The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Help.

Please help.

Because I don't know.

I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to say about this.

I don't know what to do or say because Kathryn Stockett wrote the wrong story.

Which is ironic, really, because one of Stockett's own characters manages to write the right story. Even more ironic is that it's Stockett's own author surrogate that writes the right story.


I'm so disappointed in the whole situation. I expected a blunt, hard-hitting, soulful examination of the lives of the South's colored maids in the 60s. What I got was a cowardly side-step around the issue.

I knew that The Help contained the writing of a book by the maids, facilitated by a white woman (named Skeeter), and that the employers of the maids who took part were in for some nasty shocks. That's fine. It's kind of taking the long way around the issue, but ultimately it shouldn't be terribly important.

But it was. Stockett wrote The Help about the writing of the fictitious book Help. Stockett wrote about the publishing of the book. Stockett's characters took real risks, faced real danger, overcame real obstacles and prejudices, and showed a bravery few people would have at the time.

The characters showed more bravery in their time than Stockett showed in the relatively soft-and-fluffy 2009.

Stockett told a few of the maids' stories, but most of the book was about the interactions between the white women and how afraid the maids and Skeeter were, and Skeeter's home life, relationships with her friends, and boyfriend. Most of the book's 450 pages are completely unnecessary and uninteresting. Even the maids' most shocking and tragic stories are stilted. The stories are referred to but the meat of the story goes into the personal interviews to be edited into characters' book that the actual living reader never gets to see.

This book could have been so much better. It could have been a couple of maids sitting around a card table telling stories about their past jobs that started with the good things, then as the night wore on got progressively more tragic. To keep the element of social change, they could have approached a sympathetic white character (like Skeeter), gotten it published, and then had the town's families recognize themselves. By taking the approach she did, Stockett never had to write anything too troubling, or too challenging. She took the easy way out. The commercial way out.

And I'm not sure which is worse, because they're really two halves of the same thing: Kathryn Stockett sacrificed her artistic integrity. She sold out. Yes, she's sold a lot of books but, as far as I'm concerned, they might as well be empty.

It's not that I can't enjoy a good light read, but even the parts that were supposed to be the most shocking or gut-wrenching fell short. Of course the maid cleaned up after her employer's wife had a miscarriage, who else was going to do it? Of course the maids did questionable things to the food they served you, do you think that it hasn't happened at every restaurant you've ever been to, ever? That the employers wives and maids never took care of each other after one of their husbands beat them? But those stories, the gritty ones, take up only paragraphs. And, unintentionally I hope, the author's tone is full of sunshine the whole time-- which is so weird. 

Those women went through things we can't even imagine, and things we can. It's the author's job, it's Stockett's job, to research what happened as much as she could and then go the extra mile. Tell us something new. Come up with something we haven't thought of. That's what authors do. That's what artists do.

Maybe if she had been bold and taken the chance, maybe the book wouldn't be the success it is today, but that's the risk an artist takes.


And...I mean...I'm usually not one to call Mary Sue, because I'm sure all writers put something of themselves into characters, but MARY SUE. The best part is where, after the acknowledgements section, Stockett herself outs Skeeter as her Mary Sue. Doesn't even try to hide it. Nope. It's right out there. Skeeter is directly based on Stockett herself and (secretly, for safety reasons) receives the praise and sworn love and protection of the black community in The Help. I think I can guess what Stockett was hoping to achieve with this book. 






If you're not expecting it to be a serious literary work of great social significance, you'll find The Help a pleasant beach read with a few smiles and maybe a gasp or two. You can even feel like you're being socially aware by reading a book dealing with race. 





A begrudging 2.5 stars out of 5.

The Giver by Lois Lowry-- The Giver Quartet, #1

I've been pretty blue these past couple of days and wishing for a simpler time. High school, specifically, and I read The Giver for the first time in high school, so in my mild regression I decided my next review would be of The Giver, first in The Giver series which, coincidentally, will have its fourth installment released in October.

