Gone Girl vs The Casual Vacancy

By Melissa Ann

Gone Girl vs. Casual Vacancy (Zombie)

Gone Girl had me from page one. It was a page-turner throughout even though it was very predictable. The annoying part is that it felt like it was written to be a movie and it lost its literary appeal to me half-way through. The book became a little cheesy but I finished it because it was still enjoyable and I wanted to see how it ended.

Gillian Flynn's writing style is easy to digest and it flows. It's written in such a way that makes you want to come back to it if you've put it down because you want to know what happens next. It draws you in. 

I had high expectations of Casual Vacancy because I enjoyed Harry Potter so much. I was disappointed because I kept putting this book down because it could not hold my attention. I felt like I was reading for homework, not pleasure. I read various passages throughout the book and can see that Rowling probably did a great job with her character development. But I didn't care for any of it. 

If I had enough discipline to sit down and read this book cover-to-cover, maybe my opinion would be different. But the fact that I would need discipline to read a book at all means it simply is not good (for me). 

I am a mother of two young children and when I love a book, I steal any opportunity to read two pages here or two pages there. Finishing emptying the dishwasher? Reward = 2 pages. Finishing cleaning kitchen? Reward = one chapter. I do this throughout my day. You get the picture. I was doing this for Gone Girl but not for Casual Vacancy. 

I do not think either of these books deserve to be a "winner" of a book tournament. But since I have to choose one, it is Gone Girl. I am basing this on whether or not I would recommend the books to patrons. I would recommend Gone Girl to patrons. Although it wasn't perfect, it was entertaining. Would I recommend Casual Vacancy? Never. 

Winner: Gone Girl 

Yellow Birds vs Round House

In Yellow Birds, Murphy and Bartle are young soldiers off on their first tour of the war in Iraq. Murphy’s mother asks the 20 year old Bartle to promise to bring her son home.  Bartle casually agrees but starts to ponder his responsibility to the younger soldier thrust into his care by his Sergeant.  The novel has flaws- a thin plot with a shaky conclusion and clichéd, watered-down stereotyped war characters. Powers makes up for these flaws with descriptions of Iraqi villages in the desert light, the depth of the soul sucking heat and the struggle of these two soldiers to survive with poetic passages that make your heart ache for young men in war. This is Kevin Powers first novel and he tells his story with passion.

In contrast, Round House by Louise Erdrich is her 14^th novel and it is a technically well written, socially significant story of a young boy’s struggle with the rape of his mother. Set on a reservation in North Dakota, Erdrich weaves together the complexity of tribal law and white law and rape. The Ojibwa stories are wonderfully told. The conflicts of white and tribal law I thought could have been better explained.  The characters still seemed remote and the final actions of the 13 year old did not ring true to me.

Because it grabbed my mind and heart.      YELLOW BIRDS

The Beginner's Goodbye vs. Round House

The Beginner's Goodbye by Anne Tyler vs. Round House by Louise Erdrich

The sweet novel tells The Beginner's Goodbye tells the story of Aaron, who was born with a slight physical handicap.  All his life he has felt coddled by his family.  He works in the family publishing business so he is never far from his relatives.  He has married Dorothy, a doctor he interviewed for one of his books.  They have a comfortable life together but are not truly in love. When Dorothy dies in a freak accident, Aaron must reinvent his life and eventually find love again.

Round House tells the story of Joe Coutts, a Native American boy of 13 whose mother is brutally raped and left for dead.  She survives the attack, and the book is about Joe and his parents' life together afterward.   The identity of the rapist is soon obvious, and much of the narrative is about tribal boundaries and the jurisdiction responsible for prosecuting the crime.  Ms. Erdrich writes an afterword about the high incidence of rape among Native American women, but the story is not a polemic.  The characters ar real and well-drawn.

I enjoyed both novels, but I felt that Round House had more depth.  For thta reason, Round House is the winner.

The Chaperone vs. Gone Girl

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

The Chaperone vs. Gone Girl

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn are excellent books with remarkable characters.   This is a tough match between a loveable protagonist in a historical fiction novel and one very wicked woman in a psychological thriller.  

