Go ahead--judge this book by its cover

I'm a little late to the game on these, since they came out late last summer, but I spied this Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Wurthering Heights at the library last week, and it literally stopped me in my tracks.


How fabulous is that?

I'll admit it--I can't count myself as a fan of Wuthering Heights. I've read it twice and really, really tried. I can see Emily Bronte's genius as a writer and storyteller; but the story she had to tell... Yikes. However, I am in love with this book cover (the illustrations run onto the inside flaps of the book jacket as well), illustrated by Ruben Toledo. For me, they evoke perfectly the twisted, gothic, torrid world of Cathy and Heathcliff. Heathcliff's actually my favorite part of the illustration--he has a kind of sinister James Dean thing going on. It actually makes me want to give the book another chance. And I definitely need this on my bookshelf.

Toledo illustrated two other classic book covers for Penguin as well, Pride and Prejudice,


and the Scarlet Letter.


Toledo's take on Pride and Prejudice doesn't quite work for me. It's a little too Tim Burton for the BBC version that I have running constantly through my head, but I like the Scarlet Letter. It doesn't put me in the novel as well as Toledo's version of Wuthering Heights, but it's an interesting take on Hawthorne. I especially like the gossips. It feels like Desperate Housewives meets Puritan New England, which is kind of fun.

The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte by Syrie James

Summary and review:

This "secret diary" of Charlotte Bronte follows her romance with Arthur Bell Nicholls. Nicholls was the Brontes' next door neighbor. He worked under her father as the curate of tiny Haworth village for eight years before expressing his love to Charlotte and giving her an offer of marriage. The near-decade that spanned the time between Charlotte's first meeting with Mr. Nicholls and his proposal saw Charlotte evolve from an imaginative spinster to a celebrated writer.

I thought the book started roughly. I didn't buy the idea that these characters were living in a tiny parish in Victorian England. The language seemed stilted and overly formal, yet it was peppered at times with modern-sounding phrases that were completely out-of-place in the dialog. For example, in one scene, Charlotte and Emily are angry with one another. "You cannot stay angry with me for ever," says Charlotte, to which Emily replies, "Watch me."

"Watch me?" Umm, I'm sorry, but I just don't think that Charlotte and Emily Bronte spoke like 21st Century eight-year-olds. So that bothered me. I also didn't like the fact that the "diaries" weren't written in a diary format. The style is more of a narrative than a diary. Charlotte begins the novel by addressing "Diary," but there aren't individual entries; it's as if she's recounting the entire story in two or three sittings.

I did, however, think that the story, if not riveting, was interesting. Syrie James based the plot around letters written by and about Charlotte Bronte and the other characters mentioned. Although the dialog was fabricated and much is conjecture, from what I can tell the story is relatively true to history. It was interesting to learn about the sources of inspiration for the Bronte novels. The lives of the Brontes were tragic, and while reading I realized that I knew very little about Charlotte or her sisters. I admit that formerly I had a difficult time keeping track of the three sisters and remembering which one was which. Having read this book, I feel like I know them better; I doubt I will be confusing them in the future.

Charlotte's romance with Mr. Nicholls is unusual; it was definitely not the sweeping, passionate love affair found in Jane Eyre or Wurthering Heights. It was different from what I expect in a romance and interesting because of it.

I would have liked to know more about Charlotte's early life; actually, I would have liked to know more about the life of all three sisters, Emily in particular. Although her life seems to lack the romance which Charlotte experienced, Emily Bronte is perhaps the most fascinating of the sisters. I've read Wurthering Heights twice times, and each time I was more disturbed by it. What were the circumstances that produced a woman who, coming from the strict, sternly religious upbringing in the rigid Victorian age, could write such a sordid, passionate and disturbing story full of horror, violence, and illicit love?

I also would have liked more more description of the village and the moors. The moors played such a huge part in the Bronte novels, but I never really felt their presence in this book. Haworth as portrayed by Syrie James felt like a bland one-size-fits-all English village.

Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books, and I approached this novel hesitantly. I didn't want to read something silly or talentless that merely coasted off of the popularity of Jane Eyre (Aside: I feel that most of the modern novels based on Jane Austen and her writing fall under this description). I wasn't expecting a true biography, and I didn't get it. I thought that most if not all of the romantic scenes were silly and would have been embarrassing for Charlotte Bronte to have read. However, I did end up liking this book much more than I expected, much more than I did when I first began to read. I imagined that Charlotte Bronte lived a cloistered life akin to that of Emily Dickinson; however her experiences were much more far-reaching than I knew. I'm looking forward to reading Jane Eyre again, and I'm also planning to venture out to Charlotte Bronte's other works and will be looking up some actual biographies written about her. ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ (5/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: N/A

Sex: Very mild innuendos

Language: N/A

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Summary and review:

The Scarborough women have been cursed for generations--at the age of 18 they become pregnant and, after giving birth (always to a baby girl), they go mad. The curse will end only when a Scarborough woman can complete three impossible tasks before the birth of her daughter. Lucy is the next Scarborough in line for the curse, but with the help of her boyfriend, her foster parents, and clues passed down to her from her mother, she is determined to successfully complete the tasks and escape the fate of the Scarborough women who have come before her. The tasks are outlined in a version of the folk song "Scarborough Fair" that Lucy's ancestors have sung for generations--make a magical shirt without needles or seams, find an acre of land between salt water and the sea strand, and plow an acre with goat's horn before sowing it with a single grain of corn.

I loved the way that Nancy Werlin used the song "Scarborough Fair." It's such a brilliant idea. The song is perfect; despite its familiarity, its beautiful tune is haunting and the meaning of the lyrics cryptic. The idea that something so common can hold so much mystery and hidden meaning is exciting. It gives a magical, mystical possibility to everyday life.

I also really liked the relationships in the book. It's so easy in young adult fiction to manufacture plot lines by giving the teen antagonist backstabbing best friends, unfaithful significant others, and unsympathetic, distant, or totalitarian parents (who are usually divorced and fighting, adding additional angst to the storyline). Not every relationship in the book was healthy--Lucy's mom, for example, was a deranged bag lady. However, Lucy had a strong support system in the form of her boyfriend, her best friend, and the Markowitzes, the foster parents who reared Lucy since birth. Anyone of these people could have easily let Lucy down, considering that she was a pregnant teenager with some pretty crazy-sounding ideas about how she ended up that way, yet they didn't. It was refreshing to see Lucy's loved ones stand by her.

I wish that the villain had been a little more menacing. The truth about the punishment he imposes on the Scarborough women is absolutely evil and creepy and horrifying, but with regards to Lucy completing the tasks, he didn't seem to pose much of an obstacle. I think Werlin definitely could have upped the tension in that respect.

Overall, I thought that this was a captivating book, especially at the beginning. The momentum died down a bit towards the book's conclusion, but I loved the premise and the characters. This is the second book I've read by Nancy Werlin, and I will definitely be adding more of hers to my library's hold list. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: Minor

Sex: References to abortion, pregnancy, and teenage sex, and rape. Although Lucy refuses to consider abortion and mentions that she is alive only because her mother refused it, abortion is offered by several different people as a viable option to end an unwanted pregnancy. Furthermore, teenage sex is seen as something inevitable and normal. This may be offensive to some people, so please take that into consideration.

Language: Mild

Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth from the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hutter Epstein

Summary and review:

As the subtitle to Randi Hutter Epstein's book suggests, Get Me Out follows the science and superstition of childbirth from the earliest recorded births to the fertility industry of today. But Get Me Out does more than just deliver birth-related anecdotes; Epstein uses historical attitudes toward conception, pregnancy, and delivery to comment on contemporary society. From feminism to industrialization to urbanization, Epstein argues that the way humans view childbirth is a reflection of the morals, values, and beliefs that we espouse in general. It is a fascinating read and moves quickly, throwing out examples from various historical ages. In particular, Epstein traces the "medicalization" of childbirth. Pregnancy, which began as a spiritual journey on which a woman was accompanied by instincts and fellow women became, in the 20th Century, a medical condition that necessitated professional treatment as would a life-threatening disease.

