Fiction Pick of the Week: B-Sides and Broken Hearts

B-Sides and Broken Hearts by Caryn Rose 2011

Ever wonder what happens to those young girls who attend every concert of their favourite band, screaming their lungs out and crying; buy all the music; paper their rooms with posters; and treasure the music forever?  In this semi- autobiographical first novel, Caryn Rose will give you a quick look. 

To Lisa Simon, it’s always been all about the music. ‘Lisa from New Jersey’ is a 30-something computer programmer living in Seattle with her boyfriend Ian, though theirs is not a happy relationship.  Lisa is working one morning and a headline pops up: “Joey Ramone has died”.  How can that be? He was only 49. Email notifications start flooding in.

Lisa’s reaction to the unsettling news sends her on a whirlwind journey back through the stages of her life that brought her to where she is now.

Yes, the story IS about sex, drugs, and Rock and Roll, but not necessarily in that order. This is a heartfelt look inside the music world of the latter decades of the 20^th century, from a Superfan’s perspective. Enjoy!

Fiction Pick of the Week: The End of Everything

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott 2011

Thirteen-year-olds Lizzie and Evie have been best friends forever. Lizzie, the narrator of this story, is fascinated by Evie’s seemingly perfect family, especially her glamorous older sister Dusty, a beautiful boy-magnet girl and accomplished sportswoman. She also idolizes Lizzie’s father, Mr. Verver, a cool and approachable man, the king of the beautiful Verver kingdom. Lizzie’s own family is in disarray, ever since her parents’ divorce, with her mother striking up a relationship with a married man. Then one day, on the way home from school, Evie disappears. The police and her family are desperate for clues and Lizzie feels something nagging at the back of her mind until she remembers….she remembers a maroon car that had been following them and a whispered conversation with Evie about someone who had been watching her from outside her window. It soon becomes clear that Evie has been taken by Mr. Shaw, a married, older man who had been observing her for a while. In the ensuing days, Lizzie tries to make sense of what is happening. She searches into Evie’s disappearance and uncovers secrets and lost memories that cause Lizzie to question if she ever really knew Evie at all.

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Talk-Funny Girl

The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo 2011

Marjorie is the seventeen-year-old “talk funny” girl whose first person recollection of her upbringing in a poor rural area of New Hampshire is the basis of this compelling novel. Her parents are completely isolated from the community with their own mountain hybrid dialect that makes Marjorie a subject of teasing at school and abuse at home. Her distrust of adults is well entrenched, learned from the actions of her parents and a sadistic minister, and heightened by the unsolved abductions and murders of several young girls. Only the kindness of an aunt and a young stoneworker, with a dream of building a “real cathedral” out of the debris of an old church, can save her.

This novel is captivating, the suspense low grade but building to an unexpected ending It is apparent from the opening chapter that Marjorie, with her inspiring resilience, finds her way out of this hopelessness. Having lost her dialect as an adult, she is aptly able to express herself: “I wanted to go back and hunt it down and close the hurt museum for good though I discovered you cannot really do that. What you can do, what you have to do is not pass much of it on.” It is a journey and a moral lesson the reader will remember.

Fiction Pick of the Week: The Guardians

The Guardians by Andrew Pyper

It only took me two days to read The Guardians by Andrew Pyper – it was that good. The story centres around four childhood friends, who played on their high school hockey team called “The Guardians”. The novel opens with Trevor, Randy, and Carl each going back to their small Ontario town for their friend Ben’s funeral. Ben has committed suicide and the remaining three must come to grips with not only his sudden death but with something even more sinister. Trevor, Randy, and Carl have been keeping details of a mysterious crime they were all involved with twenty-four years earlier locked up. But travelling back to Grimshaw and once again seeing the abandoned house at 321 Caledonia Street brings all the bad memories back – and more!

Fiction Pick of the Week: Annabel

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Annabel, a nominated title for the 2011 Ontario Library Association Evergreen award,is an edgy novel about a child who was born a hermaphrodite to a family in a small community in Labrador. The baby’s father, Treadway, wants the child to live his life as a male while his mother, Jacinta, feels that the baby is truly her daughter.

The child is brought to a surgeon who follows the wishes of the father.
The baby is christened Wayne. Wayne has a difficult life living in a male body that requires pharmaceutical interventions to mask his dual sexuality.
Wayne has one true school friend, Wally Michelin, who wants to pursue a career as a classical music singer. A tragic accident results in Wally’s vocal cords being injured. Wayne, on the other hand,is interested in bridges and architecture.

What I liked about the book is that both Wayne and Wally are able to achieve their life dreams regardless of the struggles that they have to endure. The novel has many well-developed characters and aptly portrays the struggles of Wayne, Treadway, Jacinta and Wally. Annabel was nominated for the Evergreen Award, the Governor General's Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Fiction Pick of the Week: Girl in Translation

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok 2010

Narrated by an eleven-year-old girl, this is the inspiring story of Kimberly and her mother who make the move from Hong Kong to New York City in the 1990s. They are leaving Hong Kong before China takes over and incorporates communist rule. However, they are not prepared for the impoverished living conditions of New York City after leaving a comfortable lifestyle back home. Her mother ends up working in a textile sweatshop and has trouble learning the language and customs of the city. Kimberly must assume a leadership role in her small family to protect her mother and to get ahead in her education. We follow Kimberly’s progress as she masters the language and excels in school. Her journey is not always easy and is heartbreaking at times, but her strong spirit helps her to overcome the obstacles to succeed.
Compelling coming-of-age fiction which would be interesting to teens as well as adults.

Tuesday's Pick: Tomato Girl

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek


Had I gotten this book a week earlier, it would have been one of my picks for Beans 'n' Books: new novelist. The theme of this story would have reflected that of Mudbound and Sweet Treats: family dysfunction, secrets and deception within families, and desperate love. I need to treat myself to some children’s fantasy stories for a while!

Told in the first person of Ellie Sanders, this story quickly takes the reader into Ellie’s nightmarish life with her mother and father. Ellie’s absolutely frightening mother terrorizes Ellie daily: will mama be good and nice or will she turn into that other woman?

With her mother so unstable, Ellie leans heavily on her father for normalcy. It takes awhile for Ellie to understand that the tomato girl, who brings produce to the store, brings more than that to her father. Tess is that young woman; she runs away from her abusive father and finds comfort with Ellie’s father. But her solace becomes everyone else’s grief. Ellie watches horror-struck as her beloved father brings Tess into their house, and slowly his character turns from a loving family man to someone Ellie begins to fear. Ellie’s tortuous life as a young girl almost brings her to the edge of madness. Read Tomato Girl, and you’ll know why!!

Monday's Pick!

The Time it Takes to Fall by Margaret Lazarus Dean is a classic coming of age novel, but its backdrop in the heady days of the early space shuttle programme makes it unique. The story is told by Delores Gray whose father is a NASA technician. She is keenly intelligent and wants to be an astronaut like Judith Resnick; yet she is drawn to an unpopular boy who, although his father is a NASA supervisor, is more concerned with a colony of pelicans, endangered with every shuttle launch.
In this part of Florida, the values of the American family are closely tied to the successes and failures of the shuttle. When the Challenger explodes on takeoff, in January 1986, it has a disastrous effect on the characters. This is a beautifully written first novel that manages to build suspense even when you know how it has to end.