Erika L. Sánchez – I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

Erika L. Sánchez – I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

When her older sister Olga dies in a car accident, there is only 15-year-old Julia left to be the perfect Mexican daughter her parents want to have. Olga was a role model, she always obeyed, did not go out, helped her mother with her cleaning job and even at college did not have a boyfriend. Julia, instead, wants the full life that all girls in Chicago have, she dreams of becoming a writer, likes to go out with her friends and have fun. Quite naturally, she over and over provokes conflicts with her parents. After Olga is gone, the situation worsens increasingly until it becomes unbearable and she only sees one way out of it all.

Erika L. Sánchez is a journalist and writer of Mexican decent. Her novel “I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter” was nominated finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. She brilliantly portrays the perspective of a teenager who struggles with all the problems of a typical teenager but additionally has to live up to the expectations of her parents who have grown up in another country, with another culture and other values which they have taken with them and which they now project on their daughters. Additionally, which only becomes clear throughout the novel, the loss of her sister has left a greater scar on Julia than was obvious at the beginning.

I totally adored how Erika L. Sánchez found the tone of a teenager who is emotional and only wants to be free, free in her very own understanding. Julia is a sympathetic and adorable girl and it is not difficult to follow her line of thoughts. She wants to be a good daughter, she hates the fights with parents, but she is also stubborn and demands to be treated like the others, the American girls, and not to live up to the old, overcome Mexican values.

Living between two cultures means much more than just growing up, fulfilling the expectations of the peer group and the parents is impossible but nevertheless expected from teenagers in a time of rebellion. They all have to find their individual way of coping with this, Olga found hers and Julia only bit by bit uncovers that her sister wasn’t necessarily the girl she thought she was.

A great read in many respects, full of life, emotional, funny but also reflective and dark at times, it captures the full range of teenage life and takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride.

Marijke Schermer – Love, If That’s What It Is

Marijke Schermer – Love, If That’s What It is

They have been married for 25 years but now, Terri fells like suffocating. She can no longer go on being the housewife in the suburbs whose daily routines have been the same for decades and who has lost all individuality. When she meets Lucas, she falls for him and leaves her husband David. Neither he nor their two daughters Ally and Karla can understand Terri’s behaviour. While Terri finds the second love – if that’s what it is since it does not actually go far beyond bodily desires – her eldest daughter finds her first love. David and Ally need more time to adjust to the new situation, but they two learn that another life is possible.

Marijke Schermer cleverly composes her novel to show quite different types of love. On the one hand, there is the reliable love that has been formed during years of marriage, where the partners know each other with all their weaknesses and have formed dependable routines. On the other hand, Terri lives an ecstatic love with Lucas which does mainly focus on bodily needs but not on getting to know the other’s character. Love within the family – which should be something you can trust on and which deeply disappoints if this is not the case – the first love with butterflies in the stomach and the love between those who have already loved, have been disappointed and not in the middle of their age, approach the concept with reluctance.

I liked the interchange of the different perspectives which are cleverly linked within the story. We often get the same moment first from one then from another character’s perspective thus outlining how they might differ in the assessment of the situation and also showing the different expectations they have.

Interestingly, I can easily understand Terri’s feeling of suffocating and wanting to break out of her life after so many years of only following routines, of feeling like having lost her self and being stuck in a dead-end. David’s perspective, too, is easy to follow. He and Terri have been a team, their family is their common endeavour, she cannot just stand up and go! For him, all was fine up to that moment and thus, he is totally surprised by his wife’s move. For the girls, the situation is hardest, family is the concept they have known and even though they have been confronted with separations and divorces this has been something that happened to others but not to them. How can they experience something like the first love when love can hurt so much?

A wonderfully written novel, right out of life which I totally enjoyed reading.

Diadié Dembélé – Le duel des grands-mères

Diadié Dembélé – Le duel des grands-mères

Le jeune Hamet vit à Bamako avec sa mère. Son père travaille en France et comme celui-ci n‘avait pas la possibilité d‘obtenir une bonne éducation, il voulait que son fils aille à une école française pour apprendre la langue du colonisateur. Mais, l‘école est dure quoiqu‘il apprenne vite le français. Après plusieurs incidents, les parents décident d‘envoyer Hamet chez ses grands-mères qui habitent la campagne. Là, il passera l‘été non seulement à apprendre à obéir de nouveau, mais aussi à connaître l‘histoire de sa famille.

« Le duel des grands-mères » est le premier roman du Malien Diadié Dembélé. L‘auteur réussit à créer une atmosphère vivante et animée qui bien transporte les émotions du jeune Hamet qui, d‘un côte est un peu naïf comme il peut bien l‘être à son âge, mais qui, de l‘autre côté, est observant et intelligent et peut regarder derrière les façades des adultes et reconnaît que parfois, ceux-ci suivent leurs intérêts plutôt que être sincères.

J‘ai vraiment adoré la première partie du roman dans laquelle on apprend beaucoup sur la vie à Bamako, avant tout sur le rôle de la langue qui est un indice du statut social. Hamet est un caractère gentil qu‘il faut aimer immédiatement.

« Il y a des serpents venimeux, des plantes vénéneuses, mais surtout des humains venimeux. »

C‘est au village d‘où viennent ses parents qu’il apprend une leçon pour sa vie. Non seulement reconnaît-il les différences entre Bamako et la vie à la campagne qui est toujours marquée par une foi ancienne. Avant tout, il s’aperçoit des lois non écrites qu‘il faut connaître et obéir. En plus, il y a là des choses qu‘il ne sait pas, l‘histoire de sa famille, des affaires datant de décennies qui sont toujours présentes dans les têtes des habitants du village.