The Giver takes place in an uber-futuristic world, in a community that, in an effort to minimize difficulty and pain, has eliminated things like weather, hills, and personal choice. There is no sunlight. There is no rain. The people have lost the ability to see color. Adults apply for a spouse and one is assigned to them. Spouses apply for children and they are assigned to them- one boy, one girl, no more, no less, not ever.

At the annual ceremony where infants to children of  11 (turning 12) receive the items, responsibilities, age, and hairstyles of the next year. The 11 year olds that are turning 12 are given the job assignments they will have for the rest of their lives, and the story centers on one of these 11-to-12 year olds, Jonas.

At the ceremony, Jonas is named the next Reciever of Memory. The community only has one, one man that holds the memories of generations past and feels all the pain and love that the rest of the community never gets to experience. In order for him to retire he needs to transfer the memories to Jonas.

Jonas then begins to see the problems in his community. The literal and metaphorical lack of color. The reason why they are so serious about precision of language (parents don't love their children, they enjoy and take pride in them. You're not starving, you're hungry-- no one in the community is starving, or ever will be. Etc.) Jonas decides after gaining so much experience from the memories, that things need to change.


One of the things I love most about this book is the amount of detail Lowry packs into such a short book. The way she has the community set up is watertight, no element of life in the community is left out. You aren't distracted halfway through going, "Wait, how do they...?" because it's covered.

In fantasy criticism there's a rule that's been repeated so often it's cliche: the book or movie needs to establish a set of rules of what is and is not possible in the world being worked in. Chandler and I say this all the time on Movie Gaga. It's this seemingly small rule that, not followed, can destroy a fantasy work. The Giver stays well within its own bounds. More than that, it just barely goes outside the bounds of the natural world. The only magic that actually occurs is in the transfer of and the ability to almost enter the world of the memory.


This book is also the perfect introduction to dystopian stories. Too young for Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World, but old enough to begin questioning authority and the world around them? There isn't another book for tweens/young adults that shows how dangerous mind control can be.

There are layers of symbolism and allegory that can be analyzed all on their own, as well, which is what makes this book something you can return to over and over again for years, even as an adult. I love it.

5 stars out of 5

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Let me preface this review by saying this book is not nearly as girly as it sounds from the title.

That being said, I do have to admit that this book is one of the three books that have ever made me cry in my life.

Well, four-- I was about eight years old and was reading this book that was waaaayyyy too old for me and I lost it when the dad murdered the baby sitter. I don't count that one, though, because I never finished it. And because I didn't cry because I was attached to the characters, I cried because I was afraid for my life.

The other two are the 6th and 7th Harry Potters.

This book struck a chord. I'm starting to get a little teary just thinking about it.

The story follows 3 students through boarding school and into their lives after. They grow up with the vague knowledge that they're very special, very lucky, and that they're human clones bred and raised to one day donate their organs to "normal" citizens until they die.

Their life-spans are half to a third as long as normal citizens so we watch as Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy dream of and struggle to have normal lives, make sense of their past, and try to put off their fates for as long as they can.

I think one of the reasons this book got to me so much was the powerlessness of the characters. The idea of being unable to do anything about your destiny, about your life...and knowing you're essentially going to be tortured to death at a young age; what a horrible fate. I feel a little claustrophobic just writing it.

There's no shortage of dramatic tension with this knowledge over your head while you read, but Ishiguro employs a writing technique that does, for me, diffuse the tension of the individual situations a bit-- Kathy, as the narrator, tells you what's going to happen, but then in order for that to make sense she has to explain something that happened weeks or months or years earlier. This makes me crazy, but I admit that I can't think of a better way to do it for this particular story.

Overall, there's something incredibly engaging about the book: I couldn't put it down. Watching Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy unraveling the secrets surrounding them, their love for each other in all its forms, and watching them deal with the heartbreaking truths is addictive.

4 Stars out of 5

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

I really enjoy books about Asian cultural history-- probably because my American education refused to believe there was an Eastern hemisphere, but I digress. The point is, nowadays, I can't get enough of it and Lisa See is one of my favorites.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan gives an in depth look into the secrets of women's lives and relationships in 19th century China-- foot binding, cloistering, women's writing, and the special friendships forged. The story takes Lily and Snow Flower through their early childhood together as a matchmaker-made relationship between young girls called laotong.

