Unwind

Unwind by Neal Shusterman is a good book. It was a tad more disturbing than I was expecting from the guy who wrote The Schwa Was Here, but still a great read with strong characterization. Though it is something of a science-fiction book, none of it feels contrived and the situations and perils feel genuine. You actually get attached to the characters, even the perceived villains, and there are a few unexpected deaths that heighten the drama while at the same time not undermining the human value of those who die. All in all, it's a good book and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good deal of heart with a healthy dose of suspense.

And Another Thing...: Hitchhiker's Guide, Book 6/3

It's been sixteen years since Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian Astra and Random Dent were vaporized, turned into carbon particles and sent drifting through space for the upteenth and final time.

Or so it was thought.

The above fact has a little something to do with the fact that the creator of the aforementioned characters, Douglas Noel Adams, died a death that was slightly less dramatic about nine years ago, without getting the chance to bring them back from oblivion as he had wanted to.

Now, it seems another man, Eoin Colfer, has done the deed for him.

There are a few things that are a tad off in his installment, such as the usage of "frood" as a verb and the capitalization of the word zark, but these things have no baring on the novel's literary merit or how well it fits in with the rest of the Hitchhiker's trilogy--the flamboyantly random and satirical first volume; the even more random and satirical Restaurant at the End of the Universe; the epic Life, The Universe and Everything; the uplifting and humorous So Long, And Thanks For All the Fish; and the darkly humorous and occasionally depressing Mostly Harmless.

First off, it seemed that this volume existed solely to bring our heroes back from the dead, which is probably entirely related to the fact that this volume existed solely to bring our heroes back from the dead. And it does--not by acknowledging, as previous books have done, the existence of the afterlife and reincarnation in this universe, but rather with a deus ex machina that would've made the softest sci-fi writer blush. Apparently, the very machine sent to destroy them obeyed Random's wish for a better life before the Earth goes foom, and after keeping them in an alternate, wish-fulfilment reality for half a century it brings them back to the to the moment of Earth's destruction due to its battery dying. Just as they're about to die again, Zaphod shows up to save them. Unfortunately, he can't do jack squat, and just as it looks like all is lost Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged shows up, and all is saved.

What follows is a romp through space-time to save some backwater human space colony from Vogon distruction, some romance, a bit of angst, the return of Thunder-God Thor, and a little character development. Arthur, Ford and Trillian are written up to standard, although as far as Zaphod and Random go it seems Colfer needed a little time to find his footing. The Guide is still very much a major player, with more entries than we've seen for the past three installments. In fact, Colfer's better at weaving them in than Adams ever was. As time went by, the books became more literary than literate, and in that respect Colfer has definitely succeeded.

So, how does the book overall fall in the pantheon of Hitchhiker's? It's not as bitingly satirical as Resteraunt, although it definitely makes a few points on religion and society Adams would've liked. This volume is a tad more epic than Everything, and the mood is less defined than in Fish or Harmless. Overall, it's not nearly as good as any of them. And yet is still throughs in a few good one-liners, it flows a lot better than the earlier books, and the ending is so ambigious it practically begs for a seventh installment. I guess what says the most about And Another Thing is that a seventh book might not be so bad.

Go Ask Alice

...when she’s ten feet tall...and if you...go chasing rabbits...

Sorry about that. I'm taking a decidedly less formal tone for this post, because I feel it's the best way to address this book. When I'm done, I'm sure you'll agree that the Jefferson Airplane song is much better than the book that takes its name.

This book is about a girl who starts hanging out with stoners because she has straight hair (and therefore looks like a hippie), accidentally starts taking drugs, goes on and off them multiple times, quits for good, almost gets roped in by stoners who try to keep her in their group as though it was a cult, accurately describes in her diary the experience of thinking worms are eating her alive while her fingers gradually become barely usable, and dies about six months after swearing off drugs for the final time and the only one that actually sticks. The protagonist, "Alice", is at first enjoys being on drugs, goes on and off them, falls in and out of love, runs away from home, becomes a sexual deviant, starts wallowing in self-pity, and decides that her parents don't deserve her before finding acceptance and the road to recovery.

This alone is implausible enough, but then I told my sister this story. She was amazed, because she had recently read a book called Almost Lost: The True Story of an Anonymous Teenager's Life on the Streets, about a kid named Sam, who at first enjoys being on drugs, goes on and off them, falls in and out of love, runs away from home, becomes a sexual deviant, starts wallowing in self-pity, and decides that her parents don't deserve him before finding acceptance and the road to recovery.

Wow.

Further investigation revealed that both of these books were "edited" by a woman named Beatrice Sparks, who apparently is a child physiologist who published these and other "diaries" and "studies" based on her work with young children, and asserted that they were true. Although Alice is now listed in libraries as a work of fiction (Sparks admitted to mixing and matching patient stories to put it together), her other works are still considered non-fiction and Alice is still sold in bookstores as such. This is especially jarring as all but two of the alleged journals allegedly edited by here have Sparks listed as the sole author in the US Copyright Offices.

However, no discover shocked me as much as the following segment from a Wikipedia entry (which is backed up by this article):

In 1973, Marcella Barrett, a Pleasant Grove, Utah woman whose son Alden had committed suicide at the age of 16, read a newspaper interview with Sparks and became convinced that she was the right person to bring Alden's diary to the public. The result was Jay's Journal, which tells the story of a teenage boy drawn into Satanism. Barrett's family were horrified by the book. They insisted that Alden had never been involved with the occult and that Sparks had used only 21 entries from his journal (out of 212 supposed entries that appeared in the finished book).

Wow. Just wow. There's also A Place in the Sun: The Truth Behind Jay's Journal, which tells the true story. Not to mention that the details of Barrett's cult do not match up with the actual practices of any existing Satanic cult.

I could go on and on about the atrocities this woman has committed, such as claiming to be a child physiatrist who spoke to many of her subjects and providing no evidence she even has a doctorate. But I feel that, seeing as I read this book for entertainment and not preachy morals, I should say something about its literary merit and how much I enjoyed it. It has none, and I didn't.

The story came off as preachy, poorly written, unrealistic and vaguely predictable (she quits drugs halfway through, so obviously she falls off the wagon or else the rest of the book has no substance). Alice as a character is vaguely bi-polar and impossible to relate to, and her morals and blind condemnation of the 1970s peace movement and homosexuality piss me off (she breaks up with her boyfriend not because he cheated on her, but because she cheated on him with a guy, and calls anti-Vietnam protesters "misled" and "militant", probably because Sparks admittedly felt similarly about these topics.) Moreover, the idea that Alice would both remember enough about her drug-induced hallucinations to write them down, and even be able to write about a bad trip as it's inadvertently causing her fingers to become bloodied and useless, is implausible in and of itself.

In short, not only does this book fail in pretending to be fact, it epically fails at being realistic fiction. I would not recommend it to anyone, not even the author.

Epilogue

Three weeks after resolving never to recommend this book to anyone, the author of this blog post died. Police suspect Beatrice Sparks pushed him off a cliff. This is implausable, but hey, so is dying of a drug overdose after being sober for half a year.