his brother and the woman they both love, Lou.


"In Bed, David Whitehouse has put a magnifying glass on contemporary society. Hailed as a 'momentous' (The Bookseller) debut in the UK, Bed is a mordantly funny and ultimately redemptive parable about mortality, obesity, celebrity, depression, and the broken promises of adulthood. It is one of the most audacious debut novels in years."

Opening Line:
"Asleep he sounds like a pig hunting truffles in soot."

My Take:
OK but a bit on the underwhelming side. I seem to be saying this a lot, but it was hard to get a good grasp on the characters and their motives. Mal comes off as a spoiled brat (if a deeply troubled one), and both the brother/ narrator (who never does get a name of his own) and their servile, enabling mother are ciphers. I also didn't see a lot of humor here, probably because so much of the description of Mal's condition was so horrifyingly grotesque. Heft was, in my mind, a much stronger book on similar themes.

#34: Swimming

Swimming, by Nicola Keegan (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

Summary:

"A spectacular debut about the rise of an Olympic champion -- a novel about competition, obsession, the hunger for victory, and a young girl with an unsinkable spirit struggling to stay afloat in the only way she can.

"When we first meet Pip, the extraordinary heroine of Nicola Keegan's first novel, she is landlocked in a small town in the center of Kansas, literally swimming for her life. Pip is tall and flat and smart and funny and supernaturally buoyant. On land, she has her share of troubles: an agoraphobic mother, a lost father, a drug-addled sister, and a Catholic education dominated by a group of high-energy nuns. But in the water, Pip is unstoppable. In the water, her suffering and rage are transmuted into grace and speed and beauty.

"Swimming is the story of Pip's journey from a small Midwestern swim team to her first state meet, her brutal professional training, and the final, record-breaking swims that lead to her dizzying ascent to the Olympic podium in Barcelona. It's the story of a girl who discovers, in the loneliness of adolescence, in the family tragedies that threaten to engulf her, the resilience of the human spirit and the spectacular power of her own body."

Opening Lines:

"I'm a problematic infant but everything seems okay to me. I'm sitting in Leonard's arms grabbing at his nose."

My Take:

This was one of those books that left me feeling a bit stupid and lightweight because I didn't enjoy it more than I did. It was OK, but as Ron Charles's Washington Post review points out, 

Swimming remains an unusually interior novel, contained entirely in Pip's discordant head. Even the dialogue is mediated by her voice, rendered only in italics, no quotation marks, sometimes slipping into shorthand and ellipses. This can feel a bit claustrophobic, as though we're missing a lot of what's happening outside her narrow attention. Moscow, Paris, Stanford University and other colorful locales are hard to see in much detail through the scrim of Pip's self-absorption, but if you've spent time around precocious teenagers (or been one), you'll recognize how true this sounds.

Charles' review was a positive, almost laudatory one nonetheless, but for me, the interior nature of the novel was a real roadblock. It was hard to get a real feel for any of the other characters, or even a vivid, objective picture of Pip (nee Philomena) herself. I'm glad I read the book and appreciate Keegan's literary skill, but think there's something I just didn't get here.

#23: Running the Rift

Running the Rift, by Naomi Benaron (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2012)

Summary:

"Running the Rift follows the progress of Jean Patrick Nkuba from the day he knows that running will be his life to the moment he must run to save his life. A naturally gifted athlete, he sprints over the thousand hills of Rwanda and dreams of becoming the country's first Olympic medal winner in track.

"But Jean Patrick is a Tutsi in a world that has become increasingly restrictive and violent for his people. As tensions mount between the Hutu and Tutsi, he holds fast to his dream that running might deliver him, and his people, from the brutality around them. But the day comes when he realizes there is only one way he can continue competing, and suddenly he's thrust into a world where it's impossible to stay apolitical -- where the man who sold him bread a few weeks ago now spews hatred, where an identity card bearing the right word becomes his most prized possession, and where the woman he loves may be lost to him forever.

