Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

I'd heard a great deal about this book, and visually it is quite exciting. The book is full of bizarre vintage photographs. Unfortunately, the story doesn't live ups to the photographs. Angsty teenager Jacob Portman goes to Wales to try and find out about his grandfather's past. A refugee from the Nazis, Abe Portman grew up in a children's home in Wales presided over by the enigmatic Miss Peregrine. A mysterious abandoned manse, time travel, and a new girlfriend will all help Jacob unravel the truth about his grandfather and himself. 

While there are elements of fancy added to the characters, the basic story is, rather, basic. There's lots of reviews that compare this book to X-Men, and yes, that's pretty much it. More problematically, this reads like a child's story. The book is classified as young adult, and that appears to be the one constituency that is not served. The pictures are not as integral to the story as their volume might have one believe. It seems like Riggs often wrote the plot around the pictures, and that doesn't necessarily make for the best plot choices.

Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk, 2011) ISBN: 1594746036 

Review: The Oxford Project

This is like no other book I have ever read before. In 1984 Peter Feldstein took a picture of ever resident of the tiny town of Oxford, Iowa. In 2007 he took pictures again. Feldstein asked people to tell their stories in their own words. The book presents old and new photos along with their subjects' stories.

What emerges is the collective portrait of a small town. Oxford is a place where people stay for generations. The collected stories show just how much tragedy and suffering regularly afflicts human beings. It is evident how strongly people crave connections to others. Poverty affects many in Oxford. Young marriage is the norm, and many are married in their teens with children following shortly thereafter. Many regret lack of college education.

Oxford is an entirely different place from anywhere I have ever lived. I wonder how much of the country is still like Oxford. For everyone who bemoans the decline of close-knit community, the Oxford example suggests that people who live in such places are not necessarily any more or less happy than their big-city counterparts. I'd be interested to know more about the people who have left Oxford. They are not included in the book, and that is a side of the town's story that is missing.

Peter Feldstein, The Oxford Project (Welcome Books, 2010) ISBN: 1599620871 

Review: A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea

This beautifully-written book is a coming of age story set in post-revolutionary Iran. Saba Hafezi is obsessed with English language and American culture, a dangerous pursuit in revolutionary Iran. This interest is cemented by Saba's memories of her mother and twin sister migrating to the United States in the midst of the revolution. Saba has to deal with the emotional baggage of being the twin left behind, while trying to find her way in a confusing world with few opportunities for smart young women. Saba's own story is interwoven with the stories she tells about her mother and sister. Storytelling becomes the way that Saba works out her sadness and grief.

This book provides a fascinating look at growing up in the Iran of the 1980s. Saba lives in a rural area. Her remoteness from the capital provides her with some protection, but she longs for the cosmopolitan Tehran she remembers from pre-revolutionary days. In a broader sense, this is a book about a community coming to terms with a confusing new society. Over the course of the book the presence of the moral police becomes heavier, and the opportunities for a smart young woman like Saba diminish. The author pays significant attention to the development of Saba's relationship with her closest female friend, Ponneh. Each woman takes a very different path to dealing with the restrictions of the new Iran, and neither finds complete satisfaction.

In language and description this is a beautiful book. I was drawn in by Saba and her community. I was less interested in the stories she told about Mahtab, and occasionally found these a bit ponderous. Overall, though, a very moving book.

Diya Nayeri, A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea (Riverhead, 2013) ISBN: 1594487049 

The Honey Thief, by Elizabeth Graver

Today's book is one I purchased after reading the jacket description. I have a thing for coming-of-age stories, and the blurb caught my attention.

The Honey Thief presents a coming of age story of a girl, Eva, on the cusp of adolescence who has recently moved to the New York countryside from the city, in a desperate attempt by her widowed mother to escape a troubling past. The immediate impetus for the move is Eva's series of compulsive thefts. Her mother, Miriam, moves Eva out of the city in an attempt to stop the behavior. For Miriam Eva stealing is much more troubling than just adolescent misbehavior. Why that is is related throughout the book in a series of flashbacks, that tell the story of Eva's parents early relationship and their marriage, before Eva's father's death, several years after her birth. Yet, the country does little to help Eva, and, if anything, her problems worsen. The one mitigating factor for Eva seems to be her introduction to a local beekeeper, who invites Eva to watch and learn about his bees. But through a series of chance encounters the one stable and satisfying part of Eva's life will be endangered too. Eva's story is an interesting one, and the relationship she develops with Burl the beekeeper is an interesting and nuanced one that Graver develops with skill. Ultimately I found the end of this book much less satisfying than the first 3/4 of the text. The ending was a surprise, but unsatisfying. It's difficult to explain why without giving away the ending, but suffice it to say that I found there to be little resolution for the most sympathetic and interesting character in the book. But up until the end the rest of the text was engaging, full of complicated characters and problems. Eva's family is one in which all members are burdened, both by the past and by illness, and much of Eva and Miriam's tell is really an attempt to deal with these problems. Graver is a good writer, I simply wished she'd handled the ending with more complexity.

Elizabeth Graver, The Honey Thief, (Harvest, 2000) ISBN: 0156013908