Every Day

Title: Every Day
Author: David Leviathan
Pub: 2012; Knopf Books for Young Readers
Pages: 304
Genre: Young Adult; Reality Bending; Romance
Etc: Shouts and loves to Netgalley and Knopf (!)

Every day I wake
A new body I am in
Never my own space

Aiight.  Check out this crazy plot.  (And before I begin, a quick *squee* fangirl cry because it's David-freakin'-Leviathan and I love him and feel even more warmth and fuzz and fangirl giddiness because I met him a couple of years ago and he is SUCH an amazing down to earth author which is awesome!)

Now.  The plot.  "A" wakes up every morning into a different body and "A" exists there for that day, making the decisions of that person for that day.  Immediately, you might want to associate it with Meyer's Host, but it's not like that.  Not really.  Because "A" doesn't get a choice, this is just the normal existence.  Also, "A" doesn't interact with the person's body that has been kidnapped.  This isn't an ideal existence, obviously, and "A" tries to live by the ideal do no harm, meaning, DON'T MESS UP THAT PERSON'S LIFE THROUGH SOME RASH DECISION.

*whew*  Let me tell you, trying to write that paragraph without using a gender was tres difficile.  Because, you now, "A" doesn't HAVE a gender.  One day "A"'s a girl, the next a boy.  (Also, "A" is a self given name).

Interestingly enough, this idea behind gender associations as well as sexual and racial identity is one of the reasons why David (I'm pretending here that David and I are on first name basis terms) wrote the book.  That reason alone is one of the reasons why he is such an amazing young adult writer.  He gets these notions and then writes books based on these notions for teens who need to spend time thinking about these things.  Fantastic!

I have to admit that this would be hands down a five-star book EXCEPT the ending sorta irked me.  I mean, sure, I get that this is an incredibly tough premise to wrap it up argh! It bothered me something fierce.  (So please, if WHEN you read this find me on twitter @ReadingThruNite so we can chaaattt!)

Bottom line, loved the concept, loved the author, REALLY liked the book.

Ultraviolet

Title: Ultraviolet

Author: RJ Anderson

Pages: 316

Pub: September 1st, 2001 ; Lerner Publishing Group

Genre: reality bending (?) fantasy (?)

Etc: received from netgalley

The Short of It

Seeing the world differently can hinder.

The Long of It

Alison is first introduced to us awakening from a fugue.  She has been admitted into a mental institution due to a violent outburst and inability to coherently share what happened.  Oh yeah, and the blood on her hands didn’t help the situation NOR the fact that there’s a missing girl that she’s been known to verbally spar with.  Doesn’t look good. 

Alison also suffers from synesthesia, which is the ability of seeing letters distinctly colored, etc.  In Alison’s life, it really is a hindrance; her world is turned upside down because of this extreme sensory ability.  She can taste sentences and her world is filled with personifications.  Because her mother has ignored her symptoms, Alison has grown up in an environment where she denies these experiences and hides them within herself.

Which definitely allows for the sensation of a “crazy” narrator and makes her very unreliable.  She knows what happened to the missing girl, she saw her disintegrate right in front of her.  Alison keeps this quiet because she knows how it sounds.  And the shrinks already think that she’s schizophrenic.

The Thoughts about It

As many of you know I absolutely freakin’ adore books that take place in mental institutions, asylums, or have any sort of mental illness.  When I saw this book I hardly knew what to expect, and even while reading it, I had no idea what to expect.

I am not very familiar with synethesia, but I think that it was cleverly used in this situation to make Alison even more unreliable than if she was just in a mental institution.  Believing that the girl disintegrated right in front of her hardly fit that disorder, but her ability to “see” the world differently led me to question the reality she was experiencing. 

I read some other reviews that were not as impressed by the book as I was.  In order to fully explain my position, there might be some SPOILERS.  Ultraviolet did move toward a science fiction ending which seems to make some ill at ease, maybe like a cop out?  I don’t’ know.  I had no problem suspending my disbelief.  It led me in that direction perfectly, and maybe it was merely because I looked at Alison as the unreliable narrator that she was.  After all, how can you fully believe a character when you first meet her in a state hospital and a possible criminal?


In a nutshell, this was an enjoyable read. 

Choices

Title: Choices

Author: Deborah Lynn Jacobs

Pub: Roaring Press, 2007

Pages: 203

Genre: Young Adult, Realitybending**

“Okay, let’s say you’re right,” I say, “We’re shifting between multiple copies of ourselves. Is that why I have two sets of memories? The memories I carry with me when I shift, and the memories of the body I’ve shifted into?”

“Exactly,” Luke says.

I shiver.  “We’re like ghost, possessing our own bodies for a time and moving on.” (92)

Stranded at a party because everyone, including her best friend Jen, is drunk, Kathleen calls her brother to pick her up.  The weather conditions are fierce – snow settling on the icy roads.  Nick is involved in a devastating car accident that takes his life.  Kathleen blames herself and in her moment of anger and blame isolates herself from Jen and anyone else once close to her.  Kathleen’s mother begins to drink while her father pretends as though nothing is wrong.