"Winner of the Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, Naomi Benaron has written a stunning and gorgeous novel that takes us behind the headlines to reveal the causes and effects of Rwanda's tragic history and, more important, to portray the resilience of the human spirit. Through the eyes of one unforgettable boy who comes of age during that time, she explores the story of a country's unraveling, its tentative new beginning, and the love that binds its people together."

Opening Line:

"Jean Patrick was already awake, listening to the storm, when Papa opened the door and stood by the side of the bed."

My Take:

If you know me you'll know how rare this is, but I really have no words to do this book justice. Stunning, wrenching, and beautiful. I'm really trying to be objective here and not fall into that Saving Private Ryan fallacy of thinking any book that captures an especially harrowing moment must be good. But I don't think that's it; much of the book's power comes from the fact that for most of the book the violence is relatively understated, and only plays around the edges of the main characters' lives. Without spoiling too much, its most moving parts aren't pictures of graphic, wholesale slaughter after President Habyarimana's 1994 assassination (which are mercifully few), but the smaller scale human scenes that take place in its wake, specifically Jean Patrick's farewell conversation with his former schoolmaster, and Ineza's chilling insistence that daughter Bea run away with Jean Patrick rather than stay behind with her parents. I seem to be saying this left and right lately, but this is one of the best books I've read in a while.

#16: The Marriage Plot

The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2011)

Summary:
"It's the early 1980s -- the country is in a deep recession, and life after college is harder than ever. In the cafes on College Hill, the wised-up kids are inhaling Derrida and listening to Talking Heads. But Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English major, is writing her senior thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot, purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels.

"As Madeleine tries to understand why 'it became laughable to read writers like Cheever and Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France,' real life, in the form of two very different guys, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead -- charismatic loner, college Darwinist, and lost Portland boy, suddenly turns up in a semiotics seminar, and soon Madeleine finds herself in a highly charged, erotic and intellectual relationship with him. At the same time, her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus -- who's been reading Christian mysticism and generally acting strange -- resurfaces, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

"Over the next year, as the members of the triangle in this amazing, spellbinding novel graduate from college and enter the real world, events force them to reevaluate everything they learned in school. Leonard and Madeleine move to a biology laboratory on Cape Cod, but can't escape the secret responsible for Leonard's seemingly inexhaustible energy and plunging moods. And Mitchell, traveling around the world to get Madeleine out of his mind, finds himself face-to-face with ultimate questions about the meaning of life, the existence of God, and the true nature of love.

"Are the great love stories of the nineteenth century dead? Or can there be a new story, written for today and alive to the realities of feminism, sexual freedom, prenups, and divorce? With devastating wit and an abiding understanding of and affection for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides revives the motivating energies of the Novel, while creating a story so contemporary and fresh that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives."

Opening Line:
"To start with, look at all the books."

My Take:
Really enjoyed Middlesex and have heard mixed things about how this one compares. First chapter's been a bit slow to get into, but not lethally so.

(later) Better than average, but Middlesex it ain't. Fortunately, it did get a lot more engaging, at least for me, when we got past Madeleine's college days and out of the copious senior-English-major-seminar, pretentious literary jargon that seemed to take place there. Perhaps some of my more literary friends would have really enjoyed this piece, and even I admit -- I'd encountered enough of this gobbledygook peripherally, by osmosis, that I could recognize Eugenides's skill as a satirist. Even so, I'm a two-time social scientist, and as such, like both my fiction and my academics to be a bit more concrete.

