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Book Reviews: Riding Freedom, Ryan; Twins, Cooney; The Shiny Narrow Grin, Gaskell
Title: Riding Freedom
Author: Pam Muñoz Ryan
Narrator: Melissa Hughes
Published: Blackstone Publishing, 2011 (1999)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 512,115
Text Number: 1849
Read Because: more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A retelling of the life of Charley Parkhurst (born Charlotte), who fled an orphanage to live as a male stable hand and stagecoach driver. Published in 1999, this is one of those (minor but apparently beloved?) MG novels that wasn't part of my own MG experience; I imagine it would be significantly different if written now, as Ryan treats Charley as the public persona and Charlotte as the private self, retaining she/her pronouns, shrinking the scale to age down the historic 1868 vote, and ending before Charlie's death and the discovery of his birth sex. The result is still compassionate and grounded, and like most stories of crossdressing to attain restricted social freedom it feels private, secretive, intensely personal, empowering, and full of potential; also: horses - I could see eating this up as a kid. But twenty-some years later, it's somewhat conservative in its approach to the nuance of pre-modern gender nonconformity.
Title: Twins
Author: Caroline B. Cooney
Published: Open Road Media, 2012 (1994)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 512,290
Text Number: 1850
Read Because: reading the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Inseparable twins are separated when their parents send one of them to boarding school. Every story about creepy twins immediately begs trope-guessing (one isn't real/is dead? codependency, incest, evil twin, mistaken identity, telepathy?) and I'm delighted to say that this has multiple of those, leaning hard into creepy codependenies (plural!), which means it might as well be dedicated to me, personally. Is it good? Not as remarkable in language or atmosphere as Freeze Tag, but I still appreciate Cooney's voice, a stylistic brevity that balances nicely the melodrama. Like many stories about evil, this falls apart a little when it goes to depict evil - there's a pivotal scene that needs to be scary and can't quite sell itself, and so it loses instead of gains momentum, and the ending doesn't recapture it. But in premise, I'm an easy sell and this didn't disappoint; I can see myself rereading this.
Title: The Shiny Narrow Grin
Author: Jane Gaskell
Published: 1964
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 512,420
Text Number: 1851
Read Because: see review
Review: Terry's father reenters her life, and on his heels a strange, pale, cold boy, both exerting a tumultuous effect on the already-wild life of a teen Mod. On one hand, this needs more vampire; on the other, Gaskell is intentionally foiling the two halves of the protagonist's life, the social dramas of her parent's failed marriage and the Mod subculture, and the longing for something else, something worse, something dangerous and captivating. Gaskell's language is remarkable:
Imagery I've never seen, distinctive and strange and doing more than plot or characterization to sell the Boy's mystique. I found this chasing back from Klause's introduction to The Silver Kiss, and this book's influence on that one and therefore on the lineage of YA paranormal romances/urban fantasy is unmistakable. Hell, this precedes Interview with the Vampire and the popularization of the sympathetic vampire by over a decade. As a reading experience, I still agree with the protagonist: needs more vampire and less of the mundane. But it's well worth tracking down - as with all Gaskell, it's incredibly out of print.
Author: Pam Muñoz Ryan
Narrator: Melissa Hughes
Published: Blackstone Publishing, 2011 (1999)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 150
Total Page Count: 512,115
Text Number: 1849
Read Because: more children's lit on audio, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A retelling of the life of Charley Parkhurst (born Charlotte), who fled an orphanage to live as a male stable hand and stagecoach driver. Published in 1999, this is one of those (minor but apparently beloved?) MG novels that wasn't part of my own MG experience; I imagine it would be significantly different if written now, as Ryan treats Charley as the public persona and Charlotte as the private self, retaining she/her pronouns, shrinking the scale to age down the historic 1868 vote, and ending before Charlie's death and the discovery of his birth sex. The result is still compassionate and grounded, and like most stories of crossdressing to attain restricted social freedom it feels private, secretive, intensely personal, empowering, and full of potential; also: horses - I could see eating this up as a kid. But twenty-some years later, it's somewhat conservative in its approach to the nuance of pre-modern gender nonconformity.
Title: Twins
Author: Caroline B. Cooney
Published: Open Road Media, 2012 (1994)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 175
Total Page Count: 512,290
Text Number: 1850
Read Because: reading the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Inseparable twins are separated when their parents send one of them to boarding school. Every story about creepy twins immediately begs trope-guessing (one isn't real/is dead? codependency, incest, evil twin, mistaken identity, telepathy?) and I'm delighted to say that this has multiple of those, leaning hard into creepy codependenies (plural!), which means it might as well be dedicated to me, personally. Is it good? Not as remarkable in language or atmosphere as Freeze Tag, but I still appreciate Cooney's voice, a stylistic brevity that balances nicely the melodrama. Like many stories about evil, this falls apart a little when it goes to depict evil - there's a pivotal scene that needs to be scary and can't quite sell itself, and so it loses instead of gains momentum, and the ending doesn't recapture it. But in premise, I'm an easy sell and this didn't disappoint; I can see myself rereading this.
Title: The Shiny Narrow Grin
Author: Jane Gaskell
Published: 1964
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 130
Total Page Count: 512,420
Text Number: 1851
Read Because: see review
Review: Terry's father reenters her life, and on his heels a strange, pale, cold boy, both exerting a tumultuous effect on the already-wild life of a teen Mod. On one hand, this needs more vampire; on the other, Gaskell is intentionally foiling the two halves of the protagonist's life, the social dramas of her parent's failed marriage and the Mod subculture, and the longing for something else, something worse, something dangerous and captivating. Gaskell's language is remarkable:
The Boy's shadow netted Terry's catching-up feet. It was bitty, a tattered shadow, a light-trick sliding across the pavingstones, as though his clothes were throwing shadow but he wasn't.
Imagery I've never seen, distinctive and strange and doing more than plot or characterization to sell the Boy's mystique. I found this chasing back from Klause's introduction to The Silver Kiss, and this book's influence on that one and therefore on the lineage of YA paranormal romances/urban fantasy is unmistakable. Hell, this precedes Interview with the Vampire and the popularization of the sympathetic vampire by over a decade. As a reading experience, I still agree with the protagonist: needs more vampire and less of the mundane. But it's well worth tracking down - as with all Gaskell, it's incredibly out of print.