[ARC] Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan

Leila, la protagonista del romanzo, sta affrontando una crisi: ha scoperto la propria omosessualità e l’essere di origine persiana e adolescente non aiutano.

L’arrivo si Saskia, nuova studentessa svizzera (dal nome quantomeno originale), genera subito scompiglio, e Leila perderà istantaneamente la testa per la nuova bella della scuola. Nel mentre accadono recite teatrali, conflitti famigliari e il ricongiungimento con una vecchia amicizia.

Questi gli ingredienti di Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, YA scontato e banalotto, in cui i personaggi sono scolpiti con l’accetta e piatti come tavole. Il colpo di scena finale è scontato, e la scrittura non salva dal tracollo il romanzo: non chiedo una Margaret Atwood che scrive romanzi per adolescenti, ma un minimo di complessità narrativa e di ironia non avrebbero fatto male.

Evito di infierire e mi limito a non consigliarlo.

Ringrazio l’editore per avermi fornito la copia necessaria per stendere questa recensione.

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Leila, the novel’s main character, is facing a personal crisis: she accepts the fact that she is homosexual, but her Persian family and her schoolmates could pose some problems.

When Saskia, a new student from Switzerland (with a peculiar and exotic name), arrives in Leila’s class, everything begins changing suddenly, and Leila falls instantly in love with the new most beautiful girl of the school. In the meanwhile other thing happens, like theatre rehearsal, family issues and an old friendship is back.

This is the recipe for Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, a foreseeable and prosaic YA, where the characters are roughly described and emotionally flat. The ending is trivial, and the writing style does not help: I’m not asking for a clone of Margaret Atwood to write young adults fiction, but a slightly more complexity in the narration and some irony could have helped.

I restrain myself and I restrict to not suggesting to read it.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

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Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan ★☆☆☆☆

Confessione by Kanae Minato

Kanae Minato, in questo romanzo in cui ogni capitolo è a capo di un solo personaggio, decostruisce e ricostruisce un delitto, cosa è stato prima e le sue conseguenze.

Tutto si apre l’ultimo giorno di scuola con la confessione di una professoressa delle medie alla sua classe: ricorda il suo percorso di vita e soprattutto sua figlia, morta qualche tempo prima proprio nei pressi della piscina della scuola. Nel suo discorso la professoressa Moriguchi afferma quindi che siano stati due degli studenti presenti a uccidere la bambina.

Il primo capitolo si apre così sulla ricostruzione dell’omicidio dal punto di vista della docente, i capitoli successivi forniranno invece altri punti di vista, precedenti o successivi alla vicenda, completando così la ricostruzione effettiva dei fatti.

Il meccanismo narrativo scelto a livello dell’intero romanzo è molto coinvolgente – e la lettura ne beneficia, molto scorrevole – e per ogni capitolo viene scelto l’espediente narrativo più indicato (il dialogo, la lettera, il diario, …) anche rispetto alla voce che si confessa al lettore. L’unico capitolo a cui ho effettivamente trovato difficile credere è proprio il primo, forse per l’improbabilità di un avvenimento simile nella cultura occidentale.

I vari narratori soffrono tutti di un desiderio incontenibile di confidarsi completamente, e sembrano così ogni volta completamente affidabili, finchè parte della loro ricostruzione viene prontamente smontata dalla voce successiva, generando quindi un insieme di narratori inaffidabili a livello del romanzo complessivo.

La storia è scioccante: ogni voce – forse più folle di quella che la precede – parla con sincerità e distacco delle proprie azioni, per quanto crudeli e folli queste si dimostrino, è una sorta di lucida follia quella che pervade i personaggi, e che non ho mai trovato in altri romanzi.

Confessione, bello e coinvolgente da leggere, è anche un ottimo spaccato su una cultura così diversa come quella Giapponese; un esempio su tutti è il “Milk Time”, ovvero l’imposizione governativa agli studenti di bere una confezione di latte ogni giorno per valutarne gli effetti a livello di crescita e attenzione, un sistema decisamente inapplicabile in paesi culturalmente differenti.

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In this novel where each chapter is told by a single character, Kanae Minato, deconstructs and analyse a murder, what happened before and his consequences.

The story begins during the last school day with the confession of a middle grade teacher to her students: she begins remembering her live, but mostly her little daughter, died some months before near the school swimming pool. In her monologue the teacher Moriguchi declares that her child did not died for an accident, but two of her students committed a murder.

