The Places You Will Go

Different Seasons

 

From Tots to Teens, 17th April 2011

By DAPHNE LEE

ALLEGRA (Ally to her friends and family) Katz has been playing the piano since she was four. She’s now 13 and belongs to a pre-college music programme at the Juilliard Music School. Her dad is a violinist with a famous quartet, and her mother trained in opera and now sings the blues in jazz bars in Manhattan’s Alphabet City.

Ally’s life revolves around music. She has to practice six hours a day and spends practically the whole of every Saturday at Juilliard, attending various music workshops and classes – theory, chamber, composition, solfege, master class, and her piano lesson proper with the relentlessly demanding and unsympathetic Miss Pringle.

“It felt like the world was passing me by,” says Ally when she can’t make it to her best friend, Opal’s art exhibition. Slumber parties, just hanging out eating hotdogs or watching movies, dating, all the things that most teenagers take for granted have to take a back seat to her music career, or rather making sure that she has music career to look forward to – “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice.”

Ronnie's War by Bernard Ashley | Book review | Books | The Guardian

I have mentioned before in these pages that we live now in a publishing world which frequently seems to equate size with merit; the big fuss is aimed at the (literally) big books. In such a world, the short book is often overlooked, on the mistaken principle, I believe, that you can't say anything weighty if you don't use enough words to require the felling of half an acre of woodland. The truth is that a few words in the hands of a skilful writer can be worth a few paragraphs from someone apparently holding shares in Scandinavian paper mills.

Every Dog Has Its Day

From StarMag

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS

Author & Illustrator: Jeff Kinney

Publisher: Puffin Books, 214 pages

ISBN: 978-0141327655

MY eldest son, who is 12, loves Jeff Kinney’s Wimpy Kid series of books. Why? “They’re funny!” he says. And? “They’re just ... funny!” he repeats. Well, I guess I should be glad he didn’t give me his usual answer, that favourite of all popular adolescent phrases: “I don’t know.”

Of course, I’m happy to see a book – any book – in his grubby paws. In an interview with US National Public Radio, Kinney was asked to comment on the opinion that his work is not exactly deathless prose. He said, “These books are turning kids on to reading and they’re going to move on to more legitimate reading in the future, and that’s a good thing.”

Kinney is being overly modest, though. While Wimpy Kid may not be winning prestigious literary awards, I think the series should be acknowledged and admired for its role in promoting reading as a enjoyable pastime.

The Wimpy Kid books are written in diary format (in font that mimics handwriting), with cartoon illustrations. When I first heard of them I was immediately reminded of Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 was my Wimpy Kid (the first book was published when I was 15 and the main character is almost exactly my age) and I can totally understand why so many tweens love Greg Heffley, the hero of Wimpy Kid.

The Science of Miracles

THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX

By Mary E. Pearson

Publisher: Henry Holt, 266 pages

ISBN: 978-0805076684

JENNA Fox is 17. When she was 16 she was in an accident that put her in a coma for a year. She is awake now and every thing is different. Strange.

It’s not just that her family no longer live in Boston. It’s not just that Jenna can’t remember a single thing about her past. Or that every link she had with her life before the accident seems to have been severed.

Her parents whisper about her and watch her closely, with something like fear in their eyes. Her grandmother, whom she used to call Nana, but now automatically calls Lily, is physically and emotionally distant. “Why do you hate me?” Jenna asks her and Lily replies, “I don’t hate you, Jenna. I simply don’t have room for you.”

Yet Jenna, although she can’t remember events from a year ago, has distant memories of babyhood, memories of a time when Lily adored and cherished her. What could have happened to cause her feelings to change so drastically?

“How far would you go to save someone you love?” This question is printed across the book’s cover. How far did Jenna’s parents go to save her after the accident? So far that Jenna’s grandmother doesn’t approve?

Lily says that Jenna is “not natural”. But her own daughter, Claire (Jenna’s mother) was an in vitro baby. Claire says to Lily, “You always called me your miracle. Why can’t I have one too? Why do you get to decide when the miracles will end.”

What sort of miracle is Jenna? Mary E. Pearson does a good job of keeping you guessing and wondering. Every thing is seen from Jenna’s perspective so you share her confusion and worry and questions. Equally, you also learn things as she does, and feel her horror and anguish as the truth is slowly revealed.

Do or Die

From Tots to Teens, StarMag

HOW brutal and blood-thirsty the ancient Romans were, gathering to watch people kill and be killed in terrible ways, even hunted and eaten by wild beasts. How unfeeling the public in Elizabethan England were, attending public executions and watching, with morbid fascination, as men and women were hung, drawn and quartered or burnt at the stake.

Could we stomach such violence and cruelty? Don’t we anyway when we watch some action and horror movies? Does it make a difference knowing that what we see isn’t “real”?

I think it depends on the viewer. I can’t watch a torture scene in a film because although I know the actor isn’t really suffering, I can imagine what it might be like to undergo the torture. I can imagine his pain. And what’s worse is I know that people are tortured in real life.

We get our fill of fictional violence, blood and gore on the telly and in the cinema, and in video games too. If we didn’t, would we welcome the opportunity to witness live executions and combat? After all, most of us enjoy the thrill of watching reality programmes: Seeing someone suck up half a kilogramme of real raw brain is so much more entertaining than knowing it’s in fact pureed banana with a dash of strawberry sauce, isn’t it?

