Grrrranite!

Posted on by Beth Hull

I am supposed to be working on my novel right now, so today’s Momming Around entry is a couple photos of our new counters and sink:

Eyes, look your last. The uncluttered-scheme will probably only last as long as my energy. Oh, I may as well be honest. I had to move a whole bunch of clutter around just to take these photos. Behind you on the other counter are all the things that used to be on this counter. And as soon as I took the photo I moved most of them right back.

This week, my mother-in-law is visiting, and while some people don’t get along with their mother-in-laws, I am not one of those people. She’s the best. And she’s giving me writing time in the mornings, which is also the best.

I don’t think kids are meant to be raised with just one adult in the house. Few people in our society, or even world, can afford to have one parent stay at home, and fewer could have both parents stay at home. And lots of us don’t live in the same places as our parents or other family members.

One mom, alone with her kid or kids, all day? It’s tough. I’m not complaining (okay, maybe a little bit). There are so many moms out there who would love to stay at home full-time. I’m one of them. But it is hard. What I am really doing right now: rejoicing in having another adult around while Husband is at work, so it’s not constant Z time. Yesterday, the time I played with her I could be totally focused on her, because I’d had some nourishing time to myself. I appreciated her so much more.

Next week, my mother-in-law won’t be visiting. Sad. But she’ll come back again, and I’ll enjoy the time that she’s here. And meanwhile…

I can use my super-duper handy-spandy built-in soap dispenser!

Life's Little Pleasures

To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett

Posted on by Beth Hull

So far so good on my contemporary-fantasy-fast. In the past two and a half weeks I’ve read To Come and Go Like Magic, Ida B, and I finally finished The Botany of Desire. [Like whoa on The Botany of Desire.]

Today I review, for your reading pleasure, To Come and Go Like Magic. If you’ve read The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, you’ll know what I mean when I say this: sparkling, poignant vignettes. [Um, I actually haven’t read Cisneros’s book in its entirety, just a couple of vignettes while doing classroom observations. But I plan to read it. Maybe soon.] To Come and Go Like Magic is an entire novel written in sweet, two-to-four page chapters. But they’re not really chapters because they do everything a novelist is not supposed to do when trying to create suspense and keep the reader turning the page. Each vignette has a beginning, middle, and (kiss of death for chapters) an end. There’s a sense of completion, which made each vignette feel like its own poem, its own work of art.

Beautiful writing and the main character’s voice add to the magic in this book. The setting is also unique: Chileda is twelve years old, growing up in the 1970s in a small town in the Appalachian mountains. Her thirst is to see the world, and this thirst conflicts with her micro-society’s expectation that you just don’t leave home.

A suspenseful novel this is not. Piercing, pretty, quiet – yes.

On a total sidenote, is there something about middle grade fiction that requires at least one scene of total and absolute unfair action towards the main character? I’m thinking of the scene here where Chili’s uncle does something so unfair I wanted to reach into the pages and strangle him. A similar thing happens in Ida B, and if you haven’t met the Dursleys in the Harry Potter books, you’re missing out on some prime injustice writing.

My guess is that one of the extremely irritating things about being a middle-grader (ages 9-12) is the discovery that the world isn’t fair, in so many startling ways. And perhaps these novels are working to address that universal, middle-grader issue.

But I need to conclude my actual book review, so: To Come and Go Like Magic is a quiet gem, and a huge turn from my vampire biting, werewolf howling, demon slaying contemporary fantasies. In one word: refreshing.

To read more about To Come and Go Like Magic, check out the Q & A session posted on Katie Pickard Fawcett’s blog.

Yappy #1 and Yappy #2

Posted on by Beth Hull

*

Good morning. It’s 4:12 a.m. The neighbors’ yappy dogs have begun to bark.

4:12 a.m. and 15 seconds: Z wakes up crying.

4:12 a.m. and 20 seconds: The Ever-Suffering Mother (hey, that’s me!) retrieves crying child and deposits her into what can now be called The Family Bed (of Pain).

4:13 a.m.: Yappy dogs still barking. [Mostly it’s the dog with the higher-pitched bark, but the other joins in occasionally if things are getting too quiet.]

4:13 a.m. and 17 seconds: Z shifts and says, quietly, “Hold my hand.”

4:13 a.m. and 18 seconds: The Ever-Suffering Mother holds her hand.

4:22 a.m.: Bark. Bark bark bark bark bark! …Bark Bark Bark BARK BARK BARK…BARK BARK! Bark bark bark bark bark Bark BARK. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark…bark bark…bark bark bark bark bark. BARK BARK BARK BARK!

4:25 a.m.: Z and Ever-Suffering Mother blink at each other in the near-dark. Suffering together.

4:26 a.m.: Bark bark bark bark BARK BARK…bark BARK (etc.). Z shifts again, impaling the Ever-Suffering Mother with her leg.

4:27 a.m.: Silence.

4:27 and 36 seconds: BARK BARK!!!!! Bark bark bark bark BARK…bark bark! BARK.

4:29 a.m.: Silence. Z shifts, kicking leg into the Ever-Suffering Mother’s back (back still sore from the previous night’s kicking abuses).

4:29 and 12 seconds: Ever-Suffering Mother balances precariously on edge of the Family Bed (of Pain), almost out of range of the Kicky Feet.

4:33 a.m.: BARK! (etc, etc)

4:34 a.m.: The Ever-Suffering Mother drafts dialogue for nasty phone call to owners of Yappy #1 and Yappy #2.

4:35 a.m.: Still barking.

