Review, sort of: Those Who Save Us

Those Who Save Us by Jenna Blum
Find it at a local indie!

• Why I read it: A German perspective of WWII, Minnesota nice
• Disclosure: Received a copy as a birthday present. Thanks!

Anna Brandt is eighteen years old in 1939. In her hometown of Weimar, Germany, where relationships between Germans and Jews are outlawed, Anna and the man she loves are committing the crime of race defilement. When Anna is forced to flee the home of her father, a Nazi sympathizer, she takes refuge in a bakery owned by a Resistance member. Soon Anna is making pastries for the officers of nearby Buchenwald while also making "special deliveries," risking death to bring bread to the camp's inmates. Then she is noticed by one of Buchenwald's highest-ranking officers. And everything changes. Five decades later, long after Anna has emigrated to Minnesota, she still refuses to speak of her wartime experiences. Anna's daughter Trudy has only one clue as to what they might have been: a family photograph featuring Anna, Trudy, and the Obersturmfuhrer. Haunted by the guilt of her heritage, Trudy, now a professor of German history, begins a deeper investigation of the past and not only finds a chance for redemption but unearths the heartbreaking secret her mother has kept for fifty years.

When I received this as a birthday present, I wasn't sure about it. Yes, Trudy's part is set in Minnesota, which is always a benefit for someone with as much love of my beautiful state as me. (Yes, even when it's -25 degrees Farenheit and there's three feet of snow on the ground and you have to bundle up like a marshmallow to walk to the mailbox. Hey, it's an excuse for hot chocolate!) But the mere mention of a concentration camp in fiction has started to make me cringe. It's a topic so vast, so horrible, and so utterly incomprehensible that any attempts to explore it are almost certainly going to fail. We've been hit over the head with so many Holocaust books that it's hard for even a bleeding heart like me not to get frustrated. (Which, in a sidebar, is why Maus by Art Spiegelman is a brilliant and original way to do it. If you haven't read it, you should.) I'd much rather see a writer tackle another of WWII's horrors - the Japanese "comfort women," mass murders of Filipinos, Indonesians, Koreans, and other ethnic groups, even the Greek Civil War which started right on the heels of German and Italian surrender - than the "We hid from the Nazis" theme.

Still, I sat down to read Those Who Save Us one night, deciding that (almost) every book deserves a shot, especially books with pretty covers. The clunky prose and confusing beginning almost forced me to put it down again, but by chapter three or four I was completely engrossed in Anna's story and even mildly interested in Trudy's.

Those Who Save Us avoids the usual "Nazi" shtick by using an ordinary German's perspective, one who isn't particularly brave, one with mouths to feed. It's a study in the word culpability and where it really lies - and you start to realize it's not entirely at Hitler's feet. The author worked for Steven Spielberg's Shoah foundation interviewing Holocaust survivors, and it's clear that this novel is written from rich experience. While I found myself skimming through Trudy's sections to get back to Anna, even with the lovely Minnesota connection, WWII through the eyes of Trudy's German project is also fascinating.

The prose, unfortunately, didn't get much better through the course of the novel, and that along with the nature of Anna and the Obersturmfuhrer's relationship made for some icky, icky awkward sex scenes that would probably make an adult reader blush and cringe. As a teen it was downright painful. I think we were supposed to be revolted, similar to Kiana Davenport's Song of the Exile (the only novel I've ever found that features comfort women), but it was still tough to read. Blum's themes and story are brilliant, but her execution not so much.

I always feel odd as a teen reviewing adult books (which is why my review request policy says I don't accept them), and this book epitomized the reasons why. It's gritty, mature, and uncomfortable, and as grown-up as I'd like to think I am my evaluation of style is a little clouded by themes I don't understand. I'm not sure I'd recommend this to my teen blogging peers, but adult readers might find a lot to enjoy. Four out of five stars.

From the Abuelas' Window Winner!

This contest was technically supposed to end on January 28th, and I did shut down submissions then...but of course, I'm only getting around to announcing the winner now because that's the way I roll. Don't judge. Anyway, drumroll please, because the winner of a signed copy of From the Abuelas' Window by Nancy Toomey is...

Christi the Teen Librarian!

Congratulations, Christi! I'll be emailing you shortly for your contact info so Nancy can send that to you. Thanks for the entries, everybody!

Review: Jazz in Love

Jazz in Love by Neesha Meminger
Find it at a local indie!

• Why I read it: Arranged marriage, cute boys, growing up, Southeast Asia, culture clash!
• Disclosure: Received a copy from an author friend (but not THE author). Thanks!

 Jasbir, a.k.a. Jazz, has always been a stellar student and an obedient, albeit wise-cracking, daughter. Everything has gone along just fine--she has good friends in the "genius" program she's been in since kindergarten, her teachers and principal adore her, and her parents dote on her. But now, in her junior year of high school, her mother hears that Jazz was seen hugging a boy on the street and goes ballistic. Mom immediately implements the Guided Dating Plan, which includes setting up blind dates with "suitable," pre-screened Indian candidates. The boy her mother sets her up with, however, is not at all what anyone expects; and the new boy at school, the very UNsuitable hottie, is the one who sets Jazz's blood boiling. When Jazz makes a few out-of-the-ordinary decisions, everything explodes, and she realizes she'll need a lot more than her genius education to get out of the huge mess she's in. Can Jazz find a way to follow her own heart, and still stay in the good graces of her parents?