We follow the girls through their brutal, painful, dangerous foot bindings and their lives as young girls locked away in the upstairs women's chambers, sewing and painting and doing "womanly" things. Then there's their meetings with the matchmaker, wondering about their husbands, and preparing for their weddings in both the traditional ways and the special ways reserved for laotong. After comes their lives during and after their marriages and children. Throughout everything, as was the intention of the pairing, the girls are there to help each other through anything the other needs.

Secrets are the main theme of the story. The women's secret lives in their cloisters, the secrets of the care and creation of the perfect bound foot, the secret language women developed to communicate with each other, and the secrets shared and forged between best friends. And as the novel progresses, the secrets surrounding Snow Flower's life are uncovered, one heartbreaking discovery after another.

Lisa See is an amazing writer, and this is the kind of book you can become completely engrossed in for every one of your multiple readings.

5 stars

A note about the movie: While I want to keep my movie-related rants confined to Movie Gaga,

I did want to mention that if anyone saw the (very poorly reviewed) movie without having

read the book I can tell you with complete confidence, even though I have never seen the

movie, that the two have very little do with each other. To sum up that point I will say only that there is not a single character in the book that is not Chinese, yet Hugh Jackman was one of the film's stars. No, I'm not kidding.

Blindness by Jose Saramago

I'm not going to beat around the bush: this book was a difficult read for a lot of reasons.

Reason #1: The style is...unique. After an extremely contagious and quickly moving plague of blindness strikes a city the government decides to quarantine the blind in an abandoned mental institution to try to contain the outbreak. For reasons unexplained beyond "names are no longer important" in the quarantine, none of the characters are named. The main characters are "the doctor", "the doctor's wife", "the girl with dark glasses", "the first blind man", and "the boy with the squint." They spend the entire book that way.

Which is awkward enough without Saramago's other stylistic choice: there are no quotation marks around anyone's speech, and he doesn't start a new paragraph when a new character begins speaking. This, naturally, makes it difficult to tell exactly who's speaking- or even if they're speaking at all. It works on the level that it's disorienting, so it's kind of like actual blindness in that way. But that being said, shouldn't sound then be the clearest thing? Or clearer, anyway? We would at least be able to tell the difference between two different speakers is all I'm saying.

Reason #2: It's incredibly violent, and graphically so. There are injuries, illnesses, attacks, fights, murders, and (again, graphic) gang rape in spades. Blood. Pus. Guns. Scissors. Did I mention the gang rape? Or, more specifically, multiple gang rapes. One woman is gang raped to death. We hear all about it.

In detail. Did I mention that part?

Reason #3: There's a lot of...excrement. The plumbing at the facility isn't the best and with society breaking down around them the blind stop caring about where they take care of business, as it were. But then the blind leave the facility because it turned out that just about everybody was blind and there wasn't any real need for the quarantine anymore, so we find out that the blind outside the facility stopped caring about...cleanliness, as well. Between the sights (one character can see), and the...smells...and the...depth...yeah, no, it's not pretty.

Reason #4: It's scarily realistic. Everything that happens, given the circumstances, is completely believable. Through the whole book you know- you know- that it's all plausible. And that's terrifying. But it's part of what makes this such a good book.

But that being said, it is a good book if you're the type that reads dramatic, depressing, intense things-- which I am but, for example, my mother is not. I wouldn't recommend this to her if Saramago paid me, she'd hate it. But if this is your thing, it's a can't miss read.

4 stars out of 5.

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory

I've been fascinated by the Tudors for most of my life. I could recite Henry VIII's wives, children, and their fates in elementary school because that's just the kind of kid I was.

Yes, I got as many strange looks as you think.

So it's only natural that as I grew up I came across Gregory's books and fell in love, just like I fell in love with Showtime's The Tudors. It was destiny.