I've also become a fan lately of truth in advertising when it comes to book jackets, and in all honesty -- this wasn't really a proper triangle. "Triangle," to me, implies that there's some sort of relationship among three parties that would be drastically altered if one of those parties were removed. Here that's not the case: Madeleine loves Leonard, Leonard loves her back (though perhaps not quite as much) but is really too consumed by his bipolar disorder (then known as manic depression) to be a proper partner, and Mitchell's had a long-standing unrequited crush on Madeleine. A brief flirtation or frisson between the two years earlier does not a triangle make. To some extent, this is a nitpick, but it does get at what I see as one of the book's chief weaknesses: while both the Mitchell-traveling-around-the-world storyline and the Madeleine-living-on-Cape-Cod-with-Leonard-while-figuring-out-what-to-do-with her-life one are reasonably well-done, they don't ever come together in a satisfactory fashion. We see them cross paths early in the novel (technically in flashbacks, as the story begins with Madeleine's graduation and running into Mitchell in a coffee shop), and then again, briefly and insignificantly, towards its end. Mitchell obsesses about Madeleine while backpacking around Greece and India, sure, but I don't recall her thinking much about him at all for the bulk of the book.

Again, I may be coming off a bit too harsh here; Marriage Plot certainly isn't awful. It's entirely possible that I just Didn't Get It, that I'm not sufficiently well-steeped in the Romantic novels Madeleine favors to really appreciate the whole marriage plot novel and thus, to understand the ways in which Eugenides is trying to allude to the same. If so, perhaps it's my loss. This was a decent book, and solidly written -- but not necessarily one I'll need to read again.

#13: The Namesake

The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri (New York: Random House Audio, 2003)

Summary:
"Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one of the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/ Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.

"In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion.

"The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name.

"Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs, With penetrating insights, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as 'a writer of uncommon elegance and poise.' The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity."

Opening Line:
"On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl."

My Take:
Simply exquisite. Listened to this one on CD on a drive downstate and back, somewhere in between 11/22/63 and State of Wonder, and wow ... what a gorgeous book. Perhaps it's that Gogol is just 2 years older than I am and so much of his coming of age mirrors my own, maybe it's Lahiri's seemingly effortless combination of those challenges unique to the child of immigrants with those common to all American (or hyphenated American) adolescents. Or the perfection with which the novel captures tiny but telling details; if I warmed to Ashima on the first page, trying to re-create a favorite Calcutta street food in Boston circa '68 in the last few weeks of pregnancy cravings, I absolutely adored her by page 8, when she looks back on the day 2 years earlier on which she first laid eyes on Ashoke:

"Glancing at the floor where visitors customarily removed their slippers, she noticed, beside two sets of chappals, a pair of men's shoes that were not like any she'd ever seen on the streets and trams and buses of Calcutta, or even in the windows of Bata. They were brown shoes with black heels and off-white laces and stitching. There was a band of lentil-sized holes embossed on either side of each shoe, and at the tips was a pretty pattern pricked into the leather as if with a needle. Looking more closely, she saw the shoemaker's name written on the insides, in gold lettering that had all but faded: something and sons, it said, She saw the size, eight and a half, and the initials U.S.A. And as her mother continued to sing her praises, Ashima, unable to resist a sudden and overwhelming urge, stepped into the shoes at her feet. Lingering sweat from the owner's feet mingled with hers, causing her heart to race: it was the closest thing she had ever experienced to the touch of a man."

You (or at least I) can't help but feel the same tenderness for Gogol, Ashoke, and even some of the more minor characters like Ruth, Gogol's first real girlfriend, and Moushumi, who he eventually marries. (I did not, however, ever warm to his post-college love interest, the spoiled rich Manhattanite Maxine.)

I could go on, and on, and on ... but truly, this is one of those books I was sad to finish because I didn't want to let the characters go.

#10: The End of Everything

The End of Everything, by Megan Abbott (New York: Little, Brown, & Co., 2011)

Summary:
"In a placid 1980s suburb in the Midwest, thirteen-year-old Lizzie and her next door neighbor Evie Verver are inseparable, best friends who swap bathing suits and field hockey sticks and between whom, presumably, there are no secrets. Together they live in the shadow of Evie's glamorous older sister Dusty, who provides them a window on the exotic, intoxicating possibilities on their on teenage horizons. To Lizzie, the Verver household, presided over by Lizzie's big-hearted father, is the world's most perfect place.