I've said it before and I'll say it again - I have a hard time with romance. Mostly because I'm much more the scrawny-gangly-shy-artsy-bangs-in-the-face-and/or-dreadlocks-emo-bohemian type than blond-surfer-boy, and the former doesn't show up so much. (Come to think of it, he doesn't show up much in real life, either. Hmmm...) So why is it that cross-cultural romance is so awesome? Born Confused by Tanuja Desai Hidier. Major win. While not strictly YA and also magical realism, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Even more of a major win. Jazz in Love by Neesha Meminger? Absolutely adorable and the most fun I've had reading a book in forever. Anyone else seeing a trend?

Meminger is also the author of Shine, Coconut Moon, which I haven't read but have heard is pretty awesome. Unfortunately, even after the success of Shine she couldn't find a publisher for Jazz, so she decided to self-publish, and produced the perfect example of everything self-publishing could/should be. It's got a cover that's better than most "chick lit" types (read: not totally embarrassing to be seen with in public), it's smoothly edited and well-written, keeps it real, has characters I want to know, and is laugh-out-loud hilarious. Long story short, traditional publishers lost out, because it's a book that I would have bought (and am still planning to buy as a gift!) in a heartbeat.

It's the wisecracking narration by Jazz that really made this book for me. While I occasionally felt like I was outside the SE Asian clique with slang like bindi-bos (bimbos, "but brown") and frequent mocking of American attempts to pronounce Jasbir - jazz-BEER - Jazz's attempts to mesh the Bollywood world of her parents with her teen realities could be related to any teen's frustrations. Her secret romance novel obsession, her "gay best friend," and her crush-maybe-more on the school bad boy were certainly things that transcended cultural differences. It's not an "issue" novel, it's just a novel where the main character happens to be a PoC. The world needs more of them. There were a few things that grated on me, like the overuse of exclamation points (!!!) and several moments where I was beating my head against the wall at Jazz's bad decisions. (What, are you stupid? Well, ARE YOU? Stop. Just. Stop. *puts hands over eyes* *shakes head* *peeks* *keeps reading*) Still, it grated on me less than your average Meg Cabot, which is a Big Deal because The Princess Diaries? Ultimate rainy day book.

The ending in particular was excellent, because even though it was a little dragged out, it wasn't perfect. Sorry, but in real life things don't always work out, and Meminger captured that here without making it a downer to read. Still a happy ending, but bittersweet, too.

What this all boils down to? Read this book. It's sweet, funny, real, and just all-around awesome. Trust me! Four and a half out of five stars.

In My Mailbox/Read This Week, belatedly. Again.

I wasn't even going to post tonight because yeah, I really should be doing homework right now...but then I remembered POSTERITY, because I'm totally going to want to remember what I was reading during what are supposedly the best years of my life somewhere down the line. Right. Anyway, In My Mailbox is usually done on Sundays by sane people most people, except not by me because I always leave my Monday morning homework to the very last minute and am thus spending all Sunday scrambling to get it done. Procrastination is not my friend. It's hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren, who is a superhero who does memes on time. Really. This week, a dear friend of mine surprised me with...

...Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

Ethan Wate used to think of Gatlin, the small Southern town he had always called home, as a place where nothing ever changed. Then he met mysterious newcomer Lena Duchannes, who revealed a secret world that had been hidden in plain sight all along. A Gatlin that harbored ancient secrets beneath its moss-covered oaks and cracked sidewalks. A Gatlin where a curse has marked Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals for generations. A Gatlin where impossible, magical, life-altering events happen.
Sometimes life-ending.
Together they can face anything Gatlin throws at them, but after suffering a tragic loss, Lena starts to pull away, keeping secrets that test their relationship. And now that Ethan's eyes have been opened to the darker side of Gatlin, there's no going back. Haunted by strange visions only he can see, Ethan is pulled deeper into his town's tangled history and finds himself caught up in the dangerous network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, where nothing is as it seems.

Yay! The South! Grits! People who actually say "The War of Northern Aggression!" Grits! Civil War reenactments! Grits! Total strangers who call you "honey" and "darlin'!" GRITS! (Catching my drift?)

Because I have amazing family and friends, I was also surprised with two books by my mother, one of which being Malinche by Laura Esquivel. I loved Like Water for Chocolate, and have always been fascinated by the story of La Malinche. (If you're not a history buff, she was Hernán Cortés's Náhuatl translator and lover as he conquered Latin America and is generally reviled as a traitor to her people.) Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it's the translation or the book but the prose is terrible. I'm thinking I'll try and get it in the original Spanish and see. It's got one of the most beautiful covers I've ever seen, though - the Goodreads image doesn't do it justice! 

She also got me a copy of The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg because books described as "A riveting combination of culinary biography, behind-the-scenes restaurant detail, and a unique exploration of globalization's dynamics" float my boat, and because sushi is really, really yummy and insanely hard to get here in Minnesota, so I like reading about it and tormenting myself. Also, I'm thinking this dust jacket and my Vampire Academy novels might have to get acquainted.

Anyway, a day late, what did you get in your mailbox this week? Please leave your titles and links in the comments!

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 Read This Week

Across the Universe by Beth Revis

Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler

Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future by Matt Hern (Hey, what can I say. I'm an urban planning geek.)

The Indigo Notebook by Laura Resau.

(This is what happens when I don't have Facebook.)