But all these years of research and entertainment did little to endear Katherine of Aragon to me. Of course I admired her strength and fortitude, remaining silent and faithful while her husband flaunted his affairs then divorced her, claiming they were never really married in the first place. I can't even begin to imagine the pain...I'm not going to lie, I'm a jealous girlfriend. Had I been Katherine I'd have had that Boleyn woman trampled by horses at the very least, so the fact that she didn't even do that speaks to incredible self-control.

But self-control, especially in that decadent court and the sumptuous entertainments its inspired, is really kind of boring. Honor? Piety? Integrity? Snore.

So I put off reading The Constant Princess. Katherine was boring in stories about other people, so why would I want to read a whole book about her?

To my great surprise I regretted not having read it sooner. It's excellent.

Don't get me wrong. The Other Boleyn Girl is still the jewel in Philippa Gregory's crown, but The Constant Princess without a doubt claims a very respectable 2nd place in Gregory's stunning career.

One thing I didn't like, though, was that she wrote 3/4 of it in third person EXTREMELY limited

point of view and a quarter of it in first person, with long stretches of third person broken up with the first person bits, Katherine herself giving us further insight into her actions. Which was strange because the narrator gave almost no "inside" information on any of the characters. Had Gregory written this with a more traditional third person limited it would have completely eliminated the need for Katherine's explanations and would have made the flow of the novel far smoother.

But that's really my only complaint. In The Constant Princess you get to see the beginnings of Katherine's incredible strength: her mother, Isabella of Spain. Gregory also gives an explanation for how it came to be that Katherine married first Henry's older brother Arthur- an explanation that also explains why she fought so hard to save her marriage to Henry.

It's also interesting to see Henry as a young boy as Gregory's interpretation of what he might have been (probably was) like so perfectly explains the man, the king, he became. Reading it, it can be hard to remember that this novel or, really, any and all of Gregory's novels, are merely conjectures on what might have been based on her thorough research. Gregory's gift is how real she makes her characters out to be. How human. And how well she lines up actual historical events to their perpetrators.

4 stars out of 5

Also by Philippa Gregory:

The Queen's Fool

The Lost Life of Eva Braun by Angela Lambert

I found this on The Onion last night:

New Documentary Focuses On Life Of Eva Braun's Late Husband

NEW YORK—The History Channel announced Thursday it will air a new documentary this fall examining the life of the late husband of prewar German model and amateur photographer Eva Braun. "This film is a fascinating, in-depth look at a central figure in Eva Braun's life," said History Channel spokesman Charles Lansing, adding that the broadcast will feature more than 300 archival images of Braun with her husband, a German civil servant and vegetarian noted for his charisma and interest in art. "Braun's longtime lover had a significant impact on her views regarding politics and aesthetics, and the footage of him we've unearthed highlights the persuasive power of the man she often wrote about." Lansing added that the new documentary, entitled The Man Behind Eva Braun, will cover the very active life of Braun's spouse right up to his sudden passing in 1945 in the basement of the couple's Berlin apartment.


Thought it was fitting.


I can't tell you how much I loved The Lost Life of Eva Braun. I'm kind of sad to give it back to the library now...anybody wants to get me a present I'd gladly take a copy of this book.


I did my thesis on Lee Miller's photojournalism during WWII so I spent 4 months completely immersed in the war and at the end of it all I sat back and said, "Wait a second. Hitler had a girlfriend through the whole thing. WHO WOULD EVER-?! WHAT?! WHY!!??? HHHHOOWW?! WWWWHOOOO????????!" So I decided to find out. Like I said above, I found this book at my library and it's in nearly pristine condition, I doubt it's been taken out more than 4 times. It's pretty new, too, published in 2006. Come to think of it, the librarian that checked it out for me didn't even know we had it.


On to the review:


It's been the intention of history to remove all humanity from Hitler & co., to portray them strictly as monsters and not human beings. Documents like personal letters were destroyed in order to keep evidence of their humanity from the public. I take issue with that, as holding them up as symbols of evil, caricatures even, removes the elements that we all have in common with them which makes it so easy for us to say "That will never be me" or "I'll never fall in love with a fascist dictator" but...it's possible. It's possible, is all I'm saying.