Epstein's attitude toward non-medical births is interesting. As a medical doctor (she received her M.D. from Yale University), I expected her to be aggressively pro-hospitals, pro-obstetrics, and anti-midwives and homebirths. She is firmly against "freebirthers," women who give birth at home without any medical intervention, shunning both doctors and midwives (her tone in the "Freebirthers" chapter is actually rather sarcastic and mocking. It's clear she finds the movement not only ridiculous but irresponsible). Yet Epstein seems surprisingly open to midwives and non-hospital births. She seems to regret the loss of the sisterhood that supported a woman before, during and after labor. Many of the anecdotes Epstein includes reflect negatively on medical professionals: doctors who unfairly painted midwives as incompetent and dangerous; men who had never stepped foot into a birthing room yet published medical tracts contradicting midwives' knowledge; horrifically painful medical experiments performed on unanesthetized slave women; epidemics of puerperal fever, spread by unwashed medical equipment and doctors' hands; and DES, a synthetic estrogen prescribed for everything from morning sickness to miscarriage prevention, which had horrific consequences for the children of DES mothers, and yet was prescribed by doctors even after it was shown to cause reproductive cancers and malformations in animal trials.

Initially I was slightly turned off by Epstein's writing style. As I mentioned, she has a medical degree from Yale, but she also has a masters degree in journalism from Columbia. However, her writing in places seemed unprofessional, even flippant. For example, in the introduction Epstein writes about the superstitions regarding cauls, pieces of the anmiotic sac that sometimes stick to a baby's head. She writes of a Roman emperor whose son was born with a caul, a fortuitious sign. "As predicted," she writes, "the boy joined his father as a co-emperor by age 9, but father and son were murdered the following year. Whatever" (ix).

Seriously? She has Ivy-league degrees in medicine and journalism, but that sentence sounds like it was written by an eighth-grade girl. Through text messaging. A few other instances like this in the beginning of the book made me wary, as if Epstein were trying too hard to sound cool, or to make a boring subject (how could childbirth and pregnancy be boring to a postpartum woman?) sound cool. Fortunately, things improved. I actually ended up liking Epstein's writing style. It felt like I was listening to an interesting lecture given by a well-spoken professor.

Other interesting stories in the book included the Chamberlens, male "midwives" who invented a type of obstetric forceps, "Twilight Sleep," a cocktail of narcotics given to women to make them forget the pain of childbirth (it was becoming increasingly popular in the early 20th century, but fell out of favor after its champion died during childbirth after having taken the drug), the use of X-Rays during pregnancy and the possible dangers of ultrasounds, and the ins and outs of the sperm bank industry.

Again, I thought this book was fascinating. The way Epstein presents the history makes it relevant to more than just women with children. Anyone interested in sociology or medical history will enjoy Get Me Out. ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (8/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: Little, but the descriptions of surgeries may be disturbing to some people.

Sex: Nothing too racy, but it is kind of the crux of the book. There is also mention of pornography as used in the sperm banks.

Language: Mild

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Summary and review:

Wintergirls begins as Lia learns that Cassie, her former-best friend, is dead. Cassie died alone in a cheap motel room during a cold New Hampshire winter's night, after having left 33 messages on Lia's phone. Lia refused to pick up the phone when Cassie called; Lia also encouraged Cassie's bulimia by making a pact with Cassie to be "skinniest" when the girls were in eighth grade. And now Lia is haunted by Cassie's ghost.

Wintergirls seems like an attempt at poetic prose--different sizes of fonts, repetition, crossed-out phrases, even pages left entirely blank. I sometimes found the style irritating and distracting, but at other times I felt that it captured the confusion, compulsion, and disjointedness Lia suffered because of her disease. One of the most commonly used stylistic devices was crossed-out text, but I'm not actually sure what that meant. Sometimes it seemed like the struckthrough phrases were Lia's attempt at sarcasm, other times they seemed like the conscious censoring of her thoughts to conform with what she feels is acceptable to others, and then there were times when it seemed like the very opposite, as if Lia were rebelling against what she was supposed to feel in order to express her version of reality.