"And then, one afternoon, Evie disappears. The only clue: a maroon sedan Lizzie spotted driving past the two girls earlier in the day. As a rabid, giddy panic spreads through the balmy suburban community, everyone turns to Lizzie for answers. Was Evie unhappy, troubled, upset? Had she mentioned being followed? Would she have gotten into the car of a stranger? Would Evie have gotten into a car with a man?

"Compelled by curiosity and a desire to rescue the enchanted Verver household from ruin, Lizzie takes up her own furtive pursuit of the truth. Her days spent with a shell-shocked Mr. Verver, she devotes her nights to prowling through backyards, peering through windows, pushing herself to the dark center of Evie's world. Haunted by dreams of her lost friend and titillated by her own new power as the center of the disappearance, Lizzie uncovers secret after secret and begins to wonder if she knew anything about her best friend at all."

Opening Line:
"She, light-streaky out of the corner of my eye."

My Take:
I've sometimes said, upon finishing books by Chuck Palahniuk or even Joyce Carol Oates, that I feel like I need to take a shower afterwards. I don't know if The End of Everything is quite that bad, but I did feel just a little ... I dunno, just icky. Certainly young adolescents' burgeoning awareness of their own sexuality isn't a new theme, and Abbott's combining it with a kidnapping angle is an intriguing idea. But IMO, a little bit of the young girl/ older man thing goes a long way, and in that regard, I think Abbott way overdoes it. Having an Evie who, at some level, wanted a relationship with Mr. Shaw? A narrator who has just a bit of a crush on her best friend's dad? An older sister who's affectionate behavior with her own father is starting to look more than a little inappropriate? Any one, perhaps even two, of these threads might have worked, but all together, they're too much. I went hunting online to see if anyone else had a similar reaction, and found this review by Ana on The Book Smugglers, which captures my problems with this book far more clearly than I could have. She says, in part:

"But I think that what discomfited me the most and makes me wonder is how, because the story is narrated by a naïve, unreliable 13 year old in the 80s, certain things remain unnamed (the setting in the 80s is quite important I think, to explain the lack of awareness?) This story clearly presents a disturbing portrait of things that are not quite right, of things that people won’t talk about or even name. I have nothing against things being open for interpretation but I would argue that even despite the unreliability of this narrator, certain events such as: the culprit being driven by guilt and killing himself in the end; Lizzie’s mother cryptically saying that things are not quite healthy next door; Dusty having serious mental issues, leave no DOUBT in my mind on what we are talking about here: incest as well as paedophilia. And yet the “relationships” between the three girls and older men in this story are constantly framed with the words “love”, “pure” “falling in love or being loved by” older men.

"I keep going back and forth about this, wondering if the narrative (again, by Lizzie, a 13 year old girl) and the 80s setting (and the lack of awareness about these issues) are enough to account for how Lizzie interprets these events and therefore it is down to the reader to name things and point fingers? Not to mention that there are enough consequences to some of the people involved in these events (death, loss of innocence, etc) not to make it an issue of metatextual lack of acknowledgment of those issues. ...

Also one last question: isn’t it disturbing how basically all female characters including the teenagers in this book are either attracted to married men or to much older ones and they are all, to one extent or another, victims of/dependent on those men? Lizzie’s mother is a victim of a marriage gone bad and only starts to recover when she meets a new man (married); Lizzie is a victim of a broken home and the lack of a father and a victim of the bad influence of the next door neighbors; Evie and Dusty are victims of their father; Evie is a victim of Mr Shaw (and a willing one disturbingly so); Evie’s mother is a non-entity, a shadow of her husband and even Mrs Shaw who never shows up on page, willingly helps her husband when he is on the run because apparently she can’t control herself or pities him even though he seems to be the worst husband in the world (not to mention a sick pedophile). I mean, how messed up is that? It is worth noting though that maybe this is totally intentional and meant to be one of those searing looks at American Suburban Life in the 1980s with women in their dependent roles with the poor children in the middle of it all and I am being entirely too contemporary in my interrogation of the text.

