Month: April 2016

Why YA Novels Can Be A-One Reading

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It’s hard to define young-adult fiction or even pinpoint when it became a category known as “YA.” Heck, YA books have been around for much longer than they were called YA books, and many of them can be enjoyed by readers younger or older than the presumed target audience of preteens and teens.

But I’ll take a stab at describing YA fiction. It often stars preteen and teen characters, and is often told from their viewpoint — whether the format is first person or third person. And it deals with topics and issues that are frequently of especial interest to younger people: growing up, family, friendship, peer pressure, dating, sexuality, school, racism, sexism, homophobia, bullying, cars, alcohol and drug use (or non-use), concern about looks, etc.

Also, YA novels are of course usually written somewhat more simply than grown-up books, though they’re hardly simple. In fact, some are as deep as books aimed at older adults. And YA novels are usually not super-long, though there are some exceptions.

Last week, I read The Yearling — which might be the only YA novel to win the Pulitzer Prize (in 1939, before YA books were called YA books). Yet, like much of the best YA fare, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ masterful novel is a YA book and a grown-up book. A major YA aspect is the novel’s focus on the preteen Jody Baxter, and the relationship that only child has with an orphaned pet fawn. But The Yearling also focuses a lot on Jody’s parents, and on the Baxter family’s interactions with other adults in 1870s rural Florida. Plus the author doesn’t spare readers the very harsh realities of life and death (of animals and people). Last but not least, the coming-of-age book is 400-plus pages — longer than most YA literature.

My favorite YA novel might be L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables — which mixes heartwarming, humorous, and sad moments as it chronicles the adolescent years of orphan girl Anne Shirley after she’s adopted by aging siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert. The many Anne sequels range from good to great, but none quite match the first novel. (This would be a good place to mention that a number of YA authors also write/wrote adult books, as did Montgomery with “The Blue Castle.”)

Other YA novels in my top 10 — or top 12-18, said by some sources to be the target age range of YA readers: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games trilogy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Louis Sachar’s Holes, Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Lois Lowry’s The Giver, and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I listed the above books — which can also be enjoyed by kids and adults — in random order. And, yes, most of them are not that recent. I’m sure there are many terrific YA novels published in the past few years; I just haven’t read them. 🙂

Then there are grown-up works that are sort of YA literature, too: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Carson McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, etc.

Certain books can be read on two levels. For instance, younger readers thrill to Gulliver’s amazing adventures, while older readers might also admire Swift’s scathing satire. The same could be said for Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which on one level is about a cool raft trip but on another level is a serious look at racism.

I didn’t discuss certain other notable YA novels — including S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars — because I haven’t read them (yet). I’d also like to read more of Robin McKinley’s work.

What are your favorite YA or YA-ish novels, and why?

I won’t be posting a column May 1 because I’ll be in Florida for my mother’s 90th birthday. New column on May 8!

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Avoiding the Classics But Not the Authors of Classics

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Some people don’t read long, challenging, and/or depressing classic novels because of time constraints and worry about feeling bored, frustrated, or sad. So, left by the wayside are Ulysses, Moby-Dick, Middlemarch, War and Peace, and various other iconic books — some of which are actually quite compelling and even entertaining.

A possible compromise: People could read the authors of classics, but read those writers’ shorter/easier works rather than the longer/tougher stuff. That approach might eventually lead readers to the longer/tougher stuff, but, even if it doesn’t, they’ve at least experienced some literary greatness.

The alternatives to reading authors’ most famous/demanding works might be in the form of novels, novellas, or short stories — with some of that work early-career efforts written before the authors jettisoned simplicity.

I thought about that last week while being riveted by a collection of Leo Tolstoy’s short stories. I had read Anna Karenina and War and Peace many years ago, and was of course impressed, but I realized that briefer Tolstoy tales might be attractive to readers who want to avoid that author’s long and very long books. Among the Russian writer’s shorter classics: “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (a grim masterpiece about a life lived too conventionally), the almost-novella-length “The Kreutzer Sonata” (an intense saga of lust, marriage, and jealousy), and the literally chilling “Master and Man.”

