Book Review | Book Chatter

Mockingbird
By Kathryn Erskine
Penguin Young Readers
April 2010
224pp

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how. When she reads the definition of closure, she realizes that is what she needs. In her search for it, Caitlin discovers that not everything is black and white—the world is full of colors—messy and beautiful.

The Short of It:

Mockingbird is at once heartbreaking, sad and hopeful. It takes you by the hand, leads you down the path of love and loss and never lets you go.

The Rest of It:

Mockingbird is a special, little book. After Caitlin’s older brother Devon is killed in a school shooting, Caitlin and her father struggle to make it through their grief but they are constantly reminded of Devon and can’t seem to find closure. If that isn’t difficult enough, Caitlin suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome so what she sees is often black or white and nothing in between. What makes this story so special is that it’s told from Caitlin’s point of view. This means that when she feels overly anxious about loud noises or finds herself unable to read someone’s expression, we hear or see it from her perspective.

When I first picked this book up, I found it a tad hard to follow. Caitlin’s thought patterns are a bit jumbled and it takes a little bit of time to find the rhythm in her words, but when you do, you can’t help but feel her pain. She loved her brother. He was the only one in the family that “got” her. He anticipated her needs and without him around, she is forced to reassess how she communicates with others.

Here is a quote from page 21 which is where she wants to enter Devon’s room even though she’s been told not to:

I wish I could go in and say Devon, I’m hungry, and he’d grin and his dimples would show and he’d say, You and me both, and we’d go find Dad and order a pizza because it’s Thursday and we’d eat warm drippy extra cheese pizza in front of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.

The other thing to note, is that all the dialogue is italicized. I got used to it and it did not detract from the story at all. Seeing things from Caitlin’s point of view was an incredibly powerful experience. This book is geared towards young adults but I think anyone reading it will be drawn to Caitlin. In one sense she is terribly complex but at the core, she is like any other eleven-year-old. She wants to be understood, she wants to fit in and she yearns for friends like any other kid her age.

Mockingbird is a quick but important read and if you’re wondering if there is a connection between this book and To Kill a Mockingbird, there is, but you’ll have to read the book to find out what it is.

Mockingbird comes out on April 15th but you can pre-order it now.

Source: This ARC was sent to me by the publisher via Shelf Awareness.

If You Follow Me
By Malena Watrous
HarperCollins Publishers
March 2010
384pp

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father’s suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter.

If You Follow Me is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters—from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion—it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.

The Short of It:

Reading If You Follow Me, is like taking a cool sip of water on a hot summer’s day. It’s refreshing and bold and filled with vivid, colorful characters.

The Rest of It:

I was rather surprised by this one. I expected it to be a “fish out of water” story, and to a degree, it is but there’s much more to it than you would expect. It’s light and airy in one sense, but it deals with some heavier themes and Watrous manages to take all of these elements and roll them into a nice little package.

Marina is an American who is hired to teach English in the small, Japanese town of Shika. She, along with her girlfriend, Carolyn, inhabit a tiny apartment and run into all sorts of colorful neighbors. Neighbors that constantly sift through her trash and complain to her supervisor, Hiro, also known as Miyoshi-sensei, about her constant rudeness.

Through letters, Hiro teaches Marina about the finer points of living in a small, Japanese town. These letters are peppered throughout the novel and are quite funny.

Here’s an example:

Now I prepare this sheet so you can learn target Japanese words and gomi law in one simple occasion. I hope it’s so convenient for you. It’s kind of so rude if you “can’t remember” about gomi law. Your neighbors feel some stress about you, and they must be so busy. They can’t talk to you every time you make a gomi mistake. I think they want to know you so much. First learn gomi law, second Japanese language, and third you can enjoy international friendship. This is like holding hands across the sea!

There are many humorous moments within this novel which sort of lighten it up a bit, but at the core, Marina is struggling to deal with her father’s suicide and the feeling that perhaps she could have prevented it. The guilt that she has over the incident is a constant presence throughout the novel. It sits quietly in the background as she tries to sort through the life that she has chosen for herself.

Her interactions with others are almost in slow motion. She sort of drifts through her days going from classroom to classroom and is often in denial when it comes to the current state of things. Marina is a strong woman though, and when she feels the need to act, she does and you end up in her corner, cheering her on.

I can’t say enough about the characters. They’re all quirky and different and although some of them are only referred to in a line or two, you still get a feeling for who they are. Watrous has a knack for carving out the essence of a character without weighing them down with a lot of background info.

There’s so much here to like. If you enjoy quirky, fun novels that have a bit of substance to them, you will enjoy If You Follow Me.