A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne

Outwardly, Maurice Swift has it all: he's charismatic, charming and has model good looks. But what's not obvious from looking at him is the turmoil inside his head. He has great ambitions of being a famous author, but he's got no ideas. Lucky for him, he's one manipulative motherfucker.

Getting what he wants is no problem for a man with an ego the size of the universe and no shame. There are lots of ideas out there in the world, but where do authors get their ideas? Maurice just has to find one that will catapult him into the stratosphere of fame he desperately wants. Who owns ideas anyway? This is the dilemma and the great question explored in A Ladder to the Sky.

Maurice has a solution. First, he finds a person to latch onto. It needs to be someone whose step on life's ladder is above his own. This person will unknowingly help him with his plan. But what's in it for them? Maurice gives them whatever they want. After all, when you're charming and not hard to look at, it turns out it's not at all hard to attract whoever you need. Once he finds a suitable target, he uses them for his own gain. He doesn't have to give up too much of himself to get whatever he wants. Because of Maurice's narcissistic tendencies, he doesn't see anything wrong with this arrangement. He gets what he needs and, well, the other person gets the pleasure of his company.

He doesn't give a second thought about what he leaves in his wake. He has no concept of consequences. Feelings and emotions play no part in his setup or his psyche. He's a classic sociopath to the core.

Maurice travels from Europe to America and back and we follow him as he moves from his youthful twenties into his senior years. He leaves victims everywhere he goes. Anyone's fair game, but he chooses very carefully. His sole ambition is personal fulfillment and he won't stop until he reaches his goal. He aims to reach the highest of heights, never thinking beyond the peak - that what goes up must come down.

Who's to tell the difference between ownership and theft? Do our stories belong to us at all? John Boyne weaves these ideas throughout, creating a superb plot and food for thought.

Judge the cover: 4/5 (A word of caution: Don't overdo it on the curiosity front like me. As I was partway through the book, I was dying to know what the wording underneath the cutouts says and inadvertently figured out a major plot development because of it. Lucky for me, this book is so well written, I still loved it, but just be patient. It will be revealed in due course.)

The Book of Essie by Meghan MacLean Weir

Essie is no ordinary seventeen-year-old. She's spent her entire life on a reality show, Six for Hicks, with her fanatically religious family.

The drama is off to the races from the get-go!

Essie, we find out straight away, is pregnant. Normally reserved for plot twists around the 200-page mark rather than Sentence Number One, this is just the beginning of a spiraling series of dramatic events. One by one, we are introduced to a vast number of secret-bearing relatives. There are many skeletons and many closets. Gradually dark secrets are revealed, true selves exposed. Everyone has something they want to hide. But Essie has something she needs to share.

All of these twists and turns make this book hard to put down. You think you'll just read one more chapter...which turns into just one more chapter...and then...well, you know how it goes. Its pacing is reminiscent of well-written YA novels.

The only thing that I found weirdly lacking was how much the reality show was responsible for the insane celebrity of the entire Hicks family, yet there never seemed to be mobs of people around any time the family members went out in public. Where were all the fans? Apart from that quirk, it was compelling, fast-paced, and you really want to find out what's going to unfold next. Because something important is always unfolding.

The Book of Essie is an impressive first work of fiction from this author. I'll be interested to see what she writes next.

Judge the cover: 4/5

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Well, not all books can appeal to all people and unfortunately The Friend just wasn't for me.

I thought this was going to be a story about a dog. And it was but just not enough for what I was expecting. It was a novel about grief and suicide (lots of suicidal references, so note to those who might find this upsetting) and writing. I should have liked it. It's full of components that I would normally find no trouble delving into and even welcome, but I just couldn't connect to the storytelling.