Moving on to other authors, I’d recommend reading James Joyce’s fairly straightforward and hauntingly sad story “The Dead” instead of/before reading Ulysses and his other brain-straining novels.

Readers who want to temporarily or permanently avoid the majestic Moby-Dick might instead try Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd or stories such as “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Benito Cereno” (the latter a mesmerizing slave-ship tale).

Before tackling George Eliot’s exquisite but at times slow-moving Middlemarch, readers might consider her Silas Marner — which has a bad reputation among some high-school students but is actually a very poignant short novel.

Scared of reading late-career Henry James novels (such as The Ambassadors) that are excellent but filled with dense verbiage? Try Washington Square and other absorbing earlier James works that are written quite clearly.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is an incredible novel but not the easiest book, so one alternative could be his also deep but much more linear Love in the Time of Cholera.

Before getting to Willa Cather’s beautifully written but oh-so-earnest Death Comes for the Archbishop, readers might consider something like her Shadows on the Rock — an appealing historical novel starring a daughter and her widowed father in 17th-century Quebec City.

More before-or-instead-of possibilities (with the authors’ outstanding-but-somewhat-“taxing” classics in parentheses): Toni Morrison’s Sula (Beloved), Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (The Lord of the Rings), Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye (The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter), Honore de Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet (Old Goriot), Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight (Germinal), Margaret Atwood’s Wilderness Tips story collection (The Handmaid’s Tale), Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Trees and its sequel Pigs in Heaven (The Poisonwood Bible), and John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and its sequel Sweet Thursday (The Grapes of Wrath).

What would be some of your suggestions for less “grueling” fare by authors of classic novels?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

First Meetings in Fiction

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Last week’s post was about memorable goodbyes in literature. This week, I’m flipping that around to discuss characters’ memorable first meetings — which can help hook readers early in a work of fiction.

I’ll start by again mentioning Jane Eyre, in which Charlotte Bronte’s quiet but feisty governess heroine initially encounters a galloping Rochester on a path where his horse slips and injures him. It’s significant — and portentous — that Rochester’s temporary disability puts him on a somewhat equal footing with Jane despite being her employer.

In L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, siblings Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help with the farm chores. When Matthew goes to the train station to meet him, the “boy” is a girl: Anne Shirley. That mistake and Matthew’s shyness make for awkward acquaintance-getting, but, before the horse-and-wagon ride home is done, the orphaned Anne wins over Matthew with her talkativeness, enthusiasm, intelligence, and (understandable) neediness.

Moving from England to Canada to France, we have German surgeon Ravic in Paris on the run from the Nazis when — in the opening page of Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph — he dramatically meets an almost catatonic Joan Madou on the street as she’s (possibly) contemplating suicide. What ensues is loosely based on Remarque’s relationship with famed actress Marlene Dietrich.

Then there’s A.S. Byatt’s Possession, in which little-known scholar Roland Michell and better-known scholar Maud Bailey meet to try to solve a long-ago mystery involving two 19th-century poets. The initial Maud-Roland encounter is somewhat strained, but things gradually warm up between the two.

Or how about the part-comedic/part-scary first meeting of Moby-Dick characters Ishmael and Queequeg when they’re forced to share the same inn room before boarding Captain Ahab’s ill-fated ship?

Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay for the 1956 movie version of Herman Melville’s classic work — three years after the publication of Fahrenheit 451. In that Bradbury novel, the meeting between professional “fireman” (book burner) Guy Montag and free-thinking teen Clarisse McClellan is the spark that causes Guy to question his beliefs and what he’s doing with his life.

Another fascinating first meeting is when Kiki Belsey visits Carlene Kipps in Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. Their annoying, self-centered husbands are academic and authorial rivals, yet the two women manage to carve out something of a friendship.