The Lost Life takes an amazing perspective on the war because it's not in the concentration camps or Anne Frank's attic or any of the many many armies involved, it's civilian life in Europe, particularly Germany, at the time. Angela Lambert's mother was actually born within a few weeks of Eva Braun, so Lambert uses stories from her mother's life to supplement the little information available about Eva's childhood, and also to give her back that bit of human-ness: Eva's practically a ghost, floating through modern history as we know her name and little else.


That's about as much as most people knew at the time, as well. Hitler refused to make their relationship public, and Eva didn't end up even moving in with him until the late thirties even though Eva was essentially promoted to Hitler's #1 lady after his niece, Geli Raubal, committed suicide. And even after they began living together only the very, very top of the Nazi hierarchy and the personal maids of Hitler and Eva even knew who she was- on the phone directory for the Berghof (Hitler's main house in the German countryside) she was listed as a secretary. The few times they attended the same public event she was forced to sit far from Hitler with the other, actual, secretaries. At the Berghof she was confined to her room.


And while it's easy to view her as an anti-Semite and racist Nazi, Eva and most of her family never joined the Nazi party (except for her father, but he only did it to please Hitler). In fact, Hitler even presented her with an award he had made for non-Nazis that provided him with great services. And given her strict Catholic upbringing and patronage of Jewish clothing and shoe designers throughout the war (even after the ban on Jewish merchants was placed) it's unlikely that she was anti-Semitic. And given Hitler's strict orders that no one ever discuss anything war or politic related with Eva it's possible she never even knew about the camps, and even attempted to intercede with Hitler on behalf of a few friends (of course he ignored her, but she tried and reacted to the few incidents she did hear about.)


Lambert's book is impeccably researched (did anybody know that we, the United States, actually hold Eva's personal diary in our archives? We confiscated it during the war and it now resides in the National Archives in Maryland, along with Eva's own personal photo albums and home movies she took while living at the Berghof) and richly detailed. Her chapters on the last few weeks of Eva and Hitler's life in the underground bunker are vivid and emotional. The paragraphs on how Eva and the maids pitched in to make the last few days of the six Goebbels children as comfortable as possible knowing that their parents had already decided to murder them when the time came are particularly heartbreaking.


It's an incredible book with a unique angle on history and human nature. It also gives an in-depth look to German childhood in the early 20th century, showing how the stars aligned to make Hitler and Eva perfect for each other (Fathers, love your daughters for who they are so they don't fall in love with the first older man that shows them the slightest bit of positive attention). An absolute must-read for anyone that...no. An absolute must read for anyone, period.


5 stars

The False Friend by Myla Goldberg

"Myla Goldberg sets a steady hand upon her brow

Myla Goldberg hangs a crooked foot all upside down

...

Pretty hands do pretty things when pretty times arise

Seraphim and seaweed swim where stick-limbed Myla lies"

-- from Song for Myla Goldberg by The Decemberists

Myla Goldberg has officially made my list of favorite authors. She's written 5 books, but as my library only has her three novels that's all I've been able to read-- the 4th book is a non-fiction "walk in Prague" called Time's Magpie and the 5th is a children's book called Catching the Moon.

Goldberg's first novel, Bee Season, was brilliant. Eliza, the daughter of a Jewish scholar, was an average student until her talent for spelling was found. The talent takes her to the National Spelling Bee twice (unlike the movie) and she begins to study a word-related arm of Jewish Mysticism with her father, while her mother's mental health slowly breaks down and her brother explores Hinduism.

Her second novel, Wickett's Remedy, was excellent-- and managed to have a unique format, and when was the last time you saw a novel with a unique format? Exactly. Lydia Wickett and her husband begin a mail-order business in the late 19-teens, and after her husband's sudden death the 1918 influenza epidemic hits and, compelled to act, Lydia joins a (historically accurate) medical study of the deadly flu using convicts on a remote island facility. Running through the novel is fan club literature and information on QD Soda, whose secret recipe is suspiciously close to that of Wickett's Remedy. Throughout the story is also a running commentary in the margins provided by the souls of the dead, correcting or expounding on the thoughts, actions, and memories of the living characters in the story.

