I finished Burning City the other day but haven't gathered my thoughts about it yet. Is Erica the only other person who has finished it?
Nonetheless, I did want to post that Locus had a whole young adult fiction issue in May. I'll have to buy it once I have a Texas address; it looks pretty good.
Also, I love Roger Sutton's comment about The Giving Tree in a recent blog entry.
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- The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
- Absolutely, Positively Not - David LaRochelle
- Zap - Paul Fleischman
- Stay with Me - Garret Freymann-Weyr
- Blow Out the Moon - Libby Koponen
- The Book of Lost Things - John Connolly
- American Born Chinese - Gene Luen Yang
- Kalpana's Dream - Judith Clarke
- The Body of Christpher Creed - Carol Plum-Ucci
- The Canning Season - Polly Horvath
- Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
- Wrecked - E. R. Frank
- Burning City - Ariel & Joaquin Dorfman
- Stuck in Neutral - Terry Trueman
- Criss Cross - Lynne Rae Perkins
- Sandpiper - Ellen Wittlinger
- Looking for Alaska - John Green
- Full Service - Will Weaver
- Black Hole - Charles Burns
- Autobiography of My Dead Brother - Walter Dean Myers
- Geography Club - Brent Hartinger
- So B. It - Sarah Weeks
- A Great and Terrible Beauty - Libba Bray
- Bound - Donna Jo Napoli
- Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem - Marilyn Nelson
- The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place - E. L. Konigsburg
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- The Gravedigger's Cottage - Chris Lynch
- House of Stairs - William Sleator
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8 comments:
I've gathered my thoughts. I did not enjoy this book, and that's a let-down, because I voted for it.
At first, I felt like I was reading an episode of "Lost". I like to know at least as much about what's going on as the protagonist, and I hate it when the author tries to intrigue me by confusing me. It doesn't work. I just get pissed off. As the story progressed (if you could call it that), I had trouble figuring out where the story was going. Ok, there's a girl. Ok, he goes to a bar and meets random people. What's the point? I never really figured that out. I understand that there was some sort of change that Heller went through, but I couldn't really tell what that was.
I feel like I'm missing a huge part of the book, some symbolism or a reference to something outside my scope, and there must be something more going on than bike racing and a pretty girl, but I just don't get it. And that's frustrating. And that's why I didn't enjoy this book. It frustrated me.
Anybody want to enlighten me?
It's funny, Erica -- when I saw that you weren't a fan of this book, I really wondered whether it would turn out to be one of my favorites. Our tastes seem to be rather reliably opposite. ;-)
However, I too was disappointed by Burning City, although not for the same reasons as you. I didn't find the plot -- such as it was frustrating, mostly because I was kind of drawn to the whole "delivery of bad news" idea. I guess if I had to peg what the Dorfman's message was, it would have something to do with the fact that Heller is tapped into everyone's pain, confusion, regret and anger except his own, and that he speeds through life in order to escape it -- but that he learns to acknowledge, maybe even appreciate his own sorrows.
Yeah... it's not that interesting a message. Sorry.
Anyway, here are my incredibly long thoughts:
-- Writing: sophisticated, but occasionally overblown, and WAY too many ellipses for my taste. Some lovely lines : "the cake of failure," Christophe signalling his "approval of all things". Some bizarre ones: "It was overwhelming, a circus whose clowns had all committed suicide in midperformance." Huh??
-- One of my biggest complaints is the slightly jarring fact that all the characters who aren't white just happen to be lyrical, wise, poetic, deeply emotional, or intuitive: see Salim, Benjamin Ibo, the Jamaican Man who sells umbrellas, even Mrs. Chiang. They weren't exactly caricatures, but they weren't exactly real people either.
-- I liked the setting, mostly. The whole idea of the Soft Tidings company is slightly fantastic, so I was drawn in against my will. I felt like they wanted to paint new york city as a place of myth, fable, narrative -- not quite real, not quite the NYC that actually exists. I confess to wondering the whole way through how it was going to treat 9/11, since it's set in the summer of 2001. I was frankly relieved when it didn't come up, because I think it would have been a mistake to turn it into a metaphor, or to connect it any more to the Trojan War than it already was by implication.