The book is written as a letter/book/memoir - even the format isn't very clear - to a writing teacher's mentor who had died by suicide. She is left to look after his Great Dane. The dog is depressed. He's clearly sad, but the narrator does her best to make him comfortable. She muses a lot about human/animal relationships, about grief and how both humans and animals process it and, because she is a writing teacher herself who is writing to a writing teacher, there is a lot of philosophizing. And lots of quotes by other authors. In some sections, quote after quote after quote after quote to the point where I got tired of reading other authors' quotes and just wanted to read an original thought. (Sixteen quotes within seven pages at one point until I stopped counting - because books are for reading, not counting.)

The flow was off for me at various points as well. Much of it felt like author's notes that she wanted to include in a book, but that hadn't been formed into cohesive paragraphs. By the end, however, the book pulled together a bit more for me. There was more about the dog and more of a story. I wasn't mad at the end. It actually tied up very nicely.

My absolute favourite part is about two-thirds of the way through when the author discovers the dog likes being read to, that he finds it soothing. He picks up a Knausgaard paperback and places it gently by her side. A giant gentle dog that personally selects Knausgaard? That's the exact moment when I too fell in love with the dog.

But ultimately not even a Knausgaard-loving dog could make me connect to this book. 

Book cover rating: 4/5

Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir by Liana Finck

I wanted to like this graphic memoir a little more than I did. I found it a little hard to follow.

Liana (or Leona, as she refers to herself in this book) has lost her shadow. This concept is basically what confuses me - if I'm understanding it right, I think her shadow is the deep core of her true self, but I'm also unsure if the shadow is a darkness she may have inherited from both of her parents who fought their own demons. Liana has trouble forming and maintaining relationships and refers to Aspergers at one point. She's trying to tell her story, but keeps having to rip out what she's done and start again. She begins with her mother's story, then starts over with her father's story. She moves onto her childhood, then a short-lived relationship with a famous comic artist boyfriend. She concludes with a chapter about her shadow. Interspersed are interpretations of a couple of bible stories.

There were certain sections that shone more than others. One thing the author's not afraid of is exploring her inner voice and exposing herself through her art.

You can tell the author inherently needs to draw. She draws to find what she has lost. She draws to fulfill the voids in her life. She draws to find herself.

Book cover rating: 3/5 

Between by Angie Abdou

Let's start over. This is what Vero's young son says whenever his day goes awry or there's a fight. Starting over is the most prominent theme that runs throughout Between.

Vero and Shane are married with two young sons. When Vero starts falling apart at the seams, overwhelmed by her marriage and motherhood, Shane suggests hiring a nanny to help her cope. Hiring a nanny is supposed to help Vero start over, to have time to focus on her work and on herself, but the entire idea stresses Vero out. She questions the idea of hiring someone from a foreign country to do her work as a mother. Soon she reaches a breaking point and agrees to her husband's suggestion. She interviews a few nannies over the phone and chooses Ligaya (or Lili as she comes to be known) - a woman from the Philippines who is starting over herself.

While Vero's been going through her breakdown in Canada, Ligaya's been in Hong Kong working for the strict Poon family. She sleeps in a closet and phones her family in secret since she isn't even supposed to own a cell phone. She had to work in Hong Kong for a year in order to be eligible to work in Canada. When she's put in her time there and gets the call that she's got the job in Canada to work for Shane and Vero, she's excited to start over in this new country. She's hoping for better living conditions and nicer employers than she's experienced in Hong Kong, but her heart really lies with her family back home in the Philippines - they're the reason she's living abroad. They simply ran out of money and opportunities in her homeland, so she's been forced to work abroad and sends gifts and money home.

The points of view bounce back and forth between Vero and Ligaya. I liked the character, Ligaya, the most. She's trying her best to navigate a new country with a pretty significant language barrier, trying to respect the agency rules set out for proper nanny/employer relationships, while trying to balance the obvious tension between Vero and Shane. She does her best to give Vero space and develops a special relationship with the two boys. All the while, Ligaya holds onto a significant secret about her life back home, so she's trying to compartmentalize her two different lives on different sides of the world.

