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SET in 1950 New Orleans, this is the story of 17-year-old Josie Moraine, who is the daughter of a prostitute.

Not the "filthy, streetwalking kind", as we discover in the second sentence of the book, but the kind who works for a madam in a respectable (as far as that term can apply to the world's oldest profession) brothel.

And not the kind who should be a parent either. After all, what mother beats her 10-year-old daughter and is "happier without her around"? Or maintains a romantic relationship with a cruel Mafia hitman, who bears a deadly grudge against her daughter for throwing hot coffee at him after he caused her to be hospitalised from a drunken beating?

Although Josie's life is inevitably influenced by her mother and her occupation, she is not defined by it. She may love her mother with a loyalty that is undeserved and heart-breaking, but by the tender age of seven, Josie is already independent, knowing how to cook, clean and make martinis, while feeding her intelligence with books and school.

This is also the age she and her mother, Louise, move to the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Louise seeks out employment at the brothel of famous madam Willie Woodley.

Willie, and those who work for her, become Josie's de facto family, along with bookshop owner Charlie Marlowe and his son Patrick. At 10, when the beatings start, Josie begins hiding and sleeping in the bookshop owned by Charlie. One night, she discovers that the office she has been sneakily sleeping in has been fixed up as an apartment for her, and in exchange for the lodging, she begins working at the bookshop.

The story proper begins with Josie at the age of 17, who, despite her brains and high academic scores, only dreams of saving up enough money to get out of New Orleans. But a series of events unfolds that conspire to dare her to dream of attending the elite female Smith College in Massachusetts, and then to thwart that seemingly out-of-reach dream.

Her mother's hitman boyfriend, Cincinnatti, comes back to town, still bearing a grudge two years after the hot coffee incident. At the same time, Josie fantasises that a nice gentleman called Forrest L. Hearne Jr, who comes into the bookstore for poetry books, might be her unknown long-lost father. So when he dies suddenly at a club the next day, she becomes unusually interested in the case.

Then, there is also the problem of boys; more specifically, familiar, comfortable Patrick Marlowe, and good-looking, quiet Jesse Thierry. Although these events may sound quite random, the story actually ties them all together quite well. Author Ruta Sepetys is an excellent storyteller, with an interesting and different hero in Josie.

One of the things I like best about her narrative is that she allows us to see how Josie's life and relationships are through the story itself, rather than just telling us outright.

Josie is made to face some hard truths, make some difficult decisions, and also realise how much she is cared for, despite her fierce independence and self-reliance.

The only thing I didn't really like was the ending. It's not the sort of ending that portends a sequel, but the sort that just seems to trail off quietly, rather than end satisfyingly.

Despite that, I would definitely recommend this book for those who want to read about a different sort of plucky, independent teenage heroine.

Sirens

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A WOMAN in the 1920s "knows that it is her ... twentieth-century birthright to emerge from a creature of instinct into a full-fledged individual who is capable of molding her own life. And in this respect she holds that she is becoming man's equal," Dorothy Dunbar Bromley wrote in 1927 in Harpers magazine, describing the "Feminist – New Style".

Quotes such as these that precede several of the chapters in Sirens set the scene for not only the story but also the main characters in it.

The era of jazz clubs and flapper girls marked a time of upheaval. The men who returned from the horrors of World War I were very different from who they had been when they left; Prohibition (when the manufacture and sale of alcohol was banned in many American states) and the gangsters it gave rise to ruled the day; and, as the quote illustrates, this was also when feminism began to rise.

While Sirens is very much about girls embracing their new-found independence and daring to live their dreams, the novel is written in the alternating voices of Josephine "Jo" Winter and Louise "Lou" O'Keefe to show two very different girls and the widely divergent paths they take towards similar goals.

Jo is the more introspective character; sent away from home by her overprotective father, she dreams of living her own life and having her own career. Lou is the classic gangster's moll who escapes her poverty-stricken life when she finds favour with New York's most notorious gangster, Danny Connor; while she expresses love for him, her real motivation is to make sure she doesn't lose her new and glamorous lifestyle – and like her gangster boyfriend, she will not let anything or anyone stand in her way. Sirens' main plot focuses on Jo and her relationship with her supposedly dead brother Teddy.

Before his disappearance, Teddy confided in Jo that he was in some sort of trouble and had to go off the grid for a while. Trusted with this secret that, if let slip, could threaten not just Teddy's life but also the lives of everyone in her family, Jo is clearly carrying a burden too heavy for her young shoulders.

The circumstances that lead to Teddy's predicament are revealed very slowly – so much so that at times the story dragged a little and I really wanted the author to get to the point. As interesting as the story was, I just wanted to find out how it would end. Since Jo speaks in the present voice and Lou in retrospect, you already know from the get-go that at least one of them is going to survive; the real mystery is whether or not the other one will.