This newest novel, published in 2010, tells the story of Celia Durst-- a woman in her early 30s struck one day with the memory of a childhood friend, Djuna, she is convinced she saw fall down a well in the middle of the forest, not getting into a stranger's car like she told everyone after it happened. Celia returns home to tell everyone the truth, but no one believes her. As Celia goes through reconnecting with people she hasn't spoken to in 20 years, details of the moments leading up to Djuna's disappearance are brought back to light for Celia, including (and especially) their bullying of a classmate, leading to the fight between Celia and Djuna before she disappeared.

This book is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to better understand women and their relationships to each other, and just what the hell was going on between the girls on the playground.

Parts were extremely emotional, remembering...just remembering what it was like. Goldberg so perfectly captures the delicacy and brutality of the world of young girls you have to wonder what Goldberg herself went through.

Goldberg even deftly handles what it's like watching your hometown and parents age-- it's difficult enough to live through, let alone write about.

The writing is sharp and witty, the pacing is tight, and the characters and their relationships are realistic. It packs a lot of punch in its 250 pages and I couldn't put it down.

5 stars

The World I Live In by Helen Keller

If you have an Amazon Kindle, or a Kindle App, The World I Live In is available for free here:The World I Live In. If you have some other kind of E-reader do your thing, whatever that may be, because I have a Kindle so that's all I understand.

What I'm trying to say it's available online, for free. It's sitting out there waiting for you to find it in its free-ness.

And you should absolutely find it. Find it now.

My experiences with the Helen Keller story are like everyone else's: you read a story in elementary school about how deaf and blind Helen learned to speak and went to college because of her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Then a little while later you see one version or another of The Miracle Worker because every few years, without fail, The Miracle Worker comes on TV and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I remember that Helen Keller thing..." And between those experiences you hear the jokes about rearranging the furniture and "reading" the waffle iron. Then later on you discover Apples to Apples and learn that a (more or less) properly played "Helen Keller" card is an instant win because it's pretty freaking hilarious every time. In fact, you can even Like it on Facebook: "Apples to Apples: The Helen Keller Card".

People make offhand Helen Keller jokes all the time, but their thoughts never seem to go much deeper than "Being deaf and blind would suck a lot." I myself never really thought that long about it even though I had my mother rent The Miracle Worker every week for months. But I never really thought about it.

Maybe it's because I never had to-- that I was never faced with it on an everyday basis. Or maybe I did think about it as in-depth-ly as my 8 year-old brain could go and when my questions went unanswered they dissipated.

In any event, while reading The World I Live In, I was continually surprised by the little things that never occurred to me and I found myself saying, "Oh, yeah! How does she do/experience that? What's that like?"

Helen takes us through her world in 15 chapters and explains how her world compares to ours in day to day life- speaking, reading, writing, and her life before Annie Sullivan.

Then, in Chapter 15, Helen lets loose a rhapsodic torrent of ethereal beauty. Chapter 15, "A Waking Dream", weaves history, literature, and fantasy into a veritable tapestry of...of...of...beauticiousness. I sincerely want Herbert to come over and read "A Waking Dream" to me while I drift off to sleep. I loved this chapter. I think it was included to show that her imagination is just as good as-- if not better than-- the average person's, and it is. It's most certainly better than mine; my actual dreams are only half as good and that's only because of the drugs I'm on, and she's talking about a daydream. That's serious creativity.

The World I Live In is a quick, pretty, and interesting read, and absolutely worth it.

5 stars

The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory

The Queen's Fool is the third book by Philippa Gregory I've read, the first two being The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance. They were much better.

The thing that I most enjoy about Gregory's work is how historically accurate they are-- of course, no one can know exactly who said what to who and when, but when we have so much information about what happened and who these people are it's not too much of a stretch to infer what may have been said. Like in the Elizabeth movies starring Cate Blanchett. Gregory really brings these long-dead people to life.