Or, in another reality…

Kathleen is still stranded at the party and Nick is still dead, but instead of her mother drinking she has been throwing herself in to community efforts to help prevent drunk driving and various other causes.  Jen is still Kathleen’s best friend, and life moves on.

The only thing that each of the realities have in common is a boy named Luke, whose first interaction with Kathleen is at Nick’s funeral. Kathleen doesn’t know where he came from but instantly feels a connection. Plus, he seems to be the only one who has memories of his own alternate realities.  Maybe he can help her find the one where her brother is still alive.

What drew me into this book was the notion of alternate universes.  I don’t think that I’m a very big fan of time travel novels, although I guess the concept of realities all existing simultaneously is similar in fashion.  I’m looking over the notes that I made about this novel and I’m not quite sure where I was going with it.  I wrote something along the lines of follow up with Rogers (Carl Rogers, a brilliant theorist and therapist back in the 60’s I wanna say.  He devised the notion of person-centered therapy and was best known for his work with schizophrenics.  Rogers believed that we must emerge ourselves into the schizophrenic reality to communicate with them, rather than try to force them into our reality.  But you see, even though I made this notation, I am not quite sure why?)

I enjoyed this book and think that a lot of teens will like it as well.  Kathleen is a very empathetic character.  I truly wanted her to find her brother but understood the dilemma of what that might mean in all of the other realities.  

___

** Realitybending is how I refer to books that make you question reality.

Going Bovine

Title: Going Bovine
Author: Libba Bray
Publication: 2009; Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Pages: 496
Genre: Young Adult
Awards: Printz

"Not that you should put your cat in a box with poison; that's why it's a thought experiment..." Rachel points out, "...and the atom either decays and kills the cat - or it doesn't. Until you open up the box and observe, everything's a probability."

"Wrong," Kevin says. "You're hung up on the observer effect. You don't control the outcome. You don't create the reality. Face it - the cat's either alive or it's dead." (11)

ATTENTION: Because I am working through my likes and dislikes of this book there will be potential SPOILERS. Read at your own risk. :)

OK. So here's the deal. We meet this boy, Cameron, who I believe is sixteen and a total slacker. I mean, no commitment, could care less about anything, except he digs this odd import band that makes weird music. But that's about it. No friends. And he's okay with it. No goals. And he's okay with it. Overall, not the type of character that you'd be rooting for. Ya hear me? Perhaps the anti-hero type?

Then, Cameron starts spazzing out. He is cursing out loud like he's got a good case of tourettes, twitching all nervous and uncontrollable-like, and actually gets into a fight. Full on physical punching the dude that is with his sister. Obviously parents freak and think he's on drugs. But nope. They were wrong. As it happens, Cameron caught a bad case of Mad Cow's disease.

Wherein, he ends up in the hospital fighting for his life when an uber hot angel girl (Dulcie) convinces him he must go on a mission with this OCD/ hypochondriac dwarf friend of his who is also in the hospital, by the name of Gonzo (and it is pretty hysterical since the true Gonzo was fearless and this one is a case of "OMG I'm dying from EVERYTHING!"). And of course, Cameron goes. Because it wouldn't be a book without an adventure right?

So now, I am starting to have some problems with the book and we're not even half way through it. First, I could care less about Cameron. Really. So what if he has this rare cow disease that is eating away at his brain. He just didn't convince me. Which means that i have to rely on the story. Cameron and Gonzo go traipsing through the states, first to New Orleans (because of course every crazy adventure has to start in NOLA) and the eventual goal is Florida (we're gonna go to disney world, ma!). Along the way he ends up talking to Dulcie off and on, meeting interesting characters, and having philosophy ideas posed to him. I was instantly reminded of Tom Robbin's novels, except Robbin's is an expert at taking you through a mental adventure and I found this to be amateurish and contrived. For example, Cameron and Gonzo get picked up by these CESSNAB folks and taken to their commune. They soon find out that CESSNAB stands for "Church of Everlasting Satisfaction and Snack N' Bowl". Yup. A utopia where everyone is happy, but in fact, is a dystopia because no one is free to feel anything else or be different from anyone else. A person might ask for a Strawberry Smoothie while their buddy requests Banana but both will be given Vanilla. Ya see? But then we don't get the show don't tell...we get a lecture on the value of individual.

As you can imagine, I debated putting it aside. And, actually I did. I did not bring Going Bovine with me to the Keys. After vacation, I chose to give it one more chance. So I read on.

Now for the big SPOILERS. But it's the ending that sorta redeemed by book for me. Through out the novel we get different glimpses of Cameron lying in the bed at the hospital: coding, getting saved again, new meds burning, nurses talking, parents crying. We know that everything that happens in the Cameron/Dulcie/Gonzo world (oh yeah, and there's a talking gnome, too) is not real. Of course he's dreaming...or hallucinating, or whatever else you want to describe that time when you're slowly dying because your brain is getting eaten alive. But then, Bray doesn't puss out. He doesn't miraculously return back to the land of the healthy. Nope. In the last scene Cameron is dead and hanging out with Dulcie.

