I was really excited about reading Blow Out the Moon. It's a boarding school book, part of a small genre, and it's the best kind: foreigner boarder! (I used to be really keen on these--the English girl at an Australian boarding school (and vice versa), English evacuees sent to the US because of WWII and then returning, etc. Classic fish out of water setup.)
Ach; disappointment! Was Koponen going for a story or a biographical account of her life? The book straddles an uncomfortable position between "this is what really happened" and fiction, settling for neither, leaving the reader (me, anyways) confused. Pick one or the other, please. Sometimes there was too much exposition, not enough character development. Other times, Koponen describes herself as a child--especially her thinking processes--in an apt, realistic manner.
Either way, clean up the cutesy writing and CUT BACK ON EXCLAMATION POINTS. We also know (how we know, how you repeat it over and over) that you really, really, really, REALLY like Henry. We don't know why (or really care), but we know you do.
It's a screaming "First Novel."
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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
- Chasing Vermeer - Blue Balliett
- The Gravedigger's Cottage - Chris Lynch
- House of Stairs - William Sleator
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8 comments:
I collected my thoughts about this book about a week ago, so here they are, in no particular order. Note, Sarah, my comment on the exclamation points, too!
The book is very episodic, yet nothing really happens in each episode. I do think episodic books can be amusing and entertaining; I laughed out loud when I reread Cheaper by the Dozen a few years ago. But these episodes were like little nonepisodes all strung together, making a book but not a novel.
I liked how Libby had read all those boarding-school stories and the author is basically writing her own. I liked Libby as a girl and enjoyed reading from her perspective (although there were way too many exclamation points in her narrative). I could picture Libby’s life at Sibton Park—picture her friends, the house, the rooms, her lessons. But there just wasn’t enough. It’s as if now I can picture everything and now I’m waiting for the novel to begin. I’m waiting for something to happen.
I would have liked it better had it not been billed as a novel, had it been more of a little memoir. Although I probably would have been bored then, too… It read kind of like that book about Virginia Lee Burton by Barbara Elleman, but because Libby is just Libby, it’s hard for me to understand the point of it. I’m not saying you have to be somebody to write a memoir, but surely something significant has to happen to you? Yes, Libby moved from America to England for eighteen months, but I’m not sure I’d call that significant enough to warrant a memoir/book/novel if no details are given to make that adventure more significant than just the act itself.
I don’t understand the title. The poem at the end of the book (even after the epilogue) used the phrases “blow out the light” and “put out the moon,” but never “blow out the moon.” Why wouldn’t she have used one of the exact phrases? And I’m still unclear as to how the poem relates to the entire book. Yes, Libby loved to read, anywhere and everywhere. And I could see her getting snippy if people are telling her to turn out the light and go to sleep. But in the poem the girl gets all pissy, which seems a little harsh for Libby. What’s the connection?
I was interested at first, but by the end I was feeling a little misled. Why am I reading this? Is anything going to happen (longer than what it takes three pages to write)? What’s the point? I’m glad she didn’t fill it with Life Lessons Learned Along the Way, but still. I think I need more of a story.
And, Sarah, I agree that it uncomfortably straddles real life and fiction. It made such a point to show real stuff (letters, pics), but then it calls itself a novel. What was real? What was made up for the story? Oh, wait, I just remembered I don't care. Blown moon, indeed!
Eunice--you are right; nothing really happens. Libby goes over here, then she goes over there, and ooh, then someone says something and og looky--a real photograph of the real horse the real Libby rode!
Maybe this is a book with a beginning and an end but no middle.
It would have been better as a memoir, but then, something would have had to happen!!! Or perhaps this is a memoir for the younger set? Like second grade?
No clue about the title, either.
Maybe they go out of their way to bill this as a novel because of the whole James Frey debacle, lest anyone check up on Koponen's facts and find out she didn't really ride Tuppence on that particular day. But still, I would have rather she stuck to autobiography (but, as we said before, it would have been boring and too simplistic -- maybe even too much so for a second grader?). Otherwise, she should have made up a lot more details and events and adventures to spice up this book! Why write a novel where nothing really happens? Make shit up, woman! It's what writers often do!
I, too, agree that nothing happens, so I guess I don't need to go into a lot of detail about that (except to say that that was the quickest year and a half ever, and that, considering how young she was, it seemed a little odd that she didn’t have any problems fitting in with her friends again after such a long time). Like Sarah, I like boarding school books precisely because the characters are out of their familiar lives, but Libby seems to have a harder time than most when dealing with change.
I wasn’t bothered by the exclamation points—didn’t notice them, in fact. What DID bother me was how often she needed to point out that she was American and that “this is the way they did it in England.” I guess Koponen didn’t intend for the book to be read outside of the U.S, or at least not in England. Libby kept saying how she hated England, but many of her non-connected episodes (nice comparison, Eunice, with Cheaper by the Dozen, which I just read for the first time so it was neat to have someone mention it) described how much fun she was having and how interesting everything was. She wished she looked like the English kids, but she kept lecturing them on liberty and justice for all; did she feel the English kids had no freedom? She must, considering she felt “freer to say things” once she got back to the U.S.