Lia, I would imagine, was a difficult character to write. Typically in order to receive positive reviews, a book needs a sympathetic main character. Lia...isn't really. It is extremely frustrating to watch Lia do things that are so destructive and appear so irrational, especially when she seems to know better at times. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast. Anorexia (officially, "Anorexia Nervosa") is, from what I understand, a compulsive disorder, meaning that those who suffer from it are driven to act in a way that is irrational and destructive. Like Lia, those who suffer from anorexia may know that they harming themselves but their disease leads them to continue on the same course regardless.

I don't feel that I gained any insights to the causes of anorexia--rich, upper-middle class white girls with difficult family lives who feel pressured by their parents and want control over their lives. Not much new there. There were places in which Lia's way of thinking was eye opening, however. The way that food conjured up opposing feelings of desire and disgust and the ever-receding target weight were interesting. I was actually worried at times that it was too explicit; some of Lia's methods for hiding her weight loss and disguising her refusal to eat seemed a bit too educational.

I was really conflicted by this book. While the topic is obviously important, I don't know enough about the disease to say whether or not Wintergirls really captured the essence of anorexia. It was definitely not pleasant to read; if terrifying and disturbing were what Anderson was going for, than it was spot on. ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ (6/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: The description of Cassie's death are disturbing, and Lia is a cutter as well as suffering from anorexia.

Sex: N/A

Language: Not extreme, but the F-word is used (just once, I believe) and other curse words are scattered throughout.

The Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin

Summary and review:

David Bernard Yaffe is embarking on a second attempt at finishing his senior year. His first senior year was stalled when he was accused of killing his girlfriend, Emily. Although he has recently been acquitted, the memory of Emily's death and the sensationalism of the trial are too fresh in the minds of David's Baltimore community, so he moves to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to live with his uncle's family and finish school. Cambridge, however, is not free from complications. David's Uncle Vic and Vic's wife Julia aren't speaking to each other; there is something seriously wrong with Lily, their 11-year-old daughter, who resents David's intrusion into her life and embarks on a campaign to drive him out; On top of it all, David is staying in the attic apartment which, until four years previously, was occupied by Kathy, Vic and Julia's eldest daughter. Kathy is dead, but she still haunts the Shaughnessy family.

David is the book's narrator; the story follows him as he tries to manage the guilt he feels over his role in Emily's death, but, as the book's title seems to imply and as David's prologue states, the story is about Lily. Lily is haunted by her sister's death, and deals with her emotions by attempting to manipulate and control those around her. David's arrival throws her world into disarray, but it may also give her the chance to finally come to grips with what happened that day.

I was surprised by how creeped out I was at times while reading The Killer's Cousin. It's a thoughtful, well-written book that explores grief, forgiveness, family, and guilt, but it's also extremely suspenseful, and exhibits characteristics of thrillers and supernatural-type books. Lily in particular is creepy. If I were David, knowing that Lily was lurking around my apartment would be much more disturbing than anything else that could be hanging around.

I felt that the big mystery which was revealed towards the conclusion of the book was kind of obvious, however, I don't really have a problem with that. In many ways, anticipating the horror David would feel upon discovering the truth actually increased the suspense I felt while reading.

Although The Killer's Cousin deals with some extremely weighty topics and is a very sad book overall, it ends on a hopeful, redemptive note. The ending was satisfying, giving the characters a fresh start, and left me feeling positive. ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (7/10)

Content:

Blood and Gore: No graphic descriptions are given, but the book explores the deaths of two young women.

Sex: Again, no descriptions are given, but sex is mentioned multiple times in relation to several characters.

