See You at Harry's by Jo Knowles

See You at Harry's is one of those books I picked up pretty randomly. I hadn't read anything by Jo Knowles yet, and I'd heard good things about her writing, so that was part of it. I was also drawn to her latest novel, and first middle grade book, because it featured the kind of big, crazy family I grew up in. Whatever the reason, I'm so glad I did.

The narrator of See You at Harry's is twelve-year-old Fern, and although she'd deny it, she's also its heart. Fern feels like an outsider in her own family, made up of an older sister, Sarah, who is working at the family restaurant, Harry's, as she figures out what she wants to do after high school, and an older brother, Holden, who is dealing with bullies at school and opening up about being gay. Finally, there's the baby, three-year-old Charlie was a surprise but he's earned his place as the adorable and hilarious centre of attention. But when the unthinkable happens, this family is pushed to the edge and it will take all of Fern's strength to keep herself from falling off.

Knowles broke my heart in See You at Harry's. From the beginning I connected with Fern, which was especially impressive because this is technically a middle grade novel, a genre I sometimes have a harder time with. But with Fern, it was easy. She was instantly sympathetic, funny and intelligent. She just wanted the attention of her family, especially her mother who often ran off to meditate or was busy with Charlie and the restaurant. I wanted to reach through the pages and tell Fern everything was going to be okay– the only problem was, it wasn't. And that's how Knowles broke my heart.

But in spite of all the darkness, and there is a lot, See You at Harry's is remarkable because there still manages to be light. A school dance. A hug. These moments are the ones that change everything. I have read a lot of books that deal with tragedies lately, but this one stands out for the quiet and powerful way that Knowles writes about it, especially because of Fern's perspective. Fern feels invisible, and I think that's something that readers– that people– can universally relate to. Emotional and heart-warming, tragic and heart-breaking, powerful and beautifully written, as difficult as See You at Harry's was to read at times, I'm so glad I decided to pick up Knowles' novel and will definitely be picking up more books by her in the future.

Release Date: May 8th 2012  Pages: 310  Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher  Publisher: Candlewick  Buy It: Book Depository

Before You Go by James Preller

Six years ago, when Jude was only nine years old, his little sister drowned when he was supposed to be watching her and since then, nothing has been the same. His mom has her prescription medications and his dad has his health and fitness obsession, but all that Jude has is his running, his guitar, and his best friend Corey. Then Jude gets a job working at a beach confession stand, where he meets Becka. But just as Jude is finally starting to live, his life spins out of control all over again. Before You Go by James Preller is about Jude's struggle, both before and after, and how he can either pick up the pieces, or let the darkness swallow him up. 

I really hate factual inaccuracies in books, no matter how small, as I pointed out in my review of While He Was Away by Karen Schreck. In Before You Go, Jude is described as having his wisdom teeth out as a child. I've never met anyone in my life who had them done as a kid, only teenagers or later. Add in, the doctor uses nitrous oxide, which is rarely used anymore, and it wasn't quite the believable dental experience. Sure, it was only one page out of 200, but it's the sorta thing that really annoys me in books. Because if the tiny details aren't right, then who knows what else I'm missing.

There were quite a few things I did like about Before You Go. I thought that the male perspective was authentic and interesting, it was really neat reading how Jude starts to develop feelings for Becka, and I found their relationship really believable. What the novel is really about though, is grief and when it came to that I didn't find myself connecting with it emotionally the same way I did in See You At Harry's by Jo Knowles, which I had just read.

I did appreciate how Preller shows different reactions to the same situation, how the death of Jude's sister has changed his family and how even years down the road they are not the same, but Jude himself felt a bit flat at times. I think part of the difficulty is the writing. It works well for dramatic scenes like the car accident that begins the book, but there are other points where Preller's style becomes too distant and literary, when what I craved was something more raw.

Before You Go is a really sad book, and there's a bit of a twist to it that made it even sadder than I expected– but somehow none of that really manage to tear my heart out. The part of the story I found the most tragedy in had nothing to do with death at all, and that was the relationship between Jude and Becka. While so much of the grief is dramatic and big actions, the love story is subtle and moving. In the end, I'm definitely conflicted about Before You Go; it's a short little read full of tragedy that didn't break my heart in the way I expected, mainly due to the distant writing, but I managed to find some light in the romance all the same.

Release Date: July 17th 2012  Pages: 199  Format: E-galley
Source: NetGalley/Publisher  Publisher: Feiwel & Friends  Buy It: Book Depository

The Guardians: An Elegy by Sarah Manguso

The Guardians: An Elegy by Sarah Manguso
 
Release Date: February 28th 2012
Pages: 128
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Also by this Author: The Two Kinds of Decay
Buy It: Book Depository

The Guardians is an elegy for Manguso’s friend Harris, two years after he escaped from a psychiatric hospital and jumped under that train. The narrative contemplates with unrelenting clarity their crowded postcollege apartment, Manguso’s fellowship year in Rome, Harris’s death and the year that followed—the year of mourning and the year of Manguso’s marriage.

So the first thing I want to talk about is what I was afraid of when I first picked up The Guardians; and that was that it might get bogged down in science instead of lifted up by poetry, something Manguso's first memoir The Two Kinds of Decay suffered from a bit too much. And unfortunately it does, sometimes veering into too much fact, like describing side effects of certain anti-psychotics, going into a detailed history of akathisia, even quoting two paragraphs directly from a Czech doctor, Ladislav Haskovec. At the end of the description she links it back to her friend Harris, as the common outcome includes suicide, specifically by jumping, but by that point I was wondering why I was reading all of this info dump of facts.

The other major time info-dump happened was much later in the book, where there are several pages quoting three published cases on the same side effect. The Guardians is so short, barely past 100 pages, so that in a way I felt cheated having to read three full pages that weren't Manguso's; more science, more quotes. She even quotes herself at one point, a page from a novel she didn't finish.

But– the reason I felt the need to detail the fault of this memoir so precisely is that the rest of The Guardians, the part in Manguso's own words, it's absolutely breath-taking and original. There are countless times when I had to pause reading to write down a quote, something beautiful and heart-breaking that twisted inside me. At one point, Manguso writes:

"Then, when he dies, you’ll wonder how his death could have burned you entirely away– yet there you are, walking out of the fire in a form you no longer recognize."

Her powerful description of grief reminded me sometimes of The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke, another memoir and one I absolutely adored. Both O'Rourke and Manguso have this powerful, sharp and broken way of describing grief, of reminding the reader of the pain. The other author that comes to mind, because of the topic but also the fragmented way of writing, different memories combining into one tragic story– is Joan Didion, who dealt with grief in two memoirs, The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. It especially reminds me of Blue Nights because it is both the story of the person who died, in this case her friend Harris, and a story of a personal journey– as Manguso marries her husband.

Ultimately, Manguso's poetic prose is what make The Guardians such a wonderful yet heart-breaking book– she has a genuine and beautiful way of capturing moments and feelings, which is why I am disappointed every time she veers off into the scientific instead.