The Hunger Games (Scholastic Press, 464 pages, ISBN: 978-1407109084) by Suzanne Collins capitalises on the popularity of reality TV and violent shoot-’em-up video games. It’s a comment on the voyeur in all of us, and how the media feeds on this and manipulates us for its own gain. It also asks how far humans would act and how much they would accept in the name of entertainment and monetary gain.

Love and Honour, Revenge and Betrayal in a Gripping Page-Turner

I bought Across the Nightingale Floor at the Times Warehouse Sale - it was in the "Three for RM10" pile. Once I started reading the book I could not put it down, and I was lucky enough to find a box-set of the first three books at BookXcess (the copy I bought at the sale is now lokking for a home - any takers?)

The trilogy is an exciting and riveting read although the third book ends too abruptly to be completely satisfying.

Betrayed

Review by DAPHNE LEE

WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED
By Judy Blundell
Publisher: Scholastic Press, 284 pages
(ISBN:978-0439903462)

A scene in What I Saw and How I Lied takes place in a movie cinema. Evie Spooner, the book's 15-year-old narrator, is there with her stunning mother, Beverley, and Peter, the handsome young man from her stepfather's WW2 army unit. Evie goes to buy candy and when she returns, she finds that Peter has moved up a seat and is now next to her mum. This scene reminds me of a similar one in Elizabet Bowen's The Death of the Heart: The teenage heroine, Portia, is watching a film with the boy she loves and notices that he's holding another girl's hand. The feeling of betrayal and embarrassment is intense. Portia's heart dies in this novel and what she witnesses in the cinema is one of the blows that kill it.

Insider Gossip

From StarTwo

Review by DAPHNE LEE

POP BABYLON
By Imogen Edwards-Jones
Publisher: Bantam Press, 310 pages
(ISBN:978-0593060308)

I DON'T know about you, but I really like watching the E! Entertainment channel  and sniggering over programmes like MTV Cribs, Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane and Meet the Kardashians. It's just so much mindless fun watching how the rich, famous and shameless live their lives.That's why Pop Babylon is such a delicious read.

It's the latest in Imogen Edwards-Jones' series of Babylon books - novels that claim to give us a sneak peak at what truly goes on behind the scenes of various industries. So far she has covered fashion, travel, hospitality and, with Pop Babylon, music.

Who Wrote That?

From StarMag

Review by DAPHNE LEE

ANONYMITY
By John Mullan
Publisher: Faber and Faber, 374 pages
(ISBN: 978-0571195145)

AS a journalist (lately a freelance one) I have never published work anonymously but have done so using various pseudonyms. My reasons have included the desire to disassociate myself from what I consider hack jobs, and to avoid trouble in instances when the subject matter might be deemed controversial. Pseudonimity may be as effective as anonymity when used to hide the identity of the author.

Many classic works of literature were first published without their author's names or under false names. It was so common to publish anonymously or puedonymously in the 18th and 19th century that a Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain was published in 1882 - begun in the 1850s, it ran to four volumes when finally completed. In 1934, additional volumes were published and in 1962, the final edition numbered nine volumes in all. Even so, the book does not list works whose authors' identities have not been revealed - and a quick search online will reveal that there are many famous quotes that remain anonymous.

In Anonymity, John Mullan explores why many authors of English literature chose to publish anonymously. He looks at the different circumstances and motives behind authors' decisions to hide who they were; the effect an author's anonymity had on his or her readers; and the reaction of the public and press when the author's identity was finally revealed.

A Good-looking Effort

THE WILDLIFE WATCHER
Written and Illustrated by Choong Kwee Kim.
Publisher: MPH Publishing, 32 pages

CHOONG Kwee Kim's second picture confirms that her strength is as an illustrator. There are some lovely spreads in this book, especially the silhouettes that are obviously inspired by Jan Pienkowski (Choong acknowledges the Polish-born British illustrator in her author's note).

However, I think Choong needs to be less literal in bringing a story to life with her pictures. She could afford to add illustrative subtext and this would make for a much richer and layered telling of the story.

Unfortunately, The Wildlife Watcher does not have much of a story going for it and perhaps Choong could have used her drawings to show her readers what she might not have been able to convey through her text.

What is presented here is a mere snapshot of a little girl who likes to sit watching the animals in a mangrove swamp. The snapshot, sadly, lacks focus.

The girl is nervous because she senses that something is about to happen and is unsure what to expect. The readers aren't quite sure what to think either. Is this story about the animals' struggle for survival? Is it about how man is an enemy to nature? Is it about how the village is under threat thanks to urban development? Is it about the little girl's fears for the animals and her village?

I believe Choong's intention was to link everything but she does not do it very successfully. The girl's feelings are not explored sufficiently to make her a sympathetic character. She watches the wildlife struggle to survive but what she observes of their strife is not linked back to her own fears for her way of life. How does she gain strength from the animals? What leads her to make her final decison to "stand up for what's right"? And what does this mean? How will she make her stand? Choong does not answer any of these questions.

It is also never made clear what the "strange wind" that will take everything away is. A tsunami? The winds of change in the form of modernisation? As this is never made clear, there is no sense of resolution at the end of the story.

I feel Choong is handicapped in telling her tale clearly by her use of rhyming text. It is not easy to write in  rhyme and it is obvious that Choong struggled with it. Most of the rhyming couplets are forced and clumsy. To make matters worse, many sentences are convoluted and hard to understand. Mixed-metaphors and the incorrect usage of words hardly help matters.

I hope Choong will continue to grow as an illustrator and that she will work with other writers to produce good Malaysian literature in the future. As an author, she may have to accept that storytelling with words is not something she excels at.