Book Review: Strange Happenings by Avi
Mar. 25th, 2009 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Strange Happenings
Author: Avi
Published: Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2006
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 147
Total Page Count: 70,184
Text Number: 203
Read For: personal enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: Strange Happenings is comprised of five independent tales of transformation—a boy turned into a cat, an ever-changing devil, a man turned halfway into a bird. The tales vary in tone from folkloric to mundane, but most maintain a sense of wry humor and all are written in a paired-down text. This book is better in concept than in execution: some of the stories are promising, but the dry writing style strips away anything interesting about them. This is an immemorable text, and not worth reading. I don't recommend it.
Somewhere between the Brothers Grimm, Aesop, and modern-day America lie these various tales of Strange Happenings. "Babette the Beautiful" and "Simon" are not unlike fairy tales, "The Shoemaker and Old Scratch" has an ending not unlike Aesop, and "Bored Tom" and "Curious" both take place in the American Midwest. It's an odd combination and not entirely successful, perhaps because Avi harvests the least appealing aspects of each influence: similar to translated Grimm, his writing style is repetitive and bone-dry; the Aesop-like moral is punny; the American settings are so mundane that they seem out of place against the other fantastic tales.
Which isn't to say that Strange Happenings is entirely bad; rather, it's simply unsuccessful. The premises of some of the stories, like the shape-shifting cats and the man halfway transformed into the birds he hunts, are outright intriguing, and Avi sometimes manages to work in just enough fantasy and black humor to affect a Gaiman-like sense of dark magic. But despite these reaches towards greatness, Strange Happenings is largely uninspired. Stories are predictable, or unexciting, or simply mundane; the entire work is bogged down by writing so plain and dry that it strips away any sense of magic. Sad to say, but the lovely cover may be the best part of this book. The rest is an exercise in failed potential. It's a short read, and largely harmless, but it's entirely forgettable. Don't waste your time or money. I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Avi
Published: Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 2006
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 147
Total Page Count: 70,184
Text Number: 203
Read For: personal enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: Strange Happenings is comprised of five independent tales of transformation—a boy turned into a cat, an ever-changing devil, a man turned halfway into a bird. The tales vary in tone from folkloric to mundane, but most maintain a sense of wry humor and all are written in a paired-down text. This book is better in concept than in execution: some of the stories are promising, but the dry writing style strips away anything interesting about them. This is an immemorable text, and not worth reading. I don't recommend it.
Somewhere between the Brothers Grimm, Aesop, and modern-day America lie these various tales of Strange Happenings. "Babette the Beautiful" and "Simon" are not unlike fairy tales, "The Shoemaker and Old Scratch" has an ending not unlike Aesop, and "Bored Tom" and "Curious" both take place in the American Midwest. It's an odd combination and not entirely successful, perhaps because Avi harvests the least appealing aspects of each influence: similar to translated Grimm, his writing style is repetitive and bone-dry; the Aesop-like moral is punny; the American settings are so mundane that they seem out of place against the other fantastic tales.
Which isn't to say that Strange Happenings is entirely bad; rather, it's simply unsuccessful. The premises of some of the stories, like the shape-shifting cats and the man halfway transformed into the birds he hunts, are outright intriguing, and Avi sometimes manages to work in just enough fantasy and black humor to affect a Gaiman-like sense of dark magic. But despite these reaches towards greatness, Strange Happenings is largely uninspired. Stories are predictable, or unexciting, or simply mundane; the entire work is bogged down by writing so plain and dry that it strips away any sense of magic. Sad to say, but the lovely cover may be the best part of this book. The rest is an exercise in failed potential. It's a short read, and largely harmless, but it's entirely forgettable. Don't waste your time or money. I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