Which got me thinking...I don't think that all of those lectures were really written to be verbose but more like Cameron's other selves talking to each other. Sometimes when I dream I know that I'm saying (thinking?) obvious things, but my mind is sorta processing what I've thought about and tying up all of the loose mental strings.

In that sense, the novel came across rather clever. I mean, how often are you going to find a book that deals with death that way? The more I thought about it the more I decided I liked Going Bovine.

TSS - Subjective Reality

Good morning Saloners! I'm up with my cup of coffee and ready to roll. OK. Who am I kidding? I'm ready to sit here on the couch with my coffee and devour my RSS Feed. Eventually I'll be ready to roll. :P

Teresa over at Shelf Life got me thinking. In her SS she shared her love of plays and it reminded me that my all time favorite piece of literature is Six Characters in Search of an Author by Luigi Pirandello. I read this play in college and could not get enough of it. Have you read it? If not a quick synopsis:

There are six fictional characters who show up in a theatre vehemently demanding their story be told. The actors on the stage are shocked as the characters bend their perception of reality. What ensues is conflict between the characters and actors as they search for an joint understanding.

SCiSoaA is filled with wonderful thought-provoking quotes.

"We have this illusion of being one person for all, of having a personality that is unique in all our acts. But it isn't true. We perceive this when, tragically perhaps, in something we do, we are as it were, suspended, caught up in the air on a kind of hook. We perceive that all of us was not in that act, and that it would be an atrocious injustice to judge us by that action alone, as if all our existence were summed up in that one deed." ~ The Father

It was after reading this play that I had one of my Ah-Ha moments. (C'mon, I was an undergrad, they were fairly significant!) I've always been fascinated with reality bending. It's my favorite philosophical debate: what is real, how do we define reality, to what extent is it perception, etc.

As a child my favorite movie was Nightmare on Elm Street (I had very lenient parents, I was reading Stephen King in the 3rd grade). What fascinated me wasn't the gore or the horror, it was this character - Freddy - being able to leave our nightmares and enter the "real" world. Or, people entering the dreamworld and having real experiences. How wonderful! How, well, surreal.

After I finished my undergrad in literature and took of a few years, I pursued a double master's in therapy. During these two years I grew fascinated with schizophrenia. Humans completely embodying reality bending. My favorite theorist was Carl Rogers. As a phenomenologist, he felt that in order to work with these individuals we need to enter their world rather than force them into ours.

Moving back to literature, though, I love books that force this reality bend. Being Written, which I read last year, is the last book that truly captures that feel. In the novella, the main character believes that he is a minor character in a story. Hoping to become the main character he pursues interactions and situations to put him in the forefront of the story. As the reader, we question the reality of the situation.

I'd like to read more reality-bending books (for lack of better term, and I'm sure there's one out there!) but just don't know how to find them. Do you have any suggestions?

Being Written by William Conescu

Title: Being Written

Author: William Conescu

Country: United States (2008)

Pages: 196

Genre: Fiction

Challenges:

Rating: *****

I stumbled upon this gem of a book through reading a review in, I think, Bookmarks. I was instantly drawn to the premise: the "main character" is actually a minor character who knows that he is a character and is trying to get the author's attention. What?!

Seriously. The little book did not disappoint.

Daniel is a bit peculiar compared to most people because he realizes that he's not just a person, but a character to be used at the author's whim. How does he know this? Well, he can hear the scratching of the author's pencil of course! Which is the creative carrot that entices you in.

Daniel, having a drink,hears the scratching over in the direction of this attractive woman sitting a the bar. He's fed up. Daniel no longer wishes to be a minor character, merely filling in the background scenes, he wants his own part. In fact, if he's going to be honest with himself and the author - he wants his own novel. Daniel has no other choice but to approach the woman who the author is writing about, forcing the author himself to acknowledge Daniel's presence.

Thus begins Daniel's role in the lives of friends Delia, Graham, Jon, and Monty. Just because the novel is about them, does not mean that Daniel cannot maneuver himself into a stellar role. Under the guise of a writer himself, Daniel conveniently shows up in the friends' lives over and over again, until he finally establishes himself. Question is, is it the part that he's always wanted?

I think I loved this book because I've always been fascinated with the concept of reality and perception. In college I read a play, "Six Character's In Search of an Author" by Pirandello. It's an absurdist play, in which a group of characters show up to a dress rehearsal looking for an author to finish their story. One of the many speculations from this play is that we are all characters, existing in separate realities all dependent on the performances of those surrounding us. Which ultimately poses the question which self is more real? Or are all merely illusions?

I'll have to re-read the play again. The above ramblings are relied upon from a memory ten years ago. (Although I do recall after turning in my analysis of the piece to my professor I put an asterisk at the bottom questioning the realness of the paper, or some such postscript that I felt was pretentiously clever at the time). Luckily, I just found Six Characters is on Project Gutenburg. Looks like I might have to re-read this one!

Regardless, Being Written is a quick read. I highly recommend!