Meanwhile, in an attempt to feel less guilty and also because she's feeling a bit stranded in life, Vero wants nothing more than to be friends with Ligaya, rather than being just her boss. However, much to Vero's annoyance, because she's so intent on following the rules, Ligaya mostly maintains a professional distance. 

There are a couple of instances where the plot really veers out of the everyday. I found these scenes just made Vero's character seem more disjointed. It seems she went from silently seething at her husband and then doing a total 180 and was doing everything she could to please him and was generally completely unpredictable overall. I suppose these instances maybe just highlight how all over the place Vero's mindset's at, but I found her character just didn't flow quite as well as the others. I found her a bit hard to decipher. 

Overall, it was a bit of a dark plot, but Ligaya provided a lot of light. She was the anchor for the unmoored: she provided stability for Vero and her well-being, she did her best to handle the tension between Vero and Shane, to provide balance between motherhood and the children, between her family at home and the one she looked after in Canada. The name Ligaya translates to happiness, and it was happiness that I was hoping Ligaya would find after all she sacrificed for herself and for everyone else. She truly deserved to start again with a smile on her face and happiness in her heart.

Book cover rating: 3/5

Arbitrary Stupid Goal by Tamara Shopsin

Tamara Shopsin's Arbitrary Stupid Goal stands out for it's uniqueness. She grew up in a way that I secretly dreamed of while holed up in boring, beige, suburbia: 

a) She grew up in The Village in NYC in the 70s/80s. We're almost the same age but, unfortunately for me, that's where the similarities end.
b) Her family owned a small grocery store, which they later turned into a small legendary restaurant. Both were referred to as "The Store".
c) Actual celebrities frequented her family's diner.
d) Her parents were super lax with rules. I think there was only one.
e) She had four other siblings.
f) The neighbourhood had many eccentric characters. There was always something interesting or unusual going on and someone interesting or unusual doing it.

This book is a collection of memories, most of which are about Willy (her father's unofficial mentor), the family businesses, and her family members (but mainly her parents).

Willy was one of the neighbourhood eccentric characters and a very close family friend who just had the most filthy mind, but always seemed to get away with his dirty old man lifestyle. He sounded very charming and magnetic, yet very dirty. He reminded me very much of Heather O'Neill's stories about her father's friends when she was growing up. Larger-than-life, unconventional, free-spirited, charismatic are all words that come to mind. But when he got old and started going senile, it was enough to break your heart.

The stories about the legendary family businesses were my favourite. You could just picture it all in perfect detail. The restaurant had hundreds of items on the menu since her dad, Kenny, was always experimenting. There were many rules at the restaurant. No ordering the same item as your neighbour. A standard response to a customer who said they were in a hurry? "Leave now - you'll be early." Restaurant reviews were banned. So were lots of people. In a world where business owners are falling over themselves trying to attract customers, her father would singlehandedly determine who he would allow to dine in their restaurant. There were many ways to fail at being a customer. There was lots of yelling from her dad (a brash, short-tempered chef) and lots of camaraderie from her mom (the happiest waitress ever who had an endearing habit of sliding into customers' booths to take their orders).

I found that other stories that form part of this collection just weren't quite as strong, though they were still good and definitely entertaining. I particularly liked the one about the crossword lady and if, for some reason, you have always wondered how to fold a napkin into a penis-with-balls sculpture, you can find a handy diagram on page 290.

Visually, the typography layout is unique and worth a mention. Most of the text doesn't fill the page. A paragraph or two may be on one page with a ton of white space below. The next paragraph will start on the following page. There are also a few diagrams and photos interspersed throughout. I still can't decide if this text formatting is cool or a bit try-hard. Basically, it reminds me of when you're in school and your teacher asks you to write ten pages, but you aren't quite sure how to fill that many pages, so you write in gigantic double-spaced loopy script to make it fill ten pages. However, if you had condensed it all down to normal size, you might actually have three pages of actual text. So, is this a 324-page book with really around 200 pages of text? Oh well. It's different and makes it easy to read, so I suppose I'm on board. It's just food for thought. Anyway, it's the substance of those words that really matters the most and there is certainly no lack of substance. And no lack of food for thought. Just lack of food for the poor disobedient customers of The Store.

