Zooming In ~ This is Where it Ends 12/20/2019

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     Marieke Nijkamp’s debut YA novel, This is Where it Ends, follows 4 students through a traumatic 54 minutes of their lives in which a shooter locks them in the assembly hall. Autumn, the younger sister of the shooter, Tyler, her girlfriend Sylvia, Sylvia’s twin brother Tomás, and Tyler’s ex-girlfriend, Claire all narrate the story, each with short passages at similar times in different situations. Tyler, who has been acting strange and was gone from school for a while, has decided to reappear and finish out his old battles for good. While everyone at Opportunity High is in the auditorium for the beginning of school assembly, everything takes a turn for the worse.

     Most novels span many days sometimes even weeks, months, or years, so this book differs when the entire 300 page novel zooms in on 54 horrific minutes. Each chapter or passage of the book focuses on one or two minutes of the incident, describing in painful detail every movement, action and thought. I think that this serves a certain purpose in how the story is presented, as by zooming in so much, the significance of everything is weighted a lot more. This style can also make readers realize how quickly things can go wrong, how in just a second everything can flip. The book starts out with a perfectly normal day in a school assembly, with everyone expecting to go home in the afternoon, but it only takes a minute for Tyler to show up with a gun.

This book may be a bit frightening for some readers, as it is a heavy topic that can be upsetting, but in some ways, it should be frightening. The author is trying to make a point, by writing about this topic in such a troubling way, as shootings have been so common that they have almost becoming normalized, and we need to be reminded just how horrible they can be and that it can happen to anyone. Although this book is certainly an important read and can be very beneficial especially with discussion afterwards, that does not mean it is immediately a great book. I think that a lot of things are good about this novel, but it does have some short comings. To me, it feels a bit as though the author is rushing to make a point, without actually creating strong writing and characters. One thing that I found slightly annoying was the shear amount of secondary characters. There were many characters that were not main ones, but many seemed thrown in for no reason, and they distracted from the plot. I personally would have preferred fewer but more developed characters than a ton of shallow ones.

     This is Where it Ends is an important young adult novel that deals with school shootings specifically in high schools. While not the most beautifully written book, it is worth reading and can provoke important and meaningful discussions among people. I would recommend this to anyone who feels comfortable reading it. It is probable best for older children and adults as it may be to upsetting to young kids, but its audience is not just limited to teens. Even if the topic is a little challenging, I would still recommend it as it can be good to be challenged as long as you don’t hurt yourself.

A Book about Gogol, but not the Russian Writer

I have recently started reading “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri, and although I have not finished it yet, I have enjoyed it so far. In the first 60-odd pages the book talks about the birth of Gogol, the main character, and his sister Sonia. The book starts with the arranging of the marriage of Ashima and Ashoke, Gogol and Sonia’s parents. Their marriage starts in a difficult way because it is an arranged marriage and neither of them know each other. But Ahima goes with Ashoke to America anyway and they get to know each other. Ashima, at first, cannot bear the United States because she has lived her whole life in Calcutta. Eventually, they get to know each other and Ashima gets used to the United States and they decide to have a child. That’s where the story of Gogol begins.
One of the main parts of this story is immigration. This is also a controversial topic in the upcoming presidential election and is mentioned constantly in the debates. The book talks about the struggles Ashima goes through adjusting to America. The book highlights struggles with immigration by mentioning how it is difficult for the Ganguli’s (Gogol’s family) to find friends that are not Bengali. They do find many Bengali friends that act as honorary aunts and uncles when they have special events for their newborn children.

One thing that really stands out to both Ashima and Ashoke that is completely different from Calcutta is that in Calcutta they have both a good name and a family name. The good name is what everyone calls them and the family name is what family calls them. However, in the United States there is no such thing. Their family also has a tradition of having Ashima’s grandmother choose the name of a newborn child and so when Gogol is born they wait on a letter from Ashima’s grandmother, which gets lost in the mail. When they try leaving the hospital after Gogol is born, they have to come up with a name to put on the birth certificate, so they choose Gogol. At first, they wanted Gogol to be his family name but when he goes to kindergarten, he does not respond to anything else, so that is what everyone calls him.

Overall, this is a great book and a very well written one at that. I have enjoyed it so far and will probably read the rest of it. I would recommend this book but there are some sad moments and if you are someone that has lost a loved one this book may trigger some of that trauma. There is also a movie based on this book and I do plan to watch that movie sometime in the near future.

The House on Mango Street is a Really Good Book

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is a novel that tells the story of a girl’s year in a run down home with her family from her perspective. Esperanza, the protagonist, and her family move to a poor, rundown area in Chicago, where they meet new neighbors and build new relationships whilst dealing with the unfortunate aspects of their new surroundings. The format of the novel is slightly unorthodox. The chapters do not follow a regular paragraph form, and instead have a stanza like structure similar to that of poetry. I found this especially interesting because as the novel progressed, I was able to see Esperanza narrate with increasing articulation and see her develop although the book spans over the course of one year. Esperanza experiences all sorts of things, good and bad, and they all pertain to the society we live in today.