-- Heller: I'm afraid I don't believe in him at all. I would like to, but I don't. Is he supposed to be a flawed, tragic superhero? There's not enough to sustain that impression here. I have absolutely no reason to believe Heller is a naturally empathic person or that he somehow exudes a comforting pheremone to people in distress. He strikes me as a fairly typical teenager in virtually every way: self-centered, mad about a girl, antiauthoritatian. I needed something, some evidence, to show me why he's different or why he is so incredibly good at what he does. The Dorfmans don't provide that. And honestly, being handed flowers along with the news that your beloved has died? Not so much a powerful act of understanding. Actually kind of weird and inappropriate.
-- What the hell is the fact that the news appears on "ambiguously light green" cards supposed to convey?
-- The "Picture This" bit at the end sort of makes me hate the Dorfman pair, because it comes across as a clever-clever ploy to make me like them or think they're cool. Oh, it's a son who plays billiards and writes all night long and calls his father "Old man." Wow.
-- I'm actually totally offended by Salim's speech on page 135, otherwise known as "Advice on how to die in horrible blistering pain and have pieces of flesh fall off your body, but it's ok because you will finally be experiencing the real heart of life and truth."
-- Benjamin Ibo calls Heller Eshu. He tells Heller that Eshu is Destiny's best friend, and Heller later changes that to "Chance is Destiny's best friend." Does that make Heller Chance? What does that mean? That he brings news that is random, capricious? How does that make him connected to destiny? Is any of this actually thought out, or is it all just a string of pretty words?
And yet, I didn't hate this book. It worked for me in some ways; I knew someday Heller would have to deliver bad news to someone he cared about, and I wondered what it would be like. It didn't disappoint.
I think the book just occupies an uncomfortable place between fairytale and reality, and neither part was powerful enough to work.
(Sorry for typos above -- distracted by TV. E., wasn't that zombie dance awesome? :-))
Oh shoot - I wrote this offline before I saw that Meera commented.
Hmm.
I'm not sure what to think of Burning City except that the authors tried to fit a whole lotta stuff in the story and I don't think they fully succeeded. It was difficult to get into the book.
Themes I Found:
+ What it means to be an American
+ Purpose of life, love
+ Dealing with grief
+ Growing up (our favorite!)
+ Relationships are Hard! -- with strangers, friends, relatives, coworkers
Not having been to New York, I can't comment on the authenticity of "capturing the flavor" of the city, though I think it isn't that easy to find someone or keep running into the same people. The descriptions of Heller's "hell on wheels" (ha ha) bike excursions were vibrant and exciting.
I read a review somewhere where the reviewer found it hard to accept Heller's dismissive (rude, really) treatment of his grandparents against the contrast of his kindness and sensitivity to strangers. I agree with that, but caveat that teens and their guardians are often at odds and that Heller has a nice load of resentment and unresolved issues with his parents. And aren't we always nicer to strangers? Heller sees his job as helping people -- and there are no strings attached, initially.
If Heller is supposed to have this inborn -- inherited from his father -- ability to break bad news in a good way, why is he so indifferent to his grandparents? I don't think the "teens will be teens" fully explains the situation; Heller's got quite the passive-aggressive thing going on.
Ironically, as Heller helps people deal with grief, he refuses to face his own sadness over his absent parents, off in their vague do-gooder land. But I don't know if that is the point of the book, as Meera said; it came across as an inconsistency of character to me -- not a Flaw(!). Maybe it was supposed to be, but I didn't get it.
Like Erica, I felt like I was missing something, especially with Salim's ancient stories of Troy & surrounding environs. I think the Dorfmans were trying to paint a picture of NY and a specific thread of relationships; in that I think they succeeded, but Heller didn't grow on me as a character.
Meera -- Yes yes! Too many ellipses! Look at us: clever-clever! And the Exotique of the People from Other Lands was also galling.
The whole Eshu-Destiny-Chance thing didn't fully work for me, either; in delivering those cards, he's a destiny character, not chance.