"... It is a good book, with positive things but ultimately it is not the sort of book that I, personally, care to read."

#109: Damned

Damned, by Chuck Palahniuk (New York: Doubleday, 2011)

Opening Lines and Summary:
"Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison. I'm just now arrived here, in Hell, but it's not my fault except for maybe dying from an overdose of marijuana."

"'Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison,' declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned, Chuck Palahniuk's subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose -- and the next thing she knows, she's in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone's favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals must trek across the Dandruff Desert and cross the Valley of Used Disposable Diapers to confront Satan in his citadel, and all the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won't buy them off.

"This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell ... He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine."

My Take:
What a pleasant surprise. I picked this one up despite knowing Palahniuk's books leave me feeling in desperate need of a shower, because the premise just seemed too damned funny (excuse the pun) to pass up. It was, and grody as the descriptions of the underworld were, Damned made me laugh more than it left me with that visceral ickiness I had after Pygmy and Choke. It's hilarious.

#98: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, by Heidi W. Durrow (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2010)

Summary:
"Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on a Chicago rooftop.

"Forced to move to a new and strange city, with her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, startling blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It's there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity. Raised by her mother to think of herself as white, Rachel is now expected to 'act black.' And all the while, she keeps asking herself why she has to be defined by her skin, and whether labels say more about who she is, or more about a world that attempts to brand her as black or white."

Opening Line:
"You my lucky piece," Grandma says.

My Take:
Not quite as clear and gripping all the way through as the first few chapters start out, but nonetheless an outstanding book. It opens in 1982, at which point the not-quite-teenaged Rachel has recently moved to Portland with her grandmother and much younger and warmer Aunt Loretta, and is still stung with fresh grief compounded by her new guardians' refusal to even mention her mother's name. We learn, in fairly short order, that Nella (Rachel's mother) had left not just her abusive husband, but the unique insularity of military base life ... only to find that Chicago @ 1980 couldn't quite wrap its brain around a white mother with three seemingly black children. Eventually, her inability to raise and guide them properly under the circumstances led her to jump (or perhaps be pushed) off a rooftop; only Rachel survived.

While the story centers primarily on Rachel, we do get to know other characters to some degree, including Brick, the young man who was fascinated with birds as a child until he saw Rachel's brother Robbie fall to his death, and Drew, Aunt Loretta's mover-and-shaker boyfriend whose influence in Rachel's life far outlasts his relationship with her aunt.

This may be one I'll want to buy and reread; I think there are probably layers of meaning I didn't quite get the first time around. Even so, I still enjoyed it.

#86: The Gap Year

The Gap Year, by Sarah Bird (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011)

Summary:
"From the widely-praised author of The Yokota Officers Club and The Flamenco Academy, a novel as hilarious as it is heartbreaking about a single mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter learning how to let go in that precious moment before college empties the nest.

"In The Gap Year, told with perfect pitch from both points of view, we meet Cam Lightsey, lactation consultant extraordinaire, a divorcee still secretly carrying a torch for the ex who dumped her, a suburban misfit who's given up her rebel dreams so her only child can get a good education.

"We also learn the secrets of Aubrey Lightsey, tired of being the dutiful, grade-grubbing band geek, ready to explode from wanting her 'real' life to begin, trying to figure out love with boys weaned on Internet porn.

"When Aubrey meets Tyler Moldenhauer, football idol-sex god with a dangerous past, the fuse is lit. Late bloomer Aubrey metastasizes into Cam's worst silent, sullen teen nightmare, a girl with zero interest in college. Worse, on the sly Aubrey's in touch with her father, who left when she was two to join a celebrity-ridden nutball cult.