Esperanza is relatively young when the novel begins, I would estimate around twelve. The implications of the bad situations taking place in her surroundings are vague, and I noticed she gives much greater detail in areas where something childish was occurring rather than something serious, like her neighbor’s son getting arrested for stealing a car. However, Esperanza describes playing a game of jump rope with her friends in much greater detail. I believe this relates to the comprehensive theme of facing reality because it displays how a child Esperanza’s age is unable to process and describe the negative aspects of their surroundings, but are able to go into much more depth when the topic is something childish. Esperanza was forced to face the harsh reality of her environment at a young age, causing her to try and hold on to the innocent aspects of her youth.

There are ample examples of misogyny throughout the book. Esperanza is witness to her female neighbors or friends being locked inside their homes or getting married young only to encounter domestic abuse, and she refuses to end up like that. I think it was very important for misogyny to be incorporated into the book because it gives a good message to readers about how it may negatively affect one’s life.

We will be reading The House on Mango Street in class very soon, and I think it’s great that we are. It is a very well written, unique, and thought provoking book that is open to any interpretations from the narration of Esperanza. I would highly recommend it to those looking for a quick, yet meaningful read that enforces a connection from readers to characters.

-Zoya

Winter... or Snow White?

   
                                                              Winter... or Snow White?

     Once upon a time, there was a fair princess of a royal kingdom. Everyone in the city adored her, everyone besides her wicked stepmother. Her stepmother made every attempt to wipe her own daughter out of existence so that she can be the most beautiful person alive. By now, most people reading this would be thinking about the iconic fairy tale, Snow White. However, I just gave a rudimentary summary of Marissa Meyer's book, 'Winter'. This book is the finale of the Lunar Chronicles, a fantasy science fiction series where each book bases itself off of an iconic fairy tale such as, 'Cinderalla' (Cinder), 'Scarlet' (Red Riding Hood), 'Cress' (Rapunzel), and finally 'Winter' (Snow White). In 'Winter', the book is separated into sections with a few small sentences I'll refer to as 'fairy-tale relations'. These fairy-tail relations link the book 'Winter' to its fantastical counterpart Snow White. I'll discuss in this essay most of the fairy-tall relations mentioned in this book as well as how these sentences are implemented in a more science-fiction way.
      On page 182, the first major fairy-tail relation was written, 'The huntsman took pity on her and said, "Run away into the woods, child, and never come back." For this particular fairy-tail relation, the author puts a special twist on the story by making the 'hunter' a love interest to the main character, Winter. However, there are also many other differences between the book and this particular 'fairy-tail relations' from the original book. Firstly, the 'Hunter' already had disloyal ideas in his head. In fact, when the evil-step mother (named Queen Levana) told the 'Hunter' to assassinate Winter, he was already forming an intricate plan in his head. This is much different than the original fairy tale as the 'Hunter' was supposed to have never met Winter/Snow White before. Therefore, the readers would not have known that the 'Hunter' would let the princess escape. Secondly, the escape sequence was much more tense in the sci-fi adaption than the original fairy tale. This is because the surveillance technology that existed in 'Winter' was much more advanced than the fairy tale and the 'Hunter' had to kill someone else to fake Winter's murder.
     Another interesting 'fairy-tale relation' was presented on page 517. This fairy-tale relation portrays the event of the evil-stepmother poisoning Winter, by saying " 'Are you afraid of poison?' asked the old woman. 'Here, I will cut the apple in two. You eat the red half, and I shall ear the white.'" What's interesting is that this fairy-tale relation added a unique element that was not in the original fairy-tale. In 'Winter', the princess was lured into the woods by an illusion of a 'handsome young man' (who happened to be Winter's childhood friend). Although, by the time she caught up, the man was replaced by an old and 'innocent' women. Besides that particular part of the story, there was no major difference in how Winter was poisoned and how Snow White was poisoned. This part of the story was more similar to the original fairy tale than any other 'fairy-tale relation'.
     Overall, the 'fairy-tale relations' provided a unique element to the story which intrigued me a great amount. Even though some readers might think that 'fairy-tale relations' would spoil the book, it instead gave the readers a false sense of understanding as the book would sometimes completely takes the readers off guard when there is a difference between 'Winter' and 'Snow White'. The 'fairy-tale relations' also surprises the readers when they first realize the difference between the two stories, such as when the 'Hunter' was revealed to be a love interest and the 'evil-stepmother' disguised herself using her powers and not magic like in 'Snow-White'. In conclusion, 'Snow-White' and 'Winter' share many similarities and differences, but this does not make 'Winter' any less of a unique and unpredictable story that would excite all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy readers alike.