The author of The Chaperone, Laura Moriarty, lives in Kansas the setting of the novel and writes with a lyrical style.  The writing flows and readability is one of its strength. There is a huge attention to historical details with an impressive bibliography at the end of the book.  It was obvious that the author researched Louise Brooks, the orphans trains, and Kansas history.  Cora Carlisle cares about her family, friends and even nasty Louise and the tone of the book is optimistic and heartwarming.  I am a fan of Laura Moriarty – her writing is lovely and there is always a solid substance to her novels. This escape to the past offers insight and reflection on how far we have traveled in the tolerance of birth control, homosexuality, unwed mothers and illicit sex.

Forging ahead to the contemporary world where bright people lose jobs and parents ruin the lives of their children, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is a hot novel. It is easy to find fault with success and let the little guy win.

Gillian Flynn is a master of manipulation. Her skillful surgery of the minds of the characters and their motivations fascinates me. The careful pacing flips the pages.  The structure of alternating viewpoint chapters between Nick Dunne and Amy Elliott, the conniving couple, serve to confuse and misguide. Although one can view it as a Scott Turow look alike or as a carbon copy of an episode of Law and Order I believe strongly in its uniqueness.  Who is the bad guy develops into how low everyone can go. The ending is outstanding in its irony.  While I detested most of the characters in the book I was enthralled with their thought processes.

 I tend to follow most fiction fans and favor likable characters over unreliable ones. Cora Carlisle, the protagonist in The Chaperone  is a likable, strong, empathetic character, who rises above all obstacles Although Cara experienced hardship in her early years I felt that her life of lies worked out a little too picture perfect. Amy Elliott in Gone Girl is psychopathic, hateful, mean, manipulative, murderous, vicious, and damaged goods. Yet her mind and Nick’s are so intriguing. Welcome to the real world.

Sinners win over Saints.  Strength of writing, plot development and the structure of a novel control this contest.

WINNER: GONE GIRL BY GILLIAN FLYNN

Arcadia vs. The Yellow Birds

ARCADIA by Lauren Groff tells the story of a man told in four parts, beginning with his early childhood in a hippie commune in upstate New York. Even as a small child, Bit Stone can see the cracks splitting his parents' Utopia, though their stable relationship shields him from the drugs and sex to which many of the other children are exposed. I liked this part the least, because it seemed like Groff was trying too hard to develop Bit into a Holy Fool -- he's very small for his age and doesn't talk, yet he has a gift for midwifery!

In the second part, Bit is a teenager and no longer presented as the fool. Now he's known around the commune as SOMEONE WHO NOTICES THINGS. He's found his voice and expresses himself through photography. Meanwhile, the commune is collapsing under the weight of its own decadence. Its population has swelled from a few dozen to nearly a thousand. Really? A thousand? I can't imagine so many people willingly living with the commune's strict rules, unsanitary conditions and near starvation diet when there are other options available.

The final two parts of the story follow Bit as an adult. I liked these parts better, because the New York City that he inhabits makes for a more authentic setting. Groff delivers some insight into the value of community in the final section, which takes him in a bit of a circle back to where he began. The flu epidemic within this final section has already been commented on; I will say that I didn't mind it as much as some other readers. It wasn't the only element within the story that seemed slightly over the top.

What did annoy me are the lack of quotation marks around dialog. This wasn't the first book I've read that eschewed the marks (that would be Cormac McCarthy's The Road), and I hope that this stylistic trend will die soon. With The Road, the missing quotes came as jolt, but McCarthy's spare prose always made clear who was speaking. I figured, hey, the apocalypse has come and gone, who has time to worry about punctuation? Now, though, it feels gimmicky. For comparison, Bullet Time looked really cool and served a purpose in The Matrix, but you can't put it in every movie.

I did like Arcadia overall, despite my complaints. The elements of the novel that I enjoyed most -- the power of his parents' relationship, his love of photography, and Groff's insights on community -- are universal ones.

THE YELLOW BIRDS by Kevin Powers follows two soldiers who serve together in Al Tafar, Iraq. Early on, Powers establishes that the war for them is not some great adventure, but the great white whale -- a force of nature that indiscriminately devours everything within its path. Bartle and Murphy are only trying to survive. Their goal is to not be one of the first 1000 US casualties to the war. 

Besides his two main characters, Powers has populated his story with some well-known war tropes like the  colonel who comes to fire them up before battle with a big speech, and the hard-ass sergeant who delights in killing. Powers uses these tropes well, making them vital rather than tired. Bartle dismisses the colonel's "half-assed Patton imitation", and the killjoy sergeant also fusses over his privates, preparing them for battle by taping their gear to their bodies so it doesn't jingle.