"As the novel unfolds -- with humor, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and penetrating insights about love in the twenty-first century -- the dreams of daughter, mother, and father chart an inevitable, but perhaps not fatal, collision ... "

Opening Line:
"I once believed that I was physiologically incapable of being unhappy while submerged in water."

My Take:
This one was pretty darned good. As the jacket indicates, the story alternates between Cam's and Aubrey's perspectives, but also between different times; Cam's story begins in August 2010, on the eve of Aubrey's scheduled departure for far-away Peninsula College, while Aubrey's starts a year earlier, on the cusp of her senior year when heat exhaustion at band practice leads her to puke on local football star Tyler Moldenhauer.

Both characters are very well-rendered, with a realistic dose of faults. On one hand, Aubrey's so dazzled by the initial scraps of attention Tyler offers that she thinks little about what she herself wants, both in terms of friendships/ Relationships and life in general. On the other, she's seventeen, so this is probably understandable thanks to youth and hormones. It's the little touches here that make the story: Aubrey's being surprised by Tyler's "country teeth" (anyone else in Parkhaven would've had that remedied by orthodontia years ago) and touched by his calling an interviewer for the in-school TV show "son" even though they're presumably only 2 or 3 years apart.

Cam, on the other hand, is both sympathetic and infuriating, in that half-nervous, too-close-for-comfort way. She's always prided herself on the close, open relationship she has with Aubrey -- at least, till a year ago -- but now finds herself agonizing regretfully over all the things they haven't done, from reading The Secret Garden together to staying in the hipper but educationally dodgier Sycamore Heights instead of moving to well-off, uber-conformist Parkhaven where neither of them really fits in. I'm with her here, but on the other hand, her contempt for Tyler is way excessive and off-putting. She can't seem to mention or even think of him without affixing "redneck" or "hillbilly" before his name, and appears to have spent the whole summer disparaging a job that seems pretty darned enterprising for a barely-literate high school grad; Tyler and Aubrey have been raking in the bucks operating a mobile food service van, which Cam can't stop calling a "roach coach."

Put the two together, add in Aubrey's unexpected Facebook friendship and regular online chats with her father, Martin ... and it's clear that something, somewhere is eventually gonna blow. When her part of the story opens, Cam's spent the whole summer laying in enough towels, sheets, and other dorm supplies for a whole floor of freshmen, but Aubrey won't even say two words about her college plans. Cam nags incessantly about how the two of them need to go to the bank together to withdraw her first year's tuition from her trust, but Aubrey constantly insists she's too busy with customers. Did I mention that Cam still carries a torch for Martin, even though he left her for the Next! cult and cut off all contact 16 years ago? Or that her own best friend, bad-a$$, rebel-without-a-cause Dori, serves as both comfort and warning (since Twyla, her own daughter and Aubrey's former best friend, ran off to live with her dad a year ago and hasn't been in touch since)?

A balanced, highly readable novel.

#85: 7 Things Your Teenager Won't Tell You

7 Things Your Teenager Won't Tell You and How to Talk About Them Anyway, by Jennifer Marshall Lippincott and Robin M. Deutsch, Ph.D. (New York: Ballantine, 2005)

Summary:
"Every teenager keeps secrets. If you're like most parents, you worry about what your kids don't tell you. In this guide to keeping pace -- and peace -- with teens, authors Jennifer Lippincott and Robin Deutsch offer a deceptively simple plan for talking to your kids that's based on a simple set of rules: Teens need to stay safe, show respect, and keep in touch."

