Secrets: Gone Girl

For secrets I read "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn. Everyone loves this book. I apparently, am not part of everyone.

Now that I have had some distance from it I am not as perturbed with it as I was when I first finished the book. My pacing in the first half of the book was normal and then zoomed into obsessed mode quickly in the latter half. I NEEDED TO KNOW WHY AMY WAS GONE. Because this book is a thriller I will not give away too many details.

***minor spoiler****

I think I didn't enjoy this book as much because I found the ending unjust/disgusting. As someone who advocates for the welfare of others I found the ending really disturbing - there is no way that is going to turn out ok and that is the WORST way to.......can't think of how to not give that piece away. Those of you who have read this will understand what put me over the edge.

The theme of this book is pretty obvious, Amy disappears and we don't know why. Everyone involved turns out to have lots of secrets. Ba-da-bing.

Up next: Books into Movies!!!!

SECRETS: Miseduction of Cameron Post

The first thing that Cameron Post feels when she finds out her parents have died is relief--relief that they will never know that hours earlier, she was kissing a girl. Before anything, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a story about finding yourself during the most difficult and confusing time of your life--the teenage years. It's about navigating through first relationships, it's about staying true to yourself, and it's about understanding the way the world works. It follows Cameron as she realizes she is attracted to girls, it follows her as she falls in love for the first time, and it follows her as all of that comes crashing down and she is sent off to be "fixed" at a de-gaying camp.

This book was phenomenal. It made me nostalgic for a childhood I didn't even have--the small town, lazy hot summers of swimming in the lake and exploring the countryside. The writing was phenomenal. To give you just a small example:

It was one of those August afternoons that Montana does just right, with heavy gray thunderheads crowding out the movie-blue sky and the feeling of a guaranteed downpour just beginning to change the touch of the air, the color of the sunlight. We were right in the middle of the maybe twenty minutes before the storm would hit, when it was only just promised, and every single thing in it's path--from the strings of multicolor turn flags over the pool to the sheen of the oily puddles in the parking lot to the smell of fried foods wafting over from the Burger Box on the corner--was somehow alive with that promise.

Though this book has a very heavy message, it is subtle and delicate and REAL. Most of the "message" books out there are so heavy handed they forget entirely about the plot, it becomes secondary to the grand message of the author. But in the Miseducation of Cameron Post, her being gay is so integrated into the story that you often forget that it's supposed to be different--because in this book, Cameron isn't different, she's just herself. I only wish, for one character, there would have been justice. They did something that made me SO angry that I was fuming when I realized there would be no revelation for this character--no "wow, I really screwed up, and I should apologize." But, unfortunately, real life doesn't work that way and neither should the book--it is so infuriating because it's so real.

SECRET: Cameron never denies her true self, and just like every other teenager (even though her sexuality means she has many more roadblocks and bumps in the road) she has to grapple with the reality that she is who she is and nothing can ever change that. She is able to keep her biggest secret throughout most of the book, but eventually she is forced to face it. Even though she is surrounded by people who do not accept or understand who she is, she understands that they are doing what they feel is right, just like she is:

I'm just saying that sometimes you can end up really messing somebody up because the way you're trying to supposedly help them is really messed up.

Goodreads rating: 5
Recommendation: Yes, yes, yes. Beautiful, real, intense.

Just a note, this book does contain graphic scenes with sex and drug use.

WILDERNESS: Oryx and Crake

I realize I'm fairly late to write this entry, and I confess I've been dreading writing it. This is one of those books that has been in my TBR pile for ages now, and I was really looking forward to finally having an excuse to read it.. which is why I think it disappointed me so much.

Oryx and Crake follows the story of Snowman, or Jimmy before mankind fell victim to their own plague, who might be the last Human on Earth. His world is filled with the vestiges of life before--genetically engineered animals and humans. Through his own memories, we slowly learn about his life with Oryx, the love of his life, and Crake, his best friend who created the "perfect Human,"and their part of the demise of Humans.

Though the concept was interesting, with these types of books I am much more interested in the human condition and what a person goes through in order to overcome their situation and come out having triumphed (or failed). Though I felt the details of the fall of Mankind were flushed out, I felt the characters fell incredibly flat and I wished I could have seen Snowman grow or change. The responses to his environment and the events of his story (in the present day) were frustratingly apathetic.

WILDERNESS: In search of supplies, Snowman embarks on a journey across the ruins of his old life and world. Outside of the interactions with the Children of Crake (the genetically engineered "perfect humans") and his memories, Snowman is alone with his thoughts and relying on himself. Because there was so much focus on his memories of what had happened, I felt that the act of survival as (supposedly) the only Human left played a significantly less important role than it should have. I realize this may  have been intentional, but it just did not work for me.