Sirens is quite complex in the sense that there are many secondary characters and they all have an important part to play in each other's lives, and they all have their role in the final outcome. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the insights into Jo and Teddy's relationship, Jo's attempts to flee Danny and his thugs, while crucial to the story, extends for longer than necessary.

One of the main gripes I have about young adult fiction is that many female characters still seem to fall into the pattern of waiting to be rescued, always playing the damsel in distress. Credit should be given to Janet Fox for coming up with a truly strong female lead, one who is determined not to let her life be dictated by anyone else. And setting her story in the 1920s gives that notion even more weight.

Dead Ever After

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HAVING been a devoted fan of Sookie Stackhouse and her supernatural adventures for almost 10 years, I picked up the final book in the series with a little bit of nostalgia, and a whole lot of trepidation. Nostalgia because there were so many characters in the series that I have grown to love and will miss, and trepidation because I wasn't sure I was going to like how Harris ended her wildly popular series.

I desperately wanted it to be great. Maybe not epic, because the quality of her later books had been deteriorating slowly, but I was hoping that since this was the last book, there would be a kind of closure for me, as the reader. In this I was not disappointed.

While I wouldn't call the book epic in any form, I felt that I got that closure I was looking for, and even better, it came tied up in a nice big bow.

In the book, Arlene Fowler (Sookie's former friend), is bailed out of jail by persons unknown, and approaches Merlotte's for a job, not realising that Sookie is now part owner. Given the way their relationship ended (Arlene, her boyfriend and friends had planned to kill Sookie), Sookie finds it relatively easy to turn Arlene down.

But then Arlene is found murdered, and Sookie is arrested for the crime. She makes bail, however, since the evidence against her is not strong, and investigates Arlene's killing. What she discovers shocks her to her very core, and infinitely changes her life.

The thing about the book that really gripped me is Sookie herself. She has come a long way from the person she was in Dead Until Dark, yet she still retains that practical nature that is one of her cornerstone characteristics.

Throughout the course of the series, she has found first love, been broken-hearted, raped, tortured and manipulated by those closest to her, and has had to kill to survive. And while she did not come out unscathed from these experiences, Dead Ever After finds her looking forward to Jason's upcoming wedding, enjoying the company of Tara and her twins, and just laying in the sun.

For Sookie, it's the relatively ordinary experiences in her life that she enjoys and appreciates, because she knows that the good comes less often than the not-so-good.

She is a survivor who is still trying to be the best version of herself, the way her grandmother taught her, regardless of the fact that the somewhat naive and innocent lens that she used to view the world with had more or less disappeared. This is undoubtedly the best thing about the book, and the series as a whole.

I also appreciated the growth of Sookie's relationship with the many characters – Andy, Sam, Pam, Tara, Niall, Dermot, the town of Bon Temps and her brother Jason. The last two is much more significant because we all know that Sookie was considered the town freak due to her telepathic ability.

Yet, in the course of the series, it is clear that the town not only begins to accept her, but also realises that she is one of their own, and therefore an affront to her is an affront to the town. Her brother Jason starts off as an immature, selfish, ladies' man, yet by the end of the series, he has also grown and matured and this has had a positive effect on his relationship with his sister.

The way Harris writes her relationships is one of the best things about the series. She captures the pain, the joy and even the pettiness with an honesty that is sometimes so stark that the words leap off the pages.

Harris has been on the receiving end of many negative responses for ending this series, and the way she ended it. After all, the series has spawned the wildly successful television series True Blood, and is definitely a cash cow for Harris. So ending it was not a lucrative decision, but Harris did it anyway.

It takes a good writer to be able to write a series that captivates the world. It takes a brave one to realise and recognise publicly that it is time to say goodbye. Harris is one of those authors who has consistently ended her series when she felt the time was right. She did this with her Harper Connelly series, Aurora Teagarden series and the Lily Bard series. So it should come as no surprise that she would eventually end Sookie's adventures as well.

Dead Ever After has a good balance of light and dark, and shows the pinnacle of Sookie's mental and emotional growth that has been happening throughout the series.

While the book itself was far from perfect (there were certain sections that I felt were there as a convenient way for Harris to cut loose ends), I still enjoyed reading it. Because in the end, the book isn't about Bon Temps, or the supernatural. It isn't about the romance, although there's plenty about that. It's about a half-fairy, telepathic blond barmaid.

Don't read this book to find out who she ends up with, or how the series ends. Instead, read it for Sookie.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Jumaat, 5 Julai 2013

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf

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