You are looking at posts that were written in the month of October in the year 2009.
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For the month of October we read the book The Pact by Jodi Picoult. During November our book club members decided that we should read a book of our own personal choice! Our next book club meeting will be on November 11th!
Liar by Justine Larbalestier (Bloomsbury, $16.99, 9781599903057/1599903059, 388 pp., ages 14-up, October 2009)
High school senior Micah Wilkins is a liar. She begins her first-person narrative, “I was born with a light covering of fur.” As her story unfolds, she makes a case for why she has lied: No one would believe the truth. By page six, Micah reveals that her secret “after hours” boyfriend, Zach Rubin, is dead. She divides her story into alternating sections “before” and “after” the murder and splices in some “school history,” “family history” and “a history of me.” But she starts with a “promise”: “I will tell you my story and I will tell it straight. No lies, no omissions.” In each slightly adjusted version of the events, what remains consistent is Micah’s feeling that she is “stuck somewhere in between . . . half black, half white; half girl, half boy; coasting by on half a scholarship. I’m half of everything.” She speaks the truth when it comes to emotions (”The place is thick with grief and dust. And emptiness,” she observes from outside Zach’s window), and she’s keenly aware of the smells and sounds of her surroundings. Micah felt most alive and content during her clandestine late-night runs and rendezvous with Zach.
Can an unreliable narrator be trustworthy? And isn’t hypocrisy lying? As Micah says, “Chantal’s a hypocrite and every bit as big a liar as I am.” Using this clever premise of the fine line between truth and falsehood, Larbalestier mines the larger questions teens confront. How much do I reveal to my parents? How much do I omit in order to protect myself–and them? At what point do I begin to take responsibility for myself? The author also explores how alien one’s body becomes with puberty, and the wild hormonal impulses that take over–including rage and lust. These themes all tie together in a larger revelation halfway into the book. Considered a “freak” by her classmates and a suspect in Zach’s murder, Micah could easily give up. Instead she fights for what she wants for herself and for her own view of justice. This suspenseful and page-turning novel suggests that much of life’s experiences exists in the gray area, “somewhere in between” the masculine and feminine, human and animal instincts. There is no black or white.–Jennifer M. Brown
http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2009-10-14/childrens_review_liar_by_justine_larbalestier.html
I (Mrs. Nored) went to the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville yesterday and today. This is a yearly festival in Nashville sponsored by Humanities Tennessee. I got to meet the following authors and get books signed for the WCHS library:
I hoped that Scott Westerfeld (Uglies series) would also be there, but his wife said that he was on a book tour for his new book, Leviathan. Sara Zarr and Kathryn Williams presented together, and we had the chance to ask them questions. Melissa de la Cruz and Daniel Waters presented together, and their question and answer session was also interesting.
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