Powers describes his characters through their motions (which are ponderous and deliberate -- perhaps because of the desert heat and the weight of their gear). He shapes Al Tafar through vivid depictions of the colors, which change with the movement of the sun. Powers himself served in Al Tafar, and the authenticity of his descriptions indicate that he spent a significant amount of time observing the shifting light while he was there.

He also clearly and concisely shows how both Murph and Bartle, like most young people, operate under the belief that death is something that happens to other people. I can say that one of them will not make it without spoiling anything: this detail is revealed early on. What I won't reveal are the circumstances of that death, and the effects that it has on the survivors. Powers' story is as much about processing death as it is about war.

I believe that Powers succeeds in not just telling a compelling story, but in recording his impressions of this specific place and time. He accomplishes both with precise, economical prose that never wastes itself.

Because Kevin Powers is someone who notices things, THE YELLOW BIRDS wins this round.

The Chaperone vs The Flight of Gemma Hardy

THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty VS THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY by Margot Lovesey

THE CHAPERONE;  This work of historical fiction is set in Wichita, Kansas in 1922. The reader is pulled right into this era with all of the period details - orphan trains, Prohibition, Flappers, and the onset of the Depression.  Cora Carlisle, aged 36 and a rather ordinary Wichita housewife, agrees to be the unlikely chaperone for 15 year-old Louise Brooks who is headed to New York to attend a summer session with the prestigious Denishaw School of Dancing.  (Readers might recognize the name of Louise Brooks who goes on to be a silent star in the early years of the movie industry.) This journey changes the lives of both women - in totally unanticipated ways. Two very different women - one a middle-aged empty nester and the other an adolescent on the brink of coming into her own life - find the answers they're looking for in New York City. This book looks at the myriad assortment of family relationships and their impact on the two characters' lives. 

Cora is a character I fell in love with. It was fascinating to see how her life played out. She was an admirable woman who managed to live a full life despite her many hardships. This book IS about "The Chaperone". 


THE FLIGHT OF GEMMA HARDY by Margot Livesey

This book is also historical fiction - set in the 1950's and 60's in Iceland and Scotland. Several reviews of this book call it a "re-inventive imagining of the classic, JANE EYRE."  It was a beautifully written book that I could not put down - for most of the book. However, as a reader, I simply could not go along with all of the many twists and turns that the author built into the plot. I could barely make myself finish the book because of this.

I loved the story-line. Gemma Hardy becomes an orphan at 3 when her Icelandic fisherman father drowns at sea. Her kind Scottish uncle becomes her guardian and welcomes her into his family. Gemma enjoys an ordinary life with her adopted family until her uncle passes away. Overnight, circumstances change for the worse for Gemma and she is suddenly hated, resented, and ostracized by her Aunt and cousins. At barely 10 years old. she is sent off as a "working girl" to a private boarding school. When that school goes bankrupt, she is forced to take on a job as an au pair on Orkney Island for the forlorn 8-year-old niece of Hugh Sinclair - a London businessman and owner of the remote Blackbird House.  Gemma's life takes off and circumstances at the Blackbird House cause her to deal with relationships and ensuing "flights" that are rather challenging for an orphan with such a hardscrabble life.

The beautiful prose and the magic realism of this book - set against the backdrop of Scotland and Iceland - made this a wonderful read. All was spoiled for me as the book neared its end. I simply could not accept the way the author developed the character of Gemma Hardy. 

WINNER: THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty

A Killing in the Hills vs. The Round House

A Killing in the Hills is Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Keller's first novel, uhmmm. For a would-be thriller, the extensive character development and backstory was a distracting drag. I started skimming pages because of the implausible yet predictable plot. Prosecutor Bell Elkins, a single mom and her teen daughter take on an illegal drug ring that’s already pulled off a Capone-style massacre of three senior citizens in the hills of West Virginia. It was a chore to get through.

By contrast, Louise Erdrich's The Round House, pulled me in from page one. Being swept up by a good story is a great reading experience. Take the book as it comes- no preconceptions, anticipations or expectations. So here's my review without revealing the plot, which is only a google away, if you like to know beforehand. This, her fourteenth novel is uncharacteristically suspenseful made more so by my ignorance of the legal quagmire around tribal lands. There were twists and turns, dead ends and red herrings along the way.  It was hard to put down.

Therefore, The Round House wins round one.