Table of Contents:

Part I: Our Jobs Redefined

Introduction

• Job Description

The Rules of Play

• Our Own Adolescence -- A Look Back
• Today's Adolescents -- What's Changed?
• The Case for the Rules of Play
• Selling the Rules of Play to Our Adolescents
• Rule #1: Stay Safe
• Rule #2: Show Respect
• Rule #3: Keep in Touch

Part II: The Seven Things

1. Their Brains Are To Blame

• The New News About the Adolescent Brain
• The Adolescent Brain's Control Mechanisms
• What We Need to Know About the Limbic System
• What We Need to Know About the Prefrontal Cortex
• The Great Brain Drain
• Substance Abuse and the Adolescent Brain
• Sleep and the Adolescent Brain
• How to Deal

2. Truth Is As Malleable As Their Friday Night Plans

• The Anatomy of an Adolescent Lie
• Categories of Lies
• Getting at the Truth
• How to Deal

3. Controlling Them Is Not the Point

• The Control Conundrum
• A New Regime
• Taking Their Tempraments
• Playing with Our Adolescents
• Games It's Okay to Play
• How to Deal
• Command of Control

4. The Adolescent Mirror Distorts

• What We See Is Not What We Get
• What They See Is Not What We See
• The Only Adolescent Perspective -- Their Own
• Time Is on Their Side
• The Art of the Adolescent Conversation
• How to Deal

5. Friends Don't Matter As Much As We May Think

• Friends Versus Companions
• Their Reality Shows
• Is a Friend of Our Adolescent's a Friend of Our?
• The Seven Myths of Peer Influence
• Friendship Formations
• How to Deal

6. When We Say No, They Hear Maybe

• Reality Bytes
• Values Clarification
• The Great Adolescent (Parenting) Inhibitors
• Our Moral Addresses
• Gender Balancing
• How to Deal

7. Taking Risks Gives Them Power

• The Nature of Risk
• The Power of Risk
• Balancing the Power Scales
• Risks Past and Present
• Degrees of Risk
• How to Deal

My Take:
The very short jacket blurb above (it's a paperback and most of the back cover is excerpts from reviews) seems appropriate, as there didn't really seem to be all that much to this book. Yes, the point the authors make about the adolescent brain not being fully developed bears repeating (and may well have still fallen into the category of hot this-just-in news when the book as published in 2005). And truth be told, I'll admit to reading about the first half pretty closely and then, well, doing a lot of skimming from there on.

But that aside, unless I missed something major, there just isn't enough substance there for a full book. Most of the communication tips seem pretty self-evident, and certainly have been published elsewhere before this, i.e., you get more info from your teen if you ask non-judgmental, impersonal questions (i.e., "Do many kids drink at parties?" "Hey, I read this article about ... ") than if you start right out accusing and blaming. And the authors' much-touted Rules of Play (stay safe, show respect, keep in touch) are good ideas in theory, but so vague ad to cover pretty much everything and nothing at once. They're also a bit light on the consequences part of parenting.

All in all -- meh. Not awful but not particularly impressive or memorable, either.

#68: The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School, by Alexandra Robbins (New York: Hyperion, 2011)

Summary:
"Cross Gossip Girl with Freaks and Geeks and MTV's MADE, a shocking plot twist, and Alexandra Robbins' signature investigative style -- and that only begins to describe Geeks, a smart, entertaining, reassuring book about the secrets of students who are popular and the triumph of those who are not. Robbins follows seven real people grappling with the uncertainties of high school social life, including:

• Danielle, the Loner, who has withdrawn from classmates since they persuaded her to unwittingly join her own hate club
• Whitney, the Popular Bitch, a cheerleading captain both seduced by and trapped within her clique's perceived prestige
• Eli, the Nerd, whose differences cause students to laugh at him, and his mother to needle him for not being 'normal'
• Joy, the New Girl, determined to stay positive as classmates harass her for her mannerisms and target her because of her race
• Mark, the Gamer, an underachiever in danger of not graduating, despite his intellect and his yearning to connect with other students
• Regan, the Weird Girl, who battles discrimination and gossipy politics in school but leads a joyous life outside of it
• Noah, the Band Geek, who is alternately branded too serious and too emo, yet annually runs for class president

"In the middle of the year, Robbins surprises her subjects with a secret challenge -- experiments that force them to change how classmates see them and teach us why the things that set students apart in high school are the things that help them stand out later in life.

