Nothing About Everything

Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay

New York : Kokila, [2019]

323 p. : maps ; 22 cm. 

I know I ordered this book for the strong reviews it received, but what finally made me grab it off the shelf to look at one more time is the captivating cover.  So, yes, covers matter! But there is so much more to this book.  I think it is one of the best YA books I have read in a long time.

So what makes me hold this book such high regard? I think what I love is that it manages to do so many things at once and never condescends.  What is Patron Saints of Nothing about?  So many things: letting a friendship drop, family secrets, political violence, drug trafficking, the immigrant connecting with the home country, American naivete, the complexities of the truth, and growing up. Let me offer an example.

In the middle of the novel, the main character, high school senior Jay confronts his reactionary, violent uncle about the situation in the Philippines. The confrontation between them rings so true.  The uncle who knows so much more about the Philippines than Jay, cuts him down to size as nothing but a spoiled, arrogant American coming back to the country he left as a baby.  Jay knows the moral truth he is committed to, but is no match against the harsh and cynical adult and loses that argument.  I've never read such a well conveyed interchange that captures this dynamic. 

There is so much more.  The novel is a coming of age novel, it's a murder mystery, it's a family conflict drama, it's a bit of a romance - and yet it manages to weave all these strands together without feeling forced.  

I will recommend this book to our students and hope I can find someone who likes it as much as I did.

  

Monstrous Beauty

Mary's Monster by Lita Judge

New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2018.

312 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.

I finally got around to reading Frankenstein back in 2011, and - after reading this fine book - I want to read it again! The reason is indicated in this book's full title Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. 

Judge's book is an superb retelling of the courage, grit and brilliance of the young Mary Shelly with a focus on the years that lead to her creation of the classic novel, Frankenstein, published in 1818.  The author tells the well-researched story in easy free verse that moves the story along at a breathless clip.  We see Mary Shelly live the shock of her widowed father's remarriage to a very unlikable stepmother, her surprisingly lovely exile from family to an extended family in Scotland, and then her return and scandalous elopement with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley - a passionate but troubled Romantic Poet.

It is during a Swiss exile with Percy and Byron that she begins writing her masterpiece. The success of this biography is that it is able to create a very clear narrative out of the tumultuous time that Mary Shelly wrote the novel. During the period covered she leaves home, returns, leaves, has two daughters who die and one son who survives, marries, is widowed, and sees her controversial novel become famous.

Additionally, the book is illustrated with evocative (haunting) illustrations of which the cover featured here is one.

I would definitely recommend this book to students.  It humanizes famous authors and makes their painful and passionate lives very real and very compelling.