Un roman d‘apprentissage émouvant. Dembélé rend hommage au femmes qui vivent à l‘ombre des hommes mais qui trouvent une manière de profiter de leur place. Et, en outre, le roman montre qu‘il n‘y a non seulement l‘éducation formelle qui est importante mais qu‘il y a aussi une autre éducation qui n‘est pas enseignée dans les écoles mais dans la rue.

Karen M. McManus – The Cousins

Karen M. McManus – The Cousins

Twenty-five years ago, their parents were disowned by their grandmother Mildred. The four Story children Adam, Allison, Archer and Anders only got a letter saying that they knew what they had done. Unfortunately, they didn’t and haven’t been in contact with their mother who still lives on the family estate Catmint House on Gull Cove Island off the coast of Massachusetts which has been turned into a successful vacation destination for the rich. Unexpectedly, Milly, Aubrey and Jonah, Mildred’s grandchildren who have not seen each other for years, are invited to spend the summer there and to get to know their granny. Has the old lady finally changed her mind? Not really, but this is only one of the many, well buried family secrets of the Storys.

I liked Karen McManus’ former young adult novels a lot since she knows how to create suspense without being actually violent and because her characters are often teenagers one can easily identify with since they show the same fears and insecurities every knows. “The Cousins” offers an interesting setting and much more twists and turns than expected and thus was an enjoyable read.

The story is told alternatingly from the three teenagers’ point of view thus giving insight not only in their thoughts but also in the secrets they hide from each other. It also adds to the fast pace and at times gives you an advance since you already know what’s coming when the characters in the novel are still in the dark.

There are also flashbacks in which we meet their parents when they were teenagers which is quite an interesting comparison and also provides the necessary background to understand the behaviour of the characters on the island.

Overall, I totally enjoyed the novel which had an unforeseeable ending and some fascinating characters.

JP Delaney – Playing Nice

JP Delaney – Playing Nice

Theo’s birth is highly dramatic, much too early, the young boy has to be taken to intensive care while his mother Maddie is still weakened by the C-section. So, it’s Pete’s task to get familiar with all the machines and to take care of his little son. Despite the turbulent start, Theo develops much better than expected and Pete turns out to be the perfect father while Maddie struggles with her new role. Quite naturally, they decide to have Pete stay at home since his job is less well paid and he totally likes taking care of the boy. When one day Miles and his wife Lucy are in front of their door, they only have faint memories of the couple whose boy was born on the same day as Theo and who was also taken to an incubator. The reason for their visit will shake their lives: the boys were swapped and Theo actually is their biological son. What starts as a friendly encounter, since they all sit in the same boat, quickly turns into the most evil fight no parent would ever like to be in. And just like in war, Miles is willing to use any weapon available to get his boy.

A novel like a roller coaster ride, emotionally challenging and breath-taking, reading it caused me almost a night without sleep since I couldn’t put it away. It is a conflict which is unsolvable, yet, the way it all turns out is unbearable to read and makes you wonder the whole time: could this happen to me, too? What incriminating material would police find if they checked on my computer and mobile phone? And at the same time: this is so absolutely unfair, this cannot be true, but how often do you hear of those stories where institutions are simply wrong and easily fooled?

At the beginning, I was wondering if Maddie’s difficulties of bonding with her son would become the major focus of the novel, quite soon, this shifted when the core problem became known. You cannot say what to do in such a case and just like the protagonists, I would never have expected it all to turn out that way. It is sheer unbelievable how everything that happens is turned against Pete and Maddie, even the most harmless incidents become major reproaches and raise questions about their parenting. It isn’t illogical at all, that is the terrible realisation, from the characters’ point of view, they hardly have any other option than interpreting the signs in this way. It hurts reading it, it really hurts, first and foremost when you look at what the situation does to Pete and Maddie. I guess, at some point, I might have given up had I been in their shoes.

To call it a wonderful read would somehow be awkward, yet, it is a brilliantly crafted novel with a very interesting conflict and, above all, authentic and lively characters who could just be you or me. Even though it is fiction and as a thriller mainly aims at making you feel a cold shiver running down your spine, it is also a novel that makes you ponder a lot.

Catherine Chung – The Tenth Muse

Catherine Chung – The Tenth Muse

“What terrible things we do in the name of love.”

Katherine grows up a very special girl. Her father introduces her to natural sciences and she is fascinated by numbers from her childhood. When her mother leaves them unexpectedly, the bond between father and daughter becomes even closer. Stubborn as she is, she wants to study mathematics knowing that the time hasn’t yet come for women to enter university and compete with men in the 1950s. But which other way could she possibly choose? She is obsessed with the Riemann hypothesis and determined to solved the greatest riddle of her time. Her stubbornness does not prevent her from being hurt, from learning the hard way that only because you are talented and eager, you do not necessarily get what you want.

Even though Catherine Chung’s novel is set in the 1950s, there is so much also today intelligent young women experience when it comes to the intellectual ivory tower. Men are still considered made in god’s image and thus by nature more capable, cleverer and more talented that any woman could ever be. Well, that’s their interpretation. I found it easy to bond with the striving protagonist and, unfortunately, only could commiserate too easily with what she feels when being deceived and her intellect ignored over and over again.

One should not shy away from the book because of the mathematics, the logical problems they are occupied with are well explained and remain quite on the surface so that the average reader can easily follow their thoughts. Apart from that, what I appreciated most is how Katherine sticks to her ideals and goals, even though this at times means that she hurts herself and gives up a lot for her professional integrity – without being rewarded for it. The second line of the plot about Katherine’s family is also quite intriguing since it is well embedded in the German history and the dangers even intellectuals ran when they had the wrong religion.

A beautifully written book about a strong woman that captivated me immediately.