"Robbins intertwines these narratives -- often victorious, occasionally heartbreaking, and always captivating -- with essays exploring subjects like:

• How do you get to be popular?
• Being excluded doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you
• Why outsiders succeed
• How schools make the social scene worse -- and how to fix it.

"The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is more than just a book. It's a movement. And whether you're a student or an adult, it will change the way you think about your friends, your school, and -- most of all -- yourself."

Table of Contents:

• Prologue
• Chapter 1: Meet the Cafeteria Fringe

Late Summer to Early Fall: The Popularity Myth

• Chapter 2: Quirk Theory and the Secret of Popularity
• Chapter 3: Why Are Popular People Mean?

Fall: Why Quirk Theory Works

• Chapter4: In the Shadow of the Freak Tree
• Chapter 5: It's Good to Be the Cafeteria Fringe

Winter: Outcast Profiling and Other Dangers

• Chapter 6: Challenges
• Chapter 7: Misperceptions

Late Winter to Early Spring: Being Excluded Doesn't Mean There's Anything Wrong with You

• Chapter 8: A Brief Introduction to Group Psychology
• Chapter 9: Why Labels Stick: The Motivations of the Normal Police

Spring: Quirk Theory's Origins: Why These Issues Are Hardest in School

• Chapter 10: Changing Perceptions
• Chapter 11: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Late Spring to Early Summer: Popular vs. Outcast

• Chapter 12: Popularity Doesn't Lead to Happiness
• Chapter 13: The Rise of the Cafeteria Fringe
• Chapter 14: Cafeteria Fringe: Lucky and Free

My Take:
Brilliant, sometimes painful, but on the whole inspiring and provocative. An absolute must-read for (among others) anyone who still struggles from time to time with their own adolescent-outcast demons at the same time they're trying to help their own child start to navigate the same shark-infested waters. Not that I'd know anything about this personally, mind you.

#59: The Pact

The Pact: A Love Story, by Jodi Picoult (New York: HarperCollins, 1998)

Summary:
"From Jodi Picoult, one of the most powerful writers in contemporary fiction, comes a riveting, timely, heartbreaking, and terrifying novel of families in anguish -- and friendships ripped apart by inconceivable violence. Until the phone calls came at 3:00 A.M. on a November morning, the Golds and their neighbors, the Hartes, had been inseparable. It was no surprise to anyone when their teenage children, Chris and Emily, began showing signs that their relationship was moving beyond that of lifelong friends. But now seventeen-year-old Emily has been shot to death by her beloved and devoted Chris as part of an apparent suicide pact -- leaving two devastated families stranded in the dark and dense predawn, desperate for answers about an unthinkable act and the children they never really knew."

Opening Line:
"There was nothing left to say."

My Take:
Powerful? Heartbreaking? Devastating? More than a little hyperbolic, but I knew what I was getting into. I bought the book in a "buy 2, get 1 free" sale at one of the local book chains (back when we had more than one) a while back, and kept it in the bull pen till I needed it.

That time came a few weeks ago, before our long vacation -- I won't go into the gory details but it was a rough week emotionally, and I just plain needed some reasonably-absorbing escapist fiction. (Plus, maybe it's just me, but when I'm feeling like my own life's a mess, some melodramatic fiction is often just what the doctor ordered -- even at my worst, I can look at plot lines like this and reassure myself that at least I don't have it that bad.)

So The Pact fit the bill. It's obviously one of Picoult's earlier books, which is a mixed bag. On the minus side, it lacks some of the gentle ethical-dilemma-probing I've come to expect from House Rules, Handle With Care, and Vanishing Acts. However, a strong plus in my book is that she hadn't yet stumbled on her now-predictable twist ending formula (which some article I read a while back called "just kill a kid and get it over with") -- which, frankly, gets a bit tiresome after the 3rd or 4th book.

Not high literature, definitely a WYSIWYG book -- whether you think you'll enjoy it or not, you're probably right. Speaking only for myself, I'm in the "enjoy it, but in pretty small doses" camp.