The first chapter opens then on the murder reconstruction from the teacher point of view, the following ones will provide other points of view, both previous and consequent to the murder, this way the reader is able to fully understand what was happened.

The narrative mechanism chosen for the whole novel (to provide various POV completing each other) is quite engaging – and the reading experience takes advantage from this – while each chapter is told in a different way (dialogue, letter, diary, …), the most suitable for the narrating character. The only chapter I did not find convincing is the former one, maybe for the unlikeness of such event in an occidental culture.

Each narrator has the deep desire to fully confess to the reader, and each of them seems totally reliable, at least till the next one: in the end the novel is told by a group of unreliable narrator.

The story is shocking: each voice – maybe crazier than the one before – speaks with honesty and detachment from his/her own actions, despite how cruel and deranged they are. It’s like a lucid madness pervades each character, and I can’t recall something similar in other novels.

Confessions is a very engaging and interesting read, and a good focus on a different culture such as the Japanese one. An example is the Milk Time, that is the government imposition to the students to drink a package of milk each day for the whole school year to analyze its long term effects on the growth, something quite impossible to apply in other countries.

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Confessione by Kanae Minato ★★★★☆

[Series] Wells and Wong by Robin Stevens

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The Wells & Wong series by Robin Stevens is set in the ’30 in England (the first two book in particular in 1934-35).

The two main characters are Daisy Wells and Hazel Wong, two girls about thirteen, great friends and both studying in a boarding school for girls. Daisy is english, blonde, bold and operative: she has always new project in mind, and she is the inventor of the Wells and Wong detective society. Hazel is chinese (from Hong Kong to be exact) and it was her father to desire her studying in England; she is just the opposite of Daisy, being shy, fearful and more reflexive.

[ARC] Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince

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Tomboy is the graphic biography of the author, dealing mainly with her being defined a tomboy since childhood by other children.

In this small book the author is able to deal with various themes regarding integration with other groups of people – forced also by some change of town during her childhood,  the reason someone could be left apart and the difficulties in constructing durable friendship and relationship with both boys and girls when being outside of “the group” dictating what is normal.

The book is very nice and fun but it’s able to make the reader asks himself/herself some questions about different themes.

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

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* Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince ★★★☆☆

*I read this book in English

Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt

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Doug Swieteck has a hard life: his family has to move to a tiny house in a small town near New York, his father is unreliable and abusive and his brother seems to have the same behaviour; the other brother is in Vietnam for the war.
The only strong point of the family is Doug’s mother, silent, obliging and with a wonderful, beautiful smile, as Doug points often out.

The novel is centered on Doug and on his family new life, it tells about different topics (Doug return to school, his learning problems, his familiar issues, the reaction of the town to the Swieteck family, his relation with his father and the come back of his brother from Vietnam for example) but mostly is about Doug and his way to deal and to solve his own problems without asking for pity or by self commiseration, in a process that involves also errors and change of behaviours.

Each chapter is marked by a bird painting by Audubon that Doug analyses, paints and that helps Doug in sorting out his own emotions: the painting meaning is not fixed but changes in function good or bad events in Doug life.

A strong point of the novel is the character description, every one of them is well constructed, even if by using only a few elements, and they all have a purpose in the story; they are not bi-dimensional but they evolve with Doug and are sometimes able to prove the reader wrong in judging them.
Impression about characters and the story events are always provided by Doug, who tells the story directly to the reader as in a dialogue or monologue (and Doug can be either open or in a self-defense manner), this way to tell the story is very engaging and helps in creating the boy’s personality.

Edit. Audubon’s work – The birds of America – is a physically giant book (searching the net can provide some images), here for example there are some info about each bird image.

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* Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt – ★★★★☆½

*I read this book in English

[ARC] The Odd Job Squad by Karl Fields

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Ander, Joe, Christian and Shooter compose the Odd Job Squad, a team that helps secretly the ones victim of bullies; everyone ignores they have this extra scholar activity.

I though that the novel was only about pranks and revenges, instead it’s better than this: once Ander is discovered by a particularly cruel girl he is forced to obtain some tickets to a boy band performance (and he does not like them at all) to avoid being uncovered to the whole school (teachers included).

It’s a nice, fun novel about friendship, not a particularly deep one: some topics are not dealt enough or have a conclusion. .

Thanks to the publisher for providing me the copy necessary to write this review.

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* The Odd Job Squad by Karl Fields ★★★☆☆½

*I read this book in English