4:36 a.m.: The Ever-Suffering Mother contemplates scenes of graphic violence to Yappy #1 and Yappy #2. Too graphic to recreate here, but basically involving firearms, poisons, and a spork.

4:39 a.m.: The Ever-Suffering Mother kicked again. Just punishment for her 4:36 a.m. Evil Thoughts.

4:40 a.m.: Still barking.

4:41 a.m.: Z still awake. The Ever-Suffering Mother still awake. Husband sleeps. [How? How? Must find out his secret.]

4:42 a.m.: Silence.

4:43 a.m.: Silence.

4:44 a.m.: Silence. Will it last? The Ever-Suffering Mother dares to hope. While perched on edge of the Family Bed (of Pain), the Ever-Suffering Mother puts defensive arm against lower back. Maybe sleep will finally come at last.

4:46 a.m.: BARK! BARK bark BARK barkbarkbark BARK…BARK. BARK bark BARK bark bark bark bark BARK! Bark…bark bark bark barkbarkbark.

4:47 a.m.: The Ever-Suffering Mother hauls suffering self off the edge of bed, finds neighbor’s phone number, and dials.

4:47 and 5 seconds: Silence.

4:47 and 30 seconds:

Mrs. Neighbor: [croakily] Hello?

ESM: Hi, this is ESM, your neighbor. I’m sorry to call so early, but your dogs have been barking for a half hour and I can’t get back to sleep [Subtext: you terrible person why haven’t you done anything about those noisy pests when no other dog I know has ever been so terrible they should be put down they are a blight on our society].

Mrs. N: Oh, I’m really sorry. Mr. N just brought them inside. I apologize.

ESM: No problem. [WTF? Why would the ESM say “no problem” when it so obviously was a problem? Her internal scientists (small, confused people that they are) continue to puzzle over this behavior problem.]

ESM & Mrs. N say goodbye, hang up.

4:50 a.m.: Silence. The Ever-Suffering Mother reperches on edge of the Family Bed (of Pain).

Sometime after 5 a.m.: Both Z and the Ever-Suffering Mother fall to sleep again.

For a too-brief interlude.

And the Ever-Suffering Husband, bless him, deals with both the highly-spirited Z and the highly-dis-spirited Ever-Suffering Mother as he tries to get ready for work. He gets up early every work day, despite his own lack of sleep, to deal with an either cranky or hyperactive toddler, and a cranky or extra-cranky wife.

So, happy Father’s Day, Ever-Suffering Husband!

*Because the Ever-Suffering Mother doubted the legality of breaking into Mr. and Mrs. Neighbor’s back yard and taking picture of the Very Demons From Hell Yappy #1 and Yappy #2, Z provided the artwork for today’s blog post.

The Object of My Fantasies

Posted on by Beth Hull

…or…On the Effects of Sleep Deprivation in Mothers of Toddlers.

I kept getting kicked in the head last night.

She’s really quite strong, my little Z.

And so, instead of a real blog post, I give you a quote from poet Maureen Owen:

…Some mornings it is cleansing
to lean from bed     lift the window     and scream     I HATE CHILDREN
into the lovely green yard.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Posted on by Beth Hull

It sounded like a werewolf story to me. And something about the cover art reminded me of Annette Curtis Klause’s Blood and Chocolate:

Hmm, now that I look at it, why don’t we throw Fallen (Lauren Kate) up here?

Lots of unhappy girls’ profiles.

A likeness of my main character will be grinning like a cheesy idiot from the cover of my book if/when it’s published. Because I hear authors totally get their say in cover art.

Yes, yes, this is actually a book review. You know I get side-tracked. By my own brain.

As I was saying, I thought this would be (another) werewolf novel, but no! It’s a post-apocalyptic zombie story! Way cool. A risk with zombies is they end up totally ridiculous (brain flashes to Shaun of the Dead). However, I was pleasantly surprised. Mary, the main character, begins her story with the statement, “My mother used to tell me about the ocean.” Mary has lived her entire life in a fenced village surrounded by wilderness inhabited by zombies, or, as the Sisters (the ruling religious sect of her village) call them, “the Unconsecrated.”

Right away I started making connections to M. Night Shyamalin’s film The Village. While there are a striking number of similarities, I was able to forget them as the novel progressed, because as Mary’s story developed it moved further and further away from The Village.

Besides, Mary’s character is so fascinating I sometimes paid more attention to her than to the plot. I mean, here is a character who has some pretty distinguishing personality flaws, yet I can’t help but love her anyway. She is selfish, obsessive, and utterly winning. The sequel to The Forest of Hands and Teeth doesn’t feature Mary as a protagonist, but I hope she plays a major role.

Not only was the heroine awesome, the writing was lovely! Who knew a zombie story could be so beautiful? The language in this book is so lyrical, the voice so dark, so perfect for the story. I am a sucker for lyrical prose (Roy’s The God of Small Things and Ondaatje’s The English Patient are forever-favorites of mine because of their language, even though the stories are dead depressing and rival Nicholas Sparks’s sob stories for potential in creating tear-filled oceans. But I digress). This novel was not a gory romance teeming with the walking dead. Okay, so it was. But it was so much more than that because of the poetic flow of the language.

Like Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, The Forest of Hands and Teeth proves that a romance-driven horror story can go beyond the romance and horror if it has memorable characters and simply beautiful prose.

That said, I’m taking a break from YA literature with fantastical elements. I am so saturated in this genre that I’ve started to get pruny, and it’s time for some fresh bathwater. I read a couple of middle-grade books last week, so maybe I’ll review one of those next.