I started and finished A Sense of Direction in one evening; I couldn't really stop thinking about it, so I couldn't put it down. I found it...
Continue »
Stories about stories are always fun, and this one is spectacular. Its backbone is the Bluebeard tale, turned on its head - St. John Fox is an author with an irritating tendency to kill of all his female characters, Mary Foxe is his walking, talking, very annoyed, and only sort of imaginary muse, and Daphne Fox is his long-suffering wife, growing suspicious. St. John and Mary challenge one another via a series of short stories, often bizarre and always beautiful. It's a book about books, about love, about authorship, about the thin line between fiction and reality. It's certainly the most adventurous of Oyeyemi's books so far (which, after 2009's bizarre and wonderful White is for Witching, is impressive), and only continues her upward trajectory.
This is probably the best historical novel I've ever read. It's the story of Thomas Cromwell, (who is usually painted as a villain in contrast to the saintly - and eventually sainted - Thomas More), an adviser to Henry VIII during and after his split from the Catholic church, and a remarkably shrewd man. The prose is dense, and there are some stylistic choices that can slow you up, but it's so good that you shouldn't mind. I can see how this might be daunting for someone without a fair bit of Tudor-related knowledge, but the lengthy cast of characters and Tudor family tree in the front of the book can be very useful - Hilary Mantel thinks you are smart enough to tackle a book that might make you work a little bit; don't prove her wrong.
On the surface, it's just a silly epistolary novel for kids, with some truly ridiculous cover art - but it's a lot more than that, too. There are your standard-issue romances, and they're handled really well, but the real magic is in the friendship between three private-school girls (Lydia, Cassie, and Emily), who are smart and funny and there for each other all the time. The story is told through their letters - to each other, and to three boys at a neighboring public school, as an English class project. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Jaclyn Moriarty juggles so many characters and voices and manages to keep each one perfectly distinct. When a new letter begins, you know who's writing it without even looking at the heading, and you're always excited to see this person again.
This books feels like it was written a couple of decades ago, in a good way. It fits nicely into that YA subgenre of New York latchkey kids navigating interpersonal and family issues, and the time travel aspect is worked in seamlessly - it does nothing to pull you out of the fairly quiet and ordinary goings-on. It's very much written for middle readers (the central mystery, for instance, is not all that mysterious, and the brief discussions of time travel theory are at a pretty basic level), but it never talks down, and the emotions are so clear and natural that I never cared that I basically knew what was going on even when Miranda didn't.
The comparison to A Wrinkle in Time is obvious, of course, but it also bears similarities in tone and warmth to L'Engle's Austin family series (particularly The Young Unicorns, another New York-based mystery) - Miranda's family may not be quite as nuclear as the Austins, but the same down-to-earth, homey vibe is there.
Powell's City of Books is an independent bookstore in Portland, Oregon, that fills a whole city block with more than a million new, used, and out of print books. Shop those shelves — plus literally millions more books, DVDs, and eBooks — here at Powells.com.
Don't Miss
Customer Comments
Erin M has commented on (4) products.
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi
Erin M, January 2, 2012
Stories about stories are always fun, and this one is spectacular. Its backbone is the Bluebeard tale, turned on its head - St. John Fox is an author with an irritating tendency to kill of all his female characters, Mary Foxe is his walking, talking, very annoyed, and only sort of imaginary muse, and Daphne Fox is his long-suffering wife, growing suspicious. St. John and Mary challenge one another via a series of short stories, often bizarre and always beautiful. It's a book about books, about love, about authorship, about the thin line between fiction and reality. It's certainly the most adventurous of Oyeyemi's books so far (which, after 2009's bizarre and wonderful White is for Witching, is impressive), and only continues her upward trajectory.Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Erin M, September 29, 2011
This is probably the best historical novel I've ever read. It's the story of Thomas Cromwell, (who is usually painted as a villain in contrast to the saintly - and eventually sainted - Thomas More), an adviser to Henry VIII during and after his split from the Catholic church, and a remarkably shrewd man. The prose is dense, and there are some stylistic choices that can slow you up, but it's so good that you shouldn't mind. I can see how this might be daunting for someone without a fair bit of Tudor-related knowledge, but the lengthy cast of characters and Tudor family tree in the front of the book can be very useful - Hilary Mantel thinks you are smart enough to tackle a book that might make you work a little bit; don't prove her wrong.The Year of Secret Assignments by Jaclyn Moriarty
Erin M, September 29, 2011
On the surface, it's just a silly epistolary novel for kids, with some truly ridiculous cover art - but it's a lot more than that, too. There are your standard-issue romances, and they're handled really well, but the real magic is in the friendship between three private-school girls (Lydia, Cassie, and Emily), who are smart and funny and there for each other all the time. The story is told through their letters - to each other, and to three boys at a neighboring public school, as an English class project. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that Jaclyn Moriarty juggles so many characters and voices and manages to keep each one perfectly distinct. When a new letter begins, you know who's writing it without even looking at the heading, and you're always excited to see this person again.When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
Erin M, July 28, 2011
This books feels like it was written a couple of decades ago, in a good way. It fits nicely into that YA subgenre of New York latchkey kids navigating interpersonal and family issues, and the time travel aspect is worked in seamlessly - it does nothing to pull you out of the fairly quiet and ordinary goings-on. It's very much written for middle readers (the central mystery, for instance, is not all that mysterious, and the brief discussions of time travel theory are at a pretty basic level), but it never talks down, and the emotions are so clear and natural that I never cared that I basically knew what was going on even when Miranda didn't.The comparison to A Wrinkle in Time is obvious, of course, but it also bears similarities in tone and warmth to L'Engle's Austin family series (particularly The Young Unicorns, another New York-based mystery) - Miranda's family may not be quite as nuclear as the Austins, but the same down-to-earth, homey vibe is there.