Book cover review: 5/5 (I love peeking under dust jackets to see what, if anything, lies beneath. This half-jacket hybrid is unlike any I've seen before. So unique!)

Roz Chast has done it again - she's made a book I couldn't put down. I love Roz Chast's work and I love New York*, so I knew that the two put together would be a match made in heaven.

Roz was born and raised in Brooklyn and somewhat very reluctantly moved to the suburbs when she had children. Although she frequently took her kids for visits into New York City as they were growing up, when she quizzed her daughter who was moving to Manhattan for college, she realized she was in fact a very suburban girl and she could use a little help. What began as a little booklet Roz made for her daughter about Manhattan turned into a book for the rest of us.

Each chapter focuses on a different aspect of Manhattan life. Everything you need to know is covered, from finding your way around (finding out cross-streets is important), to how the subway works (an empty car is not a stroke of luck - it's empty for a reason), to apartment hunting ("You will probably have to recalibrate your idea of what's affordable, and also make a compromise or two.") Of course, all of these important facts are accompanied by Roz's humorous, quirky illustrations.

And while she states very clearly at the beginning of the book that it's not a definitive guide book, not an insider's guide, nor a history book, it's actually packed full of such helpful information that I feel as though were you to be moving to Manhattan yourself - or just a first-timer visiting for a few days - you'd be armed with a whole lot of great insider information if you pick up this book before you go.

On a personal note, I'd also like to thank Roz for summing up my very own preference of concrete to grass: "For some reason, I've always preferred cities to nature. I am interested in the person-made I like to watch and eavesdrop on people. And I really like DENSITY OF VISUAL INFORMATION." Yes! That right there expresses it perfectly.

(*I claim to love New York even though I've never actually visited. I just know that it's as cool as I picture it being. One day I'll make it there. In the meantime, I'll read about it and continue to live vicariously through others' stories.)

Book cover rating: 4/5

The Blessings by Elise Juska

I can't quite remember what compelled me to pick up this book. It wasn't the cover (so-so) and I know for sure it wasn't the title (if I hear #blessed one more time, I might vomit for real), so I'm assuming that it must have been a Goodreads recommendation based on another book I enjoyed. Whatever led me to this book, I'm grateful it did because The Blessings is one of my favourite types of fiction: a multi-generational drama. While there's not always a lot of flash and sizzle with this genre, it consistently shows that every family has their own catastrophe (or series of catastrophes if they're really unfortunate - or just normal...) which either pulls the family closer together or tears them apart.

The Blessings are a large, close-knit family. They are constantly gathering not only to celebrate or mourn, but simply because it's a way of life for them. They lean on each other in different ways on a near-daily basis. Anyone who marries into this family knows what to expect so, depending on their personality, they either tend to join in or quietly simmer away, putting up with their big clan of in-laws.

Each chapter of this novel is written from the point of view of the individual members of this family. Most detail a major obstacle they are trying to overcome and show how different family members empathize with them, seek to help them or are left in the dark, depending on their dynamic. They are written in such a way that I felt an entire book could have sprung forth from each character's standpoint. As as each chapter came to a close, I wanted to find out more. Fortunately, in most cases, as the chapters move onto other family members, time passes and the years go by, we find out further nuggets of information about previous family members we've read about and how things turned out for them.

I think the character, Elena, sums this book up best as she's describing a school project: "The subject is my family, mostly. It's about these contradictions - the dualities of family life...having this identity as part of a big family but also this part of yourself that's separate, dealing with your own private stuff, that they never really know. Or dealing with the same stuff, just differently."

It's about what family members choose to share, what they keep to themselves, how they support each other, grieve together, celebrate, suffer and mourn. What draws them closer, what shatters them. It's about how love and unique bonds are the central core of a family and how everything radiates outwards from home. 

Book cover rating: 2/5