Language: The language is mild throughout the entire book, and then all of a sudden the F-word, used in a sexual context, is thrown in.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn

Summary and review:

Jacob Rappaport is the son of a wealthy Jewish merchant in New York. In 1861, at the age of 19, he joins the Union army in order to escape the marriage his parents have planned for him--to the mentally disabled daughter of his father's colleague. He quickly settles into life as a soldier, pleased with his anonymity; however, one night he is called into the tent of a visiting general. Expecting a promotion, Jacob is puzzled when the general begins quizzing him on his background. Soon Jacob finds himself on an undercover mission. A Confederate spy in New Orleans is planning to assassinate President Lincoln, and Jacob's mission is to poison the man before he can harm the Union leader. The mission will be carried out on Passover, and the target is Jacob's own uncle. And the army has other plans for their Jewish secret service agent. Upon his return to Washington, Jacob is given another assignment. The daughter of Phillip Levy, one of Jacob's father's associates, is a suspected Confederate spy. The object of Jacob's mission is to marry the girl.

I was so incredibly disappointed with this book. So disappointed. I was thrilled when I first read the synopsis on the book jacket. Jewish espionage during the Civil War? How did I not know about this before? The premise had so much potential. But the book really did not go anywhere. First of all, there was so much needless repetition, of both small details and larger thematic elements. And these repetitions are not subtle, they are often word for word--twice we read about Jacob "mourning" the disappearance of an attractive girl's body part after she had covered up some skin that was provocatively visible, and "errant curls" must have escaped from their owners' carelessly coiffed hair at least a half-dozen times. And there were so many unlikely coincidences that occurred. Jacob meeting Abigail, who looked just like Jeannie and was in love with a soldier who looked just like Jacob, for example. And don't you think someone would have flagged Jacob's name after his first attempt at espionage in the South? It was just too improbable. I didn't buy it and it bothered me to read it.

I was also irritated by the constant corny sexual innuendos. This book always seemed like it was on the verge of becoming a corset buster. While it never crossed that line, there were so many cheesy lines that I actually found myself groaning out loud a few times. I'm sorry, but getting turned on over someone threading a needle? That's just a little too much imagination, in my opinion.

Probably the most disappointing aspect of this book, however, was Jacob. I can't think of the last time I read a book with such a weak, sapless main character. Other than running away to join the Union army, Jacob did not once act of his own volition. Every step he took was forced upon him by another person. And even signing up for the army was something Jacob did only as a last resort, after he was forced into it by the prospect of an arranged marriage. Jacob is constantly having misgivings about what he is doing, but he does it anyway, every single time. Pretty major spoiler coming up right here, but if Jacob was so in love with Jeannie, why didn't he do anything about it? Why did it take two years and the combined efforts of his father and hers to get him finally track him down? I honestly just wanted to shake him, "wake up man and do something!" To be fair, I think that what the author was going for was a discussion on choosing between competing impulses: love and honor, self and society, justice and emotion. However, the debate never fully played out, because the only choice Jacob consciously made was to not act. The rest of the time he was just swept along in the machinations of characters who actually had backbone.

At the conclusion of the novel, Dara Horn includes a fairly lengthy author's note, in which she discusses her motivation for writing All Other Nights as well as the historical sources for her novel's characters and plots. The information contained here is really interesting--she lists off a number of Civil War spies and also gives some background on Judah P. Benjamin, a major player in both Horn's novel and in the actual Civil War. Reading this, I came to a realization about the plot of All Other Nights, which at first seemed like nothing more than a messy, soupy mix of random detail and far-fetched characterization: there are simply too many incredible stories to tell. The historical details Dara Horn mentions in her author's note are fascinating, even though they're only the barest outlines of the stories. In trying to pull them all together, the spy who could dislocate her jaw at will, the slave in General Longstreet's camp who relayed messages through laundry, and the riding crop used to transport messages, Dara Horn tries to do too much. It feels like she was so enamored by the many stories she came across in her research, that she forced them into the novel, and they therefore sit awkwardly with the reader. With this reader, at least. ★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (3/10)

Content:

Blood and gore: although little of the action takes place on the battle field, it is a Civil War book and so, as is to be expected, you'll read about quite a few amputations, bloody head wounds, and so forth.

Sex: More cheesy than explicit, however the reader is still privy to way too many of Jacob's fantasies, in my opinion.

Language: "Minor" curse words and blasphemy.