But what made The Queen's Fool different from the other books I read was that this was the first one where the main character was a complete fabrication. And a very unrealistic one, at that. The title character is Hannah Verde, a Spanish Jew on the run from the Inquisition with her father after her mother was burned as a heretic. Hannah has the gift of "Sight", having random premonitions of the future. After seeing an angel accompanying Robert Dudley and his tutor as they entered Hannah's father's bookshop, Dudley "begs" her for a fool to the ailing King Edward.

I don't have any problem with this. I especially have no problem with anything involving Robert Dudley as, being a fan of Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth, in my mind he's played by Voldemort's studly younger brother, Joseph Fiennes.

The problem is that, after Edward dies, Hannah's career goes off into "What the hell?" land. Being paid by the Dudleys, Hannah is implanted into the service of Queen Mary. Immediately Mary takes her into her trust and inner circle- regardless of being a person of no standing and paid by Mary's enemies. It only gets worse from there as the Dudleys launch their plot to get Mary's sister Elizabeth onto the throne instead, with Hannah passing messages between the plotters and Elizabeth...and the whole book is like that-- Hannah is doing all of these treasonous things, the plotters are all in the prison in the Tower of London, but Hannah just gets away with everything. It only gets more complicated, treasonous, and heretical as it goes on but Mary and Elizabeth trust the girl implicitly, both divulging extremely personal and valuable information without so much as a second thought.

I understand why Gregory chose to do it this way-- Queen Mary's reign was an incredibly turbulent time for England and she needed a character on the inside with everyone regardless of their politics and that just didn't exist. It wouldn't have existed. It couldn't have. So instead of having the story come from several different points of view, like The Boleyn Inheritance, she created Hannah.

Hannah also serves the purpose of representing the underground Jewish families at the time, hiding from the Inquisition and fighting to keep their traditions and way of life alive while pretending to be good Christians.

I understand wanting to tell that story, it's an interesting angle of an interesting time and I wish Gregory had divorced the story of Mary's reign from the story of Hannah and the Jews and made them two separate
books. Perhaps Gregory was afraid to break her royal formula, but I think it could have worked. Or worked better, anyway.

All in all an entertaining read, but not of the quality I've come to expect from Gregory's books.

3 stars out of 5.

Also by Philippa Gregory:

The Constant Princess

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

Mark your calendars, here's an occasion where the movie is better than the book.

Not a lot. Just enough to not be a tie.

But that's not to say that the book isn't good, because it is. Sometimes? I'm not sure how to organize my thoughts here.

...

Okay, I've got it.

Things I liked:

I liked the honesty of the relationships between Bridget and her friends, like how Bridget's friend Jude stays with her boyfriend Vile Richard despite his vile-ness and all of her friends saying she'd be better off without him. We all have that friend: miserable but just can't let go for whatever reason.

And I liked the honesty of the relationships between Bridget and her family, and family friends-- like the unending parade of parties, picnics, and celebrations you're forced to attend, plastering a smile to your face. And Bridget, like all single women, are hounded with the same question by them all: When are you going to get married? I was only 14 when my brother Arthur married his wife Janet and even then I was getting "When's it going to be your turn?" Bridget really is the voice of single women everywhere, it's not an exaggeration.

Bridget's relationships with men are spot-on, as well: waiting for the phone to ring, checking 100 times to see if maybe you missed a call when you weren't paying attention, and the flirty first stages of getting together and the constant nagging doubts, "Does he really like me? Really? No, I mean, but really?"

And Fielding summed up the amount of work that goes into womanhood better than anyone or anything else I've ever seen:

6 p.m. Completely exhausted by entire day of date preparation. Being a woman is worse than being a farmer- there is so much harvesting and crop spraying to be done: legs to be waxed, underarms shaved, eyebrows plucked, feet pumiced, skin exfoliated and moisturized, spots cleansed, roots dyed, eyelashes tinted, nails filed, cellulite massaged, stomach muscles exercised. The whole performance is so highly tuned you only need to neglect it for a few days for the whole thing to go to seed. Sometimes I wonder what I would be like if left to revert to nature- with a full beard and handlebar mustache on each shin, Dennis Healey eyebrows, face a graveyard of dead skin cells, spots erupting, long curly fingernails like Struwwelpeter, blind as a bat and stupid runt of species as no contact lenses, flabby body flobbering around. Ugh, ugh. Is it any wonder girls have no confidence?