Goodreads rating: 3
Recommendation: I concede I am the minority in this, but I do not recommend this book, and I do not think I will be reading the rest of them. I really should have given it a 2, but I can't get over how everyone else loves this book, so I must have been missing something.

May's theme: "The Wildnerness"

May's theme is "The Wilderness", I interpreted this broadly and chose to read "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

There are many reasons I loved this book. It has subversive feminism, critiques of colonialism, and the struggle for survival.Without giving too many spoilers here is my mini-summary:

The main characters in this book are a Baptist family. This book takes place starting in 1960, and this family in many ways represents stereotypical white families of the South; in this family, Dad is IN CHARGE. He is a Baptist preacher and decides that the whole family, four daughters included, needs to move to The Congo to "save souls". He takes this quite literally from the evangelical perspective, everyone in The Congo that has not accepted Jesus as their personal savior is going straight to hell, thus, he views their mission as imperative and they are doing all the Congolese a favor.

In this book the jungle of The Congo is almost a character in itself because the jungle frequently thwarts the efforts of the people who live there and try to control it and exerts a powerful influence psychologically on everyone there. The forest shapes their behavior and seems to have a will of it's own.

The main events of the book unfold as the family tries to continue their mission even has civil war descends into their village. Everyone in the family copes with this a different way - in contrast to how they started all on the same page.

I very much enjoyed how this book tells the story from each female character's point of view. LOVED THAT.

Now that I have written about this book, I AM READY TO READ IT AGAIN! It was great! I have heard from other friends who didn't care for it as much and there were times I was frustrated with it because I thought the dad was being such a tool it was difficult to read. The colonial issues can be difficult to read as well but I found myself often reflecting on how colonialism promotes the values of the domineering culture but too, how even when reacting to colonialism (our reactions to it) even often promotes the domineering culture's values. For example, you SHOULD be pissed off reading about how Western cultures have taken advantage of many, many, African cultures, YET we DO NOT know what is best for those cultures now. We didn't know then, we don't know now. We can't tell people how to fix the problems - even if we started them - because that is promoting our own values again, not theirs.

Also loved the subversive feminism of this book. I don't think any of these characters would call themselves that but certainly they were. But, don't want to give you any spoilers :)

Summary: READ IT, FIVE out of FIVE STARS!!!!!

Far From the Tree: The Final Entry

It is with pleasure that I have wrapped up this book. Often when I end a book this excellent it is bittersweet, but this book has given me so much to chew on I am sure I will be revisiting it time and time again. Especially as I go on to be a parent myself.

This post covers the remaining three chapters: Criminality, Transgender &0; Father.

Criminality:
I found this chapter to be an especially interesting one in terms of the philosophical meeting the practical. Here is an example of how this dynamic comes together: Juvenile delinquents have a recidivism rate of 93%, adding mandated family therapy drops this to 60% (so quoted in the book). YET, in most states family therapy is not part of the package. Even though it saves tons of money and heartache in both the short and long run. BUT because we want "punishment" we don't want to give people therapy, that seems too much like a positive, a possible reward. I find myself caught in this conflict at times as well. As much as I truly despise how much we incarcerate people in this country and the damage it does to them psychologically, I am really unsure as to what the alternatives are. In the case of juveniles I think the answer is more clear, adolescents and children are much more malleable to change and we should be throwing as many resources at them as we can. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is not to say that adults aren't worth rehabilitating as well, I think it is just less clear what works in that case.

There were several really interesting stories in this chapter, including a family where the son had molested his own niece but had been rehabilitated, a chronic offender gang banger, and parents of one of the Columbine killers. The Klebolds, parents of Dylan Klebold one of the teens who killed his classmates at Columbine, were exceptionally brave and insightful in sharing their story. A theme of this chapter, and especially for the Klebolds is how much opprobrium (author's word) parents of juvenile delinquents face.

Transgender:
My knowledge of this is from two main perspectives: Oprah and Child Psychology. In child psychology I was really struck by learning how intersex children and the really terrible ways medical science (and our culture) has dealt with their gender variance. Until reading this chapter I largely thought of transgender issues in terms of adults and adolescents wanting to transition but this chapter shared the tales of many very YOUNG children who were transgender. I find this really fascinating, having watched my own brother become very into being "a BOY" at quite a young age, it does make sense that a feeling of mismatch with your gender begins so young but it is startling how well these children can articulate that.

Father:
Similar to the chapter son, this chapter focuses on the authors own experiences and related to that, was one of my least favorite chapters. I did like this more than the chapter "son" because it did wrap things up.

