Islands make good book fodder


I just finished an advanced reader's copy of The Waves, An Island Novella, by Jane Minkman.



No relation to Virginia Woolf's work. In spite of the title and the lighthouse on the cover. Definitely not as much of a downer, bless Woolf's soul.

Book theme: Losing your childhood beliefs does not mean you lose all faith in the world. Walt is inspired by an older cousin who questions the status quo without being cynical, but it takes going to a land where no one shares his beliefs for him to find his own peace with what he had always been taught.

The novella was peopled with good, sympathetic characters. It had a bit of the feel of Ursula K. Le Guin, in the world building around arbitrary systems of beliefs. And a bit tame Lord of the Flies. The obvious sources of their ways of seeing the world was not treated as a joke, even though it could have been, instead just imbuing the story with a sweet tolerance. 

I would recommend this to a teen reader, and look forward to more from this author. Too bad about the cigarette smoking scenes, though.

Comments

  1. Jen MinkmanSeptember 17, 2013 at 4:55 AM

    Thanks Julia! You're the very first one to write a review of my new title and I'm happy you enjoyed it :) If you want, I could also send you a review copy of The Island (the prequel) because I don't remember seeing a review of that novella on here, so let me know if you're interested :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julia Gandrud (aka JuliaLikesFrogs)September 17, 2013 at 1:54 PM

    Hi Jen,
    Yes, I would happily read the prequel! And other books you write. Well done, and thank you for sharing.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Subscribe

* indicates required

Popular posts from this blog

What comes next?

Image
Surgery was a month ago. Since then I have been sleeping, writing, painting (a little) and playing with my children. Each child alone is a pleasure, although the two together are baking soda and vinegar. I'm not saying which is which. Finally, Laurent took smallest monkey to France, where smallest monkey will spend a whole month alone with his grandparents, because we all needed a break, including Emile. He might even start maternelle,  preschool, there, for a short while. Everyone gets a break, but I miss him like crazy. Starting tomorrow, I will be going to Boston every day for radiation - that's three hours round trip for 15 minutes of being turned into the Hulk. I'm doing it because they will also be giving me more chemo, and I apparently love chemo that much... Every day is hard. It's a mixture of crabby because I might die within the next five years, and blissed out because life is so beautiful, and crying when I hug my family. It's extrem
Read more

Women in abstraction: a century and a half of female artists at the Centre Pompidou

Image
The Women in Abstraction show at the Centre Pompidou was arbitrary, condescending, and totally worthwhile. I mean, Elle font d'Abstraction is just short of “Look! A woman can make a painting! How quaint!”  Still, go. You won't regret it.  They more than make up for any condescension... And if they don't, we're clearly hungry for this exhibit. I counted two women in attendance for every man – yes, really, I counted.   “The utopian ideals of pure abstraction have allowed women artists some kind of entree into art, since a truly universalist art practice would be genderfree... but it was a myth.” - Mira Schor, 2009, from “Some Notes on Women and Abstraction” On a personal note, I hadn't been expecting to have a night alone in Paris. I certainly hadn't expected to have a good time. I'd always associated Paris with exhausting in laws, arguments, and trying to keep up with fast paced conversations in a new language. But my flight out of Charles De Gaulle was sched
Read more

NaNoWriMo and Escapist Literature

Image
My name is Julia, and I am addicted to escapist literature. I'll read far into the night, even through the night, to get to the end of a story. Even a cluster of not exceptional YA fantasy stories, like the ones I've recently brought home from the library. (Librarian: "You know those are from the young adult section?" Me: Blank look.) Or maybe the stories are good, and I've just had a temporary raising of the bar for books in general, from having finished Abigail Thomas' memoir, Three Dog Life . Which is one of those books full of truth written beautifully, that often made me laugh, about loss of what we know, and loving what takes its place. Profound, in other words. Most of what I read isn't profound. My mother, who worked in a bookstore for part of my childhood, brought home great boxes of books without their covers. Some of my all time favorite books, of which I know every illustration, I wouldn't recognize on your coffee table at a
Read more