Not a craptastic book, just not a great one.
M- Yes, we certainly disagree a lot. The zombie dance didn't do it for me at all. It was just weird. But I loved the lindy hop dance they did the week before!
I actually agree with all the above criticisms. That they tried to squish all these ideas into one story with little plot is what made me feel I was missing something. Apparently I wasn't, because I got that much. Maybe it was also the half-fantasy aspect that made me uncomfortable. I did get the feeling at one point that all the strangers would turn out to be imaginary or something, but it didn't pan out.
About NY: I started the book shortly after a horrifying trip to the city. (Nothing out of the ordinary happened, I just can't stand the place. Another difference in taste, M.) I abhor all the qualities this book seemed to celebrate: hordes of people, endless cement, street vendors, traffic, etc. So when the authors started to sound like a typical New Yorker ("NY is the awesomest place ever! It's magical!"), it just added to my anger about the whole situation. And then the bike excursions were supposed to be exciting? Whatev. Action scenes might as well be blank pages for me.
I'm trying to think of something positive, really I am. The only thing I can think of is the cake. Strawberry cake. Mmm. Come to think of it, who eats strawberry cake? I've had cake with a strawberry layer or strawberries on top, but never strawberry cake.
Wow, you guys are way more eloquent and expressive than I am. I don't want to take away from that, and I don't want to comment on every little thing (because I wouldn't be adding anything, just nodding my head in agreement). I finally finished this book this morning, and I'm unimpressed. I'm not angry, or frustrated, or disappointed. I just didn't like it. Not my book.
Interestingly, though, I think one of the reasons I didn't like it is because I thought it was going over my head. The chance-destiny stuff, the talk of Troy, the symbolism of Salim and his Otherness. I guess now I'm glad that I wasn't really missing anything (like Erica also thought), that it wasn't really shaken out well anyway. Although I admit, even if it were, I probably wouldn't have loved the book.
It's just not my type. [Is "shaken" a word?]
I did find the book rather unbelievable. I guess I can wrap my head around the fact that there is a fantastical element to it, what with the whole Soft Tidings thing, but still, I found other stuff unbelievable, not just fantastical. Would Heller really have thrown that cake at Bruno's car? Would the other employees at ST really have treated Heller like shit and rallied around Rich so much? Would Heller really be so out of touch as to ask Silvia "am I your boyfriend again" when he wasn't really a boyfriend to begin with and she had certainly shown no signs of letting him be it again so soon? Would he keep running into people? Would he and Salim really be that close after such little time? Would everyone really be offering his/her condolences to Heller and Heller only at the cremation? I can't believe Salim didn't have closer friends in the city.
And why set this book in the summer of 2001? As much as I didn't want 9/11 to have anything to do with it, the time part of the setting seemed purposeful. For no purpose.
And yeah, I didn't believe in Heller. He didn't seem that great at his job. And Dimitri was weird. And why didn't we get to know more about his parents? I found that annoying. Just tell me, already. Heller was so "complicated," but really I found him incongruous. Is that the word I'm looking for? His actions and behaviors didn't seem like they were all coming from the same person.
And the "ambiguously light green card. 4 x 8." was incredibly annoying. I don't know even know how a card can be an ambiguous color. Definitely a little gimmicky, a little clever-clever.
Although I admit I enjoyed that "Picture this" at the end. But now that Meera voiced her opinion on why it's annoying, I totally see that it's annoying. But I do have to say that I didn't feel like this novel was necessarily disjointed -- I was worried I would be able to tell it was written by two people. But maybe those were the inconsistent characteristics of Heller. Maybe I could tell, after all.
I will stop now. Sorry it took me so long to finish the damn thing, but thanks for everyone's thoughts. They helped me hash out this book, feel better that I didn't "get it," and be comfortable with not liking it. And now I'm excited to read Wrecked.
Eunice wrote:
[Is "shaken" a word?]
Yes, as in, "Shaken, not stirred."
Ah, yes. See -- relate it to alcohol and immediately I get it!
Thanks, Erica, for helping me along my brain fart.
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