THE END!!!

EVERYONE GO READ THIS AMAZING BOOK!

It is quite a tome but WELL WORTH IT!

Far From the Tree: continued

This post is dedicated to but one chapter. One heavy, heavy, chapter.

"More than any other parents coping with exceptional children, women with rape-conceived children are trying to quell the darkness within themselves in order to give their progeny light." These stories offer a perspective on humanity few other tales of life can in exhibiting both the light and the dark in equal intensity.

"The children described in the rest of this book sustain injuries; these children, through no fault of their own, are injuries."

As most of you know, I am a scholar of psychology. Particularly, I am interested in rape and other forms of sexual assault. My research is aimed at preventing these acts, my clinical work towards treating women (and sometimes men) who have suffered, and my teaching is about a mix of the above with a few other things thrown in. So, I talk about rape a lot. Sometimes the tone I use offends people because, let's face it, I get habituated. It's not that I don't care it's that it doesn't hold the taboo for me anymore and I perhaps speak with less hesitation than the normal person and this comes off as callous. But I do care, most deeply. For me this is the perfect little intersection of issues I care about: clinical psychology and women's rights.

Given this background I was very intellectually excited to read the chapter on Rape in Far From the Tree. Rarely do popular non-fiction books cover this topic in a depth that appeals to me. And I don't know as much about women who have had children because of rape, this is a topic on which there is very little information. Little did I know how difficult it would be to read this chapter!

In many ways, I had to force myself to read this chapter. It stabbed little holes in my skin emotionally while I read it. This surprised me a bit, I thought since I am so familiar with this topic it wouldn't get to me much. I was wrong I think, for two main reasons. One reason is I underestimated how much I do care about psychotherapy treatment ( I do more research than treatment generally) from a justice perspective. One thing that really tore me up reading this was reading about all the crappy therapists these poor women had been too. OH MY LORD. I cannot fully describe my anger while reading these passages. Because I DO know how to treat posttraumatic stress disorder. Most people with posttraumatic stress disorder deal with it untreated for an average of TWELVE YEARS before seeking help. And then, these poor women fell onto these bozo therapists? Perhaps they were somewhat helpful but it statistically very unlikely they "cured" them or alleviated their symptoms as significantly as they could have if they followed empirically supported treatment protocols. LIKE I WOULD. So this really got to me, knowing how many women (people) are out there who are not getting the treatment they deserve.

It was also just overwhelmingly sad to read these stories of many of these women, for whom having a child because of rape was just another injustice. We tend to think of having a child because of rape as "an exception" and something so horrible as to cause us to grant exceptions to our norms (e.g., abortion laws). Yet, for many of the women described in this chapter it was just another awful thing. For some though, it was the final injustice that propelled them towards a different way of living, living with love for their child. It's truly amazing the way different mothers dealt with this circumstance, though it seems a little silly to call a child a circumstance. I found the mothers in the US just as moving as the mothers in Rwanda, though their horrors seemed slightly different, when things are that horrible is there a point to making gradations in the horror? Seems unnecessary to me.

Still a great book. A great chapter too, though I don't think I will assign it in my Abnormal Psychology class like I planned, too much. As much as reading about trauma may make one wonder about the status of the world it actually usually makes me a bit hopeful. If we can live through all that we can do about anything. But we need to work out the details.

FAMILY: A Monster Calls

At seven past midnight, a monster calls. But this isn't the monster that Conor has been expecting, this monster isn't the one from his nightmares, so what does it want?
A Monster Calls is the heart-wrenching story of a boy who is trying to deal with the reality of his mother's sickness. Every night he wakes up from a nightmare to a monster knocking on his window. The reader follows Conor as he navigates school, where he has become an outcast due to his "special circumstance;" his family, a sick mother and an insufferable grandmother; and his nightmares, which force Conor to confront his deepest fears--the truth.
Told alongside stunning illustrations, the story unfolds before the reader page by page, where the monster outside Conor's window shows him not everything is black and white, and where finally the reader confronts Conor's nightmare alongside him. 
Family: With his mother dying, Conor is (rightfully) resistant to anyone--even family--coming into his life as his new caretaker. It's heartbreaking to see his grandmother and absent father try to explain to him what's happening with his mother and see him shut down. The reader understands, as well as he does, he knows exactly what's going on--he just doesn't want to admit it. Family is at the core of this story, even though truth, love, and grief all play an important part.

Goodreads rating: 4 Stars
Recommendation: Read it! The only reason why I didnt give it 5 Stars because it didn't make me cry nearly as much as other books by Patrick Ness..