There are many memorable meetings in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — Dorothy coming across the Scarecrow, the two of them meeting the Tin Woodman, the three of them encountering the Cowardly Lion, the four of them meeting the Wizard, etc. (And black-and-white meets color in The Wizard of Oz movie. 🙂 )

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, the title character learns he’s a wizard when meeting Hagrid; then, on the train to Hogwarts, he encounters the two people (Hermione and Ron) who will become his closest friends; then Harry is introduced to Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore; then he later meets arch-villain Lord Voldemort; and so on.

There are also first meetings — often in a continuing series of novels — that are long anticipated/delayed. For instance, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series has Jack first hearing Major Susan Turner’s voice on the phone in 61 Hours, but our curious hero doesn’t come face-to-face with that potential romantic interest until four books later, in Never Go Back. A meeting teased that long is often worth waiting for — and, in this case, it is.

An engineer visiting a Massachusetts town is also curious — about the dour, limping Ethan Frome when he first meets him in Edith Wharton’s novel. Readers soon learn about Ethan’s melancholy, tragic history.

Then there are meetings with celebrities, as when the time-traveling Sam Fowler encounters Mark Twain, President Grant, and other notables in Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back.

Not to mention difficult meetings between people who don’t understand each other’s language, as in Zhilin’s initial “conversation” with his captor in Leo Tolstoy’s tale “The Prisoner of the Caucasus.” (I’m currently reading a collection of that author’s short stories.)

What are your favorite first meetings in literature?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Farewells Arm Many Novels With Dramatic Moments

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Partings are often sad and poignant, and literature is full of them. I don’t mean partings as in death, but either temporary or permanent farewells between characters who remain alive.

Those goodbyes can be spelled out in dramatically dialogued scenes, or more minimally mentioned in some narrative way by an author. The leave-takings might or might not be “for the best,” and readers wonder if the characters will meet again. Readers also think about their own real-life partings, which adds their personal emotions to the emotions evoked by the author.

Two novels that are among my favorites — Jane Eyre and The Grapes of Wrath — contain wrenching separations.

In Charlotte Bronte’s book, Jane sneaks away from Thornfield Hall after a devastating revelation convinces her that she can’t stay with Edward Rochester. There is no direct goodbye — they already said plenty during an emotionally charged conversation not many hours before — but Jane’s surreptitious departure remains a powerful scene. Plus she will be alone in the world, with no particular destination.

John Steinbeck’s novel features a meeting between Ma Joad and her in-hiding son Tom just before Tom flees to escape capture after committing a morally justifiable (but of course technically illegal) murder. A very sad encounter, made even sadder by the endless cascade of troubles that had been hitting the beleaguered Joad family for months.

Another melancholy parting, which we learn about in backstory, is between the Persuasion characters of Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth. In Jane Austen’s novel, Anne’s snobby family pressured her to break off her engagement to the admirable Frederick because he was a not-rich-enough “nobody” at the time.

There’s also the goodbye between Gwendolen Harleth and the title character of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. Gwendolen is in love with Daniel, but Daniel has just married someone else with whom he’ll be traveling far from England — perhaps for the rest of their lives. Gwendolen’s letter to Daniel in the novel’s closing pages is heartbreaking.

Another unrequited romance followed by a goodbye is part of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer, in which Judith Hutter is left despondent after Natty Bumppo declines her offer of marriage. Years later, Natty thinks he sees Judith in the distance, and her life has not turned out particularly well.

Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years has Delia Grinstead leaving her husband and children — partly because they’ve been taking her for granted for a long time. In this case, Delia’s action itself is a farewell; she doesn’t literally say goodbye when she leaves to try to start a new life. Will she return?

Moving to another country can certainly set up sad family separations — as in Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, etc.

Then there are the goodbyes in times of slavery, war, and other ultra-wrenching periods. What could be worse than the inhumanly brutal forced separations of parents and their children in Octavia Butler’s Kindred, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and various other novels set in the Antebellum South?

During war, we have devastating separations in such novels as Erich Maria Remarque’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside, among many other books.

Which novels contain goodbye scenarios you’ve found particularly memorable?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.