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
- Chasing Vermeer - Blue Balliett
- The Gravedigger's Cottage - Chris Lynch
- House of Stairs - William Sleator
- HOOT - Carl Hiaasen
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6 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?
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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