Perhaps things have changed a lot in 40 years (the cancellation on the back of a postcard said 1959, so I’m assuming that was the year), but I didn’t realize Americans were still obsessing about the Revolution in the 1960s: “Don’t ever give me tea—if you do, I’ll have to pour it out on the floor, in honor of the Boston Tea Party…. There was a little pause when I was done [explaining the Tea Party], and then Catherine Marshall said, ‘That’s interesting’” (p. 86). I personally think that the pause and comment were code for “you can’t be serious.” Libby didn’t like one of the verses from “All things bright and beautiful” because it referred to the estates of the rich and poor, and she said, “That was the bad side of England—what the Revolution stopped in America—but they still had it in England” (p. 161). Yet social inequality is very much still in the U.S., so it seemed “a bit odd” to say that. I might be overreacting, but things like that bothered me.
Libby the character in 1959 was just a kid, so I’m certainly not criticizing her feelings or impressions of a different country, but I do wonder why Libby the author in 2004 would stress how absolutely wonderful America is compared to England. I didn’t think we felt that way about England any more. To clarify, I should specify that most of her stories didn’t bother me. She was in a different culture, and it is only natural to comment on different ways of dressing, eating, and speaking. In that way, I liked the idea of including pictures from her life, although I think many of them were unnecessary and rather forced.
This is the second book that I’ve complained about, so I feel I should end with something relatively positive. Libby is always talking about how much she wants to be a writer, so I wonder if presenting this book as a type of scrapbook (since I don’t know whether it is novel or memoir either) might help other kids realize that they can be writers, too—although at the risk of losing my positive tone, I would hope their writing would have a middle.
Oh good heavens--I was so embarrassed that Libby kept bringing up the Boston Tea Party. The justice and liberty spiels were also cringe-worthy. As I read the book, it just seemed to be a "Leave It to Beaver" Americana innocent purity thing.
However, and I didn't recall this until now, I had a Libby-esque experience as a child involving the Statue of Liberty and, looking back, it somewhat puts Libby in perspective:
I loved those workbooks you buy at educational teacher stores. You fill out the worksheets and, if correct, you put a sticker (stamps, really, but they were included!) on the page. Yay! Validation!
Okay, not all stickers are the same. "Nice Work!" is not as good as "Excellent!" and "Super!" (Can you do better than Super? I love Super!)
I finished a connect-the-dot page where you neatly printed out what the picture was. The dots linked to form the Statue of Liberty. I painstakingly lettered the answer and showed it to my mom for approval. She put a stamp on the page and returned it to me. I cried. Sobbed, really, to my mom's bafflement. She asked what was wrong and my answer--I was maybe seven then--was that it was the first time, the very first time I'd written out STATUE OF LIBERTY and she only gave me an sticker with a stupid stork saying "First Rate!" on it; surely that deserved a "Fabulous!" or some other prime endorsement. But those stamps don't come off and I didn't want to waste having two on one page. The stork stayed, and I kept the book.
I also remember constantly asking my parents if every US flag we encountered was the Real Flag.
So I hate those overly patriotic parts in the book, but apparently, I can relate.
OH: regardless of how much I could relate, I was smart enough not to force my passions on people outside my family, ie. people in another country who I should be trying not to alienate.
Just a couple more quick points:
* Beth, I totally agree that it was weird that Libby said she hated England but then thought everything was neat and fun.
* Beth (again! I agreed with your whole post!), I agree that all the anti-England stuff was weird (maybe Libby's little grade-school mind thought that, but I would have thought Koponen would temper it a little or something), and I also hated how Libby kept bringing up the Revolution (maybe she had just learned about it; I think I recall that her dad kind of laughs at her about it in one scene, as if he realizes how weird it is that she is thinking about it all the time; did I make that up?). I love that you thought Catherine Marshall was secretly thinking, "You can't be serious." Me, too!
* The whole thing about Libby constantly saying she wanted to be a writer was annoying. I'm a total bitch, but I kind of feel like Koponen is saying with this book, "See? I did it! I became a writer!" First of all, you don't need to publish to be a writer, and second of all, if you do think you need to be published to be a validated writer, then it should be a real book and not a fake memoir. I told you -- I'm a bitch!
* Sarah, your SoL story totally cracked me up. I can see you being terribly unhappy with your stork sticker but not wanting to waste another. Oh, the agony!
Ok, I don't get it. The book was
a) not a memoir -- memoirs have shape, and purpose, and generally reflect on things, not just report boring little incidents that drift about like yellow cream in a glass of milk.
b) not a novel -- novels also have shape, and purpose, and actual characters, and plots.
c) written as if BY the 8-year-old Libby for a school essay; no style, no literary language, no nothing that makes it sound like an actual book and not a piece of personal memorabilia.
I'm sorry, because this was obviously a labor of love, but it's really absurdly bad. An MFA from Brown? Really? Wow. :-(
Sarah, I love you. You poor tragic soul. That reminded me of the time I gave my dad an essay to read that I was SUPER proud of and that my teacher loved (I think I was 11 or so) and he said "It's quite good."
I bawled. He explained to me that he was using "quite" in the first of these senses. I bought it then, but only snifflingly. ;-)
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