The Weight of Ink

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish  592 pp.

I was close to finishing this before the end of 2019 but didn't quite get there. This story takes place in London in the 1660s and the early 2000s. Esther Valasquez is a Jewish woman of a Portuguese family that escaped the Inquisition to settle in Amsterdam. After the death of her parents she takes a job in London working as a scribe for a rabbi who was blinded by the Inquisitors, a job that is considered unsuitable for a woman. Helen Watt is a British historian who is called on to investigate a collection of papers discovered during the renovations of a 17th century house. Helen and her American graduate assistant work on finding the identity of the scribe while each dealing with their own personal problems. The orphaned Esther is dependent on the charity of a congregation in Amsterdam. When the rabbi and others insist she marry and give up her beloved job as scribe she rebels. Esther and Helen are strong women battling the attitudes of the men in their lives. The story is well researched an written but drags in spots and I kept wondering if it was ever going to end.

The Graveyard Book

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, 312 pages

A toddler escapes the man who has murdered his family, and finds refuge in a nearby graveyard, where the dead take it upon themselves to care for this young boy. The boy, who is given the name Nobody Owens by his ghostly caretakers, grows up in the graveyard, learning questionable school lessons from long-dead teachers and how to haunt from other ghosts. It's an unlikely story in every aspect, but, as he does with so many stories, Gaiman crafts it wonderfully, sprinkled with details that make this impossible tale seem so real. I particularly liked listening to the audiobook, which Gaiman reads himself, lending an extra element of wonderfulness to an already excellent tale. This was a winner for my whole family.

Euphoria

Euphoria by Lily King  261 pp.

Without knowing in advance that this book was very loosely based on the life of Margaret Mead, while reading I had the thought that the character Nell Stone's book parallels what Mead had written in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.  Nell, her husband Fen (Schuyler Fenwick), and a third anthropologist, Andrew Bankson, are all studying tribes in 1930s New Guinea. Nell and Fen's marriage is rocky, due in part to Nell's acclaimed book about native sexuality. Bankson, has been battling his own demons and a failed suicide attempt led him to take a break from the tribe he was studying to assist Nell and Fen in the search for a new group to study. In the process, he becomes infatuated with Nell and a brief affair occurs. I got wrapped up in the characters in this award winning novel but felt the ending was less than stellar.

The Crossover

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, 240 pages
2015 Newbery Medal Winner
A 2015 Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book
A 2015 Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Book

 Josh and his twin brother, Jordan (better known as JB), are teen basketball phenoms. Basketball is as vital and natural to them as breathing, which isn't surprising given that their father played professionally overseas before deciding to retire at a young age. This year, their team has a real chance at winning the county championship, especially since Josh and JB are playing the best they've ever played. But growing up (and in the case of identical twins, starting to grow apart) takes its toll on the young boys. Josh feels left out when JB starts dating a new girl at their school, pushing down his anger until it explodes on the court. He also can't ignore the increasingly louder arguments between his parents over his father's health. Josh pours it all into poetry, telling the story in verse, while playing it out on the court. In fact, Kwame Alexander's decision to write The Crossover in verse format is a great one, infusing the scenes where Josh and JB are playing in games with a hip-hop swagger, playing with font sizes, styles, and spacing to create an image of the action. It adds to the vulnerability that Josh is feeling about JB and his father's not-totally-obvious decline in health. My only complaint is that it feels like a lot gets packed into a short amount of time and then ends before the reader has time to process all that happened (though after reveling in the 500-plus pages of All the Light We Cannot See, this feels like an unfair observation to make, so it's probably just me and not the book). This is a great book, perfect for middle-grade readers, and definitely worthy of its accolades.

(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge.)

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick

Midwinterblood by Marcus Sedgwick, 272 pages
2014 Printz Award Winner

In 2073, Eric, a journalist, heads to a small Scandinavian island to write a story about its inhabitants. The residents of Blessed Island never die, but no children are born. The island is also home to a rare orchid, rumored to be a fountain of youth of sorts, yet the islanders seemingly have no desire to exploit this for their own gain. There he meets Merle, and finds himself immediately in love. But he can't shake the feeling of déjà vu, that this has all happened to him before. And it's not until the final moment that he realizes that it has happened before, but maybe not always in the same way or with the same faces.

Midwinterblood is a bit hard to describe, but that doesn't make it any less wonderful. Seven stories, all entertwined, tell the story of Eric and Merle, starting in 2073 and going back through the centuries. Each story contains certain elements: two people named Eric and Merle, the orchid in some form, a hare, a sacrifice (and more I'm probably missing). Collectively, it's a story of a love that endures, but it's not a romance, like you might expect from a young adult novel. And I think that what I love most about it is that it's about this love. It's a quiet book, yet each story is so effused with that love, that when you get to the last story and really get to the heart of why Eric and Merle have endured for so long, you feel sad for what could have been for them, yet happy for what was. Like many other Printz winners, this is one to recommend to anyone you know who doesn't think young adult books are any good, as well as the ones who do.

(Read as part of YALSA's Hub Reading Challenge)