How right is that? She's inside my head.

Also inside my head, and also a little inside Mia's from The Princess Diaries head (the novels, not the movies), Bridget thinks it's hot when boys get authoritative-- and Lord, ain't it the truth. Whew.

Thing I mostly liked but really sort of didn't:

The deal with Bridget's weight. This is delicate because Bridget's obsession and confusion and struggle and up, down, up up up up, down, up, down, down, up up up up, down, up, down, down, down dance with the scale are all deeply realistic, the amount of weight being talked about (and sneered about) is paltry. Bridget spends the book at about 125 pounds and is fixated on losing 6.

And I know when you're slender and always have been that those few pounds really seem to make a difference but we need to collectively, as a world, start getting realistic about numbers. Nobody, no matter how cruel, will say about 123 pound woman that's over 5 feet tall, "I thought you said she was thin." This is the kind of thing that fuels eating disorders and shouldn't be portrayed as "normal", like everywoman Bridget Jones.

To rectify this situation with myself I mentally added 30 pounds to each of the weights Bridget claimed. Made me feel much better.

Things I didn't like:

Certain elements of the story bothered me. In fact, the worst subplot of them all was excluded from the movie and the movie was the better for it, it was just too, too unrealistic.

I also didn't like some of the style Fielding used for Bridget's writings, at times it felt far too slangy...but then, I was never the type to doodle or shorthand in my own diaries, and it grated me in The Princess Diaries, too. That's probably just a personal thing...

And I wasn't a fan of Mark Darcy's part in the book, I think his character was also handled better by the movie. While I liked how he loved Bridget all along, flaws and all, he was colder in the book, and when he comes through for her in the end it seems to almost come out of nowhere. Especially what he goes through for her before they're even properly dating! Not kidding, he goes to Portugal. I felt like a queen when boyfriend Herbert once stopped at Wawa for me on his way to my house and he didn't have to go a foot out of his way to do it. AND we were dating at the time.

Another thing, that was a complete surprise, was the confrontation (read: fight) between Mark and Daniel doesn't happen in the book. That was surprising. Maybe it's in the following books, I don't know, I'm just saying that it doesn't happen in this book. And I was disappointed.

In the end, it's a good book-- a light, entertaining read with genuine heart and solid writing.

3 stars out of 5.

White Oleander by Janet Fitch

When I like a movie that's based on a book I have to read the book because the book is usually so much better. Sometimes they break even, and rarely does the movie kick the book's ass.White Oleander is a case where the book and movie break even, because certain elements of the story are done better in the book, and others in the movie.

White Oleander is the story of Astrid Magnussen, the daughter of single mother and poet Ingrid Magnussen. One day Ingrid murders her boyfriend so Astrid is put into California's foster care system. The book follows Astrid from home to home, detailing the various horrors she faces and her relationship with her mother.

The book, of course, goes into greater detail about the relationships between characters and Astrid goes through more homes in the book. The biggest thing that the book does better is Astrid's relationship with her mother: how her feelings change, how even an absent parent shapes your life and who you become, and recognizing when the relationship is toxic and needs to be ended.

One thing the movie has over the book, though, is that the movie doesn't have Astrid's constant, annoying, and unnecessary narration rife with ridiculous similes. Had Fitch removedhalf of them there would still be too many. Astrid is an artist, so I understand wanting her to view the world in a specific and referential way but holy crap. Too, too much.

I kind of wish I had found this book in high school, it would have meant a great deal more to me then. I would have identified with Astrid's alienation and survival, and it would have helped me relax and live a little freer. Now I wish it were a little more refined, and that it didn't try so hard.

I give it 2.5 stars out of 5-- 2.5 being my "Guilty Pleasure" rating, I know it's not great but damn if I don't end up reading it again every few years (or if it's a movie, watching it on those rainy afternoons when there's nothing else on-- you know you do it, too).